I was struck by a couple of points that were made and a general trend. The general trend of questioning and testimony was at what I might call a 'functional' level. There was very little grand strategy involved. Despite Dr. Barnett's attempt to introduce general strategic pictures and point out the need for specific choices to be made at that level in his opening testimony, the discussion centered mostly on particular programs, particular concerns about acquisitions and the like. This is not meant as an indictment of the process; the members present were serving both their committee and their constituents' interests throughout. However, while everyone seemed to wholeheartedly agree that 'hard choices' would need to be made, and 'hard decisions' taken, very few of the participants struck me as concentrating their thinking at that particular level of the discussion.
For example, the size of the fleet was brought up several times. Mr. O'Rourke did (in my estimation) a stellar job of presenting factual data to the committee, as his brief with CRS directs. I look forward to reading those parts of his testimony that the committee chose to enter directly to the record in order to conserve time. However, that data is being collected to be used - and in my opinion, should be used - to support strategic choice decisionmaking before the dickering over budget levels and program sizes or status begin. Again, to flagellate a deceased equine - what are we trying to do? Why are we trying to do it? How do we intend to achieve it? Nearly all of the discussion I heard this morning centered on the third question. When it did stray towards the 'what' it tended to do so strictly as a risk and/or budget tradeoff question - more on this in a bit.
Dr. Barnett presented a fairly clear strategic point of view. Although it was not as fleshed out as his books are, or as I would like to have heard (obviously) he identified a threat environment - the periphery, failed and weak states, and the access points from blue-water to the littorals - as a basis for his recommendations. Dr. Thompson and Adm. Houly, on the other hand, seemed intent on concentrating on the 'threat' of a smaller fleet size. When pressed on the current downward trends of that fleet size, Dr. Thompson stated that this process supported his preference for a 'multi-mission capable' fleet.
He did not, in my opinion, address the natural conflict between 'multi-mission capable ships' and the entire reason the fleet is shrinking - more expensive platforms built in smaller numbers. He and Adm. Houly did address the need for a 'high/low' mix, but mostly by namechecking it - there was little 'meat' in their discussion of what such a 'high/low' force would look like, what it would do, and how much it would cost.
I should step back here and state that I am no doubt asking far too much of a 105-minute Congressional hearing. I should think that the requests for further information and requests for private discussions that several of the members made to the witnesses will bear much more fruit in terms of deeper discussion - and I regret that I won't be able to be a fly on those walls.
There were two specific issues that came up which struck me. At one point, Adm. Houly (I believe) was describing the LCS program as a program intended to address the fact that the current Fleet is not well structured to accept risk, and that engineering risk out was the driving paradigm. This, in turn, results in pressure for requirements creep and overengineering. He mentioned that the LCS program was deliberately intended to force the Navy to accept a greater deal of operational risk in order to break the logjam of increasing requirements and shrinking numbers.
At that point, the Chairman (Mr. Taylor, D-MS) sharply pointed out that from the notion of 'accepting risk' to the notion of 'disposable ships' and thence 'disposable crews' was too short a distance for his taste, and that as a Congressman and a parent he was flatly against those notions.
The problem is that there are many, many kinds of risk. There are strategic and budgetary risks in the acquisition process. There is tactical or operational risk to a particular unit. There is tactical or operational risk to a plan. In this case, I do believe that Adm. Houly and Chairman Taylor were discussing the same type of risk - the acceptance, by the Navy, that the LCS ship would be forced to go in harm's way in order to perform its missions without the same panoply of defensive and interdiction measures available to the 'high' end of the fleet.
This, no doubt, was what sparked the Chairman's response.
The problem is that we are (in my view) at a point where the strategic risks we face are growing in direct response to the attempted reduction in operational unit risk and acquisition risk. Put simply, as many others have done before me, we're at the point where our preferences for risk are one of the primary drivers of the cost, complexity and consequently the low numbers of available platforms. The conflict that produces is that while attempting to lower the risk to individual units, we are increasing the risk of being unable to achieve our strategic objectives (if we even know what those are) and, in fact, are seeing a lowering of the likelihood that we would be able to achieve operational goals for these platforms. It was brought up that we don't yet have an operational concept for the LCS, and that calling the program a failure before we have a chance to develop one is foolish savings. If the LCS' operational concept is to provide a certain amount of coverage of the littoral battlespace (as a force), and increasing requirements for the individual units mean that we don't acquire enough units to provide that coverage, we risk being unable to perform that mission properly at all.
An Army colonel I knew once told me that as an officer, he couldn't think of his job as ensuring that his soldiers didn't die - because soldiers do die and only God could decide that. He saw his job as ensuring that the fewest of his soldiers went into harm's way and risked death as possible - while ensuring that he achieved his mission goals. Because if he failed to achieve his mission goals, any soldiers of his that had perished - or those from other units that would perish to do the job he failed to do - would be wasted sacrifice.
I'm not qualified to speak, myself, on combat command and the risk management thereof - I've never been a military officer, and have no experience with this critical form of decisionmaking. But as an analyst, I am trained to look at systemic and strategic risk - and to point out that eventually the payoff curves for personal and strategic risk will cross. As the former drops, the latter rises - and I think trends say that we're closing in on that point.
Again, this is in no way because our Armed Forces are not willing to make sacrifices to do their job. Far from it. It is because we are getting closer to asking them to do an impossible job with the assets we are giving them - and we need to either change how we get them those assets, or change the job we are asking them to do.
Whoop, gotta run. More later when I have keyboard time.
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