Foundation Forum

Air Force Association Symposium
Colorado Springs
Rethinking National Security Strategy
May 24, 1996
Gen. Charles A. Horner (USAF, Ret.)

I sat and listened to the briefings this morning on the theme of Change in Acquisition. In my consulting work, I am on the other side of the acquisition fence, and I am truly proud of the Air Force and their attempts to streamline our acquisition process and to change and modernize.

I also can sense that both the professional acquisition core of the Air Force, and industry to some extent, are very reluctant to accept these changes. It is very difficult for them because it is a strange world, and it is scary.

We have to make the changes based upon the things that you know all so well the change in the environment that drives acquisition. There is no doubt that commercial enterprises have assumed leadership in many of the R&D areas that were once the province of the military. There was concern when Admiral Bill Owens started the JROC [Joint Requirements Oversight Council] procedure. I supported him fully because I was disgusted with the inability of the services to cooperate and work together in areas where they had overlapping capabilities. In effect, the JROC procedure is removing the requirements function from the services, not totally, but it will have a major impact as to how we do business.

The role of the CINCs was greatly expanded by Goldwater-Nichols. The CINCs themselves do not have the trained staff nor the impetus to focus on the long-term. They are short-term, regionally focused. If we allowed the CINCs to fulfill their full role under Goldwater-Nichols, we would have a force for fighting in Europe, a force for fighting in the desert, and a force for fighting in Korea. As a result of Colin Powell s leadership as Chairman, USACOM for formed, which Colin called "America s Command" at one time. That particular CINC will become very influential in the requirements process and in the acquisition process.

There is no doubt Desert Storm showed us coalition warfare. As a result, we ve had a significant policy change in our government, and it is exactly on the right road the idea that we are going to fight together, and we need to be interoperable. We also need to be more free in our release of our technologies and sales.

Certainly Desert Storm showed that our stuff works and our stuff is good, and it is the stuff to buy. That lesson is not lost around the world, but unfortunately we still have people in other departments and in the Department of Defense who give us problems.

I am a little concerned about outside pressures to reform acquisitions. Many of them want to have a professional OSD acquisition force outside the services. That is a Brave New World which I am not ready to see yet. There is a change in our acquisition methods that tend to make these kinds of changes, but at least you should examine them closely as I m not very confident in them.

The biggest change in the acquisition environment is the southward direction of our budget. How did we accommodate the budget fall? We paid for downsizing of the Cold War budget by giving up program acquisition. We paid for it with our new programs. For awhile, we could do that because of the capabilities funded in the 80s, but we ve reached he point now where we are falling off the earth. We really cannot sustain the way we do business right now.

We took the Cold War force and we made it smaller we didn t change it. It is fundamentally the same force. We used the two MRCs [Major Regional Contingency] to define how we are going to live within the amount of money available. This is understandable; but on the bad side, it stresses force structure, not the quality of the force. As a result, we have an "attrition" fighting force built for the Fulda Gap, built for the control of the Atlantic, the Pacific, or built for deterrence of the Soviet Union. We are missing the fundamental change that has come with the end of the Cold War.

We saw some of that change in Desert Storm. But it was masked because Desert Storm was a combination of the "old way" and the "new way" of warfare. "Functional warfare" for land, air, sea and space, as appearing on some of the charts today, is creeping in, even though the Marine Corps will fight that to the death. They don t need to, there is going to be a Marine Corps forever.

But, we no longer fight as services. Air Force, Army, Navy and the Marine Corps no longer fight wars. That is slowly seeping in. The other thing we fail to understand from Desert Storm, and I really accuse the services of this, is an appreciation for stealth, precision and the way we did business where we had individual successes, the Battle of Kafji being one.

It requires people to examine what they are doing. It threatens the way we think about ourselves. As a result, you ll find most of the lessons learned from Desert Storm are really not lessons learned, they are justification for continuing the way we do business.

We need to break that mold. We need to develop a new way of fighting. We need to develop ways to provide our people with training, doctrine, and the equipment they are going to need to fight in the future. There has to be a fundamental change in our attitude toward war. The adversaries we are going to face in the future are going to learn from Desert Storm.

They are going to learn that surprise is all important. They are going to learn they need to get the war over rapidly because America lies behind two huge oceans and it takes awhile for us to get there. They are going to learn that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons have utility, if nothing more than as coercive devices. They have learned we can t shoot down ballistic missiles in a way that works. We shoot them down over our own heads so we catch the fallout from the warhead.

They will also have the surveillance and precision munitions that no one ever thought Third World countries could access. They are going to buy them; they are going to build them; or they are going to have them given to them. Those things are going to dictate the kind of war we are going to face. We are not going to be in the position of calling the tune.

What do we need in our forces? First of all, we need forces that can get there in a hurry get there in a matter of hours. Once they get there, we need forces that can spread out and come together in order to defeat the enemy s ability to survey the battlefield and hit us with precision munitions.

We need to change our fundamental doctrines in all the services. We are very closely tied to the past and it is not going to work. We will find ourselves just like the United States found itself in 1950 when it emerged from World War II as a huge military power, and still got its tail kicked in Korea. We need to close the gap between intelligence and operations. "Information Warfare" is the buzzword, but people really don t understand it. They have not brought it to bear on the issues.

Fundamentally, we must get out of the attrition warfare business and get into the business of defeating the enemy so thoroughly and so rapidly that the war is over almost before it ever begins.

We can deter conflict by announcing our ability to be so strong. We have to inflict such shock on the enemy system that they will accept the political outcomes that we have in mind.

What are the caabilities of that kind of force? I touched on some certainly speed, range, and discriminating fire. One of the biggest problems we had in Desert Storm was when we bombed the bunker. That was a "discriminating" bomb as it hit six inches from where it was aimed. However, we did not have the intelligence to support that kind of precision. As a result, we killed 200-300 civilians.

We must survive in combat. People talk about "standoff." I don t know what "standoff" is. Now we are talking about enemies who will have ballistic missiles with capabilities to strike 3-4,000 kilometers. How are going to build a standoff weapon? I think we are worshiping at the wrong altar. We need to build stuff that is survivable, stuff that can engage the enemy and survive and come back.

We need to look heavily at the cost of ownership. We don t do that very well. Over 50 percent of the cost of ownership of a system is based on the personnel expenses for the all- volunteer services. Freddy Franks and I sit on a review group, and he is in there protecting the Army. You don t have to protect the Army, it doesn t need protecting. There are 18,000 people in a division, but we have the firepower now to create a division equivalent amount of destruction with just 800 people. Why don't we make our divisions 800 people? Think what that would do for the cost. Think what it would do for the mobility, the speed, and the ability to respond. This is very difficult for him to accept because the Army defines itself by how many people it has. It doesn t define itself on how capable it is on the battlefield.

Look at an aircraft carrier. There are 5,000 people on an aircraft carrier. One cruise missile from a third-rate power could sink an aircraft carrier attempting to stabilize a crisis. We saw what happened when one soldier was dragged through the streets of Somalia. Think about 5,000 casualties. It takes 11 people to operate a supertanker, which is an ocean-going vessel similar to a carrier. You need people to load the jets, and you need aviation from the sea, but do you need to do it with 5,000 people? Why not 1,000 people or 2,000 people? Yet the services are very reluctant to think in those terms.

We talk about supply. In the Battle of Kafji, the Marines were concerned because General Walt Boomer, in order to get a high speed attack through Kuwait, had positioned his supply depot in front of his front lines. It was below the Kuwaiti border, but in front of his front lines. In the Battle of Kafji, the Marines were convinced the Iraqis were going to attack this supply depot that was 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. It scared the dickens out of them. In reality, the Iraqis didn t know it was there.

Why don't we take our soldiers and give them a credit card, a 1-800 phone number and a FedEx barcode reader. Why do we have this huge supply line? Over 90 percent of the munitions that the Army shipped to Desert Storm, got shipped back home in their original containers because they didn t understand the lethality of modern firepower and they didn t understand the relationship between air power and land power.

What is going to happen? I don t know. I think we are seeing very well intended and great leadership Darleen Druyun is a hero to many people trying to reform the existing acquisition system. On the other hand, it is cumbersome, and it will be very difficult for it to heal itself.

As a result, we are seeing people bypass the entire acquisition system. You see that in various forms. They may call them ACTDs a one time hot buzz phrase. The idea was to get something quickly and then provide the residual capability toa CINC who wanted to use it. We see it in the movement to COTS [Commercial Off-the-Shelf]. COTS is more than economy. It is also speed to get something on the ramp. During Desert Storm, I sat in the same type of command and control facility that existed when I came into the Air Force. Our ability to provide command and control of the warfighters has not been adequately served by the acquisition system in the past. There is a lot of pressure now to do better.

We have an interesting situation on the industry side of the house. The industry players are becoming huge. Lockheed-Martin-Loral is one example. That may yield economies of scale, but I am not sure that it does. Having to get a contract through the new legal office of one of these companies may not be as easy as the old way where your boss just signed the contract. Now it goes in and six or eight months later surfaces as the same contract. So, there are some real potential downsides to getting bigger that have to be addressed.

The secret of success for big industry is being big and acting small and address the customer on an individual basis. They need to react very responsibly and put themselves at the service of the customer like a little company does when it is just trying to get started it will do anything to make sure that contract goes. Otherwise our defense industry is heading for a very painful environment by virtue of being big and unresponsive.

We need innovative programming. I ll give you an example. The Air Force has been very good stewards of providing lift to the military services and the unified commanders. The C-17 is an excellent airplane and took a lot of the Air Force s investment resources. During Desert Storm, I was appalled that the sealift was so unresponsive. We were in dire straights. We had 27 divisions of Iraqis sitting on the border just north of us, and we had no forces to stop them. As a result, we were loading up the ships and the ships would sail out of the harbor. I remember one comic opera when a Fast Sealift Ship wasn t combat ready so it sailed out of the harbor and went hard left on the rudder and sat there doing circles in the bay. It was kind of humorous, but when you have 27 divisions looking down your throat, it isn t very funny. The Navy will admit they have not paid attention to their end of the lift.

Most of the stuff moved overland under the responsibility of the Army was moved by Saudi Arabian trucks with Bangladeshi drivers. In fact, there was concern about these guys running away if chemical munitions had been used. So the Army put a soldier in each one of these trucks.

We had a case where the Air Force had developed the C-5s, C-141s and C-130s and had done their share for lift. The Army had not, and General John Yeosock, the head of the Army, plainly told General Norm Schwarzkopf in November of 1989 that he was not going to be able to meet his responsibilities for transportation. The Navy had not built the ships because they didn t have guns on them so they didn t have an advocacy group like we do with our airlift. As a result, during Desert Shield, we started shipping more and more stuff by air when it was inefficient to do so.

Look at space lift. If we had to launch a satellite during Desert Storm, we didn t have a real capability if the system wasn t already in the que or already been programmed. We could only accelerate something in the que by maybe a month. The Air Force had not met its requirements for spacelift the same as the Navy on sealift and the Army on land transportation.

What they ought to do for the programming is figure out what we need of each lift capability and then index the services. It is greatfor the Navy and the Army to have the Air Force buy all that airlift. It doesn t come out of their budget, and the CINCs all state, "We want more airlift."

That means the Air Force core competency of flying combat missions in terms of fighters and bombers is stressed because of our supporting land and sea lift requirements. We need to index our programming on Joint, shared programs and really have a level playing field for all the services because that will then drive acquisition.

I've also talked about the need for a separate space service. It drives Bob Dickman [Maj. Gen. Robert Dickman, DoD Space Architect] up the wall because he is in there with all the lions trying to appear transparent. I think the Air Force is where the Army was in the 1920s. It is reluctant to give up its space forces, and yet the space forces are becoming so important in combat. Their doctrine is different and their ways of doing business are so different that it is appropriate now to look at a separate space acquisition.

In some respects that is what the Space Architect is all about. At some point in time, space is going to be big enough and important enough in its own right to rate an equal place at the table. Then, instead of trading off space systems to buy airplanes or watching space systems that support all the services force programs fall out of the bottom of the budget, we ll have 25 percent going for space, 25 percent for air, 25 percent for sea and 25 percent for land. There will be a proper balancing as the Air Force budget grows to 50 percent of the total federal Defense expenditures (laughter).

I'm convinced the Pentagon cannot change rapidly enough. The services are very reluctant, and there is a lot of inertia. When you think about it, you can understand why. Anybody in charge of a program feels his survival is tied to that program.

We have tremendous leadership in the Air Force, and I am extremely proud of the Air Force and the way they have tried to make changes. But, I think we need to examine how we do business in the Air Force better than we do. The acquisition force deserves great credit for what they ve done.

It is important we bring this change to bear as rapidly as possible. We don t know when the next war is going to come. I saw where the president says we don t need ballistic missile defenses for the next 10 years. I wonder how he knows that because nobody told me we were going to be in Desert Storm in August 1990, and I knew the Middle East better than most.

We need a new security policy. Our national security policy is still rooted in the Cold War. That is not the fault of the current administration. "Deterrence," "Massive Retaliation" and "Mutual Assured Destruction," took years and years and years to hammer out as policy. But the Cold War has been over for six years, and it is time we develop a new national security policy.

In fact, there is really no debate. It is not even a campaign issue. The inertia that we have defeating all of the programs that are fundamental to acquisition reform needs to be attacked as well as trying to fix acquisition. These things are not easy. They are not necessarily fun because oxen get gored. On the other hand, they are fundamental to the security of our nation.

Thank you very much.

Return to the Colorado Springs '96 Foundation Forum