Reconstituting National Defense

This book analyzes President Bush's new Regional Defense Strategy--the master plan that will guide the transformation of U.S. defense policy for the post-Cold War era. Most recent books on defense prescribe how U.S. policy ought to change or critique past policies without taking Bush's new strategy into account. This book takes a different approach, providing the first comprehensive assessment of the new Regional Defense Strategy, analyzing the consequences for U.S. forces and alliance relations, and examining the political difficulties of transforming President Bush's vision into reality. It explains major changes in U.S. defense doctrine and strategy, force and command structure, future programming requirements, and the major question of how such a significant change was managed in the United States. Much is new and even radical about the Regional Defense Strategy. Bush has built it around the concept of reconstitution, under which the United States will scrap the forces needed to fight a large-scale conflict and rely on the ability to create new forces if such a conflict looms on the horizon. However, reconstitution will impose demanding requirements on U.S. intelligence and the defense industrial base. Congress will also have an important say over this proposal and the new national security strategy as a whole. So will U.S. allies in Europe and the Far East, some of whom are already moving to recast the strategy's proposals for basing U.S. forces abroad. The primary audience of this book is politico-military strategic planners and those interested in organizational theory, management of change in large organizations, and government policy.

Explanation of President Bush's new national security strategy and General Colin Powell's Base Force. Sources of strategy. Analysis of major unresolved issues, such as: unilateral U.S. capability for war at strategic, operational, and tactical levels; impact on DoD organizations and joint military operations, the industrial and manpower base. Chapter on changing requirements for the U.S. intelligence community. Chapter on impact of Operations DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM. Analysis of role in Congress in formulating the strategy and their response to date. Implications for maritime and nuclear forces. Regional assessment from perspective of Asia and Europe. Study concludes that the major stress points of new strategy are: industrial reconstitution, additional requirements for intelligence, and the role that will be played by allies and the Congress. Includes impact of August 1991 coup in Soviet Union and unilateral announced by President Bush at end of September 1991.

The National Security Strategy has identified four elements critical to the future security of the country: strategic deterrence and defense, forward presence, crisis response, and reconstitution. The purpose of this study is to focus on reconstitution which, in light of current and projected defense cuts, is vitally important in the event the nation must again face a global challenger. Unfortunately, over the long run, reconstitution is unlikely to be able to provide sufficient capabilities, within the timeframe promised, in order to either deter or defend; time is the issue. The reasons for this are two-fold: First, reconstitution bets on the availability of early warning followed by decisive political action, well in advance of any potential conflict. This assumption is necessary to provide the long leadtimes--literally years--required to produce modern high tech weapons of war. The problem is this assumption has no historical credibility; America has, politically, never been able or willing to prepare for war during peace. The United States' late entries into World Wars I and II were not flukes, since the political and economic structure of the country makes it difficult, if not impossible, to do otherwise, in the absence of direct enemy attacks. Second, reconstitution promises a robust industrial base with the capability to quickly produce and sustain large scale operations. Yet, even now, this base is fragmenting as thousands of contractors and subcontractors flee the defense business.

The National Security Strategy has identified four elements critical to the future security of the country: strategic deterrence and defense, forward presence, crisis response, and reconstitution. The purpose of this study is to focus on reconstitution which, in light of current and projected defense cuts, is vitally important in the event the nation must again face a global challenger. Unfortunately, over the long run, reconstitution is unlikely to be able to provide sufficient capabilities, within the timeframe promised, in order to either deter or defend; time is the issue. The reasons for this are two-fold: First, reconstitution bets on the availability of early warning followed by decisive political action, well in advance of any potential conflict. This assumption is necessary to provide the long leadtimes--literally years--required to produce modern high tech weapons of war. The problem is this assumption has no historical credibility; America has, politically, never been able or willing to prepare for war during peace. The United States' late entries into World Wars I and II were not flukes, since the political and economic structure of the country makes it difficult, if not impossible, to do otherwise, in the absence of direct enemy attacks. Second, reconstitution promises a robust industrial base with the capability to quickly produce and sustain large scale operations. Yet, even now, this base is fragmenting as thousands of contractors and subcontractors flee the defense business.

With the transition to lower U.S. military force levels, near-term reductions in defense procurement seem inevitable. Budget pressures will dictate not only that smaller quantities of individual weapon systems be acquired but also that many long-enduring production lines be shut down. In addition, production lines of new weapon systems may well be dismanfled soon after the initial production runs are complete. At the same time, the United States must maintain a capability to respond to regional conflicts that threaten U.S. interests and to reconstitute its forces in the event of extended conflicts. Indeed, reconstitution is one of the four foundations of the new national military strategy enunciated by President George Bush in 1990. In this report, we examine one promising reconstitution option: activating the industrial base to produce major weapon systems whose production lines have been shut down. This report examines the following major production-restart issues: cost and schedule relative to those of new programs, measures to ameliorate the problems of restart, criteria for selecting restart candidates, and alternative reconstitution strategies. The specific questions we set out to answer and the conclusions we reached are as follows.

The Institute for Defense Analyses prepared this paper for the Defense Conversion Commission. It describes DoD's mission to preserve the nation's ability to reconstitute forces, and outlines a reconstitution strategy. The proposed strategy relies on DoD's in-place suppliers, who support ongoing modernization and support programs, augmented by commercial suppliers. The paper outlines the programs and policies needed to tap the commercial supplier base for reconstitution, and examines needed industrial base capabilities. The conclusion identifies the appropriate defense conversion policies to support reconstitution.