In this Army vs. Navy contest, the Army risks being sidelined by the Marines

The urgent, immediate objective of all the branches of the United States military is to prepare for a new age of warfare dominated by artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics, unmanned systems, and cyberwarfare.

And the looming threat focusing the collective minds at the Pentagon is China, which is expected sometime in the next decade to make a move on Taiwan in a way that could draw the U.S. into an all-out war.

For its part, the Army has established the Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas, to work with entrepreneurs, scientists, and academics to fast-track the development of new warfighting technologies, several of which are on the cusp of moving from the lab to the field.

“We are at the beginning phases of the largest Army modernization effort in the last 40 years,” said John Whitley, the acting secretary of the Army. “The Army is now a DOD leader in technology and concept development and is at the forefront of fielding new technologies.”

But with the Biden administration proposing a Pentagon budget for 2022 of $715 billion, basically freezing defense spending at this year’s level, the competition among the services for a bigger slice of the same-size pie is getting cutthroat.

“Many strategists and budgeteers are looking at the Army, particularly its end strength, as an offset to fund air and maritime priorities,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They question the Army’s role in the Indo-Pacific region.”

As the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines all jockey for more funds, their arguments are often centered on the role each service would play in any future war with China.

The Marine Corps has already outflanked the Army as the “ground force of choice” by ditching its 1980s-era tanks and towed artillery in favor of a radically revamped warfighting concept aimed at thwarting China in its own backyard by operating from islands and ships in the South China Sea.

With the Navy providing the ships, both manned and unmanned, and the Air Force and Navy providing precision fires, again from manned and unmanned platforms, the Army has been struggling to explain what value-added capabilities it would bring to the fight.

Asked about that point-blank by Cancian at a CSIS event in March, Gen. Paul LaCamera, commander of the Army in the Pacific, seemed to admit that the Army might be relegated to a critical but supporting role.

“We provide over 51% of logistics to the other services. You know, we are the largest ground force,” LaCamera said. “So if there’s a fight on land, you know, we’ll be the ones participating in that … with our Marine brothers and sisters as we move forward … you know, us grabbing a piece of ground that then facilitates operational maneuver with our operational fires that sets the conditions for the Air Force and the Navy.”

But the Army is also moving ahead with an ambitious and expensive plan to deploy troops and ground-based hypersonic weapons capable of destroying Chinese defenses.

In case you were under the misimpression that bitter interservice rivalries were a thing of the past, the Army’s concept of basing its long-range missiles in the Pacific faced immediate derision from the four-star general who commands the Air Force Global Strike Command.

“There are a lot of countries that have to agree to this. I could see some of them probably agreeing in the European theater, maybe in the Central Asian theater, but I don’t see it coming together with any credibility in the Pacific any time real soon,” Gen. Timothy Ray said in a Mitchell Institute podcast last month.

Ray argued that that the Air Force’s array of bombers and standoff missiles deliver far more bang for far less buck.

“I just think it’s a stupid idea to go and invest that kind of money that recreates something that the service has mastered and that we’re doing already right now,” Ray said.

The debate illustrates the tension as the services scramble for funding is what is a zero-sum game.

The Army wants more soldiers, the Navy wants more ships, the Air Force wants more squadrons, and somebody is going to draw the short straw.

In an article last month in Foreign Policy headlined, “Give the U.S. Navy the Army’s Money,” Blake Herzinger, a defense analyst and lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, argued that it is time to reassess the traditional roughly one-third split between the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

In a future war with China, he said, the Navy will be the linchpin.

“In terms of any contingency related to a rising China seeking to displace the order of the free world, there are no realistic options without a strong, revitalized Navy,” Herzinger argued. “To have all the modern tanks in the world surrounded by soldiers with augmented reality helmets stuck on U.S. shores or sunk hundreds of miles from land is not a winning scenario.”

The Army, seeing the handwriting on the wall, has already given up its ambition to increase the active-duty force from the current 485,000 soldiers to 550,000.

“I recognize that, quite frankly, we just can’t afford that and at least with what I see as budgets,” Gen. James McConville, the Army chief of staff, said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing this month.

Instead, Army leaders like McConville are pleading with Congress to allow them to hold on to what money they’ve got.

“Our readiness is at a good place, but that readiness could become fragile,” McConville testified.

“If you’re a professional sports team and you never practiced and then you’re expected to go in the Super Bowl and actually play the game, we would never consider doing that,” he said. “And it’s the same thing with our troops.”

Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com