Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences
The 34th IFPA-Fletcher
Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning
and Military Transformation
December
2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.
Address by General Michael W. Hagee, USMC, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps
Introduction by Dr. Jacquelyn K. Davis, Executive Vice President, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis
General Hagee: What I'd like to talk a little bit about this morning is how we see the strategic landscape, and then how we think about war. I think those are two important components when you talk about transformation. And really, it's the Navy and the Marine Corps primarily looking at the strategic landscape, and how we look at war. But it's also how the joint force looks at it. I just finished reading Wick Murray and Bob Scale's new book on war in Iraq. And towards the end of the book, I thought they made quite an interesting statement. They said that they could not grade the air war in Iraq, because it was too integrated into the ground scheme of maneuver. That is transformational in my mind.
The strategic landscape. There have been several authors who have talked about this, individuals a lot smarter than I am. They've called it the gap. They've called it the third world. They've called it the arc of instability. And really, it's a series of countries. This arc of instability runs, one could argue, from Central America through Africa, up through Asia, southwest Asia, south Asia, southeast Asia. There are some countries that probably do not belong in that particular arc, and there are other countries, for example, North Korea, that do belong in that arc. What are some of the characteristics of that particular arc? Well, they have about one-third of the population of the word, resides in that particular arc, about 2 billion people. And the demographers say that in the next 50 years, the largest increase in population is going to occur in that particular arc, in those countries. And today, 50 to 65% of the individuals living in those countries are below the age of 25. And that's going to get worse.
What are some of the other characteristics? Those countries, by and large, cannot provide the basic needs for those people: sanitation, jobs, education, water. There is a feeling of disenfranchisement among the youth in those countries. And of course, that provides a great venue for the radical ideologies that tend to grow in such an environment. And 80% of the people living in those countries are within 200 miles of the coastline. That's sort of the strategic environment as we see it in the Marine Corps.
I'd like to talk just a little bit about how we see the nature of war. There's a lot of talk about how war has changed, conflict has changed. And I would agree, on the battlefield, the processes that we use have in fact changed. But I would argue that in fact the nature of war, the essence of war, the essence of conflict, has not changed. It is still chaotic. It is still uncertain. There is still a great deal of fog. There is still a great deal of friction. It is still very, very dangerous. When you boil it right down to it, whether it's at the strategic, at the operational, or at the tactical level, it is thinking individuals going against one another. It's move, countermove. It's deception. And I don't see that changing. Operation Iraqi Freedom indicates that that essence of war has not changed. Now, how we prosecute war has in fact changed.
There's one other element that I'd like to talk about, and that is the lack of assured access. We all read about that. We talked about it during the buildup for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Every sovereign country has to decide for itself what's in its best interest, and some of our allies decided it was not in their best interest to support the war in Iraq, either through their airspace or using their ground space. My sense is that particular challenge is not going to get better in the future. In fact, it is going to become more difficult. With the various anti-access strategies that are out there, the various weapon platforms, that are relatively inexpensive, very, very accurate, I see access as becoming more of a problem.
So, that's sort of the strategic landscape. That's sort of how we think about war. So, how are we responding to that? First off, I would tell you that the most important thing, individual platform, is in fact the individual Marine soldier, airman, or sailor, and how we train and educate that individual. That individual has to be able to live, work, survive, and fight in that chaotic, uncertain battlefield environment. And the education that we bring to bear, and the training that we give him or her is going to prepare that individual to do just that. That's probably the most important thing that the service chiefs have, at least in my opinion, on their plate. And probably the most transformational thing that this country has done in the last 50 years is go from a conscripted force to an all-volunteer force.
But the Navy and the Marine Corps, when they look at this particular environment out there, the way we have responded to that is this idea of sea basing. This is not new, but we have extended this thought. And what we want to be able to do is to use the oceans and the seas as maneuver space, true maneuver space. Do the arrival and assembly at sea. Do the reception, staging, onward movement, integration at sea. In essence, to be able to start Operation Iraqi Freedom without having to have access to Kuwait. Can we do that today? No. But we believe that we can do it in the future.
And this sea basing concept is really composed of four pillars. There is a strike pillar. And this is a set of strike capabilities, offensive capabilities, that can be expanded or contracted at sea. We call it Sea Strike. There is a set of defensive capabilities, all at sea, not in any one platform, that can be expanded or contracted, based on the tactical, operational situation. There is a set of logistic capabilities at sea that can be expanded or contracted. And then of course, there is a set of command and control capabilities that can be expanded and contracted. And this must be joint. Every service must be able to plug into this sea base, whether it's into the command and control, whether it's into the sustainment, whether it's into the strike or the defensive set of capabilities. And from this sea base, we can project combat power ashore. We can project combat power through the sea base. An example would be special operation forces. And the sea base can enable major combat operations ashore, either from its strike, its defense—And the defense is not just to protect the sea base at sea, in other words just to protect itself. That shield must reach inland and protect the force that is operating along the coast.
This can be used in high end warfare. It can also be used in security cooperation exercises. We retain the sustainment at sea, and we put the forces that are needed ashore to operate, and they are sustained from the sea. Does this do away with large scale armies ashore? Absolutely not. In fact, it helps that particular operation. As air forces flow into a base that we may have to take, we can provide that sustainment to those air forces until they have built up the sustainment. Same with large army. And I'm not talking only US. I'm talking coalition forces. So, that is our vision on how we see, number one, the strategic environment, and how we are using our basic understanding of warfare to set the forces for the future. And I look forward to your questions when we get to that part of the discussion. Thank you.
Dr. Davis: Thank you very much, General Hagee.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Audience: James Kitfield [?] from National Journal magazine. I'd like the chiefs to address the issue of end strength in transformation. As we all know, this force was not sized recently. It was sized in the 1990s. And it was not sized for a global war on terrorism. Intuition would tell you that now that we're in Afghanistan, in Iraq, we need a bigger force, because these are new contingencies that we were not planning on. We're told that we probably don't need a bigger force, because this transformation has allowed us to do things with smaller forces, and so the joint staff is now reworking the war plans. If you're in Iraq, and you see how stressed the Army is, it seems to me that that's not a transformational mission. The stability operations are manpower intensive. Is this force big enough, basically, for the contingencies it's facing now? And is transformation really a way out of confronting the fact that this force is very, very stretched thin right now.
Dr. Davis: Who would like to begin? General Schoomaker?
General Schoomaker: If I understand the tenor of your question, you're speaking to the end strength issue, whether the force is large enough to do all of the kind of things that we're doing right now. And I can speak for the Army. I think Vern had it exactly right. I think that transformation is going to give us capabilities that is going to allow us to use our people smarter. But we have a more immediate problem right now. I'll call it kind of, in the Army here, the fundamental question. We have over a million people in the Army, active guard and reserve. We can't reach a million. And the big challenge that I've got, resource-wise, is paying for more people, exactly what Vern was talking about, and putting them into a bankrupt structure, and then end up having to pay for that with the top line pressures in the future that you heard from over here on the left, on my left.
So, one of the major things that we're doing right now is mining the structure that we have, and aligning it, and getting it balanced so that we can get access to the force structure we're paying for, and making sure it's ready and available to us. And we're doing pretty well. There is no commander in Iraq or Afghanistan that is asking for more people. That is, it's not a bumper sticker that this is true. And we constantly are in dialogue about what the requirements are over there, and there's nobody that's asking for a bigger force over there. They feel they have the force that's required. My problem is the persistence, and how do we generate this force over a long period of time? And quite frankly, we're working that very well. We may end up coming up having to ask for more force structure, or for increased end strength. But I am not prepared at this time to give up on the fact that we're making quite a bit of headway right now, in terms of the balance, and getting access to what we have. So, it's an open question. And it's a good question, but I think you're jumping to huge conclusions, that the answer is just supplying more soldiers to the battlefield. It's not the issue.
__: If I might, I addressed this briefly, but let me tell you the things that we're doing. We did a pilot, a pilot called sea swap, that would keep our ship on station, rotate our people. Buys more capability if we don't have to pay for the transit every time. We're going to end up leaving a ship over there two years, and see what we learn. That's going on now. We're on our third rotation.
I've got another pilot going on called optimum manning, figuring out how we can inject technology into the process, and reduce the size of the crew. We will apply those in the next submission, across the whole force, because it's been very successful. DDX, that we will build, instead of having a 500-person crew, will have a crew of between 100 and 125 people. Technology will allow us to do that. Those are changing the ways we do things some, but also the application of technology. But the biggest savings will come to us when we learn how to do things smarter, and we revolutionize our processes, and run the business end of this thing more effectively.
So, I'm going after less end strength, but I'm doing it with a very clear objective in the strategy. That's where I'm going to get the resources to recapitalize. Jackie said, "Is transformation modernization? Is it—"Well, you know, it might be modernization. But certainly, here's one of the things I've come to believe, that if you miss the opportunity, when you are modernizing, because you're getting rid of old stuff and getting new stuff, when you buy that new stuff, it's going to be set in the structure, for 30, to an aircraft carrier, for 50 years. And so it is vital that we think through the transformational process as we are going through the modernization process. And in my case, I am actively pursuing less end strength.
Dr. Davis: Next question? Right here. Oh, come on. This is your chance. There's one back there.
Audience: Ed Rowney (?), retired lieutenant general. I want to follow up on that last question. I did not get an adequate answer, and I want to pursue it a bit. This is mostly to General Schoomaker. Given that you're transforming, and having lighter and more mobile forces, and can possibly do this with a few fewer people, given that the reserves need to change, and more regular Army people need to have those missions of medics and engineers and whatnot for reconstruction problems, given that the National Guard has to reorient its mission from overseas to more home security, I wonder, and I want to ask the question, can you possibly do this with not only the possibility, but the probability, that you're going to have to not only stay in Iraq, but have more Iraqs, can you possibly do this with anything less than 50 to 100,000 more troops on the ground?
Certainly, we should save money. Certainly, I applaud all the things that Admiral Clark said. But, you know, we've spent 6, 7, 10% of our gross national product before. We're now spending 2.9%. We're in the fight of our lives for this war on terrorism. Certainly we can afford more than 2.9%. So, I'm going to just pursue this question, just to be a pain in the neck. Can you possibly do this without fewer than 50 to 100,000 Marines and Army troops on the ground.
General Schoomaker: General Rowney, you're talking about on the ground in Iraq?
Audience: No, I'm not talking about on the ground in Iraq. I'm not going to contest the question of the soldiers saying they don't need more forces. Sometimes I wonder about that. I thought, you know, that we should have had a little more forces going in, because you had to have some contingencies. And the force, the division couldn't get in. So, I happen to believe that we didn't have enough.
Let's wipe all that out. Let's agree with the commanders in the field that they don't need more. But I'm saying, we're going to have to stay there. And right now, the reserves are hurting. The Army is hurting, on moving back and forth. The National Guard has to have a homeland mission. I see a need to persist in Iraq. I see a need for planning against future Iraqs. I don't know whether it's going to be Syria, or Iran, or North Korea. There's certainly going to be more before we finish this war on terrorism. Therefore, I say, let's do all these other things, but let's not believe that we're going to be able to do this without more Marines and Army boots on the ground for the future.
Dr. Davis: Generals Hagee, Schoomaker, do you have a follow-up comment?
Gnereal Hagee: I would actually follow up from what Pete said. He made very good points there. But the way I look at the battlefield is, what we're doing right now, is this what we're going to be doing five or 10 years from now? In other words, have we arrived at a point where we're going to have forces, as General Schoomaker talked about, spread throughout the world, the Sinai, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan? If we are, then I think the answer might be that we do in fact need an end strength increase, just as General Schoomaker mentioned. But if we're not, if this is a spike, even though that spike might be a year or so, my professional opinion is that right now we do not need an end strength increase, if in fact it is a spike. And that is—I think this is what the Chief of Staff of the Army talked about—that is what we are looking at right now, and that's what we're trying to look at into the future, and make a good call on that.
Sir, as you know, you cannot stand up a division overnight. It takes a couple of years to stand up that division. We stand up that division, and we find out that, in fact, two, three, four years from now, we don't need that division, because it was in fact a spike. Have we, in fact, used the resources of this nation correctly?
__: I think I also owe you a little bit on this. You know, if we were unconstrained, and had no issue in that regard, obviously, we could build a force where there was no risk. Then we ask ourselves, can you recruit and retain the force that we're talking about, at that level? If you take a look at what we have right now, you know, we are operating—Right now, the reserve component's under a thing called partial mobilization. It's not PSRC. This is not the typical thing that we've operated under in the past. This is partial mobilization. This gives the President and the Secretary of Defense access to one million people in a reserve component for two years. One million people for two years. And we are not anywhere near that level of commitment.
Right now we have mobilized, counting the next mobilization, about 40% of the reserve component. So, I can tell you that it's not only possible and feasible to continue this level of operation with the force we have, but that if we can get access to a lot of the force right now, because of the way it's structured, and bring it into the thing, that we'll get much better use out of the force that we're paying for, which we are not getting right now, we haven't gotten for years, and we need to fix. It's time to quit thinking the old way on this. And if we can't do that, then we are going to have to go, and we're going to have to spend a premium on the most expensive element, and then worry about whether or not we can recruit and retain that large a force. So, I think I owe it to the people, the Army, and to my boss to do the very best we can to figure out what we can do with what we have before we get into this other question. Because the other question is not going to solve our problem for us right now.
Dr. Davis: Next question, in the back first.
Audience: ...[inaudible] the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center. My question really is for General Schoomaker, although I expect it pertains to the other panel members as well. There is a perception that our reserve component is fairly heavily committed at this point. Because of the nature of the business, many of those men and women are also our firefighters, policemen, EMS techs, Hazmat folks. And so their deployments not only have a personal impact, but also a very real impact on local jurisdictions' preparedness. So my question is, in the transformation, are we looking at ways in which we can minimize the impacts and the commitment of our reserve component?
__: Well, again, that's probably a question that's more germane to the Army. We realize that. I mean, I was just with the 30th Brigade, and a high school principal was one of the sergeant majors that was there. There were about seven state troopers in one company that I was with. There are county sheriffs, and firefighters, just like you talk about. But, you know, we mobilize who signed up, and who we have in that structure. And the reality is, when we do mobilize them, they come out of the communities. And you're exactly right. These are exactly the same kinds of people. So, I guess the bigger question is, is the construct that we have for the United States Army, which was designed to fight and win the Cold War, and to mobilize and expand, still a viable construct?
Because when we call up units, we don't ask how many principals are here, and how many state troopers, and how many prison wardens, and all that. We call up soldiers, and that's what shows up. And I don't know another way around that right now. So if we're going to escape that issue, it's a whole new question, in my view. You're exactly right. That's exactly what occurs right now, and they serve very well, and they're very proud of what they're doing.
Dr. Davis: There's a question right here.
Audience: Jason Sherman [?] from Defense News. My question is for General McNabb and General Schoomaker. Admiral Clark and General Hagee outlined a broad vision for where they'd like to take their services, with this notion of a sea base. Would the two of you be willing to endorse their vision, particularly the joint aspect of it, and say what role you see for your respective services in this sea base?
Lt. General McNabb: Well, if you ask us if we endorse, we obviously do. I think it's a great concept, and they are going to be betting on the Air Force support as needed. And I think that there's no question that this is the kind of thing that is, they come forward with that vision. We will look at how we need to support that vision for the employment of their forces.
One of the things that I think, and it kind of gets to maybe this end strength issue that you all talked a little bit—One of the things that you can see is, if we have to surge, and spin the dollars for a surge force, it becomes cost prohibitive. But one of the things that we can do by working together with capability type packages, instead of talking about platforms, we talk about, what capabilities do we bring? What you can end up doing is often the combatant commander's packages of capabilities that will allow us to take care of each other's surges, and perhaps mitigate it. Where the Air Force might be surging and needs help, the naval and Marine forces come to fruition. Sometimes it would be a combination of air and Army forces coming together to say, "Hey, combatant commander, you need this."
So, I look at the vision of the Navy, the sea basing, when they brief that, to the programmers and the op steps (?), one of the things that became very clear is that our role in that is absolutely essential as well. And now the part is, how do we fold into that? That's the part that we were talking about the future of joint ops. I mean, it's great to see where they're going, and then we can say, "Hey, what else can we do for you? How could we make it even better?" And I think those relationships are really there. It's really going to make a big difference.
General Schoomaker: I think—In fact, Vern and I talked about this ...[inaudible] Not only do I subscribe to it now, and support it. I have for years. And I'll just go back. I was on the mission to go into Iran and rescue the hostages, 1980, one of the ground force commanders there. We used sea basing as part of that construct. When we went to Grenada, I was on that mission 1983. We used sea basing as part of that construct. When we did Haiti, we used sea basing. I had my jessodiff [?] headquarters on the aircraft carrier America, with 64 Army and Air Force and Marine helicopters abroad that ship as a central element of what we did. We had a maritime construct involved in Just Cause, when we did that.
You know, I am a joint officer, and have been since 1987, that happens to be in the Army. And this is not a big stretch, as far as I'm concerned. I think it's a hugely important domain, and if we're going to move an Army to war with campaign qualities, and even in an expeditionary sense, the way you're going to move it fastest is by sea, and augment it with airlift for the kinds of things that you need early in the deal. But I mean, this is a domain and a dimension that is absolutely essential.
And I'd just like to go a step further here. You know, a lot of people think that Desert Storm was a joint operation on the thing, going back to one of Vern's things here. You know what it really was? It was joint de-confliction. That's what Desert Storm was, joint de-confliction. The war we just fought in Iraq was joint interoperability. Where we need to go in the joint world is to joint interdependence, where we trade some of our capability for other people's ability to deliver. That's where we need to be going.
Dr. Davis: Yes, sir. Right here.
Audience: Rick Middle [?]with the "Dallas Morning News." General Schoomaker, I wasn't going to ask this question, but your enthusiasm for sea basing tempts me. What role might the V-22 play in the Army's future? Are you considering that aircraft, particularly since you participated in the mission that inspired the Marine Corps to develop it?
General Schoomaker: Well, the Army right now does not have any role with the V-22. As you know, I commanded US special operations command, and as you know, special operations command is committed to 50 CB-22s for its thing. The reality is, that kind of capability allows you to move at C-130 speeds and C-130 distances. It's huge, in terms of what it means for battlefield mobility and agility. And I think the Marine Corps, when it gets the V-22, is going to find itself able to operate, as we discussed this morning, you know, in the old sea echelon concept.
When I went to the amphibious warfare school for a year with the Marine Corps to get educated on amphibious warfare, we learned the sea echelon concept. Well, you can't survive that concept anymore. You've got to be further out over the horizon. You've got to be able to close that distance. You've got to go deeper, beyond the old force beachhead line, to do the kind of things you've got to do. B-22 will do that. I think we'll be informed in the Army by that technology. I think we'll see some opportunity there. And, you know, just go back to Afghanistan. You know, when SOFF was inserted in Afghanistan, those were 900 mile legs by helicopter. That is four air refuelings each direction, to put teams in. V-22 will do it with less refuelings, and at twice the speed on the deal.
And so I think it's a huge dimension, and I think it's something the Army is going to get informed about. And quite frankly, I think part of what we're looking at is transformation of Army aviation, and we're going to have to look at those kind of speeds and distances. That is not to say that we have active interest, or doing anything right now with the V-22, but I think we're going to be quite informed in terms of what that means. And if we are joint interoperable, and we've got a partner here that's got a hell of a lot of them, we just might end up finding ourselves riding them some time, you know? By the way, you know, he also owns 51% of the C-130 tankers.
Audience: ...[inaudible]
General Schoomaker: Well, there's nothing to pin down.
Audience: But it sounds like you're saying that you do see a V-22 in the Army's future.
General Schoomaker: I did not say that. We're talking about capability here. And I think we'll be informed by that kind of speed and range. And if it makes sense, we may go that in direction. But there is nobody right now that's thinking about buying a V-22 for the Army. I want to see what they do with it, and I want to see what SOFF does with it, and I want to see what's beyond it. There's a dimension beyond that. It's like V-22 capability with a CH-47 size box, or a C-130 size box on it, tilt rotor. You've seen that, the advanced tactical transport.
Dr. Davis: Unfortunately, I see many hands now rising to ask questions, but the chiefs have to get back to the building. And it remains for us to thank them for taking their precious time to be with us today.