Beyond the Third Offset: Matching Plans for Innovation to a Theory Of
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Pilot Training Next students train on virtual reality flight simulator at Armed Forces Reserve Center in Austin, Texas, June 21, 2018 (U.S. Air Force/Sean M. Worrell) Beyond the Third Offset Matching Plans for Innovation to a Theory of Victory By James Hasik n November 2014, Secretary of (AI). While progress in these fields has Three Offset Strategies Defense Chuck Hagel announced the been brisk, their offsetting qualities To understand how the department I launch of the Third Offset Strategy. are not obvious, and they may not stumbled into this set of choices, we Despite official insistence to the con- be realms of enduring comparative should review what Americans mean by trary, the offset remains substantially advantage to the United States. If they the term strategy. In Arthur Lykke’s for- a technology strategy, and one largely do prove efficacious, military planners mulation, now widely cited within the focused on the interrelated technologies must contemplate profound organiza- Armed Forces, a strategy is a plan, tying of autonomy and artificial intelligence tional and doctrinal changes to com- means to ways, to achieve overall ends.1 pensate for rapid change in the ways of However, the effect should not be seen war. Whatever the likelihood of future as additive: applying more resources James Hasik is an Associate Professor in the military-technological trajectories, (means) through more methods (ways) Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National American strategists might consider does not generally produce better strat- Security and Resource Strategy at the National less expensive and more certain ways egy. Applying all elements of national Defense University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow for Defense in the Scowcroft Center on of dealing with some adversaries’ local power may just produce denser briefing International Security at the Atlantic Council. superiorities. slides and more frustrated officials.2 Any 14 Forum / Beyond the Third Offset JFQ 91, 4th Quarter 2018 good strategy must embed an econom- Soviet conventional superiority in central skip-echelon command hierarchy, which ical theory of victory, and that requires Europe, transoceanic distances over accords mostly administrative functions deeper thinking.3 One alluring concept which American reinforcements would to groups and numbered air forces. Air can be an offset strategy, which is con- need to travel, and reluctance of its North divisions were completely eliminated in sciously designed to diminish or balance Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the 1990s. This approach, however, may adversaries’ known advantages with Allies to fully rearm during postwar re- be more feasible in relatively static trench asymmetric alternatives. Done well, an construction.9 In war, in Nathan Bedford warfare, or when managing a 3-day air offset strategy may impose such costs Forrest’s famous formulation, it is gen- tasking order. For the U.S. Army in the on adversaries that they will decline to erally best to “get there first with the 1950s, the organizational change went become actual enemies.4 In 2014, after most men,” but no one on the friendly unloved, substantially because of the years of enduring insurgents’ asymmet- side had a direct solution. The indirect inherent command and control problems ric attacks, Pentagon leadership decided solution was to threaten massive retalia- with the communications technologies to borrow the approach, taking a page tion, in which the United States would of the time.12 In early 1961, President from one of its old playbooks.5 Thus, “consider nuclear weapons as available for John F. Kennedy’s introduction of the in a speech that November, Secretary use as other munitions.”10 While far more Flexible Response strategy convinced the Hagel announced the launch of the economical than matching the Soviets Army that battlefields would likely not Defense Innovation Initiative, which tank-for-tank ex ante, it would also have be nuclear. By 1965, the Reorganization would include the now widely discussed been wantonly destructive ex post. of Army Divisions plan had returned Third Offset Strategy.6 The strategy embedded two import- all Army formations to structures akin Hagel made the announcement, but ant organizational factors. At the highest to those of the armored divisions of the progenitor of the concept was clearly level, solidarity across NATO was re- World War II.13 former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert quired for deploying and threatening the Whatever the organizational initia- Work, who kept his position through use of enough nuclear weapons around tives, the problem of Soviet numerical Hagel’s handover to Secretary Ashton the periphery of communist Europe to superiority had not gone away. In par- Carter, and even into the first several crush any advance. But planning for the allel, American observers noted how months of the Trump administration New Look recognized from the start that precision aiming and guided missiles under Secretary James Mattis. Work the Soviets would eventually have many led to high loss rates in the 1973 Yom made this “big idea” initiative a central nuclear weapons themselves. In 1956, Kippur War. The first commander of occupation of his tenure. In his view, this led the U.S. Army to an intriguing U.S. Army Training and Doctrine the “job of the deputy secretary, the organizational innovation, and a Service- Command remarked shortly thereafter primary job, is to fashion a program that level response to the broader New Look: that with modern weapons, “what can is constant with the secretary’s strategic the Pentomic infantry division. Each be seen can be hit, and what can be hit vision.”7 He traced his thinking about the formation of three brigades was reorga- can be killed.”14 Conveniently, during need for an offset strategy to 2012, when nized into five regimental-sized “battle the Vietnam War, the United States had he was Under Secretary of the Navy, and groups,” each containing five infantry begun investing in a variety of new tech- Carter himself was Deputy Secretary of companies. Between the discontinued nologies for precision bombardment and Defense. Carter established a Strategic brigades and battalions, an entire level of electronic warfare, and Pentagon leader- Capabilities Office (SCO) that year, hierarchy was removed. The smaller, flat- ship had reasonable faith in an enduring designed to cost-effectively draw new ter, wider division was intended to have American advantage in these realms capabilities out of existing systems with increased survivability through dispersion over the Chinese and Soviets.15 In 1977, limited injections of advanced technol- across the atomic battlefield. Defense Secretary Harold Brown devel- ogy.8 As Work was one of the few Obama Whether that would have worked was oped a Second Offset Strategy, which he administration officials asked to remain a separate question. During World War I, actually termed the “Offset Strategy.”16 into 2017, one could surmise that the the Imperial German Army progressively He was clearly taken with the idea; his an- new administration, or at least the new flattened its command structure. In nual report to the Congress for fiscal year Defense Secretary, was reasonably taken 1916, the brigades between regiments 1982 used the word offset 15 times.17 with the concept. and divisions were effectively elimi- Effectively employing these technolo- In Work’s figuring, the first great nated; two brigades of two regiments gies further required new operational and American offset strategy was the New each became a single brigade of three doctrinal innovations, notably Follow-On Look of the Eisenhower administration. regiments, but in name only. By early Forces Attack and AirLand Battle. In 1953, the National Security Council 1918, regiments were serving mostly Organizational innovation was another took stock of several serious strategic administrative functions, with battalions matter. The structures of brigades, wings, problems: the cost of the recent Korean reporting directly to division head- and flotillas did not change radically, War, consolidation of communist con- quarters during battle.11 The U.S. Air for the weapons were just swapped in trol across much of Eurasia, growing Force takes a similar tack today with its to replace less accurate analogs, and JFQ 91, 4th Quarter 2018 Hasik 15 the precision-guided violence would Forces Attack.”22 However, during his of intelligent drones, deployed from largely head outbound. However, the similar speech in Brussels the following long-range aircraft, can compensate for sophistication of those formations’ higher April, he talked almost exclusively about local enemy superiorities in missiles or headquarters would greatly increase, technology, and just two interrelated tank troops. That seems the point of the just to manage the flow of information fields of technology: autonomous systems SCO’s Perdix drone demonstration, in needed for rapid precision targeting. As and artificial intelligence. At that time, which a hundred networked tiny aircraft early as 1984, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, he gave particularly short shrift to orga- cooperate in performing reconnais- chief of the Soviet General Staff, had nization, mostly just reminding us how sance missions—or perhaps more lethal concluded that NATO’s precision Alliance solidarity was important to the missions eventually.28 Even nonlethal conventional weapons could produce First Offset.23 But during a speech to the autonomous vehicles can track enemies, battlefield effects