Budging Bulging Budgets

“Not one more horse will I give up for a tank.” Maj. Gen. John Knowles Herr, the last general to head the United States Cavalry. 1939. That was the Army then. Manned aircraft vs. remote-controlled drones. That is the U.S. Air Force now. Exactly how important is having manned fighters and bombers, fleets and hordes of them, in the military conflicts of the future? The Brookings Institutions has been looking at the issues, and so should our representatives in Congress. The immediate issue is whether the U.S. really should spend the $850 billion over the next few years ordering 2,000 F-35 II joint strike fighters or follow a different path.

“The F-35 is ‘a plane conceived in the 1990s whose massive budget threatens to strangle a new generation of unmanned systems at birth,’ wrote the Brookings Institution’s Peter W. Singer in an Oct. 22 Foreign Policy article that calls on the Pentagon ‘to think big and look to the past in order to prepare for the chaotic technowars of the future.’

“The F-35 and the horse cavalry were one of the ‘eerie parallels’ as Singer warned that ‘not merely tactics or operations, but fundamental organizational questions’ are involved. That means the military services have traditionally had a hard time adapting to the emergence of new technologies and new threats to national security.” Walter Pincus writing for the November 4^th Washington Post.

But it’s not just hardware that needs fixing, it’s the overall tactical mission and how to recruit and train military experts for what we really require: “A September study by Brookings, ‘Manning the Next Unmanned Air Force,’ concluded that the Air Force is ‘not properly identifying and professionally developing’ candidates for careers in the remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) field. Many in the past two years came from the bottom quarter of the Air Force Academy’s academic rolls, while others were taken from among the washouts of initial flight training. One result: Their attrition rate during flight screening ‘is three times higher than traditional pilots,’ the study reported.

“Also, ‘RPA pilots are unable to meet promotion education and training opportunities commensurate with other officers, resulting in a 13 percent lower promotion rate to the rank of major over the last five years,’ said the study, which was authored by Col. Brad Hoagland, a command pilot with 23 years of service. He conducted the study as a Brookings military fellow…. Singer points out that the British not only invented the tank but after World War I ‘carried out a series of innovative tests . . . that showed just how game-changing tanks could be in the next conflict.’… Nonetheless, before World War II the British army retreated from fully adopting armored units ‘because of the consequences it would have had on the cherished regimental system that was at the center of British military culture.’” The Post. Is the F-22 a military necessity, a luxury or simply “déjà vu all over again”? What’s your opinion?

I’m Peter Dekom, and change, particularly paradigm shifts, can be exceptionally challenging for even the most seasoned and experienced managers to deal with.