Government Executive - Authors - Stephanie Gaskell

Chuck Hagel Is Out at the Pentagon

Stephanie Gaskell — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 09:35:49 -0500

This story has been updated.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down as defense secretary, after less than two years on the job.

A senior administration official confirmed Hagel’s resignation to Defense One.

“Over the past two years, Secretary Hagel helped manage an intense period of transition for the United States Armed Forces, including the drawdown in Afghanistan, the need to prepare our forces for future missions, and tough fiscal choices to keep our military strong and ready. Over nearly two years, Secretary Hagel has been a steady hand, guiding our military through this transition, and helping us respond to challenges from ISIL to Ebola,” the official said. “In October, Secretary Hagel began speaking with the president about departing the administration given the natural post-midterms transition time. Those conversations have been ongoing for several weeks.”

“A successor will be named in short order, but Secretary Hagel will remain as Defense Secretary until his replacement is confirmed by the United States Senate,” the official said.

President Barack Obama is expected to make an announcement at the White House later Monday.

Hagel, 68, has been under mounting pressure in recent months as a growing number of national security problems have clouded the Obama administration, from Russian aggression and the threat of the Islamic State to scandals and budget cuts in the Defense Department. His resignation was first reported by The New York Times.

Hagel was brought in to lead the Pentagon after the war in Iraq ended, the war in Afghanistan wound down and deep budgets cuts became the new normal. After a contentious and bumbling Senate confirmation hearing in early 2013, Hagel stepped into the top job at the Pentagon as a quiet, unassuming leader. He used his experience as a former Republican senator to try to reverse budget cuts known as sequestration, led the pivot to the Asia-Pacific region and became a voice of caution for the use of military force across the globe.

But quickly, Hagel became entrenched in combating a number of conflicts and threats around the world, and several scandals inside the Defense Department, including a rise in sexual assaults and problems within the nuclear force.

On the short list to replace Hagel are his fellow Vietnam veteran and close friend Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., former Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy.

Though Hagel never enjoyed high marks, a Defense One survey released earlier this month showed that his approval rating was just 26 percent. At the time, Pentagon Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said, “The secretary is focused on his job making sure men and women in uniform and their families have all the support for the mission they’ve been assigned. That’s his focus.”

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The Pivot To Asia Hits Rough Waters

Stephanie Gaskell — Fri, 09 May 2014 10:27:21 -0400

Military commanders in the Pacific have a long list of things they need to carry out the Pentagon’s much-publicized pivot to the Asia-Pacific region. More follow-on forces, more submarines, more amphibious ships.

Budget constraints are clearly affecting President Obama’s plan to beef up the military’s presence in Asia, and just how much is starting to become clearer. Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, and Gen. Curtis “Mike” Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, laid out what they need to carry out the mission at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“The forces in the theater have been fully resourced, despite the budget constraints that we’ve had. I’m happy with that and appreciative of it,” Scaparrotti said. But going forward, he said he is concerned about the “readiness of follow-on forces” in the region—forces that would be necessary to back up troops in the event of a crisis or attack.

“In our theater,” Scaparrotti said, “given the indications and warnings, the nature of this theater and the threat that we face, I rely on rapid and ready forces to flow into the peninsula in crisis.”

Locklear said he’s asked for more “amphibious lift” for the five amphibious readiness groups in the region. “To get Marines around effectively, they require all types of lift, they require the big amphibious ships, but they also require connectors,” he told the committee, referring to craft that take Marines from ship to shore. “I have asked for additional amphibious lift to be put into the Pacific, and that request is under consideration.”

Locklear also said his requirements for attack submarines are “not all being met.” Under current budget plans, the military’s attack submarines will decline from 55 in 2013 to 42 in 2029, according to Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.

Locklear and Scaparrotti pointed out gaps in coverage to an area of the world that is a dominate part of Obama’s military strategy, despite continuing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa and new challenges with Russia. Their comments come on the heels of a controversial admission by a top Pentagon official that the pivot to Asia “can’t happen” because of budget cuts.

In March, Katrina McFarland, the assistant secretary of Defense for acquisition, told a conference in Arlington, Va., that “right now, the pivot is being looked at again, because candidly it can’t happen.” McFarland quickly backtracked her statement, saying through a spokeswoman that “the rebalance to Asia can and will continue.”

But the region has special needs, because of the makeup of its geography and the nature of the threat, Locklear and Scaparrotti noted. Pacific Command’s geographic region, or “area of responsibility,” according to Locklear, makes up 50 percent of the world’s surface. Of that 50 percent, 17 percent is land and 83 percent is water. Six out of every 10 people in the world live on that 17 percent of land.

And the threat from China and North Korea is a different kind of threat than in other areas of the world, and would require a swift and strong response. “On the Korean Peninsula, the nature of the fight is potentially high-intensity combat, and the time and space factors also present a tough problem for us. So the delivery of ready forces on a timeline is important,” Scaparrotti said.

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Fighting The Future Enemy

Stephanie Gaskell — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 11:35:00 -0500

Even with new innovations and evolving threats, the Army’s vision of what war might look like and the challenges troops would face in 2030 isn’t all that different than it is today.

Army leaders recently conducted a “deep future” war game to play out a military conflict 15 years from now, coined “Unified Quest,” and held at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pa. Defense One was invited to listen in as dozens of Army brass and civilian and foreign counterparts conducted an after-action review at the National Defense University in Washington.

Here’s the scenario they used: There’s been a chemical attack inside the United States and the terrorists responsible for the deadly attack are from a nuclear-armed landlocked nation surrounded by less than supportive neighbors.

The U.S. military has strong ties with one of the enemy’s bordering neighbors, who also happens to have a port, and through a “coalition of the willing” and a U.N. Security Council vote approving military action, other bordering nations offer access as well. The Marines swoop in, followed by several divisions of a now smaller Army. Navy ships steam toward the region.

The United States is still facing budget constraints in 2030 and the Army is leaner, doing more with less, but there have been investments in new innovations on the battlefield in the service’s best-case scenario. There are ground combat vehicles that weigh just 30 tons, helicopters that can fly faster and longer, extended-range missiles and ammunition with advanced sensors, hybrid-powered rechargeable equipment and a massive vertical lift aircraft capable of moving an entire battalion.

It takes the Army 15 days to get in. The mission is to secure and stabilize the enemy’s cache of chemical weapons. There’s plenty of combat, but within 24 days, there’s a cease-fire and the WMDs are secured. But the enemy regime remains in power. The war game ended there and did not address whether U.S. soldiers stayed to hold their gains or do any post-conflict nation-building operations or whether they simply turned around and went home. There were major shortages of fuel, and being lighter and more maneuverable paid off at first, but the Army’s tail quickly became difficult to build and sustain.

That was one scenario.

But knowing that most of these imagined and costly new weapons and vehicles are unlikely to debut on the battlefield in the next 15 years, Army officials simultaneously played out a second 2030 scenario without their wish list. The results were markedly different. This time, it took about seven weeks to enter the imaginary country, and after 85 days of combat the WMDs were lost.

What’s interesting to note is the enemy the Army sees itself fighting. Despite the Pentagon’s much-touted pivot to the Asia-Pacific region, the Army’s future adversary resembles Syria and Pakistan more than China or North Korea. The 2030 war game isn’t all that different from what unfolded last summer as President Obama stared down the Assad regime after it used chemical weapons. While there was never a threat of putting American boots on the ground and no direct attack against the United States, many of the challenges are the same.

Army leaders say being lighter and faster helps. “Speed created more time to make decisions,” one official says. One lesson learned: The Army wants to move faster at setting up secure communications without all the bulky equipment that comes with it. Leaders want to find a way to harness private sector capabilities with military-grade security, seeing a future in which a soldier can talk to his commanders using only an iPhone. “Al Qaeda is doing it. Hezbollah is doing it. They leverage existing networks. Five to six years from now, that’s what I want,” one official says. “That’s the kind of innovation we need.”

The problem, even in 2030, is logistics. “What’s the point of having 21st century equipment when you have 20th century logistics?” another official says.

The Army of the future also sees its soldiers serving repeated rotations in the same geographic regions to boost their expertise; linguistics will be a critical skill as well. Another key to success leaders already know will be to build and maintain strong ties with militaries around the world, so when a crisis erupts they’re already there. And even if a 30-ton vehicle or a vertical lift that can move a battalion probably won’t be available in 15 years, the Army knows it must innovate and reshape after fighting two long, massive ground wars. The enemy might not be that different in 2030, but the economic climate has changed.

“We have no choice but to innovate,” one leader says, “because of the budget.”

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Hagel to Cut Hundreds of Staff, Contractors and Reorganize for $1B Savings

Stephanie Gaskell — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 17:22:44 -0500

The Office of the Secretary of Defense will get smaller over the next five years as Chuck Hagel plans to cut 200 positions from his office, saving the Pentagon about $1 billion.

In July, Hagel ordered a 20 percent reduction in the front office budget to comply with sequestration reductions. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, service chiefs, combatant commanders and 3-star headquarters will reduce their staffs, as well.

“Some of these savings will be achieved through significant reductions civilian personnel; much of these savings will be achieved through contractor reductions. We are still finalizing the details, which will be available when the budget is submitted next year. But we will save at least $1 billion over the next five years,” Hagel said during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

America’s Longest War

Stephanie Gaskell — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 01:00:00 -0500

After 12 years of fighting in the mountains on the Pakistan border and the fields of Helmand province, the United States is planning to withdraw from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war. But that doesn’t mean the fighting is over.

U.S. forces first entered Afghanistan to find and capture Osama bin Laden on Oct. 7, 2001—just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks—and disrupt al Qaeda’s most important safe haven. It began as the “good war” with little controversy and a small number of troops with a specific mission. Then the Iraq war diverted American attention, resources and fighting power, dividing the nation as nearly 4,500 American troops were killed and 32,000 wounded. When that war ended in 2011 and President Obama vowed to end the war in Afghanistan, Americans turned their attention elsewhere.

But if there was ever a time to pay attention, it’s now.

Difficult Choices

This final year of the war in Afghanistan will be the most crucial. A bilateral security agreement between Washington and Kabul needs to be reached to allow some U.S. and NATO troops to stay behind to train the Afghan army and police and conduct targeted counterterrorism operations. And a presidential election set for April 5, 2014, will decide who replaces the iconic Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s strongman since 2002. All while bringing about half of the more than 50,000 U.S. troops home by February.

One of the sticking points is whether Karzai will agree to give American troops legal immunity, which in Iraq was a primary issue that derailed the deal to keep troops there past 2011. But Afghan negotiations have hit a bump in the road. Karzai not only wants the United States to guarantee Afghanistan’s security, he wants U.S. forces to hand over their intelligence to Afghan troops so that Afghans can conduct operations against al Qaeda and its operatives. It is one of many difficult choices leaders face before Americans can wipe their hands of the war.

“Our war may be ending, but the war in Afghanistan is only changing,” says Matt Sherman, a political adviser to ISAF Joint Command.

Signing a bilateral security agreement is priority No. 1 right now. The sense is that Karzai must ink a deal before he leaves office because the new president isn’t going to want his first act to be an agreement that cedes his nation’s sovereignty. Also, the political machine moves slowly in Afghanistan—after a likely runoff election, it could be next fall before a new leader is in place.

“What’s going to be so key is the transition of power after the elections, in my mind,” Sherman says. “How will the victors govern, and will Afghan security forces remain a force that’s able to defend their country? The issue is whether the people, the security forces and the government accept their new leadership. And equally important are the losing candidates. Will they accept defeat and rally their supporters to support a new government? It’s just going to be a very, very fragile time.”

Far From Over

Although the war rarely makes the front page or the evening news anymore, the fighting is not over. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in early October by an IED in Kandahar. There are certainly fewer U.S. and NATO casualties now that they’ve stepped back to let the Afghans take the lead, but that doesn’t mean the fighting has abated—it just means the Afghans are taking the hit now with as many as 100 Afghan soldiers and police killed every week. And there is another fighting season to be fought, though many U.S. military officials wonder just how much of a lull in fighting there will be this winter with the election coming up in April.

During his speech at the United Nations in September, President Obama said the core of al Qaeda—the terror group that U.S. and NATO troops have been battling for more than a decade—has been dismantled. Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul says he agrees with that assessment, but his country still needs help battling the Taliban.

“[The] Taliban is not powerful enough in Afghanistan, but they continue to disturb our security,” Rassoul told CNN’s Situation Room. “One thing that we’re focusing on now is the peace process to convince those in Taliban to come to the peace process, join Afghanistan and stop fighting.”

Brig. Gen. Jim Blackburn, commander of the U.S. Army III Corp, says “there’s still a lot of work to be done.” But, he adds, “insurgencies live and die on perceptions, and perceptions have changed here.”

There has been a lot of progress in Afghanistan in recent years, according to Blackburn. “We’ve established the conditions for the Afghan forces to be able to repel threats against the government,” he says. “The Afghan security forces are not going to lose this war.”

One U.S. official in Afghanistan says he takes a longer view. “Are segments of the Taliban going to continue to pressure this government? Absolutely,” the official says. “Are they going to continue to attack? Absolutely. The question is will the Afghan security forces be able to stay together. That’s the greatest lever in my mind, in terms of long- term stability.”

It remains to be seen how hard the Taliban will try to take over the government after 2014. “There will still be high-profile attacks in urban areas, and there will still be incidents in rural places,” the official says. “The issue is whether it poses a threat to the government in a real way. If the government and security forces remain cohesive and functional, the Taliban and other insurgent groups will then realize that they can’t return to power with force. They will then be forced to come to the reconciliation table if they wish to remain relevant and take part in the political process.”

And will the international community stay focused on Afghanistan after 2014 and keep its commitments to provide billions of dollars in aid? That’s something surely on Karzai’s mind as he negotiates the conditions for withdrawal.

Although most Americans think the war in Afghanistan is finished, this next and final year could be the most decisive of the 12-year conflict. And the fight against terrorism is far from over. As Blackburn puts it: “I’m not sure what ‘over’ is. I don’t think there will be an end to people conspiring against the United States of America.”

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Is This How It Ends in Afghanistan?

Stephanie Gaskell — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0400

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, then-Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who was commanding the 101st Airborne Division, famously said: “Tell me how this ends.” The U.S. military learned some hard lessons in Iraq that it hopes not to repeat in Afghanistan, and one of those is that success looks different in different parts of the world.

With most coalition forces beginning to draw down by early next year, the enemy landscape is beginning to play out in a way that could become the new normal in Afghanistan: a few remaining al Qaeda and Haqqani members looking to hit Western targets, a pliable Taliban searching for a piece of the political pie with the hope of returning to strict Islamic rule and criminals trying to take advantage of it all.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, says there are only about 75 members of al Qaeda left in the country. The Taliban is positioning itself for some sort of political solution with the government of Afghanistan. The Haqqani network is largely confined to the P2K area of Paktia, Paktika and Khost on the Pakistan border. And the rest of the bad actors appear to be criminals looking to make a buck off the instability, corruption and flow of goods and opium going in and out of the country.

Casualty reports from the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan are now using the term “enemy of Afghanistan” when describing who attacked them. They used to say “insurgent attack.” And these enemies are now up against a 350,000-strong Afghan army, local police and tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops.

“You have to be careful when you try to define who you’re fighting against,” says Brig. Gen. Joseph Osterman, deputy chief of staff for the ISAF Joint Command. “It’s one of those things that if you try to define who the Taliban is or who the Haqqani
is . . . you kind of start crossing yourself in terms of what the motivation is.

“We do see all of these groups in combinations,” he says. “You’ll see the Haqqani
network in and around the Kabul area; you’ll see the Taliban a little bit more widespread; you’ll see, for example, the folks involved with these kind of half-insurgency, half-criminal activities that are prevalent near the Helmand area where the poppy is growing. That’s kind of the mosaic. And there’s a criminal element of this whole thing that frankly is just all from an economic standpoint. It’s all about money, it’s all about commerce, it’s all about jockeying for commercial relevance and power in certain areas.”

The “enemy of Afghanistan” has also become more transient, especially with other fights to be had in hot spots around the world.

“We have seen reporting that indicates that certainly some of them—al Qaeda being probably the most prominent, which is relatively small remaining presence here in Afghanistan . . . are looking to, in some cases talking about, meeting glory in Syria or Egypt or Yemen,” says a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And in some cases, those that went back to Pakistan for Ramadan may not come back to Afghanistan afterwards and may go somewhere else.

“It’s somewhat complex,” the official says, “because it’s not simply the insurgency [groups] that are causing problems. This area of the world has had a history of illicit trade, of narcotics, of any number of things that have created power brokers and influential people that have a lot of different agendas. Some of these folks have a distinct desire to see the status quo remain just like it is because they’re able to have some freedom of movement and make an awful lot of money. So it’s not simply al Qaeda.”

In fact, al Qaeda is “just surviving, not thriving here,” the official says. “A couple of years ago we probably would have seen reporting where al Qaeda operatives were helping facilitate Taliban and other groups. Now we’re kind of seeing where these other groups [and the] Taliban are helping the remnants of al Qaeda.”

With Afghan security forces now mostly in the lead, Osterman says, the enemy is further destabilized, and not just tactically. “What we’re really seeing more here is these various factions that are now questioning why they’re fighting and what they’re fighting for,” he says. “You’re actually seeing some of them kind of dissolve, if you will, back into society. They just get tired of fighting.”

The biggest threats seem to be not from al Qaeda at all, officials say. Rather, they are from the Taliban—which had a long history in Afghanistan before the United States showed up in 2001—and from criminals.

Tough economic conditions are always good for the Taliban, which argues that the government of Afghanistan is corrupt and unable to provide for its people. “As long as those conditions continue to exist, there’s an ability for the Taliban to continue to regenerate,” the senior U.S. military official says. “I think that we’re getting to the point, certainly now with the [Afghan National Security Forces] in the lead, I think there are leaders within the Taliban that acknowledge or recognize that a military solution is not going to get them ultimately what they want.”

Afghanistan won’t be completely rid of violence among its warring factions anytime soon, but with the end of the war nearing in 2014, the military and political chips are beginning to fall into place.

“I think ultimately there’s going to have to be some political reconciliation effort and think there are some senior members of the Taliban and some senior members of these insurgency groups that are beginning to recognize that. And not all of them are going to follow that,” the official says. “Clearly the Haqqani [network] is a capable organization. It is localized in the P2K area, that’s their homeland. There are going to be some organizations that are completely opposed to reconciliation and may continue this fight for many, many years.

“I think we’ll get to a point with
successful elections [in 2014], with successful growth in the ANSF and greater capacity, greater capability, greater confidence—and we have a peaceful transition here—that ultimately these groups don’t reconcile [and] over time become irrelevant,” the official says.

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