Background: My piece on "The Tragedy of the American Military" is here; the "Gary Hart Memo" is here; an extra reading list is here; and for previous reader responses see No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, No. 5, No. 6, No. 7, No. 8.
On the title of this installment No. 9: Long ago when I was starting in magazine journalism at The Washington Monthly, its founder and editor Charles Peters hammered away at the concept of "meanwhile, the realities." That is, the gap between theoretical discussion of some public issue and the way things actually looked on the delivery end. Here are three notes in that vein.
1) Helicopters are boring but important. From a Pentagon official involved in aircraft tests:
I've long been troubled by our country's emotionally empty "support" of our military, so I quite enjoyed your article. I'm [directly involved in engineering new aircraft] for the DoD, and while I'm not authorized to speak for my organization in any official capacity, I'd like to comment on the procurement-related piece of your writing.
The F-35 is certainly a large, high-profile, example of aviation procurement gone wrong. It illustrates the problems inherent with developing a complex, multirole, aircraft on a compressed timeframe. Other journalists have explored the failure of the "concurrency" concept for development and fielding.
F-35 is also emblematic of our fascination with high-tech toys that are largely irrelevant to recent wars. The military has spent billions on advanced fighters like F-35 and F-22, but also on anti-submarine aircraft like the P-8. None of the assets has been used in any meaningful capacity in the War on Terror, yet they absorb a large percentage of our RDT&E budget. [Research, development, test, and evaluation.]
Meanwhile, our military has struggled with aging and obsolete helicopters to perform the actual mission during our 13 years at war. The Army has failed with every major helicopter upgrade program (RAH-66, H-60M Upgrade, ARH-70), while the Marines have limped along on the 30-year old CH-53E for their heavy lift mission.
Rotorcraft are not as sexy as pointy-nose fighters, and perhaps it's harder for policymakers to envision us fighting the Soviets with them. Still, it seems that our focus and spending is misplaced when emphasizing jet fighters over helicopters.
2) The procurement racket. From someone with experience in defense contracting:
The company I work for used to have a major software contract with [one of the military branches]. We don't any more because it was gradually pried away from us by first forcing us to pair with one of the big name DoD contractors, and eventually awarding the contract to them outright instead of to us.
The hollowness of this bid was immediately evidenced when they hired our entire project staff outright.
3) "Where is the accountability?" From a veteran of the invasion of Iraq:
As a junior officer and part of the initial invasion I came back from the war with more questions and extreme frustration. This wasn’t any sort of PTSD but pent up frustration that accumulated for several years then exploded into apathy and an unconscious desire to stay distant from the war.
For me your article shed some light on why I was so frustrated. It’s the disconnect between policy makers, civilians and the military.
I was part of the last class of [a program] that allows for learning between various services and branches- why they discontinued this program is beyond me. I first expressed my frustration with two simple points that you alluded to in your article but would be worth expanding upon.
1) Why were we not able to secure the main supply lines in Iraq? These are basically 3-4 open highways similar in size and scope to Texas.
2) Why were we not able to immediately retrofit the HMMWVs to become armored resistant from the beginning of the invasion or at least when IEDs were becoming routine.
The points above would pale in comparison to some of the tasks for the WWII mobilization. One of the few reasons I can think of is that the policy makers didn’t have any of their own kids in the fight. They didn’t get it.
Our unit directly benefited from the A10. This plane eliminated opposition forces that could have killed our troops during the first few weeks. I remember seeing an engine of this plane coming into a landing at the Tailil airforce base in Nasiriya. The pilot got out and joined us in the lunch line without even acknowledging the damage. Kind of like the dent in your old pickup truck.
3) No sense of urgency from Generals or politicians
a. I remember hearing (second hand) that General Abazaid gave a speech at Harvard in 2007 or so where when asked why we were still in Iraq and the response or how it was conveyed to me was we were there to buy time until the policy figured itself out. Wow. I’d hate to be a parent of a Soldier killed because we were trying to buy time to figure things out.
b. The Hart Plan that you cite is fine but for 1.5 Trillion can’t we find more competent policy makers and a greater sense of urgency to implement these basic ideas before the invasion. Asymmetric warfare is nothing new.
4) No accountability from policy makers. This enables your idea of easier to go to war.
a. We are quick to jail some junior enlisted teenager for leaking secrets (which doesn’t say much for our control on keeping them) or acting out in the stressors of war but what is said about the 1.5 Trillion dollar failure for the points you mentioned and I’ve listed above? Was anyone fired for failure to secure the supply lines, not protect our troops, engage in the protracted war? When ISIS recently rolled through 5 years of blood sweat and tears was anyone held accountable like “Hey this plan was really fucked up from the beginning, training the Iraq troops didn’t work.” All the people supporting training the Iraqi troops should be fired or at least barred from making poor choices in the future. I mean no accountability.
5) Commo – Why is it that will all the advancements in military technology are communications constantly down in a fire fight??
I could go on and on but .. this article has helped me personally understand some of the sources of my frustration. Not many things help me so thank you.
This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/chickenhawk-responses-no-9-meanwhile-the-realities/384201/
