America Ball Land: Still fighting the cold war

The US military is shifting its focus toward unconventional warfare � but its politicians remain stuck in the past

When US defence secretary Robert Gates unveiled a half-trillion-dollar military budget blueprint in April, he also signalled a dramatic shift in how the US will fight its wars in the future. It is a move away from weapons for conventional conflicts, focusing instead on weapons needed for the unconventional warfare the US is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But is the US military ready to shed the cold war mindset that has defined its training and foreign operations for decades? Significant change is unlikely to come soon.

The Iraq invasion and its aftermath underscored the struggles the US military faces in adapting to fight guerillas and militant groups who target civilians and governments through force and information warfare.

Victory in Iraq became elusive because the US military leadership failed to define the mission as a counterinsurgency. Six years later, the US is still far from perfecting its ability to defeat a powerful insurgency. The challenges are also evident in Afghanistan, where the war is now headed toward its eighth year. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden � the al-Qaida leader US forces went in to catch � continues to elude the most powerful military in the world.

The Sons of Iraq, credited with a major part of the success seen in the aftermath of the US troop surge in 2007 and 2008, were paid off. The movement grew out of Sunni tribes in Anbar province who had fought US forces and rebelled against al-Qaida militants. The surge's "clear, hold, build" strategy would have fallen flat on its face without these men � from finding common ground with the Americans and forming US-led neighbourhood militia groups.

The 2010 Pentagon budget acknowledges some of these challenges, calling for more spending on Afghanistan than Iraq for the first time since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and outlining some 50 programme changes to play up unconventional warfare capabilities. The overhaul reflects President Barack Obama's changing focus to the interlinked quandary in Afghanistan and Pakistan as he withdraws the 130,000 US troops from Iraq.

More broadly, the budget points to a new focus on hybrid wars: those that lie between conventional warfare and a full-blown insurgency, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, that renders much of the military's traditional heavy weaponry useless.

Gates has all but ended the army's $200bn attempt to build a fleet of nimble, electric-powered vehicles over concerns that the vehicle's design put it at greater risk from roadside bombs, the militants' weapon of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he has increased spending � in the billions of dollars range � for more armoured vehicles, spy planes and monitoring and jamming technology. The plan also unveils sweeping changes in the military's bloated procurement process, one decried by Gates and other lawmakers as having benefited a select group of major contractors for too long after 9/11. Instead, the plan sees civil servants replacing many private contractors.

The $534bn budget also axes controversial plans to build a new, high-tech presidential helicopter and the C-17 military transport plane, and only pays for four more of the very pricey F-22 stealth fighter jets, prompting outcry from both Republican and Democratic legislators whose states stand to lose many jobs in the midst of a recession.

Ignoring a veto threat from the White House, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill late last month that adds $369m for more F-22s and to develop a backup engine for the F-35 joint strike fighter, promising a bloody stand-off with the Obama administration ahead of final passage in Congress, which could come later this summer.

Among the staunchest critics of Gates's plans are those who attacked them as putting America at risk by hampering its preparedness to fight conventional threats, such as those emanating from China or North Korea. Yet for all Gates's tough talk, the budget blueprint still bears a hefty $534bn price tag, a figure that rises to nearly $664bn after including the costs of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and calls for building three more DDG-1000 Navy destroyers, which can operate in shallow water but whose need has been questioned. And that's not counting the funds added on by individual legislators.

Half of the budget proposal, Gates says, is allocated to fighting conventional wars, in contrast to just 10% spending for unconventional warfare, while the remaining 40% would go toward weapons that can be used in both types of conflict.

Despite Gates's spin, the thrust of his proposals has not gone unnoticed. As the sole Republican holdover from the Bush administration, Gates is facing criticism from within his own party for vowing to axe programmes close to some congressmen's hearts.

But as lawmakers took out their pitchforks, Gates responded in kind. When Republican representative Trent Franks of Texas questioned the termination of two missile defence programmes and a funding cut of $1.2bn for the missile defence agency, he received an abrupt tongue-lashing from Gates: "I would just say that the security of the American people and the efficacy of missile defence are not enhanced by continuing to put money into programmes that are fatally flawed, or research programmes that are essentially sinkholes for taxpayer dollars."