Remarks by ADM Paul David MAY 28 1993 All of us here today - military The demand for military capabili- Today, military and corporate The demand for American On the “investment side," the QEPOSTED BY INITED STATES OF AMERICA trends are down. With respect to We started the current restructurthe changing market, we find ing from a position of strength. And ourselves “overinvested" in some as we head down the glide slope areas. We've already begun a toward a smaller force, the task careful restructuring of our armed ahead is to decide what capabilities forces, establishing a prudent glide should be retained. What capabili slope - a planned 25 percent ties should be enhanced and reduction in investment between strengthened? We're not going to 1990 and 1995 - continuing the throw out what we have and buy downward trend that has reduced new. We can't afford it. We won't defense outlays by nearly 30 percent be permitted that luxury. And we in real terms since 1985. have a responsibility to our shareAnd as spending is coming down, holders - the taxpayers of this great so is force structure. You know the country - to continue making the numbers. We've already planned to best possible use of past defense cut a million people from DoD by investments. 1995, planned to close over 800 So our first challenge as we head bases around the world. And we're down the glide slope is to determine planning to do it in a measured way, the level and mix of military capabiliover time, in order to protect to the ties needed to match the market. greatest possible extent the magnifi- We've got to do that, not immedicent men and women of our ately, but over the next few years, current force. before we go too far down the glide slope and have to claw our way back Best Force, People up. Do Even Better The second challenge, and it's just current force. Picture the tremen- as important as the first, is to make dous capability. It's the best force the needed reductions in ways we've ever had. We have the best which enable us to continue to grow technology, the best combat in capability, even as we reduce in systems, the best stock levels, the size. I'm not saying we have to do best training and most importantly, more with less. What I am saying is the best people ever. that we've got to explore ways to do And our force is hard at work in even better with our unmatched so many places around the world, in capabilities. the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, The demand for American Somalia, in the Adriatic and at bases military capabilities remains high, but in Europe, in the Caribbean and the market is changing. By now, all South America. The beat goes on. of us are familiar with the risks of Our people are working as hard as failing to meet the market. Just the they ever worked during the Cold other day Sears announced they War. We have what we have, and were dropping the "Big Book" fortunately, what we have is very, performing radical surgery on the very good. heart of their corporate culture in “There are plenty of would-be defense experts willing to redraw the blueprint for America's future defenses. We must continue to lead the debate, or the pundits and armchair generals will carry the day as they sometimes have to our later regret during earlier periods of restructuring." everyone in this room. That strategic framework furnished a relatively fixed set of assumptions which changed only incrementally over time. For four decades, it was comparatively easy to structure U.S. forces. "The threat" was the Soviet Union. hopes of saving the patient. Catalog sales in the United States are at an all-time high. Look at L.L. Bean, a catalog company that provides a model of customer service and quality not just for the retail sector but for all of us. The demand is there, but you've got to keep up with the market. And today, the market demands that we articulate our evolving roles and missions clearly and concisely. The military has lots of intellectual competitors out there. All you have to do is look at the op-ed page, or even the front page, of almost any newspaper. There are plenty of would-be defense experts willing to race us to the blackboard to redraw the blueprint for America's future defenses. As military practitioners, we must continue to lead the debate, or the pundits and armchair generals will carry the day as they sometimes have — to our later regret -- during earlier periods of restructuring. You can't beat something with nothing. The old ideas don't sell anymore. The Cold War is over. To keep up with the market, we've got to learn to change. Combat Command and Air Mobility Command, has undertaken perhaps the most sweeping, forward-looking and far-reaching reorganization yet attempted by any service. Gen. Colin L. Powell's roles and missions report, which many of you have no doubt read about and others have been closely involved in, ... advances fundamentally the cause of change. And we're confronting change in more concrete ways — in Iraq, in Somalia, in Bosnia. Yes, we have made a lot of changes, and we're planning even more. But to paraphrase one joint staffer recently quoted in The New York Times, "Some people look at all this and see revolutionary change, while others see no change at all." I don't know which is more frustrating: listening to the outside critics and experts claiming we're refusing to change or getting jostled and jarred by all the internal speed bumps one encounters on the road to making change where it's really needed. Some days I feel like the preacher who said, “I just wish more folks who criticized the church were members of the church. Then they'd really know what's wrong with it." So today, there's little need to underscore for this audience the magnitude of changes already made. I'm going to talk to you instead, as members of the church, about why we must continue to change. Because even with all the changes we've made, I must report from my vantage point as a joint commander, the American military as an institution is only beginning to fully grasp just how much we have to change and how little time we have to do it. Permit me to elaborate. The Cold War provided the backdrop for the careers of almost Rethink Assumptions The task of re-engineering our forces to promote stability, peace, prosperity and democracy in the post-Cold War world is not so well defined. All our assumptions with respect to force structure, with respect to stock levels and infrastructure, with respect to how we organize and train all those assumptions have to be rethought. And you know, that's a lot easier said than done. We're trapped by our old mental models, prisoners of our individual views of what the world is really like. We've learned to insulate ourselves from new ideas which threaten our old, trusted assumptions. We reflexively defend the status quo; after all, “That's the way we've always done it." And we take out bureaucratic insurance policies to guard against change. Now, all of us in the military are undergoing the difficult process of learning to change, accepting that the beliefs and assumptions which served us well in the past need modification. But it's tough. We're always on the lookout for a new "comfort zone." We want to put all this change behind us as quickly as possible so we can settle back into comfortable patterns of thinking for another 40 years. The problem is, any new equilibrium will be a dynamic equilibrium a constant state of change - and to keep up, we're going to have to learn to keep pace with that change. Let me say that one more time. We're going to have to learn to change. We're going to have to build into our military, into our corporate theology, ways to accelerate organizational learning, build consensus and promote change. Ray Stata, the chairman of Analog Devices (semiconductor firm), says that in the time ahead, “The rate at which individuals and organizations learn to change may become the only sustainable competitive advantage," and that's especially true in Change = Improvement Let me stop here and give you a warning. I'm going to use the word "change" quite a few times here in the next few minutes. That makes people nervous. So every time I say "change," just pretend I really said "improvement." That sounds a lot better, doesn't it? "Improvement." Not nearly as threatening. And if we do our job right, the changes we make will be improvements. We've already made lots of -uh, improvements. The Air Force, under the inspired leadership of Gen. (Merrill A.) McPeak, in standing up the Air “We have a commitment to the American people to keep up with change. To do that, we've got to minimize the time lag between challenge and response. Gen. (Curtis) LeMay understood that. He built it into the theology at (SAC) Strategic Air Command. Today, the challenges are different. We've got to engineer the obstacles out of the system." knowledge-intensive organizations like ours. We've got to minimize the time lag between challenge and response not just on the battlefield, but in the halls of the Pentagon. Let me give you an example, and it gets right to the focus of this conference The Role of Airpower in Joint Campaigns. Two years ago, we were in the midst of Desert Storm. That experience underscored once again the need to clarify the role of the joint force air component commander, the JFACC. Nearly every Desert Storm "lesson learned" pointed to the JFACC as an area that needed joint attention. So 20 months ago, while I was commanding the Atlantic Fleet, ADM (Leon A.) Edney, my predecessor at LANTCOM (Atlantic Command) asked (Air Force Gen.) Mike Loh (commander, Air Combat Command) and I — his air and naval components — to start working jointly on a JFACC concept of operations to fix the things that needed fixing. All on Board Mike and I work pretty fast. It only took us 16 months to come to closure on a 13-page document. Last September, we signed it. So did (Army) Gen. Edwin H. Burba from Forces Command. Then we sent it along to the chairman and the other CINCs (commanders in chief), hoping to get them all on board. Today, I'm happy to report, two years after Desert Storm, we almost have an approved JFACC concept of operations. LANT and PAC (U.S. Pacific Command) are on board. EUCOM (U.S. European Command) is almost there. I expect we'll also get agreement from CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) and SOUTHCOM (U.S. Southern Command). Two years. Two years to fix something everyone agreed needed fixing - an issue over which there was no disagreement on the fundamental principle. We won't often have the luxury of that much time. We have a commitment to the American people to keep up with change. To de hat, w ve got to minimize the time lag between challenge and response. Gen. (Curtis) LeMay (commander, Strategic Air Command, 1948-1957) understood that. He built it into the theology at SAC. Today, the challenges are different. But we've got to put as much energy and enthusiasm into getting new ideas off the ground as we put into getting the bombers airborne. And just like Gen. LeMay and Gen. (Russell) Dougherty (SAC commander, 19741977) did at SAC, we've got to engineer the obstacles out of the system. During the Cold War, we viewed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the service chiefs and the CINCs much like ships' captains. Their job was to keep the vessels entrusted to their care on a safe course and off the rocks. But our future leaders are going to have to be designers and builders as well as operators. To accomplish their missions, they will have to not only set the course, but also continually re-engineer our organizations and reshape doctrine. Let me take a moment to sketch for you, from my vantage point as a unified commander, my own mental model of America's future conventional force. First, our force will be more capabilities-based than threatoriented. That means our forces will be shaped more by the capabilities they contribute toward achieving our national goals than by the traditional, neat, rack-and-stack of threat, capabilities and intent. military, multiagency and multinational effort. Gen. Powell has emphasized this again and again: teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. He put it in Joint Pub No. 1. In fact, he thought it was so important, he put it on the cover: “Joint Warfare is Team Warfare." Third, our armed forces will remain a sword for deterrence, crisis response and warfighting. But the American people have purchased the technology and training to do more. Our military is the only organization with the core competencies and capabilities to take on the future-oriented peacemaking, humanitarian and disaster relief missions I spoke of earlier. Finally, and most importantly, I envision the American military committed to a continuous process of review and self-appraisal leading to change -- improvement - with joint operations as both the driving force and the yardstick for success. I envision a force which has learned how to change. Before I take some questions, let me spend just a few more minutes expanding on this business of jointness. To defend America's interests, our military must still be in many places around the world. The chairman and the unified CinCs are looking for innovative ways to do that job without overcommitting tomorrow's smaller force. As force levels decline, we're recalibrating the needed balance between forces based overseas, forces which deploy and forces based at home. To do the job with a smaller force, we must make full use of our nation's total joint military kit. The CinCs should be able to go to the cupboard and find the capabilities Premium on Teamwork Second, a smaller force will put a premium on teamwork. That will call for even greater cooperation inside the military and out. We are going to have to wring the full potential value from every joint “America's fundamental national interests I don't want you to leave here thinking this sermon on change and jointness is aimed at the Air Force. It isn't. This sermon is for all members of the church, regardless of the denomination or congregation to which they belong. America's fundamental national interests haven't changed. But the role of our military in defending and advancing those interests is becoming eminently more challenging. To meet those challenges, we've got to learn to change, weaving into the very fabric of our military services an enduring commitment to continuous improvement. The teamwork needed for joint operations will be our yardstick for success because there is one thing we can count on, and I want to conclude with this thought; that is, in the time ahead, America may need less military, but you can be certain we won't need our military any less. they need "on the shelf," jointly trained and ready. And from that full kit of capabilities, they should be able to "write a prescription" for the specific dose of joint capability they need positioned forward in their AOR (area of responsibility) at any given time. If we do our work well, jointly organizing, planning, training, those tailored joint forces we send forward will be backed up by jointly trained and ready forces stateside. We also need to sell this idea of jointness to our potential coalition partners and within NATO. And, it's fair to say, we still have some selling to do here at home. To sell jointness, we've got to Published for internal information use by the American Forces Information Service, a field activity of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Washington, D.C. This material is in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission. The terms “roles," “missions” and Functions are specific responsibili- A Short History For the first century and a half of Roles and missions grew even After the war, in order to imple ment lessons learned, Congress American strategic forces were on passed the National Security Act of constant alert, and more than 1947. This act made the Joint 300,000 U.S. troops were in Europe, Chiefs of Staff a permanent, formal ready to repel any attack by the body; created the United States Air Warsaw Pact. Today, the Cold War Force as a separate service; and, is over. The Warsaw Pact is disafter amendment in 1949, led to solved. The Soviet Union has ceased establishment of the Department of to exist. Our strategic bomber force Defense. This act also attempted to is no longer on alert. Nuclear and clarify and codify service roles and conventional arms control agreemissions to provide a framework for ments have been concluded, program and budget decisions. eliminating entire classes of nuclear But the disappearance of the been committed in over two dozen recommend such changes in the crises, ranging from armed conflict in assignment of functions (or roles and Panama and the Persian Gulf to missions) as the Chairman considers peacekeeping and humanitarian necessary to achieve maximum assistance missions in several parts of effectiveness of the Armed Forces." the world and to disaster relief This is the second report in accor- operations at home and abroad. In dance with the act. short, our armed forces have been This report is a comprehensive busier than ever in this rapidly summary of a process of internal changing world. Four key factors — the end of the months of effort by the chairman Cold War, budgetary constraints, the and the Joint Staff. The recommen- Goldwater-Nichols Act and the press dations of this report are the of new regional crises — converged chairman's alone, though the service to provide the opportunity, the chiefs, the combatant CinCs and necessity and the authority to their staffs were directly involved in address the ways in which all four the review process. services are structured, trained and i RSITY OF MICHrega, Changes have occurred in the employed in combat. As a result, Rapidly Changing World Three years ago, WHERARIES U.S. military in the past three years report on roles and missions was than in any similar period since the prepared, the Berlin Wahnst0 3topgl93 National Security Act of 1947. DEPOSITED BY |