U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

i 

24–681 2017

[H.A.S.C. No. 115–9] 

U.S. GROUND FORCE CAPABILITY AND 

MODERNIZATION CHALLENGES 

IN EASTERN EUROPE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL 

AIR AND LAND FORCES 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 1, 2017 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

PAUL COOK, California, Vice Chair 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

TRENT KELLY, Mississippi 

MATT GAETZ, Florida 

DON BACON, Nebraska 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California 

ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland 

TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

(Vacancy) 

JESSE TOLLESON, Professional Staff Member 

DOUG BUSH, Professional Staff Member 

NEVE SCHADLER, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Tsongas, Hon. Niki, a Representative from Massachusetts, Ranking Member, 

Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces ................................................ 3 

Turner, Hon. Michael R., a Representative from Ohio, Chairman, Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces ...................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Bonds, Timothy M., Vice President, RAND Army Research Division, Director, 

RAND Arroyo Center ........................................................................................... 5 

Hunter, Andrew P., Director, Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group, Senior 

Fellow, International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies ................................................................................................... 7 

Shlapak, David A., Senior International Research Analyst, Codirector, Center 

for Gaming, RAND Corporation .......................................................................... 3 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Bonds, Timothy M. ........................................................................................... 45 

Hunter, Andrew P. ........................................................................................... 74 

Shlapak, David A. ............................................................................................. 35 

Turner, Hon. Michael R. .................................................................................. 33 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Langevin ..................................................................................................... 87 

Ms. Rosen .......................................................................................................... 89 

(1) 

U.S. GROUND FORCE CAPABILITY AND MODERNIZATION 

CHALLENGES IN EASTERN EUROPE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 1, 2017. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:41 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael R. Turner 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL R. TURNER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM OHIO, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES 

Mr. TURNER. The hearing will now come to order. Today we will 

receive testimony on the operational and strategic challenges facing 

the United States and NATO forces in deterring, as well as responding to, Russian aggression on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastern flank, or NATO. 

I would like to welcome our distinguished panel. Mr. David A. 

Shlapak, Senior International Research Analyst and Codirector, 

Center for Gaming, RAND Corporation. And by gaming we don’t 

mean Vegas. We mean modeling, which I am not criticizing. 

Mr. Timothy M. Bonds, Vice President, Army Research Division, 

and Director, RAND Arroyo Center. 

Mr. Andrew P. Hunter, Director of Defense-Industrial Initiatives 

Group and Senior Fellow, International Security Program for the 

Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]. 

Beginning with the invasion of Crimea in 2014, followed by incursions into East Ukraine, Russia continues to take aggressive actions in overturning European security. The Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, has stated that, quote, 

‘‘Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security’’ and 

that, quote, [what] ‘‘they seek to do is to undermine credibility of 

our ability to meet our alliance commitments to NATO.’’ 

Reported just last week, a Russian intelligence collection ship 

was operating off the east coast of the United States. Russian military aircraft have made high-speed passes over U.S. naval ships 

operating in the Black Sea, and recent media reports indicate Russia has operationally deployed a new ground launch cruise missile 

that violates the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and directly threatens our NATO allies. 

Secretary Mattis and Vice President Pence have reaffirmed the 

United States commitment to NATO, and have also made it clear 

that Russia would be held accountable for its actions. 
2 

As the former president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly 

[PA] and current head of the U.S. delegation to the NATO PA, I 

am in agreement with the Secretary and the Vice President’s position. NATO’s first goal is to prevent conflict. And highly ready forward-deployed military forces contribute to this by deterring conventional conflict. 

Actions have been taken by NATO in response to this continued 

Russian aggression. For example, at the Wales Summit, NATO 

heads of state established a readiness action plan and stood up an 

enhanced NATO response force. 

The United States remains fully prepared to meet Article 5 commitments to NATO allies. However, if we are to rebuild a credible 

deterrent posture in Europe, the NATO nations also need to meet 

their agreed-upon goal of spending 2 percent of gross domestic 

product on defense. Only five nations today do so. 

Despite taking these actions, a major challenge for the U.S. and 

NATO continues to be reestablishing a credible forward presence of 

ready military forces. The previous administration’s strategy in Europe assumed that a small forward-deployed presence, augmented 

by a small rotational force, would provide a credible deterrent. 

That assumption has been proven wrong. 

So reviewing our current force structure in Europe is an excellent place to start for understanding current gaps in the capability 

and capacity of our ground forces, and can be applied to ground 

forces writ large. 

Besides the broader strategic policy implications of reassuring 

members of the NATO alliance, the witnesses today are prepared 

to discuss what is required by our ground forces from a modernization perspective in the near term to improve force posture and mitigate potential threats posed by Russia. 

Of special interest to the subcommittee today are the findings 

and observations from the most recent RAND War Game Report 

2016 on the Defense of the Baltics entitled, quote, ‘‘Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank.’’ That raised alarming concerns 

regarding current U.S. and NATO military posture in Europe. 

The European Reassurance Initiative and multilateral training 

exercises like Operation Atlantic Resolve have been good first steps 

in improving forward presence in Europe and reassuring our allies. 

However, the reality is that more resources and actions are needed. 

Given the threats posed by Russian aggression, we need to move 

from a posture of reassurance to a posture of deterrence; credible 

deterrence. 

Finally, I want to close with a quote from Lieutenant General 

John W. Nicholson, the former commander of NATO’s Allied Land 

Command. Quote: ‘‘Military readiness costs money, but the costs of 

readiness pale in comparison to the human and material costs of 

war.’’ 

Before we begin, I would like to go to my good friend and colleague from Massachusetts, Niki Tsongas, for her comments. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Turner can be found in the Appendix on page 33.] 
3 

STATEMENT OF HON. NIKI TSONGAS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM MASSACHUSETTS, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES 

Ms. TSONGAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon and 

I want to welcome our witnesses and look forward to hearing from 

you. 

As the United States confronts Western aggression in Eastern 

Europe, it underscores the importance of the NATO alliance, what 

Secretary of Defense Mattis has called, quote, ‘‘our strongest bulwark against instability and violence,’’ unquote. It is also prompts 

us to assess NATO’s current capabilities to credibly deter further 

Russian aggression, and to examine what additional investments 

the United States should or must make with our NATO allies. 

Keeping in mind, however, our ongoing fiscal constraints and a 

number of emerging and growing and threats across the globe that 

are also top of mind. 

In that context, today’s hearings are quite relevant, and I look 

forward to your testimony. And with that I yield back. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Without objection, all witnesses’ prepared statements will be included in the hearing record. We will 

begin with Mr. Shlapak, followed by Mr. Bonds; and then Mr. 

Hunter. Mr. Shlapak. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID A. SHLAPAK, SENIOR INTERNATIONAL 

RESEARCH ANALYST, CODIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GAMING, 

RAND CORPORATION 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Thank you. 

Chairman Turner, Ranking Member Tsongas, members of the 

committee, I am honored by this opportunity to testify before you 

on this important topic. 

The re-emergence of Russia as a disruptive force in global security is an event of historic significance, and RAND has been at 

work seeking to understand its implications since Russia’s annexation of Crimea unambiguously signaled its willingness to use force 

to revise the European security order. Among the first questions we 

asked was does this more assertive Russia pose a renewed military 

threat to NATO? I wish to be as clear and direct as our findings 

allow me to be. NATO is not postured or prepared to defend its 

most exposed and vulnerable member states, the Baltic Republics 

of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, against a Russian attack. 

In a series of war games conducted over the past 3 years, a 

short-warning Russian invasion of the Baltic States—and this is an 

entirely plausible scenario—one conducted in a way that allows 

NATO only about a week of warning, has consistently resulted in 

the catastrophic collapse of NATO’s defenses within 36 to 60 hours 

of the onset of hostilities. Such an operational defeat would leave 

the U.S. President and his Canadian and European counterparts 

with only bad strategic choices: build up forces and launch a bloody 

and costly counteroffensive, risking Russian nuclear escalation; escalate to the use of nuclear weapons themselves; or accept the Russian fait accompli, thereby conceding NATO’s utter failure to carry 

out its founding mission, which is to guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of its member states. 
4 

Now whether or not NATO survives such a disaster, the Eurasian security order would be transformed in a way utterly contrary to American interests, and the United States credibility and 

reliability as an ally would almost certainly be called into question 

globally. 

Fortunately, our work also indicates that avoiding this outcome 

and restoring a credible conventional deterrent along NATO’s eastern frontier is both doable and affordable. A force of approximately 

seven NATO brigades ready to fight at the outset of hostilities, and 

supported by artillery and airpower, as well as proper logistical 

support, and command and control, appears sufficient to deny Russia a rapid victory. 

With the prospect of inflicting a quick one-sided and devastating 

strategic defeat on its most threatening adversary off the table, the 

temptation for Moscow to attack the Baltics under even the most 

inviting or stressful circumstances would be greatly reduced. Deterrence would be enhanced. 

Now key to the success of the seven brigade defending force is 

the incorporation of three heavy brigades, units equipped with 

tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and so on. 

Because these forces must be on the ground and ready to fight on 

D-Day, and are difficult to move across long distances, it would 

likely prove impossible to deploy them from the United States during a crisis, even if their equipment were prepositioned in Europe. 

Questions remain to be addressed regarding the risks and benefits of various options for posturing these forces, but I believe that 

some form of forward basing of the heavy brigades, permanently 

stationing them in central or northeastern Europe, will prove necessary to have a sufficiently reliable, responsive, and robust deterrent. 

Now to be clear, these seven brigades will require substantial reinforcements from both our NATO allies and ourselves in order to 

sustain the defense, and if necessary, eject the Russians from 

whatever territory they may come to occupy. This topic is addressed in greater detail in my written testimony. 

It is vital to recognize that ultimately the success or failure of 

NATO in the Baltics is not just about the fate of three countries 

with the combined population of Missouri or collective economy the 

size of Iowa’s. Instead it is about deterring, about preventing a conflict with the only country on earth that has the capacity to destroy 

the United States as a modern functioning society. Conflict with 

Russia must always be contemplated with full awareness of its consequences, not just for the people of Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania, 

but for those of Ohio, Massachusetts, Arizona, California, and 

every other citizen of the United States. 

Let’s look at this for a moment from a historical point of view. 

For 70 years, every administration and every Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has recognized the importance of a free, prosperous, 

and vital Europe to the safety and prosperity of our own Nation. 

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have enjoyed a respite from 

worrying about the basic security of the European order. That respite, ladies and gentlemen, is over. The United States and its allies 

are challenged once again from the east. We don’t get to control 
5 

that. It is happening. What is in our hands, what is in your hands, 

is how we respond. 

I thank you for your time and your attention and look forward 

to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shlapak can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Bonds. 

STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY M. BONDS, VICE PRESIDENT, RAND 

ARMY RESEARCH DIVISION, DIRECTOR, RAND ARROYO CENTER 

Mr. BONDS. Thank you, Chairman Turner, Ranking Member 

Tsongas, and members, for inviting me to speak with you today. It 

is an honor to be here. 

As my colleague Dave Shlapak has just described the capabilities 

required to deter, or if deterrence fails, to defeat aggression in the 

Baltics, I would like to say a few more words about the current posture and size of America’s ground forces in terms of meeting this 

and other pressing threats. 

First, we must address the posture of our ground forces, which 

we have talked some about already. As my colleague stated, the 

Russians can overrun the Baltics and reach the capitals of Tallinn 

and Riga in 60 hours or less. Therefore, deploying three armored 

brigade combat teams [BCTs] and other combat and support forces 

after the war has begun will not work. They need to already be 

there when the fighting starts, or they will be too late. 

The first option then is to preposition equipment in the Baltics 

and then deploy soldiers to man this equipment on warning of a 

Russian attack. This option requires sufficient strategic warning to 

assemble and deploy forces to the Baltics, rendezvous with their 

equipment, and then move to their defensive positions. This takes 

time and requires access by the air, sea, or ground to the Baltics, 

access which the Russians can interrupt with their anti-air, antisea, and surface-to-surface rocket and regular artillery forces. 

Also, a massive deployment of troops during a crisis may prompt 

the Russians to speed up their offensive if this, indeed, was their 

original intent or if it seems an advantageous opportunity in the 

moment. And the prepositioned equipment may be vulnerable to 

preemptive air and missile strikes and to sabotage. 

The second option then is to forward station three armored brigade combat teams along with their headquarters, fires brigades, 

and supporting forces in the Baltics so they are ready to fight on 

short notice, much as we had forward stationed forces during the 

Cold War, but this time many fewer would be required. Either existing units could be permanently moved from their bases in the 

United States, or new units could be activated and reside in the 

Baltics. 

The third option is to increase U.S. forces rotating through Poland and the Baltics from one armored brigade combat team currently undergoing heel-to-toe rotations to three armored brigade 

combat teams; again, along with the headquarters, fires, aviation 

brigades, and other supporting forces needed to win a fight. 

However, to sustain rotational forces indefinitely, it takes three 

regular brigades in the rotation to keep each one deployed. That is 
6 

for every armored brigade combat team deployed, the services have 

to have one in training or just having gotten back, another one getting ready to go. That is called a 1:2 deployment or 1:2 boots on 

ground, or BOG, dwell ratio. So for every one brigade that is forward deployed, two are either just back or getting ready to go. 

Currently there are 9 armored brigade combat teams in the regular Army with a 10th now being formed. At a 1:2 rotation tempo, 

these nine brigades can maintain three forward, just enough for 

the Baltics, as my colleague has described. However, a fourth armored brigade is required to defend South Korea against provocations from the North and be ready to counter weapons of mass 

destruction issues with North Korea, and the fifth has been guarding Kuwait. This would require 15 armored brigades at a 1:2 rotation ratio to meet all 5 of these demands, and infantry, Stryker, artillery, aviation, and other units are subject to the same pressing 

rotational arithmetic. 

I have given some more detailed analyses in my written comments, but the bottom line is that this rotational arithmetic hits 

the ground forces hard in both the Army and the Marine Corps. 

The ground services are hard pressed to maintain their day-to-day 

operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, other Persian Gulf 

nations, to maintain a posture to counter provocations or weapons 

of mass destruction in Korea, and to support other deployments 

around the world. 

Because of this rotational turbulence, there are not enough ready 

armored forces present in Europe and in the United States to respond rapidly to Russian aggression. Increasing the total Army to 

over 1 million soldiers, including a regular Army of 476,000, certainly helps. Increasing Army strength further to 1.2 million with 

a regular force of 540,000 soldiers and increasing the Marine Corps 

to 200,000 would help even more. 

However, the ground forces would need money to recruit, pay, 

and retain these soldiers and marines and to train and equip them 

with modern weapons to restore overmatch or at least matching capabilities against modern adversaries, and to employ them in ready 

units. 

Restoring overmatch is particularly important. Today the U.S. 

Army would be outgunned, outranged, and outmanned in a fight 

against the Russians in the Baltics. The Army will need to rebuild 

its maneuverable short-range air defenses, improve the survivability and lethality of its combat vehicles, extend the range of its 

cannon and rocket artillery forces to simply match the Russians. 

The Army also needs to invest in theater air and missile defenses 

in order to match advances in Russian and missile threats. 

But simple parity with the capabilities of potential adversaries 

should not be our goal. We should seek to have the best equipment 

across the board in order to be sure that our soldiers are in a position to win. For the Army, this likely requires an increase in total 

obligation authority. If the money needed is simply shifted from 

modernization accounts, then soldiers and marines will be at a disadvantage against adversaries that continue to advance their own 

capabilities. If training and exercise accounts are cut, then the 

readiness of our ground forces will suffer. 
7 

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. I am happy 

to address your questions in the question-and-answer period. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bonds can be found in the Appendix on page 45.] 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Mr. Hunter. 

STATEMENT OF ANDREW P. HUNTER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSEINDUSTRIAL INITIATIVES GROUP, SENIOR FELLOW, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC 

AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Chairman Turner and Ranking Member Tsongas, for the invitation to be here today and to join my 

RAND colleagues and to hear their testimony. 

I am here representing the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I just want to emphasize the positions you will 

hear are mine. CSIS doesn’t take positions as an organization, but 

we do have several studies that bear very much on today’s topic, 

two of which that I want to mention. One is the two-phase report 

on evaluating U.S. Army force posture in Europe done by CSIS in 

which I have played a small role. And the second is an ongoing, 

soon-to-be-completed project on the Army’s modernization strategy. 

And those projects, the first was sponsored by U.S. Army Europe. 

The second has an industry sponsorship from GD [General Dynamics], DRS [Leonardo DRS], and L–3 [L–3 Technologies]. I wanted 

to make you aware of that. 

A potential future conflict on NATO’s eastern flank presents one 

of, if not the most stressing scenarios for U.S. ground forces. The 

close proximity of NATO’s easternmost members to Russia, combined with the explicit steps Russia has taken to develop and deploy systems designed to undermine or match U.S. warfighting advantages, makes the threat in this region especially potent. 

In my view, there are three main features of the challenges presented by Russia that are central, and I am going to focus more 

on the level of capabilities versus the kind of force-on-force perspective that our friends from RAND have presented so far. 

First, Russia has an A2/AD capability, anti-access/area denial, 

particularly along its border with NATO that presents a sophisticated, layered, redundant, multidomain capability that hinders the 

U.S. ability to project power in Europe. Through a combination of 

highly capable layered integrated air defense systems and offensive 

ballistic and cruise missile capabilities, Russia presents strategic 

operational and tactical challenges to U.S. ground forces. 

Russia has also invested significantly in its ground combat systems, narrowing the U.S. advantage in combat vehicles by procuring modernized tanks and other vehicles while gaining an outright advantage in terms of indirect fire such as artillery and rocket systems. The advanced capabilities provided by these systems, 

when combined with the advantage of shorter internal Russian 

lines of communications in Eastern Europe, presents a significant 

operational and tactical challenge to U.S. ground forces. 

Third, Russia’s nonkinetic capabilities, particularly in electronic 

warfare, cyber operations, and information operations, significantly 

outpace the limited capabilities the United States Army can currently bring to a potential conflict. These nonkinetic capabilities po-
8 

tentially undermine the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence and antiarmor systems, and threaten the ability of the U.S. and its NATO 

allies to operate effectively as a coalition. 

I would also note that it is very likely that Russia—well, Russia 

has, and is likely to continue, to export many of these advanced 

systems to other potential U.S. adversaries, which means that 

these systems are likely to challenge U.S. ground forces in a variety of locations around the globe where they may be married with 

even other layers or degrees of challenge that you don’t see in Eastern Europe. 

So the U.S. Army needs modernization to address these problems, but Army modernization is currently facing what we at CSIS 

have termed the triple whammy. Let me walk you through that. 

The first is that the Army is near the bottom of a historically severe budget drawdown. Army modernization funding declined 74 

percent between 2008 and 2015, as a result of the drawdown from 

two wars and the imposition of the Budget Control Act [BCA] caps. 

The magnitude of this drawdown exceeds the drawdown the Army 

experienced after the end of the Vietnam War and also the drawdown after the end of the Cold War. And we have some charts on 

that in my written testimony. 

The second aspect of the triple whammy is that as part of this 

deadline in our remodernization, there has been an unprecedented 

decline in Army R&D [research and development] funding. While 

the recent drawdown in Army procurement funding is roughly in 

line with those of the previous drawdowns, what is entirely different this time is a drawdown in R&D funding which is roughly 

twice as large as previous declines. 

While R&D funding has been relatively preserved in previous 

drawdowns, this time it was a target, falling over 50 percent. This 

decline is concentrated in the later stages of research and development at the prototyping and system design and development 

stages, which are the immediate precursors to fielding new capabilities. And we have termed this phenomenon a 7-year trough in 

the pipeline for developing new Army systems. 

The third aspect of the triple whammy is that the current drawdown has occurred after a relatively ineffective modernization 

cycle, for the Army, in the buildup that preceded this drawdown. 

The failure of a range of Army modernization programs such as Future Combat System, Comanche, Crusader—there’s more—in the 

last modernization cycle and the focus on procuring less enduring 

systems like MRAPs [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored 

vehicles] during the buildup which was worth doing, but many of 

which have not been retained, meant that the last modernization 

cycle did much less to modernize the Army than the ‘‘Big Five’’ acquisition cycle of the 1980s. 

So unlike the Cold War drawdown, the Army has experienced 

this drawdown without the advantage of having recently fielded 

large, modernized fleets of equipment in the buildup. And as a result of the unprecedented decline in R&D funding, it enters the 

current modernization cycle without the same foundation of systems in the pipeline that are ready to procure going forward. 

Now that the drawdown is over and the defense budget is poised 

to begin to grow—I am tempted to knock on wood, but I think it 
9 

is true—the Army’s modernization strategy must be reoriented to 

address these new challenges, including those that are the topic of 

today’s hearing. 

The fiscal year 2017 Army POM [Program Objective Memorandum] projects modernization funding that is approximately $7 billion below the historical average for Army modernization funding, 

and that is in constant dollar terms. So the hole is quite large. 

If you look instead of at the overall average, if you look at the 

average during periods of growth, which we believe we are entering, by the most conservative estimate we could come up with, it 

is at least $9 billion below that average modernization level during 

periods of increase. So it is hard to escape the conclusion that the 

Army is going to need substantially increased levels of modernization funding if it hopes to field significant new capabilities in the 

coming years. 

And I would note that to the extent that you have force structure 

increases, you are going to need some modernization funding just 

to make sure those units are equipped at a baseline level. So that 

will merit an increase, but that is not going to deliver the kinds 

of new capabilities that will be required to address some of these 

Russian challenges. 

In my view, the goal of delivering the Army the key capabilities 

it needs is best accomplished by adopting an Army modernization 

strategy that focuses on adding capabilities to the Army’s large 

force of fielded systems across five major capability areas, including 

air and missile defense, advanced protection systems, electronic 

warfare, cross domain fires, and logistics. These capabilities will require and can further leverage the Army’s substantial investment 

made in the last two decades in networking and situational awareness. 

The Army can obtain the fastest and most pervasive improvement in its force by progressively fielding these improvements in 

regular, sizeable increments. In addition, the Army’s modernization 

strategies should explicitly set aside room in the POM for quickly 

developing, prototyping, and deploying capabilities in response to 

emerging threats and opportunities as the Army has done with this 

committee’s help with the up-gunned Stryker vehicle. 

I will close by just saying a little bit about allies and partners 

in Europe. There is some good news here that I want to start with; 

highlight the good news first. Our allies and partners in Europe 

have fielded actually a number of capabilities that were designed 

and do some measure of meeting this challenge from Russian systems. Whereas our indirect fire systems can be outranged, some of 

our partners in Europe actually have longer range artillery so we 

can gain leverage by fighting in coalition with these partners and 

at times potentially acquiring some of the niche capabilities that 

they have developed into the Army’s force. 

I would also say, Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that 2 percent 

of GDP [gross domestic product] metric on the front end. I just 

want to emphasize that that is a good metric, but I think we 

should also focus on where that money is getting spent. I think it 

is critical that our allies and partners are spending any increase 

that they might put against their defense budgets on these chal-
10 

lenges and not simply increasing defense spending in areas where 

it is not going to pay off in these potential conflicts. 

I think the challenge on NATO’s eastern flank is a harbinger of 

fuure challenges facing the Army, and I urge this committee to 

keep that in mind as it does its oversight and focus on the budget 

this year. Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be found in the Appendix on page 74.] 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, all of you, and I want to thank also 

RAND and CSIS for what you do in being able to give us as policymakers the ability in a nonclassified basis to take information, discuss its implications and impacts, and your expertise then is lent 

to us as we then formulate policies to come out of what some of 

the important issues that you identify; so thank you for the work 

that you do. 

Mr. Hunter, I agree with what you said on how they spend the 

money. We are very excited, of course, that the President has made 

a point on the 2 percent. I was in Munich and in Brussels following 

on with the Vice President and Secretary Mattis and was somewhat interesting as to the tone that I might expect when I got 

there, but, in fact, it was actually embracing. NATO members 

know they have a problem. They know they need to get to the 2 

percent. I think that is going to be an important discussion, and 

I think in part they understand it because of what the three of you 

have been describing. Russia’s aggressiveness and threat to Europe 

should not represent the need for a backstop by the United States. 

We should be an additor. We should be an addition to their capabilities. 

The fact that Russia has an economy the size of Italy yet can 

threaten all of Europe without us is something that I think most 

of our European allies are beginning to address and looking to 

their 2 percent. But, Mr. Hunter, as I was leaving the Munich Security Conference, I was reading a piece on how the 2 percent, as 

you just said, is not necessarily the most important number. Nearly 

half of the expenditures from our NATO partners are assessed at 

possibly being wasted from duplication of effort, lack of focusing on 

unique capabilities and capacities, so that there is a unified capability that is delivered to NATO. So I appreciate your points there. 

Also I appreciate the points that you have made on the Kaliningrad, Crimea, and Syria area access of land, sea, and air denial 

that we are facing. That is an additional stressor besides just Russia’s aggressiveness that we are now looking into an environment 

where we don’t have the freedom of movement in addition to, as 

RAND has pointed out, that the Atlantic now being a contested 

space. 

I just want to give one editorial note to the conclusion to the 

RAND study that there are three possible choices for the United 

States or our allies or outcomes, one being a protracted conventional war; two, risking or initiating nuclear exchange; or, three, 

essentially surrender. Those really aren’t three options, and I appreciate the fact that you, by bringing this issue forward, help us 

create additional options so that we are not faced with that. 

Looking at Russia’s efforts on denial of access, their modernization programs, their size, their geoproximity to the area that could 
11 

be in conflict, ability to resupply, and the threat of their exercises 

that are giving them new capabilities to operate within the area, 

it raises the issue of not just our forward deployment or what our 

posture should be, but also the issue of modernization. 

So my question to you is in looking at just the issue of Russian 

modernization in addition to its aggressiveness and the fact that 

Mr. Hunter, as you have indicated, 74 percent of the Army modernization funding was cut since 2008, what should be our top 

three priorities looking at our Russian adversaries—and they have 

self-declared themselves our adversaries—what should we as a 

committee be focusing on for Army modernization as we move forward? 

And we’ll begin with you, Mr. Bonds. 

Mr. BONDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would say the first 

three that I would look at very carefully: Long range fires is an 

issue. At the moment the Russians can outrange us and outgun us. 

Having the fires that can respond in kind will be important. Some 

of those have to be capable of not only of performing counterbattery against their surface-to-surface, rocket artillery, or longer 

range missile systems, but some of them also have to be able to 

conduct either suppression of enemy air defenses—we call it 

SEAD—or destruction of enemy air defenses. We call that DEAD 

or ‘‘DEAD,’’ if you prefer. The submunitions that are used will be 

very important. Having submunitions that can actually also on 

those systems be able to break assaults of massed Russian armored 

forces will be important. Having something with precision because 

some of the firing may be into Russian territory, like Kaliningrad, 

and being able to limit collateral damage in those strikes will be 

important. So the very first one I would say would be long-range 

artillery fires with the accompanying submunitions. 

The second one is because of the pressures to have soldiers for 

a variety of other purposes in the regular and counterinsurgency 

operations we have fought over the last 15-plus years, one of the 

areas that the Army has had to divest is short-range air defenses. 

Having the ability to keep Russian ground attack airplanes off of 

the U.S. and NATO brigades will be very important, especially if 

the anti-access/area denial forces in Kaliningrad and the other ones 

that Russia could push forward in an invasion can deny the blue 

Air Forces, the U.S. Air Force and our NATO allies, the ability to 

defend NATO and U.S. ground forces with our own airpower. So 

short-range air defenses are another priority. 

The third one would be modernization of our combat vehicles. 

This is something that is very important, being able to give them 

better protection, actual protection systems. Being able to give 

them longer range direct fire weapons would be a third important 

thing. 

If I could sneak in a fourth, electronic warfare and being able to 

protect our own headquarters would be a fourth area. We have to 

have mobile headquarters. We have to be able to both protect them 

against Russian electronic and signals intelligence capabilities. We 

have to be able to respond in kind. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Hunter or Mr. Shlapak. 

Mr. Hunter. 
12 

Mr. HUNTER. I have a very similar list. I might slightly reorder 

them, probably put air and missile defense first. The one thing I 

would add to the list that he had is the issue of munitions, and, 

you know, the NATO alliance has often faced a numerical disadvantage when confronting the threats in Europe, previously the 

Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact. And the answer to that was more 

precision, was higher tech-type response, and in this context when 

you talk about potentially being somewhat outranged or outvolumed by Russian indirect fires, the potential U.S. response to 

that can be longer range guided precision munitions that don’t require the same volume in order to be effective. We have some of 

those that have been developed, but we don’t see them across the 

full range of Army munitions. 

And so I think there is a lot that can be done to increase the effectiveness of the munitions coming out of the tank, out of the artillery systems, off the helos [helicopters], across a wide range of 

Army systems. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Shlapak. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. I would just like to reinforce the importance of the 

short-range air defenses within Army maneuver formations. In our 

war games, we frequently see U.S. and NATO ground forces come 

under very heavy air attack from Russian fixed- and rotary-wing 

attack aviation, inflicting substantial losses, and contributing significantly to NATO’s problems. 

Now, American soldiers have not come under air attack since 

1950. The dominance of U.S. airpower has been that substantial for 

that long. The challenge presented by Russia’s air defenses, the integrated air defense comprised of the most sophisticated surface-toair missiles in the world, plus an air force that, while not nearly 

the quality of NATO’s, is good enough to stay in the game, means 

that in the opening hours, days, perhaps even weeks of a fight with 

Russia, NATO’s airpower will be busy trying to deal with those air 

defenses, trying to deal with that air force, and will only be available to support the ground forces either with air-to-ground fires or 

to provide air defenses episodically, in bubbles of space and time. 

The Army will have to be able to defend themselves from air attack. Right now their capability is essentially zero. That needs to 

change and change soon. 

Mr. TURNER. Turning then from modernization to the issue of 

how should we position ourselves, you have pointed out the issue 

of the aerial denial and infrastructure which inhibit our ability to 

get forces forward, pointing out the issue of early warning and not 

likely to be available to us, and that of course is cast in the light 

of the exercises that Russia is having on a repeated basis in large 

scale exercises where we are unable to ascertain their intent. 

In looking at the war gaming that you have done, what do you 

see as our needed permanent and rotational forces mix, and what 

are your recommendations to change this dynamic? 

Mr. SHLAPAK. The challenge of warning is a substantial one because, as you say, we have seen very large exercises by the Russians, the so-called snap exercises, that occur with very little warning and comprise thousands, tens of thousands of troops, and the 

challenge of course is at the end of the exercise, do they turn right 

and go home, or do they turn left and create problems? And that 
13 

is what leads to our assessment that a scenario that begins with 

very few days of warning for NATO is eminently plausible, and it 

is because of that timeline that forward presence is so important, 

which is why while there are options, as my colleague Tim suggested, for how you achieve that forward presence, the most robust 

answer would be to permanently deploy three heavy brigades in 

the region. 

Other forces can get there more rapidly. Airborne forces can 

move from Fort Bragg or from Italy. The Stryker brigade that is 

in Germany can road march, and it has demonstrated its ability to 

road march rapidly from its peacetime location into Eastern Europe. Tanks don’t get from Fort Hood to Europe fast. It takes 

weeks. NATO will likely not have weeks. Even drawing out prepositioned equipment from stocks that are located in Europe takes 

more time than NATO is likely to have. My best judgment, backed 

I think by our war gaming, is that forward stationing of those 

forces creates the most robust, most responsive, most reliable deterrent. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Bonds. 

Mr. BONDS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to add to the comments 

my colleague made, with which I certainly agree. 

There are a couple other things we need to think about in addition to those. One is logistical infrastructure. It is something that 

doesn’t get a lot of press. It is not always interesting, but what it 

really means to be ready in Europe means that you have got a 

logistical infrastructure that can handle a warfighting—can sustain 

a warfighting load. Something we paid a lot of attention to in the 

old Cold War days, now all those logistical needs go a thousand 

miles to the east. We have never had the kind of infrastructure in 

Eastern Europe that is now needed. 

We have been really heartened. We recently returned from a 

visit to U.S. Army Europe and to the 3rd and the 4th ID [Infantry 

Division] that is deployed to Poland, Zagan, Poland. They are making enormous strides in trying to understand the infrastructure 

that is needed, what is available, what improvements need to be 

made, really rapid progress, but much more needs to be done. 

The other thing that the trip confirmed for us was the need to 

operate, to train, and to develop interoperability with our NATO allies. It used to be in the Cold War they would be interoperable on 

a corps-to-corps or division-to-division level. Now with the NATO 

multinational battle groups that are going to be forward deployed, 

they need to be interoperable at a company and even a platoon 

level. So having the ability to interoperate with the forces of other 

nations, different radios, different languages, different procedures, 

very, very important. Again, they are making great strides in their 

training. Much more needs to be done. 

Mr. HUNTER. I think there may be a slight point of difference 

here between the work that has been done at CSIS and RAND’s 

work, in that we observed quite a number of practical limits on 

how forward deployed forces, how forward they really are. And actually to the point made about the logistical challenges in Eastern 

Europe, and it is actually quite a long way from the areas in Germany where we have traditionally stationed forces to the Baltics. 

And on the timeframes that the RAND war game looks at, you 
14 

know, you are not going to get from Germany to the Baltics in that 

timeframe with significant force. 

So I would characterize the approach that our CSIS study looked 

at as focused very much on deterrence, in other words, trying to 

make it such that if there was a decisive move made against the 

Baltics, that it would necessitate offensive action against other 

countries in Europe, so raising, escalating the cost to Russia if they 

were to decide to take that approach. 

And our study recommended a mix of forward-deployed forces, 

rotational forces, and prepositioned equipment sets, such that it 

would be very clear to the Russians that making such a move 

would have very high costs. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you for these perspectives. They give us the 

ability to do that assessment of what we have to make certain that, 

what capability or capacity that our military has. 

Mr. Shlapak, you had an additional comment. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Yes, I just wanted a point of clarification, if I may, 

Mr. Chairman. If I were waiving a magic wand instead of a marker 

pen and I were determining where U.S. forces would be forward deployed, it would not be in Germany. It would be in the Baltic 

States themselves or at the furthest in Poland because I agree with 

you, Mr. Hunter, that having them in Germany is too far away. 

Currently we are still postured to defend the Fulda Gap, which is 

no longer the problem. 

Mr. TURNER. Niki Tsongas. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for 

being here today. I think in your testimony you are certainly raising some very concerning questions, and I appreciate Mr. Turner’s 

commitment to pursuing this issue. 

None of the answers are easy given the multitude of threats that 

we confront across the globe and the need to be aware and responsive to those in a fiscally constrained environment, and so I think 

the decisions that we make going forward has to recognize that and 

try to make smart investments as we do that. 

And as you all have been talking about, the Army is currently 

rotating units in and out of Eastern Europe in an effort to deter 

Russia from provocative action in the region, and I think that is 

quite appropriate. But as we know, this is an expensive undertaking, and the prospect of further force buildup would only increase this cost over time, and I think that is something that we 

struggle with. 

So I’d like to get your take on what type of deterrent capability 

we could derive from the deployment of other kinds of things like 

advanced sensors or robotics or other standoff capabilities in concert with or in lieu of U.S. ground forces to the region. 

So in other words, how best to take advantage of the third offset 

strategy capabilities? And in talking about that, what are the benefits of a conventional force versus using and taking advantage of 

those new strategy capabilities that are being developed? 

And I will start over here with you, Mr. Hunter. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. A couple of points that I want to make 

on that. You know, technology can have a deterrent effect. In many 

cases, one way to achieve that is to reveal a capability that you 

have and make it very explicit. Another way to do it is to achieve 
15 

some ambiguity about what capabilities you may or may not have. 

And I am thinking at this point specifically about the Strategic Capabilities Office which is, in fact, very much focused on this sort 

of problem set. 

How do you develop a suite of capabilities and selectively reveal 

some and make it clear that you are also developing others that 

you don’t reveal in order to have an effect, a deterrent effect, on 

a potential near-peer competitor because it raises their uncertainty 

about whether they are going to enjoy the success that they might 

imagine that they would enjoy based on their uncertainty about 

what capabilities you might actually be able to bring to the fight. 

The thing that comes to mind specifically when it comes to 

NATO’s eastern flank was referenced earlier, the need for better 

intelligence indications and warnings, and so I think in terms of 

the capabilities that would be good to feel that you could reveal, 

would be better capabilities to understand the Russian order of battle. We used to be extremely good at that, at knowing exactly 

where all the Russian forces were and what their capabilities were. 

That has atrophied somewhat because our focus has been elsewhere for very good and understandable reasons. 

And I think there is a lot that can be done to renew that and 

some additional technical approaches to enrich our understanding 

of their order of battle and of what kind of maneuvers they may 

be undertaking. And particularly, as you know, they are fond of 

doing these exercises, and you are always left wondering if that is 

really an exercise or if it is something more. And I think there are 

some capabilities we could field that could help us there. 

And then I think on this area of longer range fires and munitions, capable munitions across a larger set of the Army’s already 

installed base of munitions, that is a very Strategic Capabilities Office type approach of leveraging what we have already fielded relatively quickly with improvements to raise the uncertainty on the 

other side that our weapons may have far more capability than 

they know of, and that would be another effective approach. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Mr. Bonds. 

Mr. BONDS. Representative Tsongas, thank you so much for that 

question. As a former aircraft designer, that was my life for about 

a decade. 

The development of new capabilities is always a great idea, especially when it is coupled with a better approach to combat. In some 

respects, the last thing you want to do is to have to employ large 

numbers of humans of any service when you can use technical 

means in order to make the humans you have more effective. But 

capabilities are really only real when they reach the field. The 

thing that I would want to caution this committee and the greater 

defense community against is relying on a capability until it is actually proven. 

And so on our way to building, testing, and fielding, whatever 

the third offset winds up actually realizing in terms of new capabilities, we are going to have to maintain our current force structure. In some ways we say, hey, let’s not forget offset 2.0 or offset 

2.5. We are going to want to make sure that we really have a current capability to deter. Our belief, the belief we have from our 

work, our conclusions from our work, is that the only real deterrent 
16 

is an ability to deny an adversary their objectives and ultimately 

to defeat them. 

So we need that capability now as we seek to improve it going 

into the future. We always want to wind up in a better place, and 

if the question really looks at how we increase our capabilities in 

the future, I am all for that so long as we can still meet the challenge today. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Mr. Shlapak. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Let me echo my colleague in saying that looking 

for new ways of solving these hard problems is always a worthwhile endeavor. And certainly the American way of war has always 

embraced the notion of capital labor substitution, because putting 

Americans in harm’s way is never the right answer to any problem. 

Having said that, let me talk a little bit about the time factor 

and how that drives how you have to approach this problem. In our 

war games, the fastest Russian forces are allowed to move is 5 

miles an hour. That is unimpeded, on a road, nobody attacking 

them, nobody shooting at them, nobody bombing them, 5 miles an 

hour. That is the Capital Beltway on Thanksgiving weekend. The 

fastest they are allowed to move, and the fight is still over in 36 

to 60 hours. 

Why is that important? It is important because things like longrange precision fires take time to work. It simply takes time to deliver enough firepower to wear down an attacking force to the point 

where it stops, where it is defeated. The reason ground forces are 

so important is that they allow you to shape the battlefield in a 

way where you slow the adversary down even from that 5 miles an 

hour. You slow them down from 5 to 3 to 2 to 0. And you also force 

them to operate in different ways that make them more vulnerable 

to those long-range precision fires so that you get a synergistic effect from those ground forces and from those fires. And we have 

found that that synergy is vital. 

If you take the ground forces out of the equation or you have inadequate ground forces or you have the wrong ground forces, you 

don’t have the heavy forces that can maneuver and engage the 

heavy armor of the Russians, that can shape the battle space, then 

the fires become much less effective and are simply inadequate to 

stop the offensive before it reaches Tallinn, before it reaches Riga. 

So while I certainly encourage the pursuit of new options, new 

ideas, new concepts, new technologies, we should be cautious about 

understanding how the synergies affect actual battlefield outcomes. 

Ms. TSONGAS. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Cook. 

Mr. COOK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I read the report that you 

had. It was pretty scary, and we had a CODEL [congressional delegation] that went to Europe last summer and we discussed that, 

and it almost went back to a book that was written many years 

ago. I don’t think Mr. Hunter was born when it was written. It was 

called the Third, if I remember right, and I haven’t referred to it 

in years, Third World War by—exactly. And the Fulda Gap and everything like that. It was kind of scary in terms of the American 

force, and it was kind of a wakeup call to the American military 

at the time. 
17 

And I actually think your report should be a wakeup call. You 

are absolutely right. And, of course, I am not a big fan of the sequester. I wasn’t. It is killing the Army. It is killing training. It is 

killing weapons systems. For those of you who don’t know me, I am 

real big on reactive armor. I love the Israeli Trophy system and 

some of the other things. 

I wanted to ask you about systems like HIMARS [High Mobility 

Artillery Rocket System]. You briefly referred to multiple launch. 

I agree with you. I don’t think you are going to get those tanks 

there. You know, years ago they used to be able to put tanks on 

a train and get them there. You are right. It is going to be the traffic jam at noon, and to react to that, you are going to need those 

long-range systems to stop interdicting and buy us time. 

And can you go into that a little bit more on HIMARS and some 

of these other systems, as well as some of the air systems that you 

think could help us on that. 

Anybody. 

Mr. BONDS. Thank you for the question, Mr. Vice Chairman. I 

would like to talk about the ground-based rocket artillery and then 

go to colleagues for some of the air part of that. 

On the ground-based, I think that long-range precision fires are 

going to be very important. We need to actually probably look at 

longer ranges, and we need to look at where they can be based. I 

don’t think all by themselves they are going to be sufficient. I think 

that the name of this game, if we are going to win it, if we are 

going to play it and win it, is going to be combined arms. It is going 

to be a combination of the long-range fires, maneuver forces, and 

air forces. 

Mr. COOK. No. I agree. I am just kind of focusing on the 

HIMARS because of the range in that particular system right now. 

So no, what you are saying is absolutely right, but I am just 

thinking here, where are we going to throw some money because 

we have to make choices on this committee and critical choices. So 

we can’t buy everything, but we can buy certain things. 

Mr. BONDS. So we have done some work on this, and among the 

things, one of the things we like to look at is the whole end-to-end, 

some call it a kill chain. Others might call it an effects chain. One 

of the things we have to work on with our long-range fires is a better ability to sense where the targets are, a better ability to actually be able to do the targeting and pick them out from what will 

be potentially an enormous amount of clutter. 

One of the things the Russians have always been very skilled at 

is having camouflage, concealment, deception. Presumably they will 

be on their best game if they ever decide to attack NATO. Having 

the ability to seek things even in a cyber challenge environment is 

going to be very important as well. 

The ability then to attack them, sir, I think is what you have 

pointed out. Having a longer range in our missiles would be important. Having simply more of them. 

One of the things Mr. Hunter pointed out is that we don’t simply 

buy enough of the rocket munitions. Having an adequate supply of 

them will be important. 

The other thing we are going to need to consider is what we are 

going to do about submunitions. We have been abiding by the Oslo 
18 

Treaty. It is something that we may want to carefully take another 

look at. Yeah, you know without meaning to trivialize this, if it 

gets to the point where we cannot stop mass formations any other 

way, we will need to look at our utilization of those munitions. 

Mr. COOK. All right. I am going to switch gears because I am 

probably using up far too much time, but I also wanted to throw 

in a political or foreign affairs question. Belarus. Belarus is going 

to be key on this, and everybody knows the geography where Kaliningrad, part of Russia is right there, but a lot of this attack is 

going to come from Belarus—correct me if I’m wrong—or support 

of this attack. 

And somebody referred to it, they got to know right off the bat 

that, hey, you are going to be drawn into this if you are going to 

attack these other countries. Belarus is a satellite, in my opinion, 

of Russia. Any comment on that? I know it is getting off a little 

bit but. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Belarus is an interesting case. We give our red 

teams free play in terms of how they choose operationally to attack. 

Do they attack north? Do they attack in the middle? Or do they attack south? And almost universally they choose to attack north. 

They don’t choose to attack through Belarus. 

And when we ask them why, one of the responses that they give 

us is that from their point of view, Belarus is to them what the 

Baltics is to NATO, this very large, hard-to-defend area that if they 

attack through it, becomes their responsibility. It becomes their 

rear area. And because the Belorussian military is not very high 

quality, they can’t defend themselves. 

So it becomes actually a liability for the Russians if they use it 

as a launching point for a major offensive. And so they tend, at 

least in our war games, they tend to focus on the north where they 

can operate out of sovereign Russian territory, and thus make 

NATO face the challenge of actually attacking into Russia, rather 

than attacking into, as you say, a Russian satellite or Russian—— 

Mr. COOK. Yeah. But the snap exercises, you know, they come 

down from the south. Remember the ones that come that way, 

around Kaliningrad? 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Right. One of the scenarios that you often see 

played is sort of a land bridge out of Belarus towards Kaliningrad, 

which is a challenge, but it does on the Russian side create this liability which is now the Russians have to commit forces to actually 

defending that rear area for precisely the reason, Congressman, 

that you say, which is Belarus becomes a co-belligerent and, therefore, becomes liable to attack by NATO. 

Mr. COOK. The last thing I want to say, it was very disturbing, 

the report and the comments that are made, but more people in 

Congress and what have you, not just this committee, have to hear 

what you are saying about that because you are spot on. Thank 

you. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks so 

much for joining us today. 

I wanted to start with Mr. Bonds. Looking at the gaming scenario that you put together, you talked about the seven brigade 

combat teams, and I know that three of those are armored bri-
19 

gades. We have one of those rotational armored brigades there in 

Europe. Tell me the scenario about how the other six come into 

being. What capability is there with our NATO allies? Can they 

marshal enough to be equivalent to six of our brigade combat 

teams? If not, what do we have to do to backfill? What do we have 

to do to move other assets around in CENTCOM [Central Command], EUCOM [European Command], those areas? 

Give me the scenario about how we deal with that as a backup 

to having on the ground a permanently stationed BCT. We had a 

chance to visit the Baltics not long ago, and, of course, their want 

is for U.S. presence there. They were asking for just battalion presence, not rotational presence there. Their facility is pretty rudimentary, as well as their training. 

We also know too, the very short timeframe with Russian forces 

coming across with armor units, artillery units, and boots on the 

ground about how quickly they would overrun Tallinn and those 

other capital cities there in the Baltics. Give me the perspective 

about how do we, we have identified what we need currently with 

what we have. It seems we are far short of equity there. Give me 

a scenario about how those pieces that already exist kind of come 

together. 

Mr. HUNTER. Let me give you a little flavor of our CSIS look on 

this, and then RAND I think has their own perspective on it. They 

are not wildly dissimilar. 

The analysis that CSIS did suggested that a total force of about 

13 coalition, if you will, NATO BCTs could effectively deter a move 

by the Russian forces that are typically deployed in their western 

area, which is to our east. So of those, about eight would be U.S., 

and five would be NATO or Allied, many of them from the Baltics. 

And let me just say a little bit on the Baltics themselves. I think 

you would be pretty challenged to permanently station three armored BCTs, U.S. BCTs or NATO BCTs, in the Baltics not only for 

geopolitical reasons because even though we would know that they 

were entirely defensive, they might not look so defensive to the 

Russians, but also just from a logistics and a space. They are not 

humongous countries. 

So that is a concern, and it is one reason why the CSIS look focused on adding an additional armored brigade combat team to Europe, which was also a recommendation of the Commission on the 

Future of the Army, and, of course, Dr. Hicks, my colleague who 

led our study, was also on the Army commission. So it focused on 

adding that one armored brigade combat team and filling in essentially the rest of the U.S. eight with forces already in Europe, rotational forces, and then the preposition sets that could be fallen in 

on relatively rapidly. That was the approach that our study recommended. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Mr. Bonds, give me your perspective if 

you would. 

Mr. BONDS. Sir, if I could I would like to defer to my colleague 

and then add in anything that he may miss. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Shlapak. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Which is bound to be extensive. 

Congressman, so let me talk a little bit about the specifics of how 

we constitute that force. Our assumption, which is probably opti-
20 

mistic from the NATO point of view, but that was deliberate in the 

way we staged our game, our assumption was during the warning 

period, roughly four brigades could arrive on scene. That would be 

the division ready brigade of the U.S. 82nd Airborne deploying 

from the CONUS [continental United States], the 173rd Airborne 

coming out of Italy, and the 2nd Stryker Brigade coming from Germany. So those are three U.S. brigades that could arrive. 

And then what is called the lead element of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force [VJTF] which is a composite NATO formation. So we assume that those could arrive during that 7- to 10- 

day warning period that we allocated to NATO. Now the rotational 

brigade is potentially a very powerful formation, but the current 

concept for it is to spread it out from Estonia to Romania in small 

sort of penny packets, again, more as a reassurance than a deterrent posture. 

Our game assumed that it could be reconstituted and be made 

ready to fight as a brigade in that 7- to 10-day warning period. Realistically, it is not clear that could be done, and it is also not clear 

that our NATO allies would, in Hungary and Romania and Bulgaria, be particularly happy about surrendering their reassurance 

force at the edge of a war with Russia. 

Our NATO allies are deploying three battalion-size, battalionplus battle groups, one in each of the three Baltic States. Conceivably they could combine to form something approaching a heavy 

brigade, but again their concept of operation is not consistent with 

that. The plan is for them to be very tightly integrated with the 

individual national armies, and we have had conversations with 

the appropriate folks in NATO, and it is clear there is absolutely 

no concept to sort of ‘‘Avengers Assemble’’ and bring them together 

to sort of fight as a brigade. Instead they will remain with their 

national forces. 

Our NATO allies have unfortunately since the end of the Cold 

War, and also ongoing through this century, drawn down their 

heavy combat forces substantially. Now some of that, to be fair, is 

them being good allies. We asked them to come and fight with us 

in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That didn’t require tanks. 

That required infantry, and so they made the choice to seek to 

make those contributions, which meant retiring tanks. It meant 

doing away with their heavy forces. 

So you look at, say, Germany which during the Cold War in the 

late 1980s fielded 12 heavy divisions. Today they have a little over 

200 tanks in their entire active inventory, and it would probably 

take them 45 days or so to get a single heavy brigade into action. 

The Allies today probably are not well postured to contribute 

much beyond what they already are in terms of these three battle 

groups plus the VJTF to that initial force required to sort of keep 

NATO in the game for longer than 21⁄2 or 3 days. The burden probably falls on the United States for that, and that is where we say 

that those other armored brigade combat teams somehow have to 

be produced, whether through the rotational dynamic that my colleague discussed or by permanently dropping them down there. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Got you. Very good. 

Mr. BONDS. I would like to add just one thing to that if I could. 
21 

I agree with Mr. Hunter that actually stationing three armored 

brigade combat teams in the Baltic States would require a fair 

amount of infrastructure that does not at present exist. It is not 

just the infrastructure to host them of course, as you know, but it 

is the sustainment infrastructure, the port infrastructure, et cetera. 

It can be built, done it with many more forces in Germany earlier, 

but that infrastructure does yet remain to be built. 

I will take a—push back a little bit though on the notion that 

three of our brigade combat teams in the Baltics would look like 

an offensive threat to Russia. They might say that, but they actually know better. The canonical formulation is that if you are going 

to attack, you need a three-to-one advantage. 

Right now in the western military district, the Russians can 

count on 27 heavy brigades. If only one-third of them is ready, that 

is nine ready armored brigades that would be defending against an 

attack of three. The Russians know that that is not a correlation 

of forces that would actually imperil St. Petersburg. And in fact, 

there is a statement by the Russian Minister of Defense that admits as much. Apparently they have read our report too. There 

have been something like 2,500 downloads in Russia. They have actually responded to it in the press. They have said, well, if NATO, 

in fact, does put three armored brigades in the Baltics, we will 

have to put three new divisions in the western military district. 

So they understand the correlation of forces, still three to one to 

maintain an advantage of attack. They are saying they are going 

to increase their forces ninefold if NATO puts three in the Baltics. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. If I may also just address that very briefly. I have 

had the opportunity to speak at conferences where Russians were 

present, and I have invited them to come play our war game, and 

to play NATO, and to attempt to invade Russia with three brigades 

against our red team playing Russia and defending, and I have actually offered to give them two tries in case the first try doesn’t go 

very well, and so far the Russian General Staff has not responded 

to this invitation. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield 

back. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Mr. Brooks. 

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Shlapak, during all the testimony and questioning, I was reviewing your work entitled Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s 

Eastern Flank, Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics, a little bit 

in greater detail than what your testimony has been. 

But one part of it says that seven brigades, quote, ‘‘could suffice 

to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic States,’’ end quote. Two 

phrases or words are important. One is ‘‘could,’’ and the other one 

is ‘‘rapid overrun.’’ If we had those seven brigades there, how would 

you describe the word ‘‘could’’? How would that change. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Well, there are a number of factors that determine 

combat outcomes, and the human factor is very important. 

One way I describe this when I talk about war gaming is that 

you get very different outcomes with the exact same force if Ulysses Grant is commanding the blue team or Hugh Grant is commanding the blue team. So we have had that. 
22 

Mr. BROOKS. I am from Alabama. We prefer you talk about Robert E. Lee, but go ahead. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Fair enough. But the analogy doesn’t work quite 

as cleverly, sir, but fair enough. 

So we have had blue teams that were less successful with that 

seven-brigade force because their application of it was more Hugh 

Grant-like than Robert E. Lee-like. Military art remains a very important factor in determining success or failure on the battlefield, 

so the ‘‘could,’’ was meant to reflect the fact that this does not 

guarantee success. These forces have to be properly employed in 

order to—— 

Mr. BROOKS. Best-case scenario, how long would it take the Russians if they were intent on taking the Balkans [sic] and we put 

in seven brigades, for the Russians to be successful? 

Mr. SHLAPAK. We believe that that seven-brigade force, if it was 

properly supported, could hold out for up to 28 days against a force 

of 40 to 50 battalion tactical groups, which we assess as being 

about the maximum effort that the Russians could plausibly bring 

to bear, given current and midterm projected Russian capabilities. 

Mr. BROOKS. So the best-case scenario is we delay a 2- to 3-day 

defeat to a 28-day defeat, assuming that we don’t then reinforce 

those seven brigades in some fashion. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Reinforcement is absolutely necessary. During that 

28 days, which after you add in the 7 to 10 days of warning you 

had becomes 35 to 38 days of total mobilization and deployment. 

During that time, the Army currently plans on deploying three brigade sets of armor in Europe. During that time, we would expect 

those three brigade sets, if they are properly positioned, properly 

protected, to become available, which would allow three additional 

U.S. armored brigade combat teams to hit the ground running. 

You now start getting into the window of time where, with modest increases in readiness, German/French/British heavy brigades 

could begin to appear on the battlefield. You have a Polish army 

that is fairly substantial, and upon mobilization could begin contributing forces to the fight. 

So if you can hold the line for that month, potentially, if you 

have done smart things with your sustainment, as my colleagues 

have discussed, if you have done smart things with your modernization, as Mr. Hunter has discussed, so that you are not outmatched during that 28 days, you can begin to bring NATO’s overall superiority to bear. And that 28 days, where those seven brigades are, for those of you who remember your World War II history, are sort of Bastogne-like, holding the line against the much 

larger Russian force that is—— 

Mr. BROOKS. You have answered my question. Let me move on 

to some others. 

As was mentioned previously, and I think this is right on point, 

we are under severe cost limitations, given our extraordinary outof-control deficit and debt. You may or may not be aware that the 

GAO [Government Accountability Office] and the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] last—well, in January, issued another report 

saying that what we are doing is unsustainable, which is their way 

of saying we are headed to insolvency and bankruptcy. If you look 

at the current Secretary of Defense’s comments, also Chairman of 
23 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, in his testimony, 

our greatest national security threat is our debt, if you believe 

them, and I do. 

How much does it cost for these seven brigades and the infrastructure, incremental additional cost, to position them in the Baltics as opposed to their being nonexistent or where they are now? 

Mr. SHLAPAK. So it depends how you—— 

Mr. BROOKS. And anybody can answer that. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. Right. It depends how you choose to generate 

them. We have done one set of estimates. If you are simply moving 

existing units, the one-time cost to move them is roughly $700 million; and then the incremental cost, on an annual basis, is roughly 

$200 million. 

If you create new units, but you exploit existing equipment 

stocks, either by taking equipment out of storage or perhaps rerolling Reserve Component units, Reserve Component heavy units 

from armor to Stryker or infantry, you have a one-time cost on the 

order of $4 billion and then annual costs of about $2.7 billion. This 

is for a full-up armored division. So it is three brigades plus artillery plus enablers. 

Finally, if you are just going to create completely new formations, 

just create from the ground up an entire new armored division, 

your one-time startup cost, which obviously would be spread over 

a period of years, is about $13 billion. And then, again, you have 

about that $2.7 billion annual O&M [operation and maintenance] 

cost to maintain the force. 

Mr. BROOKS. Mr. Chairman, may I have one followup? 

Mr. TURNER. Sure. 

Mr. BROOKS. All right. You know, there is an old saying that the 

best defense is a good offense. And it seems to me that as you are 

trying to evaluate whether to spend these very large sums of 

money, you also have to take into account the probability that Russia is going to attack the Baltics, in order to make an assessment 

as to whether it is worthwhile. 

If we are going to instead talk about a good offense being our 

best defense, what would your-all’s thoughts be on us assisting 

Ukraine, both in the Ukraine proper and in Crimea, which used to 

be a part of the Ukraine, a little bit more aggressively in order to 

do two things: One is to force the Russians to shift more resources 

to their efforts in that part of the world; and, two, to reinforce that 

we are sincere about trying to deter the Russians should they try 

to be expansive? And if we do it in the Ukraine and Crimea, that 

would suggest that we are going to do likewise in the Baltics, 

which, in turn, might deter them from considering attacking the 

Baltics. 

What are your-all’s thoughts on that? 

Mr. BONDS. Sir, two things. One, the concept of actually stretching them across, you know, multiple domains, probably always a 

valuable thing to look at and to spend some attention to. Whether 

that—you know, to what degree that means providing more lethal 

aid to Ukraine would need to be looked at, sir. 

The one thing I would want to caution against is substituting a 

different war. My colleague, Dave Shlapak, says we don’t want to 

be in a position of fighting a different war rather than defending 
24 

where they have already attacked and intend to win. So it may not 

be a substitute. 

It may be the situation where you augment a deterrent strategy 

in the Baltics with doing other things, you know, being strong 

other places around their periphery, causing other challenges that 

stretch them in some ways. I think that would tend to be an additive thing rather than a substitute. 

My fear would be they might decide that we can hold out in the 

Ukraine, we can keep our operations going longer there while we 

take over the Baltics, and then we will deal with what the U.S. and 

NATO does in the Ukraine. 

Sir, if I may add one thing to your earlier question. I want to 

clarify that it is not so much that we believe we would then lose 

in 28 days instead of 2 or 3 if we added the seven brigade combat 

teams. It is simply that what happens after day 28 becomes murky, 

unless those forces can be sustained. They will start to run out of 

stocks, preposition stocks, so those stocks have to be replenished. 

They will have to be reinforced. 

And you may remember, sir, during the Cold War days, the 

standard for NATO was 10 divisions in 10 days reinforcement from 

the United States. But also, 28 days gives a lot of time for airpower 

from the U.S. and from our NATO allies to break through the 

Kaliningrad air defenses. And so at that point, heavy airpower and 

heavy missile fires, if indeed we do invest in those long-range systems, can have a chance to become a lot more effective and attrit 

the Russian forces that might be outside the gates of Tallinn and 

Riga. And so I just want to add that those things will be going on 

during that 28 days, but you will still need that reinforcement. 

Mr. HUNTER. I think I largely agree with what has been said. I 

do think the key is deterrence, because I think the truth is, whether it is the scenario that we looked at, the scenarios war games 

there, there is no certainty of victory if the Russians make a serious move against the Baltics, at least in the near term, right, and 

that immediate stopping the offensive. 

There is not going to be a guarantee of success, so the key is deterring them from taking that step. And that is why the CSIS recommendations are focused so much on the elements of deterrence. 

What does it take to achieve that? 

On your idea of essentially going on offense in some respects, the 

step that I think would be the most offensive in that, if I can use 

that analogy, to the Russians would really be for our European allies to significantly up their investment in defense, because I think 

that has direct implications for this scenario, but it has implications for the Russians across the board. 

And as the chairman mentioned in some of his opening comments, actually, you know, the combined economies, and to some 

extent the combined forces, even though we wish our European allies had larger militaries, but their combined militaries and their 

combined economic efforts are very threatening to the Russians if 

they are unified. 

Mr. BROOKS. One of the reasons I mentioned the Ukraine and 

Crimea is because, hopefully, we learn from history. Certainly, our 

military assistance with weaponry had a major effect in Afghani-
25 

stan, with Afghanistan becoming free of the Russians on the one 

hand, and ultimately the Soviet Union collapsing on the other. 

Thank you for the additional time, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. TURNER. Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your expertise. 

Thank you for the perspective you have given to us today. Thank 

you for both CSIS and RAND and the work that you do. 

And I want to ask you if you have any additional information or 

items that you want to highlight before we conclude the hearing. 

We are done with our questions, but if you have anything else you 

would like to add, we certainly are willing to recognize you. 

Mr. BONDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members. 

Thank you, Ranking Member Tsongas. This has been really a terrific opportunity to talk more about our work. 

There is one thing I would say. We focused a lot on the Baltics 

here. There is another step to our work. When we consider total 

Army capabilities, total Army capacity, it needs to be for the range 

of threats that are faced. 

We are about to embark on running an extensive series of war 

games, four different war games looking at the Korean weapons of 

mass destruction threat, what the U.S. might at some point determine it needs to do about that, what the response from North 

Korea might be, and what might happen if, either as a result of 

war, social pressures, economic pressures, or political pressures, if 

North Korea collapses. 

At that point, you have between 50 and 75 nuclear weapons, we 

estimate by 2020, that might be used or might be lost. And so we 

are running a series of war games that will look at those additional 

things. And we will have to consider, in addition to things we have 

talked about [with] reference to the Baltics, what you would need 

in those other contingencies. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. TURNER. Are you assuming that there is not a China response that would inhibit our response to North Korea? 

Mr. BONDS. So that is a great question. We actually think there 

will be a China response. We think it can actually be a productive 

one, if it is something that is worked on in advance. The question 

will be, how far south do they come? How completely do they secure the nuclear weapon sites that they come across? 

You want to make sure that they are diligent about securing 

them from theft and proliferation, but also how do we at least 

deconflict with them and perhaps cooperate with them so that it 

is really a combined approach to dealing with the problem. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Hunter. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you for the opportunity to add on, because 

I really wanted to get to a larger point about Army modernization 

in general. I think what today’s hearing and what this situation 

and NATO’s eastern flank highlights is the fact that we don’t have 

a tremendous amount of time to wait around for the next great 

Army to show up in 10 to 15 to 20 years. 

You know, that is an arguable point. There are some who say, 

you know, the technologies that are available in the near term 

aren’t attractive enough, aren’t compelling enough to induce us to 

want to make a major investment. 

But my view is that you have got real threats and challenges in 

the near term that you are going to need to address. And since you 
26 

don’t have 10 to 15 years to wait to deal with those problems, you 

have to adopt a modernization strategy that you can implement 

and start to iterate improvements across the Army’s force relatively 

quickly. And that is what leads me in our study, which will be coming out soon, to a strategy that looks at making more of these incremental improvements and iterating them across the force very 

rapidly. 

Now, of course, the key part is it is going to take more funding 

to do that, as I outlined in my opening statement and in my written testimony. And when you see that, for example, today, you 

know, the Army’s plan is to field the next increment of WIN–T 

[Project Manager Warfighter Information Network-Tactical] over a 

40-year time period before they finish fielding it to the entire 

Army, that’s not rapid. I don’t think that is going to get the job 

done. 

To be fair to the Army, they are put in a really no-win situation 

with the Budget Control Act caps and the drawdown that happened. I think they did a relatively good job of protecting the vital 

capabilities of the Army in a cut drill. But we are in a different situation now. And so we have an opportunity to come up with a 

strategy that is focused on meeting these new challenges, not simply trying to avoid more harm. 

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Shlapak. 

Mr. SHLAPAK. I would like to vehemently agree with Mr. Hunter. 

This is all about deterrence. To fight Russia and win would be a 

strategic failure of the first magnitude. And so the question is to 

think about what really are the requirements of deterrence. 

So Mr. Brooks mentioned learning from history. Historically, I 

think we know that countries and particularly great powers start 

wars for two reasons. They start them because they have to or they 

think they have to. Japan in 1941 felt itself cornered, saw a menu 

of bad options, thought the best of the bad options was to attack 

the United States in hope that it would knock us far enough back 

that it could consolidate its position and then negotiate from a position of strength. 

They also start wars because they see opportunities, because 

they see opportunities to achieve important strategic goals rapidly, 

at minimum risk, at low cost. These are the wars that are going 

to be over by Christmas, the wars that you send your soldiers off 

to with flowers and marching bands. Now, they are almost always 

wrong, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do it. 

Right now, when Mr. Putin looks across his border at the Baltic 

States, he potentially sees the opportunity to launch—to impose a 

crushing strategic defeat on what he identifies as the number one 

threat to the Russian Federation, which is NATO, rapidly, at minimal risk, and at low cost. 

The challenge to NATO is to change that picture, to make it look 

like a different fight, to make it look like a high-risk, high-cost war 

with the most advanced, most powerful, richest alliance that the 

world has ever seen. That is what our work is designed to do. That 

is what the force we recommend is designed to create, that level 

of deterrent. That is what this is about. Thank you for your time. 

Mr. TURNER. I appreciate your comments. And one aspect of deterrence is leadership, and that aspect of leadership is resolve. And 
27 

I think certainly a calculus that we have to include in all that is 

an understanding that when the Russian leadership looks out, that 

they see leadership looking back. 

That is something that we need, regardless of technology, capability, or deployment. And I know it is certainly part of the debate 

we are having now, and you are contributing to it. 

So thank you so much for that. And with that, we will conclude. 

[Whereupon, at 5:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 1, 2017 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

MARCH 1, 2017 

(33) 

Statement of the Honorable Michael Turner 

Chairman, Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces 

Hearing: U.S. Ground Force Capability and Modernization Challenges 

in Eastern Europe 

March 1, 2017 

The hearing will come to order. 

Today we will receive testimony on the operational and strategic 

challenges facing U.S. and NATO forces in deterring, as well as responding 

to, Russian aggression on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) 

eastern flank. 

I'd like to welcome our distinguished panel: 

Mr. David A. Shlapak , Senior International Research Analyst and 

Co-Director, Center for Gaming, RAND Corporation 

Mr. Timothy M. Bonds, Vice President, Army Research Division, and 

Director, RAND Arroyo Center 

Mr. Andrew P. Hunter, Director, Defense Industrial Initiatives Group, 

and Senior Fellow, International Security Program for the Center for 

Strategic and International Studies 

Beginning with the invasion of Crimea in 2014, followed by incursions 

into East Ukraine, Russia continues to take aggressive actions in overturning 

European security. 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, has 

stated that "Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security," and 

that "what they seek to do is undennine the credibility of our ability to meet 

our alliance commitments to NATO." 

Reported just last week, a Russian intelligence collection ship was 

operating offthe east coast of the United States. Russian military aircraft have 

made high-speed passes over U.S. Navy ships operating in the Black Sea, and 

recent media reports indicate Russia has operationally deployed a new 

ground-launched cruise missile that violates the Intermediate-range Nuclear 

Forces treaty and directly threatens NATO allies. 

Secretary Mattis and Vice President Pence have reaffinned the United 

States' commitment to NATO, and also made it clear that Russia would be 

held accountable for its actions. 

As the former President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (PA), 

and current head of the U.S. delegation to the NATO PA [am in agreement 

with the Secretary and the Vice President's position. 

NATO's first goal is to prevent conflict. And highly ready, forward 

deployed, military forces contribute to this by deterring conventional conflict. 
34 

Actions have been taken by NATO in response to this continued 

Russian aggression; for example at the Wales Summit, NATO heads of state 

established a Readiness Action Plan and stood up an enhanced NATO 

response force. 

The United States remains fully prepared to meet Article 5 

commitments to NATO allies; however, if we are to rebuild a credible 

deterrent posture in Europe, then NATO nations also need to meet their 

agreed-upon goal of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. 

Only five nations do so now. 

Despite taking these actions, a major challenge for the U.S. and NATO 

continues to be reestablishing a credible forward presence of ready military 

forces. 

The previous Administration's strategy in Europe assumed that a small 

forward deployed presence, augmented by a small rotational force, would 

provide credible deterrence; that assumption has been proven wrong. 

So reviewing our current force structure in Europe is an excellent place 

to start for understanding current gaps in the capability and capacity of our 

ground forces, and can be applied to ground forces writ-large. 

Besides the broader strategic policy implications of reassuring 

members of the NATO alliance, the witnesses today are prepared to discuss 

what is required by our ground forces from a modernization perspective in the 

near term to improve force posture, and mitigate potential threats posed by 

Russia. 

Of special interest to the subcommittee today are the findings and 

observations from the most recent RAND wargame report (20 16) on the 

defense ofthe Baltics entitled, "Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern 

Flank" that raised alarming concerns regarding current U.S. and NATO 

military posture in Europe. 

The European Reassurance Initiative and multi-lateral training 

exercises, like Operation Atlantic Resolve, have been good first steps in 

improving forward presence in Europe and reassuring our Allies; however, 

the reality is that more resources and actions are required. 

Given the threats posed by Russian aggression, we need to move from a 

position of reassurance to a position of deterrence---credible deterrence. 

Finally, I want to close with a quote from Lieutenant General John W. 

Nicholson, the former commander ofNATO's Allied Land Command, 

"Military readiness costs money, but the costs of readiness pale in comparison 

to the human and material costs of war." 
35 

Testimony 

Deterring Russian Aggression in the Baltic 

States 

What it Takes to Win 

David A. Shlapak 

CT-467 

Testimony presented before the House Armed Services Committee. Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces on March 1, 

2017. 
36 

For more infom1ation on this publication, visit www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT467.html 

Testimonies 

RAND testimonies record testimony presented or submitted by RAND associates to federal, 

state, or local legislative committees; govemment-appointed commissions and panels; and 

private review and oversight bodies. 

Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif 

© Copyright 2017 RAND Corporation 

RAND® is a registered trademark. 

Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights 

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of 

RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of 

this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal 

use only, as long as it is tmaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to 

reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For 

information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit 

www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. 

www.rand.org 
37 

What it Takes to Win 

Deterring Russian Aggression in the Baltic States 

Testimony of David A. Shlapak1 

The RAND Corporation2 

Before the Committee on Armed Services 

Subcommittee on Tactical Land and Air Forces 

United States House of Representatives 

March 1, 2017 

Put most plainly, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

confront three related challenges in deterring Russian aggression in the Baltics (and, more 

generally, wherever NATO ten·itory may be threatened). Solving all three of these is vital 

to achieving core American objectives in Europe, which have been consistent and strong, 

through Republican administrations and Democratic, liberal and conservative, since 1945: ensure 

peace and stability, support democratic and market forces, and prevent the use of armed force to 

coerce the free people of Europe or to alter established borders. In this context, "winning" means 

putting in place the wherewithal to efiectively deter any Russian adventurism aimed at NATO 

member states by being prepared to deny Moscow its objectives without escalating to the first 

use of nuclear weapons. 

It is critical to note that "victory" here does not mean fighting a war with Russia and 

winning; that would be a strategic failure of historic dimensions. It means preventing conflict 

through a combination of strength and engagement not terribly unlike-in concept, if not scalethat which ultimately brought the Cold War to a conclusion with the !all of the Berlin Wall and 

the dissolution ofthe Soviet Union. 

These conditions do not exist today. RAND has conducted a series of war games-more than 

20, over a period now approaching three years-that have demonstrated that NATO's current 

posture is woefully inadequate to resist a Russian attack on the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, 

and Lithuania. We had participants from throughout the U.S. defense and intelligence 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony arc the author's alone and should not be interpreted as 

representing those of the RAND Corporation or any of the sponsors of its research. 

2 The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make 

communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, 

nonpartisan. and committed to the public interest. 
38 

communities at these war games, as well as our NATO allies. In no case have they been able to 

keep Russian forces from the Estonian capital of Tallinn or the Latvian capital of Riga for more 

than 60 hours; in some cases, NATO's defeat has been written into history in a day and a half. 

Such an outcome would leave the United States and NATO with no good options, Russia 

potentially re-established as the dominant strategic actor in Central Europe, NATO collapsed, 

and the trans-Atlantic security bond in tatters. It would make a failure of nearly 75 years of 

bipartisan American efforts to sustain the security of Europe, which Democrats and Republicans 

alike, since Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, have understood to be vital to the safety and 

prosperity of the United States. 

The first step towards winning eventually is not losing right now, which would be NATO's 

current fate. So, NATO needs to be able to stay in the game. The minimum requirement for 

detetTence by denial along NATO's frontier with Russia is not to otTer Moscow a vision of an 

easy strategic victory-the chance to register a fait accompli against minimal resistance. While 

on any given day, the Russian leadership may not be tempted to seize even such tempting lowhanging f!·uit, the challenge NATO confi·onts is not successfully to deter on an average day; it is 

to deter on the one day out of a thousand, or 5,000, when Moscow, for whatever reason, sees the 

prospect of a crushing win over its most dangerous adversary as an attractive prospect. 

The requirements for this are nontrivial, but hardly overwhelming. RAND analysis indicates 

that a force of about seven brigades, including, importantly three armor-heavy brigades-armor 

brigade combat teams (ABCTs), in U.S. Army parlance-in addition to the national defense 

forces of the Baltic states, and properly supported with fires, fixed- and rotary-wing aviation, 

engineering, logistics, and other enablers, and with adequate headquarters capacity for planning 

and command can prevent the fait accompli. 3 To be very specific, this force-present and ready 

to fight at the outset of hostilities-can, if properly employed, enforce an operational pause on a 

Russian ground force of up to 40-50 battalion tactical groups (BTGs), while retaining 

sufficiently large lodgments outside Tallinn and Riga to protect them from the bulk of Russian 

artillery. 

Our assessment is that this force could sustain itself on the defensive against the Russian 

offensive for up to 28 days. This leads to the second of the three challenges NATO faces: 

winning the game. While deterrence is greatly enhanced by the ability to deny Russia a quick 

win, ultimately the seven-brigade force appears inadequate to hold out indefinitely against the 

much larger and heavier Russian order of battle, let alone counterattack to evict them from 

NATO territory. 4 Accomplishing this requires a substantial additional increment of force. 

We currently estimate that an additional nine to 14 maneuver brigades-again, properly 

supported by fires and other enablers-would need to be prepared to counterattack to restore 

3 See David A Shlapak and Michael Johnson. Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank: Wargaming the 

Defense of the Ba/tics. Santa Monica: RAND, RR-1253-A, 2016. A U.S. Army ABCT consists of over 4,500 

soldiers and incudes abou!90 tanks. 90 infantry fighting vehicles. and several hundred other tracked and wheeled 

vehicles. 

4 As the discussion should make clear, the seven-brigade force cannot conduct a forward defense of the Baltic states; 

significant amounts of territory would likely be lost to the initial Russian offensive. We have not conducted any 

analysis of the size of the force needed to hold the line far forward. 

2 
39 

lines of communication trom Poland towards Riga, reinforce defense, and eventually conduct a 

counteroffensive to drive the Russians back behind their prewar borders.5 Further analysis is 

needed on this issue; while the general nature and scale of the required force is clear, its 

generation-most European NATO armies arc ill-prepared to contribute significant heavy forces 

on short notice-deployment, and sustainment need examination. 

Both staying in and winning the game-which are about putting in place the pieces of an 

unambiguously credible conventional deterrent posture-require more than combat troops. 

Today, NATO's defense infrastructure-the array ofheadqumiers, bases, other facilities, lines of 

communications, transportation assets and legal arrangement to facilitate the deployment and 

sustainment of forces-is woefully inadequate to support a warfighting posture east of the Oder 

River. U.S. support operations remain localized in southwestern Germany, more than 1,000 

miles from the likely combat front east of Riga; attempting to support multibrigade operations 

from that distance would be a logistical impossibility. The United States and especially its 

European allies need to make careful, focused, but likely extensive investment in revamping and 

revitalizing NATO's ability to receive, move, and support large combat formations along its 

eastern boundary, and especially in all three Baltic states. 

Substantial work is still needed to determine precisely what needs to be done and how to 

prioritize this work. However, RAND's wargaming suggests that NATO needs to be able to 

rapidly mobilize, deploy, fight, and sustain up to 21 maneuver brigades, organized probably in 

two or three corps, in a full-scale conflict with Russia in the Baltics. Given current plans and 

capabilities, the U.S. Army might be expected to supply up to 12 of those brigades: 

• up to three ABCTs stationed in the Baltics-the "stay in the game" force. 6 

• three more ABCTs drawn from secure brigade-sized prepositioning sites 

• up to six additional armored, infantry (IBCT), or Stryker brigade combat teams. 

The Anny should also anticipate potentially being called upon to deploy and support three or 

four fires brigades-at least one pcrn1anently stationed in the region and another in 

prepositioning-and two or three combat aviation brigades. 

Because NATO's command and control structure relies on consensus decisionmaking by the 

alliance's political leadership, the United States may also be obligated to provide at least one 

Corps headquarters to perform prewar planning and warfighting command, at least in the initial 

stages of any fast-moving conflict. 

5 See Tim Bonds, Limiting Regret: Building the Army We Will Need, Santa Monica: RAND, CT-437, 2015. NATO's 

air forces would also likely require reinforcement to make up for losses during this time frame. Ho\vever, the most 

crippling problem confronting NATO"s airpower after the first few days of conflict would be shortfalls in the most 

modern and effective weapons and munitions. 

6 Currently, the three eFP battlegroups spread across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania could, in aggregate and with 

proper training and exercising. fill one of the three heavy brigade requirements for the "stay in the game" deterrent. 

However, as currently conceived, each will be tightly integrated with the national defense forces of the host country, 

and there are no plans to ever treat them as an integrated combat force. Hence, we do not count them against the 

requirement for three heavy brigade for the initial deterrent force: initial wargaming of the "'post-Warsaw Summit" 

NATO posture suggests that this is appropriate. 

3 
40 

Critical to all of this will be NATO's approach to exercising and training. All of the 

investment in soldiers and equipment, railroad cars and planning, will be of little usc if the 

alliance doesn't realistically exercise its plans and capabilities. The successful deployment of the 

first "heel-to-toe" U.S. rotational ABCT in January 2017 was a sign of how far the U.S. Army, 

both at home and in Europe, has come in a very short time-such an exercise could hardly have 

been imagined a few years ago. However, all involved recognize that the long-planned 

movement of a single brigade is hardly a full test of the scale and complexity of the activity that 

would be necessary to respond to a full-blown crisis in the region. And unfortunately, the threat 

exists today-the United States and its allies must "spin up" to confront it with some degree of 

urgency. A robust and increasingly realistic schedule of deployment and warfighting exercises, 

combined with aggressive home station and prcdeployment training, is absolutely necessary. 

All of this will cost money. As the new Administration, the Pentagon, and Congress 

contemplate increases in defense spending, the Army has the opportunity-and the obligationto make resource allocation choices that result not just in a bigger A1my, but a more capable one, 

better able to execute the Service's most vital missions to support the nation's most vital 

interests, one of which is surely deten·ing conflict with the only other power able to extinguish 

our way of life in a matter of minutes. This means among other things taking the opportunity to 

expand the number of ABCTs in the force. The currently planned number of 10 active heavy 

brigades (tbc nine current ones, plus another scheduled for conversion from an IBCT) is entirely 

inadequate to support requirements in Korea, the Middle East, and Europe. Indeed, Europe alone 

could demand six, a commitment that the planned force could likely not support and certainly 

could not sustain. 

Finally, the third challenge is that the United States and its allies must sustain deterrencethrough the demonstrated capacity to stay in the game and then win it-without behaving in such 

a way that they unnecessarily increase the likelihood of a catastrophic outcome-blowing up the 

game. 

As discussed above, any potential crisis or conflict with Russia would lie deep in the 

proverbial shadow cast by nuclear weapons. A strong conventional deterrent helps manage these 

dangers: first, by decreasing the overall likelihood of a cont1ict erupting and, second, by reducing 

the pressure on the NATO side to contemplate immediate nuclear escalation to ward otT rapid 

defeat. It may increase these dangers, however, by magnifYing fears on the Russian side either of 

aNA TO otTensive threat or of the potential consequences to Moscow of being conventionally 

defeated should it fail to be deterred. 

On the first score, the operational realities of the situation should serve to mitigate actual, if 

not rhetorical, Russian anxieties. Less than a handful ofNA TO brigades on Baltic territmy, even 

backed by the alliance's ultimately superior air and sea power, do not represent a credible threat 

to the ten·itory of the Russian Republic. The notion of NATO mounting an attack on Russia with 

three brigades is strategically, operationally, and tactically absurd-even assuming that the 

alliance would somehow reach agreement to undertake such a course. 

The latter fear is more difficult to mitigate, since ultimately the prospect of precisely such a 

defeat is the basis of the deterrent NATO hopes to present. That said, it at least in part can be 

4 
41 

managed by carefully communicating to Moscow NATO's intent, and backing those words with 

appropriate actions. 

Thus, the alliance and the United Stales must continue to seek to maintain channels of 

communication with Russia at the political and military levels. Only if the two sides are 

talking--even about minor issues, such as managing incidents at sea or in the air·-can they 

make progress towards allaying mutual suspicions, thereby rendering the mutual deterrence 

equation more stable and perhaps, ultimately, less necessary. 

The idea of talking with the Russians while maintaining a posture of military strength is 

neither contradictory nor new. For years, it has been the foundation of U.S. policy towards its 

rising East Asian great power competitor, China, and it was the approach that characterized the 

last 20 years of the Cold War. 

The United States and its allies consistently sought dialog with the Soviet Union across a 

wide range of grounds, from the narrowest questions of enhancing the safety of forces operating 

in close proximity to the broadest ones of human rights, while expending herculean efforts to 

maintain powerful militmy deterrents against the prospect of Soviet aggression. 

To summarize: Today, NATO does not have in place an adequate conventional deterrent to 

Russian aggression against its most exposed member states, the Baltic republics of Estonia, 

Latvia, and Lithuania. A minimum deterrent--one that keeps NATO in the game for longer than 

two or three days-requires a force of about seven brigades, three of them armored, with 

appropriate support and sustainment. A more robust posture-one that can "win the game" by 

successfully defending for an extended period and, if necessary, eventually counterattacking to 

eject Russian torces-will require up to 12 additional brigades from the United States and its 

allies. NATO's eftorts to rebuild its conventional deterrent posture must be combined with an 

ongoing attempt to establish productive dialogue with Moscow, to reduce the propensity for 

crisis and minimize the chances of blowing up the game. 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify today and stand ready to address your questions. 

5 
42 

OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS. 

Senior International Research Analyst: Codirector, 

Center for Gaming 

Pittsburgh Office 

B.A. in political science, Northwestern University 

David A. Shlapak is a senior international research analyst at the RAND Corporation and 

codirector of the RAND Center for Gaming. Since joining RAND in 1982, he has led research on 

topics ranging from counter-terrorism to nuclear strategy. His primary current areas of 

research include U.S. national security strategy, the evolving East Asian and European 

security environments, and the use of gaming and simulation in defense planning. Shlapak is 

a graduate of Northwestern University and did his graduate work at UCLA. 
43 

Federal Contract or Grant Information 

The RAND Corporation is an independent, non-profit organization that perf(Jrms research 

and analysis. During the time period in question (FY20 15 through FY20 17), RAND has 

had contracts and grants with various agencies of the federal government to perform 

research and analysis. Research has been performed for the Departments of Agriculture, 

Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland 

Security, Justice, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the Administrative Office of the United 

States Courts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of 

Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal Communications Commission, 

the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York, the Intelligence Community, the 

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Social Security Administration, and 

the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. RAND has contracts with 

the Department of Defense to operate four federally funded research and development 

centers (FFRDC): PROJECT AIR FORCE lor the U.S. Air Force; Arroyo Center for the 

U.S. Army; National Defense Research Institute for the Department of Defense, and 

Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) for the Department of 

Homeland Security. 

Foreign Government Contract or Payment Information 

FY2017 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

FY2016 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Foreign Government 

South Korea 

Japan 

Subject of contract or 

payment 

Research 

Research 

Subject of contract or 

Foreign Government Dollar Value payment 

Commonwealth of 

Australia $1,521,072 Research 

Jinan Water 

Resources BureauPeoples Republic of 

China $3S5,652 Research 

Japan $ h 

South Korea $249,040 Research 

United Arab 

Emirates $3,155,000 Research 

Kurdistan Regional $2,714,789 Research 
44 

FYlS 

Foreign Subject of contract or 
45 

Testimony 

Limiting Regret 

Building the Army We Will Need-An Update 

Tim Bonds 

CT-466 

Testimony presented before the Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Tactical Land and Air Forces on March 1, 2017. 
46 

For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT466.html 

Testimonies 

RAND testimonies record testimony presented or submitted by RAND associates to federal, 

state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and 

private review and oversight bodies. 

Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. 

© Copyright 2017 RAND Corporation 

RAND® is a registered trademark. 

Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights 

This document and trademark(s) contained herein arc protected by law. This representation of 

RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of 

this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal 

use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to 

reproduce, or reuse in another !orm, any of its research documents for commercial use. For 

information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit 

www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. 

www.rand.org 

ii 
47 

Testimony of Tim Bonds 1 

The RAND Corporation2 

Before the Committee on Armed Services 

Subcommittee on Tactical Land and Air Forces 

United States House of Representatives 

March 1,2017 

Thank you Chairman Turner, Ranking Member Tsongas, and members of the 

subcommittee for inviting me to speak with you. It is an honor for me to be here 

today. I would like to share an analysis on closing the gap between the security 

commitments the United States has made and the ground forces that the Department 

of Defense (DoD) has planned to fulfill U.S. commitments. 3 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the author's alone and should not be interpreted as 

representing those of the RAND Corporation or any of the sponsors of its research. 

2 The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make 

communities throughout the world safer and more secure. healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, 

nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. 

3 This analysis draws upon publicly available materials, published RAND national security research, and RAND 

wargaming and analytic expertise to evaluate the U.S. Army's ability to help execute the national defense strategy 

against key threats. This analysis was funded by philanthropic contributions from RAND supporters and income 

from operations. 
48 

The Army describes its capability to support the nation's security commitments in terms of 

three factors: (I) its number of soldiers-what it refers to as its "end-strength"; (2) how well 

prepared its units are to operate -what the Anny refers to as its "readiness"; and (3) how 

modern its equipment is. What I would like to talk about today is how big and ready the nation 

needs its Army to be--from a joint perspective--to fulfill America's commitments and limit 

future regret about the decisions that the nation makes today. 

I have three main messages today: ( 1) the world has changed since the decisions in the 2014 

Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) set the size and capabilities of the forces we have today; 

(2) emerging and growing threats make it more likely that U.S. commitments in key regions will 

be challenged; and (3) the current trend in force planning will leave us with an Army too small to 

credibly sustain U.S. commitments and interests under the shadow of emerging and growing 

threats. 

us 

The latest review of Army force size and capabilities, contained within the March 2014 

QDR, "rebalanced" U.S. military operations to the Asia-Pacific and prescribed cuts in Army end 

strength. This included reducing the regular Army from 570,000 soldiers to 450,000; reducing 

the Army National Guard from 385,000 to 335,000; and reducing the Army Reserve from 

205,000 to 195,000. Further reductions in each component were anticipated. 

But many challenges to U.S. security have emerged or worsened since the 2014 QDR. In 

response, the work of this subcommittee, as reflected in the National Defense Authorization Act, 

increased the size ofthe Army to 476,000 soldiers in the regular Army, 343,000 in the Army 

National Guard, and 199,000 in the Army Reserve. In addition, it paused the Marine Corps 

2 
49 

drawdown at 184,000. This increase in Army size and pause in Marine Corps drawdown will 

increase the nation's capacity to meet these security challenges-if these forces are fully 

resourced and matched with the funds needed to ready these soldiers and equip them with 

modem weapons. 

As the Trump Administration develops its defense policy and strategy, it needs to assess 

whether further growth in the nation's ground force size, capabilities, and posture may be 

needed. 

3 
50 

To begin this assessment, we sought answers to tour specific questions: 

• How is the Army being used now around the globe? 

• What has the United States committed itself to do? 

• What regret might the nation have if it does not meet those commitments? 

• How large a ground force could be needed to meet those commitments? 

The final question assumes that the ground force would be employed as part of joint air, sea, 

land, space, and cybcr operations as one component of national power, in addition to diplomatic, 

economic, and other measures. 

4 
51 

The United States currently maintains forces worldwide, as shown on the above map. 

Specilically, as highlighted on in red, the Army has 68,000 soldiers on rotational deployments to 

the Baltics, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Africa, Afghanistan, South Korea, and other places around the 

world. 

These soldiers are deployed on a rotational basis, so it takes more than 68,000 troops to 

maintain a constant presence in a given theater. For the Army, forces could be deployed for nine 

months, followed by 18 months at home-a 1 :2 deployment ratio. At a 1 :2 deployment ratio, 

204,000 troops are needed to keep 68,000 troops deployed in the lield-68,000 conducting 

operations, 68,000 just back, and 68,000 more getting ready to go. 

Also shown on the map in blue are the 40,000 troops the Army has assigned to US European 

Command and with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the 22,000 troops forward 

stationed in South Korea and Japan; and the 17,000 additional soldiers forward stationed in other 

parts of the world. Because these 79,000 soldiers are home-based in these regions, they are all 

postured to support contingencies. Finally, the Army has 31,000 soldiers in the United States, 

providing a variety of support for ongoing missions. (Many of these may be the 23,000 Army 

National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers on active duty in February 2017). At an end strength 

of 476,000 regular soldiers, the Army would also have 11,000 soldiers in the continental United 

States (CONUS) supporting the Global Response Force (GRF), along with other forces available 

for assigned missions. 

5 
52 

Let me also mention the 151,000 soldiers conducting generating-force and strategic 

activities. At present, about 65,000 new soldiers are undergoing training or education; 

approximately 46,000 soldiers are organizing, training, and equipping the Army and building the 

capabilities that the United States will need in the future; and 40,000 soldiers are providing 

support for joint and national missions, including !he 23,000 soldiers in Army Medical 

Command and the 8,000 soldiers in joint assignments, such as combatant commanders and other 

senior officials. Additional soldiers are assigned to theater commands, strategic intelligence, U.S. 

Cyber Command, and other activities that support the DoD. 

6 
53 

us Commitments 

Given the forces available, the question then is how such forces map against the 

commitments the United States has made. We list above several recent statements of intent by 

the Trump Administration. In this testimony, we will focus on three of our commitments that are 

particularly salient today: our commitment to defeat violent extremism, our commitment to 

defend our NATO allies, and our commitment to defend South Korea. 

First, the national strategy commits the United States to combatting the persistent threat of 

terrorism. President Trump has specifically stated that "today, we deliver a message in one very 

unified voice: To these forces of death and destruction, America and its allies will defeat you."4 

However, our current force planning mainly considered efforts to continue to degrade a\ Qaeda. 

It turns out that the Middle East is in much worse shape than we assumed in our planned 

"rebalance" to the Pacific: The Taliban remains a threat to the government of Afghanistan, and 

the rise ofiSIL-and its seizure of population centers-was not anticipated in our force 

planning. 5 Therefore, the forces that have been deployed to these areas further reduce our 

available capacity for more serious threats to America's security. 

4 The White House, "Remarks by President Trump to Coalition Representatives and 

Senior U.S. Commanders," MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida, 6, 

5 The ISIL organization's name transliterates from Arabic as ai-Dawlah ai-Islamiyahfi al-'Iraq wa a/-Sham 

(abbreviated as Da'ish or DAESH). In the West, it is commonly referred to as the Islamic State oflraq and the 

Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State oflraq and the Sham (both abbreviated as ISIS), 

or simply as the Islamic State (IS). Arguments abound as to which is the most accurate translation, but here we refer 

to the group as ISIL. 

7 
54 

The next two commitments arc related. Our nation has long been committed to assuring allies 

and deterring, defeating, and denying aggression in multiple theaters. Regarding NATO, in the 

same speech, President Trump stated that: 

We will make a historic financial investment in the Atmed Forces of the United 

States and show the entire world that America stands with those who stand in 

defense of freedom. We have your back every hour, every day, now and always6 

He has also commented on the fact that many of our NATO partners have not yet met their 

obligation to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP: stating that: 

That also means getting our allies to pay their fair share. It's been very unfair to 

us. We strongly support NATO. We only ask that all of the NATO members 

make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which 

many of them have not been doing. Many of them have not been even close, and 

they have to do that. 

Our NATO allies have agreed to increase their spending in order to contribute their fair share 

to our collective security. 7 Even if and as they do so, however, it will take some time for those 

increased investments to result in the needed forces in the field. In the meantime. the United 

States must decide whether it is willing to bridge this gap with our allies, increasing their share 

as time goes on. 

However, the current force planning in the 2014 QDR does not provide sufficient ground 

capabilities for the United States to sustain a defense against Russian aggression. The QDR did 

not anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its potential implications for the NATO Baltic 

states. There are some references in the QDR to concerns about Russia's behavior, including: 

Russia's multidimensional defense modernization and actions that violate the 

sovereignty of its neighbors present risks. We will engage Russia to increase 

transparency and reduce the risk of military miscalculation. 

Other than that, the QDR force-planning construct does not anticipate what President Obama 

later described as Russia's "brazen assault on the territorial integrity of Ukraine." 

Finally, this and previous administrations have long acknowledged the dangers that weapons 

of mass destruction (WMD) pose to the United States, its allies and friends, and their interests. In 

a phone call with acting South Korean President Hwang Kyo-Ahn, the White House reports that 

President Trump "reiterated our ironclad commitment to defend the ROK, including through the 

provision of extended deterrence, using the full range of military capabilities." The statement 

further reports, "The two leaders agreed to take steps to strengthen joint defense capabilities to 

det(md against the North Korean threat."8 

6 The White House, of tile 

7 NATO, "Wales Summit Declaration Issued by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of 

the North Atlantic Council in Wales,'' September 5, 20!4. 

8 The White House, oflhc "Readout of the President's Call with Acting President Hwang 

Kyo-Aim of the Republic of Korea.·· January 29, c017a. 

8 
55 

The QDR does address deterring a North Korean attack and countering WMDs to some 

degree. However, the scope and scale of needed capabilities are not fully addressed. In particular, 

the QDR does not anticipate the scope and scale of countering provocations that could escalate to 

a massive North Korean artillery barrage of South Korea. Similarly, the problem of"loose 

nukes" is described in tenns of counterterror and special operations, but not in terms of securing 

the entire Nmth Korean nuclear program, including an estimated 200 separate sites, from theft 

and proliferation.9 

9 Timothy M. Bonds. Eric V. Larson. Derek Eaton, and Richard E. Darilek. Strategy-Policy Mismatch: How the U.S. 

Army Can Help Close Gaps in Countering Weapons of Mass Destmction, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation. RR541-RC. 2014 (as of September I. 2015: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research _reports/RR54l.html). 

9 
56 

Given that our most recent defense plans have not completely anticipated current threats, 

let's examine the regrets that the nation might face if it does not meet the commitments we have 

made to meet those threats. 

For our first example, what might happen if the United States does not continue its missions 

to defeat ISIL, al Qaeda, the Tali ban, and other violent extremist groups around the world? One 

potential regret is enduring terror movements that continue to destabilize vulnerable nations and 

whole regions; harm captured peoples; exploit captured territory to train terrorists, raise funds, 

and attract new recruits; and export violence to the United States and its allies and friends. 

It remains unknown whether currently deployed forces are sufficient to achieve U.S. 

objectives. In fact, the United States has steadily increased troop deployments to Iraq and Syria 

and extended the mission in Afghanistan. However, this analysis assumes that U.S. ground 

forces will remain engaged at their cmTent levels against extremist groups in order to continue to 

degrade them. There tore, we assume here that these troops could not be pulled away for other 

operations without ending this mission. It is also possible that countering violent extremists will 

require more troops if the mission changes-for example, if additional ground troops are 

committed to combat operations, such as those in Syria and Iraq. Total troop requirements would 

remain those shown earlier as the worldwide commitments. 

10 
57 

or war 

For our second example, how might Russia take the same course in the Baltics that it has 

taken in Ukraine? Russian "volunteers" could enter and destabilize Estonia and Latvia, or worse, 

conventional forces could launch a surprise invasion and present a fait accompli to NATO. We 

estimate that against currently stationed fi:Jrces, the Russians could reach the Baltic capitals in 

36-60 hours. That would leave the President with few and bad choices. The President could 

negotiate for the Russians to leave and risk the fracture of NATO if negotiations and sanctions 

drag on for months or years, or the President could choose to launch a counteroffensive to retake 

NATO territory-against a nuclear-anned Russia that has threatened first use of nuclear weapons 

to defend its territory from conventional attack and prevent its military from being destroyed. 

While the risk of war with Russia is small, and the risks of escalation to nuclear conflict are 

smaller still, neither risk is zero. Since the human and financial costs of both would be 

catastrophic, it is prudent to hedge against them. 

ll 
58 

New or war 

.. 

overrun 

Instead, NATO-and the United States-might place armored brigades in the Baltics. These 

armored brigades, along with other U.S. and NATO forces able to quickly deploy on warning, 

would be capable of denying Russia a quick victory. Such forces could be pennanently stationed 

or rotationally deployed. These ground forces would be supported by air and sea power from the 

United States and its NATO allies. The European Reassurance Initiative and the tour NATO 

battalion tactical groups deployed to Poland and the Baltics have made an impOiiant statement of 

alliance commitment and an initial "down payment" on the f(:Jrces needed, but are not yet close 

to the amounts required to deny Russia a quick oven·un of the Baltics. 

lfthe Russians attacked under this scenario, the United States and NATO would send air, 

sea, and land reinforcements to deny a Russian victory. Additional U.S. and NATO forces would 

be needed to defeat Russian forces and reverse any Russian territorial gains. 

12 
59 

u 

We will now assess the numbers of ground forces needed for the missions described above. 

We will begin with continuing infrastructure tasks, including training new troops, supporting 

joint missions, and current overseas missions. 

Adding the forces supporting current missions, we have a demand for 434,000 soldiers to 

support infrastructure tasks and current missions. This includes the troops who are rotationally 

deployed; those forward-stationed in Europe, South Korea, and other places; and those 

supporting generating- and strategic-force operations (but who are not in the GRF or available 

for other missions). 

13 
60 

How large of an additional force would be required to deter and defeat aggression in the 

Baltics (shown here in orange)? For the deterrent force, we estimate that a total of three armored 

brigades would be needed on the ground in the Baltics on the day fighting started, along with the 

two U.S. brigades and supporting soldiers already in Europe, and two other U.S. Army and 

NATO rapid reaction brigades (the 82nd Airborne GRF and the NATO Vety High Readiness 

Task Force) that can deploy to the Baltics on warning. In the future, our NATO allies should be 

able to provide one or more of the three armored brigades needed. However, in the near term, it 

is unlikely that any one of these nations would be able to sustain a deployed armored brigade. 

Therefore, we assume that the U.S. would need to deploy two more armored brigades and a fires 

brigade in addition to the forward stationed forces already in Europe and the armored and 

aviation brigades already deployed in a "heel to toe" fashion. In total, 36,000 additional soldiers 

would be needed over and above those already forward stationed or rotationally deployed to 

Europe. 

When deployed at a I :2 rotation ratio, keeping 36,000 soldiers on the ground in the Baltics 

requires 108,000 soldiers to maintain a continuous presence. Including the 283,000 soldiers 

forward deployed in or rotating to Europe and other theaters, and the 151,000 soldiers engaged in 

infrastructure activities, a total of 542,000 soldiers would be required for these activities alone. 

This number exceeds the 476,000 soldiers now planned for the regular Army, forcing the DoD to 

reduce day-to-day operations, continuously deploy 66,000 National Guard or Army Reserve 

soldiers, grow the regular Army, or take some combination of these measures. Worse, this leaves 

no margin for higher demands if deterrence fails and war breaks out in Europe, Korea, or 

elsewhere in the world. 

14 
61 

can 

In wartime, therefore, the DoD might be compelled to suspend troop rotations to maintain 

sufficient numbers of forces to meet contingency needs. From this point on in this testimony, we 

will discuss wartime demand, with troops deployed without rotation for the duration of a 

conflict. Such extended deployments for the duration of the conflict will impose extraordinary 

strain on troops and their families. (We should also note that some troop rotation will still be 

needed within theaters, so battle-worn units can pull back from the line for rest, refit, and 

replacement of casualties). 

If troop rotations to all theaters are suspended, including the deterrent force in the Baltics, 

troop demands will decline somewhat. The additional demand in the Baltics would decline to the 

36,000 soldiers deployed at any one time; demand for the combination of other theaters would 

decline to 146,000, while the demand for infrastructure forces would remain steady at 151,000 

soldiers. The total troops needed for these missions would decline to 334,000 soldiers when on a 

wartime footing. 

15 
62 

win 

Additional troops would be needed if the Russians were not deterred and decided to invade. 

To expel the invading Russian forces, we estimate that an additional 85,000 U.S. troops, 

including six armored brigades and associated artillery, aviation, headquarters, and other 

supporting troops, would be needed to defeat a Russian invasion (shown in brown), along with 

eight brigades and a similar number of troops from our NATO allies. 

This raises the total U.S. troops needed to around 420,000 soldiers. This includes soldiers 

tasked to conduct in1rastructure missions, continue cmTent missions around the world, and 

deploy the U.S. contribution to the NATO deterrent and war-winning forces shown above. Once 

again, this assumes a wartime footing for all of these troops with no rotations of soldiers. 

16 
63 

We now turn to a third example-a war resulting from a provocation cycle that escalates to a 

North Korean attack on South Korea. 

Current DoD force planning seems to focus on an invasion threat to South Korea from North 

Korean forces, as depicted on the map. But the threat is changing. A provocation cycle could 

escalate out of control and lead to an artillery barrage of Seoul, involving some of the 10,000 

artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers, firing from hardened positions that the DoD 

believes to be in range of South Korea. 10 Or North Korea might collapse as a result of war or 

economic failure, leaving up to 200 nuclear, chemical, and biological program sites unsecured 

(as represented by dots on the map above) .. 11 

In either event, a significant burden would fall on U.S. forces. To counter North Korean 

artillery, U.S. ground forces would need to provide forces to evacuate U.S. noncombatants; 

engineering, logistics, and maneuver units to sustain South Korean and U.S. operations to clear 

artillery within range of Seoul; WMD-elimination task forces to secure chemical or nuclear 

munitions deployed with artillery units; and ground combat forces to protect each of these types 

of units. 

10 Office of the Secretary of Defense, "2000 Report to Congress: Militat}1 Situation on the Korean Peninsula.)' 

Washington. D.C., September 12. 2000; General Cutiis M. Scaparrotti, Commander, United Nations Command; 

Commander, United States-Republic of Korea Combined Forces Command; and Commander, United States Forces 

Korea. statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 23, 20!6. 

Bennett, Preparingjbr 

SRF. 20!3. 

a former Republic of Korea Minister of Defense as reported by Bruce W. 

Collapse. Santa Monica, Calif: RAND Corporation. RR-331-

17 
64 

South Korean forces would also be stretched to gain control over North Korean military 

forces, exert political control over territory captured, and deal with a massive humanitarian 

catastrophe~all at a time when the South Korean Army is decreasing in size by one-third from 

its peak. 

For these reasons, countering an artillery barrage or North Korean WMDs would require 

significant U.S. ground forces. 

18 
65 

or 

We estimate that 162,000 soldiers (shown in green in the figure above) over and above the 

troops already deployed or forward stationed in South Korea would be needed for either the 

counterartillery or counter-WMD missions. Those numbers are added to the forces already 

shown as needed for int]·astructure, current missions, and to deter or defeat aggression in the 

Baltics.ln total, the number of U.S. soldiers needed, including operations in Korea, would be 

about 570,000 soldiers. 

19 
66 

700 

600 

500 

400 

300 

200 

100 

0 

u and 

Turning from the demand side to the supply side, how could the United States meet the 

demand required to lulfill the three missions discussed here? This level of demand could be met 

if the United States could deploy over 80 percent of the planned regular Army and Marine Corps 

operating forces and progressively mobilized an increment of25 percent of the Army National 

Guard, A1my Reserve, and Marine Corps Reserve each year, as shown in the figure above. 

20 
67 

But utilizing such a large fraction of the regular Anny and Marine Corps would leave very 

few soldiers or marines available to sustain that deployed force. Sustaining that force in combat 

will require replacements for casualties and other force "frictions," a reserve in case the conflicts 

are harder than expected or new crises emerge, and some in-theater rotation base for units to rest 

and refit if wars are longer than a single year. Taken together, sustaining that force tor an 

extended period of time will probably not be possible with an Anny active component of 

475,000 soldiers, a National Guard of343,000 soldiers, and an Army Reserve of 199,000 

soldiers. 

21 
68 

would 

We estimate that the nation could have sufficient ground forces to conduct operations during 

the tirst year of the described contlicts and some depth to provide replacements, a reserve, and 

some ability to rotate some soldiers out of combat if the United States takes several measures. 

First, reversing a portion of the recent drawdown could provide the soldiers needed to sustain 

contingency requirements. We estimate that returning the regular Army end strength to 540,000 

soldiers, while increasing the National Guard and Army Reserve to 360,000 soldiers and 300,000 

soldiers respectively, could provide the soldiers and unit types needed to reduce the gaps in our 

ability to maintain contingency force deployments. 12 In the example above, the regular Marine 

Corps is also increased to 200,000 troops. 

Second, the United States could plan for full mobilization of the reserve components and 

attempt to speed up their deployment-above the 25-percent increment we assumed would be 

mobilized the lirst year and every year thereafter, as shown in the example above. 

Third, the United States could either end other ground force deployments, or shift some of 

them-like CONUS supporting forces and Guantanamo Bay deployments-to the Navy and Air 

Force. However, withdrawing from these missions would be difficult in practice and may place 

important security and stability gains at risk. 

Please note that this and the prior example assume that the Marine Corps devotes essentially 

its entire operating strength to these ground missions and suspends other deployments, such as 

the Marine Expeditionary Unit and special Marine Air-Ground Task Force missions. 

12 In our analysis, we particularly emphasized filling holes in the Combat Support and Combat Service Support 

forces. Many of the units and capabilities most in need of increased capacity are currently in the U.S. Anny Reserve. 

22 
69 

Planned Army too small to meet commitments 

Leaving two choices: 

limit Response- Choose one fight to win 

If fully engaged in Korea, Army cannot successfully defend Baltics 

If fully engaged in Baltics, Army cannot stop artillery barrage or 

secure loose nukes in Korea 

Opportunistic aggression may become more likely 

limit Regret- Retain forces needed for both 

Pause drawdown until new threats fully addressed 

Increase Active and Reserve readiness -test on regular basis 

Improve defense posture in Baltics and Korea 

Force would be stressed, but would have capacity/some staying power 

In summary, the planned Army is too small to meet the current U.S. commitments. This 

leaves the nation with two choices. The first choice is to limit response. The United States could 

decide to win just one of the fights if they were to take place-losing the ability to "hold" an 

opponent's progression in other conflicts. For example, if the nation puts its war-winning force 

in South Korea, it could not keep the Russians ftom overrunning the Baltics. Conversely, if U.S. 

forces fully engage in the Baltics, they could not stop a North Korean artillery barrage or secure 

loose nukes after a North Korean collapse. Such limitations could raise chances that an adversary 

might take advantage of an opportunity to commit aggression and may also cause U.S. allies to 

rethink the credibility of U.S. commitments and whether to rely on U.S. conventional and 

nuclear deterrent forces. 

The second choice is to limit regret. To do so, the United States could reverse recent troop 

drawdown until new threats are fully addressed. This higher force strength could be drawn down 

again when, for example, the Russians withdraw i!·om Ukraine, retum captured territory, and 

take other measures to demonstrate that they will respect international boundaries. 

In either choice, to be ready to win in the Baltics, the U.S. Army should improve its ground 

force capabilities in the following ways: (1) increase the readiness of active and reserve forces 

and test their readiness on a regular basis, (2) pre-position more equipment in both the Baltics 

and Korea to speed force deployments and (3) restore a "matching capability," as my colleague 

Dave Shlapak has testified. 13 The United States needs to restore its ability to at least match large 

and capable adversaries ( ovennatch would be better still, and should be a goal that we continue 

13 David A. Shlapak, What it Takes to Win: Deterring Russian Aggression in the Baltic States, Santa Monica, Calif.: 

RAND Corporation, CT-467, 2017. 

23 
70 

to seek). Today, the U.S. Army would be outgunned, outrangcd, and outmanned in a fight 

against the Russians in the Baltics. The Army will need to rebuild its maneuverable short-range 

air defenses, improve the survivability and lethality of its combat vehicles (with active protection 

systems and modern antitank guided missiles), and extend the range of its cannon and rocket 

artillery to match the Russians. 

Thank you for your time. I am happy to take your questions. 

24 
71 

OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS. 

Santa Monica Office 

M.B.A. in business administration, Washington University in St. Louis; M5. in aero/astro 

engineering, University of Illinois; B.S. in aero/astro engineering, University of Michigan 

Timothy M. Bonds is vice president. Army Research Division. and director. RAND Arroyo 

Center. 

Bonds has served as a RAND vice president since 2011. Previously. he was deputy director of 

the Arroyo Center from 2003 to 2011. acting director from March 2009 to May 2010. and. from 

1999 to 2003. director of the Aerospace Force Development Program within RAND Project AIR 

FORCE. 

A member of the RAND staff for over 20 years. Bonds has led a variety of studies for the 

Arroyo Center. Project AIR FORCE. and the National Defense Research Institute. Areas of 

emphasis include ground force capabilities needed to meet national commitments; the 

deployment of Army-provided forces in recent wars and contingencies; and the US Army 

capacity required to meet current and future demand. Past analyses include evaluating C2 

(command and control) capabilities. personnel mission-day metrics, and the military 

employment of commercial space systems and services. Bonds has served as a member of the 

Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. and as a consultant to the Army Science Board. 

Among his most recent publications are Limiting Regret: Building the Army We Will Need. 

Strategy-Policy Mismatch- How the US Army Can Help Close Gaps in Countering Weapons of 

Mass Destruction. and Army Deployments to OIF and OEF. 

Prior to joining RAND. Bonds spent nine years in the aerospace industry. where he led projects 

to develop high-speed vehicle and weapons concepts. He holds an M.S. in aero/astra 

engineering from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from Washington University. St. 

Louis. 
72 

Federal Contract or Grant Information 

The RAND Corporation is an independent, non-profit organization that performs research 

and analysis. During the time period in question (FY20 15 through FY20 17), RAND has 

had contracts and grants with various agencies of the federal govemment to perfonn 

research and analysis. Research has been performed for the Departments of Agriculture, 

Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland 

Security, Justice, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the Administrative Oflice of the United 

States Courts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of 

Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, 

the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York, the Intelligence Community, the 

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Social Security Administration, and 

the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. RAND has contracts with 

the Department of Defense to operate four federally funded research and development 

centers (FFRDC): PROJECT AIR FORCE for the U.S. Air Force; Arroyo Center for the 

U.S. Anny; National Defense Research Institute for the Department of Defense, and 

Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) for the Department of 

Homeland Security. 

Foreign Government Contract or Payment Information 

FY2017 

Foreign 

FY2016 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Subject of contract or 

Subject of contract or 

Foreign Government Dollar Value payment 

Commonwealth of 

Australia $1,521,072 Research 

Jinan Water 

Resources BureauPeoples Republic of 

China $355,652 Research 

Japan $207,700 Research 

South Korea $249,040 Research 

United Arab 

Emirates $3,155,000 Research 

Kurdistan Regional $2,714,789 Research 
73 

FYlS 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Subject of contract or 

Foreign Government Dollar Value payment 

Commonwealth of 

Australia $9,104,636 Research 

Canada $17,624 Research 

Japan $207,700 Research 

South Korea $100,000 Research 
74 

House Services 

Subcommittee on Air and Land 

Senior Fellow, International Security Program 

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 

March 1, 2017 

2118 Rayburn House Office 
75 

Hunter: Testimony, HASC- TAL 3/01/2017 2 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the tactical, operational, and 

strategic challenges faced by U.S. ground forces in responding to Russian aggression in Europe. 

I'd like to divide my testimony into three parts for the purposes oftoday's hearing. First, I will 

briefly address the security environment in Europe and the patiicular stresses it places on the 

United States Army. Second, I'll discuss how the Army's modernization program is postured to 

address these challenges. Third, I'll talk a little about NATO and how the Army's modernization 

approach can suppoti the institutional security framework in Europe. 

I would like to emphasize that the views presented arc my own. While they arc informed by the 

work I do at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), they are not positions 

attributable to CSIS as an organization. CSIS does not take or advocate for specific positions on 

public policy issues. For purposes of disclosure, I will also make you aware of two projects in 

which I have been involved at CSIS that bear directly on my testimony today. First, CSIS did a 

study on Evaluating U.S. Arn1y Force Posture in Europe, performed in two phases in 2016. This 

study examined options for U.S. Army force posture in Europe, and was sponsored by U.S. 

Army Europe. Second, my own Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at CSIS is currently in the 

final stages of a project looking at the Army's modernization strategy. 1 This project is 

examining the Army's current modernization dilemma in the context of its historical funding for 

modernization, cun·ent challenges to the Army's ability to achieve overmatch, and options for 

addressing these challenges. Our Army modernization project was made possible by support 

from General Dynamics, DRS Technologies, and L-3 Technologies. 

A potential future conflict on NATO's eastern flank presents one of, if not the most, stressing 

scenarios tor U.S. ground forces. The close proximity ofNATO's eastern-most members to 

Russia combined with the explicit steps Russia has taken to develop and deploy systems 

designed to undermine or match U.S. warfighting advantages makes the threat in this region 

especially potent. In my view, three main features of the challenge presented by Russia are 

central. Russia has an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capability along its border with NATO 

that presents a sophisticated, layered, redundant, multi-domain capability to hinder the U.S. 

ability to project power in Europe. Through a combination of highly capable, layered integrated 

air defense systems and offensive ballistic and cruise missile capabilities, Russia presents 

strategic, operational, and tactical challenges to U.S. ground forces. This A2/AD capability 

challenges the strategic mobility of U.S. forces in Europe, complicates U.S. operations by 

holding lines of supply and communications at risk, and imposes tactical limits on U.S. forces by 

inhibiting the ability of U.S. ground forces to receive support from U.S. air and naval forces that 

is usually taken for granted. 

Russia has also invested significantly in ground combat systems, narrowing the U.S. advantage 

in combat vehicles by procuring modernized tanks and other vehicles while gaining an outright 

advantage in terms of indirect fires such as artillery and rocket systems. The advanced capahility 

provided by these systems, when combined with the advantage of shorter, internal Russian lines 

of communication in Eastern Europe, presents a significant operational and tactical challenge to 

U.S. ground forces. In addition, Russian non-kinetic capabilities, particularly in electronic 

warfare, cyber operations, and information operations, significantly out-pace the limited 

1 CSIS's report on this project is forthcoming in spring 2017 and is entitled "The Army Modernization Imperative: A 

New Big Five for the Twenty-First Century" 
76 

Hunter: Testimony, HASC ~TAL 3/01/2017 

capabilities the United States Anny can currently bring to a potential conflict. These non-kinetic 

capabilities potentially undermine the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence and anti-armor systems 

and threaten the ability of the U.S. and its NATO allies to operate effectively as a coalition. 

While the capabilities Russia has on NATO's eastern flank present a particularly stressing set of 

circumstances, it is worth noting that the willing of Russia to export many of these advanced 

systems to other potential U.S. adversaries means that these systems arc likely to challenge U.S. 

ground forces in a variety oflocations around the globe where they may be married with other 

challenges. 

The challenges presented by Russia on NATO's eastern flank carry clear implications for U.S. 

Arn1y modernization. U.S. ground forces need more robust short range air defense capabilities 

and increasingly advanced ballistic and cruise missile defense capabilities. Advanced precision 

munitions capabilities must be proliferated throughout the ground forces and adapted across the 

full range of direct and indirect fires. The Army needs to invest in more numerous and more 

capable long-range precision fires, replacing and extending the capability currently provided by 

ATACMS, and larger numbers of fire and forget anti-tank guided missiles. The Army must 

quickly enter the fray in electronic warfare (EW) and cyber operations, both to counter the wide 

variety of Russian EW systems and ensure the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence, surveillance, 

and reconnaissance (ISR) and networking capabilities. In addition, our NATO allies must invest 

significantly in missile defense and secure communications capabilities as well as generally 

increasing investment in their forces. This is only a san1pling of the modernization implications 

of the challenge to U.S. forces on NATO's eastern flank, but it is intended to convey one clear 

message: there is a need for significant efforts to modernize U.S. ground force capabilities in the 

near and medium te1m. 

I will tum now to the Am1y's broader modernization dilemma, a situation that CSIS has te1med 

the "triple whammy." The Anny's triple whammy is a combination of three trends which 

combine to seriously compromise the Am1y's ability to react to the challenges discussed above. 

Two aspects of the triple whammy are highlighted in the following table: 

Source: Rhys McCormick, The Army Modernization Challenge: A Historical Perspective 

First, the Army is near the bottom of a historically severe budget drawdown. Army 

modernization funding declined 74% from 2008-2015 as a result of the drawdown from two wars 

and the imposition of the Budget Control Act caps. The magnitude of this drawdown exceeds the 

drawdown the Anny experienced after the end of Vietnam and the drawdown after the end of the 

Cold War. The second aspect of the triple whammy is the unprecedented decline in Army 
77 

Hunter: Testimony, HASC ~TAL 3/01/2017 4 

research and development (R&D) funding. While the recent draw down in Army procurement 

funding is roughly in line with those of previous drawdowns, the drawdown in R&D funding is 

roughly twice as large as previous declines. While R&D funding had been relatively preserved 

in previous drawdowns, it was a target this time, falling over 50%. This decline is concentrated 

in the later stages of R&D, at the proto typing and system design and development stages, the 

immediate precursors to fielding new capabilities. l describe this phenomenon as a 7-year trough 

in the pipeline for developing new Atmy systems. 

Lastly, the current drawdown is occurring after a relatively ineffective modernization cycle for 

the Army. The failure of a range of Army modernization programs such as Future Combat 

System, Comanche, and Crusader in the last modernization cycle and the focus on procuring 

less-enduring systems like MRAPs meant that the last modernization cycle did much less to 

modernize the Army than the "Big 5" acquisition cycle of the 1980s. Unlike the Cold War 

drawdown, the Army has experienced this drawdown without the advantage of having recently 

fielded large, modernized fleets of equipment in the buildup. And as a result of the 

unprecedented decline in R&D funding, it enters the current modernization cycle without the 

same foundation of systems in the pipeline that are ready to procure. The impact of this lost 

modernization cycle can be partially illustrated with data from the Army's Decker-Wagner 

report: 

Figure 1. Cance1led Arm)· Acquisition Sunk Costs. 1995-2009 

.······················ .... .. ····· · ...... . 

······················· ......... . ..... ··········· 

--.It:-: 

BY! 

Source: Army Strong: Equipped. Trained, and Ready -Final Report of the 20 I 0 Army 

Acquisition Review 

jll' 

if' l 

The triple whammy leaves the U.S. Army's modernization program particularly ill-equipped to 

deal with the security challenges on NATO's eastern flank. The severity of the drawdown lead to 

a process where every portfolio in the Army's modernization program was cut back to, or below, 
78 

Hunter: Testimony, HASC- TAL 3/01/2017 

minimum sustaining rates. As a result, whether it's the Army's stated priorities, the President's 

Budget for Fiscal Year 2017 Program Objective Memorandum (FYI? POM), or anecdotal 

evidence from interviews can·ied out by CSIS as part of our Anny modernization study, there is 

a lack of consensus and understanding of the Arn1y's top modernization priorities across the 

broader defense enterprise. And under current modernization plans, there is little budget relief on 

the way. Over the course of the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), planned Army 

modernization funding in the FYI? POM remains just above the existing levels. Even if the 

Army could afford new platforms, the Anny has limited options. At the moment, the Anny does 

not have a surfeit of internally-developed capabilities in the pipeline that can be quickly fielded. 

The cuJTent Army modernization strategy essentially is: accept increased risk, halt new platfonn 

development, improve and/or sustain the existing inventory, and divest select platfonns. 

Now, that the drawdown is over and the defense budget is poised to begin to grow, the Anny's 

modernization strategy must be reoriented to address new challenges including those that are the 

topics oftoday's hearing. The FYI? POM projects Army modernization funding that is 

approximately $7 billion below its historical average and about $9 billion below the average 

modernization funding level during periods of increasing budgets. It is hard to escape the 

conclusion that the Army will need substantially increased levels of modernization funding if it 

hopes to field significant new capabilities in the coming years. However, as previously 

discussed, there is a significant near to mid-tenn need to field new ground force capabilities. As 

a result, even assuming significant new funding is added to the Anny's modernization budget, 

the Army will have to be extremely disciplined in ensuring that this funding is focused on the 

key capabilities required to address emerging threats such as the challenge on NATO's eastern 

flank. Given the likelihood that the Anny's force structure will be expanded beyond what is 

envisioned in the FYI? POM, a certain level of modernization funding increase will be required 

just to equip new force structure with today's capabilities. Unless the Anny grows force 

structure smartly, and equips its forces to address its shortfalls, even increased modernization 

funding may not necessarily result in increased capability. 

In my view, the goal of delivering the Anny the key capabilities it needs is best accomplished by 

adopting an Anny modernization strategy that focuses on adding capabilities to the Army's large 

force of fielded systems across 5 major capability areas including: air and missile defense, 

advanced protection, electronic warfare, cross-domain tires, and logistics. These capabilities will 

require, and can further leverage, the Army's substantial investment made in the last two decades 

in networking and situational awareness. The Army can obtain the fastest, most pervasive 

improvement in its force by progressively fielding these improvements in regular, sizeable 

increments. In addition, the Army's modernization strategy should explicitly set aside room in 

the POM for quickly developing, prototyping, and deploying capabilities in response to emerging 

threats and opportunities, as the Anny has done, with this committee's help, with the upgunned 

Stryker. Because the A1my's technology pipeline currently has serious gaps, some of these 

capabilities may need to leverage developments undertaken by partner and allied nations who 

have made focused investments in key ground force capabilities. Although this modernization 

strategy would not rule out some limited investment in efforts to develop new platforms, as many 

of the Anny's platforms will eventually need to be replaced, such investments should be 

undertaken only to the extent that they do not undermine the strategy's central approach. 
79 

Hunter: Testimony, HASC- TAL 3/01/2017 6 

The topic oftoday's hearing, the challenge on NATO's eastern flank, highlights a few important 

points about the institutional framework in Europe. There is no doubt that our allies and partners 

in Europe have underinvested in their security needs, and have done this for some time. 

Likewise, they followed the U.S. lead in putting what they were investing in recent years into 

counterinsurgency and counterterrorism capabilities that may not provide the capability required 

for operations to directly defend NATO members. However, the current focus on getting our 

European partners to increase the share of their GOP devoted to defense spending, while 

worthwhile, nms the risk of incentivizing a suboptimal response. Any increase in defense 

spending, for example increased contributions to military pensions, can help a nation raise its 

defense spending as a proportion of GOP, but not every spending increase will allow our NATO 

partners to better interoperate with us in addressing challenges in Europe. lt is far more important 

that our NATO allies join the U.S. Army in investing in the capabilities to address the challenge 

on NATO's eastern flank than it is that they hit a particular spending target. And, in fact, as 

previously mentioned, many of our NATO allies have invested in critical ground force 

capabilities such as precision, high volume indirect fires, short range air defenses, and electronic 

warfare that can be extremely valuable in the coming years. The U.S. Army can leverage these 

capabilities, whether they are deployed as part of aNA TO or coalition force, and/or through 

incorporation into Army systems. The focus of activity at U.S. European Command must shift in 

this direction as well. Just as the U.S. Anny needs a focused modernization strategy, the United 

States needs a focused, cooperative modernization approach with its NATO allies and other 

partners. Ideally, this approach would also be coupled with a broader national-level security 

cooperation strategy that complements and enables interoperability and modernization, resulting 

in a significantly more capable NATO alliance. 

The situation on NATO's eastern flank is concerning. More concerning is that it is potentially a 

harbinger of similar or even more serious challenges to lJ .S. security interests still to come. 

However, the good news is that there are real, practical measures that can be taken to address 

these threats. I recommend that this committee engage closely with the U.S. Army in its 

oversight and in its review of upcoming budget requests to ensure that a focused, well prioritized 

Army modernization strategy is adopted that allows the Anny to meet current and emerging 

challenges. 
80 

Andrew Philip Hunter 

Director, Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group and 

Senior Fellow, International Security Program 

Center for Strategic and International Studies 

Andrew Hunter is a senior fellow in the International Security Program and director of the 

Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at CSIS. He focuses on issues affecting the industrial 

base, including emerging technologies, sequestration, acquisition policy, and industrial 

policy. From 2011 to November 2014, Mr. Hunter served as a senior executive in the 

Department of Defense (DOD). Appointed as director of the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell 

in 2013, his duties included fielding solutions to urgent operational needs and leading the 

work of the Warfighter Senior Integration Group to ensure timely action on critical issues 

ofwarfighter support. From 2011 to 2012, he served as chief of staff to Ashton B. Carter 

and Frank Kendall, while each was serving as under secretary of defense for acquisition, 

technology, and logistics. Additional duties while at DOD include providing support to the 

Deputy's Management Action Group and leading a team examining ways to reshape 

acquisition statutes. 

From 2005 to 20 I I, Mr. Hunter served as a professional staff member of the House Armed 

Services Committee, leading the committee's policy staff and managing a portfolio 

focused on acquisition policy, the defense industrial base, technology transfers, and export 

controls. From 1994 to 2005, he served in a variety of staff positions in the House of 

Representatives, including as appropriations associate for Representative Nonnan D. 

Dicks, as military legislative assistant and legislative director for Representative John M. 

Spratt Jr., and as a staff member for the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and 

Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. Mr. Hunter holds an 

M.A. degree in applied economics from the Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. degree in 

social studies from Harvard University. 
81 

DISCLOSURE FORM FOR WITNESSES 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

INSTRUCTION TO WITNESSES: Rule 11, clause 2(g)(5), of the Rules of the U.S. 

House of Representatives for the ll5'h Congress requires nongovernmental witnesses 

appearing before House committees to include in their written statements a curriculum 

vitae and a disclosure of the amount and source of any federal contracts or grants 

(including subcontracts and subgrants ), or contracts or payments originating with a 

foreign government, received during the current and two previous calendar years either 

by the witness or by an entity represented by the witness and related to the subject matter 

of the hearing. This form is intended to assist witnesses appearing before the House 

Committee on Armed Services in complying with the House rule. Please note that a copy 

of these statements, with appropriate redactions to protect the witness's personal privacy 

(including home address and phone number) will be made publicly available in electronic 

form not later than one day after the witness's appearance before the committee. 

Witnesses may list additional grants, contracts, or payments on additional sheets, if 

necessary. 

Witness name: Andrew Hunter 

Capacity in which appearing: (check one) 

D Individual 

~Representative 

If appearing in a representative capacity, name of the company, association or other 

entity being represented: ..:C:::.S=IS"--------------------

Federal Contract or Grant Information: If you or the entity you represent before the 

Committee on Armed Services has contracts (including subcontracts) or grants (including 

subgrants) with the federal government, please provide the following information: 

2017 

Federal grant/ Federal agency Dollar value contract grant 

N/A 

r 
82 

2016 

Federal grant/ Federal agency Dollar value Subject of contract or 

contract grant 

grant Naval Postgraduate School $119,000 Impact of Sequester on Defense lndustna! Base 

grant Naval Postgraduate School $119,000 OCO Contracts after Iraq 

grant Naval Postgraduate School $119,000 lncentlveslnPerformance-basedlogiStlcsContractmg 

2015 

Federal grant/ Federal agency Dollar value Subject of contract or 

contract grant 

grant USAREUR $247,000 US Army Force Posture in Eastern Europe 

grant Naval Postgraduate School $119,000 Federal R&D Contract Trends 

grant Naval Postgraduate School $119,000 International Joint Development 

Foreign Government Contract or Payment Information: If you or the entity you 

represent before the Committee on Armed Services has contracts or payments originating 

from a foreign government, please provide the following information: 

2017 

Foreign contract/ Foreign government Dollar value Subject of contract or 

payment payment 

N/A 

2 
83 

2016 

Foreign contract/ Foreign Dollar value Subject of contract or 

payment government payment 

N/A 

2015 

Foreign contract/ Foreign Dollar value Subject of contract or 

payment government payment 

N/A 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MARCH 1, 2017 

(87) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN 

Mr. LANGEVIN. These wargaming projections indicate NATO’s current structure 

would fail to repel a Russian force invasion of its bordering Baltic neighbors. I 

greatly appreciate the various recommendations that were made as a result of this 

wargaming, and I would like to hear your thoughts on how we can best supplement 

any immediate gaps in force structure with advanced technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), electronic warfare, or cyber tactics, for example. Do 

you see viable opportunities there to tip the balance in our favor? 

Mr. SHLAPAK and Mr. BONDS. Advanced technologies, such as UAVs, electronic 

warfare, and cyber tactics, cannot by themselves ‘‘tip the balance in our favor’’ or 

serve as a substitute for capable ground forces to prevent a rapid Russian fait 

accompli in the Baltics. But Army modernization is necessary to counter Russian 

advantages in air defense, long-range fires, attack aviation, antitank munitions, and 

cyber-electromagnetic capabilities, so that ground forces can successfully fight outnumbered and win with reduced casualties. 

There is not enough time and space for stand-off strikes in support of a limited 

ground force to succeed in preventing a rapid fait accompli. It is only 135 miles from 

Pskov to Riga. Moving tactically at 5 miles per hour, the Russians can still overrun 

Baltic defense forces and isolate their capitals in less than 60 hours. Russian air 

defenses and fighters, available bases, realistic sortie rates, and legacy munitions 

reduce the effectiveness of NATO airpower in the opening weeks of a conflict. 

Third offset technologies will likely not solve this fundamental time-distance problem, although some could enable a joint force to execute a more realistic ‘‘multidomain battle’’ concept. The Army modernization priorities necessary to close critical capability gaps, retain freedom of action in contested environments, and succeed 

in close combat include: 

1. fires: improve target acquisition sensors and the range, volume, and area effects of Army fires to destroy mobile radars, missile launchers, armored forces, and 

command posts 

2. protection: improve mobile, light-armored short-range air defense to defeat 

enemy fighters, attack helicopters, and unmanned aerial systems so ground forces 

can move to and win the close fight 

3. maneuver: improve M1/M2 armored protection, aircraft survivability (radar 

surface-to-air warning), and lethality (extended-range Hellfire), as well as dismounted firepower (better, faster Javelin) to destroy enemy forces in close combat 

4. command: improve C4ISR system integration, resilience, and interoperability 

with allies; assured precision navigation and timing; and offensive and defensive 

cyber-electromagnetic warfare capabilities to exercise effective mission command 

5. mobility: improve the weight capability of armored vehicle-launched bridges 

to support a rapid counterattack in Baltic terrain with multiple rivers. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. It is no secret that over the past decade, the Russian government 

has conducted increasingly frequent and egregious cyberattacks against NATO 

countries. As such, cyber defense has become an integral part of NATO’s fundamental mission of collective defense. Do you believe NATO is at a maturity level 

to effectively incorporate cyber technologies into strategies or doctrine to exploit 

Russian critical infrastructure? And how can we better leverage U.S. resources to 

broaden NATO cybersecurity capacity, take preventative measures and enhance information sharing? 

Mr. SHLAPAK and Mr. BONDS. Though RAND has extensive analytic capability in 

cyberwarfare, RAND has not yet been asked to assess NATO’s ability to effectively 

incorporate cyber technologies into strategies or doctrine to exploit Russian critical 

infrastructure. However, we can offer some broad observations. Progress on 

cybersecurity, as articulated in NATO’s Cyber Defence Policy, includes the following. 

• At the 2016 NATO Summit in Warsaw, the allies ‘‘recognized cyberspace as an 

operational domain in which NATO must defend itself as effectively as it does 

in the air, on land and at sea.’’ 

• The allies made a ‘‘Cyber Defence Pledge’’ to prioritize their cyber defense 

capabilties and protect their national networks. 
88 

• The allies committed to mutual assistance in preventing, mitigating, and recovering from cyber attacks and conducting cyber education, training, and exercises. 

However, significant challenges remain before NATO has an effective offensive 

cyber capability. • Some NATO member states are developing their own offensive cyber capabilities, but these remain national capabilities under national control. • It is unclear how and under what circumstances member states would choose 

to make their cyber capabilities available to the NATO alliance and NATO commands. 

The U.S. is positioned to lead NATO to achieve cyber goals. 

• NATO should develop the ability to plan, coordinate, command, and control the 

offensive cyber capabilities of member states. This is still nascent within NATO. 

Given that NATO planning, as well as command and control mechanisms, generally mirror those developed by the United States, we expect that Department of 

Defense (DOD) mechanisms will serve as a template for NATO. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. These wargaming projections indicate NATO’s current structure 

would fail to repel a Russian force invasion of its bordering Baltic neighbors. I 

greatly appreciate the various recommendations that were made as a result of this 

wargaming, and I would like to hear your thoughts on how we can best supplement 

any immediate gaps in force structure with advanced technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), electronic warfare, or cyber tactics, for example. Do 

you see viable opportunities there to tip the balance in our favor? 

Mr. HUNTER. Advanced technologies such as UAVs and EW can serve as important force multipliers that improve the effectiveness of current U.S.-European force 

posture but are by themselves insufficient in tipping the balance. Though these investments would improve the capability of NATO’s current force structure, they 

would not solve the fundamental imbalance of forces. As structured in the wargame, 

the limited number of NATO forces stationed in the Baltics cannot deter a Russian 

invasion, as they do not pose a credible threat of failure to Russian leadership. 

Going against a quantitatively superior Russian force, the NATO defenders would 

be quickly overwhelmed. Incorporating advanced technologies can slow down the 

Russian invasion envisioned in the wargame results but must be supplemented by 

an increased flow of additional allied forces into the Baltic states. In turn, this 

would increase the time, cost, and complexity of a Russian invasion and reduce or 

eliminate the perceived advantage Russia might gain from such an operation. This 

requires a combination of increased allied forces that are in or realistically transportable to the Baltics and the advanced ability of these forces to address evolving 

Russian threats. 

Although advanced technologies alone cannot tip the balance, that does not lessen 

the importance of investing in these technologies. These technologies should be incorporated with force structure increases to tip the European deterrence balance. 

The historical example of the Second Offset Strategy demonstrates the success of 

such an approach. The technologies developed during the Second Offset Strategy— 

precision-guided munitions, stealth, communication, command, control and intelligence (C3I)—permitted the U.S. to deter Soviet aggression without the need for 

massive, unsupportable European force structure requirements. Today, advanced 

technologies offer the same potential to supplement smaller allied force sizes as one 

element of a broader plan to restructure U.S. and NATO force structure to sustain 

a credible conventional deterrence posture. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. It is no secret that over the past decade, the Russian government 

has conducted increasingly frequent and egregious cyberattacks against NATO 

countries. As such, cyber defense has become an integral part of NATO’s fundamental mission of collective defense. Do you believe NATO is at a maturity level 

to effectively incorporate cyber technologies into strategies or doctrine to exploit 

Russian critical infrastructure? And how can we better leverage U.S. resources to 

broaden NATO cybersecurity capacity, take preventative measures and enhance information sharing? 

Mr. HUNTER. It is my belief that, collectively, NATO is not yet at a maturity level 

sufficient to effectively incorporate cyber technologies that exploit critical Russian 

infrastructure. In this area, the technology available is fairly advanced, but the concept of operations and doctrine for its use is extremely underdeveloped. This is true 

here in the United States and even more so at the NATO alliance level. Classification of the technology involved is a significant barrier to developing an integrated 

alliance approach. 

The challenges NATO faces in broadening its cyber security capacity mirror the 

difficulties the U.S. military faces today in improving cyber security. First, the 

United States and NATO need to better leverage the cybersecurity expertise found 
89 

in the private sector. In the United States, this entails finding ways to recruit and 

retain cyber experts outside of the traditional military career structure and was a 

top focus of Secretary Carter’s Force of the Future Initiative. NATO countries will 

similarly need to find ways to ensure that their militaries leverage and enable those 

with the requisite cyber skills to join the military. Additionally, the U.S. and NATO 

need to further a common understanding of the cyber field. NATO’s July 2016 recognition of cyberspace as a domain of operations was a good start, but further work 

is needed in reaching a common understanding of what cyber entails and best practices for preventative measuring and enhancing information sharing. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. ROSEN 

Ms. ROSEN. This war game was designed to help assess the viability of NATO’s 

current posture, and in turn U.S. conventional military posture in Europe. How has 

U.S. military posture in Europe improved since the release of RAND’s wargame report? In your opinion, are we doing enough to maintain a credible deterrence posture? 

Mr. SHLAPAK and Mr. BONDS. The increase in the U.S. European Reassurance Initiative and the matching contributions by NATO allies are important first steps that 

signal alliance cohesion and commitment to the Baltic states. Yet they remain insufficient to prevent a rapid Russian fait accompli, which arguably should be the standard for credible deterrence given the enormous costs and risks of miscalculation, 

war, and escalation with Russia. 

The increase in the U.S. European Reassurance Initiative provided for one rotational armored brigade, which is being spread across Eastern Europe from the Baltics to Bulgaria. There are U.S. plans to establish a prepositioned equipment set for 

a second armored brigade, although it would not be possible to draw equipment and 

fight on seven to ten days’ warning. The Europeans are providing three battalionsize battlegroups in each of the Baltic States led by Britain, Canada, and Germany. 

RAND war games have shown these forces remain insufficient to prevent a rapid 

Russian fait accompli if deterrence fails. 

The problem with relying on a tripwire is that Putin may doubt NATO’s will to 

follow through with a delayed counteroffensive to liberate the Baltic states. A counteroffensive would be expensive, requiring six months to generate nine times more 

force to attack at a 3:1 ratio than to defend at a 1:3 ratio. NATO would likely suffer 

more casualties in the first week of combat with Russia than during the last decade 

in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia could retaliate by striking critical infrastructure in 

Western Europe and the United States with conventional cruise missiles. Moscow 

would also likely threaten and possibly demonstrate use of nuclear weapons to deter 

a NATO counteroffensive. Would Western policymakers really be willing to risk 

their capitals for Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius? Putin may believe he can engage in 

brinksmanship to shift NATO’s response to economic sanctions. 

To avoid a rapid defeat, RAND war games suggest the U.S. should station a corps 

headquarters and a full modular armored division with three armored brigades and 

supporting enablers in Europe to defend the Baltics on short warning. Reducing the 

Russian advantage in tanks to 2.4:1, this force, along with the three NATO 

battlegroups, three infantry brigades, and one Stryker brigade, could hold the Baltic 

capitals for two to four weeks with prepositioned stocks of fuel and ammunition. Another nine to 12 NATO armored brigades would need to counterattack rapidly to establish a sustainable defense. These forces largely exist; they are just not ready, not 

in the right place, and lack infrastructure to move quickly. 

Ms. ROSEN. What specific Russian capabilities, which have been demonstrated to 

date, pose the highest risk to U.S. ground forces? In your opinion, what modernization capability gaps do we need to focus on in the near term to help mitigate these 

capabilities and/or threats? 

Mr. SHLAPAK and Mr. BONDS. The most lethal Russian capabilities that pose direct risk to U.S. ground forces include BM–30 and BM–21 rocket artillery; T–14, T– 

90, and T–72B3 tanks; AT–14 antitank guided missiles (ATGMs); Su-34 and Su-25 

attack aircraft; Hind attack helicopters; Iskander missiles; and cyber-electromagnetic warfare capabilities. Additionally, Russian SA–21, SA–15, and SA–22 air 

defense systems and fighter aircraft present indirect risk by limiting the defensive 

counterair, air interdiction, and close air support for ground forces provided by 

NATO airpower. Army modernization should address critical capability to suppress 

Russian air defenses, counter long-range fires, defend against low-altitude attacks 

by aircraft and attack helicopters, survive ATGMs, conduct cyber-electromagnetic 

warfare, maintain interoperable command systems with NATO allies, and bridge 

rivers with heavy armor. 
90 

Russia has steadily modernized its forces to negate U.S. airpower and dominate 

its neighbors. Russia has developed a two-tier air defense system with a stand-off 

advantage that presents a lethal threat to NATO’s fourth-generation aircraft. Assuming a 33-percent readiness rate in the Western Military District, Russia could 

still generate 27 battalion tactical groups or nine brigade equivalents with seven 

days’ warning, achieving a 6:1 advantage in modern main battle tanks versus 

NATO’s current posture in RAND war games. At a 66-percent readiness rate, Russia could generate up to 60 battalions or 20 brigade equivalents with ten days’ 

warning, achieving a 4.5:1 advantage in tanks versus NATO’s enhanced forward 

presence. NATO’s artillery would be outnumbered, outranged, and outgunned by 

Russian artillery. Emerging insights from RAND’s analysis of Army capability gaps 

and modernization priorities observe that Russia’s ATGMs can destroy M1A2 tanks, 

while the active protection system on Russian armor can defeat Javelin antitank 

munitions. Russia could surge close air support and attack helicopters in low-altitude attacks to destroy U.S. armor, which lack short-range air defense. Russia’s 

cyber and electronic warfare attacks present new challenges with potentially crippling effects. Collectively, this is a prime example of losing ‘‘overmatch.’’ 

In contrast, the United States has not sized, postured, modernized, and resourced 

the armed forces to deter Russia since 1992. In particular, the DOD has for 25 years 

built the Army to defeat third-world powers and insurgents, not a peer competitor. 

Army modernization programs have been repeatedly cancelled and cut during this 

time. Fixing forward posture is a necessary but not sufficient condition to prevent 

a rapid fait accompli. Army modernization is necessary to close the critical capability gaps outlined above in order to succeed in decisive close combat. 

Ms. ROSEN. Rotating forces over time seems to be a costly undertaking. After how 

many 9-month armored brigade combat team (ABCT) rotations does it become more 

cost effective to permanently base an ABCT in Europe? 

Mr. BONDS. RAND has the analytic capability but has not yet been asked to complete a detailed cost analysis of the range of possibilities about how and where units 

would be based, operated, and supported under permanent stationing or rotational 

presence over time. Nor has RAND completed an analysis of different posture locations, methods, and force levels to determine their respective strategic and operational advantages, disadvantages, costs, and risks. 

However, we offer the following operational and force sufficiency considerations. 

• Rotating an armored brigade with its equipment to Europe provides the most 

ready unit forward and improves power projection skills in Europe. • However, it requires all nine current armored brigades in the active component 

to meet three rotational requirements for deterrence in Europe, Korea, and Kuwait at a 1:2 ratio. • The Army currently does not have enough capacity to maintain three rotational 

armored brigades in Europe to deter Russia while meeting its other two requirements in Korea and Kuwait. 

• Even accounting for the two additional armored brigades that the Army plans 

to build plus the five armored brigades in the National Guard, the Army will 

not have enough capacity to maintain five rotational requirements. 

• Given the enormous costs of miscalculation, war, and escalation with Russia, 

the Army, DOD, and Congress should consider growing three new armored brigades and stationing them in Europe to provide a minimum credible deterrent, 

reduce rotational turbulence, and sustain unit readiness in the United States. 

We also offer the following considerations on different types of costs. 

• Some recurring costs are higher for permanently stationing forces overseas, including housing, dependent education, and cost of living adjustments. 

• Other categories of recurring costs can be higher for rotating forces to meet 

overseas missions, such as transportation costs for unit deployment and return. 

• Some categories of recurring costs are challenging to estimate without a detailed understanding of where and how units will be stationed, operated, and 

supported. 

• In addition to recurring costs, there may also be one-time costs for either permanent stationing (e.g., military construction) or rotation (e.g., equipment sets). 

• Host nation support may offset some or all of the additional costs discussed 

here, such as soldier/unit support, base operations, and military construction. 

Ms. ROSEN. This war game was designed to help assess the viability of NATO’s 

current posture, and in turn U.S. conventional military posture in Europe. How has 

U.S. military posture in Europe improved since the release of RAND’s wargame report? In your opinion, are we doing enough to maintain a credible deterrence posture? 

Mr. HUNTER. Though the U.S. has improved its conventional military presence in 

Europe, further improvements are needed to maintain a credible deterrence in pos-
91 

ture. A recent CSIS report, Evaluating U.S. Army Force Posture in Europe: Phase 

II Report, recommended the following improvements to U.S. European force posture 

as means to maintain a credible conventional deterrence posture: 

• ‘‘An armored brigade combat team and a full-strength combat aviation brigade 

should be permanently assigned to Europe.’’ 

• ‘‘The U.S. based rotational force should be transitioned from an armored brigade to an infantry brigade and possibly provided with pre-positioned equipment in the east for training and exercises.’’ 

• ‘‘The U.S. rotational troop presence in each Baltic State should be expanded 

from a company to a battalion.’’ 

• ‘‘Equipment should be pre-positioned in Western Europe for four U.S.-based brigades (two ABCTSs, one fires brigades, and one sustainment brigade) to enable 

rapid surge capacity in a crisis.’’ 

• ‘‘Increased U.S. force posture and defensed investments in Europe must be 

nested in a whole-of-government approach and accompanied by significant increases in defense spending and contributions from NATO allies.’’ 

Ms. ROSEN. Rotating forces over time seems to be a costly undertaking. After how 

many 9-month armored brigade combat team (ABCT) rotations does it become more 

cost effective to permanently base an ABCT in Europe? 

Mr. HUNTER. In evaluating U.S. Army Force Posture in Europe: Phase II Report, 

the CSIS authors recommend permanently stationing a third ABCT in Europe ‘‘in 

order to improve deterrence, sustainability, and likely long-term cost effectiveness.’’ 

In conducting that study, the CSIS study team found that determining when it becomes more cost effective to permanently station an ABCT in Europe is difficult to 

determine, as it depends on several factors, such as permanent basing location, burden-sharing agreements, length of rotations, etc. The study team further concluded 

that it is likely to be cheaper to permanently station an ABCT in Europe than to 

continuously rotationally deploy forces through Europe over the long term. This 

finding is supported by the historical example of the Army’s increased size and 

equipment requirements of the heel-to-toe ABCT deployments in the 1970s. During 

this time, the Army briefly experimented with rotational deployments to bolster its 

European presence before electing to permanently station these forces due to costconsiderations. Additionally, the increased size of the rotational forces and decision 

to not use prepositioned equipment will drive the cost of rotating forces higher than 

the $637 million/year listed in the President’s FY17 budget request. 

In making the decision whether to permanently station an ABCT in Europe, there 

are several important questions Congress needs to resolve: How long will the U.S. 

maintain this increased presence in Europe? Where would an ABCT be permanently 

stationed in Europe? Before deciding to permanently station a third ABCT in Europe, decision makers need to identify how long the U.S. might expect to maintain 

this increased force posture. Permanently stationing forces in Europe requires a 

substantial upfront MILCON investment in the form of new bases/expansion of old 

bases coupled with the cost of construction for new housing, installations, schooling, 

etc. for families. If the U.S. expects to only maintain an increased European force 

presence for a few years, the Army will not achieve savings from permanently stationing forces as opposed to continuously rotating forces through Europe. The second 

question that must be answered by Congress is the following: where would an ABCT 

be permanently stationed in Europe? While it’s preferable to permanently station 

an ABCT closer to the NATO’s Eastern borders, cost considerations and logistics dictate that it is more likely that an ABCT would be permanently stationed somewhere 

in Germany. Compared to other locations, stationing an ABCT in Germany would 

likely lead to a smaller upfront reduce a smaller upfront MILCON investment at 

the expense of reaching the frontlines slower. 

Ms. ROSEN. What specific Russian capabilities, which have been demonstrated to 

date, pose the highest risk to U.S. ground forces? In your opinion, what modernization capability gaps do we need to focus on in the near term to help mitigate these 

capabilities and/or threats? 

Mr. HUNTER. Multiple CSIS studies have found that Russian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD), ground combat, and non-kinetic capabilities present the greatest pacing threat for the United States Army. The Russian A2/AD concept of operations 

is a sophisticated, layered, redundant, multi-domain network that hinders the U.S. 

ability to project power in Europe and presents challenges to certain fundamental 

assumptions about the Army and its role in the joint force. Comparing ground combat capabilities, the U.S. retains a diminished lead in combat vehicles, while the 

Russians have surpassed the U.S. in indirect fires capabilities. Finally, Russian nonkinetic capabilities, particularly in EW and cyber operations, significantly out-pace 

the limited capabilities the U.S. Army could currently bring to a future conflict. 
92 

Given the Russian challenges, in a forthcoming CSIS report, The Army Modernization Imperative: A New Big Five for the Twenty-First Century, the CSIS authors recommend that the Army prioritize five capabilities: Electronic Warfare, Air 

and Missile Defense, Cross-Domain Fires, Advanced Protection, and Logistics. Given 

funding limitations, these five cross-cutting capabilities offer the greatest return on 

investment for the Army. In Electronic Warfare, the Army portfolio is ‘‘empty’’ after 

neglect since the end of the Cold War and requires substantial investment in both 

offensive and defensive capabilities. Short Range Air Defense capabilities should be 

a top priority in Air and Missile Defense, accompanied by incremental upgrades to 

PATRIOT. Given trends in the future operational environment, the Army needs to 

increase investments in fire systems that enable greater effectiveness and range 

across multiple domains to include cyber and space. In Advanced Protection, active 

protection systems are necessary given the proliferation of advanced munitions. Finally, commercial advancements can be harvested for military logistics to improve 

military effectiveness and negate future operational limitations. 

Æ