Macgregor: Pentagon satellite launch "monopoly" a security risk

Last Week, the Obama administration announced sanctions on top Russian and Ukrainian political figures. A day later, President Vladimir Putin defied the West and added Crimea to the Russian map.

How will current (and future) sanctions against Russia impact U.S. defense firms? 

Col. Douglas Macgregor, executive vice president of the Burke-Macgregor Group, offered his analysis on Government Matters.

Read more: http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/03/macgregor-pentagon-satellite-launch-monopoly-a-security-risk-101473.html#ixzz2xNacpevQ

More Guns, Fewer Generals

The American Conservative, 27 March 2014 

excerpt: In fact there is an alternative plan currently gaining the attention of some on the Hill under which the Army can operate within the same top-line cap of 420,000 troops yet produce a force that has a great deal more combat power, is more strategically flexible, and—even under sequestration—can maintain 35,000 to 50,000 troops in a perpetual state of combat readiness...  According to our analysis, as a result of numerous formation and institutional reforms the [Macgregor Transformation Model] force of 420,000 may also cost $10 billion per year less than what the current force would cost at the same size. Thus, the MTM could produce an Army with almost double the armor, be sustainable even under sequestration, and save an additional $10 billion per year...

In the uncertain international security environment that exists today, it is of paramount importance that the United States ensure it has the most powerful Army possible within budgetary constraints. The Macgregor Transformation Model could be the vehicle that accomplishes that goal. What is needed before a decision can be made, however, is an unbiased analysis. The Government Accountability Office should examine the current proposal of the U.S. Army should it be forced down to 420,000 and compare it to the MTM at the same size. The stakes are too high to willingly choose an Army construct that is smaller and less capable when an alternative plan exists that would better ensure America’s vital national interests.

full report: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/more-guns-fewer-generals/

Stalin’s Successor is teaching.

Stalin’s Successor is teaching.

Americans should learn.

 

President Obama warns that if Russia intervenes with military power to crush the new Ukrainian government in Kiev there will be a cost.  Yet, it’s hard to know what the President can actually do that would impress Putin?

 

America’s post-Cold War surplus of military power is gone.  It was squandered on self-defeating occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The preoccupation with “irregular warfare,” the self-defeating interventions conflicts with insurgents that have no armies, no air forces, no air defenses and no naval strength has left the U.S. unprepared for current and future crises:

 

·       Shrinking the Army in favor of light infantry-centric counterinsurgency—focused units has turned what’s left of the Regular Army into a large constabulary force.  The failure to consolidate Army combat power through reorganization, to extract more fighting power from its remaining numbers has destroyed support for new, survivable combat platforms the Army needs.  Capability depends on organization, technology and leadership, not just numbers.

 

·       Inside the Navy, shrinking defense dollars are diverted into amphibious carriers and Service-unique jet aircraft for the Marine Corps at a point in time when slow, diesel-powered mini-aircraft carriers with minimal self-protection cannot operate in anything other than an extremely permissive environment.  The Department of the Navy cannot afford two independent air forces both operating variants of the same aircraft or different aircraft for overlapping missions.  

 

·       The Air Force and Navy need larger strike weapons that are faster; have more penetrating power and more lethality for potential conflicts with continental opponents like China or Russia, nation-states that can absorb the precision-guided missile strikes envisioned in Air-Sea Battle the way a sponge absorbs water.  

 

·       Today, the way American military power is organized and commanded obstructs unity of effort and supports wasteful spending.  The President and the Secretary of Defense do not actually command the U.S. Armed Forces, they referee them.  Because there is no national defense staff designed to assist the nation’s civilian leaders with the command and development of the armed forces, the American people depend on an ad hoc committee of Service Chiefs, Combatant Commanders, the Secretary of Defense and the President for collective military leadership.

 

Putin understands unity of command.  He has a national general staff and he commands the armed forces.  He also knows that only ready, trained Army forces equipped with mobile armored firepower integrated with powerful air forces can initiate decisive offensive operations, punch through enemy resistance, encircle and destroy enemy forces.  Secretary Hagel should know too, but he’s deferred to the Army four stars, men who treat the U.S. Army and its soldiers like an old tire; letting air out until money and people are provided to re-inflate it.  

 

But there comes a time when you cannot re-inflate the old tire, when the old tire must be replaced with something new and better.  It’s why Putin has subjected the Russian Army to sweeping reform and reorganization, eliminating its divisions and replacing them with large, mobile brigade groups commanded by generals; mobile armored formations designed for decisive operations in concert with Russian airpower.  

 

Russia is not as strong as it once was.  Russia’s armed forces number less than a million, down from 14 million in the 1980s, but like China, Russia is still a great continental power with massive air defenses and a powerful army.  

 

Fortunately, unlike Stalin between 1929 and 1932, Putin cannot murder millions of Ukrainians with impunity.  Public displays of Russian brutality might alert the American people to Russia’s true nature.  Worse, it might wake up Germany and the rest of the Europeans from their long, comfortable sleep.  These are the reasons why Putin is moving cautiously to secure control of Ukraine’s “Russified” East and Crimea,” before gradually pushing Russian military power West to Poland’s and NATO’s eastern border.

 

But it would help enormously if the U.S. Army could provide the United States and NATO with the capabilities they need; if the option of rapidly deploying integrated Joint U.S. Army and Aerospace forces to Central-East Europe existed.  It would be a game changer if the American people had an army capable of providing the core of an allied force around which the armies of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Germany could assemble.  Then, the President could hold Moscow’s aims in Ukraine hostage to Western political demands.  

 

Sadly, the option does not exist.  Putin knows it.  

 

Colonel (ret) Doug Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, a PhD and the author of five books.  His last book was, Warrior’s Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting, (USNI Press, 2009).

IDF Prime Journal

The PDF File (see link below) was a paper written by Doug Macgregor in 1991 that was translated to Hebrew and published in Maarachot the IDF Prime Journal. 

Click here to open PDF file 

Going around Congress

 February 5, 2014 - 02:17 PM
 By Morgan Gilliam


Macgregor interview Feburary 4, 2014
Budget cuts to the Defense Department have put top priorities on the back burner. The Pentagon could find a way to work around the setbacks.

Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.), executive vice president of The Burke-Macgregor group, discussed that and other issues.



Short URL: http://wj.la/LzhLmq

No American National Defense Staff: No Coherent Defense Strategy

Like the British in the run-up to WW I, Americans spend a great deal of time congratulating themselves on defeating enemies that are the contemporary equivalents of the Sudanese Tribesmen at Omdurman in 1999 while dismissing (as most Europeans did before 1914) the possibility that large, powerful, modern Nation States and their supporting allies would ever actually engage in war.  Asking people to ponder the seemingly incomprehensible—Real War—is not rewarded with much attention on the hill or coverage in the press.  Here is a statement of part of the problem from this month’s AFJ:

 

U.S. casualty lists since 9/11 show that more than 6,700 Americans were killed and more than 45,000 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Yet in contrast to the major battles of World War II, Korea, and even Vietnam, the vast majority of these casualties were caused by improvised explosive devices during mounted and dismounted patrols, sniper fire, hit-and-run ambushes, accidents and “friendly fire” from some Afghan troops.”[i]

 

The point is simple.  When it comes to military power, we Americans are living in fantasy land.

 

We are the only modern scientific-industrial state without a national defense staff and a chief of defense with the authority to act on behalf of the president and SECDEF to determine strategic military requirements, plan and conduct military operations.  Instead, we revel in the absence of national leadership and strategy, an environment that encourages destructive inter-service fights for resources, needless military redundancy and political tampering on the Hill with defense spending for self-enrichment and political benefit.  Like the British in 1914, we’ve got something akin to a war cabinet, but no national defense staff capable of assisting the President and the SECDEF with the execution of their responsibilities. 

 

Like the British War Cabinet in 1914, our appointed and elected leaders referee  the fight among the services.  In the run-up to 1914, the competition was between the Army and the Navy with the Navy routinely capturing the resources.  Today, the inter-service competition is won by the service or services offering the best spending opportunities to congress and industry, preferably F-35 like programs that are too big to fail.  As a result, too few people are willing to accept or even address the vulnerabilities, let alone, the irrelevance of their pet rocks.

 

Instead, we are maintaining an Army that now consists of more wheeled armor and infantry than it does of survivable, tracked mobile armored firepower.  We are investing in a weak, infantry-centric Marine Ground Force that is designed to assault defended beaches, a mission Marines have not executed for 60 years.  We are funding prohibitively expensive aerospace programs like the F-35 and ship building programs like the LCS or slow diesel mini-carriers for the Marines that are excessively vulnerable to any opponent with a modicum of capability and add no useful capability to the Navy.  Meanwhile, we are investing defense dollars in ASB’s precision-guided munition salvo for use against a continental opponent, China, that will absorb the strikes like a sponge absorbs water.

 

Without defense reform led by people other than the usual suspects inside the beltway, the American people are screwed.  It’s that simple.  Cheers, Doug

Book Review: Warrior's Rage by Douglas Macgregor