By Marina Malenic
The U.S. military and its industrial base must become more responsive to the basic equipping needs of current, low-intensity conflicts instead of building more complex and expensive weapon systems for a war that may never come, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week.
“I have expressed frustration over the defense bureaucracy’s priorities and lack of urgency when it came to the current conflicts–that for too many in the Pentagon it has been business as usual, as opposed to a wartime footing and a wartime mentality,” Gates told military and civilian officials at the National Defense University on Monday.
“When it comes to procurement,” he said, “for the better part of five decades the trend has gone towards lower numbers as technology gains made each system more capable. In recent years these platforms have grown ever more baroque, ever more costly, are taking longer to build and are being fielded in ever dwindling quantities.”
Gates said that “apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing our capabilities to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict–and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of our forces engaged in these conflicts.”
Gates has previously warned that the Pentagon must cure itself of “next-war-itis.” Many within the department, he has said, are so preoccupied with preparing for potential wars with industrialized adversaries that they fail to recognize the very different skills and equipment that are needed for rooting out terrorists, protecting civilian populations and engaging in minor skirmishes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gates on Monday specifically criticized the “shock-and-awe” strategy of the 2003 Iraq invasion. He told the audience to “look askance at idealized, triumphalist or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to upend the immutable principles of war” and remain skeptical of the premise that “adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”
Further, the defense establishment’s adjustment to the counterinsurgency mission in Iraq “came at a frightful human, financial and political cost,” the secretary said. “For every heroic and resourceful innovation by troops and commanders on the battlefield, there was some institutional shortcoming at the Pentagon that they had to overcome.”
For example, Gates said, the Pentagon took too long to develop up-armored Humvees, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, jammers and other gear to the counter improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that became the greatest threat to U.S. troops in Iraq. New organizations with multi-billion dollar budgets, such as the Joint Improvised IED Defeat Organization, had to be created before the problem was adequately addressed.
“Why did we have to bypass existing institutions and procedures to get the capabilities we need to protect our troops and pursue the wars we are in?” Gates said.
Instead, the Pentagon needs to be able to purchase and field equipment–particularly low-tech capabilities–rapidly during wartime.
“Our conventional modernization programs seek a 99 percent solution in years,” Gates explained. “Stability and counterinsurgency missions– the wars we are in–require 75 percent solutions in months.”