NEWS TRANSCRIPT
On the web:
Media contact: newsdesk@osd.pentagon.mil
Public contact: defenselink@osd.pentagon.mil
| |
United States Department of
Defense NEWS TRANSCRIPT On the web: Media contact: newsdesk@osd.pentagon.mil Public contact: defenselink@osd.pentagon.mil |
|
Presenter: General James P. McCarthy, U.S. Air Force, Retired |
Tuesday, June 12, 2001 - 1:30 p.m. EDT |
(Special briefing on Defense transformation.)
Staff: Good afternoon. General Jim McCarthy, U.S. Air Force (Retired), is here today to talk about the defense transformation study that he prepared for Secretary Rumsfeld. General McCarthy is Olin Professor of National Security at the United States Air Force Academy. Some of you may know that he chaired the Task Force for Kosovo Lessons Learned, and he has served at various times on the National Defense Panel, the Defense Policy Board, and the Defense Science Board.
The study led by General McCarthy is one of a number of studies commissioned by the secretary to stimulate his thinking on the issues now being faced or about to be faced by the Department of Defense. As such, this and the other studies represent inputs to the secretary, not decisions.
One footnote before we begin: we plan a similar briefing here tomorrow, Wednesday, at 1:30 p.m., with retired Navy Admiral David Jeremiah, who will brief the study that he led on morale and quality of life in the military. Watch for a press advisory a little bit later this afternoon to confirm that briefing.
General McCarthy.
McCarthy: Thank you very much. My understanding is that you have a copy of my briefing that you can refer to, and I will point to various slides. In some cases, my briefing will cause me to point to a slide that's coming along to explain further about our study.
[ Slides used in this briefing are available as a single .pdf file or as individual .jpg files ]
A reminder now of the context: This was a study done under the Institute for Defense Analysis, which is an FFRDC [Federally funded research and development center]. We had a two-month study group of senior retired military, as well as scientific advisers and intelligence specialists. And a reminder that this is not a decisional briefing that you're seeing; it's the extracts from our study that was to provide the secretary with new ideas and concepts how to transform the U.S. military.
The most significant comment that was made was, how do you enhance military capability overall?
We focused on conventional forces, and yet we felt that there were other areas that were being studied by other groups that had a significant impact on our conventional force capability. This is a listing of those capabilities that we felt were absolutely essential to enhancing our military force -- conventional forces. And so those are displayed there for you as a reminder, and we have annexes in our study that cover each of these important areas.
What's new and different in terms of war-fighting capabilities? This idea of shared situational knowledge among all elements of the joint force is a theme that you're going to see throughout our study. And the second portion of the new war-fighting concepts is the element of speed and precision with which we will try and bring to bear over a transformed force that capability and more parallel, continuous and seamless operations rather than the sequential capabilities that you've seen demonstrated in the past.
So in transforming conventional capability, which is the focus of our study, first we focused on transformation of the global joint response forces. And I'll further define those for you in a later briefing. We want the capability to operate across the spectrum. In the past, we were focused primarily on the Cold War. Our experience in the last 10 years has shown us that we need a capability across the full spectrum. And in one of my later charts, I'll show you more precisely what we mean by that.
We believe that the most significant transformational concept is to create a truly joint force; that is a force that is able to organize, train and equip, a standing joint command and control capability, and more frequent exercises and experimentation in the future to make that a more effective concept.
And we would transform the early entry forces -- this is the joint response force concept -- as the first phase in eventual transformation, a decision on how much of the force to transform that comes later on in the sequence of the transformation process.
We build on forward-deployed capability. Some have suggested that perhaps that is not required. Our assessment is that that's a very valuable part of our capability and, if anything, needs to be expanded rather than contracted.
And this tip-of-the-spear capability permits longer effective life for what we know as the legacy forces. If you can strike with speed and precision once that decision is made, you create an environment where the legacy forces can be more effective. And I hope to show you that in subsequent slides.
Here's the discussion of why an early entry joint response force concept is the focus of transformation. I'll let you read that because it's simply a list of justification for why we chose to do it this way.
From a historical standpoint, when you look back at truly transformational concepts, about 8 to 14 percent of the force was transformed that had a significant impact on the fighting capability of the entire force. Let me use the German blitzkrieg as an example. Most people think of Stukas and panzers and characterize that as the German Army in the beginnings of World War II, but in fact only about 10 percent of the force was transformed with that concept; 90 percent of the forces that eventually conquered much of Europe was foot soldiers and horse-drawn cannon. But the effect was that this small transformation in terms of percentage of the force was overwhelming in its power.
So we were seeking, as we tried to define what to transform, a similar type of approach; that is, something that would make a big difference.
And you will see that, I hope, in the subsequent briefing charts.
So the elements of the joint response force concept are a deployable joint command-and-control system; tailorable force modules, so that the common organizational structure you've understood in the past is not necessarily the one you'll have in the future, but at least individual modules of capability will be able to be integrated into a joint response force, depending on what the circumstances may require, and those modules exercise and train together so that they are capable of an integrated way of fighting.
Robust connectivity; I think most of you understand that already. Pervasive networks of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting assets. So there's a major emphasis on command-and-control and ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] in this concept.
Long-range precision strike and information operations. I would point out that we have integrated those on the same line in this chart intentionally. They go together, in our view.
Forward-deployed forces, again, emphasize rapidly deployable ground component of the joint force. We need part of that force to be able to respond quickly. I'll expand that in a few moments.
Deploy and sustain without buildup of vulnerable logistics nodes and lines of communication; and then the ability to deal with what one might anticipate an adversary would develop: weapons of mass destruction, missiles, mines, and other anti-access capabilities.
Now, this is the center point of my briefing today, and I realize that this chart may be difficult to see with this lighting. That's why we passed out the chart, that you might understand what we're talking about here.
In this spectrum of possible military operations, we picked three to be representative of the concept. The first one was "hostile environment." Think of that as the most heavily defended, with an adversary using anti-access strategies which may include political denial of even some of our friendly forces through friendly neighbors, including intimidation and other aspects of it, and how do we deal with that hostile environment?
Probably the most benign environment we could envision is the humanitarian circumstance where there is no adversary military force; there is some kind of natural disaster that we may be requested as a nation to respond to, and how we deal with that part of the spectrum.
And finally, a permissive environment. The one that might be considered an example in this capability would be Saddam Hussein threatening to enter Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, and we respond -- even though there has been no start of hostility, we respond with a force that goes into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to deny him that objective, and then we have to be prepared to move from a permissive environment to a hostile environment.
Those three scenarios, then, were used to show the full spectrum of capability that we think that we need to have in the future, and how we would deal with it.
Notice that in each of these blocks we have joint command and control, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance across that entire spectrum. We think we require those, although perhaps in differing degrees, in every circumstance that we may be presented with. And so that's a common one across there.
We found that there were three phases, if you will, although they could be simultaneously in operation, that are required: Set the conditions as rapidly as possible. We've used a notional 24 hours on which to set the conditions in a hostile environment, a permissive environment, and a humanitarian environment. This is not meant to be the completion of that operation, but the start of it, and in some cases, we may be able to achieve it within the timeline that's here.
In the "set the conditions" then, let me take the hostile environment as an example of the war-fighting capability that we're talking about establishing. This is a combination of submarine-launched cruise missiles, bomber force with escort fighters, cruise missile carriers that are airborne -- think of B-52s; and to the degree that has been achieved, the stealthy entry of carrier battle group aircraft. And the idea is that we could very rapidly respond anyplace in the world with a massive strike, if that is required, to set the conditions in the hostile environment.
It's designed to counter the defenses of an adversary and to overfly or circumvent the anti-access strategies in the first elements of the conflict.
The second part is establish control in 96 hours. Here we're talking about missile defense, ground combat units, theater precision attack, and forward-deployed forces. Let me give you a scenario that's meant to be an example of this concept.
The first strike comes primarily out of the United States and out of sanctuaries like submarines, with a massive capability to set the conditions. And then you want to establish control. The best way to think of this is the carrier battlegroup moves into the littoral. It has already performed some anti-access strategy efforts to clear mines, to take care of submarines. And as it comes in, it brings a defense bubble for air and missile defense. As it moves in across the land, we put in ground security forces that give us the ground element of security in addition to the air security. And then we bring in more forces on the ground to create a capability to use the aerial ports and the seaports to bring in the legacy forces later.
This concept, then, would bring in ground missile defense to supplement and expand the capability of the carrier battlegroup- provided defenses. We'd bring in ground combat units that have high mobility and great lethality, and theater precision strike attack, as the defenses permit, and then bring in APOD [aerial port of debarkation] and SPOD [sea port of debarkation], as we call them, support.
A way to think of this is that we already have under way concepts for expeditionary forces. Probably the classic example is the carrier battle group always has several carrier battle groups deployed. When they return, then go into a shipyard for retrofit, configuration of new capabilities, turnover of people, and then begin a training cycle that brings them up to the state of readiness.
The Marine expeditionary units have a similar concept already. The Air Force has just developed air expeditionary forces as a similar capability and similar readiness capability. And the Army, with its interim brigade or the brigade combat teams, would be similar in terms of developing their expeditionary capability, and they would form the majority of this, along with any forward-deployed forces in the future.
Then, mostly coming by sea, but not exclusively, these are the other forces that are in the decisive resolution capability. That is the full capability ground units; the expeditionary land, sea, and air forces that are not at a state of readiness that they can be immediately deployed; and Reserve forces in our sustainment capability, as well as population control, coordination, and the follow-on to conflict operations.
Now what I've described to you is the hostile environment. Let me move now to the permissive environment capability. And you'll notice that this force composition is actually identical here. And what we are trying to do in that capability is deploy those expeditionary forces rapidly into an area of interest and assume that they can be fully supported by placing these long-range precision strike and direct insertion forces on alert. For those of you who are familiar with the nuclear posture capability we had in the past, where moved in states of readiness all the way up to start engines and taxi, and in some cases -- though never used -- positive control launch, those types of capabilities would be fundamental to protecting the force we deploy forward and having the ability to strike within a short period of time.
The capability would also include the ability, while the force is en route, to determine final targeting and interject into the systems -- the navigation systems and the weapons systems the precise targets. And for those missions which might take 20 -- correction -- 14 hours to get to a target area, you'd have all of that time to continue to refine the targeting capability in response to the commander in chief of that regional area.
So this force, then, is the same force that's in a permissive environment. And the focus of our transformation of the military forces is right here at the leading edge. This is what we're trying to accomplish in terms of force effectiveness.
Let me talk about humanitarian before I move on here. Humanitarian efforts have many of the same requirements of other military operations; that is, the ability to respond quickly and the ability to work with other capabilities: units, nongovernmental organizations, other countries, things of this nature. So we would create a standing humanitarian joint task force, probably located in the Washington, D.C., area, with a joint command and control capability similar to our war-fighting capability, access to ISR with some immediately airlift and security capabilities.
And its principal focus when not being used would be to go work out the arrangements with other governmental agencies who have a responsibility for humanitarian operations, as well as the nongovernmental organizations we normally deal with, and be prepared to respond rapidly to set the conditions by putting a survey force in place, once that decision is made by the national command authority, to understand what level of effort is required. In a truly benign environment, then, one of the things they would have in place and funded would be contractor support, so we could immediately go to contractor support for food distribution, for repair of critical facilities and things of that nature, as well as contract law enforcement and any of the other capabilities that you'd need in the benign environment.
The other part of this concept is that if the circumstances required a military response, we would draw forces from here to support this capability for the limited time we could get to a circumstance that permits contract support, rather than drawing from here, as we do today.
This will enable us to have our readiness forces here, which have a high response time, to maintain their readiness, rather than to be used for humanitarian operations, which has as a consequence a reduced combat capability that flows from that.
Now, we organized our military capabilities in these four major areas, and then we divided those into these main subject areas. So our full report has those elements in it, and I'm not going to go into those, other than to answer your questions today.
We also identified what we called "transformational R&D," and these are the major thrusts that we recommended significantly more investment in: Information and decision superiority, and that includes offensive operations as well as protection of our own systems. It involves significant improvements in our ISR capability, including the use of space for platforms for ISR capability. Here is information warfare, offense and defense. Advanced power; it turns out that 80 percent of a deployed operating ground force logistics support is in fuel and batteries. So finding capabilities for advanced power is very significant. We've been doing research in directed energy and some of those are showing great promise, and we would make further investments in that.
Stealth encounter; stealth will remain very important in the future and understanding how to counter, for example, an adversary's use of cruise missiles in a stealthy mode is an important aspect of this. A lot of robotics; our definition includes lots of unmanned air vehicles, underwater vehicles and things of that nature, in addition to robotics of very, very small elements on a battlefield. Non-lethal capabilities, as well as additional work in chemical and biological weapon defense, characterization, and other aspects of dealing with that future threat.
The consequences of this transformation focus, then, primarily enhanced military capabilities. And here's the joint force information decision superiority emphasis that I've placed on this; striking with precision, the global power projection; and then we're looking for the various theaters of war battlespace dominance.
There are other important consequences: force size offset by increased capability; reduced operating and support costs; reduced logistics tail that prevent, then, the big buildup of activities now; and the faster application of new technology.
Institutionalizing transformation. We believe that transformation is not a single event, but a process that needs to go forward in the future so that we are constantly in an evolution of transformation as time goes on. And these are the five recommendations we've provided to the secretary to ensure this process continues in the future.
Slide, please. I guess that's me. (Laughter.) I'll go back one.
Study conclusions. Integration and synergy that true jointness brings is the most powerful transformation. The services are very, very capable, but they still have not learned and they have not trained and have not exercised sufficiently for us to claim we have a true joint force capability. And so our principal focus is on how we can achieve that. And Joint Command and Control is the most enabling transformation effort, so we recommend a lot of focus on here.
Focus transformation -- since you can't afford to do it across the board -- on the Joint Response Forces, giving them new capabilities is the focus of our study. We characterize programs by A, B, C. Those contributing the most to that, and it's initiate those new programs that are essential to transformation; accelerate special access programs -- we reviewed all of those programs and found that there were a number of them that were truly transformational that require a significant investment in the future because of the capabilities they'll bring. I won't discuss those any more today. A reminder that those things that I showed you on the second slide about capabilities beyond our study, but influenced the capabilities of the transformed military force, are also essential. And then institutionalize the transformation process.
And that is my last slide, and I'll be happy to take your questions.
Q: As you look at the force today, how close is it to being transformed? How much will it cost to do this?
McCarthy: Well, we did not calculate a total cost to do this --
Q: Can you go to the podium, please?
McCarthy: I'm sorry?
Q: Will you go to the podium, please?
McCarthy: Okay. I thought my mike was working.
How much will it cost? We did not calculate the cost of doing all of this. We have a general understanding that this will require a number of billions of dollars to do this, but we don't have a precise monetary figure to give you.
The first part of your question was?
Q: How close is the current force to doing what you want?
McCarthy: Well, many of the capabilities will work in this concept, but we are not there in terms of a truly joint force. So the methods to achieve that interaction depends primarily on command and control. We think that's probably two or three years before we can field what we believe is required there and from that foundation then build to a more transformational capability. We build on many of the capabilities that already exist, but in specific areas, we're going to make an investment to make existing systems work better.
Q: Sir, you talked about a secretary of Defense transformation discretionary fund. When would that fund begin? What fiscal year, whether it's going to be '02? And how much would be in it?
McCarthy: A reminder now that these briefings that you've seen here are recommendations to the secretary of Defense. Most of those answers will come from him, rather than me. We would propose that they start in '02 and be a fairly substantial amount of money so that when a truly transformational idea is presented, that those dollars can be applied immediately and not have to wait for the several-year process that we have today to POM a new idea. "POM" meaning Program Objective Memorandum.
Q: How much would you propose?
McCarthy: I think up to a half a billion dollars would be very helpful.
Q: And that's not in the budget now in '02; it's not in the '02?
McCarthy: I don't know that. I can't answer that question.
Q: Sort of a series of little questions. Resistance by the services to all this jointness. Jointness is certainly not a new concept. You seem to be wanting to push it down deeper.
Are you talking joint buying, for example, or most of this is operationally oriented? The services just don't like to give up their prerogatives. How would you break down those barriers? That's one quick question.
The other one is, can you go back to the hostile environment, the kicking-down-the-door part of this, and describe in a little more detail the direct insertion forces, the forward-deployed forces, sort of what you're envisioning and how you go about that?
McCarthy: Yeah. First of all, I don't find the resistance in the services to jointness from an operational standpoint. And I -- while they would have to speak for themselves about what they think about our study, in terms of an understanding that we truly need more jointness, I think you'll find universal agreement among the services and the Joint Staff. And many of the ideas that we captured did come from them, so --
Q: To operate?
McCarthy: To operate.
We did not address in our study joint buying or anything like that, and probably we would not support that sort of thing, based on the membership in my group.
So we're talking operationally only, and I believe that we have the support of everyone trying to get a new operational concept that establishes true jointness.
The other part of that is the joint command and control system. So far, we have not figured out how to organize, train, and equip a joint command and control system. That's why we don't have one.
So that will take some innovative thinking to -- how to create that capability, and we've given, in our recommendations in the study, joint forces command a major role in developing and experimenting with a joint command and control system for all of the CINCs [commanders in chief] and then eventually distributing that capability out to all of the CINCs as a way to deal with this effort.
If I can go back to your second question, then, the direct insertion forces today would be the 82nd Airborne, for example, which has the capability of taking down an airfield or some key element. I guess the way to describe that transformation is to give them a better planning capability, to give them an en route support capability, and then make them more lethal for when they actually are on the ground, so they have greater lethality than they have today. That would be transformational for that kind of a force.
As the Army moves to future combat systems, through the interim brigade or brigade combat team, some of those capabilities will come along with that and then they would become direct insertion forces. If you look at that concept -- (to staff) -- Would you put that matrix slide back up, please?
If you look at the concepts here, the idea is, in forward-deployed forces today, we probably don't have any for a truly hostile environment that's already deployed out there. But an example that we specifically said is, when the carrier battle groups have JSF [joint strike fighter] on them, which combines stealth and precision, then they would move from this capability up into this capability. That would be an example of how this is done.
While no one suggests that we can transform this whole legacy system, these fully capable ground units, as they become much lighter and more lethal, would move from here to here. And so you get a roll-down effect in terms of moving forces, over time, out of the legacy force into here. That doesn't mean you transform the entire force.
Q: General, could you share with us your ABC list, or at least give us some examples of systems now in development that the panel determined were indeed transformational and maybe some that do not contribute to transformation?
McCarthy: I'll try. I'll go through a set of slides here that are designed primarily to show you the methodology, and then there will be some ABC -- well, actually, only A, in these particular slides I'm showing you. But here's "achieving information decision superiority." We judged the value of that particular capability. Here are the critical elements of that capability. You don't have those in your slides, if you're leafing through there, so I'll give you a couple of moments to look at that. Then, in command-and-control, here is the key operational capabilities that we're trying to achieve, and here are the enabling capabilities.
Here's this joint task force headquarters vice "service-centric." The way we create joint task forces today, principally, is whoever is the commander goes to their service and says, "I need command and control," and they bring that in to operate a joint force. That's the best we can do today; but the impact is that it does not give you a true joint capability in commanding joint forces, and it contributes to a lack of integration, both in exercises and actual operations.
And here are standards of readiness, response, and performance aspects for command and control. We have them for operational units; we don't have them for a command and control system, so we don't have a way to evaluate readiness in that particular area. And then the various tools that one would have.
So specifically, a category A transformation program is develop a joint command and control as a core competency. Here's JFCOM [Joint Forces Command] the resources and authority, working with other CINCs, to design, and then here are the major aspects of that, including a Joint Forces Command-DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] cooperative relationship, and co-evolve the new command and control concepts, involve interagency and coalition partners -- which answers an earlier question. And then this is a continuation: treat command and control as we do combat systems, deployable capability for each of the CINCs, and implement a family of interoperable pictures as part of this investment strategy that we would recommend.
Let me look at another one -- striking with precision. Here's the value of the capability: deter, assure, dissuade. This idea is that if you have this force that an adversary knows can strike them in, say, 24 hours, or whenever the national command authority decides to do that, and it's powerful enough, that it will have a deterrent capability against conventional operations, and these are the elements that we'd like to have.
And these critical elements, then, are divided into four sections. I'm going to show you one of them, which will -- here are the key operational capabilities. Notice the first one is to offset an adversary's key access denial strategies; operate strikes from relative sanctuaries -- that means the United States or under the water or carrier battlegroups at sea, that sort of thing; penetrate defended airspace and disable or destroy defenses; gain control of key airfields, seaports and infrastructure; and defend deployable forces.
Here are the enabling capabilities: ISR assets, stealth, cruise missiles, escort aircraft and direct insertion with stand-off protection -- in order words, they count on support from stand-off capability. And here's what you ask for: Key Transformational Programs Category A. Convert four Trident submarines to cruise missile carriers; enhance the B-2 force with large carriage capability and flexible targeting.
For example, you can put 324 of the small-diameter bombs on each B-2. If you launch 18 of the 21 B-2s, that's 5,824 individually targeted weapons on that small force. When you put together this and this and ALCM [air launched cruise missiles] to CALCM conversion along with increasing the B-52 conventional force, you're talking about 8,000 to 10,000 weapons in a single strike package, which is pretty awesome. And then Global Hawk deployment advanced, build a stealthy joint long-range cruise missile for both the submarine and the aircraft carriage, develop a long-range precision strike capability and accelerate Navy JSF.
Q: This does not mean more B-2s, right? It means more capability for --
McCarthy: On the existing B-2 force.
Q: Why the Navy JSF and not Marine Corps, Air Force?
McCarthy: The one that we thought needed accelerating was the JSF.
Q: Why?
McCarthy: Because from a carrier battle group, then you'd have stealth and precision forward. And without that, until they get that capability, which was delayed several years, we wouldn't have that capability on a carrier.
Q: Is there any role in here for the F-22 and the global strike task force?
McCarthy: Yes, there is. As both an escort aircraft and a precision strike aircraft.
Q: But does that mean you need more of them?
McCarthy: Well, we did not make a judgment about what's the final number. That was not in our charter. We did not do that. We said the F-22 program's coming along fine, the JSF is an important capability, and accelerate it to get it on the carriers faster, but we did not say you need X umber of them. That was not in our charter.
Q: When you say the long-range precision strike capability, a new one, that's a B-2 follow-on and presumably that would be faster than the Air Force's current plan of --
McCarthy: It could be (inaudible). And remember now, this is a study and we're making simply recommendations. It could be a manned or an unmanned bomber. It could be a cruise missile carrier. It could be from space. We did not limit the possibilities there.
Q: But sooner than 2017.
McCarthy: Absolutely sooner than 2017. Okay?
You want to turn that off? Okay.
I've already called on you.
Yes? In the back.
Q: Can you leave that on for a minute for me?
McCarthy: Oh. You want to copy that?
Q: Yeah.
McCarthy: Okay. Leave it on.
(Cross talk.)
Q: If you want to a copy -- (off mike) --
Q: Are you going to have copies for that -- (off mike)?
McCarthy: Pardon?
Q: You're going to have copies of -- (off mike)?
McCarthy: Yes.
Staff: We'll get copies --
McCarthy: They'll get them for you.
Staff: (Off mike.)
Q: General --
McCarthy: I've already called on this man in the back here. I'll come back to you.
Q: Two questions, General. To what degree did you engage the service chiefs, service staffs, and war-fighting unified commands in the conduct of your study? What was their input?
And secondly, could you expand on your operational concept for the deployment of this -- what I understand is a standing JTF command and control element or an entire JTF headquarters staff to that unified command?
One of the strengths of the manner in which the JTFs have been stood up in the past in theater is that they draw on the personnel and command structures that exist, the most knowledgeable people about that theater.
McCarthy: Okay, let me take the first question, which was the service and CINCs' involvement. From the very beginning, I involved each of the service chiefs, discussed what we were going to do. They each provided a general flag officer, who participated with us. They listened to all the briefings that we received, where they had the classification level necessary to do that, and they kept their service chiefs informed.
They did not participate in our deliberations, but at the completion of our deliberations, I personally briefed each of the service chiefs, and so they were involved, in my view, from the beginning and the end.
We did not bring all of the CINCs in, but we did bring several of the CINCs in where we thought we needed more information, and they participated with either a general or flag officer representative or personally participated.
So I think we have service involvement. We brought in contractors. We brought in think tanks. We brought in people with some different ideas. And then we listened for about three or four weeks before we got into the deliberation phase.
Now to your question on joint command and control. We believe that the CINCs are the major war-fighting responsible individuals in their theaters. We would give them each a compatible joint command and control system that they could operate, if they chose to, from their headquarters, and we would encourage them to operate that way on a day-to-day basis.
And it would also have a deployable element, so they could deploy the headquarters forward, if they chose to do that, with a subordinate officer as the JTF that they would pick to handle that responsibility. The difference is that those people doing this command-and-control business would be all trained and experienced in that, and rotated among various commands to give them the operational capability, but the CINC would still have responsibility for picking the JTF commander, senior staff that would drop in on this capability, which would be exercised and trained to do that, which is not what we do today.
Now, the CINCs have started down this process within their own resources. We think they need more resources to carry out that responsibility.
I promised you next.
Q: I'm not saying you're reinventing the wheel, but we've heard a lot of this stuff before. This is very familiar. The specifics may be cutting-edge. Let me press you on jointness. CINCs have joint staffs already. I think Schwarzkopf ended up with an Air Force general running the ground war. Didn't work too well, so they had to supplement it with a Marine. What do you want in terms of jointness? Do you want a single helicopter force? I mean, we have all three different helicopter, four different helicopter forces now. Do you want a single helicopter force? Single cargo force? Can you be a little more specific on the jointness?
McCarthy: No, we would not advocate a single-force, avoid-duplication type of thing. What we would talk about is the ability to take force modules and have them trained and experienced in such a way, particularly in the command-and-control system, that they can operate with whatever -- if they were a ground force, they could operate with whatever Air Force and Naval components that we brought together to do that. We don't think that one service can provide all of the helicopter support, for example. I don't think any of us in our transformation study would go there.
But what we are talking about is the concept of developing, with experimentation and exercises, so that force can truly operate together. And we think the most powerful aspect of that is giving them a command-and-control capability, which they don't have now, as a way to move in that direction.
The second part of that is the tailorable force concept, the force modular concept. You remember in Kosovo, the ability to command-and-control the Apache helicopter squadron that went into Albania was they had to deploy a corps headquarters command-and-control element, which is far too large for that. And that's the kind of thing we're talking about.
With force modules, you can build whatever modules you want and they will operate within this joint command-and-control capability. And the way you ensure that they do that is through experimentation, exercise, training and that sort of thing.
Q: But this joint command-and-control capability, there seems to be a lot of concurrent effort within each service to develop their own B-2 system. Would you rather see a whole new system developed and people trained, or interfaces that need to be built between those systems?
McCarthy: The way we have done it in the past, and this is my shorthand, so it's not precisely accurate, is each of the services have built from the bottom up and then tried to integrate them. And in some cases that works pretty well. The problem is, then you have so many multiple interfaces that the cost of doing that is humongous, in my view.
So what our recommendation was is to create a new joint command and control at the top that integrates all of the operations necessary for a joint task force. And it starts with the design of being totally interoperable among the CINCs and down to and then -- well, this is not a decision -- our recommendation is down to the JFACC, the ground force commander at the corps level, the carrier battle group and the MEU are examples of where the interfaces would take place. And then the services would continue, at least this point in time, to develop their own capabilities there.
Now, eventually what I think will happen is -- and this is a personal view, not the study team's view -- I think what will happen is the joint command and control, as it becomes effective, will then start to reach down further and further into designing a more compatible interoperable system. So that's where I think that will come from.
All the way in the back.
Q: Two questions. Can you address a time line for all this for us? I mean, where are the milestones out here? How many years do you expect it to take for the various aspects of this to develop? And secondly, on page 11 of your slides, you talk about an offset in terms of size of existing forces. Could you give us some detail on what size reductions you envision in existing forces as a result of the increased capabilities?
McCarthy: We did not, other than to classify into what would be near term, mid term and far term in our program in terms of when they would be ready for our forces. We did not put a timeline on here. They extend from some fairly fast changes, like accelerating Global Hawk deployments and increasing the number significantly would be one example; two, space-based radar, which depends on how rapidly we can develop the technology, and that's basically far term rather than mid term or short term. So we did do that descriptive element with it in terms of that capability.
The second part of your question, please?
Q: Yeah, well, in following up on that part, what is near term in terms of years?
McCarthy: Five years -- notionally five years, not precisely five years. Mid term, out to 10 years, and then beyond 10 years.
Q: The other question was you mentioned an expected offset in the size of forces.
McCarthy: Ah, yes.
Q: Could you describe how much you expect to offset size?
McCarthy: We do not have dollar figures or anything like that. But going back on looking at -- when I first started flying B-47s, there were 2,200 B-47s. Then we built 586 B-52s to replace them. Then we built 100 B-1s; we built too few B-2s -- 21. But a part of that was the fact that each aircraft was far more effective in its mission than the one before it.
So this increase in effectiveness could permit you -- I'm not saying it should -- could permit you to reduce the total number that you have in that particular capability. And numbers count in a number of different ways, but not in all ways. And so what we're saying is that as you build these capabilities, in some cases you'll be able to reduce the size. Let me give you an example.
We have a lot of platforms to deal with ISR, and today we are recommending an increase in the number of those platforms. When we get space-based radar with a ground moving target indication capability, you may be able to supplement all of those aircraft. It's that kind of thought process that we're talking about in that particular bullet.
Yes?
Q: Could you elaborate on this concept of the joint humanitarian task force? Would that include troops who specialize in this kind of mission? Would it just be a headquarters element?
McCarthy: This would be a headquarters element and a survey element, and it would have people who focus themselves primarily in that particular area. The forces that they would draw from, after the initial survey, would come out of that -- what I would label for shorthand the legacy force. And some of them already have those kinds of skills that would be used in a major conflict, if you will. So we would draw on those, if that was required.
But the idea of this concept is to minimize the impact on those forces with the highest state of readiness, and do that instead of using soldiers, as we have generally described that in the past, we would use people who can do that same thing but without interfering with military forces.
Q: Sir, how much does this diverge from Joint Vision 2020? I mean, is that going to need a rewrite, essentially? And JFCOM has been doing a -- or Joint Forces Command has been doing an awful lot of experimentation in rapid, decisive operations, which seems to fit in with your global joint response force. They've estimated that if these experiments are right, that 25 percent of the force could be transformed in the next five years. Does that fit right in with what you're talking about?
McCarthy: First of all, I believe that our concept is consistent with Joint Vision 2020, but the joint vision is such a broad statement. It is very consistent with the rapid, decisive operation that has come out of the Joint Staff, but it's more specific than those general concepts that they've talked about.
And no, I don't believe that 25 percent of the force could be transformed in the next five years. My belief is that if we can afford to transform 10 percent of the force, that would be, as a general statement, a more achievable thing to accomplish. And some of those things that we recommend in that 10 percent will not be achievable for 15 or 20 years because of the technology.
So don't think of this as tomorrow the force is transformed. It is a continual process where you leverage where you can put your technology, where you make your operational changes to give you a more enhanced war-fighting capability.
Q: I wanted to ask you about a couple of systems that were rated "C" in your April 27th final report to Mr. Rumsfeld. One of those was the F-22. Could you elaborate a little bit about why it was rated C Category? And why were not the DD-21 or CVX in this report at all in terms of transformational?
McCarthy: In terms of the F-22, our recommendations were Deltas to the existing program, Delta meaning do you need to apply more money, do you need to accelerate it. And we considered the F-22 transformational, but not requiring any changes or anything of that nature.
Q: It stayed a C category because of that.
McCarthy: Yes. In other words, if we had concluded we need to accelerate it, or possible to accelerate it, it would have moved to an A category. But we didn't have to do anything with it; that's why it stayed at that level.
Q: It's not a pejorative that it's a C category.
McCarthy: No. It is, does it require -- the way to think of this is were we recommending the secretary do something different than the plan already is. Okay?
Q: DD-21 and CVX, they were noticeable by their absence in your whole report.
McCarthy: Yes, that's a fair assessment. (Laughter.) We were not persuaded they were truly transformational.
Q: You're a blue suit, or why? I mean, this raises the question of the composition of your group.
McCarthy: The composition -- my group had more admirals than anything else, so -- and don't misunderstand me. We are not saying kill any program. That was not our effort. Our effort was, here's a group of programs that are truly more transformational than other programs are, and we put them in that category. So we did not say that they were transformational.
Q: Why, though? Can you elaborate a little bit?
McCarthy: We didn't see a substantial difference in operational capability in the DD-21 compared to the other systems.
Q: The 51, the DDG-51 or something like that?
McCarthy: Yes. Well, now I've got to refer to my Navy counterparts. But the bottom line is that we felt the continuation of what we're building now is the right answer.
Q: Could you elaborate on your global joint response forces? Are you taking some number of people from each of the four services and making a combined force of some kind, or are you talking about drawing on the existing predeployed, forward-deployed forces? And on that point, you mentioned that if anything, you would like to see more forward-deployed forces. Are you talking about station forces or the rotational forces, such as the Navy and Marine ARGs?
McCarthy: The second question -- and I'll ask you again about the first question -- the second question is that we are talking about more forward-deployed forces, not necessarily forward-stationed forces, but forces that could be deployed forward rapidly.
And so whether they're actually deployed forward or could be deployed forward, that's in that definition.
And in terms of your first question, we are not talking about creating a new force. It is how you organize and exercise and train the existing forces, and what capabilities that you give them. So in terms of the long-range precision strike, much of those forces exist today. They're CONUS-based. And what we would do then is enhance their capability for rapid strike anyplace in the world. It's the same forces, but we would then provide them with different weapons systems, better command and control, better targeting capability to enhance that force.
So I think the answer is no new forces in terms of what we're talking about; it's how you organize the existing forces.
(Cross talk.)
Q: To get back to -- follow up on several of the questions that were asked about the familiarity of the themes, is this essentially a compressed survey of the literature? Is there anything in here that has not been in previous studies about future transformation?
McCarthy: We certainly did a survey of the literature, so -- and we invited people in who had extreme ideas, if you will. So we picked and chose among those.
I think the emphasis on jointness through joint command and control would be something that you probably haven't heard before. I mean, a lot of people have talked about command and control, but the more precise definition we've tried to give it, I think, is new.
Some of the programs that had been thought about before -- but nobody's put any money about them -- are certainly part of that transformation.
But in fact what I think we've done is put an operational concept together that is different than most of the writings on transformation in the past.
That one slide that had the matrix on it of set the conditions, establish control, decisive resolution, as a thought process -- at least some people have told us that's new and innovative. So it's hard to judge, because we did seek from others their ideas and obviously adopted some and rejected some others, based on what we had.
Yeah.
Q: General, have you recommended a resumption of the B-2 production line, and if so, how many more planes would you buy?
McCarthy: We did not. What we did put down is a long-range precision strike capability which could include the B-2C, could include a variety of different others, but we did not specifically recommend that.
Q: General --
Q: Sir, could I get just a little more precision on the Navy JSF?
McCarthy: Yeah.
Q: I think that the IOC for that now is 2012. It might be 2011. Did your group recommend a specific year you'd like to see it moved up to?
McCarthy: No. We wanted to accelerate it as rapidly as we could.
Q: One question --
McCarthy: That's probably -- the question was acceleration of JSF, and what we concluded was that we could probably -- probably -- accelerate it two or three years, to put it on the carrier earlier --
Q: But if the Navy did that, would they have to take money from the Super Hornet to do it? Would that be your group's recommendation?
McCarthy: No, we did not make any recommendation on where you pull money from, and we just simply prioritized programs.
Q: General, on the order of battle for the hostile insertion, that looks a lot like everything we see now. It seems to be the same order of battle -- starting with cruise missiles and stand-off attack, followed by your rapid-deployable units and then building up as you can -- that we've always had. Could you explain how that's different? And also, the V-22, did you make a statement on that?
McCarthy: Yes. First of all, what's different is the speed and precision with which we're talking about that hostile environment, long-range precision strike, and the direct insertion forces. So backing up this concept, then, is the investment in ISR command-and-control, new small weapons, to get both precision and a very large strike force.
I mean, take the B-2, for example. It carried 16 weapons to Kosovo. We're now talking about 324, with an equal capability in terms of what that weapon would do with its accuracy. That is a dramatic change in its capability. The same way with converting Trident submarines to be cruise missile carriers. So that -- that fits in.
The V-22 we did not get involved in understanding what the issues are in terms of the capability. What we did judge is that, assuming those issues are resolved, that aircraft is certainly a transformational aircraft.
Q: General -- General, you've -- General, we've been told repeatedly that you can't have a military future plan without an understanding of the mission and the strategy. Did you go into this with a fixed understanding of what the military's strategy is?
McCarthy: Andy Marshall's group did the strategy. I had access to that strategy as we developed this. We believe that you can make a direct connection with the strategy down to a number of the things that you saw here in our concept today.
The strategy tends to be fairly broad, so that was not difficult to achieve, but in fact you can see a flow-down, if you will, from our recommendations and those that other groups made that are consistent -- or, I should say, transform the military impact.
So there was this working relationship among groups, and I am comfortable that this would support the strategy as I understand it, although the secretary, again, has not made decisions on that aspect of it, either. So I can only go with that.
Staff: Thank you.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2001/t06122001_t612tran.html