Ground Truth Ground Truth The Future of U.S. Land Power Thomas Donnelly and Frederick W. Kagan The AEI Press Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute WASHINGTON, D.C. To the men and women of the United States Armed Services Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 15200 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214. To order call toll free 1-800-462-6420 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries please contact the AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 1-800-862-5801. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Donnelly, Thomas, 1953– Ground truth : the future of U.S. land power / Thomas Donnelly and Frederick W. Kagan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-4262-5 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-8447-4262-7 1. United States—Armed Forces. 2. United States—Military policy. 3.United States. Army. 4. Military readiness—United States. 5. Military planning—United States. 6. Unified operations (Military science)—United States. I. Kagan, Frederick W., 1970- II. Title. UA23.D6226 2008 355'.033273—dc22 2008013062 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5 © 2008 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the American Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI. Printed in the United States of America Contents INTRODUCTION 1 1. THE MISSION 5 How We Got Here 6 The Military’s Missions 11 Priorities 14 Enemies 16 Threats 23 Iran 23 China 27 Challenges 28 Requirements 30 2. WHAT KIND OF WAR?33 The Nature of Conflict and Attempts to Predict the Nature of Future War 34 The Posture of the U.S. Military Today 37 The Need for a Full-Spectrum Force 40 The Internationalist Chimera 42 The Nature of the War on Terror 45 The Restoration of Military Capability 48 3. CASE STUDIES: NEW BATTLEFIELDS 50 The Invasion of Iraq: Speed Kills 52 Tal Afar: Conventional Forces in Irregular War 59 Israel in Lebanon: Serial Surprise 65 vii viii GROUND TRUTH Lost and Won: The Fight for Anbar 73 Building Partners: The Abu Sayyaf Campaign 80 4. WHAT KIND OF FORCE?87 Force Presence and the Institutional Base 89 Information Gathering and Processing 92 Firepower 98 Leader Training 100 Partnership 102 Expansibility 108 5. COSTS: TIME, PEOPLE, MONEY 110 A Ten-Year Commitment 110 Sizing the Force 113 Structuring the Force 122 Equipping the Force 128 Paying for the Force 139 CONCLUSION 142 NOTES 145 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 157 INDEX 159 Introduction In wartime Washington, the one point of bipartisan agreement is that our land forces are too small. Indeed, the small size of America’s land forces has for years been the tightest constraint on U.S. military strategy, and it is likely to remain so for years to come. The failure to foresee the need for larger ground forces, and the reluctance to respond rapidly once the requirement became undeniable, may constitute the most profound mistake made by the Bush adminis- tration after the attacks of September 11, 2001. It will fall to the next administration to begin the effort to remedy this most dire divergence between American military ends and American military means, and the undertaking is likely to go on for at least a decade. We went to war with the army we had, and now must accept the truth about the size, shape, and costs of the land forces we need. This book is an attempt to tell that truth. It addresses the most important policy questions about U.S. land power—questions that must be answered if we are to create the forces we need. It looks at the state of the current force, and at the missions that American land forces must be prepared to conduct. It seeks to consider the nature of land warfare in the early twenty-first century, and to infer, in turn, the qualities American forces will need for success on these new battlefields. And it provides specific answers to the questions of how large the force should be, how it should be equipped and structured, and what it will cost.† † We would like to thank the dedicated research assistants and interns of the American Enterprise Institute, who have been instrumental in bringing this project to fruition. 1 2 GROUND TRUTH Chapter 1, which deals with the missions confronting U.S. land forces, begins by charting the slow and painful reduction of these forces since the end of the Cold War. We suggest that the desire for a peace dividend, coupled with the belief that modern information technology would transform the nature of war, led the United States to view land war as a thing of the past. But the United States is coming to terms with the fact that it cannot simply fight the way it would prefer to fight—rapidly, decisively, and from a distance. The land force, in our post-9/11 and “post-Baghdad” world, is deluged with multiple missions, and we indicate in this chapter how the military ought to prioritize them, identifying enemies, threats, and challenges. We acknowledge that the many commitments of the Long War will be the main preoccupation of the active-duty U.S. land forces, but we also consider a number of additional scenarios that will affect the size and structure of the army and marines, rang- ing from a nuclear Iran to state collapse in North Korea, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. If the number and duration of operations since 9/11 have been unexpected, so too has the nature of these wars. In chapter 2 we look at the types of conflicts the United States must be prepared to engage in. Since even the most experienced strategists err in pre- dicting what kind of war will be next—and since the army cannot speedily adapt itself to each new conflict—the United States cannot simply prepare for one kind of expected combat (for example, “asymmetric”). It needs to be ready to fight across the entire spec- trum of conflict, from high-end major war to low-end peacekeeping mission. It needs, moreover, to be prepared to undertake these fights alone. Even if our allies are willing in spirit, they tend to be weak in flesh, having disarmed even more significantly than we have. Because the heaviest burden of current and likely future threats will fall on U.S. ground troops, we argue, the army and Marine Corps must be rebuilt before a new crisis engulfs us. Chapter 3, a series of short case studies of recent campaigns, is designed to highlight the emerging battlefield realities and to offer lessons to military planners. Given the pace at which U.S. ground forces are moving, these studies can only be suggestive—of the INTRODUCTION 3 range, the length, and the intensity of modern land force combat and stability operations; this is a series of snapshots. Nevertheless, they give a better appreciation of the details of the missions faced by U.S. land forces. They also offer a range of important lessons for the future—from the proper ratio of troops to population in counterin- surgency operations, to the likely effect of years of reliance on air- power on the performance of ground troops, to the value of cultural training and of initiative by junior leaders. The fourth chapter is an attempt to distill the essential qualities that U.S. land forces will need in order to achieve success in their current and imminent missions. Given the number and variety of missions and the emerging nature of land war, it is apparent that U.S. land forces need not only to be more numerous but also to reflect capabilities beyond the timely and devastating delivery of firepower—though the need to deliver firepower undoubtedly remains. We argue that our troops need to be forward stationed: good things tend to happen when U.S. forces are present, and bad things happen when they are not. We argue further that they need, in this war of information, to be able to effectively gather, share, analyze, and respond to a flood of information; that better and more extensive education and training for leaders, particularly junior leaders, is needed; and that the land forces must be able to build effective part- nerships with the foreign militaries they help to develop and train. In the final chapter, we answer some of the toughest questions about the increased land force, including precisely how big the force should be and what it will cost. Breaking down the various forces required for a variety of possible commitments, we argue for a total active-duty land force of about one million, with a reserve compo- nent of approximately 850,000 to 900,000, an army reserve of about 350,000, an Army National Guard of 450,000 to 500,000, and a marine reserve of up to 50,000. The costs of building such a force are undoubtedly large—for the army, with an active-duty force of 800,000, around $240 billion—but the proper question to ask is not whether we can afford sufficient land forces, but whether we will choose to have them. In the context of the overall American gross domestic product, the total burden of an expanded army, by the time 4 GROUND TRUTH this rebuilding process neared completion in around 2017, would be less than 1.2 percent of projected GDP.