The Future Imperfect

...ugly track record. Be humble.

What are we constantly told will dominate the fight at sea in 2050, or as we conveniently put a marker down yesterday, 2047?

If you read the same things as I do, and haunt the same “thought leaders” timelines that none of us can ignore, what do you hear all the time about the future?

“Loyal Wingman” will be the norm in TACAIR? Large Unmanned (or uncrewed as the Zampolits now insist) will be missile barges. Large UUV will creep along the seabed mining our enemy into oblivion. “Replicator” will turn any war into a swarm of FPV and autonomous weapons hellscape. Decision makers will have all-domain awareness globally in real-time, etc.

OK. Maybe. What is our track record in predicting the future? Should our recent past encourage us to be humble and realistic?

In response to yesterday’s post, our friend Claude Berube pointed back to a DOD document that forms the right bookend to the end of the post-Cold War Era.

At the tail end of the eight years of the Clinton Administration. After the Last Supper. At the height of our End of History™ arrogance, and the budding into what would be the Age of Transformationalism™.

1999.

Two years before 9/11, how did we look forward 21 years to 2020?

Take some time to read the peak of Clintonian Era DOD thinking in, Joint Vision 2020 and ponder for yourself, but I think this summarizes the primary lesson.

What do we see on page 38?

From top to bottom:

• F-22A: First flight 1997. In service, 2005. In 2009 under the next (D) Administration, production was killed at 187 production units. By 2020, a smaller number are considered FMC.

• RAH-66 Comanche: First Flight, 1996. Cancelled 2004 after 2 units.

• DDG-1000: Cancelled 2009, but allowed three ships to be built. First commissioned 2016. None have ever deployed.

• Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (previously known as the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV)): Cancelled in 2011.

• Land Warrior: Cancelled 2007.

That’s a depressing ride, even in hindsight.

Make no mistake, we must experiment. We must innovate. As we do that, we must continually be clear-eyed and demanding about what we expect to give to our young men and women to fight our wars.

Be skeptical, and preferably as cynical and harsh as possible, of anyone who tells you they “know” they have THE answer for the future. That this ONE PROGRAM will be the Easy Button.

They are grifters at worst, most likely salesmen, at best easily seduced marks.

We’re are going on a second lost generation of development. It is no mistake that we are largely riding on the vapors of programs that started before the accretions and ineffectiveness of Goldwater-Nichols and the Cult of the Joint took hold.

Ask hard questions … and then continue to demand that Congress work on ripping up our procurement and DOD bureaucracy root and branch to create a more effective system with a smaller, more modern structure. Replace Goldwater-Nichols, the present COCOM charters, and throw the Cult of the Joint into the gutter.

What we have now is not fit for purpose - and that is being charitable. Everyone knows it, but they are too scared of the SES-encumbered bureaucracy to make the change needed.

We can fix it now, or wait until another, larger national defeat to force change.