someone whose last name is Arkin.
Turns out Arkin is a regular columnist for the Washington Post. (Gee, now we know he is a commi-lib, don't we?) I have been reading some of his back columns, and he really seems to have good info on the Defense Department, as he should have, since that is his "Beat."
Here is his take on the "Crusader." Since he agrees with me, he must be right.
Icons of the Crusade
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, May 20, 2002; 11:38 AM
The Army's Crusader artillery gun should be cancelled. But so should the Navy's cruise missile submarine, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, and extended- and long-range cruise missiles the Air Force is toying with.
And why is the United States spending more than $850 million in this year alone on a smorgasbord of "smart" anti-armor weapons: the Brilliant anti-tank (BAT) sub-munition, the Line-of-Sight Anti-tank (LOSAT) system, the Army's Tactical Missile System Block II, Javelin, the Short-range Antitank weapon, and the sensor fuzed weapon?
And what about the $213 million the Pentagon is proposing to pay this year and next to just start developing a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)?
What is more, does the United States really need both the F-22 "Raptor" and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter?
I hate to play the game of picking systems out of air to criticize, thereby buying into competing concepts of warfare or giving aid and comfort to dueling industries or interservice rivalries. I know exactly the Navy admiral who is going to call me this week to tout his service's submarine conversion. Air Force friends are going to shake their heads in dismay that I would jump on an anti-F-22 bandwagon.
Bad Company
Still, many readers and friends have asked my opinion about the cancellation of the Crusader, the Army's 60-ton tracked gun. Yet I find it impossible to declare my position without applying some of the same standards to other systems.
Anyone who's been following the debate knows the pro-Crusader argument: troops need what's called fire support and Crusader can do that better than current guns. Even Iraqi artillery "outranges" and "outguns" U.S. artillery. Sadly, we still live in a world in which on-paper capability is confused with real capability. The Iraqis were so shell-shocked in the Gulf War, so unable to assimilate their own technology no matter how good it might have been on paper, they could have had golden guns and it wouldn't have made a difference.
Then there are the arguments against Crusader. Mostly that it is too big. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld loves to say that it would take 64 C-17 airliners to move 18 guns into a battle. "The question is where do you land them, how do you move them, will they go across a bridge with those kinds of weights?," he said last week.
No argument from me there. But that's where my list of weapon systems above comes from. Do we really need so many redundant precision weapons? Has the U.S. military had trouble getting to targets with its current capabilities? Has it had any difficulty killing enemy tanks and armored vehicles in the last three major wars? Can it really justify its Cold War program to develop a gaggle of anti-tank systems when the Soviets are gone? Even without such systems, Iraqi tank armies were soundly defeated.
And why do I throw in the new cruise missile submarine and fighter planes? Because it's not just about how big, or good, something is. It's also about timing. Do we really need two new fighter planes this decade, regardless of whether these are even the right planes to buy? We already have an Air Force, however "aging" and supposedly threatened by mythical air defenses, that performs again and again as the envy of the entire planet.
And a new ICBM? Let's ignore President Bush's visit with his Russian counterpart this week. What is conceivably "transformational" about a 1960's nuclear armed totem poll that the U.S. wouldn't even field until after 2020?
Lonely at the Top
If Secretary Rumsfeld's proposal to cancel Crusader is rejected because Congress or the defense industry wins, or Army troglodytes are successful in saving their hallowed gun, the blame lies with Rumsfeld. He and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz have done poor jobs of articulating what is otherwise a basically sound decision. Here's what we heard from them in the past week in repeated interviews and testimony: poor us fighting against the Pentagon bureaucracy and Congressional pork, it's so hard to "transform" and change, no one likes to give up their program, someone has to make the tough decisions.
"What we have to do is look at other ways to do things," Rumsfeld told Rush Limbaugh on Thursday. "What I think the country needs is more precision munitions ?"
The Pentagon is going to "move the money from [Crusader] and to invest in more truly transformational technology," Wolfowitz echoed.
And what exactly is transformational? It's completely in the eye of the beholder. And sometimes it is a meaningless buzzword. In their interviews this past week, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have cited the conversion of four existing Trident submarines into cruise missile submarines as a "transformation" initiative. "We're taking those incredibly valuable submarines and converting them to be cruise missile carriers so that we will give those submarines the kind of conventional crunch that is transformational," the Secretary said.
Hello? Converting the submarines rather than scrapping them might be a better idea, but is it transformational? We already have stealthy attack submarines, surface ships, and bombers galore that can fire cruise missiles, now and into the future. There is nothing transforming here. The promiscuous use of the transformation magic wand points to a basic conceptual problem with the very articulation of what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz say they want to do.
Under the current defense leadership, some things are transformational and others are not. But there's no particular reason. It's okay in the case of artillery to cancel Crusader and instead improve the projectiles and sensors and existing systems to get the job done. It is even okay to force the Army to come to grips with the idea that it might have to depend on the supporting cast of the air forces to provide "fire support" for guys on the ground. But in the case of fighter airplanes or cruise missile submarines, the same transformers support the inconsistent stance that the current generation isn't good enough and that a new generation of weapons and sensors would "transform" the new platforms into superior systems to improve air defenses and bombing ability.
Why is the Air Force's articulation of its need for F-22 any sounder than the Army's desire for Crusader? Because there is a sense that airpower is more relevant than heavy ground forces for the types of conflicts that the United States will have to face in the coming years and decades. But would defense leaders actually favor one mode of warfare over another? Would they ever dare to really transform and take money from one service and give it to another?
No. And that's why the debate over the Crusader cancellation is a food fight. The true decision to go after one weapon and not another is political and capricious, and the articulation of favored weapons is weak because it is so lacking in vision and honesty. With no common standard to apply, with no integrated understanding of what all services bring to the fight, with no sense of proportion about what we need and when, why shouldn't Congress and industry and the services fight for they want? |
