One could argue that a primary responsibility of a Defense Secretary is to sort out the conditions for deploying force, how to withdraw those forces and how to operate in the incomplete operations, which 21st century conditions will almost certainly require. In other words, the end game needs to guide the processes of force deployment and force generation, and not the other way around.
The Gates strategy — to the extent there was one — was to surge and hope. He clearly articulated the need for some sort of U.S. presence in Iraq, which did not happen in large part because the Obama Administration could not agree with the Iraqis on a status of forces agreement.
The book emphasizes the process of surging and drawdowns. It tells us precious little about the end games, or the relationship of ANY military intervention to strategy in the region. This clearly reflects Gates’ focus on his bureaucratic wars: on dominating the processes, and not on setting in motion any real strategic reflection about the impact of his actions.
Gates underscores two procurement decisions which he believes demonstrates his leadership against the military and civilian troglodytes who opposed his surge of support to the troops.
The first is the decision to buy the MRAPs for Iraq and their cousins for Afghanistan. There were very few leaders in the Pentagon in my experience opposed to buying some MRAPs and deploying them; indeed the Marines had already done so. The question was: how many of them and at what cost?
A key consideration should have been to include the MRAP investment within thinking and decisions about the Army’s future combat vehicle. Would this vehicle be useful anywhere but in Iraq?
As Gates puts it: “Most people believed the MRAPs would just be surplus after the war, which most also thought would soon end.”
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Acquiring some MRAPs made sense but not the at least 50 billions of dollars expended on an asset with limited utility and with very little future contribution to the force. It was a very near term asset decision, not a decision taken with the overall evolution of the future force in view.
In 2007, it was clear that Secretary Gates was jamming massive MRAP investments down the throats of the services, in spite of the very clear position of many senior players that so doing would jeopardize the force to be deployed after Iraq.
As the Christian Science Monitor reported, the then-Marine Commandant thought this made no sense.
“Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway supports the MRAP and said Monday the program “was the right thing to do.” But thinking ahead, the Corps’ top general is concerned that his service’s traditional missions could be hindered by the costly and heavy truck that is virtually impossible to transport easily. General Conway also believes the truck is contributing to the Corps losing its “expeditionary flavor.”
“Can I give a satisfactory answer to what we’re going to be doing with those things in five or 10 years? Probably not,” he told a group Monday at the Center for a New American Security, a new think tank in Washington.
“When the Marines ultimately leave Iraq – which could be sooner rather than later since they occupy one of the most secure areas there – they will effectively be saddled with the trucks if there is no mission that requires them.
“Wrap them in shrink wrap and put them in asphalt somewhere is about the best thing that we can describe at this point,” Conway said. “And as expensive as they are, that is probably not a good use of the taxpayers’ money.”
Conway was one of those military leaders who were often obstacles to achieving the Gates vision of the future. In Afghanistan, Gates was happy to reap the benefits of the Marines’ exceptional performance in Helmand, but he couldn’t resist inappropriately charging them with parochial service interests at the expense of the Afghanistan mission.
Only Helmand fit Conway’s conditions. The Marines were determined to keep operational control of their forces away from the senior U.S. commander in Kabul and in the hands of a Marine lieutenant general at Central Command in Tampa. The Marines performed with courage, brilliance, and considerable success on the ground, but their higher leadership put their own parochial service concerns above the requirements of the overall Afghan mission.
Before Helmand there was Fallujah. And in Fallujah, the Marines emphasized integrated operations and a central role for their MAGTF approach to defeat the adversary. As Marine Corps historian Fred Allison noted about the Battle of Fallujah:
“Although Air Force, Army, and Navy aircraft flew numerous strikes, in the final tally, at least 80 percent of the CAS strikes in November in Fallujah were delivered by 3d MAW aircraft, precisely and expeditiously. Approximately 318 precision bombs, 391 rockets and missiles, and 93,000 machinegun or cannon rounds were sent down range by aircraft—in concert with over 6,000 artillery rounds and almost 9,000 mortar rounds fired.There were no fratricides. ”
Perhaps the Marines had a good idea of what they were doing when it came to Helmand and — amazingly — understood the combat environment better than intelligence-analyst-turned-SecDef Gates.
The second procurement decision highlighted by Gates was his decision to increase the number of Unmanned Air Vehicles bought by the Air Force. Here he hammered his “old service” the Air Force for foot dragging and blocking not only UAV acquisitions but ISR aircraft like Project Liberty aircraft (which would also have no future).