Andrew Uscher
If you had an additional dollar to spend on improving force capability in the Defense Department, where would you place your money? There are three elements or “buckets” where you could place your additional dollar: force size, modernization or readiness.
It would be an interesting exercise to divide the entire defense budget into these three elements and add support functions to produce the entire budget.
How do you make the decision of where to place this additional dollar to improve force capability, which can be defined as the ability of your force structure to deter and win wars? That decision is complicated because these three elements all interact with each other.
For example, if one of these elements is especially weak or vulnerable, it could destroy the ability of the other two elements to be effective. If you have a modern and ready air force with only one plane, you would be in trouble. If you had a large force of airplanes which were ready to fight but were old and outdated compared to enemy forces, you would also be in trouble. Finally, if you had a large force of modern planes which were not ready to fight, you would again be in trouble. All three of these elements are vital to the effectiveness of force capability, and they are interrelated.
In the field of operations research, there is a concept known as the “rate-determining step.” This is defined as the process which most slows down the rest of the process, or it could be defined as the best step to focus on if you wish to speed up the entire process. This concept applies to where you would place your additional dollar to improve your force capability. You would likely place that dollar on the element which is the weakest and would most improve your overall force capability.
The size of your forces is the easiest element to define and measure. It is also the element that is easiest to cut when you reduce the size of the defense budget.
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