On Tuesday, a federal judge in California issued a worldwide injunction against execution of Section 654 of Title 10, or as it is more commonly known, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The injunction by Judge Virginia Phillips of the Central District of California follows her September 9 ruling in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is an unconstitutional infringement on servicemembers’ rights of substantive due process under the 5th Amendment and freedom of speech under the 1st Amendment. The ruling was the first to declare the law unconstitutional.

First to the law surrounding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The various federal courts that have addressed DADT in 2009 came to different conclusions. In Witt v. U.S. Dept. of the Air Force, the Ninth Circuit upheld parts of DADT and deferred judgment through remand on the issue of substantive due process. In Pietrangelo v. Gates a federal judge in Massachusetts rejected all three arguments against DADT. The decision was upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which based its ruling on “the special deference we grant Congressional decision-making” in the area of military policy. The case was then declined by the Supreme Court.

As is usual in court cases with significant public interest, cases challenging DADT have several elements, some of which have attracted more attention than others. The most-publicized element of DADT rulings has been the policy arguments surrounding the “unit cohesion” issue – whether the presence of gay and lesbian servicemembers makes a military unit less effective. This issue is important, but far from the only one raised in legal challenges to DADT. It has been challenged by various groups on several grounds: it violates the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of substantive due process, it violates the 1st Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, and it violates the equal protection clause.

The substantive due process claims argue that DADT violates servicemembers’ right, identified in a 2003 case invalidating a law prohibiting sodomy in Texas, to “autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.” The issue hinges on what level of scrutiny courts apply to the right of “intimate conduct. A challenge to a “fundamental right” is reviewed with “strict scrutiny” and can only be outweighed by a “compelling” government interest. A challenge to a right that is not fundamental is reviewed with a “rational basis” test where the government’s hurdle is merely rationally related to a legitimate state interest. In essence, if the Supreme Court says a particular right is fundamental, then it makes it much more difficult for government restrictions to withstand a constitutional challenge. It’s in this area of the law that the issue of unit cohesion is argued.

The free speech claims argue that since part of the evidence proving a servicemember’s homosexuality under DADT can be statements and not conduct, these regulations unconstitutionally restrict free speech. The counterargument is that the “evidentiary use of speech” has never been prohibited and can be used to prove a variety of things, including motive and intent.

Lastly, the equal protection argument is that gays and lesbians deserve equal treatment under the Constitution. The counterargument is that sexual orientation is not a “suspect class” (whereas gender and race are) and that the government has a rational basis for the legislation, similar to the argument under substantive due process.

In Log Cabin Republicans, the Judge found that there was no rational basis for prohibiting gay and lesbian servicemembers from serving openly. More importantly, rather than just rejecting the government’s claim, Judge Phillips actually found that the reverse is true – prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly actually harms unit cohesion and decreases readiness. In making this finding, Judge Phillips pointed to discharges of highly trained Arabic linguists and other experts, as well as the increasing rate of obesity, criminal records, and lower education among new recruits.

Judge Phillips also found that DADT restricted speech “more than reasonably necessary to protect the Government's interests.” Because the speech relates to content, rather than a location or circumstance, it must be held to a higher standard. This higher standard asks if the restriction is truly necessary given the governmental interests at stake. Judge Phillips found that there was not a “substantial governmental interest” at stake because of the harm DADT does to military recruiting and readiness.

Importantly, Judge Phillips’ listed extensive findings of fact about DADT and its effects in her opinion. The Ninth Circuit resolves disputes about law, not facts, and its review of Judge Phillips’ ruling will have to accept her findings of fact that DADT is harmful to military readiness in seeing if she misapplied legal precedent. A potential Supreme Court ruling would have the same approach.

It would appear that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is history. But several other layers of the issue reveal that to be misleading.

A few days ago Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that he is would like to see the Defense Department cut $100 billion from the defense budget over the next five years. As someone who has studied the defense budget in depth over the past few years at both the Kennedy school and the Fletcher School I have written the following memo outlining ways in which the DoD can cut $150 billion from the defense budget by 2016.

Returning the defense budget to pre 9/11 levels will force us to prioritize future threats and explicitly define the strategic purpose of each branch of the armed forces. Budgetary constraints will finally shift us away from our current Cold War mix of combat capabilities towards a new 1-3-2-1 force planning construct. Under the new formula, the U.S. military will be responsible for defending the United States (1); maintaining forces capable of deterring aggression in NE Asia, the East Asian littoral, and Middle East (3); actively partner with allies to perform stability operations in two of these regions (2); and maintain a capability to win decisively in one war against a conventional or WMD armed adversary (1).

Analysis of the future threat environment has concluded that unconventional wars are the most likely conflicts facing the U.S for the foreseeable future. In order to properly mitigate this threat, the armed forces must elevate irregular warfare, counterinsurgency and stability operations to the status of “core missions.” While critics will argue that prioritizing unconventional threats will leave us vulnerable to attack by conventional actors, the lack of a near-peer competitor makes this a low-risk opportunity to remodel our force structure to battle more current and likely threats. Institutionalizing counterinsurgency and stability operations will allow the U.S. military to respond to a broader range of threats at a greatly reduced cost. The following suggestions are ways to reduce the defense budget to approximately $400 billion by FY 2016. Suggested cuts translate to $104.7 billion in annual savings and an additional $159.7 billion in long-term savings resulting from a reduction in F-35 procurement over the next ten years.

Reduce End Strength to Near FY 2000 Levels ($63.3B in annual savings)
By reducing the overall end strength of the land forces to FY 2000 levels, we can decrease annual defense spending by an estimated $61.3 billion. The majority of savings can be found by first rolling the Army back to ten divisions each consisting of three combat brigades, a total reduction of 67,620 soldiers. From the remaining force, we should eliminate one armored division and one light infantry division to form two stability and reconstruction divisions each consisting of 10,000 troops. These divisions will allow special operations forces to focus on direct action by taking over training of indigenous security forces and most other COIN/Stability operations. CBO estimates that this restructuring would save the Army $32 billion over the next 16 years ($2 billion annually) due to the smaller number of units that would require modernization and the reduced need for next generation weaponry. One area of growth for the Army should be the 20th CBRNE Support Command, which should be doubled in size to 12,000 soldiers in order to be able to assign an EOD team to every BCT and a CBRN unit to each division. If we are no longer engaged in large scale combat operations, the Marine Corps will also be forced to reduce its numbers from 202,000 back to 172,000. While the Army and Marine Corps will likely object to large scale reductions in their end strengths, our new force planning construct no longer calls for us to fight two simultaneous conventional campaigns and thus maintaining the current number of combat forces is no long necessary

Reduce the Number of Foreign Military Bases by 25% (Cost of $30B, yields $25.5B in annual savings)
Of the 737 U.S. military bases currently operating worldwide (not counting in Iraq and Afghanistan) 427 (58%) are located in Europe. While the majority of our future planning and acquisition programs are oriented around fighting and deterring threats emanating from the Middle East and Asia, the U.S. military’s antiquated basing structure is still largely focused around deterring a Soviet threat that no longer exists. I propose reducing our global footprint by ¼ through the closing of 145 of these bases: 112 in Germany, 6 in Belgium, 2 in Greece and 31 in Italy. While the cost of many of these bases is shared with allies, we can no longer justify a large presence to guard against a non-existent threat. This new round of BRAC will cost approximately $30 billion if begun in 2011, but should yield annual savings of $25.5 billion after 2016.

Reduce Procurement of the F-35 by 50% ($15.9B in annual Savings, $159.7B long-term)
Our lack of a peer competitor and our near term focus on unconventional warfare means that our emphasis on replacing our current generation air systems with next generation systems is unwarranted. Rather than purchasing thousands of new F-35’s, we should reduce procurement of this platform and instead replace air systems that have reached the end of their life cycles with the latest version of the same system. These newer systems are far more capable than the ones they replace and cost approximately half as much as next generation technology. A fifty percent reduction in the procurement of F-35’s will cut $159.7 billion from the total long-term procurement budget and translate to $15.9 billion in annual savings. While the Air Force and Navy will argue that such cuts will reduce the number of missions they are capable of flying, a portion of the F-35’s mission can be allocated to our new long-range bombers and UAVs.

Restructure the Navy to be a More Mobile and Cost Effective Force ($5.3B in savings over 5yrs)
Since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has failed to redefine its strategic purpose. Over the next decade, we must move the Navy away from its focus on maritime warfare towards its primary missions of supporting ground-based operations and protecting the sea lines of communication (SLOC). According to their long-term shipbuilding plan, the Navy plans to acquire 53 Littoral Combat Ships (LCS’s) to perform antiship, anti-submarine and countermine warfare at a cost of $33.1 billion. I believe that combining the Navy and Coast Guard’s Small Combatant Programs will provide the Navy with a capability that is superior for executing the peacetime elements of its maritime strategy, but also offers the speed and offensive capabilities necessary to guard against threats to the SLOC. Reducing the number of LCS’s purchased will allow the Navy to acquire the naval version of the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter (NSC). The CBO estimates that swapping out 25 LCS’s for 20 NSC’s will save the Navy an estimated $5.3 billion.

The US military is buying Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters in order to equip the Afghan National Army Air Corps, and Congress is not happy about it.

The Washington Post reports:

In a turnabout from the Cold War, when the CIA gave Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels to shoot down Soviet helicopters, the Pentagon has spent $648 million to buy or refurbish 31 Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters for the Afghan National Army Air Corps. The Defense Department is seeking to buy 10 more of the Mi-17s next year, and had planned to buy dozens more over the next decade.

The spectacle of using U.S. taxpayer dollars to buy Russian military products is proving a difficult sell in Congress. Some legislators say that the Pentagon never considered alternatives to the Mi-17, an aircraft it purchased for use in Iraq and Pakistan, and that a lack of competition has enabled Russian defense contractors to gouge on prices.

So what's wrong with buying American helicopters to equip the Afghans?

The most likely alternative candidates, the UH-60 Black Hawk or the CH-47 Chinook, have unit costs of between $10-$15 million and $10-$24 million, respectively. These costs track closely with the $15 million per unit the US government is paying for the Mi-17s. The American aircraft, however, are significantly more complicated than the Russian models - they lack "amenities" like GPS - which would drastically increase maintenance costs. With the goal of creating an Afghan air corps that can operate independently of US support, keeping future maintenance costs at a minimum can't be too far from the minds of US officials.

Most importantly, the Mi-17 works well in Afghanistan. First, Afghan pilots, to the extent that they have flight experience, have it with the Russian aircraft. This fact significantly lowers the learning curve of the new Afghan air corps, accelerating the development of Afghanistan's own armed forces. Second, the Mi-17 is described by US officials as "well-suited for navigating the altitudes of the Hindu Kush mountains, as well as Afghanistan's desert terrain."

"Buy American" is a worthy goal in the abstract, especially when times are tough, but the military's decision seems based on realities on the ground. Congress, led on this issue by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, has a legitimate oversight role to make sure the military acts as a good steward of tax dollars, but can't lose sight of the larger picture. Winning the war in Afghanistan is more important than steering more contracts to a particular state - the UH-60 Black Hawk is produced by Sikorsky in Stratford, Connecticut.

UPDATE: Apparently my unit cost research was a bit off - the Mi-17 is actually much less expensive than the Black Hawk. The Thai Royal Army recently opted for purchasing three Mi-17s for the price of one UH-60.

Renewed warnings about the US Federal Government's budget deficit hit the front page of the New York Times today.

The Federal Reserve chairman said Wednesday that the government must begin to make “difficult choices” to address its gaping deficits and warned that “postponing them will only make them more difficult.”

Bernanke continued:

"Although sizable deficits are unavoidable in the near term, maintaining the confidence of the public and financial markets requires that policy makers move decisively to set the federal budget on a trajectory toward sustainable fiscal balance."

The United States needs to spend less money. Period. But that is the easy part. The hard part comes when specific cuts must be made.

(I should add that this post is written under the assumption that no further tax increases are politically feasible/possible/desirable in the short- or medium-term)

The American reaction to potentially cutting Social Security benefits is representative of the difficulty of cutting domestic social benefits - Americans react with visceral disdain to any suggestion that their Social Security benefits might be cut and politicians are wary of running on benefit-cutting platforms. Social Security is rightly called the "third rail of American politics."

If social benefits can't feasibly be cut, where to next? Foreign aid is a favorite target of budget-cutters (71% of Americans would cut it), but it accounts for less than 1% of the total federal budget.

One idea, until recently thought to be tantamount to political suicide, is to make cuts in the US Defense Budget, which represents the largest single piece of the discretionary budget. Why is it not political suicide now? Matthew Yglesias has some interesting analysis that examines the political feasibility of defense cuts.


(Graph courtesy of Anne Lowrey of the Washington Independent - In blue, the number of people who say something should be cut with. In red, the percent of the budget that these programs account for)

Yglesias calls defense spending "the least-unpopular cut" of "the major budget items," but correctly identifies that "it’s very politically difficult for a president to do anything that provokes the ire of the defense establishment whether or not it polls well in the abstract."

When remarking on the DoD's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the esteemed think tanker Anthony Cordesman once remarked that it was "the most pointless and destructive planning effort imaginable...[and that] if God really hates you, you may end up working on [it]. So what is this document that all of DC and the security community at large is eagerly awaiting the release of and is it of any real significance?

First some quick background. The QDR is a document that was first conceived of in 1993, then referred to as the "Bottom-up Review" and was an attempt by the DoD to address the international security environment in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1996 Congress legislated that the Department of Defense conduct a "Quadrennial Defense Review" to address the U.S. military's strategic objectives and identify future security threats. To put it simply, the QDR is meant to be a time when the Defense leadership (Office of the Secretary of Defense) takes a step back from the day to day operations and attempts to think long term and answer the BIG questions. Who do we see as our enemies today and in ten years? Are we investing in the right technologies to fight these enemies? Do we possess the appropriate strategies and doctrine to face the current threats? Is the enemy we are fighting today going to be the same enemy we will be fighting in ten years?

Word on the street is that the Obama administration will be coming out with its QDR sometime in the next month. The QDR will be the most important document that the DoD puts out this year and in my opinion will likely be the most important document that the Obama administration generates as a whole, short of the budget, for some time to come. It may seem at first that I am disagreeing with the comments made earlier by Anthony Cordesman, however, I assure you that while the author does think quite highly of himself, he is not that foolish. I completely agree with Dr. Cordesman (who by the way is a Fletcher Grad) that every QDR done to date has been a collasal waste of time and resources. If you have had the unfortunate pleasure of reading all three QDR's you will notice that good chunks of them were simply copy and pasted from the previous QDR. You will also notice that they are devoid of any real strategy. The QDR was thought of as a strategy document that would supply direction to the entire armed forces, but instead it has mostly devolved into a petty fight between the services over who gets the bigger share of the budget.

Ironically, the years before the QDR existed were the years that the US military actually had a series of set strategies that for the most part worked. For the majority of the Cold War the U.S. military had a strategy of containing the spread of communism and despite dragging us into Vietnam, the strategy did manage to prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union. In the late 70's to early 80's, the U.S. military also adopted an "off-set strategy" whereby the DoD recognized that it could not produce nearly as many troops and weapons as the Soviets but would instead off-set their superiority in numbers with superior quality troops and high-tech weaponry (JDAM's, GPS, Star Wars etc). Finally, in the 90's the U.S. adopted the strategy of planning to be able to fight two conventional wars at the same time. Less of a detailed plan but a strategy none the less. However, despite jumping in head first into two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the DoD has yet to come up with a defined strategy in over 9 years of war.

That was the depressing part. I now have high hopes that the next QDR will offer up a concrete strategy for the DoD that moves it beyond the "war on terror". A basic question that the QDR will have to answer is who is the enemy? Is it local insurgencies, global jihadis, state sponsors of terrorism or all of the above? On an even more basic level I strongly believe that this QDR needs to firmly define "terrorism," specifically stating whether or not it is a criminal act or an act of war. Finally, the QDR will need to clearly state whether or not counterinsurgency is going to be the name of the game for the foreseeable future and if it is, how will be be changing the makeup of our forces to better reflect the enemy we face. This will undoubtedly mean making some very unpopular and very large cuts in the defense budget specifically things like next generation fighter planes, mid air refueling tankers and new super aircraft carriers (any of these ringing a bell!!)

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed reading about the QDR, its not the most fun document in the world but lets just hope the next one is actually worth reading. And if you happen to be walking down the halls at the Pentagon and you see someone with an ID card that reads "Kathleen Hicks" go ahead and give her a hug because despite being a great lady she is the one that God has chosen to to run this years QDR....

And that's my fifty cents (inflation)