Reimaging, Modernizing and Restructuring of the Armed Forces of America
Model One of Two
Developed by the Stand-Up America US Foundation
By Paul E Vallely MG US Army (Ret)
Our dedicated team of seasoned military strategists and experts with a wealth of experience will meticulously craft two models for the new President to consider when restructuring the Armed Forces of America.
Issues/Initiatives:
Eliminating the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a crucial step. This outdated structure provides no advanced command advisory capabilities to deal with current and future threats to America. It must be converted to a Command-driven military rather than an advisory/staff organization of the Armed Forces of America. This is not just critical; it’s urgent and cannot be ignored. Action will begin the week of January 20th after the inauguration. This is necessary to ensure the safety and security of our nation and eliminate all domestic and foreign threats to America.
History: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, born as the U.S. members of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, was established on February 9, 1942, to coordinate the war effort between Great Britain and the United States. JCS continued to function after the war and was given statutory authority by the National Security Act of 1947. The need for an overall command structure to coordinate the efforts of various military services became evident during World War II. This historical significance underscores the weight of the decision to restructure, a decision that will shape the future of the Armed Forces of America. The weight of this decision is a testament to the importance and impact of the restructuring proposal.
Establish: Focus on a command-driven Force.
· Commander of the US Armed Forces – 5 stars
· Commander of the US Army -4-star positions
· Commander of the Marine Corps
· Commander of the Air Force.
· Commander of Space Command.
· Commander of US Naval Forces.
· Cut 50% of the higher-level GO/Admiral/SES positions.
· Develop new War Fighting Commands
· Develop/redesignate new training and Support Logistical Commands!
· Redesign all Unified Commands
· Designate all Three Star Commands
· Designate Two Star and One Star Commands
· Modernize the Intelligence Commands
· Eliminate political appointees below the Secretary Level Appointees
· Consider the Global Joint Strike Force and Lily Pad Strategy
· Change the Department of Defense name to the Department of the Armed Forces of America
The formal choices, documents, and events that established the roles, missions, and functions of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the military services in the early postwar years are over 70 years old.
- The vision for the future must address all alternative roles, missions and courses of action.
- There is no single trigger for disputes, but interservice tensions are most associated with ownership of new capabilities or control of a significant function.
- Major DoD reorganization and reform efforts have often failed. President Trump needs to recall 4-6 Generals /Admirals as an action group to restructure the Military. Since WWII, the Pentagon has often failed to align and structure forces to win wars. Under the current structure and leadership, we have been unable to win any wars since 1945 and secure total victory over America’s war operations.
Some issues to consider:
There is a lot to criticize about America’s current military, but there’s another problem no one seems to want to talk about. It’s scary as hell. The United States is not ready for the kind of war we are seeing played out in Ukraine, a peer-to-peer conventional fight that is rewriting the rules of what we thought the war was supposed to be. And, with leadership in the White House sitting in a rocker staring slack-jawed at Matlock reruns, we cannot fix what will mean defeat in our next real war.
This is not solely about wokeness and how the officer corps has embraced the ridiculous shibboleths of the progressive left regarding race, gender, and the climate scam. Still, wokeness relates to the problem that the Ukraine War has revealed. When the leadership is focused on ridiculous frivolities like “white nationalism” and trans idiocy, it does not integrate the massive changes to how we fight that we need to compete on a modern battlefield.
And we do need massive changes. The old wisdom is that the military always fights the last war. Now, we’re trying to fight the last two wars. We are trying to reframe the conventional Cold War model that won the Gulf War while also fighting the counterinsurgencies of the Global War on Terror. What we are not preparing to fight is the kind of war we are seeing in Ukraine.
The Russo-Ukraine War is a test bed for new technologies overlaid over old styles of warfare, particularly the static, dug-in trench warfare of World War I. What is different? A lot. For one thing, electronic warfare (EW) is an enormous new factor. You know all those awesome precision-guided munitions we saw America use in Iraq and Afghanistan? We gave many of them to Ukraine. According to open-source reports – I do not know anything secret and would not write about it if I did – the Russians, who are very good at this sort of thing, have figured out how to use EW to defeat them. Remember, GPS is based on radio waves, which can be jammed, spoofed, or otherwise messed with. A missile that misses is useless. Imagine America going into a fight with its limited or ultimately defeated precision strike capabilities.[1]
Conservatives must lead a “restructuring” of the American military to embrace the possibility that war may be on the horizon. Too often, Americans hear a bipartisan chorus declaring the military a “melting pot” or “mirror” of civilian society. In this vein of rhetoric, the military’s purpose is to reflect the country’s demographic trends and be hospitable to the de rigueur conception of civil rights.
This reflects what Samuel Huntington described in The Soldier and the State as the tension between the military’s “functional imperative” to fight and win our nation’s wars and the “social imperative” to embrace the politics and ideologies of civil society. Huntington rightly argued that the military’s adherence to its “functional imperative” demands absolute adherence to merit and to the people, policies, and programs that make it more lethal and effective.
1870-71, for example, the Germans defeated a French Army with an excellent reputation and tremendous resources. However, decades of politicized French high command officials left the army without competent leadership, and the nation suffered a humiliating defeat. This crisis of merit spurred a century-long cycle of French military losses.
Today’s American military has fully embraced the social imperatives of the Left and the most progressive aspects of American society.
This assumption is pernicious because the 20th-century armed forces that won two world wars were built on a theory of separation from society. William T. Sherman, Jack Pershing, and George Marshall formed a tradition of military leadership built on ruthless standards of military competence and near-indifference to political pressures and social concerns. These leaders created and led armies with global success, and we should recall their approach to civil-military relations in policymaking and oversight.
Such scrutiny is appropriate, even for senior officers serving in uniform. By law, the U.S. Senate has the responsibility and authority to review every general and flag officer in the military up for promotion. This authority is entrusted to our elected leaders to ensure the best officers lead aircraft carriers, infantry divisions, and Marine Expeditionary Forces.
Suppose the nation is to reclaim the military as an institution built for victory in war. In that case, conservatives must have the courage and audacity to reform the institution, starting at the top, with uniformed leadership.
In his farewell address, President George Washington warned of the rise of “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” who would “usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Nor was this concern confined to the early days of our republic—President Dwight Eisenhower warned “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” and its “potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”
For more than 30 years, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has emphasized jointness substantially. Whether bolstering the relative influence of joint organizations such as combatant commands, requiring standard service for senior-level promotions, or achieving cross-service interoperability between operational units, jointness is valued conceptually from the strategic to the tactical levels. However, in practice, the value of jointness still needs to be measured and defined, particularly as it relates to strategic competition.
Many questions remain about the actual utility of jointness to DoD goals, the potential negative ramifications of jointness as it was implemented following the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act (GNA), and how the pursuit of jointness affects DoD’s ability to innovate and adapt to future challenges. Moreover, it is not understood how jointness affects competitive advantage relative to the United States’ primary adversaries. This study examines whether the assumption that jointness is inherently valuable is correct, and if so, in what ways. Understanding what aspects of jointness are most helpful and why they can help DoD compete more effectively against its adversaries and maximize the United States’ competitive military advantages is essential.
The development of jointness in the U.S. military has profoundly affected it as an organization and its definition and execution of missions and roles.
- The decades-long process of educating and ensuring joint assignments has contributed to developing a wider pool of officers with knowledge of and experience in planning and working with other services. This has enabled the growth of commanders and planners who can ensure that the joint force functions more effectively.
- Jointness has profoundly affected the U.S. military’s operational and tactical proficiency (e.g., command operational effectiveness in several mission areas) and the growth of a typical systems architecture.
- Several developments emerged out of the GNA—each of which might temper the benefits that the U.S. military has derived from its pursuit of jointness, including, among other factors, the services’ diminished roles after the GNA.
- In other critical areas, such as military strategy, jointness is less clear and potentially detrimental to the United States’ ability to maintain its competitive advantages when faced with two ambitious competitors: China and Russia.
President Trump and his new Pentagon leadership have an excellent opportunity to restore our military in Making America Great Again!
Paul E. Vallely – Chairman of The Stand Up America Foundation, MG, US Army (Ret)
Order now: Our books. On Amazon and www.standupamericaus.org
- Betrayal and Treason in America
- The Dismantling of America
- Beyond Treason
- Invisible Treason in America
- America’s Endgame for the 21st Century
[1] Townhall, Kurt Schlichter 8.26.2024
