Opposed Systems Design

He does an excellent job debunking the false dichotomies that are made between preparing or hedging against future conventional threats and current SSTR missions. For example:

Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in the Defense Department’s budget, in its bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress. My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support — including in the Pentagon — for the capabilities needed to win today’s wars and some of their likely successors.

Put another way, when the prevailing wind blows so hard towards conventional modernization, one needs to lean heavily in the opposite direction to maintain equilibrium. Put another way, if America’s national security leadership does not aggressively push to include SSTR capabilities in the national security portfolio, then they will be (knowingly or not) supporting a return to the portfolio balance of the 1990s.

The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with these scenarios cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions. The United States does not have the luxury of opting out because these scenarios do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war.

Given how foreign these capabilities still are to the decades-old DoD bureaucracy, change requires constant attention to prevent institutional inertia from resisting adaptation.

Just as one can expect a blended high-low mix of adversaries and types of conflict, so, too, should the United States seek a better balance in the portfolio of capabilities it has — the types of units fielded, the weapons bought, the training done.

Getting down to the difficult business of balancing the portfolio requires some very hard work injecting transparency into budgets. Based on personal experience, the services tend to resist this. There is a long history stretching back to Secretary McNamara and the old office for Systems Analysis that makes some wary of civilian analysts from OSD intruding into service budgets. That being said, however, senior decision-makers will need to be able to consider mixing and matching different sets of portfolio elements if building a “balanced portfolio” is going to be a true strategic exercise and not just lip service.
Two Opposed Systems Design posts related to this issue:
The War Over Next
Getting Back to Great Power Competition
[H/T TPMB]