A Letter to Secretary Shanahan

May 12th, 2019

I wish Secretary of Defense Shanahan all the best; by all accounts it’s a thankless job. That said, I offer these thoughts from the cheap seats, things he might want to “take a second look at.”

War Plans - there are multiple OPLANS and CONPLANS (Operations Plans and Contingency Plans); someone needs to start working on War Plans. This isn’t semantics; OPLANS and CONPLANS are the purview of the various combatant commanders. But, before there were combatant commanders, before there was a joint staff, in fact, before World War II, the Navy and the Army worked on something called the Rainbow Plans. While common myth has it that the Army and Navy were top heavy, deadwood-laden messes prior to WWII, the facts are otherwise. The work of the Army and Navy in the 1920s and 1930s, specifically on War Plan Orange and later the Rainbow plans, led to  Rainbow 5; it’s how we fought World War II. Further, the Rainbow plans were responsible for initiating multiple ship, aircraft and weapon development plans well before Pearl Harbor - these efforts allowed the US to go on the offensive in 1942. 

We need an organization that looks at what global war might look like, and what would need to be done to fight and win such a war.

While doing so, review current planning practices and assumptions. We‘ve spent the last 29 years fighting enemies far below our weight class, enemies over whom we had existing, extensive, glaring technological edges, and virtually unlimited intelligence. There are few “lessons learned” from those fights that will apply to global war scenarios.

Nuclear Forces and Special Operations Forces - both are strategic in the strictest sense of the word; take a hard look at how we’re treating them. Nuclear forces need to be modernized and ready and the personnel well trained and well lead in order to be a creditable deterrence; insist on it. 

Special operations forces have been on a high tempo grind for nearly two decades; they’ve developed exceptional capabilities but at great cost to the personnel. DOD needs a path ahead on how to maintain those capabilities and that performance while also preserving the individuals who are special operations.

Procurement - The Pentagon is fascinated with getting “the very best” thing. And there’s merit to that. But better can be the enemy of good enough. The Navy wanted all electric ships; it led to buying three destroyers for $22 billion, and an aircraft carrier that, while commissioned, is still years away from deploying. Fascinated with high technology, we risk losing sight of the need for overall combat effectiveness.

It’s worth remembering that when WWII started the US did NOT have the best fighter aircraft, the best submarines, the best tanks, the best artillery, etc. When the war ended that was still true. But we had the best intelligence…

Personnel - Look at how we’ve implemented the all volunteer force. There’s more than one way to do it, but we seem to have chosen the most expensive of all possible models. Personnel costs are consuming the DOD. Things to consider might include: “Up-or-Out” sounds good should everyone be trying to be a general - sometimes being simply the best at what you do is more important to both the individual and the organization. Why can you enter the military if you’re already married? Should there be rank limits on marriage? Military housing: why do we have any? The need for military housing developed because we had bases in the middle of nowhere. That’s not true anymore. The free market is much better at managing real estate than DOD; adjust housing allowances and then get DOD out of the real estate business. Have we become too focused on Joint operations and lost sight of service competencies? Lots of issues…

Strategic Thought - And honest appraisals of the enemy and of DOD - You need a real Office of Net Assessment. One hasn’t operated (in fact) since the 90s, when the Pentagon started to ignore Andy Marshall. He remained on the job for another decade, and the office remains open, but they’ve been ignored and their product hasn’t been linked to DOD efforts. Get it linked. Bring in new leadership, some folks you can trust to do hard thinking and to tell you the truth even when it hurts, and get the ONA running again.

Good Luck, Mr. Secretary.