Deadly Bombs' Long, Winding Trail

The U.S. government's claim yesterday, that the Iranians are supplying weapons to Iraqi militants, was met with a huge amount of skepticism -- and with good reason, given the Administration's lousy intel-interpreting track record, and the strange conditions of Sunday's presentation. (More on that, in a second.) But, for what it's worth, Defense Tech has been hearing about these weapons -- especially the "explosively-formed projectiles," or EFPs -- for the last eighteen months. Many of the government's assertions track, at least loosely, to what we've heard.

Soldiers in Iraq were already encountering EFPs -- and the closely-related "shaped-charges" -- back in the summer of '05, when I visited the country.

In the garden, there's a seemingly innocuous copper cylinder, concave on one end, about the size of a gallon of paint. It's called an explosively formed projectile, or EFP, and when it detonates, the concave end blows outward and melts into a bullet-shaped fragment that slices through armor and flesh. "Ten days ago, one of these sons-of-bitches took out an arm of a Humvee driver and both his legs," says Captain Greg Hirschey, the 717th's commander. "I get shivers up my spine every time I see one."

Back then, it was commonly assumed that the EFP-makers were getting some over-the-border help. After all, Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas have been using the weapons against Israeli tanks for some time.

A few months later, David Axe caught word of a particularly nasty EFP in Anbar province: infrared "tripwire-activated IEDs disguised as rocks and apparently employing shaped-charge warheads." That sounds almost exactly like the "Fully Operational, Camouflaged Passive Infrared EFP" that the government, in its Iran presentation, said was found in the Basra area, last May.

Still, does that mean there's a direct, tight connection between the Iranian government and the Iraqi bombers? Terrorists -- especially terrorist bomb-makers -- share best practices, from Colombia to Spain to Lebanon to Iraq. So it's not surprising to see one group's methods mimicked somewhere else. Take those infrared tripwires: they were first used by the Irish Republican Army. And I don't think we're about to send a carrier group to the Celtic Sea.

What's more, when Iranian EFPs were first spotted in Iraq, the bombs were in the hands of Sunni insurgents. At the time, that "seem[ed] to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of, given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq." But now, this looks like terror-makers sharing tricks of the trade, rather some grand, ecumenical alliance.

Or, as Kevin Drum notes, Iran could just be trying to stoke chaos on all sides. "If I were in charge of Iran, it's probably what I'd be doing," he writes. And there's more than just the EFPs to tie Tehran to the conflict in Iraq. Iranian TNT and newly-minted mortars were also trotted out in the American presentation. "The evidence of Iranian meddling in Iraq," McClatchy notes, "is far more compelling than much of the administration's pre-war intelligence about Iraq."
That said, if the case was ironclad, the administration wouldn't be resorting to silly maneuvers like these when it made its case for Iran's involvement:

The officials said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity, so the explosives expert and the analyst, who would normally not speak to the news media, could provide information directly. The analyst's exact title and full name were not revealed to reporters. The officials released a PowerPoint presentation including photographs of the weaponry, but did not allow media representatives to record, photograph or videotape the briefing or the materials on display.

Too much is riding on this evidence for such chicanery. Make the case cleanly, guys. Or don't make it at all.

UPDATE 5:11 PM: As benjoya notes in the comments to a previous post, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace doesn't agree with the administration's assessment.

UPDATE 5:36 PM: Be sure to read Newsweek's cover story, too. But be ready to wince.

Defense Science Board's Big, Scary Study

Typically, the senior scientists and military-industrial graybeards who sit on the Defense Science Board are asked to examine specific issues, one at a time. Stuff like directed energy weapons. Or combating improvised explosives. Or how long guardsmen and reservists should be deployed.

But this summer, the Board is being asked to make a very different examination, Inside Defense notes. Instead of drilling down deep, to study a specific problem, Board members are being asked to think expansively -- very, Very expansively -- and look at... well, pretty much every bad-case scenario an American bureaucrat could ever imagine. Asian economic growth, terrorist technological development, epidemics, famine, religious strife, faulty American manufacturing, biological weapons, hurricanes -- you name it, the Pentagon wants the Board to study it. And the members are supposed "identify possible solutions" and come up with “innovative technologies, systems or operational concepts that can be applied... before it becomes a national crisis.”

Better get going, boys.

Breaking: Double the Troops in "Surge" (Updated)

President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 -- more than double the number the President initially said.

That's because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, "including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.

Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.

DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the President has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additional funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007. Of that, about $3.2 billion was supposed to go to the Army and Marines for their escalated activity.

But that figure appears to have been grossly underestimated. The CBO now believes "that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment." There's a more detailed analysis of the numbers on pages 3 and 4 of the study, which was sent to House Budget Chairman John Spratt today.

UPDATE 1:43 PM: Here's Spratt's reaction, in a statement just released:

“An average of 170,000 military personnel has been maintained in the Iraq theater of operations, and this high deployment level has taken a toll. Last year, CBO reported that the Department of Defense had reduced the amount of ‘dwell’ time for many troops from two years to one year in order to sustain troop levels. ‘Dwell’ time is the time troops spend in training at bases in the United States while living with their families. CBO questioned whether such a high pace of operations was sustainable over the long term. The President’s proposal will increase this level to above 200,000 troops, and to reach this level, the Pentagon will probably have to relax ‘dwell’ time standards even more.

“CBO’s report concludes that the cost of the President’s plan to ‘surge’ troops will be higher than previously indicated, both in dollar terms and in the burdens it places on our military.”

UPDATE 2:06 PM: As they say on the Internet, "WTF?" Gen. George Casey, the nominee for Army chief of staff, "told a Senate panel Thursday that improving security in Baghdad would take fewer than half as many extra troops as President Bush has chosen to commit," the AP is reporting.

Asked by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., why he had not requested the full five extra brigades that Bush is sending, Casey said, "I did not want to bring one more American soldier into Iraq than was necessary to accomplish the mission."

With many in Congress opposing or skeptical of Bush's troop buildup, Casey did not say he opposed the president's decision. He said the full complement of five brigades would give U.S. commanders in Iraq additional, useful flexibility.

"In my mind, the other three brigades should be called forward after an assessment has been made on the ground" about whether they are needed to ensure success in Baghdad, Casey said. later.

Now, Casey has long been skeptical of a troop increase. "It's a tough nut, whether or not bringing in more troops, more US troops will have a significant long term impact on the violence," he said back in October. And just the other day, Casey was arguing that any additional boots on the ground could be removed by the summer. So this feels like we're seeing the edges of an internal squabble between the White House and the Army brass. Or maybe between general and general.

UPDATE 02/02/07 6:36 PM: The White House is denying the CBO report.

(Big ups: JA)

The President Stole My Idea...

...Well, sort of.

Last night in the State of the Union address, the Commander-in-Chief proposed this:

“A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.”

Last summer, I presented a briefing at the US Army Combined Arms Center Combat Studies Institute’s annual symposium. (full transcript of the conference) I also blogged about it here and here. In attendance at the conference, were such illustrious types as General David Petraeus, Dr. Lewis Sorely, Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, and many others. Granted I was the dim bulb in a room full of klieg lights, but it was interesting experience.

In my briefing, I proposed something very much like the president articulated last night. The crux of the problem is that about 97% of our standing national capacity to perform nation building operations in environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan resides within the military reserves. Most of these units are Army Reserve Civil Affairs units. There are about 7,000 civil affairs billets in the reserves. So a nation of 300 million relies on 7,000 military reservists whom we hope have all the skills we need to perform the stability-and-support, “Phase IV” operations. Four years into Iraq and the electrical grid is still in shambles. As a nation, we can do better.

Clearly our national approach to nation building isn’t working. We don’t have time to build this capacity after the shooting stops or the enemy regime tumbles. Iraq has demonstrated that our reconstruction capability needs to be in place quickly to pacify the civilian population. We have great organizations like USAID performing some of this role, but the American government is not configured to be expeditionary in nature. We need to change.

The military has tried some solutions to this problem like requiring that all reservists register their civilian skills with the military. This is a good idea, but a band-aid at best. In effect, we are relying on a crapshoot to determine if we have the skilled professionals we need in the military to rebuild war-shattered nations. We are hoping that the officers and enlisted men who joined the Army in the 80’s and 90’s have matured into the fire and police chiefs that we brag about having today.

I proposed that we create a standing force of skilled civilians as an augmentation to the military reserves. The same legal protections that apply to military reservists would be extended to these civilians. They would train like reservists and be available for deployment like reservists. They would join with the understanding that they could be put in harm’s way. Many in the blogosphere scoffed at the idea that we would be able to recruit people for this mission, but I believe that in the post 9-11 world many Americans are looking for a way to get in the fight besides going to the mall.

Having this standing capability might also ease our reliance on contractors or the ad-hoc nature that characterized the establishment of the CPA in Iraq. If we are truly engaged in a “generational struggle”, then we need to configure our government for it. We wished away “nation building” with political rhetoric in the 2000 election, and now it is time to face reality and enhance our capacity to do it right.

-- Kris Alexander

UPDATE 1:55 PM: "I've worked on this issue for many years on and off the Hill," says The White House Project's Lorelei Kelly. The origins can be found (with all due respect, Kris) "in the Clinton era, with the Office of Transition Initiatives."

The Clinton folks wrote the roadmap for complex contingency operations through a set of four presidential directives. Sadly, the new National Security Council threw them all out upon coming to office and so lost some of the most important institutional memory they could have had for subsequent policy crises.

This is an important innovation in government because it operationally begins to re allocate the division of labor away from the military and to civilians, as it should be. The military should not be doing many of the tasks that have accrued to it...but it is a problem solving and manpower heavy organization that does not say "no." Also, I welcome the addition of more civilians working as international public servants. These are jobs that belong in a long overdue discussion about the essential role of government in today's world....the reason the Blackwaters and other private military companies have thrived so during the past decade is not a question of whither mercenaries, its a fat and lazy elected leadership that REFUSES to have this conversation because the easiest budget box to check is to fund the defense budget at any outrageous level...

If we don't talk about the roles and missions of our agencies post 9/11 there will be no end to the spending, and we'll have both the Cold War hangover and legacy budget with an ineffectual grab bag of personnel and tools...all over militarized, and all to our own detriment.

Tom Barnett can probably cry "stolen," too.

The Speech: Sadr Bought Off? (Updated)

Has Moktada Al-Sadr, the Shi'ite strong man, been bought off, somehow? This is just a theory, an intellectual exercise -- not even a guess -- based on the President's speech.

Hear me out: A big part of Bush's plan relies on Iraq's cops. "18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades [will be] committed to" securing Baghdad. And "these Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations" there. But last time I checked, these police units were largely fronts for thuggish militias like Sadr's Mahdi Army. Also, the President talked about avoiding the "sectarian interference [that] prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods in Baghdad." How is that interference being avoided, or run over? By buying off its leadership, maybe?

UPDATE 01/11/06 10:50 AM: Or maybe not. "Iraq's prime minister has told Shi'ite militiamen to surrender their arms or face an all-out assault by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, senior Iraqi officials" tell the AP.

On the other hand, "An Army officer who recently commanded a battalion in Baghdad predicted [to the Washington Post] last night that the plan would fail because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government 'will do things to maintain protection' of Sadr's forces."

UPDATE 11:24 AM: "I would suggest that PM Nuri al-Maliki's warning to the Mahdi Militia to disarm or face the US military is in fact code," Juan Cole says. "He is telling the Sadrists to lie low while the US mops up the Sunni Arab guerrillas. Sadr's militia became relatively quiescent for a whole year after the Marines defeated it at Najaf in August, 2004. But since it is rooted in an enormous social movement, the militia is fairly easy to reconstitute after it goes into hiding."

(Big ups: Nicholas Weaver, in the comments)

UPDATE 12:47 PM: Check out the weirdly ambiguous interchange between a reporter and SecDef Gates today, courtesy of Inside Defense.

Q: Is the United States military and/or the Iraqi government prepared now to arrest or kill Muqtada al-Sadr as part of this new increase?...

SEC. GATES: I think a source of frustration for both Iraqi and American forces in the past has been political interference during clearing operations... I think one of the most important commitments that the prime minister has made is that in this offensive, the military will have the authority to go after all law breakers. There are no exceptions. I'm not going to hang specific targets on specific people, but all law breakers are susceptible to being detained in this -- or taken care of in this campaign.

Q: Sir, why are you vague on the treatment of al-Sadr? Because he has a long history here in this conflict as being on the most-wanted list of the United States; then the Iraqis persuaded the U.S. not to arrest him; he leads the Mahdi Army. I mean, this is the bad guy that the United States makes clear is helping to bring down this government, so why not commit to what our posture is with regard to him now?

SEC. GATES: What I will say is that all parts of Baghdad are going to be involved in this campaign, including Sadr City. (Cross talk.) (Laughter.)

The Speech: Goodbye, Disneyland

Almost every time I've heard President Bush talk over most of the last six years, I felt like the guy was speaking to me from a parallel dimension. A Disneyland, happy-face universe, where freedom was always on the march, and terrorists were just about to be smoked out of their holes. No matter how bad Iraq got, the good guys were winning. No matter how many people got blown up, everything was just fine.

Tonight was different. A visibly nervous President Bush stepped out of the Magic Kingdom, and spoke to us, for once, from the White House. He described an Iraq that matched up to the one my friends serving there describe - the one I've seen myself. He was honest about the challenges ahead. And he was straight-up about how his plan to settle Iraq down hadn't worked.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation... We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together – and that as we trained Iraqi security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq – particularly in Baghdad – overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq’s elections posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam – the Golden Mosque of Samarra – in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people – and it is unacceptable to me.

Now, I'm pretty damn skeptical that Bush's solution for Iraq -- 21,500 more U.S. troops -- is really going to turn things around. There are some intriguing elements, yeah. And there are some good, new commanders to carry the strategy out -- ones who seem ready to commit to counterinsurgency's most basic tenets. But it all seems like too little, too late.

The only way this plan even has the smallest scrap of hope of working is if it's governed by cold-eyed reality, not fuzzy-headed wishes. So give the President credit, at least, for driving out of Disneyland.

Darpa Preps for "Baghdad 2015"

The current TomDispatch has a great round-up of Darpa's research into the future of urban warfare. But man, do you have to put up with a lot to get to the good stuff.

The article's main thrust is that the Pentagon is readying itself for a "low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor." There's an "assumed need to be in the urban Iraqs of the future, [so] the question for the U.S. military becomes a practical one: How to deal with these uppity children of the third world."

Yeah, I'm rolling my eyes, too. Like the failed-state jihadists of the world will just go about minding their own business... if the U.S. just stays out their slums. Sure. Worked like a charm, before 9/11.

Besides, the U.S. has been fighting in cities since... well, since before there was a U.S. (George Washington tangled with the Red Coats in New York City, for example.) And we've never been all that good at it. The fact is, American armed forces have almost always preferred a stand-up fight -- an open war -- to some close-quarters, urban combat. That's what are training is oriented around. That's what our gear is made for. But the guys plotting to hurt us and our allies are in cities. So it's into urban canyons our military must go.

The article winces about American military talk of prepping for "Baghdad 2015" and urban fights of the issue fights. "Today, it's Baghdad; tomorrow...it could be Accra, Bogota, Dhaka, Karachi, Kinshasa, Lagos, Mogadishu or even a perennial favorite, Port au Prince." But given how badly "Baghdad 2007" is going, doesn't the Pentagon -- and especially, its research arms -- owe it to the rest of us to get better at those kinds of conflicts? Especially when Baghdad is only one in a long list of urban operations (Mogadishu, Srebrenica, Kabul) the U.S. has found itself in over the last few decades? Wouldn't anything less would be... well, a dereliction of duty?

Anyway. After several more paragraphs, we get to the meat of the story, on "the wide range of efforts to visualize, map out, and spy on the global mega-favelas that the U.S. has, until now, largely scorned and neglected." Most of these programs won't be new to close readers of Defense Tech. But it's interesting, and helpful, to see 'em all in one place. Items include...

VisiBuilding: This is a program aimed at addressing "a pressing need in urban warfare: seeing inside buildings" by developing technology that will allow U.S. forces to "determine building layouts, find anomalous quantities of materials," and "locate people within the building..."

UrbanScape: This program aims "to make the foreign city as ‘familiar as the soldier's backyard'" by providing "the warfighters patrolling an urban environment with an up-to-date, high resolution model of the urban terrain that can be viewed, manipulated and analyzed."

Urban Hopping Robots... a semi-autonomous hybrid hopping/articulated wheeled robotic platform [like this one, maybe -- ed.] that could adapt to the urban environment... and provide the delivery of small payloads to any point of the urban jungle while remaining lightweight, small to minimize the burden on the soldier.

Close Combat Lethal Recon This deadly, loitering explosive expressively for use in urban landscapes will expand a soldier's killing zone by reaching "over and around buildings, onto rooftops, and into open building portals." Think of it as a smart grenade or, according to DARPA Director Tether... "a small mortar round with a grenade-size explosive in it. A fiber-optic line unreels from its back end and provides the data link that allows the soldier to see the video from the munition's camera and to fly it into the target."

If it works -- and that's always a big if, when you're talking about a Darpa project -- that does sound like a nasty weapon. Not just in a city. But in any environment.

FWIW, The story leaves of of its list two of the creepiest Darpa programs geared towards urban fights. "Combat Zones That See" tries to strap cheap cameras together, giving soldiers watch over an entire city at once; the "Integrated Sensor is Structure" program aims to do the same thing -- with a giant, all-seeing blimp. And then there's Darpa's next robotic road race. It's through... a city! (Cue scary music.)

Pentagon Pays Screenwriters, Eyes Craigslist

The Air Force is bankrolling a Hollywood screenwriting class. A screenwriting class for PhDs. No, seriously.

The Christian Science Monitor explains:

America, it turns out, is suffering from a science and engineering shortage. Students are bypassing the sciences for sexier and more lucrative jobs...

This creates something of a national security problem... According to Dr. Barker, who works in the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, those who manage the national labs and others who conduct sensitive research have been saying for years "how hard it is to find qualified graduate students who are US citizens..."

Barker notes that 50 percent of America's scientific-and-engineering workforce will be eligible to retire in the next five years. Who's going to replace them?...

Hollywood... [may] be part of the solution. By writing and producing movies that have more scientific themes - and more authentic and appealing science protagonists - boosters think the US could encourage more young people to pursue careers in plasma physics, molecular biology, and other fields...

So what they've done for the past three years is convene a three-to-five-day screenwriting class at the venerated American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Called the Catalyst Workshop, it's a lot like other screenwriting classes that have become a cottage industry across the nation. But here's the twist - all participants in this one are actually scientists. Hardcore, PhD-laden, lab-certified scientists.

Now, the government has dabbled in the movie business before. The CIA, for instance, produced an animated version of Animal Farm. After 9/11, the BBC notes, Die Hard screenwriter Steve de Souza was one of two dozen writers and directors who were "commissioned to brainstorm with Pentagon advisers" about possible terror plots. The Army currently works with a bunch of Hollywood types at USC to build next-generation simulators.

And this isn't the only unusual source the Pentagon is tapping for its know-how. As USA Today reports, Defense Department officials are growing increasingly interested in Craigslist, YouTube, and other fast-moving start-ups, for ideas about how terror groups operate.

The military is paying closer attention to business... because the world of geopolitics has discovered itself to be on the same road that business has been on for some time. That road is flatter, more networked and more decentralized than ever.

Large companies are groping for strategies to fend off disruptive competitors, including YouTube, Kazaa, Skype and Wikipedia, companies that are giving away video, music, long-distance and information while eroding the revenue stream of companies that charge for it. YouTube is a website where users swap millions of free videos. With fewer than 100 employees, it has created anxiety throughout the giant industries of film and TV...

How large, traditional companies fare in this fight may prove invaluable in developing a strategy against al-Qaeda. That's why the military is going to school. A book making the rounds at the Pentagon is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. It was written for a business audience, but military strategists are saying, "This is the best thing I've read that applies to counterterrorism," says Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a Defense Department director in international affairs.

The premise of The Starfish and the Spider is that centralized organizations are like spiders and can be destroyed with an attack to the head. Decentralized organizations transfer decision-making to leaders in the field. They are like starfish. No single blow will kill them, and parts that are destroyed will grow back.

When Starfish co-author Rod Beckstrom arrived at USA TODAY's suburban Washington, D.C., headquarters for an interview in November, he said he had just come from meetings with representatives at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the "intelligence community." He said he was contacted "out of the blue" in September by one of the highest-ranking officers in special operations, and more recently by a high-ranking special operations officer at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour

I've had sources ask to meet me in some pretty odd places. But there was one meeting last year that had to be just about the strangest request yet. It wasn't just that this very-recently retired Defense Department strategist wanted to meet at the Pentagon City Mall -- that's a pretty common place to grab an off-the-record cup o' joe. It was where in the mall he had in mind: at the Nordstrom's coffee shop, tucked all the way in the far reaches of the store, just past the little kid's clothes section.

So I walk past the rows of toddlers' jumpers, past the blue-haired ladies ordering around their grandkids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that's even odder that the place where we're meeting.

Here's the goal, as another source -- U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander, Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler -- later told me on-the-record: "strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

Sounds... ummm, ambitious, right? So how do you pull off that kind of mission, now known as "Prompt Global Strike?" Well, that's the subject of my cover story in this month's Popular Mechanics.

Now, of course, the American military has weapons that can destroy just about anything on the planet in a matter of minutes: nuclear missiles. Which might have been the right answer for containing our Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War receded into memory, U.S. strategists began to worry that our nuclear threat was no longer credible. That we were too muscle-bound for our own good. Were we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? Of course not. The weaker our enemies grew, the less ominous our arsenal became. Military theorists called it "self-deterrence." "In today's environment, we've got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons, or not," Navy Capt. Terry Benedict told me. "The nation's leadership needs an intermediate step – to take the action required, without crossing to the one."

Benedict's option -- one of two I explore in the article -- is Trident ballistic missiles, armed with conventional warheads instead of nukes. For lots of good reasons (like the better-than-average chance the missiles could start World War III) Congress has negged the idea. But, in the military establishment, there's still a great deal of interest in using ballistic missiles for the hour-or-less mission. How exactly the nuclear holocaust issue is supposed to be resolved is, at this point, unclear.

Which brings us to option #2. It's a long-term play. And a long-shot, too. The military's research divisions are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into exotic, high-speed weapons like the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, illustrated on the cover. If it works out as planned, the X-51 will go Mach 5 (roughly 3600 mph) -- much, much faster than any equivalent in the U.S. arsenal. Some Pentagon planners see the X-51 as part of a suite of futuristic weapons that can almost-instantly threaten American adversaries everywhere, without threatening the entire planet in the process. But it's way off in the distance; the X-51's first test flight isn't until 2008. I'm expecting several more trips to Nordstrom's Cafe before then.

UPDATE 11:40 AM: If you want to learn how the Prompt Global Strike concept got started -- and how it's being put into early development, today -- I strongly recommend this chronology, from the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Kristensen.

Iraq War Ain't by the Book

There was a disconnect, when the Army first released its interim manual for fighting insurgencies, two years ago. The book said to stay off of big bases, and to emphasize "secrecy and surprise." American operations often went in the completely opposite direction.

The field manual has now been finalized. But, as the L.A. Times notes, many of those gaps between theory and practice remain.

The U.S. military's new counterinsurgency doctrine takes issue with some key strategies that American commanders in Iraq continue to use, most notably the practice of concentrating combat forces in massive bases rather than dispersing them among the population...

The authors of the manual say the new doctrine is not meant as a critique of the Iraq strategy... [They] rather were saying they simply did not want people to hole up and become "fobbits."

"You put a protect force in that lives in the neighborhood. They stay 24/7 to protect the people," Keane said at a briefing this week. "That piece is what we have never been able to execute in Baghdad..."

The new doctrine, which was begun in January and released in draft form in June, cautions that campaigns against insurgents are "often long and difficult" and that progress is hard to measure. Conventional militaries often stumble in the beginning of an insurgency but can succeed if they learn, adapt and push ahead against it, according to the manual.

"The military forces that successfully defeat insurgencies are usually those able to overcome their institutional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents," the doctrine says...

Overall, the doctrine says, a counterinsurgency operation is "a struggle for the population's support." To win that confidence, militaries must learn about the culture and people they are trying to protect as well as fight the insurgents who are attempting to destabilize the country, it says...

"I do not know how they will translate this to the field," [one author] said. "But I do think this will be No. 1 on the reading list."

By the way, I'm in the middle of going through the new field manual. It's fascinating -- and an easy read, not at all jargon-filled. I'd encourage everyone to check it out for themselves.

UPDATE 7:20 PM: Eason Jordan's new IraqSlogger site is trying to launch with a little controversy, by questioning why this new manual was posted on public sites -- and highlighting online Jihadists' reactions. "How would a U.S. soldier... feel knowing the hot-off-the-presses counterinsurgency manual is available to the 'bad guys' at the same time it is available to the 'good guys?'" the site asks.

Army About to "Break," Says Chief

For most of the year, Army officials have been complaining that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are chewing up their money, their gear, and their troops. Now, Army chief of staff General Peter Schoomaker has made the loudest, most public plea yet.

As it currently stands, the Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the Global War on Terror and fulfill all other operational requirements without its components - active, Guard, and Reserve - surging together...

At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component.

As the Washington Post notes, he's calling for "expanding the [active duty] force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year [to a total of 512,000] and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops."

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today's Pentagon policies is "not right."

In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war.

Most observers say Schoomaker's dire forecasts are on the money, and a long time coming. But Spencer Ackerman, for one, says the chief of staff "deserves no praise for the warning he issued yesterday."

In February, when Rumsfeld had to go to the Hill to refute charges of breaking the Army, he brought Schoomaker along for insulation:

General Schoomaker points out that he remembers what a "broken" Army looks like when he was a young officer... The difference between that Army and the professional and motivated force we have today could not be more dramatic.

Double Down? Or Move to the 'Burbs?

One of these things is not like the other...

NYT: "Iraq has presented the United States with a plan that calls for Iraqi troops to assume primary responsibility for security in Baghdad early next year. American troops would be shifted to the periphery of the capital."

"I think it is extremely important they reduce their visibility and they reduce their presence," Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, said of the American troops in Baghdad. "They should be in the suburbs within greater Baghdad."

LAT: "Strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to 'double down' in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

The problem with any sort of surge is that it would require an eventual drop-off in 2008, unless the president was willing to take the politically unpopular move of remobilizing the National Guard and sending reserve combat units back to Iraq.

But military officials are taking a close look at a proposal advanced by Frederick W. Kagan, a former West Point Military Academy historian, to combine a surge with a quick buildup of the Marines and the Army. That could allow new units to take the place of the brigades sent to Iraq to augment the current force.

"It is essential for the president to couple any recommendation of a significant surge in Iraq with the announcement that he will increase permanently the size of the Army and the Marines," Kagan said.

Kagan, who plans to release a preliminary report on his proposal Thursday, said he had discussed his ideas with people in the government. Although the military has had trouble meeting recruiting goals, Kagan said Army officials believed they could recruit at least an extra 20,000 soldiers a year. The Army missed its recruiting targets in 2005 but met this year's goal.

Everyone Hates Baker (Updated Again)

Wow. Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- hates the Baker Commission report. "Group studies Iraq- fails to find clue bag," proclaims the conservative Blackfive milblog. "The report is a dud," sighs the lefty Americablog. And Fred Kaplan mopes:

The report of the Iraq Study Group... was doomed to fall short of expectations. But who knew it would amount to such an amorphous, equivocal grab bag.

Its outline of a new "diplomatic offensive" is so disjointed that even a willing president would be left puzzled by what precisely to do, and George W. Bush seems far from willing.

Its scheme for a new military strategy contains so many loopholes that a president could cite its language to justify doing anything (or nothing).

The award for today's most original Baker hate belongs to Defense Tech pal Spencer Ackerman:

Given the specific lineup of the 10 wise men and women serving on the Iraq Study Group, the most conspicuous absence is that of supermodel Heidi Klum. Sure, she has no relevant experience in foreign policy, nor any real knowledge of Iraq -- but neither do commissioners Sandra Day O'Connor, Vernon Jordan, Alan Simpson, or Edwin Meese. What Klum does have to offer is a lesson completely lost on the commission, one taught each week on her hit reality show Project Runway: you're either in, or you're out. When it comes to Iraq, it's good advice.

OK, no Heidi Klum, I can understand. My question is: Why no veterans? Why no people that have actually fought this war?

UPDATE 8:23 AM: "The military recommendations issued yesterday by the Iraq Study Group are based more on hope than history and run counter to assessments made by some of its own military advisers," says the Times.

In essence, the study group is projecting that a rapid infusion of American military trainers will so improve the Iraqi security forces that virtually all of the American combat brigades may be withdrawn by the early part of 2008...

Jack Keane, the retired Army chief of staff who served on the group’s panel of military advisers, described that goal as entirely impractical. “Based on where we are now we can’t get there,” General Keane said in an interview, adding that the report’s conclusions say more about “the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”

UPDATE 10:02 AM: "Iraqi politicians and analysts said Wednesday [that] the report... neither addresses nor understands the complex forces that fuel Iraq's woes. They described it as a strategy largely to help U.S. troops return home and resurrect America's frayed influence in the Middle East," according to the Washington Post.

"It is a report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq's problems," said Ayad al-Sammarai, an influential Sunni Muslim politician.

UPDATE 12/08/06 9:42 AM: Phil Carter read the list of people consulted by the Iraqi Study Group. He's not happy.

[It's] a long and distinguished list, to be sure. But one group of people seemed to be conspicuously absent from the list.

Grunts. Not just infantrymen, but military enlisted personnel and junior officers generally. I don't see any officers below the military rank of Lieutenant Colonel listed in the ISG's report. And there are zero enlisted personnel listed. What gives? Counterinsurgencies are won or lost at the local level, so it would've made an awful lot of sense to talk with a few troops who've served at that level.

Not that Bush is listening to Baker and company, anyway.

Rummy: Iraq War Plans Suck

Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction...

...the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics...

The "Above the Line" options -- ones that "could and, in a number of cases, should be done" -- include:

* Conduct an accelerated draw-down of U.S. bases. We have already reduced from 110 to 55 bases. Plan to get down to 10 to 15 bases by April 2007, and to 5 bases by July 2007...

* Withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. — and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.

Baker Group Wants Troop Pullback (Updated)

Wow. Big news from the Baker commission:

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

So how will the President react?

"I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," the president said during a joint news conference with Mr. Maliki, referring to the panel's reports that are expected next week. "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."

So what's the right move? Speak up!

UPDATE 4:29 PM: Feeling in the slightest bit upbeat? Like there's a shred of hope for good in the world? John Robb should take care of that. His forecast for Iraq:

The US will find itself forced to remain in Iraq indefinitely, despite an inability to achieve any meaningful victory conditions. The reason for this is simple. Iraq is a core producer of oil for global markets. Control of this oil cannot be ceded to either the guerrillas or Iran under any meaningful interpretation of US policy. Further, a full US withdrawal would put Saudi Arabia at risk -- the collapse of both of these oil producers in tandem would plunge the global economy into a depression. As a result, the US will stay. The most likely result is that the US will reconfigure its remaining forces to play the role of the "strongest faction" in Iraq.

This new role is the inevitable result of the US withdrawal from pacification operations (particularly in Anbar), the evaporation of funding for reconstruction (Bechtel's departure from Iraq marked the end of the effort), and the failure of the effort to rebuild the Iraqi military (due to a deficit of loyalty to the government). As the strongest faction in Iraq, the US will adopt the strategy of a spoiler. This means that we will remain in Iraq to prevent (through the decisive application of force) any Iraqi faction (that is antagonistic to the US) or Iran from gaining control of Iraq and its oil. The US presence will also attempt to prevent the spread of the conflict to Saudi Arabia. It will be interesting to see how this role evolves over the next few decades, particularly as the conflict (despite US efforts, or worse, due to the inadvertent consequences of US efforts) spreads to Saudi Arabia. At that point, the entire strategy deck will be reshuffled (almost certainly for the worse, from the US perspective).

UPDATE 5:42 PM: Check out Fred Kaplan's take, too.

It's hard to justify keeping even 50,000 American troops in Iraq—even if they're just sitting there—unless they have a mission. The mission might serve as an adjunct to a broader political initiative.

If Iraq falls apart, the bordering states will be tempted to rush into the vacuum, partly for their own security, partly for aggrandizement. If they do, their forces may brush up against one another (Iraq's internal sectarian borders are far from distinct). The United States could serve as a mediator to keep this from happening. To play this role, it helps to have troops on the ground and planes in the air.

This may be the only real purpose of a U.S. military presence in Iraq at this point—to keep the country and the region from erupting into flames.

Pace Takes Page from Kerry Playbook?

Back in 2004, John Kerry got hammered relentlessly for likening the fight against terrorism to the fight against crime.

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance," Kerry said. "As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."

Will the same folks that beat on Kerry now slam the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace?

Asked in [an] interview, on MSNBC, if the United States was winning in Iraq, the general replied: "You have to define winning. I don’t mean to be glib about that. Winning to me is simply having each of the nations that we’re trying to help have a secure environment inside of which their government and their people can function..."

"Example: Here in Washington, D.C., there’s crime, but there’s a police force," he said. "And the police force keeps the level of crime below the level at which the government can function. That’s really what winning in the war on terrorism is." (emphasis mine)

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a big fan of Massachusetts' dorky, superior-than-thou junior senator. But I did think he got a raw deal on that particular comment. And it's interesting to see how the thinking on Iraq is shifting.

Joint Chiefs Want Big Changes for Iraq?

The Jim Baker-led Iraq Study Group is getting all the attention -- especially since one of its members is poised to become the next Defense Secretary. But there's a second influential commission looking at new directions for Iraq, Inside the Pentagon reminds us: "A small group of officers assembled by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, [and] expected to conclude its work in December... Some observers anticipate the recommendations will call for a dramatic change of course in the Persian Gulf nation and perhaps in the war on terrorism more broadly."

Among the top ranks of the military, there is a growing consensus that more U.S. troops are needed to crush the insurgency and cultivate the support of an Iraqi public that is not yet convinced American forces will win, a number of well placed sources say.

But that view is increasingly out of step with lawmakers and the American public, where pressure is mounting to establish "benchmarks" for the withdrawal of some or all U.S. troops.

Back at the Pentagon, Pace’s group of colonels is taking a wide-ranging approach, examining holistically the strategies for securing Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as fighting the broader war on terror, defense sources tell ITP.

The results may prove surprising, some say. The Pace group is headed toward making some bold and unconventional recommendations -- ones that may demand consensus across party lines as Bush struggles to work with newly empowered Democrats in Congress. The president and a variety of lawmakers have staked out opposing positions on troop levels for Iraq and what their objectives and strategy should be.

If the various political factions dig in their heels on their respective concepts for Iraq, they might yet all agree on one thing: that the Pace recommendations are politically naive and dead on arrival, some officials warned.

Another risk Pace faces is that the new defense secretary or members of Congress will cherry-pick only some of his recommendations for implementation, potentially leaving the military with a watered-down version of a new strategy that would only work if carried out in toto, sources said.

President Bush, for the time being at least, says he's "open to any idea or suggestion that will help us achieve our goals of defeating the terrorists and ensuring that Iraq's democratic government succeeds."

New SecDef = New Iraq Plans? (Updated)

A week before the election, House Majority Leader John Boehner told CNN, "Let's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld...the fact is, the generals on the ground are in charge." It was the latest in a long line of efforts to distance the Defense Secretary from the war launched and conducted under his watch.

Nevertheless, there are indications that a change in SecDefs may trigger a shift in Iraq policy. As Stratfor's George Friedman notes, Rumsfeld's designated successor, Robert Gates, has "particular significance because he was a member of the Iraq Study Group (ISG). The ISG has been led by another member of the Bush 41 team, former Secretary of State James Baker. The current president created the ISG as a bipartisan group whose job was to come up with new Iraq policy options for the White House."

Before Rumsfeld's resignation, it had not been entirely clear what significance the ISG report would have. For the Democrats -- controlling at least one chamber of Congress, and lacking any consensus themselves as to what to do about Iraq -- it had been expected that the ISG report would provide at least some platform from which to work, particularly if Bush did not embrace the panel's recommendations. And there had, in fact, been some indications from Bush that he would listen to the group's recommendations, but not necessarily implement them. Given the results of the Nov. 7 elections, it also could be surmised that the commission's report would become an internal issue for the Republican Party as well, as it looked ahead to the 2008 presidential campaign. With consensus that something must change, and no consensus as to what must change, the ISG report would be treated as a life raft for both Democrats and Republicans seeking a new strategy in the war. The resulting pressure would be difficult to resist, even for Bush. If he simply ignored the recommendations, he could lose a large part of his Republican base in Congress.

At this point, however, the question mark as to the president's response seems to have been erased, and the forthcoming ISG report soars in significance. For the administration, it would be politically unworkable to appoint a member of the panel as secretary of defense and then ignore the policies recommended.

UPDATE 11:38 AM: Matthew Stannard at the San Francisco Chronicle was kind enough to quote me -- along with luminaries like Friedman, Tom Barnett, T.X. Hammes, Heritage's John Jay Carafano, and John Aqruilla -- for his story on some of the challenges that Gates will face. I'm flattered to be included in such company.

UPDATE 11:40 AM: Wrong, wrong, says the Armchair Generalist. "Bob Gates' role is going to keep the rudder straight and to continue Cheney's directions on how to execute the war in Iraq and Afghanistan until Bush leaves office in January 2009. The only guarantee we have is kinder, gentler press briefings."

This is supposed to be interpreted as "see, I'm taking a trusted old friend of the family who talks to moderate Repubs like Brent Scowcraft, no more Big Bad Rumsfeld to scare us with his funny sayings about 'the Army you have'." Now Bush says he's ready to work with the Democratic-dominated Congress and work out a new bipartisan plan for Iraq. This means change for the better, right? Wrong.

In reality, the FY07 budget is already locked into place, and discussions on the defense supplementals are well along. In about a month, the FY08 budget will be locked into place by the White House. That means for the last two years, there will be little if any change from the defense acquisition plans designed by and approved by Rumsfeld. The White House isn't going to change its tone about Iraq unless Congress withholds operations funds for troops, and that's not going to happen with this new Dem Congress. At best, I foresee continued troop deployments and OSD maintaining 150,000 plus troops through the summer, and maybe - maybe - a decrease in the fall IF things settle down. If not, the troops are staying there, in the very large, hardened, permanent military installations.

There aren't going to be any key people leaving the Under Secretary or Assistant Secretary of Defense positions. This is a prediction, not a fact (yet). All of Rumsfeld's people are going to stay in place. All those responsible for the Iraq war have already left. The 2006 QDR already set the course, and the National Military Strategy is already out.

So what do you guys think? Does Gates mean a new plan for Iraq -- and for the Pentagon? Or is he just a care-taker. Sound off.

UPDATE 12:05 AM: Fred Kaplan calls Gates "professional, fastidious, and nonpartisan. If George W. Bush was looking for an utterly uncontroversial figure to calm nerves, settle bureaucratic hostilities, and re-establish credibility on Capitol Hill, he could have found no one more suitable than Robert Gates."

Kaplan also notes that Gates turned down the job of national intelligence director "in part because he realized that the post would give him little authority to make policy or to hire and fire people. It's a fair inference that he wouldn't have taken the Pentagon job, either, without assurances that he'd have leeway to make big changes."

Greg Djerejian is high on Gates, too:

We will have a Secretary of Defense who displays pragmatism and humility, not recklessness and hubris. We will have a Secretary of Defense in favor of occasionally speaking to our enemies, not intimating mindlessly and unpersuasively that the war might be expanded to new theaters willy-nilly (see Gates' co-chairing an excellent CFR task force calling for dialogue with Iran back in '04). We will have a Secretary of Defense who would never play Secretary of State, needlessly alienating allies with talk of "Old Europe", or battering our reputation in the Middle East by using gratuitous phrases like the "so-called Occupied Territories". We will have a Secretary of Defense who will display a much more sophisticated understanding of the myriad challenges presented in Iraq and Afghanistan--not to mention the war on terror more generally (an increasingly empty phrase in need of a radical rethink, of which more soon). And, not least, we will have a Secretary of Defense who understands the import of the Geneva Conventions, of the advisability of treating detainees in our custody with respect and dignity, in accordance with what we used to call American values. In short, we will have a competent pragmatist armed with fresh strategic lens, not an arrogant well past his prime and beholden to the failed polices of the past.

Rummy Gone; Transformation Next? (Updated)

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation is, of course, all about Iraq. But the implications of Rumsfeld's departure go way, way beyond the conduct of today's war. The shape of America's military for decades to come is at stake.

Over his six year tenure at the Defense Department, Rumsfeld came to personify a number of technology-heavy efforts to remake the armed services. Rumsfeld's presumptive successor, Robert Gates, is going to have to make big decisions about what happens to those projects, soon after he settles into his office in the Pentagon's E-Ring.

For instance, Rumsfeld became a champion of the idea that the American military had to change itself -- from an array of heavy, plodding forces to a reconfigurable collection of lighter, quicker, better-networked units. Every vehicle, every commander, every drone, and every grunt would eventually be connected to a wireless Internet for combat, under the doctrine, known alternatively as "revolution in military affairs" or "force transformation." By sharing so much information, U.S. forces would be able to make decisions lightning-fast, outmaneuvering and outwitting any foe. Missions that used to take countless thousands of soldiers could be accomplished with a few, wired-up troops, the theory went.

Faith in "transformation" is one of the big reasons why Rumsfeld overruled his generals, and cut the invasion force for Iraq by more than half. It explains, in part, why troop levels were kept low, even as the war effort began to unravel. And the "transformation" guide star kept research and development funds for a networked military flowing, even as a cash crunch hit the rest of the military. Will the new Defense Secretary stick with those decisions?

It's one of several questions I ask in a piece for Popular Mechanics, which should be on-line soon. I'll let you know when it is.

UPDATE 8:40 PM: It's up.

UPDATE 8:58 PM: Go read John Noonan's almost poetic elegy for Rummy and transformation, now.

UPDATE 8:59 PM: For anyone that thinks I've been too harsh on Rummy -- the "good riddance" comment really seemed to piss folks off -- please do not read Phil Carter's latest piece in Slate. The Army captain, just back from Iraq, is absolutely withering in his critique of his former boss'-boss'-boss'-boss'-boss.

When Rumsfeld took office in 2001, he swept in with promises to transform America's military—to move from the industrial age to the information age by revolutionizing both America's military hardware and the way it does business. He presented himself as a successful CEO who would hammer the Pentagon's notoriously recalcitrant bureaucracy into shape. Yet, despite all his rhetoric, it's not clear that he actually accomplished much in this area. The Rumsfeld defense budgets allocated more money to areas that he prioritized, such as missile defense and sophisticated systems like the Joint Strike Fighter and Future Combat Systems, but these were marginal changes from the 1990s, consistent with the ways the services were moving already. Despite his best efforts, Rumsfeld never managed to fundamentally change the way the Pentagon does business, partly because he ran into a solid wall of opposition from the military establishment, defense contractors, and Congress.

In battling these foes and others, Rumsfeld didn't just lose the fight, he also did a great deal of damage to the military and to the country. Thanks to Bob Woodward, we now know a few more salacious details about his spats with senior military leaders—such as the way he emasculated former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers. We also know how he handpicked officers for key positions in order to ensure that every senior general or admiral was a Rumsfeld company man, a policy that had a tremendously deleterious and narrowing effect on the kind of military advice and dissent flowing into the office of the secretary of defense.

Army Reshuffles for Long War

"Pentagon records show one-fifth of the Army's active-duty troops have served multiple tours of war duty while more than 40% haven't been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan," reports USA Today.

So the Army is "realign[ing] its forces to prevent a small slice of soldiers who are shouldering much of the fighting from wearing out."

The Army is moving soldiers from specialties such as artillery and air defense to high-demand roles: infantry, engineering, military police and intelligence, Special Forces, civil affairs and psychological operations, said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for Army personnel.

Makes sense to me. What do you guys think? And if the Army is doing this, isn't the next logical step to ship more -- way more -- Navy and Air Force types to the Sandbox, too?

Goodbye 'Gee Whiz?'

During the Cold War, the U.S. military developed weapons and strategies to counter its Soviet adversaries, in a process known as "threat-based" planning. But, once America became the sole superpower, its armed forces slowly stopped making gear and plans to beat its enemies; there didn't seem to be any enemies strong enough to plan for. Instead, Pentagon chiefs began to let their imaginations roam free -- and look at what the American military of the future could do, rather than what it needed to do in order to win. "Capabilities-based" planning overtook the "threat-based" model. Defense officials cooked up wonder weapons, like the DD(X) destroyer, the F-22 stealth fighter, and the Future Combat Systems suite of ground vehicles -- even though the adversaries for these remained, at best, unclear.

But with America mired in a pair of increasingly nasty guerrilla wars, some in the military and research establishment are looking to return to the "threat-based" approach. And that means coming up with gear ASAP that can make a difference in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Contractors" are beginning to "shift their focus from gee-whiz technologies to 'relevant' ones that can save lives and improve capabilities today," EE Times says.

Those requirements include four basic capabilities: "force protection" technologies needed, for example, to counter IEDs; command and control; "battle space awareness," or the ability to spot threats early and quickly counter them; and the all-encompassing concept of network-centric warfare, in which sensors can pick up and parse threat data, fuse it into useful information and deliver it via ground and space networks to commanders in the field...

[T]he Air Force is spending heavily on technologies like data links, data fusion and secure communications, Janos said... Meanwhile, the Navy is investing in power electronics and sensor technologies. A key research priority for the Army as it seeks to improve force protection is developing robots with greater autonomy. Janos said unmanned ground vehicles that require several operators won't cut it in a ground force that is already stretched to its limit.

All true. But still, from what I've seen, the changes in attitude are still only at the margins. Often, the military-funded researchers -- and their managers -- that I meet seem only dimly aware that there are wars going on at all. They might pay some lip service to fighting the counterterror fight. But the money, and the research projects, seem only tangentially connected to that struggle.

Take this story from National Defense magazine. "Far from being disconnected from the practical concerns of deployed forces, Navy scientists are making it their business to be attuned to the demands of sailors and Marines," it insists. But what that turns out to mean is that most of the 30% of the "future naval capabilities" research budget is actually producing... well, future naval capabilities, instead of science experiments. If that's an improvement, so be it. But isn't that setting the bar a little low?

Don't get me wrong. Everyone here at Defense Tech HQ loves big ideas and shoot-for-the-moon science. But when the country is losing two wars at once, it's time to get our priorities straight.

(Big ups: RC)

Iraq: Get Back in the Streets (Updated)

There are about a thousand reasons why I'm psyched that Phil Carter is finally home from Iraq. Near the top of the list: he can finally start writing about the war in public, again. First was his killer op-ed in the Sunday Times. Now, he's got an even better piece in Slate.

During the last two years, the U.S. presence in Iraq has consolidated in massive superfortresses like LSA Anaconda and shut down dozens of smaller bases and outposts across the country...

This [strategy] presumes that U.S. forces are able to respond at a moment's notice. Nothing could be further from the truth. The American battalion responsible for Balad is stretched over hundreds of square miles... A medium-sized city like Balad, with 100,000 residents, might be patrolled only by a company — 100 to 150 men — at any given time.

This violent weekend proves that America needs to radically change its course in Iraq, while some form of victory still lies within our grasp. First, the U.S. military must reverse its trend of consolidation and redeploy its forces into Iraq's cities. Efficiency and force protection cannot define our military footprint in Iraq; if those are our goals, we may as well bring our troops home today. Instead, we must assume risk by pushing U.S. forces out into small patrol bases in the middle of Iraq's cities where they are able to work closely with Iraqi leaders and own the streets.

Counterinsurgency requires engagement. The most effective U.S. efforts thus far in Iraq have been those that followed this maxim, like the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar, which established numerous bases within the city and attacked the insurgency from within with a mix of political, economic, and military action.

Damn right. Welcome home, Phil.

UPDATE 1:20 PM: "Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the Americ