FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
War strategies and groundwork of United States adversaries in the Pacific have set conditions for a battle unlike any in the past, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Defense Logistics Agency employees Jan. 23.
“The closest analog would be the effort that was required to win World War II. None of us has an experience base that allows us to imagine what that looks like. We can read the history, we can watch the movies, and we can wish it weren’t so,” retired Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said. “But the Chinese have systematically built a military to counter ours.”
Selva spoke at DLA’s first Warfighter Talk, part of an overarching learning campaign to foster understanding and collaboration among joint logisticians as they support forces facing new threats in the competition for world power.
Some current challenges to the nation’s military stem back to the 1990s, Selva said. In 1996, the People’s Liberation Army of China – named America’s top pacing challenge in recent national defense strategies – released its own unclassified documents about U.S. operations in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In that first Gulf War, the Iraqi Army was the largest, most equipped in the Middle East.
But it folded after a 100-day air campaign and four-day ground war with the U.S. Why? Logistics, Selva said.
“They [the Chinese] actually concluded that because we had the information systems, the networks, the capability to deploy and sustain a force of up to 100,000 with what appeared to be very little effort, that they could not defeat us,” he said, stressing that by “us” he meant logisticians.
Despite U.S. cyber security efforts, adversaries have infiltrated networks and, in some cases, stolen information, taking everything from blueprints for U.S. weapons systems to data on critical military capabilities. Those dangers are compounded by America’s shift in the mid-90s to an international supply chain, although some say it made the nation more efficient.
“At the time, that was a really smart choice,” Selva said. "It got our debt under control. It grew our economy, and it made things cheaper. You and I could buy things in stores at much-reduced prices, but the consequences of those choices have come to rest. The consequences of those choices of being part of a globalized economy put our military capacity at risk."
Most high-end microcircuitry needed for technical capabilities is now manufactured overseas and could put the U.S. at the mercy of a supply chain it doesn’t control. The good news: Some advanced microchips are still made in the U.S., and actions taken now can help protect the nation’s military advantage.
“We can choose to keep making them in the United States. We can choose to keep making them in Europe. We can choose to diversify that market,” Selva said. “All of those options are open.”
It’s increasingly important that the U.S. protect what it’s good at, he continued. Progress in advanced bioscience and advanced material engineering should be guarded, for example.
“We need to protect those things, and that means wrapping them up in cyber protection. It means we wrap them in legal protection,” he said, adding that when another country violates intellectual property rules, it should be held accountable.
In areas where the nation can’t produce as quickly as its adversaries, it must simply be smarter by creating good strategies and careful, thoughtful deterrence, Selva said. The alternative, he added, could be a war in which the U.S. runs out of beans, bullets and people before the adversary.
Beyond strategy, American forces and logisticians must also harness the power of data as well as artificial intelligence. He suggested that warfighters and support elements use AI for operational planning, training exercises and understanding possible environments for future battles. If they don’t, they’re not thinking like adversaries whose forces may outnumber America’s and whose equipment might be as advanced as American aircraft and ships, Selva added.
Prevailing in an environment where speed matters also requires Defense Department members – military and civilian – to learn how to deal with extraordinary volumes of data, he continued. Selva said internet access exposes people to so much data so fast that the human mind can't analyze it all. Not everyone needs to be a data scientist, he said, but tools that help employees better understand and use that data are critical to workforce development.
A 1996 paper called “Knowledge-Based Warfare” that Selva helped write proposes that if military members had access to data and sufficient processing to make it useful, they could overcome any adversary it faced.
“That was 30 years ago. We have made almost zero progress,” he said.
Selva ended with a Winston Churchill quote: “To each, there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared for that which could have been their finest hour.”
Being ready is an obligation, not a choice, Selva said, adding that he has no doubt DLA employees will do what they’ve done for decades when fate taps them on the shoulder.
"The environment we're finding ourselves in today is markedly different than our experience over the last 20 years in Iraq, Afghanistan and Southwest Asia. The solutions that worked there, the pressure points that worked there, the diplomatic initiatives that worked there will not work if we find ourselves toe-to-toe with the people of the Republic of China,” he said.
DLA employees who would like to watch a recording of the event can do so on the Campaign of Learning page (a DLA Common Access Card is required).