Reorganize and restructure DOD
Redefine the purpose and mission of the Department of Defense
There is no doubt that reorganization, restructuring and mission realignment is necessary for all the services because the threat analysis on which the Pentagon and their Congressional oversight committees base their decisions is fundamentally flawed.
The next war or wars
The next war will be fought strategically in cyberspace and tactically throughout the World by Special Operations groups.
The traditional distinctions between the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps must cease to exist along with the service-centered bureaucracy which maintains these artificial distinctions and creates unwholesome competition for money and materials.
The notable and wasteful failures in attempts to develop planes and vehicles capable of supporting the diverse missions of more than one of the traditional military services should have made it obvious decades ago that military procurement, research, and development should be mission oriented and directed toward providing the least expensive and most effective means to accomplish a particular objective. It is time to rediscover and recreate the OSRD which helped win World War II. Design should be driven by the needs of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen facing combat not strategic planners and analysts in the Pentagon.
Fighting the next wars
The Air war will be fought at the tactical level by drones and rotary winged aircraft in the airspace from just above ground level to ~20,000 feet with fighter cover above that and strategic bombers in the stratosphere.
The Navy will have to move around the world and its protection will be submarines and defensive vessels. Carrier groups will be simply airbases in the oceans. Smaller lighter carriers and their individual surface and subsurface protection will be deployed from the larger group as launch pads for drone squadrons and their fighter protection.
The army will have to reorganize into small tactical special operations groups with armored and mobile missile support. Larger units will provide logistical support for the special operations tactical teams and provide an occupying force large rnough to hold territorial gains where that becomes a strategic necessity.
Training for the new word of warfare
America needs Universal Military Training for men and women and insist on fitness programs in educational institutions from pre-school through high school so that every child male or female becomes as fit as their natural anatomy and physiology permit.
The Armed Services should create a common 16 week program of basic training for every student graduating from high school which will assure that each student will finish the program physically fit and with an understanding military discipline in the context of and the basics of operating as part of a team at the squad level in a hostile combat environment.
After successfully completing the first 16 weeks of basic military training, the students will undergo 16 more weeks of basic training in the service of their choice.
Upon completion of the entire 32 week basic training program, each trainee will become a member of the Reserve in the service of their choice for a period of six years.
Following successful completion of the 32 week Basic Training program, every student will be entitled to a two year “GI Bill” to continue their education whether academic or vocational. They may also choose, a four year tour on active duty in the service of their choice.
What about the Marine Corps
The Marine Corps poses a unique challenge. It was created originally as a hand to hand boarding and defensive fighting force for naval ships in the days of oars and sails. The exigencies of WW II made it an independent fighting force and eventually an independent service with an essentially suicidal mission— frontal assault of heavily fortified enemy positions. To effect that mission the Marine Corps grew to include its own air and sea capabilities which were seen as competitors by the other services.
The role of the Marine Corps also became one of rapid response—to stop the Soviet armies with pre-positioned units in Norway and Germany just long enough for U.S. Army and NATO armored and air forces to react. Those who volunteered knew they were a sacrificial force.
Based on their training, Marine Corps fighting units should become part of the Special Operations forces.
The unified Special Operations command should train continuously to meet every threat as soon as it becomes evident throughout the world.
The SpecOps groups would constantly drive the logistics support Command to fulfill its field driven needs both present and future. What the field units need, the logistics support system must supply.
Logistics
The logistical support units of all the United States Armed Forces should be consolidated in a central logistics service which supports all of the fighting units of all the services. However, central logistics leads to sloth-like response in timers of crisis.
Fighting units should never have to worry about supplies. What they need should be at hand or at most a few minutes away. Their mission is combat, not logistics. Every fighting unit needs its own supply support unit, provisioned with supplies for one or two days, located one battlefield terrain feature behind the combat units.
A Cyberwarfare Command
Of necessity, the cyberwarfare command, will initially have to be cobbled together from whatever assets exist. However the unit should immediately begin a search for young people of special talents suitable for cyberwarfare throughout every educational system in America. As soon as those children are identified they should be nurtured through the internet and eventually encouraged to enter a special school system on scholarship where they will receive an extraordinary education with guaranteed employment doing what they enjoy in defense of their country. Hopefully they will have as their lifetime ethical foundation: Duty, Honor, Country.
Initially the Cyberwarfare Command will have to concentrate on cybersecurity and cyber defense. The American Cyberwarfare Command will be playing “catch up” to the already established and highly effective Cyberwarfare Commands in nation-states as large as Russia, China, North Korea, and Israel, as well as smaller but no less skilled and dangerous units scattered throughout the world anywhere there are computers and access to the internet.
A new military
This new Military will be more economically efficient and functionally flexible than the present “Department of Defense.” It would serve America well over the next forty to fifty years as a global society evolves and we continue what is essentially our role as the police force for the World.