As a global hegemon, the United States is a leader in the market of international security. Its military is the best funded, trained and equipped in the world, and should therefore be abundantly ready to manage a range of actual and potential threats to national and international security. It is nonetheless sometimes underprepared for the challenges the country faces once it decides to commit forces to a conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why is this the case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One significant reason is because defense choices made today\u2014or in the past\u2014constrain future options, require the acceptance of risk and compel adversary adaptation, which in turn reduce the value of investments initially made to maintain or improve military readiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense budgets are finite and choices have to be made. The United States cannot prepare equally for every possible threat to its national security. Because it cannot prepare for every possible threat or contingency, the United States must accept some level of risk in respect to the types of adversaries it expects to face and the operations it expects to conduct. In addition, its\u00a0adversaries are increasingly capable\u00a0and adaptive, which gives them an unofficial vote in how conflicts involving U.S. forces unfold. The more adaptive the adversary, the more likely it will confound readiness investments made previously to confront it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense budgets and planning\u00a0decisions regarding weapons-system\u00a0purchases, troop levels, and the construction of doctrinal concepts and requisite training regimens all require significant investments of time and money. Once made, these decisions tend to be difficult to reverse or even modify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, the development of what resulted in the Bradley M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle took decades to complete, and the B-52 Stratofortress that has been in service for more than a half a century is expected to\u00a0remain in service\u00a0for a few more decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With respect to troop levels, increasing or decreasing the size of the force is a process that takes years to actualize. Reducing force size\u2014which happened at the end of the Cold War and\u00a0is happening again now\u2014is difficult because downsizing usually entails a loss of capability and experience that is not easily replaced. Skilled and capable forces cannot be created out of whole cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Military doctrine and associated training are also difficult to adjust once established. For instance, although the\u00a0conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq\u00a0quickly devolved from force-on-force operations to counterinsurgent struggles, doctrine to guide these kinds of operations and associated training programs did not emerge until 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once significant and durable defense decisions are made, they naturally reduce the force’s capacity to adapt to\u00a0changes in the international security environment\u00a0when they occur. Because the United States cannot afford to prioritize and defend against every possible contingency, it must therefore accept risk\u2014strategic, operational and even tactical\u2014with each decision it makes. For instance, if the United States prioritizes and funds a capacity to deter and defeat insurgents and other violent non-state actors\u2014as it has for the past 15 years\u2014it must then accept risk in respect to its readiness to deter and defeat other types of threats to security\u00a0such as near-peer threats..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The investment decisions the United States prioritizes and the risks it chooses to accept set the conditions for how it can and will operate in\u00a0future conflicts. Unfortunately, the choices made also set the conditions for how its adversaries will choose to adapt and respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nation-states, such as China and Russia\u2014as they have in the past with U.S. nuclear weapons development, naval deployments, or advancements in its space program\u2014 are keeping close watch on how the United States arranges and deploys its forces in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. Non-state actors, such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida and its affiliates, are also taking stock of how the United States deploys forces, conducts operations and collects intelligence in its fight against terror organizations and insurgencies in the greater Middle East and North Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because both sets of actors\u2014states and non-state organizations\u2014have greater access to manifold means for and methods of conducting warfare than they did in the past, they are able to adapt to the defense decisions the United States makes in ways that confound calculations of military readiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This\u00a0convergence of threat capabilities\u00a0and modus operandi is making potential and actual adversaries much more adaptive. This, in turn, is making it that much more difficult for the United States to resource a military that historically has been expected to prepare for one type of threat or the other, with state-based adversaries\u2014as the more consequential of the two\u2014justifiably receiving the bulk of military planners’ attention. Although recent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have tempered this expectation, it is nonetheless still a prominent feature of military planning and judgments of military readiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regardless of the adversary, the United States is being required more often than not to adapt to maintain its readiness levels\u2014threats to national and international security are no longer static.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The more significant the adaptation required (either tactical or strategic), the more time and money it will take and the more reluctant or unable defense planners will be to make these adjustments. If, as is happening more frequently, an adversary can change its operational methods and postures quickly and substantially within the scope of a conflict, it will make it very difficult for the United States to maintain desired readiness levels for any significant period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Improving future military readiness will require significant adjustments to not only\u00a0how readiness is conceived of and measured, but also to\u00a0how units are organized and trained. Lessons learned through experiences in Afghanistan and\u00a0Iraq\u00a0regarding how, and the pace at which, military units and\u00a0institutions\u00a0adapt to changing operational environments and adversaries should not be forgotten, as the United States reconfigures its defense posture after 15 years of conflict. Ultimately, reducing strategic, operational and tactical risk, and improving military readiness will require conceiving of defense choices in a way that does not constrain future options and the capacity to adapt, but instead expands them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chad C. Serena and Colin P. Clarke are political scientists at the nonprofit, nonpartisan\u00a0RAND\u00a0Corporation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a global hegemon, the United States is a leader in the market of international security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":66,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[66,33,17],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1119,993],"class_list":["post-55334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-home","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"YVPHL4MFJNAGFIBL3C5ZZCEPKU","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/commentary\/2016\/08\/10\/how-defense-choices-affect-military-readiness\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n