Okay, I Can't Leave the Stupid Alone

I had a post in which I linked to what I hoped was the most self-evidently stupid defense proposal I've seen lately. But I can't let it stand unexamined. Stupid is hardy after all, and must be killed lest it spread.

Is it self-evidently stupid? I thought so. But some professor type obviously thought it was the opposite of stupid. He is probably quite proud of the proposal. Which is sad.

He wants a Spartan-style army of 125,000 super warriors instead of our current Army of ... what? Woosies? Ask him.

Do read it all. But let me summarize.

He wants an active component army of just 125,000 super "warfighters, thinkers, managers, and public servants."

They would have incredibly high standards for recruiting, would constantly receive physical and skill training and education. They'd be subject to zero-tolerance dismissal for crimes or discipline problems. They'd serve 10-year terms for warriors or 15-year terms for officers. Their pay and benefits would be incredibly high to encourage the best and brightest to enlist.

Non-combat jobs would be shifted to contractors.

These Spartans--he uses that term--would be adept at "managing contingencies" at the low and high end of the conventional combat spectrum. They could conduct special operations missions or counter-insurgency. They would serve as the leadership cadre for an expanded conventional army should we need to fight a conventional war.

This "guild of warfighters" would be something that our society would hold in the highest esteem, and parents would aspire to prepare their children for entry into this highly paid and highly respected guild.

The Army National Guard and Army Reserve would revert to being a strategic reserve rather than being an operational reserve that supplements the active Army.

That's his proposal. So let's start with the problems.

Let me start with the obvious that Sparta was not a democracy. You thought Starship Troopers was fascistic and militaristic? That's just the beginning.

Just how this guild of killers separated from society by training and isolation during long terms of service (and the preparation that "Tiger Moms" would inflict on their kids to prepare them to pass the rigorous qualification tests) would remain a force for defending our democracy--if we can indeed create the civilian level of esteem required to sustain such a force (who breaks the news to Code Pink?)--is not addressed. An army modeled on the army of an autocracy will not long be the servants of the citizens of a democracy.

Let me also state that Sparta lost to Athens in transmitting their free society to the West rather than their militaristic society. So there's that.

Over the years, Sparta found they could not maintain their guild of warriors in sufficient numbers to compete with the other less-guildy city-states of Greece. Losing even small numbers of these warriors was horrifying. Preserving their army rather than using it became a dominant objective.

But we can't rely on these Spartans under the proposal. The good professor clearly thinks we need ground force reserves of the National Guard and Reserves. He doesn't say we need fewer of them--just that they should not used except for national emergencies. So we will have lesser mortals in the reserves ground combat formations. How that fits with the "guild of warriors" I do not know.

Remember that our existing Army has an operational force of about 75% of the Army. These are the troops in units that deploy. The remainder is composed of the institutional Army that trains and otherwise prepares the operational Army to fight. And there are tens of thousands of other troops who are in the brig, in school or college, or moving between units.

Since we have reserves of the same size, we need that active institutional Army to train and prepare the reserves as well as the active Spartans. Even if you assume that we simply contract out all of the institutional Army's functions in order to eliminate 80,000 of these slots, what have you saved there?

And what of the 45,000 or so in that last category. Sure, forget the brig because of the zero-tolerance. But with all that training going on, how many of the Spartans will actually be available at any given time to be deployed?

But the author wants 125,000 of them. Keep in mind that our current special operations command has 63,000 troops from all services. These are the closest we have to this type of warrior class, and they include not only Rangers (who probably don't meet his Spartan standards) and Marines (ditto), as well as the warriors the author probably considers the ideal--the Delta Force, SEALs, and A-Teams. There are also para-rescue, air and helicopter units for transport and fire support, boat units, logistics, training units, psychological warfare units, and civil affairs people.

We've had difficulty increasing our A-Teams by a third (by adding an additional battalion to all the groups. Yet he thinks we can essentially double SOCOM while stripping out all the non-Army types and sending them back to their home services? Oh, and anybody in a support function--and there are a lot even in SOCOM--gets contracted out to civilians.

The active Spartans not engaged in the constant training that turns them into super warriors will carry out all the missions--which would obviously have to be scaled back dramatically for the few Spartans to handle. Remember, these Spartans are expected to be adept at all types of warfare--but only sent to fight special operations missions and certain types of counter-insurgencies in support of allied nations fighting insurgencies.

Yet how can these Spartans fight very much when they are also expected to be the leadership cadre of an expanded active Army? You can have an Army of 125,000 that can fight a small war or you can have an active cadre force capable of being expanded into an Army of 500,000 that after at least a year of training, organizing, and equipping, can be sent to fight a larger war.

But you can't have an Army that does both. A cadre Army of Spartans will need to be top heavy in officers and NCOs to provide that leadership. Indeed, with terms of service of ten years or 15 for officers, few new low-ranking soldiers will be in this army at any given time. It will be top-heavy whether or not it is intended to fight. Or does the good professor intend for these Spartans to be content at remaining an E-3 or O-2 for ten years?

And this cadre role is puzzling since the author says we'd keep our Army National Guard and Army Reserves as is. So this guild of Spartan warrior cadres will ignore our major force of trained reserves in order to lead completely new volunteer units formed in an emergency?

It has to be this because the Army National Guard will already be fully staffed with leadership. The Reserves technically wouldn't have warriors to be led, since they are combat service support, for the most part. I assume that we won't send a Spartan colonel to lead a reserve water purification battalion (no offense to those troops--I was just a radio guy, remember--no snake-eating for me).

So what is it to be? We don't have our best Spartan warriors lead the existing reserve combat units by leaving the Guard leadership in place? Or we fire all the Guard leadership and replace them with the Spartans? Ah, unit cohesion. We knew you well.

The Guard and reserve will also be less capable since all members will be coming directly from training to those reserve components rather than receiving a constant leavening of discharged active duty troops who serve out at least the last couple years of their term of service.

And what of the relationship between the active corps of Spartans and the reserve components? Even if you assume that we don't replace all the reserve leadership with Spartan warrior leaders, this is going to be a bad relationship. Even today the active component looks down on the National Guard. And special operations troops think of even regular army troops as near-civilians not to be fully trusted in combat. How bad will it be with Spartans versus citizen-soldiers?

And then I have to ask, how do we ask our guild of warrior Spartan soldiers be supported by mere mortals in the Air Force and Navy which haven't been Spartanized?

Further, do we really retain a Marine Corps that is 50% larger than this active Spartan Warrior Army Guild? If we follow the professor's advice, haven't we just basically reversed the traditional roles of Army and Marine Corps by making the Army a super Marine Corps while the Marines become--by default--the larger, non-elite ground force intended for routine commitment to deployments overseas?

God save us from academics who want to improve the Army. This one is not one of the Spartan thinkers he hopes to recruit. The stupid was very intense. For God's sake, stop watching 300 over and over on Netflix.

But maybe this is how you get to be sort of a big deal in security policy studies. So just in case, I propose an Army of a single Superman paid $50 billion dollars per year. Oh, and a $100 billion black budget research program on countering the effects of Kryptonite, obviously.

There, am I qualified to teach undergraduates in security policy studies?