“From JUST CAUSE to Kosovo and Beyond”

I. Introduction

We have heard much today about the importance of power projection to U.S. national security. Joint Vision 2010 calls power projection “the fundamental strategic concept of our future force.” It provides our nation with the means to both deter conflict and to prevail decisively in operations large and small should deterrence fail.

Mobility is what makes rapid, responsive power projection possible, and adequate airlift makes the difference between rapid, responsive power projection and forfeiting the strategic and operational initiative to a potential foe.

Since Just Cause, we have seen major advances in our nation’s aerospace capabilities.

Desert Storm demonstrated the tremendous effectiveness of an air campaign that capitalizes on advances in stealth, precision strike, and improved intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Since Desert Storm, we have seen the addition of the C-17 to our mobility forces, the appearance of the B-2 stealth bomber, the GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition, and quantum leaps in the use of space assets.

These and other advances have had a direct impact on how we blend our joint capabilities. In Kosovo, for instance, we saw NATO’s aerospace forces not in a “supporting” role but in the “supported” role. In terms of mobility, we saw airlift forces moving precision munitions and support equipment for the air campaign, while at the same time undertaking humanitarian relief operations and the movement of the forces that would comprise Task Force Hawk. This was a tremendous success and a tremendous challenge. I’ll leave the details of this remarkable accomplishment to Lt. Gen. Walter Hogle, who will provide an overview of mobility issues.

What I will say about it, however, is that these competing demands during a one-Major-Theater-War sized operation stretched our mobility forces. Without adding substantially to our C-17 fleet, we may very well fall short the next time — and that could be disastrous.

II. Just Cause in Context

This morning we heard a lot about Just Cause. Just Cause is certainly one template for power projection; the Gulf War is another, as is Kosovo. One of the points I want to make right up front is that we don’t know what the next template will be.

When we look back to Just Cause, we see a joint operation enabled by what was then the force structure of the Military Airlift Command -- C-130s, C-141s and C-5s. The joint capabilities mix for Just Cause included special operations forces, Army airborne units, and Air Force tactical aircraft. It was an integrated team that applied force decisively and simultaneously -- as our speakers have pointed out.

But as then MAC commander Gen. H.T. Johnson wrote in Air Force Magazine, Just Cause was a complicated airlift operation that benefitted from its proximity to the United States and and established military infrastructure already in Panama. Writing in 1990, he noted that “threats to the vital interests of the United States will not all arise from such conveniently located nations as Panama.”

He was right, the Gulf buildup came just a few months later, Somalia a few years later, and Kosovo within a decade, none of which was conveniently located.

III. A Decade of Contingencies

The genius of Joint Vision 2010 is its emphasis on interoperability, flexibility and decisive operations at all levels. It says that to be effective, “future commanders must be able to visualize and create the ‘best fit’ of available forces needed to produce the immediate effects and achieve the desired results.”

Our joint forces have been employed in many different contingencies since Just Cause, some decisive and others much less so. If these contingencies of the past 10 years have demonstrated anything, they have underscored the integral role mobility forces play in joint and coalition operations and put a premium on the flexible employment of military power to achieve the desired “effects” mentioned in joint doctrine.

Within a year or so after Just Cause, the United States found itself involved in a major theater war. The Gulf War gave new meaning to the operational “simultaneity” achieved in Panama. Simultaneous aerospace power attacks were launched on the entire array of enemy centers of gravity - strategic, operational, and tactical - in order to achieve effects, not just to destroy targets in a sequential fashion as had been done in the past. Airmen call this approach “parallel warfare,” and it has been a fixture of aerospace doctrine and operations ever since.

The Gulf War also demonstrated the tremendous mobility requirements associated with a Major Theater War. And it stressed the mobility system, which took advantage of active and reserve forces along with the civilian carriers that make up the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. It is interesting to note that it was just a few months before Desert Shield that the planned buy of C-17s was cut from 210 to 120, a level that is too low to meet the tremendous demands we place on our mobility forces today.

Despite the resource reductions that have marked the post-Cold War era, our mobility forces have made significant strides through innovation and sheer efficiency. For example, Operation Restore Hope in Somalia (December 1992) incorporated lessons from Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Tankers were integrated with airlifters to create an air bridge that helped deliver 40,000 troops 11,000 miles, faster and with fewer missions than would have been required without seamless tanker-transport integration.

Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994 showcased another side of mobility and power projection. With 60 airlifters in the air loaded with troops and equipment, this show of force alone was enough to prompt Haitian dictator Raoul Cedras to relinquish power and allow a U.S.-led force to enter the country unopposed.

Airlift has also served other military and political ends. In Bosnia, for nearly two years, from 1993 to 1995, Operation Provide Promise represented the largest and longest sustained airdrop campaign in history. It provided supplies to the residents of Sarajevo and other besieged communities, marking the first extensive use of the C-17 in a crisis role.

On the power side of the equation, in the fall of 1995, NATO turned to aerospace forces in Operation Deliberate Force, where precision strikes reduced the Serb military’s ability to threaten or attack safe areas and UN forces.

Most recently, in Kosovo, policy-makers employed aerospace power independently to force Slobodan Milosevic to accept NATO’s terms for a cessation of hostilities.

IV. Policy-makers and Use of Force

One of the lessons we can take from a decade of contingencies relates not just to military capabilities, but also to how U.S. policy-makers approach use of force.

It has been mentioned that Just Cause was decisive on all levels, including the political level. A similar point could be made about the Gulf War.

In both of those cases, policy-makers set out clear objectives and gave the military great freedom to execute on the strategic, operational and tactical levels.

But since then, we have also seen more tightly controlled operations that bring back bad memories of the military micromanagement we saw in Vietnam. Advances in communications technology increase the temptation of political leaders to get involved at the tactical level of operations — and this is not a positive development.

In recent contingencies, the military was used as a diplomatic tool, with little regard for decisive military outcomes. We have seen this approach in the limited strikes in Bosnia during Operation Deliberate Force in 1995, the missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, and in the larger-scale operation in Kosovo.

In speaking about the Kosovo campaign, Gen. Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while airmen would have preferred a more rapid and massive application of airpower in that conflict, a view he himself shares, the “political and tactical constraints imposed on air leaders” made gradualism “the only option.””

His main point: if political leaders choose such an approach, it is the obligation of military leaders “to optimize the tools we use to achieve success.”

In his remarks today, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan will outline how the Air Force is reorganizing itself to provide a range of aerospace power options that will be at the disposal of policy-makers.

It is not surprising that the military prefers decisive operations. As an airman, I would have preferred to have seen massive aerospace power applied against the centers of gravity in Serbia from day one, and I would not have precluded a ground option.

And yet, our military leaders must be flexible enough today to blend our joint capabilities to achieve military ends based on the policy guidance they are given. This does not free us from giving our best military advice, but it does require us to have a range of options we can present to policy-makers.

The bottom line: When we talk about “responsive” power projection, it must be responsive not just to the military situation, but also responsive to the policy imperatives that will be somewhat unique in each contingency.

V. Breaking the Mold

The point of this brief recap of recent contingencies is that joint capabilities are no longer applied in traditional, set-piece fashion. The inter-German border and the Soviet threat once provided a template which we all trained to execute faithfully. Those days are gone.

Simultaneous air-land-sea capabilities may be applied in some circumstances as we saw in Just Cause, but the last decade suggests that the classic insertion of ground forces supported by air and sea forces is the exception rather than the rule.

• This year, for the first time, aerospace power was used alone to prosecute a major contingency, with NATO aerospace forces operating independently for 78 days. NATO ground forces were deployed after that military campaign to conduct peacekeeping operations, as they had done previously in Bosnia.

• In Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, we saw strikes against Iraqi military installations using joint and allied capabilities that included U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps aircraft flying from the deck of the USS ENTERPRISE; U.S. Air Force and Royal Air Force aircraft operating from land bases in the region; and cruise missiles launched from U.S. Navy ships at sea and United States Air Force B-52s.

• In August 1998, we saw a retaliatory cruise missile strike against Osama bin Laden launched by a single service, the Navy, with surface ships and one submarine taking part.

In Joint Vision 2010's Concept for Future Joint Operations, it states that our military capability “will be called upon to execute a wide range of other military missions that may or may not involve combat.” It also states that our armed forces must be prepared not just “to fight and win against any adversary,” but to be postured “with an inherent versatility, tailorability, and agility that will allow us to use the new concepts to be decisive in any mission across the full range of military operations.”

Today our military leaders have many improved military capabilities at their disposal. And decisive operations are clearly within reach — provided, of course, that the policy-maker is in search of a decisive result.

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