U.S. armed forces reserve system needs sweeping reform

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- The book "America's Defense Meltdown," edited by Winslow Wheeler, updates the work of the U.S. military reformers of the 1970s and 1980s.

The brilliant second chapter of the book by Pierre Sprey and Bob Dilger is entitled "Reversing the Decay of American Air Power." In it, the authors chop up the idea of "winning through air power," aka strategic bombing, and they flush that concept down war's sewage system.

More, Sprey and Dilger explain in detail how the United States can build an air force that can really make a difference in wars' outcomes and how the U.S. government can do so for less money than it is spending now. The key idea is simple and well supported by military history: build an air force that works in close union with ground forces.

A personal anecdote: Years ago I was asked by a thoughtful U.S. Air Forces Strategic Air Command commander (yes, there was one), "What am I supposed to do with 18 B-2 bombers?" I replied, "Tow them around to county fairs and charge admission."

My favorite chapter in "America's Defense Meltdown" is Bruce Gudmundsson's, "The Army National Guard, the Army Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve." Gudmundsson is the highly talented author of "Stormtroop Tactics," the history of the development of Third Generation war in the German army in World War I. Here, he shows how to take the classic European military reserve system and adapt it to American conditions.

Few transplants work "straight," as direct imports. Adapting them requires great insight and imagination, and Gudmundsson demonstrates both in proposals that would improve the usefulness of the U.S. National Guard and armed forces Reserve forces by orders of magnitude. His chapter alone is easily worth the price of the whole book.

Is anyone listening? Maybe. Interest is growing on Capitol Hill in reviving the Military Reform Caucus. Both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress see that further cuts in the national defense budget are coming, and they know that left to its own devices the U.S. Department of Defense will cut its own combat forces while preserving the Pentagon's bureaucracy and the money flow to its major industrial and high-tech contractors.

I suggested to a Capitol Hill staffer earlier this month that the motto of a revived Reform Caucus should be, "Preserve the combat units, cut the bureaucracy." That slogan could quickly gain bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress.

"America's Defense Meltdown" is available in print from the Center for Defense Information and is also available on the CDI's Web site. Interestingly, the site is blocked on U.S. Department of Defense computers. Why? To quote the late William S. Buckley, the founder and publisher of National Review magazine, why does baloney reject the grinder?

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(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)