What should the force structure of the US Military be?

This has always been a difficult topic for a number of reasons, primary it centers on an unanswerable question: what will the next war look like? There are generally two approaches to answering this question. The first is to look back at history and try to derive out a pattern. The second is to look to possible near-term adversaries and ask what it will take to overcome them.

In the case of the US military these approaches have led to two very different camps in term of military force structure. The first group talks about a military that can perform “operations other than war.” This is counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency AKA COIN, and traditional peace keeping. Politicians and military leaders hate the terms “peacekeeping” and “nation building.” But take a hard look at the day-to-day patrols during the Vietnam War, US anti-drug operations in Guatemala and Columbia, Somalia in 1993, the NATO air-wars in Kosovo and Libya, our decade plus in Afghanistan, and Iraq the 2^nd time around post “mission accomplished.” Our reconstruction plans post-WWII in both Germany and Japan required lots of funding and US Army bases on site.

Politicians say they don’t want to do peacekeeping, military commanders say they don’t want to do peacekeeping, but time and time again politicians find themselves asking military commander to go do peacekeeping in one form or another. No one likes it but no one has liked it for the past 68 years. This is not going anywhere. It will happen again. We owe it to our soldiers and other service members to accept the unhappy truth and make sure they are prepared to do it and do it well.

The second group looks to near competitors and is all about what is known as Great Power War. In the current environment that means a focus on A2AD (Anti-Access, Area Denial). These experts are looking at the anti-air and anti-ship missiles of nations like Russia and China. They are seeing the addition of sea mines and cyber-attacks. They are also seeing Iran training with swarms of smaller ships, a more quantity over quality approach to naval warfare.

America has dominance in the ability to project power and strike targets. The goal of A2AD is 2 fold:

• Cause high casualties to striking forces. In many cases A2AD assets are not enough to outright win in an open war, however they are enough to ensure a significant cost if there is an engagement
• Strike assets will need to function at a longer range and with greater limitations. The effect of this means some strike assets will be outside their range thus sidelined while others will have to take on significant additional risks while deployed.

Part of the A2AD conversation is to make sure policy makers understand that the strike power seen both times in Iraq cannot be replicated against certain nations due to their A2AD capabilities. It is also critical to understand different military assets have different levels of exposure to A2AD capabilities.

The optimal force for peacekeeping and the optimal force for great power war can be diametrically opposed in many ways. Peacekeeping thrives on low tech solutions, requires stay power over the long runs, and having both international and political partners are not only critical but may be more critical than the military force being deployed. Great Power War requires multiple specialized high tech solutions, a burst of forces in large numbers but only for the short term, and although international and political partners are helpful, it is the military force that determines what is happening on the ground.

People on the peacekeeping side tend argue that their mission is the most likely, which is historically true. Those on the Great Power War side argue that their mission is the deadliest/hardest, which is also historically true, and thus the standard we should prepare against. Given these two differing viewpoints, each of the service find themselves being pulled in two-different direction at once in a time when resources are sequestered, older equipment is worn out due to extended campaigns, and all services are in a “reset” phase.

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Next week I will be applying these two viewpoints to specific military branches.