By Geoff Fein
With speculation swirling over the impact the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) may have on regional commanders, Adm. Timothy Keating said yesterday that he wants to prevent any reduction in force size that would otherwise weaken U.S. Pacific Command’s (USPACOM) ability to train and execute its missions.
“I am concerned that decisions will be made that reduce force levels to an extent we will not be able to execute the missions we are given,” Keating told the Defense Writers Group. “That decision hasn’t been made yet. That’s why we are here, to engage in that kind of conversation with the Secretary of Defense, to give him the benefit of our experience.” Defense Secretary Gates and Keating are meeting today to discuss the QDR.
Any significant reduction in force size will require USPACOM to revise its plans for training, conducting exercises, theater cooperation, and to reexamine its fundamental strategy, Keating added.
“The forces that we have, the forces that we employ and deploy, are the very centerpiece of our strategy, and our ability to respond to operational tasking,” Keating said. “If we have fewer of those forces, it is likely we will have to revise the means and the methods we use to employ and deploy those forces…fewer of them [means] we kind of have to go back to the drawing board.”
Keating said USPACOM is OK today, adding he could use more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets as well as ships and submarines. There are six carrier battle groups right now in USPACOM’s area of responsibility, he added. “I could use more of those.”
Critics might wonder why USPACOM would need more carrier battle groups if there are six there now, Keating said.
“Sometimes the platform itself may be adequate but the people on it are in shorter supply,” he said.
And Keating noted that sometimes just having one more ISR asset, for example, can make a difference in the amount of information that can be gathered. “Which helps in analysis, which helps determine trends, which helps figure out the way ahead.”
“Sometimes one less won’t make a huge difference. For example, we have some 30,000 soldiers and Marines, Navy and Air Force personnel supporting (Gen.) David Petreaus (United States Central Command) and (Gen. Stanley) McChrystal and their efforts in CENTCOM,” Keating said.
“The absence of those personnel has not caused us to have to go back repeatedly to the drawing board. We made accommodations in the way forward, in the way we exercise, the way we train, the way we would respond if directed, but it has not had a significant impact on our ability to respond to higher tasking,” he added.
But taking a carrier out of USPACOM would have an impact, Keating said.
“If you take a carrier away from us, that’s a huge deal. If you take a fighter squadron, that’s a huge deal, he said. “One or two less of higher quantity systems, that’s reasonably easy to accommodate.”
Keating said his needs, as a combatant commander, can be summed up in two “bumper stickers” the professionals on his staff have. One, he said, reads “virtual presence equals actual absences.”
“I think what they mean by that, ‘you’ve got to be there.’ You can do all the video teleconferences, you can engage in social media, you can have table top war games and exercises, but you need to have a ship in the port and a Marine’s boots on the ground, airplanes overhead. So you have to be present,” Keating said.
The second bumper sticker: “quantity has a quality all its own,” gets to the subset of the first sticker, he said.
“We in the Pacific have a large area of the Earth for which we are responsible. We have 38 countries. All of them, to a degree, are interested in engaging with the military forces of the U.S. So we have to be there,” he said. “A small number of very high-end platforms can be less than official than a larger number of modest platforms.”
The more “arrows” USPACOM has, the better off it is, “not to use them in an offensive manner, but to be ready to use them if everything else fails,” he said.