U.S. Military "transformation" is dead: analysts

By Bill Rigby

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The much heralded "transformation" of the U.S. armed forces into a streamlined, computerized, unified fighting force is dead -- or at least delayed -- leading defense analysts said this week.

Instead, the Pentagon is facing up to the much more urgent task of repairing and replacing traditional military hardware being ground down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Military transformation has turned into a bad joke," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, who spoke at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

"Transformation was supposed to be Donald Rumsfeld's core legacy. We've spent at least $100 billion on it at this point, but a collection of poorly equipped insurgents is fighting us to a standstill in Iraq," said Thompson.

Departing defense secretary Rumsfeld launched his grand plan of military transformation early in 2001 after his appointment by President George W. Bush.

His scheme, based on existing ideas at the Pentagon, was to take advantage of a relatively peaceful period to leap a generation of military development and create a high-tech, networked force capable of heading off any conventional threat.

The highly unconventional attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, changed all that.

"The moment 9/11 happened, the assumption of a diminished threat environment was out of the window," said Thompson. "From that point on, military transformation began to lose its momentum."

BUDGET CRUNCH

Now, the most urgent use of defense budget dollars is to replace old equipment coming back from action overseas.

Armored vehicles, for example, are being worn out at 10 times the usual rate, according to Walt Havenstein, the incoming U.S. chief of British defense contractor BAE Systems Plc BA.L, who spoke at the Reuters summit on Monday.

The cost of repairing equipment has helped push the total cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere to $437 billion since September 11, 2001, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That is in addition to the regular defense budget, which looks set to top $500 billion next year, judging by recent spending requests.

Many in the industry say a budget crunch is inevitable. Lawmakers in Washington don't want to be seen as taking money away from U.S. troops, so the large "transformational" programs are seen as the likely losers.

"Transformation is basically dead," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with Virginia-based Teal Group, who also spoke at the summit on Wednesday. "Three reasons: strategic irrelevance, marketing overhype and budgetary impossibility."

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