- Reaction score
- 66
- Points
- 530
PART 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPOSED 2010 U.S. DEFENSE BUDGET
Summary
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates unveiled his department's proposed 2010 defense budget on April 6. One of the prevailing shifts, though not unexpected, was cuts to high-end, long-term weapons development programs. This is a conscious redirection by Gates of defense dollars to efforts that are more relevant to the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently, the United States dominates the realm of conventional military force. That dominance, however, does not maintain itself, and Gates' proposals will have implications that last well beyond his tenure.
Editor's Note: This is the first part of a four-part report on the U.S. military's 2010 defense budget.
Analysis
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' proposed changes to his department's 2010 budget announced on April 6 clearly -- and expectedly -- favored weapon systems with near-term and more direct applicability to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As Gates put it: "It is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk -- or, in effect, to 'run up the score' in a capability where the United States is already dominant -- is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take."
Gates' point is that in many areas of conventional and near-peer military conflict (such as air superiority, or 'blue water' -- open ocean -- naval capability), the U.S. military already enjoys a healthy lead, and defense dollars are better spent in areas where such dominance is not nearly so well established. These range from cyberwarfare (where the Pentagon hopes to triple the number of cyberwarfare specialists it trains annually to 240 by 2011) to providing more unmanned aerial vehicles and helicopter pilots for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond.
Some of the major cuts include:
The Airborne Laser, an advanced ballistic missile defense concept that would use directed energy to bring down ballistic missiles in the boost phase. Gates' proposal would cancel the second airframe and downgrade the existing one to a research and development program.
End production of the Air Force's F-22 "Raptor" air superiority fighter at the scheduled 187 airframes. Supporters (including some in the Air Force) wanted many more.
No funding for the Air Force's next-generation bomber program -- which, even if it was uncharacteristically on schedule, would not produce a flying prototype until 2018. (Currently, over half of the United States' long-range strike aircraft are B-52s built in the 1950s and 60s.)
Delay the Navy's next-generation cruiser and slow the build cycle for aircraft carriers by one year.
Completely revamp the Army's comprehensive Future Combat Systems (FCS) program (read: likely gutted). With undeniable flaws in program structure and execution, FCS has been a common whipping boy due to cost overruns and delays. If Gates has his way, the useful and reasonably mature parts of the program will be spun out to the Army, with the more ambitious parts -- like a new family of armored vehicles -- being canceled completely.
Not all long-term programs are being cut. Work will begin on the next-generation ballistic missile submarine, for example. But Gates is attempting to re-balance the focus of the Pentagon and how its resources are allocated. This includes shifting money to manpower -- growing and better sustaining the ground combat forces -- expanding unmanned aerial vehicle resources and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets critical to the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan and more helicopter pilots and special forces personnel that are in such short supply -- just to name a few. They will certainly improve matters operationally as they take effect, but do not address the underlying geopolitical issues of either the Iraq or the Afghan campaign (which cannot be addressed solely through military force).
One of the most important aspects of this shift is how they contrast to the goals of Gate's predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. For all his practical failings as a defense secretary, Rumsfeld was attempting to implement a vision of the Office of Net Assessment, a small shop within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, headed by Andrew Marshall. Marshall is a long-range thinker appointed to the post under the Nixon administration and still holds the position today.
Marshall envisioned taking advantage of the peace and prosperity of the 1990s to skip ahead a generation. By canceling Cold War programs and focusing heavily on far-ranging technologies for the future, the hope was to leap ahead and put the United States a full generation -- or even two -- ahead of any potential adversary in weapons development.
Rumsfeld continued with this focus after the 9/11 attacks, which left him increasingly open to criticism about his handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Partly in reaction to this, Gates is pushing aside long-range concerns about more remote and unknown potential threats in favor of refocusing the department on the here and now.
And while that is a welcome shift to many at the Pentagon, the details of how the balance is ultimately struck remains key. STRATFOR ultimately considers state-to-state, near-peer conflict to be an enduring reality of the international system. At the moment, the United States has plenty of breathing room in terms of its dominance in conventional military capabilities. But that dominance does not maintain itself, and the proposals Gates has made will have implications long after his tenure.
Next: The 2010 defense budget and ballistic missile defense.
Copyright 2009 Stratfor.
PART 2: THE 2010 U.S. DEFENSE BUDGET AND BMD
Summary
When U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates unveiled his department's proposed 2010 defense budget on April 6, one of the changes -- not unexpected -- was a realignment of funding for ballistic missile defense (BMD). Gates wants to focus on more mature BMD technologies that can deal with missile launches from "rogue" countries like Iran and North Korea.
Editor's Note: This is the second part of a four-part special report on the U.S. defense budget for 2010.
Analysis
Print Version
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Among U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' proposed changes to the 2010 U.S. defense budget, announced on April 6, were a series of increases and cuts in ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs. Taken as a whole, these adjustments mark a significant shift in the nature of BMD deployment, including an overall cut of $1.4 billion from the Missile Defense Agency. These cuts are consistent with President Barack Obama's platform of being committed to "proven, cost-effective" BMD, and are being touted as enabling the programs to focus on the threat of missile launches from "rogue" countries like Iran and North Korea.
BMD is essentially a defensive weapons system designed to intercept ballistic missiles. Ballistic missile interception can theoretically be done at three periods of the missile's flight: in the terminal phase (as it descends towards the earth), in midcourse, and in the boost phase (right after launch). Current technology permits the interception at the midcourse and terminal phases, but boost-phase interception has proved to be much more difficult, mainly because of the extremely short period of time it allows to detect, acquire and track the missile and plot an intercept before it enters the later phases of flight (more about this below).
In laying out Gates' funding priorities, the budget favors the more mature technologies of terminal-phase and midcourse interception, which are either already fielded or in the process of being fielded. But this comes at the cost of boost-phase and other more ambitious technological development programs -- including space-based assets -- which would require longer-term funding and support before tangible results could be achieved.
For Gates, these more long-range programs have been pushed forward too aggressively, before the technology could mature. They are more high-risk by nature and, for Gates, an inefficient and an inappropriate allocation of funds given the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While there are technical reasons for these choices, Gates has more in mind than just a sheet of specifications and test results.
There are four mature BMD systems that are operational or in the process of being made operational: Aegis/Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD).
The Aegis/SM-3 system is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles during parts of the ascent and descent phases. This system has already been deployed on 18 American guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, and two Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces warships and is operationally proven (though as an anti-satellite weapon rather than a BMD interceptor). The Aegis/SM-3 has been one of the most successful BMD programs in the U.S. inventory, and Gates' proposal would increase funding for the SM-3 program and upgrade an additional six warships with the system (double the three announced earlier this year for the Atlantic fleet).
The THAAD system is mobile (designed to be deployed anywhere in the world) and is capable of intercepting a ballistic missile in its final midcourse descent and in its terminal phase, both inside and outside the atmosphere. The first THAAD battery -- Alpha Battery of the 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment at Fort Bliss in Texas -- was activated last year and is in the process of being fully equipped. Meanwhile, testing continues at the Pacific Missile Range in Hawaii (a test there in March marked the system's latest success). After poor test performance in the 1990s, the program restarted testing in 2005 and has shown marked improvement. It is now considered technologically mature.
Lockheed Martin
A THAAD launcher
The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system is a terminal-phase intercept system that was operationally deployed and successfully used in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is also currently operational at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and is slated for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, although deployment of the system is encumbered by the requirement for fixed facilities, including concrete silos.
Gates curtailed funding for additional GMD interceptors in Alaska but made no comment on the much more politically complicated issue of deploying them to Europe. With his 2010 budget, of course, Gates has entered into a domestic battle with Congress over the future shape and orientation of the entire Department of Defense, not just BMD. Although part of that reorientation, the European GMD effort will be decided in the context of larger negotiations with Russia and policy choices made by the Obama Cabinet as a whole.
But taken as a whole (and even without a GMD deployment in Europe), this combination of technologies offers a tiered BMD capability in the later phases of ballistic flight. It is this sort of layered, overlapping combination of capabilities that is considered necessary to provide a truly reliable BMD shield. In addition, for the most part, these are the programs on which other countries like Japan and Israel have been cooperating with the United States.
The impetus for pursuing boost-phase intercept capability is by no means gone, however. Midcourse and terminal phase interceptions are fraught with their own challenges, including the possibility of having to deal with decoys in the latter part of the midcourse phase and multiple independently targetable or maneuverable re-entry vehicles. Additionally, debris from a successful intercept in the terminal phase may still hit the area being targeted by those who launched the missile.
Thus, it remains desirable for the Pentagon to seek technology that will push the intercept point closer to the time and place of launch, if not on the actual territory of the country launching the missile. The boost phase is when a missile is the slowest it will be in its trajectory and the most visible because of the plume of its engines and their unmistakable infrared signature of the plume of its engines). Also, if the missile is intercepted in this phase, the debris falls far from the intended target.
As alluded to earlier, however, intercepting a missile during its boost phase is extremely difficult. At most, the boost phase lasts only a few minutes, and terrestrial-based interceptors also need time to boost to altitude as well (acceleration is a key design consideration). Additionally, interceptors and sensors must be based relatively close to the area from which the missile is launched, so their positioning is highly dependent on the accessibility of territory or waters nearby.
U.S. Air Force
The problem of reaction speed in the boost phase is so challenging that it has been one of the principal drivers for directed energy weapons -- lasers -- dating all the way back to the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative. In its latest incarnation, the Airborne Laser (ABL) has only now -- after a quarter century of experimentation -- begun to show potential for operational utility. In Gates' 2010 budget, however, funding for a second ABL airframe was cut and the program was reduced to more of a long-term research and development effort.
These technical challenges will still be explored, but if Gates has his way, operational fielding of a boost-phase interceptor will be delayed -- perhaps significantly -- and some programs previously under consideration may never see the light of day as a weapons system. After all, if the concern is the current "rogue" threat from North Korea and Iran, then the ballistic missiles targeted would be highly vulnerable to air strikes while still on the launch pad.
Summary
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates unveiled his department's proposed 2010 defense budget on April 6. One of the prevailing shifts, though not unexpected, was cuts to high-end, long-term weapons development programs. This is a conscious redirection by Gates of defense dollars to efforts that are more relevant to the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently, the United States dominates the realm of conventional military force. That dominance, however, does not maintain itself, and Gates' proposals will have implications that last well beyond his tenure.
Editor's Note: This is the first part of a four-part report on the U.S. military's 2010 defense budget.
Analysis
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' proposed changes to his department's 2010 budget announced on April 6 clearly -- and expectedly -- favored weapon systems with near-term and more direct applicability to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As Gates put it: "It is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk -- or, in effect, to 'run up the score' in a capability where the United States is already dominant -- is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take."
Gates' point is that in many areas of conventional and near-peer military conflict (such as air superiority, or 'blue water' -- open ocean -- naval capability), the U.S. military already enjoys a healthy lead, and defense dollars are better spent in areas where such dominance is not nearly so well established. These range from cyberwarfare (where the Pentagon hopes to triple the number of cyberwarfare specialists it trains annually to 240 by 2011) to providing more unmanned aerial vehicles and helicopter pilots for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond.
Some of the major cuts include:
The Airborne Laser, an advanced ballistic missile defense concept that would use directed energy to bring down ballistic missiles in the boost phase. Gates' proposal would cancel the second airframe and downgrade the existing one to a research and development program.
End production of the Air Force's F-22 "Raptor" air superiority fighter at the scheduled 187 airframes. Supporters (including some in the Air Force) wanted many more.
No funding for the Air Force's next-generation bomber program -- which, even if it was uncharacteristically on schedule, would not produce a flying prototype until 2018. (Currently, over half of the United States' long-range strike aircraft are B-52s built in the 1950s and 60s.)
Delay the Navy's next-generation cruiser and slow the build cycle for aircraft carriers by one year.
Completely revamp the Army's comprehensive Future Combat Systems (FCS) program (read: likely gutted). With undeniable flaws in program structure and execution, FCS has been a common whipping boy due to cost overruns and delays. If Gates has his way, the useful and reasonably mature parts of the program will be spun out to the Army, with the more ambitious parts -- like a new family of armored vehicles -- being canceled completely.
Not all long-term programs are being cut. Work will begin on the next-generation ballistic missile submarine, for example. But Gates is attempting to re-balance the focus of the Pentagon and how its resources are allocated. This includes shifting money to manpower -- growing and better sustaining the ground combat forces -- expanding unmanned aerial vehicle resources and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets critical to the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan and more helicopter pilots and special forces personnel that are in such short supply -- just to name a few. They will certainly improve matters operationally as they take effect, but do not address the underlying geopolitical issues of either the Iraq or the Afghan campaign (which cannot be addressed solely through military force).
One of the most important aspects of this shift is how they contrast to the goals of Gate's predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. For all his practical failings as a defense secretary, Rumsfeld was attempting to implement a vision of the Office of Net Assessment, a small shop within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, headed by Andrew Marshall. Marshall is a long-range thinker appointed to the post under the Nixon administration and still holds the position today.
Marshall envisioned taking advantage of the peace and prosperity of the 1990s to skip ahead a generation. By canceling Cold War programs and focusing heavily on far-ranging technologies for the future, the hope was to leap ahead and put the United States a full generation -- or even two -- ahead of any potential adversary in weapons development.
Rumsfeld continued with this focus after the 9/11 attacks, which left him increasingly open to criticism about his handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Partly in reaction to this, Gates is pushing aside long-range concerns about more remote and unknown potential threats in favor of refocusing the department on the here and now.
And while that is a welcome shift to many at the Pentagon, the details of how the balance is ultimately struck remains key. STRATFOR ultimately considers state-to-state, near-peer conflict to be an enduring reality of the international system. At the moment, the United States has plenty of breathing room in terms of its dominance in conventional military capabilities. But that dominance does not maintain itself, and the proposals Gates has made will have implications long after his tenure.
Next: The 2010 defense budget and ballistic missile defense.
Copyright 2009 Stratfor.
PART 2: THE 2010 U.S. DEFENSE BUDGET AND BMD
Summary
When U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates unveiled his department's proposed 2010 defense budget on April 6, one of the changes -- not unexpected -- was a realignment of funding for ballistic missile defense (BMD). Gates wants to focus on more mature BMD technologies that can deal with missile launches from "rogue" countries like Iran and North Korea.
Editor's Note: This is the second part of a four-part special report on the U.S. defense budget for 2010.
Analysis
Print Version
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Among U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' proposed changes to the 2010 U.S. defense budget, announced on April 6, were a series of increases and cuts in ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs. Taken as a whole, these adjustments mark a significant shift in the nature of BMD deployment, including an overall cut of $1.4 billion from the Missile Defense Agency. These cuts are consistent with President Barack Obama's platform of being committed to "proven, cost-effective" BMD, and are being touted as enabling the programs to focus on the threat of missile launches from "rogue" countries like Iran and North Korea.
BMD is essentially a defensive weapons system designed to intercept ballistic missiles. Ballistic missile interception can theoretically be done at three periods of the missile's flight: in the terminal phase (as it descends towards the earth), in midcourse, and in the boost phase (right after launch). Current technology permits the interception at the midcourse and terminal phases, but boost-phase interception has proved to be much more difficult, mainly because of the extremely short period of time it allows to detect, acquire and track the missile and plot an intercept before it enters the later phases of flight (more about this below).
In laying out Gates' funding priorities, the budget favors the more mature technologies of terminal-phase and midcourse interception, which are either already fielded or in the process of being fielded. But this comes at the cost of boost-phase and other more ambitious technological development programs -- including space-based assets -- which would require longer-term funding and support before tangible results could be achieved.
For Gates, these more long-range programs have been pushed forward too aggressively, before the technology could mature. They are more high-risk by nature and, for Gates, an inefficient and an inappropriate allocation of funds given the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While there are technical reasons for these choices, Gates has more in mind than just a sheet of specifications and test results.
There are four mature BMD systems that are operational or in the process of being made operational: Aegis/Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD).
The Aegis/SM-3 system is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles during parts of the ascent and descent phases. This system has already been deployed on 18 American guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, and two Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces warships and is operationally proven (though as an anti-satellite weapon rather than a BMD interceptor). The Aegis/SM-3 has been one of the most successful BMD programs in the U.S. inventory, and Gates' proposal would increase funding for the SM-3 program and upgrade an additional six warships with the system (double the three announced earlier this year for the Atlantic fleet).
The THAAD system is mobile (designed to be deployed anywhere in the world) and is capable of intercepting a ballistic missile in its final midcourse descent and in its terminal phase, both inside and outside the atmosphere. The first THAAD battery -- Alpha Battery of the 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment at Fort Bliss in Texas -- was activated last year and is in the process of being fully equipped. Meanwhile, testing continues at the Pacific Missile Range in Hawaii (a test there in March marked the system's latest success). After poor test performance in the 1990s, the program restarted testing in 2005 and has shown marked improvement. It is now considered technologically mature.
Lockheed Martin
A THAAD launcher
The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system is a terminal-phase intercept system that was operationally deployed and successfully used in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is also currently operational at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and is slated for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, although deployment of the system is encumbered by the requirement for fixed facilities, including concrete silos.
Gates curtailed funding for additional GMD interceptors in Alaska but made no comment on the much more politically complicated issue of deploying them to Europe. With his 2010 budget, of course, Gates has entered into a domestic battle with Congress over the future shape and orientation of the entire Department of Defense, not just BMD. Although part of that reorientation, the European GMD effort will be decided in the context of larger negotiations with Russia and policy choices made by the Obama Cabinet as a whole.
But taken as a whole (and even without a GMD deployment in Europe), this combination of technologies offers a tiered BMD capability in the later phases of ballistic flight. It is this sort of layered, overlapping combination of capabilities that is considered necessary to provide a truly reliable BMD shield. In addition, for the most part, these are the programs on which other countries like Japan and Israel have been cooperating with the United States.
The impetus for pursuing boost-phase intercept capability is by no means gone, however. Midcourse and terminal phase interceptions are fraught with their own challenges, including the possibility of having to deal with decoys in the latter part of the midcourse phase and multiple independently targetable or maneuverable re-entry vehicles. Additionally, debris from a successful intercept in the terminal phase may still hit the area being targeted by those who launched the missile.
Thus, it remains desirable for the Pentagon to seek technology that will push the intercept point closer to the time and place of launch, if not on the actual territory of the country launching the missile. The boost phase is when a missile is the slowest it will be in its trajectory and the most visible because of the plume of its engines and their unmistakable infrared signature of the plume of its engines). Also, if the missile is intercepted in this phase, the debris falls far from the intended target.
As alluded to earlier, however, intercepting a missile during its boost phase is extremely difficult. At most, the boost phase lasts only a few minutes, and terrestrial-based interceptors also need time to boost to altitude as well (acceleration is a key design consideration). Additionally, interceptors and sensors must be based relatively close to the area from which the missile is launched, so their positioning is highly dependent on the accessibility of territory or waters nearby.
U.S. Air Force
The problem of reaction speed in the boost phase is so challenging that it has been one of the principal drivers for directed energy weapons -- lasers -- dating all the way back to the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative. In its latest incarnation, the Airborne Laser (ABL) has only now -- after a quarter century of experimentation -- begun to show potential for operational utility. In Gates' 2010 budget, however, funding for a second ABL airframe was cut and the program was reduced to more of a long-term research and development effort.
These technical challenges will still be explored, but if Gates has his way, operational fielding of a boost-phase interceptor will be delayed -- perhaps significantly -- and some programs previously under consideration may never see the light of day as a weapons system. After all, if the concern is the current "rogue" threat from North Korea and Iran, then the ballistic missiles targeted would be highly vulnerable to air strikes while still on the launch pad.
