As the United States defense budget has been cut over the last several years, the Congress has been very disappointed with proposals from the military services for readjusting their force structure. This disappointment generated the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force (NCSAF) – after the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2013 proposed cutting 3,900 Regular Air Force members, 900 Air Force Reservists, and 5,100 Air National Guardsmen, along with about 50 Regular Air Force aircraft, 50 Reserve aircraft, and 130 Guard aircraft.

Guard advocates, including members of Congress, decried the cuts as too targeted on the Guard. Taking the numbers at face value, the casual observer will sympathize, especially considering that Regular Air Force end strength started at 332,800 and Air National Guard end
strength started at only 106,700. A similar uproar has followed comparable PB15 Army force structure proposals and a National Commission on the Structure of the Army will likely ensue, along with similar commissions to examine the Navy and the Marine Corps.

All the forms of force structure mathare valid and important. The challenge is to balance the equations – and all their associated risks and benefits – for the greater common good.

All Kinds of Ways to do the Math

The senior leaders of the Department of the Air Force explained that their force structure logic was to trade quantity for quality, in order to be an affordable “smaller, but superb, force that maintains the agility, flexibility, and readiness to engage a full range of contingencies and threats.” The senior leaders of the Department of the Army explained that their force structure logic is to reduce end strength as rapidly as possible, while still meeting operational commitments, in order to concentrate remaining funds on rebuilding and sustaining “a force capable of conducting the full range of operations on land, to include prompt and sustained land combat.”

The Army is planning to take risk in its modernization programs, while the Air Force is taking risk in near-term combat capacity in order to invest in its much delayed recapitalization programs. Either way, however, call this the math of affordable combat capability, where you increase the Active Component percentage of an overall smaller force to be more ready and responsive with what’s left.

Reserve Forces Policy Board math counters the above formulation by asserting that Reserve Component forces across the four services consume only about 16% of the Defense budget, even though they represent 39% of military end strength. The simple math is telling. Unfortunately, it fails to account for the difference in routine Active and Reserve Component output short of full mobilization, and for significant Active Component investments in Reserve Component force structure (to include capabilities research, development, testing, evaluation, and acquisitions, as well as training, education, oversight and other management infrastructure).

Enough about combat. What about homeland secur