Steven Wills
A recent Defense News opinion piece suggests that the only way to achieve joint force design is to move force acquisition out of the hands of the military services and instead, “structuring the budget around the joint force design rather than just service-specific priorities.”
This is not a new concept and has been around since the 1960s when Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara sought to base force design around a common set of joint missions rather than the armed services. McNamara’s proposal at least accepted the idea that different geographies, adversaries and missions around the world should govern force design.
Taken at face value, that line of thinking would turn force design over to regional, competing combatant commanders (COCOMs), each with different requirements.
Regional commanders were once components in global deterrence and potential conflict with the Soviet Union, but after the Cold War became competing, regional proconsuls for power and military assets. Only centralized authority in the form of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service chiefs and secretaries have the global view necessary to make force design choices suitable to the entire force and not just one geographic area.
No comments:
Post a Comment