This past year was eventful for policymakers who believe the United States needs to do more to prepare for great power competition with Russia and set the stage for 2019 as a moment where critical progress must occur with regard to implementing budgets and policies with regard to Russian malfeasance. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) clearly articulated the top priority the Trump administration placed on handling the challenges mounted by near-peer competitors. The budget deal agreed to in March 2018 reset the baseline for defense funding at 3.5 percent of GDP and provided two years of significantly increased funding over Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 levels. These efforts, along with some other modest policy actions by the Trump administration in 2018, reflected a renewed concern for the threat Russia presents the United States and its NATO allies in Eastern Europe. There are a number of actions still needed to be taken that would demonstrate that the administration is committed to countering the threat posed by Russia and is willing to realign its force posture and Service budgets to achieve this strategic objective. These actions would serve to emphasize U.S. efforts to deter Russia from attempting malfeasance in Eastern Europe and, if deterrence fails, enhance U.S. ability to rapidly defeat any Russian provocations that occur.

In statements before Congress and in the public, then Secretary of Defense James Mattis emphasized that Russia is the proximate near-peer challenger, stating that “In terms of just power, I think it is Russia that we have to look at and address.” It is logical to look at Russian actions in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria and see that Russia is much more the ‘door-step’ challenge for the United States and its allies, and that the other near-peer competitor, China, represents the long-term pacing threat.

With this new emphasis on great power competition and a budget compromise that provided nearly $96 billion more (over two years) than the final Obama administration budget, one might have expected that the Defense Department would be well on the way to realigning force structure for the Russia challenge. In reality, the FY 2018 budget was prepared by the military services well before the NDS was drafted and in FY 2019 the military services (who execute the bulk of budgetary implementation) were largely working without new strategic guidance that would impact ongoing procurement guidance; and in fact contracts and acquisitions already “in motion” stayed “in motion” no matter their strategic relevance. Clearly, numerous systems and weapons were purchased in the FY 2018 and 2019 budgets that have significant relevance in potential conflicts with Russia or China, but this was a result of decisions and guidance made prior to the 2018 NDS.

It will be the FY 2020 budget, and the operational and posture decisions that frame and enable that budget, that will be the best indication that the strategic guidance of the NDS has “taken hold” in the Pentagon. To fully anticipate the budgetary, posture and operational decisions that should emerge from the Pentagon in 2019, it is necessary to first describe the “near-peer competitor” threat Russia poses to the United States and its allies.

Russia’s Challenge

Russia’s intervention in Syria and illegal occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine present foreign policy challenges that should be addressed, but do not reflect the strategic challenge from Russia that the NDS is concerned with. The U.S. defense establishment is charged with ensuring the joint force is prepared for the most complex and risky conflicts, and against that standard the most pressing Russian threat is to the United States’ ability to credibly lead a NATO response to an incursion against a NATO ally, with emphasis on a Baltic state or Poland.

Surprisingly, this is a challenge for which the U.S. joint force is not prepared. Recent unclassified assessments have gone so far as to state that in a Russia invasion of the Baltics “NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members” and that “U.S. forces could, under plausible assumptions, lose the next war they are called upon to fight.” In a Baltic scenario it is likely that Russia could achieve an occupation of Estonia or Latvia in only a few days and leave NATO with no good, or easy, choices about how to dislodge Russia from territory that is has rapidly incorporated “back” into Russia and thus may fall under the Russian nuclear umbrella.

Despite significantly smaller defense budgets for the three decades following the end of the Cold War (which averaged about 10 percent of the U.S. defense budgets), the Russians have managed to establish or maintain numerous important asymmetric advantages over the West. Russia’s strategic advantage rests on two issues, geography and a commitment to land power. The geographical condition is clear—Russia immediately borders Estonia and Latvia, and even Lithuania and Poland (through its exclave, Kaliningrad). The land power “overmatch” against the West has come about due to both Russian investments in specific high end warfighting systems that enhance their capabilities and a U.S. decision to take risk in many of these same high-end systems as the strategic focus shifted to fighting less capable adversaries in the Middle East.

Specific Russian efforts in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed them to maintain, and in recent years significantly improve, their capabilities in armor, artillery, air defense, long range precision strike (to include cruise and ballistic missiles), electronic warfare, and some aspects of air power, undersea warfare and operational logistics. Not coincidentally these are the key elements necessary for successful offensive operations in the Baltics or the Suvlaki Gap (area between Poland and Kaliningrad).

For example, Russia invested heavily in cruise missile programs, with numerous air, ship and ground launched versions of high speed, long range weapons in production. By most meaningful attributes: cruise speed, warhead size, range, terminal maneuver and variety of launch platforms the Russians are the world’s leader in cruise missile defense development. This aligns with a glaring U.S. shortfall in land based cruise missile defense. As a result, Russia is able to attack U.S. and NATO air bases, prepositioned stocks and logistics hubs with impunity.

In 2014 Russia tested (and demonstrated to others) its renewed combined arms capability during combat operations in Ukraine. Russia demonstrated massed artillery (destroying two Ukrainian battalions thru a mix of mass and thermobaric artillery fire), integrated air defense and electronic warfare, the new T-90 tank with anti-armor capabilities and massive UAV usage. Russian performance was a surprise to the United States and NATO and a sharp signal that they needed to make significant investments to achieve overmatch versus Russian ground forces.

U.S. Disengagement

Given the size of the U.S. defense budgets and the impressive advancements in many areas of U.S. military technology over the past thirty years (stealth aircraft, quiet submarines, equipping of special operators, ballistic missile defense systems, etc.), the inability to keep pace with Russian developments on a shoestring budget might seem shocking. Not surprisingly, the causes are multiple.

The U.S. joint force, and particularly the Army, was distracted by its responsibilities in the Middle East. The force structure required to fight and win in Afghanistan and Iraq did not include massed long-range artillery, ground based air defense, integrated electronic warfare or large scale armor operations. As a result these mission sets and systems were not prioritized. Compounding this neglect, a number of the “high end” U.S. Army programs that were pursued, failed, to include Crusader (artillery), Future Combat System (everything), Comanche (helicopter) and SLAMRAAM (air defense). Consequently, most of the principal systems that the U.S. Army would use today in a conflict with Russia, such as the Abrams (tank), Paladin (artillery), Apache (helicopter), Avenger (air defense), J-STARS (battlefield management), and ATACMS (long-range artillery), were developed in the 1970s and fielded in the 1980s as part for the Air-Land Battle plan designed to counter the Soviet Union.

These equipment shortfalls were matched with posture reductions as part of an effort by the United States to reduce its footprint in Europe from the 1990s until the invasion of Crimea in 2014, resulting in dramatically reduced U.S. fighting forces stationed in Europe. For example, over the past thirty years the number of U.S. ground forces stationed in Europe reduced from three hundred thousand to thirty thousand, the combat arms units reduced from two Army corps to two Army brigades and the number of air force fighter squadrons dropped from thirty to six. This U.S. reduction was subsequently mirrored by reductions in the capability, capacity and readiness of our NATO allies’ high end fighting forces. Equally impactful was the reduction in the storage of prepositioned U.S. force structure (armored vehicles, artillery) and munitions in Europe for U.S.-based forces to fly over and marry up with; the reduction in U.S. strategic lift capacity (both airlift and sealift); and the elimination of the recurring mobility exercises (i.e. Return of Forces to Europe or “Reforger” series) that demonstrate the U.S. ability to credibly meet its security guarantees.

U.S. Response

This combination of Russian investment in its high end land warfare capability, along with the obvious U.S. strategic distraction has created a serious challenge for the United States in executing the NDS in Europe. However, there are a series of actions that, if taken, in 2019 would significantly strengthen U.S. efforts to deter the Russian threat, restore the credibility of U.S. defense guarantees to NATO and provide assurance to allies. Many of these actions can be addressed within the FY 2020 Defense budget submission which is due to the Congress in February. A strategically informed budget should include guidance that directs the military services to expedite delivery of specific systems and weapons to the Joint force that are key to winning the high end fight with Russia. Such a budget necessarily will also include guidance that curtails or terminates systems that are not critical to the high end fight. It will also advance posture decisions that place additional command elements, fighting forces and prepositioned stocks in Europe; and reestablish exercises that demonstrate U.S. strategic mobility and political resolve.

The specific objectives of the posture and investment decisions would be four-fold. First, create a credible ground force deterrence package that is a mix of forward stationed forces, rotationally deployed forces and prepositioned stocks sufficient to allow for a rapid employment of a U.S. Army corps during a crisis or contingency. Second, to create a more resilient force structure in Europe, by making forces more dispersible (especially air forces), developing hard and soft kill capabilities against Russian power projection forces and deploying sufficient capabilities to rapidly reconstitute and repair damaged air fields. Third, continue to acquire and demonstrate sufficient U.S. power projection weapons with the capability to penetrate Russia’s integrated air missile defense and the capacity to impose measurable cost that influence Russian decision making. Lastly, the United States should require NATO allies to follow its lead and build similar deterrence, resilience and power projection capabilities.

What Stuff to Buy

The investments in specific systems and weapons should emphasize land based air defense, artillery, long range precision guided munitions, electronic warfare, strategic mobility and undersea warfare. Much of these efforts need to be in place in the short term (one to three years) so they draw from existing U.S. or allied systems and not rely only on elaborate new program startups, although some of these will be welcomed.

With regard to air defenses, the United States has almost no ability to shoot down low altitude cruise missiles (of any speed) launched at land targets such as its critical air bases and logistics sites in Europe. The U.S. capability, which had been based on the “Hawk” system, atrophied following the fall of the Berlin Wall and suffered thru several significant acquisition failures. The air defense mission’s low priority in the conflicts in Afghanistan in Iraq allowed its absence to go unaddressed over the past two decades. A further complication was a fixation on the ballistic missile defense mission addressed by the Patriot and THAAD systems. The Army’s current cruise missile defense development effort (IFPC) is years delayed, significantly over-budget and has serious technical challenges. In August 2018 Congress directed the Army to develop and rapidly deploy a “gap-filler” air defense system, it will be critical that a serious investment effort is made in this gap-filler program in FY 2020.

Artillery represents another shortfall area. The United States suffers a significant “throw-weight” deficiency when facing Russian units. This encompasses both mass (in terms of size of rounds and number of launchers) and range, and this gap is enlarged when you consider that only a small percentage of U.S. artillery systems are on the ground in Europe (either deployed or in in prepositioned stocks). Although some ground force limitations can be “covered” by persistent U.S. air power, this is severely limited by Russian air defense capabilities and the challenge of targeting systems in a denied environment. The FY 2020 budget needs to accelerate efforts to increase the range of existing “Paladin” artillery systems, initiate a range extension program for the ATACMS long range missile system, increase the number of Paladins in service (so more can be pre–positioned in Europe) and increase the stocks of ATACMS munitions. This is the Army Chief’s top modernization priority and the budget ought to reflect significant increased investment.

Another area of concern is the prepositioning of heavy equipment n Europe. Following the 2014 invasion of Crimea, the Obama administration established a program to restore some of the U.S. prepositioned equipment in Europe. Thru the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) the United States spent $17 Billion between FY 2015 and 2019, with about half going towards prepositioned equipment (tanks, artillery, etc). This is coupled with U.S. and NATO funding to construct, or modernize existing, prepositioned facilities in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Poland to allow for the eventual stowage of two Armored brigade combat teams (BCTs) and enabler (support) equipment for U.S. forces to fly over and join with in a contingency. The ERI was funded out of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) which is being compressed back into the base budget in FY 2020. It will be critical that the planned ERI expenditures, especially those in the prepositioned stock areas, are properly executed going forward and not “diverted” by the Services.

Logistics and engineering systems are also critical shortfalls that need to be addressed. Much of the infrastructure for moving tanks and heavy equipment thru Western Europe in the 1980s was abandoned and scrapped by the United States and its allies. Significant numbers of bridging equipment, tank-train cars and fueling gear must be procured and pre-positioned throughout the European continent. This procurement should be very carefully coordinated with NATO allies, especially Germany, who should be the lead (and principal bill payers) for this effort.

Another clear gap can be found in the United States’ stocks of long range precision strike munitions. Given the Russian capacity in integrated air missile defenses, and Russian investments in electronic warfare, the United States will need to maintain and accelerate procurement of existing high-end precision strike munitions, such as the JASSM-ER and ship-based prompt strike weapons. The United States must continue to rapidly develop the next generation of penetrating weapons to stay ahead of Russian developments, this includes both supersonic and hypersonic systems. His is another area for close coordination with Allied investments in similar ships.

Lastly, there is a growing need for investment in undersea warfare defenses in the North Atlantic. Russian investment in submarine capabilities could place U.S. strategic sealift and power projection forces at risk. The United States has invested heavily in surface towed array (SURTASS) systems to help limit the mobility of Chinese submarines forces in the Western Pacific. A similar effort should be made to procure SURTASS assets to help contain Russian submarine forces in the North Atlantic.

Posture, Or Where We Should Put Stuff

In parallel with these budgetary investments several key posture, or force deployment and basing decisions, and policy changes should be accomplished in 2019, with the goal of establishing sufficient forces and prepositioned capacity to deter Russia from initiating a crisis in the Baltics. The posture changes needed to create this credible ground force deterrence package include the mix of forces and prepositioned stocks sufficient to allow for the rapid employment of a of a U.S. Army corps, which includes two subordinate divisions and six BCTs, during a crisis or contingency.

To achieve this deterrent force most efficiently, the forward stationed forces permanently in Europe must grow to include the command and control elements (corps commander and his staff), the critical enablers (engineering, logistics, air defense, artillery, helicopter), while still maintaining the two BCTs that are already stationed in Europe (one Stryker and one Airborne). The rotationally deployed forces must continue to include an armored BCT and some enablers (which are already persistently deployed to Poland) and should expand to include additional artillery and engineering enablers who can exercise and maintain the prepositioned equipment. Pre-positioned forces should continue to grow (through the ERI) to include at least two armored BCT equipment sets (this is nearly 800 vehicles), enabler sets (additional air defense systems, artillery, rocket launchers, engineering gear, etc) and a great deal more munitions.

In a positive posture development in September 2018, the Army announced its intentions to forward station an additional 1,500 enablers in Germany, to include artillery brigade headquarters as well as rocket launcher and air defense battalions.

In 2019, the Army should continue this momentum and announce posture decisions that permanently establish a corps headquarters in Germany and provide additional enablers (engineers, artillery battalions, air defense battalions and brigade headquarters) forward stationed in Germany or rotationally deployed into Poland or Germany. There should also be a further breakdown of the intended prepositioned equipment force posture, with the intent to rapidly complete the two full armored BCT equipment sets and the equipment required for the remainder of the enablers associated with a Corps. These prepositioned stocks will be constant targets for the budgeteers scalpel.

Finally, the U.S. joint force must work to restore the strategic mobility exercise (Reforger) programs that were utilized in the 1980s to demonstrate the credibility of the United States’ rapid response capacity. These joint exercises have to be integrated with NATO allies and fully exercise the ability to rapidly draw, operationalize and maneuver the equipment in the prepositioned stocks. These exercises will also help to determine what the actual strategic lift capacity requirements are for mobilizing in a contested environment.

The strategic guidance and budget toplines are in place to support a force structure and policy that could deter Russian adventurism and assure U.S. allies. Investments made by both the Obama and Trump administrations, thru the ERI, have removed some of the more expensive prepositioning equipment challenges. Now with the proper investments in specific high end capabilities in the FY 2020 budget, and proactive posture decision that place the correct forces in Europe ahead of need, the United States can create an operational environment that permanently deters Russia, drives parallel NATO investments and restores alliance credibility.

Mark Montgomery most recently served as Policy Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee under Senator John McCain.

Image: Reuters