RE: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,168151,00.html

"So the military keeps building the F-22 fighter, which was designed to fight the Soviet Union, the Future Combat Systems, designed for ground combat against a conventional foe, and expensive ships and submarines that have little to do with fighting guerrillas on land."

Enemies become friends and Friends become enemies at such a frightening pace that it is irresponsible to believe that just because today the world is full of "shiny happy people holding hands" that the full out wars of Christmas Past will never come about again. This type of wishful thinking bit the US in the butt several times in the past.

Remember, WWI? After that war the US decommissioned and disengaged in military spending. Then WWII happened. It took the US almost 2 years to reconstitute our fighting force to the tune of "war bonds" and "rationing".

A decade after the great WWII? The Korean conflict. Once again the US found itself relearning how to fight. And on and on and on.

"fighting guerrillas, counterinsurgency warfare is more manpower intensive—requiring boots on the ground—and less dependent on high-tech weapons than conventional battle."

Lets take that one step further and say that developing high-tech weapons takes time, not just money. Counter insurgencies can be fought by adding more soldiers utilizing tried and true methods requiring little technological advancement. On the contrary, if you fall behind on the conventional war front, you dont just fall behind until you spend enough money to catch up, time lost in development is time lost forever.

The US cannot afford to lose its edge. Our greatest deterrent is not our ability to conduct "counter insurgency", it is our ability to completely and utterly destroy any foreign armed force we encounter with very little effort. If we lose that ability, we lose one of our greatest diplomatic tools.

Mr Eland , as usual, shows us his biased opinion and relative ignorance to the DoD and military strategic level thinking. It's his vision of the world that will ensure the US never again wins a war. The public has no stomach for casualties, ours, and particularly collateral casualties. The only way to avoid that is to develop better, higher tech weapons that minimize or virtually eliminate that situation, while demolishing the enemy's ability and will to fight.

And we have no peer competitors? If that were true, please explain how a Chinese deisel submarine could pop up undetected in the middle of a carrier battle group exercise! Remember that story of a few months back? And why are the Russians and Chinese spending so much effort on spying on the US and stealing technology? Is it because they want to hold hands and sing kumbaya? No Mr Eland, we have conventional force foes who want to dominate our country politically and economically, through military force. Unless you have a strong desire to speak either Chinese or Russian in your daily routine, you best hope the US maintains its technological edge on all fronts.

Of course I believe the only purpose of the article is to malign the US military and Administration, as is usual with Eland. And, I might add, to keep the enemy's will to fight going strong. Gotta love him!

As has been mentioned before, we need to find a balance:

- Balance of forces (conventional / unconventional)
- Balance of equipment (single / multi - Service / purpose)
- Balance of basing (home-based / overseas-based / forward deployed [e.g., carrier / expeditionary groups, etc.])

> And we need to do this based on an honest, non-"bottom line"-based / reverse engineered QDR process free from partisan slants and constituency agendas.

> But how we get there - if we even can, I'm not smart enough to know... .

We should not be distorting the role of the U.S. military to support the illogical and neo-imperialist policies of the current administration. The "new world order" does not require us to wage interminable war against those nations and societies which refuse to go along with our grand plan.

The U.S. military should not be planning to invade, conquer, and permanently control through military force, the indigenous people of any country. That holds true whether the country in question is Moslem or Christian, Buddhist or Hindu. The U.S. Military should be planning to defeat the armed forces of any country or combination of countries, which could threaten us or an ally with armed aggression.

Of course, part of defending an ally from armed aggression may involve counterinsurgency or "irregular" warfare, such as our response to the infiltration by North Vietnamese Army units, which then fought a guerilla war inside South Vietnam. On the other side, we disrupted the efforts of the Soviet Union to do to Afghanistan what we would try to do ourselves 12 years later, by supporting a guerilla/irregular war against them.

The threat posed by counterinsurgency/irregular warfare is minor, compared to the scale of violence and the strategic nature of warfare against large and technologically advanced military forces. We simply can't afford to fall behind or cutback on our preparations for such a conflict because there will be no time to recover.

No more than 10% of our active duty forces should be geared toward fighting counterinsurgency warfare. A half dozen Special Forces Groups, the same number of Ranger Battalions, an equal complement of Civic Action Groups, and two airborne/airmobile light infantry brigades would be a large enough ground force to support guerilla and counter-guerilla operations against a foreign-fomented insurgency in multiple locations. Two or three AirForce Special Operations Wings would provide the force multiplier element with their EC/AC/C-130s and CH-53s (or modern equivalents). The defense of major population centers and installations do not require counterinsurgency skills. These tasks would be better performed by conventional forces.

We should construct our military so that a joint operation by North Korea and China against South Korea and Taiwan could be obliterated within a couple of weeks. Such capabilities involve large and far-reaching weapons systems at the ready and deployed in sufficient quantity at sea and in the Pacific territories controlled by the United States. Because of China's growing sophistication (and Russia's as well), the United States needs to press ahead with its own developments in cyber, space-, and un-manned aerial warfare, as well as long-range bombers and refueling tankers, surface ships and submarines, and in maintaining a well-trained and ready Marine Corps that is somewhat larger than its current strength.

The Army cannot afford to lose its core competency in armored and airmobile warfare. The challenge, however, is how to move such forces into the battle front safely and in a timely manner. The Army can only do as much as the Air Force's Military Airlift Command can support. (Naval Transport cannot move fast enough to provide the Army with the speed it needs to get across the oceans fast enough to make a difference.) It is in the Conventional Army's interest therefore to support procurment of heavy airlift cargo planes for the Air force at the expense of its own budget. The last thing the Army needs to spend money on is MRAPS and "up-armored" trucks and jeeps. (Unless, of course, it intends to change its core competency from heavy combat against an armored enemy to population control in a conquered country.)

Gates is right to extole the virtues of Specal Forces. These forces are in high demand in both Afgansitan and Iraq, and there are just not enough of these forces to go around.

That should not lead to a abondonment though of the current convention force roll. While Mr Eland points out that Navies and convential forces don't have a roll to play fighting terrorism, I would have to point out that it's just as difficult for Special Forces units to project power over oceans or fight a convential war.

The US forces should be rebalanced to give a great emphisis on Special Forces. But the rest of the US Military needs to be beefed up as well. The AF planes are getting old, the Navy's now so small were having difficulty projecting into all the theaters were involved in and the Army's convential equipment is worn out.

They all need a boost.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Bill Clinton was the one who freed up Guardsmen for overseas assignments. It was also his vision- not the current administratioin's-(per his address to the U.N.) that US military members would become "emmissaries of peace" through the world, not just soldiers. And then he invaded Bosnia after the UN said no, Pope said no, Congress said no, John Majors said no....

but getting back to a point the author made early in the story, "To put it bluntly, relatively low-tech counterinsurgency warfare is not as profitable as designing and building glitzy high-tech weaponry." This is not just a problem in the military or DOD or Congress. It's the problem with healthcare (healthy people don't need doctors, so where's the motivation to promote breastfeeding and other healthy activities?), it's the problem with everything. It's the economy, stupid. And there's no answer on that account.

Antirelic and Intermodal have hit the nail on the head. I'd also like to add that, as a DoD science and technology analyst, I can assure you the number of counter-insurgency GWOT-type technologies and gizmos being developed is STAGGERING. Can't say much more over an open line, but this is cool ****, it works, and I wouldn't want to be a terrorist with half of this stuff we're developing and delivering to the warfighter all the time. To say technology isn't playing a role in this war is the stupidest most uninformed thing anyone could say. I can't blame Mr Eland, he clearly only has access to the local news station so how could he know any better?

I will say though, if he's so anti-military, why is he emplyed by a website called "military.com"?