As the Defense Department rolls out pieces of its Third Offset Strategy, it could benefit by taking a second look at the recent conflict in Ukraine, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday.
(Photo: U.S. Air Force)
During fights in Crimea and in the Donbass region of Ukraine, Russian-sponsored separatists employed a very capable ground force with rapid command-and-control and electronic warfare capabilities that they used to control the timing and pace of the battle, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said during the McAleese and Associates FY2017 Defense Programs Conference.
“What that ought to tell us about the future is at the least—at the very least in a ground formation—we’re going to have to have very resilient tactical electronic warfare capabilities,” he said. “We’re going to have very, very tight navigation and timing criteria that will allow for rapid command and control. And then the third thing that we’re going to have to have is the ability to encounter precision fires.
“Then if you have all three things in that formation, however you build for the formation, then you have the capacity to counter sorts kinds of things that we saw happen, particularly in the Donbass where the … the Russian-influenced Ukrainian separatists had all of those tools at their disposal and were trained on how to use them.”
It’s reasonable to suspect that the United States will have to contend with those capabilities in the future as they proliferate, he added. Ground forces in Syria—as well as the air forces supporting them, to some extent—are already employing such technologies.
The Third Offset Strategy is the department’s plan to push forward the U.S. military’s technological advantage so that none of its potential adversaries can match it. The Pentagon requested $35 million in its 2017 budget for Third Offset Strategy tech, many of which are classified.
Speaking about the budget, Selva said a little fiscal pressure probably helps the department from wasting money.
“I know the budget that we would like to have is bigger than the budget we have,” he said. “But if you let me buy everything that I wanted, what motivation would I have to be efficient with the things I buy?”
However, across-the-board cuts like those imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 are not helpful because they’re not predicated on reality, he said. For instance, chopping 10 percent of the budget is incredibly detrimental if there is only 5 percent waste to be found.
“I am more fond of the idea of looking for the duplication of effort in the department,” such as organizational reforms similar to the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which the department and Congress currently are considering.