Plug and Play: The U.S. Military Adapts to Austerity

The United States faces a dynamic security environment characterized by increasing “uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change.” What does this mean for U.S. national security? And how will the U.S. military respond to such challenges during a time of fiscal austerity? The U.S. Department of Defense Joint Chiefs of Staff outline plans to integrate and align their operations to address contemporary security challenges in the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations: Joint Force 2020, a strategy document released in September 2012.

According to the authors, advanced weapon technologies that seek to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities present new and omnipresent security threats. The global proliferation of new media communications creates rapidly changing and unpredictable social dynamics. To meet these uncertain challenges with increasingly limited fiscal resources, the Defense Department advocates for the development of “globally integrated operations.”

Globally integrated operations emphasize ways in which the U.S. military can reorganize its existing capabilities, rather than develop new capabilities. For instance, the authors highlight the importance of creating a military force that is not only efficient, but also flexible enough to quickly organize to meet emerging contingencies. The U.S. military will combine capabilities across “domains, echelons, geographic boundaries, and organizational affiliations” with “networks of forces that can form, evolve, dissolve, and reform in different arrangements in time and space with significantly greater fluidity” than today’s force. The proposed Joint Force will combine disparate military and non-military capabilities across “U.S. governmental agencies, partner militaries, and indigenous and regional stakeholder organizations” to meet specific mission needs around the globe at a moment’s notice.

Aware of the challenges involved, the Defense Department acknowledges that the plan is not seamless and will require significant organizational restructuring. For instance emphasizing global breadth and adaptability may require units to develop a more generalist skill set at the expense of highly specialized capabilities, which may limit the force’s effectiveness in some missions that require specialized skills. Focusing on interoperability among military forces will encourage standardization that might further limit the unique and versatile capabilities of specific units. If stretched too thin, the Joint Force may become brittle and less resilient. Decentralization may also challenge coordination and require the development of new communications technology. Finally, potential partners—including military and non-military organizations in and outside of the U.S.—may be unable or unwilling to integrate with the Joint Force.

Amid new threats and a changing security landscape, the U.S. military has to do more with fewer financial resources. Rather than building a static force and making expensive bets on what might happen in the future, the Department of Defense is striving to build an institution with the flexibility necessary to meet unpredictable challenges while positioning itself as one of many components of national power. If it can develop the command and control capacity to make this kind of operation possible, the U.S. military will tradeoff mass and deep specialization for a lean and modular quick response force, a frugal force with a broad reach. Will it stretch too far and too thin? It may not have a choice.

Feature Photo: cc/(expertinfantry)