JSF gets a boost

A report from the Washington Post seems to suggest a boost for the JSF program, which will be accelerated, and the DD-21 and CVX programs cancelled or postponed indefinitely.

“The Bush administration hopes to organize new multiservice strike forces that could be used to undertake aggressive military actions around the world and move to trouble spots within 24 hours, under a wide-ranging proposal unveiled yesterday to transform the armed services.

While relying on long-range missiles and aircraft for critical firepower, the plan also envisions the extensive deployment of combat troops overseas so they can be ready for fast attacks on hostile territory. In a departure from current practice, separate forces and specialized headquarters units would handle humanitarian missions, such as refugee emergencies.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has commissioned more than a dozen major studies aimed at scrutinizing various components of the nation’s armed services and strategy toward war. The transformation plan presented at the Pentagon yesterday was the first element of that review made public in detail. Other parts of the review, but not all of it, will be made public in subsequent briefings, officials said.

Implementing the transformation plan would require changes in several major weapons programs, speeding up deployment of the sometimes controversial Joint Strike Fighter while shelving plans for a new aircraft carrier and a new destroyer, for example. Moreover, the study suggests a major shift in military planning. Relatively limited operations, such as the 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign, would get priority over preparation for all-out conflicts such as the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which has been the guiding principle for decades.

President Bush has outlined a defense strategy in broad terms that faults past policies for continuing to emphasize the weapons and tactics of the Cold War era and not adapting to new circumstances that require more flexible, rapidly deployable forces. The transformation plan proposes changing the military’s core capabilities so that the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines can work together more effectively, and respond quicker to overseas crises.

No budget estimates were included with the proposal. It was designed to guide Rumsfeld’s thinking as he prepares a proposal for increased military spending in the 2002 budget, due to be presented to Congress within weeks. The more extensive, long-term plans will shape the 2003 defense budget due next winter.

To move quickly when a crisis erupts, key combat units from all the armed services would be organized into “Global Joint Response Forces” capable of setting up operations in a hostile environment within 24 hours, according to the proposal presented by retired Air Force Gen. James P. McCarthy, who headed Rumsfeld’s review panel on the transformation of conventional forces.

These units would be designed to gain control of a trouble spot within four days and bring a conflict to a decisive resolution within 30 days. In humanitarian emergencies, military units would start handing over operations to civilian contractors and nongovernmental organizations after 30 days, McCarthy said.

The emphasis on overseas deployments, military interventions and the use of troops on humanitarian missions runs counter to some of Bush’s campaign rhetoric last year, which criticized the Clinton administration for overextending the armed forces with missions not critical to national security. The transformation study, which was conducted by the Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded research center, only addressed the military’s capabilities and not the policies that dictate its use.

The new strike forces would serve a “U.S. strategic need,” McCarthy said, “a greatly enhanced capability to act decisively before the facts on the ground become more difficult to change.” In addition, organizing these multiservice units would mark “the first phase of the eventual transformation” of the rest of the military into a force that is at once more agile, more lethal and smaller, said McCarthy, a professor of national security studies at the Air Force Academy.

Rather than emerging from a radical redesign of the military, McCarthy said, the strike forces would be formed out of existing units. “We are not talking about a new force,” he said. “It is how to organize and exercise and train the existing forces and what capabilities to give them.”

Nonetheless, the proposal rates many weapons systems under development in terms of how much they contribute to the goal of transformation. The Joint Strike Fighter, which is expected to enter service in 2008, should be accelerated by two or three years, McCarthy said, because it would add radar-evading stealth capabilities to seaborne airpower.

Two other major Navy projects did not fare as well. Neither the DD-21, a new generation of destroyers, nor the CVX, a new aircraft carrier, contribute to the goal of transformation, the review panel concluded. “The bottom line is that we felt that continuation of what we’re building now is the right answer,” McCarthy said.

To increase the number of precision-guided weapons that the military can deliver on a target, the panel recommended converting four Ohio-class submarines to carry cruise missiles instead of nuclear ballistic missiles, and modifying the Air Force’s fleet of 21 B-2 bombers so the long-range stealth aircraft could carry more and a broader variety of bombs.”

From the Washington Post.

Looks like the JSF program is coming out of the woods after being under a very dark cloud since Bush came to power.

MinMiester