A PROPOSAL for the Next STEP IN DEFENSE REORGANIZATION A SURVEY OF SELECTED REORGANIZATIONAL PROPOSALS THE CONTRIBUTORS . 135 Address manuscripts to Editor, Air University Quarterly Review, Headquarters Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. Use of funds for printing this publication has been approved by the Secretary of the Air Force and the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, 4 December 1958. Printed by the Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Price, single copy, 50 cents; yearly subscription, $2, from Air University Book Department, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. Properly credited quotations are authorized. USAF periodical 50-2. 14 22 28 333 45 52 2 O NE HAS only to read contemporary writings on national policy or listen to the views presented each year to Congress by those concerned with U.S. security planning to realize the increase in confusion and differences of opinion over the direction we should henceforth give to the defense efforts of the Free World. Interservice conflict is clearly on the increase, as is uncertainty with respect to what is required in defense funds and defense organization to deal with the Communist threat in this atomic, missile, and space era. In recent years nearly all long-range force programs and defense plans have been extremely unstable United States, NATO, and other Allied force goals have been approved repeatedly, and yet never achieved. These goals invariably have been revised downwards as their target dates have approached, and generally for economic reasons. This situation suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with long-range security planning when minimum force requirement plans are never fulfilled, even when they are based solely on a "capabilities" approach. The trouble appears to lie in our ability-or inability-to properly take into account changes in costs, concepts, and weapons in time, the relationship that exists between these basic elements of any defense effort, and how change or lack of change in these areas affects the national security posture. Of the many problems that face the military establishment, full adjustment to changing technology and to changing weapons capability is perhaps one of the most difficult. This adjustment is made increasingly more bothersome by the equally dramatic impact of the "cost squeeze" upon our national military posture. The result is a growing inability of the military to satisfy commitments and programs in face of rising costs and relatively fixed resources and concepts. We are now in an era in which the adjustment of military programs to limited military resources has become an element in the daily life of every national military planner and commander. How adroit we in the professional military have been in this adjustment is open to serious question. One thing seems clear, however. If we are to continue to defend the Free World adequately, then the military, the "body politic," and our elected officials will have to analyze very carefully the ramifications of today's dynamic national security environment. Adjustments will have to be made, and made successfully; there is no alternative if we are to survive. Two additional major problem areas which we must consider concurrently with the problems of rapid technological progress in weaponry and the "cost squeeze" are those of conceptual change and its handmaiden, military commitments. It is within the interaction of this quartet-weapons, costs, concepts, and commitments-that the greatest potential is to be found for a major breakthrough in resolving our most pressing national security problems within the resources we can realistically hope to commit. The character of modern war is determined by two principal factors: "what" we can have to fight with-our weapons, and "how" we propose to use these weapons-our concepts. What we can have at any time stems from both technology-the state of the art and cost, which generally determines quantity if not quality. How we use our weapons stems from either past experience in war or objective study and analysis in peacetime. elements of the planning equation Failure to fulfill long-range force programs and plans can generally be traced, in retrospect, to a failure to equate properly hardware, costs, and concepts. In turn, this failure derives from faulty estimates of the extent of change necessary in one or more of these elements to obtain the optimum combination for effective national defense. This failure is exemplified when we plan to use World War III weapons in accordance with World War II tactics and strategies; when we program general-war forces, designed for long wars of attrition, in an era of short atomic conflicts; or when we assume that the targets selected for strategic bombing will also be the optimum system for space delivery vehicles to attack. Future military hardware is relatively predictable by comparison with future concepts. The weapons we can have at any time will depend on the emphasis given to research and development. Except for unanticipated breakthroughs, we can fairly accurately.estimate the type and performance of the hardware that we can hope to have for the next 10 to 15 years. Changes in concepts, on the other hand, are not as easy to predict or to come by. While generally triggered by changes in hardware, they originate in assumptions and opinions rather than in projection of tangible, techni cal facts. Both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have allocated a tremendous amount of money and manpower to research and development of weapon systems in the past 20 years. The same cannot be said to be true of research and development in conceptual areas, in how these systems may be used. In fact it seems quite clear that in the area of concepts and all that goes with it (tactics, doctrine, and organization) the research and development effort has been limited to a very few people who have had a very narrow audience and very limited resources. When we reflect upon military history, it seems to have been easier to change military hardware than military ideas and organizations. For |