People ask why our armed forces are so large (275 ships, about
10,000 aircraft, about 9000 tanks, 1,400,000 people, etc). They also ask why, with this much equipment
and this many people, the military keeps saying they need more. This is because
most people assume most of these forces are always readily available for use,
when in fact only perhaps something like 25% are available at any time for
immediate use. Why? Here are some of the
reasons.
Forward deployment
Equipment and personnel are of no use if they aren’t where
they are needed when they are needed. For example, we have treaty obligations
to defend Taiwan or Japan if China ever invaded either of them. But in fact, if such an invasion started it would
take warships in US ports several weeks to get there, by which time the
invasion would probably be over. When
Iraq invaded Kuwait it took allied forces six months (August 1990 to January
1991) to get forces in place to begin to oppose the invasion.
The solution to this is to have ships and planes and troops forward
deployed around the world so that they are closer if needed. But one can’t forward
deploy everything all the time. For example, we have 10 carrier strike groups
at the moment, but each is on a nominal rotation of 8 months deployed out of 35
months. The rest of the time they are in
maintenance, or in training, or steaming to or from their assigned station. As a practical matter that means that while we
have 10 carrier strike groups, at any given time only two or three are on
station and available for combat operations. (that also means that if Russia or
China have only one or two carriers, they really aren’t much of a threat yet, because
they can’t keep a presence at sea much of the time).
As a rough rule of thumb, the navy figures it takes about 4.4
ships of a given class to maintain one on station somewhere in the world.
Maintenance
Modern military equipment is complex, and typically operates
in harsh environments (like the Middle Eastern deserts, for example). That means they take lots of maintenance.
Combat aircraft take much more stress to the engine and airframe than commercial
airlines, and need frequent inspections and maintenance and engine rebuilds.
Navy ships live in a corrosive salt water environment and need constant maintenance.
Nuclear propulsion systems need constant maintenance and major refueling from
time to time. That means at any given time lots of equipment is out of service
for maintenance or upgrading. Any force size planning has to account for perhaps
20-30% of the equipment in routine maintenance or upgrading at any given time.
Training
The reason why a few armed forces (US, UK, Israeli for
example) are so much better, so much more effective than most others is
training, training, training. US forces “train as they fight and fight as they
train”, meaning they get lots of pretty realistic training exercises. “Top Gun”
schools, Red vs Blue force training exercises, naval exercises, combined arms
exercises (where different branches learn to work together), allied exercises
(where the forces of different nations learn to work together) all take up
perhaps 25-30% of the time, but they are absolutely essential to keeping the
forces in peak fighting shape.
Logistics
Modern armies, whether at war or just on peacetime patrols,
take an enormous amount of logistics support. For example, according to NPR, the
US military burns about 340,00 barrels (not gallons, barrels) of fuel a day. All
that fuel has to be stockpiled somewhere, and then moved to the users. The
Department of Defense reported in 2004 that “supply specialists in Iraq distributed
an average of 1.2 million gallons of fuel, 55,000 cases of bottled water,
13,000 cases of meals ready to eat, 60 short tons of ammunition, and 200
pallets of repair parts each day to U.S. forces.”
That means that an appreciable proportion of the personnel
and equipment in a modern army are devoted to just managing the logistics – keeping
the troops supplied with food, water, fuel, ammunition, and spare parts.
Industrial base
People don’t often think about this, but it matters. Ships
require shipyards and drydocks not just to get built but also to get maintained
and upgraded. Armies require manufacturing facilities to build munitions fast
enough to keep them supplied in a war. Tanks and aircraft require companies to
keep manufacturing the spare parts that wear out. All of these facilities need thousands of
experienced engineers and machinists and designers and electricians and other
specialties. And if these facilities get closed, it might take years or even a
generation to recruit and train adequate replacements. Moreover, it is not enough just to keep them
open, they also need to keep working to keep all their specialists in practice and
up-to-date.
So there is a national security need to keep a healthy domestic
industrial base in existence and up-to-date, and constantly plying their trade designing
and building new (and hopefully better) equipment. This may seem wasteful in
peacetime, but it is often the difference between winning and losing in wartime.
Military people worry about this, even if Congress doesn’t.
The takeaway from all of this is that the absolute size of
our military forces is not the right measure to look at – it is the combat-ready
and combat-available size that matters, the amount of troops and equipment that
can actually be delivered to the battlefield in time. And that is a lot less than the total size.
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