The congressionally appointed Commission on the National Defense Strategy (NDS), after a thorough two-year look, concludes that the strategy is deeply flawed.
The bipartisan panel of experts unanimously urged revisions to address emerging threats and advised a steady increase in defense spending to meet growing threats and to ensure a joint force capable of fighting major conflicts in multiple theaters simultaneously.
Led by Jane Harman, a former congresswoman from California, and vice chaired by Eric Edelman, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, the panelists said the U.S. has gone too long without a clear construct for defining the appropriate size of U.S. military forces.
“We propose a Multiple Theater Force Construct—with the joint force, in conjunction with U.S. allies and partners—sized to defend the homeland and tackle simultaneous threats in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East,” the commission proposed.
Today’s global security environment poses “the most severe” challenges since the end of the Cold War, and the situation is “getting worse, not better,” the report states. The U.S. military is unprepared for that environment, and already “at the breaking point of maintaining readiness today. Adding more burden without adding resources to rebuild readiness will cause it to break.”
Congress is making matters worse with budget constraints imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Those spending caps should be erased as soon as possible, the commissioners recommend, and spending should be increased “to begin a multiyear investment in the national security innovation and industrial base.” The nation needs a 2025 defense budget with “real growth” above inflation, and the military should be set on “a glide path” to achieving investment levels commensurate with Cold War spending.
The nation needs a 2025 defense budget with “real growth” above inflation, the report said, and the military should be set on “a glide path” to increasing annual spending from today’s 3 percent of Gross Domestic to Cold War levels, which ranged from 6.5 percent to 8 percent of GDP for most of that period.
Commissioned by Congress in 2022, the panel reported its findings in late July. Although emphatic in its delivery, only time will tell if it will find a willing and ready audience in Washington. The authors emphasize that the nation is now years late in appreciating how fast global threats are increasing and how quickly China has not just pulled even with the U.S., but in some cases exceeded it in capability.
The U.S. military was capable of managing global conflict “during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago,” the commission stated. “It is not prepared today.”
Worse, if a major fight does break out with multiple opponents, the U.S. “could lose,” commissioners concluded.
America’s industrial might, which won World War II and the Cold War, is now “grossly inadequate” to rapidly build military strength. Despite years of attempted acquisition reform, the military remains hobbled by a ponderous procurement system that slows innovation and the fielding of new equipment.
Meanwhile, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are increasing military collaboration. U.S. and Canadian forces intercepted a joint Chinese/Russian flight of bombers near Alaska in July, and both Iran and North Korea continue to supply Russia with munitions for its war with Ukraine.
The NDS, which was largely written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which delayed its release, does not take that war or the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza into account, and it underplays “the possibility of a larger war in Asia,” their report says.
A ‘Sharp Break’
“The Commission on the National Defense Strategy recommends a sharp break with the way [the Pentagon] does business and suggests an ‘all elements of national power’ approach to national security. It recommends spending smarter and spending more across the national security agencies of government,” the report states.
“The time to make urgent change is now,” with “fundamental alterations to the way the [Department of Defense] operates, the strategic focus of other government agencies and the functionality of Congress,” it continues. The U.S. must also forge closer ties and cooperation with allies and mobilize the public and private sectors.
The 2022 NDS says the right things about using an all-of-government approach to “integrated deterrence,” but the government isn’t really doing that.
In addition to Harman, a Democrat, and Eric Edelman, who served under the George W. Bush administration, the other commissioners were: retired Gen. Jack Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army; Thomas G. Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Mara Rudman of the Miller Center, a former national security official in the Clinton and Obama Administrations; Mariah Sixkiller, former strategic defense affairs director at Microsoft and a national security adviser to the White House and Congress; Alissa Starzak, former General Counsel to the U.S. Army; and Roger Zakheim, Washington director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
Force-Sizing Construct
The NDS does not specify the scale of forces needed to meet the nation’s defense obligations. The U.S. “should be able to defeat aggression by a major power while deterring conflicts in other parts of the world,” the NDS states. The nation needs more clarity, the commission said.
“We believe that there is a high probability that the next war would be fought across multiple theaters, would involve multiple adversaries, and likely would not be concluded quickly,” they wrote. “Both China and Russia independently have global reach and have committed to a ‘no-limits friendship.’” Both coordinate closely with North Korea and Iran.
The U.S. and its allies “must be prepared to confront an axis of multiple adversaries,” the commission stated.
“Not building a force construct that is appropriately resourced and sufficiently agile to deal with this environment could deter the United States from committing itself in any one theater, given the threat of conflicts in other theaters,” they said.
The result is paralyzing: “As a defense strategist warned,” the report says, “‘A force that can only wage one conflict is effectively a zero-conflict force, since employing it would require the President to preclude any other meaningful global engagement.’”
As a global power, the U.S. cannot focus on a single threat at a time. Doing so, the authors said, “is a fundamentally flawed response.” It is not enough to prepare for China and count all other challenges as lesser-included contingencies, they said. No threat—the panelists also included “violent extremism” as an ongoing concern—can be ignored.
Indeed, by focusing on the Pacific to the decrement of Europe and other theaters, they wrote, American strategy has “emboldened U.S. adversaries and required the United States to surge forces back.”
Strength “in one theater reinforces deterrence in others,” the panelists said.
The commission’s suggested force-sizing construct is “distinct from the two-war construct” that arose after the Cold War—“essentially, one in northeast Asia and one in the Middle East”—because “neither model meets the dimensions of today’s threat or the wide variety of ways in which, and places where, conflict could grow, erupt, and evolve.”
The U.S. must also recognize and prepare for “the possibility that future wars will be protracted.” America’s experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war in Ukraine shows that “modern wars often last a long time.” If the U.S. finds itself in a great power conflict, such a war would “likely last more than a few weeks or a few months.” Sustaining the fight demands a larger force, a greater arsenal, and a more resilient and robust defense industrial base—one capable of ensuring the U.S. does not run out of munitions before its military objectives are met.
“Fixing the munitions shortfall” should be a top priority for the Pentagon. While Congress has given multiyear authority for some weapons, it’s been “slow to provide and enable appropriations” to implement the concept. Congress should “significantly increase the level of investment domestically in munitions and the capacity to build them,” the commission said.
At the same time, DOD needs to work with other countries and expand munitions production “across U.S. allies” while building supply chain resiliency. It must constantly invest in new weapons to keep pace with adversaries and should “fund the recapitalization of armories and invest in advanced manufacturing and further stockpiling of munitions.” Greater “interoperability of parts” could help ensure the Pentagon buys the munitions it needs “at sufficient scale to deliver the desired operational effect.”
Commissioners warned that failures to hit recruiting targets indicate cracks in the All-Volunteer Force, and may require some re-evaluation of the sustainability of that model.
More Air Force
Commissioners noted that the Air Force is “at the forefront of a host of missions,” ranging from homeland defense to rapidly projecting power worldwide, to intelligence support “that allows the rest of the joint force to function.”
But “the size of the service (as measured in either personnel or aircraft) has stagnated, if not declined.” The Air Force’s platforms suffer from “lackluster” mission capable rates, leaving “only a fraction of the force ready for combat” at any given time.
New capabilities like the B-21 bomber are in development, but “still years away” from being produced in volume and available for combat operations.
“The Air Force requires significantly more resources to expand both its capacity and its capabilities,” commissioners said. They did not detail the number of wings, aircraft or personnel needed to achieve the multiple-theater capacity needed, however, saying only that USAF needs to “maintain sufficient aircraft” to support multiple theaters of readiness.
Commissioners applauded the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, urging the Air Force to pursue “attritable and runway-independent aircraft” to achieve needed numbers in places where adversaries will target air bases. They also voiced support for the Next-Generation Air Dominance system, the Next-Generation Air Refueling System, and improved air base defenses—“both active and passive … to prepare for the future fight.”
As for the Air Force’s effort to “re-optimize” for great power competition, the commissioners said it “is necessary but not sufficient.” The Air Force needs “more than just a reorganization.”
The High Ground
The nascent U.S. Space Force provides “a critical asymmetric advantage in modern warfare, underpinning nearly all military operations,” the commissioners wrote. Critical communications; position, navigation, and timing; and intelligence come through space. With China, Russia and other adversaries fielding anti-satellite capabilities, “space increasingly is a warfighting domain in its own right,” they recognized. Both the Space Force and U.S. Space Command “must be given continued attention and resources as they organize, bolster space defense and resiliency, and present forces to the joint force.”
The commission didn’t offer an opinion on how big Space Force needs to be, but “given the indispensable reliance on these capabilities and the advent of space as a warfighting domain, the Commission recommends continued investment in diversifying and dispersing satellite constellations, developing redundant communication pathways, enhancing cybersecurity measures for space systems, investing in on-orbit defensive and offensive capabilities, and fostering international cooperation to enhance the resiliency of U.S. space capabilities.”
It urged the Space Force to continue to work with commercial and international partners noting that “commercial space offers significant potential to augment existing government systems, and the United States should continue to expand this area of American advantage.”
The New Basics
Instead of specific force-size suggestions, the commission laid out broad capabilities the joint force must acquire as soon as possible. The military needs to be big enough to:
1. Defend the homeland, maintain strategic deterrence, prevent mass casualty terrorist attacks, maintain global posture, and respond to small-scale, short-duration crises;
2. Lead the effort, with meaningful allied contribution, to deter China from territorial aggression in the Western Pacific—and fight and win if needed;
3. Lead NATO planning and force structure to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russian aggression; and
4. Sustain capabilities, along with U.S. partners in the Middle East, to defend against Iranian malign activities.
While it said the U.S. should be advocating a steady increase in defense spending, the commission also counseled DOD and Congress to “spend smarter.” The two entities should “review all major systems against likely future needs, prioritizing agility, interoperability, and survivability.”
The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff “should be more empowered to cancel programs, determine needs for the future, and invest accordingly.” Priority areas for more investment include cyber, space, and software, “which have enabled warfighting for decades but are now central to conflict and are global.”