Good Counterterrorism Is Cheap, and Expensive Counterterrori

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-sk ... not-g-5333

This highlights one of the under-appreciated realities of dealing with terrorism: the best ways of dealing with it are often cheap and not particularly emotionally satisfying. In recent weeks I have heard former Bush administration officials and read neoconservative think tankers suggesting that bin Laden’s death was somehow the product of America’s massive defense expenditures.

Balderdash.

The vast, swaying bulk of America’s military has absolutely nothing to do with effectively combating terrorism—including the large land armies that we deploy to Muslim countries in efforts to destroy and then reconstitute their states.

Rather, effective counterterrorism is best conducted with relatively cheap means, like patient intelligence work, including cooperation with foreign intelligence services when available, standoff platforms like the RQ-170 discussed in the Post article, and small teams of direct actors like SEAL Team 6.

Not entirely true. While the SEALs are fairly inexpensive compared to a stealth bomber, they still need a delivery system.
And maybe it is just justification for the expensive defense budget, but I believe only the US could have pulled off a raid like this in the middle of Pakistan. (The Israelis might have been able to.)
But I do think the defense budget can be trimmed, especially expensive new weapons systems. Then again, what to trim? Those expensive stealth copters?

SS109 wrote: Not entirely true. While the SEALs are fairly inexpensive compared to a stealth bomber, they still need a delivery system.
And maybe it is just justification for the expensive defense budget, but I believe only the US could have pulled off a raid like this in the middle of Pakistan. (The Israelis might have been able to.)
But I do think the defense budget can be trimmed, especially expensive new weapons systems. Then again, what to trim? Those expensive stealth copters?

Cold war weapon systems.

Overhead, it takes way too many people to support the pointy end. How many civilians does the pentagon employ? 800,000? Do we really have almost 1 Admiral per ship?

I am not in the mood to look for real #'s right now but I'll bet my wag is in the ball park.

Oh, and to design a new class of warship and then only build 4 of that class is a travesty.

I found some mood. I use the USN because I was a sailor. I expect the others branches have there own inefficiencies.

"Lawmakers, Pentagon look at admiral numbers

By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Aug 10, 2010 10:56:58 EDT

At the close of World War II, the Navy had about 130 ships for every admiral in the flag ranks.

Today, that ratio is closer to one ship for every admiral.

What happened?

Repeated drawdowns targeting mostly enlisted billets have left the Navy’s top leaders virtually untouched. And that’s created a bureaucratic leviathan, with many flag officers spending most of their time presiding over sprawling staffs churning out paperwork and PowerPoint slides.

Related story: Gates to kill JFCOM, cut general officer billets
For example, an internal Pentagon study found about 30 layers of bureaucracy between the Navy secretary and an action officer in the operational fleet.

“Consider that a request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan — or for any other unit — has to go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated and eventually dealt with,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in May."........

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/08/n ... s_081010w/

A strong military serves important functions but it's not a particularly useful weapon against terrorists. Kind of like trying to kill flies with a machine gun.

Wow, that is a lot of admirals. Up and out until you get to flag rank and then you get to stay forever? More brass than seaman?

A standard cold war style military does seem out of place for many terrorist operations but sometimes you need to have boots on the ground to deny the terrorists a safe base to operate from. I do think the military is moving away from the 70's European model to a model that works better against terrorists and 3rd world armies.

There is a book out there "Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground" by Robert Kaplan....

It is about how american military 'liaisons' around the world, mainly where there us instability, are being used to immerse in the culture and in the local 'politics'. They then try to influence things in ways the help the US. They do't wear uniforms, you might even call it covert, but there is a strong sense of long term commitment to influence these regions stability.

IMHO, we need our military to shift how it does it's work. Large attack forces will no longer serve the same purpose nor needs as it once did. We need small, quick and well trained forces that work with some amount of autonomy to be able to counter terrorists and terrorism as it is today. Intelligence and police style actions against a distributed rabble of fighters,we need to fight these 'cells' with a type of group that can counter what the cells attempt to do and then eradicate them.... for good.

That paired with these military liaisons can bring this to reality.

Time to start a new spy program and bring the majority of the military home.

CriticalBill wrote: Time to start a new spy program and bring the majority of the military home.

I suspect we would get more bang for the buck if we blew up more than a few Intel bureaucracies.

neptunechimney wrote:

CriticalBill wrote: Time to start a new spy program and bring the majority of the military home.

I suspect we would get more bang for the buck if we blew up more than a few Intel bureaucracies.

I've thought all along that more cops and less bombs would have probably gone farther at infiltrating and destroying terrorist networks. Get a bunch of guys who have worked at busting up drug gangs, it's practically the same kind of work.