FCS, “Transformation” Wrong Path: Top Army Brain

Two distinct groups are emerging in the Army with quite different views on the nature of future wars the U.S. is likely to fight and the decisions the service should make about future force structure and weapons. The first group is the Title 10 side that urges the Army to embrace the troubled Future Combat Systems program and new operational concepts built around dominant battlefield intelligence. The other side is represented by officers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who think future wars will resemble the messy reality of the current ones.

In a new paper, Army Col. H.R. McMaster, definitely a member of the messy war group, calls for abandoning so-called transformation, which is intellectually rooted in the idea of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). McMaster, of 73 Easting and Tal Afar fame, is a highly influential soldier-scholar who is currently putting together a brain trust for Gen. David Petraeus to review U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

McMaster says the widely held vision of a revolution in warfare, of light, agile high-tech forces destroying an adversary with pin-point precision weapons fired from stand-off distances, ran headlong into reality in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be a superlative stretch of reality to describe the brutal fighting in those wars as anything remotely revolutionary. Both have featured much less high-tech and much more high-firepower in fierce firefights, not at the stand off ranges preferred by U.S. soldiers but in engagements where combatants were separated by only a few feet.

He says the U.S. will fight future wars “against armed groups that employ tactics and strategies similar to those it is facing in Afghanistan and Iraq.” The Army’s “legacy” formations have figured prominently in the current fight and will again in future wars. He criticizes analysts and officers - calling out Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap and Lt. Gen. David Deptula - who “advocate a return to 1990s thinking” where high-tech surveillance, air power and precision weaponry deliver “effects” against the enemy from long range in an effort to avoid costly and protracted “boots on the ground” efforts. Those who have bought into the RMA orthodoxy make the mistake of defining future conflict “as we might prefer it to be,” McMaster says.

McMaster really lets it fly at both Air Force leaders who have been very vocal in pushing the notion that airpower is America’s true asymmetric advantage. “Deptula and Dunlap fail to consider the enemy’s ability to react and adopt countermeasures that complicate our ability to remotely deliver effects. One wonders what kind of remotely delivered capability might secure people from terrorists living in their midst, reconstitute a police force, or interdict concealed vehicle bombs aimed at crowded marketplaces.” Moreover, McMaster says, future adversaries, such as China, are developing weapons designed specifically to take out U.S. surveillance and IT assets

McMaster takes a big swipe at his own service and the $200 billion Future Combat Systems program that was originally intended to supply the Army with a new family of lightweight armored vehicles but has since dissolved into a collection of some promising and many not so promising technologies. McMaster says recent combat experience shows, “we should reject the notion that lightness, ease of deployment, and reduced logistical infrastructure are virtues in and of themselves. What a force is expected to achieve once it is deployed is far more important than how quickly it can be moved and how easily it can be sustained.”

The FCS program likes to show a briefing slide that illustrates the long line of fuel tankers required to support the gas guzzling Abrams tank and the much fewer needed to support the future FCS vehicle. McMaster points out the weakness of that pitch. Sure, a 30 ton FCS vehicle with new, more efficient engine technologies will cut down on the logistical tail compared to Abrams tanks. But what do you get at the end of that long line of fuel tankers? With the Abrams, arguably the world’s best main battle tank with an impenetrable frontal arc and unmatched firepower. With FCS, you get a vehicle, with armor no thicker than that of a Bradley, that depends on situational awareness to survive an engagement.

McMaster says that despite six years of combat experience, the Army continues to embrace the “flawed doctrinal concepts and a continued fixation on futuristic experiments” that say FCS equipped soldiers will have near perfect situational awareness and will be able to promptly dispatch enemies without engaging in close combat. That’s a dangerous road to go down, he warns, that could end up costing soldiers lives. The gulf between the Army’s new warfighting concepts and the lessons coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan “demands a thorough review of Army organization.”

McMaster says theory continues to triumph over practice because of the tangled web of relationships between defense contractors, the DoD, Congress, and think tanks that often lend legitimacy to flawed concepts. He says the military should stop outsourcing its intellectual responsibilities, and defense contractors “should not produce and test operational concepts that can later be used to justify the purchase of their systems or products.”

“Deptula and Dunlap fail to consider the enemy’s ability to react and adopt countermeasures that complicate our ability to remotely deliver effects. One wonders what kind of remotely delivered capability might secure people from terrorists living in their midst, reconstitute a police force, or interdict concealed vehicle bombs aimed at crowded marketplaces.”

As much as the zoomies and their advocates hate to admit it, and in most cases will not admit it, the only way to accomplish this mission is by having "boots on the ground."

McMaster says recent combat experience shows, “we should reject the notion that lightness, ease of deployment, and reduced logistical infrastructure are virtues in and of themselves. What a force is expected to achieve once it is deployed is far more important than how quickly it can be moved and how easily it can be sustained.”

Thank God for some sanity.

The age old argument between tactics and logistics. One thing's for sure - you can't have those high firepower fights between forces if you don't have ammo and food.

the only way to accomplish this mission is by having "boots on the ground."

Bears repeating.

/ arm chair general mode

H. R. McMaster is a protege of GEN David Petraeus. I would hope they have a place in military leadership no matter what the outcome is on Nov 4th.

I remember seeing all the military marketing materials of the 1990s (during the BRACs and RIFs) promising that technology would compensate for the substantial loss in manpower and that future wars would be short, devastating, and quick because of said technology. This proved to be only partially correct since the U.S. technological breakthroughs made “hyperwar” against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein possible, but utterly failed to take into account what would happen once those regimes were ended. Without the military manpower that was available in the early 1990s (before the worst of the BRACs and RIFs), we could not occupy those countries and deal with the insurgencies that emerged in the vacuum.

I was privy to an old saying,” Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. As far as I am concerned this says it all.

When you look at the Navy ships which have been recently think, “ The purpose of the fleet is to be able to lay alongside the enemy’s fleet and sink it.”

This country has had flawed thinking not only in the economic area, but also in the military area.

“Without the military manpower that was available in the early 1990s (before the worst of the BRACs and RIFs), we could not occupy those countries and deal with the insurgencies that emerged in the vacuum.”

...and my piece of the military (the reserve component), even though not constructed to bear heavy taskings over an extended period of time, has been shouldering the load for the last 7 years. We’re wearing out. We’re still doing the job, but we’re losing people.

Colonel, USAFR

The idea that wars will only be fought by air power or carrier battle groups or by “boots on the ground” are equally flawed. Our enemies will marshall their capabilities to fight in manner they believe we are least prepared to counter. One service trying to use current conflicts to argue air, naval or ground power is obsolete or not vital does not serve our country. For instance, in the current fights, ground power is central. A major war with China would likely be much more of an air power and naval conflict.

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