Fighting the Last War

source: axios.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  | image: pexels.com

The United States — its citizens, industry, decision-makers and military — is unprepared for a war that could kick off with Russia and China and later engulf the world, according to a new blue chip study.

Why it matters: The Commission on the National Defense Strategy, a congressionally mandated group with members handpicked by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, is not known for hyperbole. Its conclusions, that the U.S. “has not kept pace with a worsening situation,” should be a wakeup call.

Here are some of the top-line issues the commission laid out in 100-plus pages published this week:

• China has “largely negated the U.S. military advantage” in the Western Pacificafter 20 years of investment.
• The Pentagon’s portrayal of Russia as an “acute threat” undersells the “ongoing and persistent” nature of the hazards it poses, especially in space and cyber. Moscow-aligned hackers are expected to sow chaos across the U.S. should war break out.
• The means by which the Pentagon purchases weapons are outdated, as are the ultimate products. Successes like the DIU are system workarounds that don’t have enough resources.
• Stateside production capacity is “grossly inadequate,” meaning a “World War II–style industrial mobilization” is off the table. A protracted fight, as seen in Ukraine, is incredibly taxing.
• Recruiting failures have stunted the services. Techniques once used to bring people in the door are in desperate need of an overhaul (no more strip mall recruiting offices and discolored billboards).
• Congress “has become a major impediment to national security” and fails to fund the government in a timely manner, while billions of dollars are wasted and new projects are kneecapped.
• Public support for a strong military and robust alliances is evaporating amid political polarization and peacetime disengagement.

What they’re saying: “We’re very good at fighting the last war,” Jane Harman, the commission chairperson, said at the Aspen Security Forum ahead of the report’s rollout.

• Harman, a former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, also said greater focus should be on software — “cyber, AI and the amazing change in social media and how people are motivated to act.”

The findings resonated with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which dissected the report Tuesday.

• “It aptly describes our hollow, brittle defense industrial base, and painfully Byzantine bureaucratic process,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican.

My thought bubble: None of this is terribly surprising, especially if you’ve read prior postmortems as well as my Future of Defense manifesto, published earlier this month. But as the volume and clip of these warnings increase, we’ll see more of the changes we track here every week.