Rational Methods, Prudent Choices: Planning US Forces

By Robert P. Haffa Jr.

Planning for US military forces goes on regardless of the political party in power, the state of the budget, or the issues of the moment. Because planners decide the size and shape of land, air, and sea forces, force planning is at the very core of our national security effort. In this primer on force planning, Colonel Robert P. Haffa reviews the process used to structure our strategic, general purpose, and rapidly deployable forces. He contends that many people both within and outside the defense community do not fully understand force planning methods. Too often, he writes, military planners themselves—caught up in the daily pressures of the bureaucracy—focus on parochial, near-term issues. At the national level, far too many public debates are cast in terms of dollars instead of national objectives, missions, and forces. Haffa calls for a return to first principles, recommending these four guidelines for force planning: emphasize coherent policy relationships; rely on empirical data; stress planning, not budgeting consider the long term. Haffa shows that rational planning methods lead to prudent choices. His analysis reminds force planners never to lose sight of fundamentals, especially while prodding national leaders to pay attention to the rational methods of force planning. This fresh study of how we plan our military forces inspires us to get back to the basics essential for informed, productive debate on defense issues. Bradley C. Hosmer Lieutenant General.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: May 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839747441

Book preview

cover.jpgimg1.png

© Barakaldo Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

RATIONAL METHODS, PRUDENT CHOICES:

PLANNING U.S. FORCES

BY

ROBERT P. HAFFA, JR.

img2.png

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 7

ILLUSTRATIONS 8

FIGURES 8

TABLES 9

FOREWORD 10

PREFACE 11

1. A PRIMER ON FORCE PLANNING 13

What Force Planning Is 15

What Force Planning Is Not 17

Planning US Military Forces 20

2. PLANNING STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES 23

The Background: Nuclear Strategy and Forces, 1945-1960 23

The Calculations: Planning a Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, 1960-1965 25

Targeting—Assured Destruction and Counterforce 26

Target Destruction 29

Measuring Force Effectiveness 31

Outcome 1: The Baseline Strategic Force 34

Outcome 2: Assessing Strategic Arms Control 38

3. PLANNING GENERAL PURPOSE FORCES 43

Designing the Ground Force: The Mission 49

Designing the Ground Force: The Method 51

Attrition Model I 53

Attrition Model II 55

Designing the Ground Force: US Troops in Europe 57

Sizing Tactical Air Power: The Mission 61

Counterair 62

Close Air Support 63

Interdiction 64

Sizing Tactical Air Power: The Method 65

Sizing Tactical Air Power: Assessing the Threat 68

Shaping a Navy: The Mission 71

Shaping a Navy: The Method 73

Shaping a Navy: Why 600 Ships? 75

4. PLANNING RAPIDLY DEPLOYABLE FORCES 80

Rapid Deployment Strategic Concepts 82

Rapid Deployment Organizations 87

Rapid Deployment Support 90

5. PLANNING US FORCES 102

Strategic Nuclear Forces 103

General Purpose Forces 109

Rapidly Deployable Forces 115

Airlift 121

Prepositioning 122

Access to Foreign Facilities 123

Reemphasis on Rational Force Planning 124

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 126

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 127

DEDICATION

For Colonel Robert P. Haffa, Sr., USA (Retired)

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

1:1 Defense Budget Authority and Outlays, 1950-1992

2:1 Percent of Destruction: Soviet Population and Industry

TABLES

2:1 Yield Needed for Constant P(k) of ,95 against 300 PSI Target

2:2 Arrival Calculations

3:1 Reconstruction of the 1962 General Purpose Force Study

3:2 Forces (including reserves) Required for ‘2½ Wars’ 1962

3:3 Aggregate USN Program by Specific Contingency/Number of Ships (600-ship Navy)

3:4 Aggregate Alternate Program by Specific Contingency/Number of Ships (500-ship Navy)

4:1 The Allocation and Deployment of Major-General Purpose Forces Under the ‘2½ War’ Strategic Concept, 1965

4:2 The Allocation and Deployment of Major-General Purpose Forces Under the ‘2½ War’ Strategic Concept, 1973

4:3 Organizing for Rapid Deployment, 1960-1980

4:4 Mobility Systems for Rapid Deployment

5:1 Combat Forces Earmarked for the US Central Command

FOREWORD

Planning for US military forces goes on regardless of the political party in power, the state of the budget, or the issues of the moment. Because planners decide the size and shape of land, air, and sea forces, force planning is at the very core of our national security effort.

In this primer on force planning, Colonel Robert P. Haffa reviews the process used to structure our strategic, general purpose, and rapidly deployable forces. He contends that many people both within and outside the defense community do not fully understand force planning methods. Too often, he writes, military planners themselves—caught up in the daily pressures of the bureaucracy—focus on parochial, near-term issues. At the national level, far too many public debates are cast in terms of dollars instead of national objectives, missions, and forces. Haffa calls for a return to first principles, recommending these four guidelines for force planning: emphasize coherent policy relationships; rely on empirical data; stress planning, not budgeting; consider the long term.

Haffa shows that rational planning methods lead to prudent choices. His analysis reminds force planners never to lose sight of fundamentals, especially while prodding national leaders to pay attention to the rational methods of force planning. This fresh study of how we plan our military forces inspires us to get back to the basics essential for informed, productive debate on defense issues.

img3.png

BRADLEY C. HOSMER

Lieutenant-General, US Air Force

President, National Defense

University

PREFACE

As an officer in the United States Air Force, I have been fortunate enough over the last ten years to study the planning of US military forces. My education in force planning issues began when I was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I was sponsored by the Air Force Academy’s Political Science Department, under the auspices of the Air Force Institute of Technology.

When I returned to the Academy to teach political science, I noted the absence of a force planning approach in our course on American defense policy. Although the department there had pioneered the teaching of defense policy at the undergraduate level with its text American Defense Policy, that volume, through a number of editions, had become largely strategic in focus and bureaucratic in flavor. We seemed to be teaching our lieutenants-to-be that American defense policy was an arcane subject conceptualized by intellectuals, manipulated by politicians, and driven by budgets. Under this paradigm, the planning of US military forces—determining the number and type of army divisions, air force wings and naval battle groups—resembles the irrational outcome of a bureaucratic political process. Neither explanations of the rational basis for these existing forces nor presentations of the quantitative methodology available to and used by force planners are given any emphasis.

This book aims to change that approach. Students of defense policy need to know that current force planning has indeed been based on rational methods and prudent choices. I hope the editors of a new version of American Defense Policy reflect that reality, and are encouraged through this work to include force planning within the Academy’s defense policy curriculum.

This book, then, is not intended primarily for those positioned to influence defense and force planning decisions in the near term. Nor is this primer on force planning addressed to the Pentagon analysts who use tools and techniques far more sophisticated than those sketched here. I send them applause, not advice. But many major defense issues are never thrust under the scrutiny of those expert analysts. All too often force planners on various service staffs lose their view of the forest by concentrating on a few leaves. Thus rational methodology can indeed be entangled in the thickets of bureaucracy and the thorns of the budget.

I am convinced that an understanding of force planning has been lacking by many who were debating defense issues in the 1980s. Why 600 ships? Why 100 B1-Bs? 50 (or 100) Peace-keepers? Why 6 divisions in Europe? How do we continue to accomplish an essential set of missions with less and less real money? No defense decisions are more important than these. They demand that planners not surrender—especially not surrender en masse—to the easy temptation and momentary satisfactions of parochial views. In talking with many of the participants in the planning process, I have grown convinced that they follow the wrong approach to force-structure decisions only because they are unaware or distrustful of the rational methods that make prudent choices consistently possible. To avoid these no longer useful and progressively more dangerous approaches—marginal-adjustment, cost restructuring, and program stretch-outs—they need to understand more clearly the matters treated by this book. If that exposes this book to labels like didactic, so be it. I want to return to first principles, to push back from the conference table and the in-box and reflect, to refresh our understanding of the history of force planning so that we make better decisions in the thundering present.

I wrote this book during my year as a student at the National War College and as a Senior Fellow at the National Defense University. Throughout, I received help from a number of people to whom I owe my thanks. Much of what is written here relies on the previous work of my mentor at MIT, Professor William W. Kaufmann. His former students will quickly recognize that intellectual debt. Included among those who took time to read and comment on the draft manuscript were Lynn Davis, Dick Fast, Bob Kennedy, Roy Stafford, and Perry Smith. Patient and persistent editors at NDU Press worked to bring this book to print. Many others—in Cambridge, Colorado Springs, and Washington—contributed, but the final responsibility is, of course, mine.

img4.png

ROBERT P. HAFFA, JR.

Fairfax, Virginia

1. A PRIMER ON FORCE PLANNING

Since the end of 1979, with its dual crises of US hostages in Iran and Soviet troops in Afghanistan, American defense policy has once again become the object of public concern, academic interest, and government effort. The reluctance to use the military as an instrument of US foreign policy lasted a decade. Effects of the American withdrawal from an unsuccessful military engagement in Vietnam included a retrenchment in South-east Asia, a reduction in the defense budget, and a rollback in US military capabilities.

But great powers cannot so easily forswear their political responsibilities and military commitments. Thus, when US global interests became threatened in the late 1970s, the return to a military option came sooner than many expected. The president who entered office dedicated to reducing force deployments and defense spending left office emphasizing anew the military instrument and declaring an American willingness to use force in regions far from the US mainland.

In 1981, that proposed defense build-up gained both momentum and money. Though a stagnant industry in the 1970s, defense became the growth industry of the 1980s. (See Figure 1:1.) Unsurprisingly, the direction federal funds flow tends to attract attention in America. Some line up for their fair share; others question the course being set. The debate surrounding American defense policy in the 1980s featured several contradictory pairings: quality versus quantity, attrition versus maneuver, strategists versus managers. The debates have been complex, the results inconclusive.

Throughout the early 1980s, the military build-up continued. Events in Southwest Asia contributed to a permissiveness in public opinion allowing increased defense spending for greater military capability. However, by the mid-1980s, growing budget deficits gave pause to the planning of forces and the procurement of weapon systems. These criticisms of US defense policy based on the budget deficit are not only often misplaced, they also fail to consider the fundamentals that underlie the planning of our military forces. This primer seeks to foster understanding of force planning basics by focusing on the following:

The baseline force: What are current force levels? How were they reached?

The adequacy of the force: How capable are current US forces of meeting anticipated contingencies? How can we test those capabilities?

The future of the force: If deficiencies are demonstrated, on what basis should the United States plan its forces to remedy those deficiencies?

img5.png

An answer to the first question calls for a description and explanation of the basis for the planning behind existing US military forces, in a time when force planning is too often thought of in relation to some percent of the gross national product, this methodology is frequently overlooked. Explaining this methodology highlights the rational methods and prudent choices used to construct the baseline force. The central thesis of this study answers the second question. A rational framework for planning military forces based on tests of their adequacy—threat assessment, campaign analysis and quantitative modeling—exists and has been used effectively. A realistic conclusion addresses the third question: methods used successfully in the past should not be carelessly cast aside as the United States embarks on a major military improvement program—but reemphasized as balance is restored to the nation’s budget.

Although the fundamentals of force planning are admittedly incomplete, they are all too often forgotten in analyses that stress bureaucratic outcomes of defense decision-making and international perceptions of force capability. Today, far too many defense debates are cast in terms of dollars rather than in terms of objectives, missions, and forces. My purpose here is to argue that a more satisfactory method of understanding the baseline force and evaluating programs to improve it is to estimate the extent to which existing and planned forces can meet national objectives and commitments. Planned increases or reductions in those forces must be related to their capability to meet those goals.

What Force Planning Is

Force planning is subsumed under defense policy, which in turn acts in support of United States national security policy and foreign policy. One of the best ways to distinguish between force planning and other elements of defense policy is to differentiate among policy levels. This approach is not new. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1956, Paul Nitze distinguished between declaratory policy—statements of political objectives with intended psychological effects—and action or employment policy—concrete military objectives and plans employing current forces in support of those objectives.{1} Nitze also saw the requirement to match the two levels closely, lest declaratory policy appear hollow or employment capability inadequate. But that fit has never been perfect.

Nitze’s concept has since been refined. Donald Snow and others have inserted a policy level between declaration and employment: force development and deployment.{2} Force planning is the development of forces flowing from the requirements of declaratory policy or the shortfalls in employment policy. Force