Under the current readiness paradigm, our answer to “what needs to be ready?” is “the stuff we have today.” However, as we observed earlier, the Defense Department in general has not followed a path to make itself truly ready for the tomorrow’s priority challenges (e.g., ready for what?). Were we to do so, we would find that our understanding of both operational and structural readiness ought to place far more weight on factors related to service modernization. The availability of obsolescent or otherwise unsuitable equipment (for example, old, increasingly expensive-to-operate, vulnerable aircraft unsuited for a high-end fight) is of marginal relevance at best to a strategy that prioritizes readiness for conflict with revisionist great powers.
… To be clear, this is a two-step process. We cannot simply cut resources for near-term readiness or legacy capacity in the name of savings. Rather, we must put those savings into transformative modernization as part of our larger future force design model. Likewise, the Defense Department and the services should make a compelling case, and be empowered, to reduce existing programs of record in accordance with other systemic changes across the services.
That was Air Force chief of staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown and Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger, Redefine Readiness of Lose. This is a pretty strong plea from two of the top military officers to divest from “legacy” systems and reinvest into “modernization.” Unfortunately, their tenure of four years is far less than the average age of major weapon programs, and thus the most likely outcome is that the programs outlast the chiefs.
Of course, it is not their place to make this claim, but cutting “legacy” systems with known jobs in known districts will face congressional backlash. The obvious response is that contracts will still be let, and any jobs destroyed will be replaced by new and higher valued jobs. That kind of creative destruction is crucial to the functioning of a dynamic economy, but is a difficult sell for Congress and DoD. Luckily, Congress doesn’t control our personal consumption, because otherwise we would still have flip phones, cathode ray tube TVs, and the slide rule.
Berger and Brown’s view of readiness reminds me of my argument for preparing for industrial mobilization:
Here’s what I’m pondering as a trade-off for industrial mobilization: the extent to which you pay for excess capital vs. pay for excess innovation. For example, a common thought is to stockpile machine tools and keep “warm” production lines for the stuff the DoD uses today. That allows industry to ramp up output of proven systems should an emergency occur.
But then the more you pay for readiness of that force structure, the less on the margin is available for change and innovation. Maybe, the force structure that has been prepped for scaling is completely the wrong composition [i.e., outdated and vulnerable]… I guess what this could look like is — whatever amount of funds should be reprioritized for mobilization could go directly into R&D for next generation manufacturing rather than “slack” in today’s manufacturing.
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