Reform ain't revolution.
Last July, Proceedings published my article, "Stop the Revolution; I Want to Get Off," wherein I tried to make the point that many of the goals espoused by the revolution in military affairs (RMA) cabal had intellectual appeal, but were vacuous constructively because of the constraints of real-world military operations. Worse, most of the RMA initiatives would draw resources away from conventional forces we use in everyday operations, and therefore had the potential to break the bank and the military services.
As I anticipated, responses to that article spanned the extremes—my view was referred to as vitriolic, visionary, and everything in between. What I did not anticipate was the recent resurgence of interest, albeit muted, following the transition to the Bush administration. The general theme of the second-wind society goes something like this: Revolutionaries win; Toti loses.
I used to believe in revolution. I like to think it was the romantic in me, but I suspect it was because my background led me to believe that technology would set us free. I no longer believe we are on the verge of the kind of revolution in military affairs that will make much of a difference in the kind of military operations the United States is likely to face. If Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is an RMA guru, as many people believe, that might derail my attempt to constrain RMA vision. I do not believe he is a revolutionary. He has talked a lot about reform, but I have not heard him say much about revolution. And reform ain't revolution.
Reformers tend to sound like revolutionaries, except revolutionaries are social outcasts, while reformers tend to make the Washington society A-list. Revolutionaries like to start with a clean sheet of paper, while reformers prefer to make pithy editorial comments in the margins of what you have written already. Revolutionaries worship Toffler. Reformers point out that it has been 20 years since the future was supposed to shock us, and it has not. Reform is, "We are going to improve the banking system." Revolution is "We are going to abolish banks because we have this brand new way for you to save money—you will give it to us." Revolutionaries don't care if what they propose ever comes to fruition. Reformers wonder why you have not yet solved the problem of world hunger. For these reasons and others, I like to put myself in the reform camp. Although I am agnostic when it comes to revolution, I am all for reform. In fact, you can call me a reformed revolutionary, actively involved in my own kind of 12-step program.
The point I want to make has to do with the conventional wisdom proclaiming that, in the reform wars, the Army is the big winner and the Navy is the big loser. Why? Because the Army was doing reform before reform was cool, in that the Army started reforming last year and reform only became cool this year. Having spent the last two years working "joint" issues in the Pentagon, I have a good understanding of what each service is up to these days—and I have done my best to remove service bias from my viewpoint here. However, to take the position that the Army is ahead or the Navy on the reform front, you have to ignore at least ten years of history, starting with Operation Desert Storm.
As it turned out, the Gulf War was the worst thing that could have happened to the U.S. Army. Here was our nation, in the final throes of the Cold War, and what happened? It found itself engaged in the one war that was exactly what Hollywood would have ordered up for the Army of the Fulda Gap. If you cannot fight the Soviets anymore, fight a Soviet clone. Better yet, fight a stupid Soviet clone and defeat him soundly. Write a script that calls for something catchy, like a 100-hour ground campaign. Of course, your director would eliminate those pesky trees that detract from a tank's ability to target, not to mention the camera's ability to capture the images on the big screen. Forget the Bulge; we want Lawrence of Arabia. That way, we will be led to believe that the post-Cold War Army is still relevant.
The upshot is that just when the Army should have been doing some heavy soul searching, the United States stumbled into the one conflict that taught it that we did not have to change at all. As a result, the Army lost ten years in the reform—now called "transformation"—wars. This was not so for the Navy. There were many questions about the relevance of the Navy after Desert Storm. Conventional wisdom reported that the fleet was flying sorties to defend against a blue-water threat that did not exist. We did a lot of reflecting. I did some, too, writing in 1991 that we needed a new, land-centric naval doctrine I called "sea-air-land battle doctrine" (which Proceedings was kind enough to publish and which predated "...From the Sea" by about a year). We may not have called it transformation, but that is what it was. The result of all this angst is that today's Navy is—in size, character, and composition—significantly different from the Navy of 1991. This is not so for the Army. It is essentially the same, just smaller.
Still the Navy is seen as being behind the power curve. While the Navy is criticized for thinking of transformation only in terms of technological advances, Army apologists talk about recent efforts of Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki to "lighten the force." What is the Army's great technology advance? The Army is literally reinventing the wheel. Thus, while the Navy is working on how to push the envelope to achieve lower propulsion and power overhead, expand sensor networks, and pack a bigger punch, the Army is evolving from tracked vehicles to wheeled vehicles, migrating back to a device that was first invented more than 5,000 years ago.
Military reform is not about technology. It is about adapting the force to the future. The Navy is well on the way to achieving that kind of reform. Rodin once said that carving a sculpture is easy. All you have to do is take a block of stone and remove everything that is not the statue. Reforming the military will be "easy"—once the defense hierarchy stops looking for Lenin and starts looking for Rodin.
Captain Toti, a submariner, recently completed a tour as the Navy representative to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council. He was Proceedings Author of the Year in 2000.