Pentagon Labyrinth

On this episode of The Pentagon Labyrinth, we analyze the most recent F-35 testing report in depth and place the issues raised in the proper context.

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis talks about the official lies told about the Afghanistan War, revealing the truth, and how America can forge a new foreign policy path moving forward.

Retired Navy JAG and Syracuse Law professor Mark Nevitt talks about the laws governing the president’s authority to deploy the military within the United States.

Retired Army doctor Robert Adams talks about the consequences of the efforts to outsource the military’s health system over the past decade, despite repeated warnings from medical professionals.

The relationship between the military and the society it serves has a significant impact on policy decisions and even budgets. The veneration of service members in the United States today manifests benignly in the refrain, “Thank you for your service,” and the much appreciated discounts at the local home improvement center, but this reverence can also have less benign effects. The number of retired flag officers serving in high government positions, sitting on the boards of defense contractors, and appearing as talking heads on television shapes policy, which in turn drives Pentagon budgets.

Dr. Steele Brand, a professor of history at The King’s College in New York City, explored the differences between the citizen-soldier and the soldier-citizen in his recent book, “Killing for the Republic.”Republican Rome produced highly adaptive armies with farmers who would moonlight as effective soldiers during the campaigning season and then return to their families and plows—a practice that helped to remove the barriers between the military and the society it served, according to Brand. He says Rome’s part-time soldiers faced an uphill battle against enemy professionals, but that their ability to adapt meant they usually prevailed in the end. In this interview, Dr. Brand explains the differences between the Roman and American models of training soldiers and how those differences contribute to the civilian-military divide.

Corruption is often viewed as a byproduct of unrest and ineffective government. Former adviser to the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Sarah Chayes, in her book Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, makes the case that corruption is the single largest source of unrest in the world. With this lens, it is possible to better understand many of the hotspots around the world—including Afghanistan, the counties upended by the Arab Spring, and even colonial America’s revolution.

Show Notes:

Thieves of State

Sarah Chayes: on living in Afghanistan and sleeping with a Kalashnikov

The Afghan Bag Man

Sarah Chayes: Global Kleptocracy

*Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden*

Combat troops tend to get the majority of the attention in the coverage of our overseas wars. But there is an often-overlooked cadre of troops that perform a key role in our overseas campaigns and can affect both the duration and outcome of a conflict.

The United States has a long history with military advisors. Soldiers in the Continental Army were on the receiving end when the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron von Steuben worked with them to increase their effectiveness on the battlefield. American forces have been advising foreign militaries since the early twentieth century in places such as the Philippines, the Caribbean, Korea, Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and still in Afghanistan. In spite of the frequency of these missions, the services have only recently taken steps to create permanent advisor institutions.

Marine Corps Captain Maurice “Chipp” Naylon spent seven months in Afghanistan as an advisor with the Georgian Army and wrote a book, The New Ministry of Truth, about his deployment. His experiences, both good and bad, provide insight to the role military advisors play.

Show Notes:

The New Ministry of Truth

By living on Afghan base, Army advisors aim to better enable partners

MCSCG Deploys to the Republic of Georgia

Marines’ alliance with Georgians holds clues to future missions

*Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden*

Military leaders are faced with a dilemma unique among the professions. While doctors get to practice medicine, architects get to design buildings, and educators get to teach students on a daily basis, military professionals spend the vast majority of their careers preparing to do a job they rarely, and in some fortunate cases, never have to actually perform.

This makes the education and training of military leaders that much more important. They need to be ready to perform at their peak from the first moment they are called to do so. Those they lead will pay the price for a lack of preparation.

The services already do a lot to train their people to do their jobs. Almost everyone who has been in the military can, and often does, tell stories of their time spent in the field engaged in training exercises. Not to take anything away from these exercises, but most of them are only useful insofar as they train and refine procedures—they don’t actually test people’s ability to make difficult decisions based on imperfect information.

Bruce Gudmundsson and Don Vandergriff, two leading military historians, talk about how using tactical decision games helps leaders develop the skills they need to deal with uncertain situations and prevail in combat.

Military scholars and practitioners continue to debate the significance and merit of John Boyd’s ideas more than 20 years after his death. Colonel Boyd is the legendary Air Force fighter pilot who, in addition to revolutionizing aerial combat tactics and aircraft design, also changed the way Americans think about conflict and warfare. He profoundly influenced the Marine Corps’ maneuver warfare doctrine and helped shape the ground campaign that led to the rapid defeat of the Iraqi Army during the 1991 Gulf War.

In recent years, some have attempted to classify Boyd’s ideas as airpower theory, which at its core is the basic idea that an air force, when commanded by airmen bombing targets selected by airmen, can influence the outcome of a conflict at the strategic level, independent of ground or naval forces.

Chuck Spinney, one of Boyd’s closest collaborators, explains how Boyd pointedly disagreed with airpower theory and how his ideas encompass conflict in all forms.

Show Notes:

John Boyd and John Warden: Air Power’s Quest for Strategic Paralysis – David Fadok

Airpower for Strategic Effect – Colin Gray

“Destruction and Creation” – John Boyd

“Genghis John” – Franklin C. Spinney

*Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden*

The Navy’s version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, recently declared ready for combat, has netted unacceptably low “fully mission capable” rates—meaning it’s in fact almost never fully ready for combat—according to a document obtained by the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

The fact that the Navy is pushing ahead with the aircraft in spite of evidence that it is not ready for combat and could therefore put at risk missions, as well as the troops who depend on it to get to the fight, comes at the same time as the Pentagon’s latest annual operational testing report for fiscal year 2018 shows that the entire F-35 program, the most expensive weapon system in history, is not ready to face current or future threats.

We look at these issues and more in the latest episode of the Pentagon Labyrinth.

Show Notes:

F-35 Far from Ready to Face Current or Future Threats, Testing Data Shows

FY 2018 DOT&E Annual F-35 Report

NAVAIR F-35 Readiness Charts

*Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden*