From America’s entry into the First World War through today’s state of strategic competition, preventing the rise of a malevolent hegemonic power on the Eurasian continent remains a central defense objective for the United States government.[1] For U.S. political leadership, the consolidation of the world’s industrial, technological, and demographic power centers in Eurasia under a hegemonic power poses a severe threat to the economy, state sovereignty, individual liberty, and physical security of the United States itself. Today, the United States recognizes the growing economic, military, and diplomatic power of the People's Republic of China as the primary strategic challenge capable of consolidating hegemonic power on the Eurasian continent.
The DoD must reduce the size of the active-duty Army to fund the Navy’s shipbuilding program, which is critical to meeting the challenge of the growing People’s Liberation Army Navy.
The U.S. military, as a critical arm of today’s strategic competition, acknowledges that budget allocations will be relatively inelastic. Budgets could even struggle to keep pace with growing inflationary challenges due to the challenges of federal debt, COVID-19, climate change, and competing strategic priorities.[2] Within these inelastic budgetary constraints, the U.S. military must reallocate funding internally—taking from lesser priorities to fund its greater ones. To meet the challenge of rising Chinese power, the Department of Defense (DoD) should implement three central allocations. The first is a service reallocation. The DoD must reduce the size of the active-duty Army to fund the Navy’s shipbuilding program, which is critical to meeting the challenge of the growing People’s Liberation Army Navy. The second is a regional reallocation, DoD must shift military and naval resources from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. The third reallocation is from the technical to the cognitive. Namely, DoD should reconsider its proclivity for costly arms races of questionable return. Instead, DoD should reinvest in institutions capable of planning and integrating all military arms and levers of power in the strategic competition against the People’s Republic of China.
Reallocation #1: From the Army to the Navy
The first reallocation for the DoD’s strategic competition with China consists of a service reallocation—namely a divestiture of U.S. Army force structure to fund U.S. Navy shipbuilding. While all warfighting domains serve an important role in the strategic competition between the United States and China, the maritime space is the central and most important. This is due to the Indo-Pacific’s central role in global trade and U.S. power projection. China’s so-called “9 dash line” claim in the South China Sea, coupled with its naval expansion to become the world’s largest navy in absolute numbers comes at a time of U.S. naval decline.[3] Indeed, the U.S. Navy itself predicts that it may be unable to meet China’s rising challenge in the broader Indo-Pacific region due to its decline in front-line naval vessels, naval construction facilities, and naval repair yards imposed by other DoD prioritizations during the Cold War and Global War on Terror.[4] The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act recently approved by Congress only allocates $22.6B for naval shipbuilding—less than the U.S. Navy received in 2021—while only maintaining the current fleet of 296 vessels.[5] To successfully compete with China, the U.S. Navy requires a substantial numerical and qualitative investment over time. The Navy estimates that this fleet would number between 398 and 512 crewed and unmanned vessels built over a 30-year period. To achieve this fleet, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding budget will have to grow by $2.4 to 10.4B each year. For DoD to maintain a flat budget, this budget increase will have to come from divestitures from one or more of the other services. While the Army may perform important supporting missions in competition against China, there appears to be few scenarios requiring the service to perform its core mission of large-scale ground combat against the People’s Liberation Army—apart from a worst-case scenario in Korea. Given the maritime domain’s predominance in strategic competition with China, the Army must be prepared to accept substantial budgetary reductions to support the Navy’s shipbuilding program over the next several decades.[6]
…this reduction in the Army’s budget must not come at the expense of collective defense requirements in Europe—an important secondary theater of geopolitical competition with the Russian Federation.
Importantly, this reduction in the Army’s budget must not come at the expense of collective defense requirements in Europe—an important secondary theater of geopolitical competition with the Russian Federation. To reduce the budget while maintaining the ability to defend U.S. interests in Europe, the U.S. Army should divest three of its active-duty Infantry Brigade Combat Teams and their supporting units. These lightly equipped units are the least capable of providing the firepower and tactical mobility required to defeat Russian armored forces when compared to the Army’s Armor and Stryker Brigades. At an annual unit cost of $2.71B, these three infantry brigade’s divestiture would provide DoD with an additional $8.13B to support the Navy’s shipbuilding requirements—representing a compromise between the $2.4B and $10.4B additional shipbuilding funds required.[7] To fund U.S. Navy expansion within a flat budgetary top line, DoD should strongly advocate for Congress to reduce the size of the Army. Eliminating three infantry brigades is a prudent measure to ensure the U.S. can compete with China in the Indo-Pacific in the following decades.
Reallocation #2: From the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific
The second department of defense reallocation to support U.S. competition with China is regional—transferring capability from the Middle East to the priority region of the Indo-Pacific. There are two significant military capabilities for this transfer. The first involves transferring the U.S. Navy’s one forward deployed aircraft carrier from duty in the Persian Gulf based 5th Fleet to service within one of the two Indo-Pacific fleets. This transfer would represent a 50% increase in naval aviation capability—with 80 additional combat aircraft and three total aircraft carriers in competition with and conflict against China. Despite the loss of naval aviation to Middle Eastern operations, the numerous U.S. regional airbases and remaining 5th Fleet surface vessels will likely provide enough strike capacity for the remaining U.S. military missions in the region.
Rather than serve as a combat reserve—as it did in Kuwait at the height of the Global War on Terror—the Indo-Pacific rotational armored brigade would serve as a regional training force multiplier.
The second regional transfer consists of exploring the tradeoffs for moving the one rotational armored brigade combat team from its enduring mission in Kuwait to the Indo-Pacific—weighing the current needs of Army forces within the Middle East to that of the Indo-Pacific. Should such a decision prove strategically favorable, DoD should explore options to move this armored brigade to Australia or Japan. Of course, such a move must come at the expressed interest of both states due to the political sensitivity of U.S. military basing. But there is reason to believe that a U.S. rotational armored brigade may potentially be appealing. Both governments have expressed interest in deepening their security relationship with the U.S. and are engaged in their own strategic competition with China.[8] Rather than serve as a combat reserve—as it did in Kuwait at the height of the Global War on Terror—the Indo-Pacific rotational armored brigade would serve as a regional training force multiplier. Regional allies and partners could send their army units to train with the U.S. Indo-Pacific rotational armored brigade—bolstering their capabilities as they compete and prepare for potential combat with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
These two regional reallocations—one aircraft carrier and rotational armored brigade—would be minimal in financial cost, as they do not require an increase in force structure or capability. They simply require moving units already scheduled to deploy from one region of decreasing relative strategic importance—the Middle East—to the Indo-Pacific, the region of greatest strategic importance.
The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) conduct a replenishment at sea with the Military Sealift Command fast combat support ship USNS Bridge (T-AOE 10). Carl Vinson and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17 are deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (PO2 James Evans/DVIDS).
These two regional reallocations—one aircraft carrier and rotational armored brigade—would be minimal in financial cost, as they do not require an increase in force structure or capability. They simply require moving units already scheduled to deploy from one region of decreasing relative strategic importance—the Middle East—to the Indo-Pacific, the region of greatest strategic importance. Most new infrastructure costs could be funded by the host nation, with comparatively little additional cost to DoD overall. Importantly, these reallocations must be paired with constructive diplomatic messaging to U.S. Middle Eastern partners. Senior U.S. military officers and diplomats must be able to explain the logic behind these moves while reinforcing America’s ongoing commitment to partnership, prosperity, and stability within the Middle East as the U.S. pivots to security challenges in the Indo-Pacific.
Reallocation #3: From Technology to the Cognitive
Lastly, DoD should limit the growth of costly technological investments of limited strategic viability and reinvest into institutions dedicated to critical thinking and innovations for modern war. This would be a reverse of the current paradigm. Namely, DoD has recently slashed funds for cognitive advancement to build expensive weaponry in the hopes that more technology can compensate for decreased intellectual fervor in modern war. Despite the potential hopes vested within modern weaponry, Clausewitz’s maxim that “the first…and most decisive act of judgment which the statesman and general exercises is rightly to understand in this respect the war in which he engages” is powerfully resonant in this context.[9] The Army has made notable headway in this endeavor to decrease funding for cognitive advancement in modern war to make way for expensive and yet-unproven weaponry. In October of 2020 the Army announced its decision to eliminate the Asymmetric Warfare Group. This institution was dedicated to observing potential enemy asymmetric threats across the world and providing solutions to U.S. Army commanders prior to deployment.[10] The unit achieved notable success in helping the Army to defeat insurgent tactics and capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet, the Army decided this cognitive and practical institution was no longer worth funding, despite the institution's ability to observe conflicts between great powers. Importantly, this means that if China or Russia were to attack one of its neighbors tomorrow, there would be no large-scale U.S. military observation or lessons learned for U.S. forces to prepare with.
While technological innovation is paramount for military success, it is no replacement for the central tasks of thinking about warfare and integrating national power in competition and conflict.
3D Illustration visualizing how the Scramjet hypersonic weapon creates thrust. (Travis Burcham/DVIDS).
In a similar vein the Army also defunded the Red Team University, permanently closing its doors in October 2021. This institution provided a curriculum designed to train students from all service branches in a formal methodology for challenging their own thinking and stress-testing their own strategies against hypothetical adversaries. Students would return to their units thinking like the red team enemy, which allowed them to provide better solutions for friendly forces during training exercises.[11] The $98.5 million in combined savings from eliminating the time-tested capabilities within the Asymmetric Warfare Group and Red Team University institutions could not pay for one new Army hypersonic missile estimated to cost $106 million.[12] The hypersonic missile program and DoD’s push to spend $96 billion on modernized intercontinental ballistic missiles and $18 billion on ballistic missile interceptors portrays a service wide push for expensive weaponry that some analysts conclude are strategically dubious and potentially destabilizing in modern war.[13] While technological innovation is paramount for military success, it is no replacement for the central tasks of thinking about warfare and integrating national power in competition and conflict. In the current strategic competition against China, DoD would be wise to curtail the growth of this expensive and potentially problematic weaponry. This would provide more than enough savings to reinstate the timeless value of institutions dedicated to cognitive warfare.
Conclusion
…the U.S. military must prioritize U.S. naval funding at the expense of army force structure, transfer critical capabilities from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, and reconstitute critical cognitive warfare institutions against expensive weapon investments.
Importantly, the three funding reallocations of service, region, and cognition within DoD must serve as pillars of an integrated whole-of-government effort. This effort must leverage all levers of national power, to include diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, and law to meaningfully apply the effects of military power reallocation. Additionally, DoD must be open to working with allies, partners, and multilateral institutions as a default, not as an exception as seen with recent withdrawal efforts in Afghanistan. A U.S. military out of sync with the efforts of the State Department or its allies will inevitably create more costly endeavors for itself in terms of time, finances, reputation, and mission accomplishment. This is even more important as flattening military budgets amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and escalating national debt means the U.S. military can no longer hope for increased funding to solve its strategic competition problems with China. This challenge in flattening budgets, however, invites a unique and critical opportunity for serious reallocation of resources and overall reform within the Department of Defense. Put simply, the U.S. military must prioritize U.S. naval funding at the expense of army force structure, transfer critical capabilities from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, and reconstitute critical cognitive warfare institutions against expensive weapon investments. By doing so, DoD will be in a considerably stronger place to compete with China, now and in the coming decades.
H. Brandon Morgan is a U.S. Army Officer and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Newly completed destroyer USS Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee (DDG-123) was christened at the Ingalls Ship Yard in Pascagoula, Miss. April 24, 2021. (Mr. Michael Duhe).
Notes:
[1] Elbridge Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021), 8.
[2] Joe Gould, “Pentagon Chiefs Insist Flat Defense Budget Is Enough,” Defense News (Defense News, June 26, 2021), https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/06/23/bidens-pentagon-chiefs-tell-lawmakers-flat-budget-is-enough/.
[3] Mallory Shelbourne, “China Has World's Largest Navy with 355 Ships and Counting, Says Pentagon,” USNI News (United States Naval Institute, November 3, 2021), https://news.usni.org/2021/11/03/china-has-worlds-largest-navy-with-355-ships-and-counting-says-pentagon#:~:text=China%20Has%20World's%20Largest%20Navy%20With%20355%20Ships%20and%20Counting%2C%20Says%20Pentagon,-By%3A%20Mallory%20Shelbourne&text=China%20has%20the%20biggest%20maritime,Defense%20Department%20report%20released%20Wednesday.
[4] Joe Gould, “Sea Power Backers Propose $25 Billion to Fix US Shipyards,” Defense News (Defense News, April 28, 2021), https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/04/28/seapower-backers-propose-25b-to-fix-us-shipyards/.
[5] Caitlin M Kenney, “Navy Secretary Seeks 3-5% Annual Budget Increases,” Defense One (Defense One, November 5, 2021), https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/11/navy-secretary-seeks-3-5-annual-budget-increases/186647/.
[6] There are diverging views on the U.S. Army’s role in competition and conflict in the Indo-Pacific. For the U.S. Army’s conceptual vision of future operations see, “The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028,” (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, December 6, 2018), https://www.army.mil/article/243754/the_u_s_army_in_multi_domain_operations_2028).
[7] Congressional Budgeting Office “The U.S. Military's Force Structure: A Primer,” (CBO, July 29, 2016), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51535. Note: numbers adjusted for inflation as of January 2022.
[8] Sadheli R Choudhury, “The Quad Countries Pledge to Promote an Indo-Pacific Region That Is 'Undaunted by Coercion',” (CNBC, September 27, 2021), https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/27/quad-leaders-summit-us-india-japan-australia-statement-on-indo-pacific.html.
[9] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 232
[10] Peter Suciu, “U.S. Army to End Asymmetric Warfare Group and Rapid Equipping Force,” The National Interest (The Center for the National Interest, October 8, 2020), https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-army-end-asymmetric-warfare-group-and-rapid-equipping-force-170297.
[11] Bryce Hoffman, “U.S. Army Moves to Close Red Teaming University,” Forbes (Forbes Magazine, October 27, 2020), https://www.forbes.com/sites/brycehoffman/2020/10/26/us-army-moves-to-close-red-teaming-university/?sh=51b989c36a01.
[12] Anthony Capaccio, “Hypersonic Sticker Shock: US Weapons May Run $106 Million Each,” Bloomberg (Bloomberg, November 12, 2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-12/hypersonic-sticker-shock-u-s-weapons-may-run-106-million-each#:~:text=Hypersonic%20Missiles%20May%20Cost%20%24106%20Million%20Each%20According%20to%20Pentagon%20Office%20%2D%20Bloomberg.
[13] For one analysis on the decreasing strategic viability of ICBMS see Garrett Hinck and Pranay Vaddi, “Setting a Course Away from the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile,” War on the Rocks (War on the Rocks, February 18, 2021), https://warontherocks.com/2021/02/setting-a-course-away-from-the-intercontinental-ballistic-missile/ ; For one analysis on strategic problems with US ICBM defense see Joan Johnson-Freese and David Burbach, “The Best Defense Ever? Busting Myths about the Trump Administration's Missile Defense Review,” War on the Rocks (War on the Rocks, February 6, 2019), https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/the-best-defense-ever-busting-myths-about-the-trump-administrations-missile-defense-review/.