First written 2022-08-09

In Carl H Builder’s “The Masks of War”, the author’s basic premise is that each of the three big armed forces branches of the United States have their own institutional personalities.

A comparison at the start of the book sums up the three branches very aptly:
The Army’s modest, stone block, colorless, old chapel.
The Navy’s ostentatious, tall, large, with a big dome, decked with deep blue carpets chapel.
The Air Forces’ modern, soaring, silver walls lined with shining stained glass, space-ship like chapel.

The Army is the nation’s loyal servant, courageous, quiet, dutiful, all encompassing in its efforts to make do with what materials and manpower it is given to do the job it is given. Out of all three branches, the army is most cooperative with the nation and with the other two branches, for it understands that without air support and sea lift it cannot get to the places it needs to fight. The army is also the branch with the greatest legitimacy and the least innovation, stemming from the fact that it draws from the common citizenry. This legitimacy also stems from the fact that the army is the one who sustains the vast majority of human casualties in wartime.

The army prides itself on the art of war, rather than the technology of war, although Builder states that in recent years, the army is becoming more and more addicted to “toys”. The army is also the branch that most suffers from a disconnect between what it wants to do and what it most likely will be called upon to do. The army envisions itself as a mass land force combating America’s enemies (this self conception is a result of its glorious victory in Europe 1945), but the advent of nuclear weapons has largely deterred war between competing industrialized nuclear states. Instead, as we have seen, the army is far more likely to be called into “third world combat zones” in order to assert American interests. One thinks of Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. These are clearly not glorious wars (with the exception of Kuwait), and consequently the army is having a hard time admitting and adjusting to the fact that limited wars are becoming the norm.

In all these combat zones, the most useful arm of the Army (apart from the Kuwait War) was the infantry. But the army is loathe to reduce its desire for big artillery and fancy tanks, since it views intelligence gathering, guerrilla training, local suppression, and slogging through hard terrain as un-glamorous. But this is exactly the problem: high tech weapons can only defeat high tech enemies: cruise missiles killing terrorist leaders does not stop the local populace from rebelling or aiding the terrorists. Out of all his predictions, Builder was most correct to point out the problem of the Army: Afghanistan, Iraq, all displayed the inability of the army to 1. suppress rebellions and 2. create loyal and effective local institutions. Part of this failure was because Congress did not want America to create governments (as that is seen as anti-democratic), but only to help in “policing”, but part of this failure was also because the Army simply did not and still does not have the ability to police people; because it does not want to see itself in that un-glamerous way.

The Army, thus, is stuck in a strategic quagmire, because it refuses to let go of its idealized image of itself: still reminiscing over the glory days of 1944-1945 Europe.

The Navy is the most independent of the three branches: it is proud, haughty, skilled, and totally aware of what forces it needs to do the job at hand (or at least, the job it wants to do). The tradition and haughtiness of the Navy was so strong that even up until the 1970s high commanding officer’s land quarters were assigned servants and housekeepers. The independent streak of the navy stems from the old problem of command and control in the era before radio: navy commanders were often given full control of their ships and their mens’ lives. (Think back to Perry, who was commander, president, diplomat, and warlord, making all the decisions on the spot by himself, to sail into Japanese waters and threaten them.) It is this long standing traditional operational independence that informs the Navy’s staunch efforts to resist any attempt by any party to encroach on its area of influence.

The Navy is in between the army and air force in terms of its strategic innovation and legitimacy. Although the common people can understand the Navy’s use, they do not understand why the Navy so highly values its independence. The Navy’s strategic thinking is also in the middle because its strategy can only change so fast as its ships change: although a fully primed war industry can build a plane or tank relatively quickly, a ship still needs a long while to build. Thus, out of all three branches, the Navy focuses most on how to use their ships, rather than what ships should be built. But despite the long build period for ships, this doesn’t mean the Navy has an excuse to not ask what kind of war it will most likely be fighting in the future.

Currently, the Navy’s choice self perception is still the “big ships open sea” doctrine, as best represented by the entire naval campaign against Imperial Japan in the pacific. Although carriers have replaced battleships as the capitol ships, nonetheless, the emphasis is on big surface ships in big formations fighting a worthy enemy navy in big formation. Of course, as you may have noticed, and as I have (and am) predicting in my earlier posts, there is nothing saying that an adversary has to fight the US navy in the way that the US navy wants them to fight.

And furthermore, statistics show that big fleet battle is not the all-deciding factor. Although we often hear that the carrier battle at Midway was the turning point in the Pacific, one rarely hears of the huge contribution American submarines made in sinking Japanese convoys. In fact, 2% of America’s seagoing personnel (the submariners) accounted for a whopping 55% of Japanese convoy tonnage sunk. If the battle for islands such as Okinawa and Iwo Jima was brutal enough, imagine how much worse it would have been if the Japanese garrisons were actually well supplied and well fed!

And speaking of convoys, the US Navy loathes to put more money into convoy escort. This is because the Navy sees convoy escort duty as un-glamorous and boring. (Think how for all the movies about Carrier and even Submarine warfare in WW2, the only one about escort warfare that comes to mind is Tom Hank’s recent “Greyhound”, which wasn’t even released in theaters: this just goes to show how unpopular even in the public’s mind the duty of convoy escort is). Yet as I have described, it was precisely the lack of convoy escort on the part of the Japanese that crippled their oceanic empire. Likewise, it was precisely the lack of effective convoy escort (during the early ears of the war) across the Atlantic that nearly starved the British isles.

In the next conflict, it is likely that no one will be dumb enough to challenge the USN on the high seas, instead, it would be much more effective (as Hitler realized) to target Allied shipping by using submarines. (And submarines are super effective: in an exercise in 2005, a Swedish submarine utilizing an ultra quiet engine “sank” an American carrier being screened by friendly destroyers). Also, the current USN’s fixation on high seas fleet battle and littoral invasion (as evidenced by the stupid investments into the Zumwalt destroyers and the USS Freedom/USS Independence) will likely not come to much if any use in the future, given the fact that an invasion of any adversarial nation with nuclear weapons would inevitably invite worldwide nuclear destruction, and that any invasion of a third world power would likely not require such intense littoral support. Instead, it would be prudent for the USN to invest in more destroyer escorts and long range naval aircraft patrol planes.

The air force is the wonder child of the military. It was born purely out of theory, and put into action by the sheer ingenuity of humanity’s combined intellect. Therefore, out of all three branches, the air force is least attached to either nation or institution. The air force exists because its people love to fly: they love their machines, they love to be in the air, they love to push the boundaries. War is secondary to them, flying is the primary concern. For example, how many of you watched the new Top Gun? Many people said it was not American military propaganda. But that is just a surface analysis: even if their claim was true, why did they go watch it? Because of fascination and addiction to those incredible machines which propel one through the air, a medium in which humans clearly are not supposed to be in! And it is exactly the fact that people are so enamored with the aspect of flying and the skill required to pull it off that the air force is able to garner new recruits, scientists, and engineers to their cause. So in fact, it is military propaganda, since the air force is not an institution per se, but a band of pilots who love their machines and the sky, bankrolled by the US government, with the justification for public consumption that they may one day be called up to fight in the sky.

Out of all three branches, the air force has the least legitimacy, since it can easily be argued that their job is to simply make sure enemy air power doesn’t cripple allied ships and divisions. And that job doesn’t require an independent air branch. Thus, historically, the air force has always based its reason for existing as an independent branch under centralized control on one major concept: strategic bombing. This is because strategic bombing as a concept is completely independent from the other two branches, and glorifies the air force as an independent wing able to end wars by bombing the enemy nation to bits. Never-mind the fact that the evidence for strategic bombing is not conclusive, or that missiles have largely replaced strategic bombers; the air force still insists on this doctrine because it is the only doctrine which gives it a reason for independent existence.

For example, look at the performance of the B-52 bomber during the Vietnam war: not only did they not achieve much, but also their rate of attrition due to Vietnamese SAM defense sites was alarmingly high. During World War 2 as well, the use of strategic bombers neither totally destroyed German and Japanese war industry, nor did it compel them to surrender: the Germans surrendered only after the Soviets were literally in Berlin, and the Japanese surrendered only after it was guaranteed that their emperor would be allowed to remain. Of course, strategic bombers played an important part, but it is hard for an outsider analyst to conclude that this justified the enormous expenditure on bombers, crews, airfields, oil, payloads, along with separate independent command, and so on, much less to conclude that strategic bombing alone carried the day.

The continued advocacy for strategic bombing exists in part also because of nuclear weapons. However, even with the advent of the B-2 Bomber, it is clear that cost and maintenance of this flying wing wonder is grossly disproportional when compared to its strategic nuclear and general-combat roles. That is to say, is its main job to drop nukes? If so, it isn’t worth the money compared to ICBMs and SSBNs, nor is the wing nearly as survivable. Or, if it’s main job is to drop long range precision bombs, then other aircraft can do that for much cheaper, and we could afford to lose those other aircraft too, while a loss of even a single B-2 would be devastating (there are less than 20 in operation, and they contain some of the most secret technology). My suspicion is that the DOD has allowed the air force to retain a small amount of B-2s as a gesture of goodwill, in the hopes of better future cooperation. Otherwise, alienating one major branch of the military would not be good.

The least favorite activity of the air force has always been air-ground support: since it relegates the pilot to the role of secondary actor in the stage of ground warfare. Furthermore, ground support duty also means that the pilot cannot fly free in the sky to fight other pilots, and it also means that the pilot must obey the directives of the air support controller on the ground. The air force’s antipathy to ground support is most noticeable by a quick examination of its inventory: only a single plane (the A-10 Warthog) is designed from the ground up to carry out ground support missions. All other USAF planes, especially the notoriously cost-overrun F-35, have air superiority as their primary role and ground support as a conciliating secondary role for the other branches of service (otherwise DOD would never approve those planes). Yet, unlike strategic bombing’s iffy track record, it can be proven that air-ground support was key in numerous battles in World War 2: Nazi Maneuver Warfare doctrine, Soviet Deep Battle doctrine, and American Overwhelming Firepower doctrine all relied on and effectively used decisive air-ground support to win battles.

Despite the air force’s current distaste for air-ground support, it is likely that air-ground support will be vital in future wars in third world countries, given their (usually) horrible infrastructure and difficult terrain. As we have already seen in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, it is very difficult to deploy armor and heavy artillery in such unforgiving geography and low development areas. Air-ground support, which can bypass hills and jungles by flying over them, then, will be the key.

All in all, it seems to me that the greatest risk we have is the in ability of the army to switch to an infantry-focused doctrine. This is because war with other major industrialized powers, although “glorious”, is not likely, due to the prevalence of nuclear weapons and the logic of indefinite nuclear escalation in the situation of a losing war (for whichever side). (Of course, this also assumes American politics is not insane and the country doesn’t try to look for a scapegoat in some other major power). Also, it would not be useful to push into the homeland of an adversarial great power who is armed with nukes, since doing so would force them into a corner, thus prompting a nuke launch.

As Builder noticed in the 1990s, the army is also starting to get addicted to “toys”, like the air force and navy are addicted. Just recently, we have witnessed the huge revamp in infantry rifles with the 277 fury cartridge and complementary battle rifle. Although such a rifle definitely prioritizes the infantry, without adequate training, logistics, intelligence gathering, and so on as discussed above, such a rifle is only a new toy to play with, and cannot accomplish the necessary tasks needed for third-world warfare and policing. Indeed, such a rifle is more suited to fighting body-armored enemy infantry, rather than run-and-hide terrorists groups.

The second greatest risk is the navy, who is still hankering for littoral combat ships and carriers, instead of the lowly and trusty destroyer. Indeed, it was only after a long development and trial period that the navy finally realized that the Zumwalt stealth destroyer concept was too cost inefficient; also, the Zumwalt’s main cannon used a special ammo that was very hard to source. Recently, if I remember correctly, they are once again returning to upgrading and producing more of the classic Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

The air force is likely to remain in its current posture simply because of institutional pressure and friction. There is no major reason for them to change, so they probably won’t: they fulfill their current job of air superiority well enough, and that’s all the DOD is really looking for at this point. Even though better air-ground support planes would be good for the army, the air force likely will not make any steps towards this venture, given no urgent need. However, it is interesting to point out that the reason the air force generals in my previous post (Status of US Strategic Weapons) argued for a continued nuclear bomber presence was by saying that “sure bombers are less cost effective and survivable than ICBMs and the new submarine nuclear missiles, but by having a trinity of delivery systems we can force the Soviets to spend a proportionately more amount of resources into defending against bombers”. Again, the reasoning was one of trading costs with the Soviets, but in reality, the Air officers simply wanted to make sure their domain of strategic bombing remained relevant.

Interestingly enough, a sub branch of the Navy, the Marine Corps, is in fact evolving towards a direction that makes ample sense. The MC have rid themselves of any main battle tanks, and are returning to their role of amphibious assault (which is traditionally very infantry intensive). Indeed, it seems that after 20 years in Afghanistan, the Marine Corps have finally managed to shake off their use by the military as a first strike force for all purposes (note how they were constantly deployed in the middle east, despite the entire region lacking any real need for amphibious assault), and are now returning to their role as a first strike force for amphibious assaults only.