What’s the role of the services these days compared to World War II? In World War II, George Marshall and Hap Arnold on the Army Air Force side had a big say on the deployment of the US armed forces. They would go in and talk to President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Stimson, and all these guys, and they’d present the military point of view. Certainly Admiral Ernie King made the case of what the Navy could and could not do. He’d bring in the Marines Commandant and all that.
The point is these service chiefs had an active role in strategy. That’s no more. Since the Goldwater Nichols reform, there’s one designated adviser to the President, and that is the chairman. The chairman is the only uniform guy who sits in the White House, and the President may or may not take his advise. Everybody else is wearing a suit.
Sadly, the people often coming up with the options, because the military doesn’t bring in much good stuff, are the 12 year olds Biff and Sandy from Harvard and Georgetown because they are the ones that the President knows from the campaign. These people don’t know their heads from a hole in the wall when it comes to military stuff.
From what I saw at that level, I don’t think the President could have picked out the senior military commanders — except for maybe Central Command — or even their service chiefs from a line up unless they were wearing their uniforms and name tags. The chairman yes, the vice chairman probably. Beyond that, no way.
What do the services do really well? Organize, train, and equip… We used to do strategy pretty well in the World Wars. After Goldwater Nichols reform, we assumed we do that well and we quit working on it. The military [services] are totally focused on organize train and equip. What you get out of that is the German Army. They fight really well and they’re always mis-employed.
That was a provocative General Daniel Bolger (ret.) on the Midrats podcast discussing his book, “Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.”
I’d argue that the organization Bolger describes got started after the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958. The services were removed from the military chain of command and unified combatant commands were stood up. Certainly a lack of strategic thinking underpinned the Vietnam War as well.
Ultimately, strategy affects how the services decide on technology development. The service chiefs prepare military requirements which feed materiel solutions analyses. But they control bloated bureaucracies that appear somewhat removed from many operational realities.
Certainly, however, combatant commanders have a say in technology requirements. It may be difficult for a commander with many immediate responsibilities to reflect on broader strategy. Perhaps the combatant command’s chief of staff should have a dual-hat by sitting on a operational/technology strategy board along with leadership from the systems commands. Here, they can pose questions, have hearings, allocate resources to experiment, and make recommendations to the joint chiefs of staff on an integrated operation/materiel plan.
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