Transforming the Pentagon

"A Tale of Two Secretaries" by Eliot A. Cohen, in Foreign Affairs (May–June 2002), 58 E. 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.

Will 9/11 finally compel the defense establishment to abandon its love affair with the heavy weapons and conventional doctrines of the Cold War?

The forces that stymied Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s plans for "defense transformation" before the war on terrorism are still in place, notes Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at John Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies: entrenched services, recalcitrant bureaucracies, the many interests with a stake in the production of costly traditional weapons. Yet he sees some reasons for optimism. Buried in the Pentagon’s $300 billion plus budget are funds for innovative weapons such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), not to mention the routine purchases of routers, servers, and global positioning systems that laid "the base for the networked war that

U.S. forces ended up waging in Afghanistan." (Military logisticians were shamed into embracing the latter by the stellar efficiencies of companies such as Wal-Mart and Federal Express.) Younger officers—now majors and lieutenant colonels, even sergeants—are eager for change, and the strong American cultural predilection for innovation and experimentation inevitably affects the military over the long term.

Still, the old battles will have to be refought. For example, because the Pentagon would rather spend money on new "platforms" than on ammunition,

U.S. forces ran short of satellite-guided bombs during the war in Afghanistan. And even as the Predator UAV was pressed into service in Afghanistan last fall with great success, the Pentagon’s perfection-oriented office of testing and evaluation was declaring it not "operationally effective or suitable." Next year, the Pentagon will spend just over $1 billion on UAVs—and $7.5 billion on conventional fighter jets.

In this new era, the United States will need to be prepared to station troops in many places—it currently has forces in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Sinai Peninsula, for example. It will need forces that are highly mobile, often without relying on local bases or prepositioned supplies. This calls for things such as "arsenal ships" and a new bomber, Cohen believes. The Pentagon will have to get better at mobilization for sudden conflicts and find new ways to make use of regular personnel, reservists, and private contractors. "Above all, the 21st-century U.S. military will require an officer corps of unprecedented versatility and intelligence." A key requirement: more emphasis on officer education in the social sciences and humanities rather than technical disciplines.

For centuries, war was waged chiefly by states with roughly comparable armies and familiar purposes. But war itself is changing, Cohen argues, and so must the Pentagon.