Robert Gates

“ We stand at a crossroads. We simply cannot risk continuing down the same path – where our spending and program priorities are increasingly divorced from the very real threats of today and the growing ones of tomorrow. These threats demand that all of our nation’s leaders rise above the politics and parochialism that have too often plagued considerations of our nation's defense – from industry to interest groups, from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. ”

“ Those of you with experience in the technology or manufacturing sectors have at some point probably faced some combination of these challenges in your own businesses. But in the defense arena, we faced an additional, usually insurmountable obstacle to bring rationality to budget and acquisition decisions. Major weapons programs, irrespective of their problems or performance, have a habit of continuing long after they are wanted or needed, recalling Ronald Reagan’s old joke that a government program represents the closest thing we’ll ever see to eternal life on this earth. ”

“ If ever legends and stories of American technological genius were deserved and not yet realized, they would be about the scientists and engineers, the wizards of CIA and American intelligence who pioneered reconnaissance aircraft like the U-2 and the SR-71, photographic satellites from the KH-4 to the KH-11, an amazing array of signals intelligence satellites and people who worked brilliantly but anonymously to serve their country. ”

“ From the very first defense budget I submitted for President Bush in January 2007, I have warned against doing what America has done multiple times over the last 90 years by slashing defense spending after a major conflict. The war in Iraq is winding down, and one day so too will the conflict in Afghanistan. When that day comes, the nation will again face pressure to cut back on defense spending, as we always have. It is simply the nature of the beast. ”

“ The Soviet military capabilities that we described were real, and those capabilities were created to a considerable degree at the cost of bringing an already fundamentally flawed economic system to its knees. It is one of history’s great ironies that the Soviet military thus helped destroy the system it was created to perpetuate.
In the economic arena CIA, in its statistical analysis, overstated the size and growth rate of the Soviet economy and relatedly underestimated the burden of military expenditures on that economy and on that society. ”

“ If the Department of Defense can’t figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by buying a few more ships and planes. What is important is to have a budget baseline with a steady, sustainable, and predictable rate of growth that avoids extreme peaks and valleys that are enormously harmful to sound budgeting. ”

“ The continuing great strength and success of the analysts of CIA and the intelligence community was in describing with amazing accuracy from the mid 1960s on to the Soviet collapse the actual military strength and capabilities of the Soviet Union.
Until the end of the Cold War and beyond, liberals long argued that CIA overstated Soviet military power, and the conservatives argued just as stridently that we underestimated. ”

“ In truth, preparing for conflict in the 21st century means investing in truly new concepts and new technologies. It means taking into account all the assets and capabilities we can bring to the fight. It means measuring those capabilities against the real threats posed by real world adversaries with real limitations, not threats conjured up from enemies with unlimited time, unlimited resources, and unlimited technological acumen.
Air superiority and missile defense – two areas where the budget has attracted the most criticism – provide case studies. ”

“ It is a simple fact that thanks to American intelligence every American President from Lyndon Johnson through George Bush made policy toward the Soviet Union knowing that economic problems in the Soviet Union provided the United States with increasing leverage and advantage. ”

“ In short, after Vietnam made the use of American military forces in the third world politically impossible at home for several decades, CIA became the primary instrument of successive Presidents and acted at their direction to maintain a decade’s long policy of containment of the Soviet Union - a policy based on the premise that a Soviet Union denied the opportunity to expand influence and power outside its own borders would eventually collapse from its own internal contradictions.
The Agency’s clandestine successes went beyond covert action. ”

“ But if properly supported, the F-35 will be the backbone of America’s tactical aviation fleet for decades to come if – and it is a big if – money is not drained away to spend on other aircraft that our military leadership considers of lower priority or excess to our needs.
Having said that, the F-22 is clearly a capability we do need – a niche, silver-bullet solution for one or two potential scenarios – specifically the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet. The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict. ”

“ Those who figured out how to obtain information from a distance of hundreds or even thousands of miles, those who designed and built unique technical systems to monitor missile testing and deployments and who could make sense out of a bewildering array of squiggly lines and rows of numbers and at least at the beginning some very fuzzy satellite pictures. ”

“ But the stakes today are very high – with the nation at war, and a security landscape steadily growing more dangerous and unpredictable. I am deeply concerned about the long-term challenges facing our defense establishment – and just as concerned that the political state of play does not reflect the reality that major reforms are needed, or that tough choices and real discipline are necessary. ”

“ Because of information provided by US intelligence, President Kennedy had an accurate picture of Soviet strategic inferiority during the Cuban missile crisis. And thanks importantly to US knowledge of Soviet strategic strength and capabilities, there would never again be a similar Soviet-American nuclear confrontation.
US intelligence information and collection capabilities made possible the negotiation of all arms control agreements and the ratification of those agreements by the Senate. US intelligence over a period of nearly 50 years helped keep the Cold War “cold”. ”

“ The American people, and I would say indeed most of the West in general owe a huge debt of gratitude to the unsung technical experts of US intelligence and to those in American industry who worked with them. ”

“ The time has come to draw a line and take a stand against the business-as-usual approach to national defense. We must all fulfill our obligation to the American people to ensure that our country remains safe and strong. Just as our men and women in uniform are doing their duty to this end, we in Washington must now do ours.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105) . ”

“ For too long our support to US military operations was not as good as it should have been, plagued by democratic rivalries and turf wars on both sides, and by a cultural gap that grew too great after Vietnam. ”

“ In some cases, their programs take the form of traditional weapons systems such as more advanced fighter aircraft, missiles, and submarines. But other nations have learned from the experience of Saddam Hussein’s military in the first and second Gulf wars – that it is ill-advised, if not suicidal, to fight a conventional war head-to-head against the United States: fighter-to-fighter, ship-to-ship, tank-to-tank. They also learned from a bankrupted Soviet Union not to try to outspend us or match our overall capabilities. ”

“ Throughout the Cold War, in the third world CIA worked successfully with governments friendly to the United States to combat subversion by the Soviet Union and its surrogates. We also waged a war of ideas and covert human rights campaign inside the Soviet Union itself and supported a growing opposition in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland. ”

“ There is the defense and aerospace industry, which has an obvious financial stake in the survival and growth of these programs. And there is the institutional military itself – within the Pentagon, and as expressed through an influential network of retired generals and admirals, some of whom are paid consultants to the defense industry, and some who often are quoted as experts in the news media. ”

“ As they targeted one of the most secretive countries in the world, it is a tribute to these remarkable men and women that, beginning in the 1960s, there were virtually no further Soviet military surprises of strategic importance. ”

“ To get there we must break the old habit of adding layer upon layer of cost, complexity, and delay to systems that are so expensive and so elaborate that only a small number can be built, and that are then usable only in a narrow range of low-probability scenarios. ”

“ We must begin to think about the possibility that that reality will include significant political instability.” I concluded, “As we look out to 1990 and 1991, we should not be confident of Gorbachev remaining in power, of the continuation of reform as presently structured with or without him, or of the continued manageability of widespread turmoil and even violence. ”

“ Instead, they are developing asymmetric means that take advantage of new technologies – and our vulnerabilities – to disrupt our lines of communication and our freedom of movement, to deny us access, and to narrow our military options and strategic choices. At the same time, insurgents or militias are acquiring or seeking precision weapons, sophisticated communications, cyber capabilities, and even weapons of mass destruction. ”

“ Consider the example of one of those programs – the Airborne Laser. This was supposed to put high-powered lasers on a fleet of 747s. After more than a decade of research and development, we have yet to achieve a laser with enough power to knock down a missile in boost phase more than 50 miles from the launch pad – thus requiring these huge planes to loiter deep in enemy air space to have a feasible chance at a direct hit. Moreover, the 10 to 20 aircraft needed would cost about $1.5 billion each plus tens of millions of dollars each year for maintenance and operating costs. ”

“ In that briefing, Kay concluded it by telling the President, and I quote, “We cannot foresee the time, but we can see the tendency between social aspirations and regime control eventually to confront the regime with challenges to its political control that it cannot contain.” ”

“ It is a versatile aircraft, less than half the total cost of the F-22, and can be produced in quantity with all the advantages produced by economies of scale – some 500 will be bought over the next five years, more than 2,400 over the life of the program. And we already have eight foreign development partners. It has had development problems to be sure, as has every advanced military aircraft ever fielded. ”

“ It simply will not do to base our strategy solely on continuing to design and buy – as we have for the last 60 years – only the most technologically advanced versions of weapons to keep up with or stay ahead of another superpower adversary – especially one that imploded nearly a generation ago. ”