Myopia In Military Policy Planning

One of the biggest complaints I hear about the U.S. military is its refusal, or at the very least extreme slowness, in adapting to change. Seventeen years after the Cold War ended in a wimper, there is still this assumption among many in the policy planning branches that the real challenge the U.S. will face in the next twenty years is a so-called peer competitor, or another state that can match us in several capability areas.

To most, the next rising power to take heed of is China. Certainly in our region of interest, China has been making waves (though I would discount how significant they really are), and China inspires some very sloppy thinking among those who simply misunderstand the place. In the DoD, this manifests itself as an overpowering drive to master China in every way imaginable, which means building a big, ultra high-tech Air Force to master the skies. The result has been curious indulgences such as the $60 billion F-22 (which wasn’t bought for Iraq, can’t send data, and only recently managed to cross the International Dateline without its nav computers suffering critical failure), and, apparently, the F-35 JSF (which is the victim of typically shady contractor shenanigans).

This China-obsession has led to damaging choices as well. In a tough post, David Axe touches on just how poor the decision-making apparatus is at USAF. After discussing the funding shortfalls for upgrading our most effective CAS craft, the A-10 Warthog, Axe explains:

The Air Force wanted new engines for the A-10C, too, but couldn’t afford them. But that’s the service’s own damn fault, and it’s indicative of backwards thinking. The nation’s youngest military service is sinking $200 billion into unnecessary F-35 light fighters when upgraded F-16s would suffice, and God knows how many billions into consistently under-performing space programs. The Air Force bailed out of the potentially revolutionary UCAS killer drone program in order to buy a big new fleet of big new manned bombers for much more money. The service wants to prepare for an imaginary high-tech air war with China instead of fighting the dirty, low-tech wars we’re actually in. Why? Because high-tech superpower showdowns are what the Air Force knows. They’re easy. The low-tech approach to warfare, by contrast, requires patience and smarts, two things today’s Air Force lacks.

Yeouch. But he’s right. This goes back to the layers of media attention lavished on Barrack Obama’s comment about civilian casualties as the result of poorly-planned air strikes—a comment that was by and large correct. The U.S. military’s belief that it can make up low troop levels with precision weapons has thankfully passed under the bridge, at least to a large degree. This is because air power is not very precise, and it is not limited—especially when you have small numbers of militants hiding in a village of mud huts. A 3-meter CEP (Circular Error Probable, which is a radius in which a weapon will land 50% of the time) is useless when even mild blast effects can rip apart mud huts and kill innocents. That is why, despite downgrading its standard munition to 500 lbs, NATO will still kill far too many civilians with such a light footprint. Over-investing in air power, and pretending that can make up for a troop shortfall, is sheer folly.

Indeed, the most precise weapon is the individual soldier, not an aircraft. Soldiers can much better distinguish between friend and foe on the ground (especially with culturally intuitive or local advisors), they direct far smaller amounts of firepower far more precisely, and they can stick around after a battle to make amends with any bystanders who may have been affected. The training of soldiers to handle urban insurgencies—surely the standard blueprint of combat for the foreseeable future, not superpower conflict with China—must become a priority if Afghanistan is ever to be settled and developed.