{"id":2017,"date":"2012-11-02T12:53:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T02:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2013-07-08T13:48:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T03:48:58","slug":"rebalancing-or-jockeying-for-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/rebalancing-or-jockeying-for-position\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebalancing or jockeying for position?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Sometimes an aside illuminates the important underlying drivers of issues. At Wednesday\u2019s ASPI\u2013Hewlett-Packard Defence and Security Lunch<\/a>, retired US Admiral Gary Roughead mused briefly about rebalancing of US forces to the Pacific. Pressed later to elaborate, he suggested the change in focus would have significant ramifications for resource allocations: in other words, who gets the money. What makes this fraught is the increasingly constrained military budget. The conditions are ripe for a turf war between the services.<\/p>\n Over the past decade the focus has been on land conflict. Sure, there\u2019s been a significant role for precision missiles and air assets have also played a part\u2014particularly in intelligence collection. But everything has been, essentially, devoted to winning the fight on the ground: it\u2019s been an Army-led war. This will change with the withdrawal of ground troops from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The title of the US\u2019s new fighting doctrine\u2014Air Sea Battle\u2014offers a clear indication of where the resources will be going. The inability of the Army to achieve unequivocal victory was already apparent when Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta signed-off on this new operational concept in 2011. It was recognition that, even leveraging off America\u2019s overwhelming technical superiority, land forces still hadn\u2019t been able to secure the victory Washington desired.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why the US is instead switching attention to arenas where its technological lead might pay off. The Air Force and Navy will now get the lion\u2019s share of resources. It\u2019s much easier for politicians to keep defence industry lobbies happy by approving new contracts for planes and ships than it is raising extra army units. Secondly (perhaps unfairly) the Army\u2019s credit in Washington isn\u2019t very high at the moment. Nobody blames the soldiers for not being more successful in Afghanistan, but the limitations of \u2018boots on the ground\u2019 are becoming apparent. And the maritime nature of the Pacific theatre further strengthens the hand of the Navy and (to a lesser extent) the Air Force at the expense of the Army.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t expect any loud announcements, but by all accounts there\u2019s a new dynamic at work in Washington. This will shuffle more money to the Navy and Air Force; less to the Army. Interestingly, a similar struggle for resources has begun here in Australia.<\/p>\n A couple of months ago (and again at an ASPI function), Air Marshal Geoff Brown made a strong pitch<\/a> emphasising the urgency of maintaining a strong air force. He described a recent exercise where the air commander needed to deploy all his assets. There was absolutely nothing in reserve.<\/p>\n