Transform or Modernize: Why Polish Military Transformation Matters
Posted: 26 Oct 2006
by Peter J. Podbielski
Executive Summary
The transformation of the Polish military has become an important goal for both Poland and the United States. To succeed, this process needs priorities, resources, and a clear vision. A recently-completed Strategic Defense Review (SDR) offers an outline of such a vision and priorities, and alludes to possible resource needs. The SDR presents options for either comprehensively transforming the force or modernizing it with selected systems and weapons acquisitions. Of these choices, Poland should opt for transformation. Achieving successful transformation will require the Polish government to encourage public discussion of defense and military matters and begin to think in state categories, rather than partisan political terms. The United States too must seek to enhance the capabilities of, and cooperation with, this important ally.
Background
Nearly a decade after Poland was invited to join NATO at the 1997 Madrid Summit; the country took up the long-overdue task of conducting its first Strategic Defense Review (the equivalent of the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review). In June 2006, a team from the Polish Ministry of National Defense completed an 18-month review. This review was underscored by multiple requirements – including a domestic mandate for Poland to adjust its defense policy, the specter of new asymmetrical threats, and various NATO and European Union requirements. The review identifies a series of road maps for defense and armed forces leaders to transform the Polish military by 2020.1
In the wake of the SDR, Polish policymakers face the choice of whether to transform or modernize the military. Transformation equates to qualitative change – change that will shape the Polish Armed Forces into a more robust and effective military capable of operating, unilaterally or in coalition, within a variety of military environments. Conversely, the main goal of modernization is the acquisition of new weapons systems – that is, simply to obtain better equipment, as opposed to ensuring full-fledged day and night compatibility (i.e., command and control, communications, intelligence, and logistics interoperability with allies and partners).
Of these two choices, Poland should opt for comprehensive transformation in how its military thinks and operates, and not merely seek to acquire new military technology.
By agreeing to allow the SDR team to complete its work, the current Polish government has shown its capability to act in state – as opposed to party – interests. It remains to be seen whether it will accept the final report findings and recommendations without challenging the objectives, analytic approaches, and process.
Problems
With NATO accession, Poland met the Alliance’s minimum military requirements and adopted an ambitious agenda of implementing NATO Force Goals, which are aimed at enabling partner militaries to achieve tactical, operational, and strategic interoperability. Despite these actions – as well as multiple out-of-country deployments in support of UN, NATO, and OSCE missions – Poland remains bereft of a strategic review and road maps to guide politicians and defense officials in their planning efforts.
Until 2004, when the SDR was commissioned, the Defense Ministry’s primary focus was to acquire new weapons systems or platforms to modernize the armed forces. In the context of a broader strategic plan, each respective acquisition – Mi-24 upgrades, self-propelled howitzers, CASA light transport aircraft, frigates, F-16 fighter aircraft – could have been a catalyst for transformation. But without such a plan, these acquisitions were not, and therefore, a number of key challenges went unaddressed and remain unresolved. These include: inadequate development of civil-military relations; lack of an integrated military intelligence; lack of viable and integrated logistics, information, and personnel management systems; lack of effective and integrated command and control (C2) and command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; and inadequate research and development programs. Perhaps most critically, there are no readily-available resources for funding improvements in these areas.
The Strategic Defense Review
Against this backdrop of inadequate planning, Poland’s recent SDR was a welcome and much-needed step. Unlike the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review, the Polish SDR served as a bottom-up as well as a top-down examination of the defense establishment and the armed forces. An additional SDR objective was to prepare road maps for the defense minister and uniformed leaders to use in transforming the military by 2020. In pursuit of this goal, the review team assessed the findings of scientific studies, analyses, strategic simulations, and opinion surveys, and met with subject matter experts, academicians, partisan political specialists, political scientists, directors of defense industry, and journalists.
The comprehensive documentation and analysis of these inputs aided the team’s efforts to conduct a program and budget evaluation of the recommended options. In its assessment of the future Polish military, the review team addressed issues in the context of both national and alliance requirements and interests. Three key questions confronted the team:
(1) whether to preserve obsolete technology – along with its co-existing logistical and maintenance backlog – or invest in new systems, platforms, and force structures; (2) how to increase the percentage of NATO standards achieved; and (3) what is the optimum deployable force that Poland can afford.
Of these, the most important issue is an economic consideration of what Poland can afford. Based on a projected 3% GDP growth rate, the defense ministry can anticipate an increase in the defense budget of PLN 6 billion ($1.9 billion) over the next 15 years, including a two-fold increase in the acquisition account from PLN 700 million ($223 million) to PLN 1.5 billion ($478 million). This account could fund a number of different things – logistics stock purchases, maintenance of current armament levels, training to ensure the armed forces meet 50% NATO standards, and new infrastructure to support the F-16 – but it cannot fund everything that Poland needs.
Polish leaders must take decisions. One of these is on the question of what type of force that Poland decides to build. Current legislation mandates an end-strength of 150,000 troops. The present government wants a stronger army but it is unclear whether “stronger” equates to a numerically-larger operational force; a smaller, better-trained and equipped operational force; or an enlarged territorial defense force.
Regardless of which option is chosen, the current situation is unhealthy for two reasons: (1) only a low percentage of the force is now operationally ready, and (2) overall force manning is low. Moreover, the defense budget is further eroded by a legacy requirement to maintain separate wartime and peacetime structures – an arrangement which contributes neither to effectiveness nor to efficiency.
The impact of low force and readiness levels will potentially impact Polish levels of ambition. Despite Poland’s solid contributions to Iraq, its support to the NATO Response Force is superficial. Conversely, it contributes approximately 60% of the force to the Polish-German battalion in the European Union Battle Group.
The discussions, debates, and exercises associated with the review have generated interest in Poland beyond the traditional grouping of subject matter experts. This nascent interest should be supported and broadened as traditionally military matters have not been discussed openly in Poland. The Polish polity should be aware, not only of the positive characteristics of the armed forces, but also of its inconsistent procurement processes, incoherency and lack of integration synergy.
Considerations and Questions
It is interesting to note – given that various NATO and European Union requirements were an impetus for the review – that the SDR charter limited its scope of analysis solely to the defense ministry and armed forces. Other strategic issues including industry, economy, demographics, ecology, and energy, may have been deliberately excluded from consideration as factors of national defense. These other strategic considerations may be absent due to other respective government ministries being neither prepared nor willing to undertake a comprehensive review. The opportunity to address issues of national defense on a broader, strategic level (including the establishment of a Homeland Security Authority and National Guard) may have been missed.
Furthermore, unlike Poland’s European and North American partners who submit their defense systems to periodic open reviews and transformations, the Polish analysis and final report – according to its 2004 instructions – is classified and cannot be scrutinized by the public.2 While Poland has no tradition of public discourse concerning defense issues, the anticipated publication of an unclassified White Book on Polish Defense is a welcome first step toward public democracy. Poland’s taxpayers deserve to be better informed about the true status of national defense and the armed forces. Awareness and discussion of national defense issues should proceed beyond the realm of exclusive partisan party debate.
As Polish politicians assess the findings and recommendations of this seminal SDR from the perspective of national interests, they ought to see the document only as a starting point for transformation. Among the many questions concerning transformation, the political elites must find answers to the following:
· What roles and missions does Poland expect its armed forces to execute in the near (less than five years), middle (five years), and long (10 years and beyond) terms? To what extent are these traditional missions of defense? To what degree are they missions beyond Poland’s borders? Independently? With the United States? With NATO? With other coalitions?
· What capabilities and what force size do these roles and missions require?
· What financial resources will be available to sustain these missions and the transformation necessary to successfully execute them? Today? Next year? Five years from now? In ten years?
· What organizational and strategic steps should the Ministry of Defense (MOD) take?
· What should be the programmatic, organizational, doctrinal, and tactical priorities and the road maps to achieve them?
· How should transformation take place?
Polish political elites should consider a series of next steps. These include accepting that effective transformation requires senior-level direction for strategies, priorities, and resources. A lack of prioritization will weaken the implementation of the SDR and slow transformation. The defense minister must be seen by everyone, from the youngest recruit to the oldest retired general officer, as the stakeholder intent on succeeding to implement changes to make the armed forces more capable and effective. A successful transformation should include the establishment of a Transformation Office directly under the defense minister which will provide the authoritative framework for the process.
This office should publish a White Book on Polish Defense signed by President Kaczynski, who is also the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. His acceptance of SDR recommendations will mandate required changes. Such a document would unquestioningly define the military that Poland needs. As an open document it will force change on this inherently, and appropriately, conservative institution.
Polish senior leaders, as stakeholders, should clearly state national priorities and the milestones for achieving them. Of the myriad priorities, which are of strategic, operational, and tactical importance? What are these key priorities? Do they deal with institutional reform and governance? Can Poland afford to maintain separate peace- and war-time command and control systems? For an expeditionary force does Poland have the critical C4ISR, mobile logistics, and strategic lift capabilities? For national defense, will a transformed and more robust operational force suffice, or will the need exist for an enhanced territorial defense? Should the response call for enhancing territorial defenses? Are Poland’s stakeholders prepared to answer the questions, “from whence the threat,” and “has NATO’s Article V no utility?”
How could transformation best take place? One approach would be for an authorized Transformation Office to develop execution roadmaps for key and secondary priorities ensuring that policy decisions are based on national security and military strategy. A Transformation Office could be empowered to recommend the establishment of new or modification of existing organizations to assist the defense minister and other senior leaders in the MOD as they weigh and balance risks as well as establish a process that identifies and reduces the kinds of risk that endanger transformation. The defense leadership may want to utilize a transformation framework that encompasses people, process, technology, and physical infrastructure; thereby ensuring that change is managed holistically rather than in a discrete and non-integrated manner.
Why Successful Transformation Matters
On assuming his office as Defense Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski expressed his intent to make the defense ministry more efficient and the armed forces better equipped and more effective. This speaks directly to the need for transformation. It may be fortuitous that Minister Sikorski’s predecessor initiated the SDR. Rather than re-commissioning a strategic review, Sikorski now can take the recommendations and begin to shape the ministry and armed forces to best meet Poland’s national interests as well as NATO and European Union interoperability objectives. The SDR team will present Minister Sikorski and the Polish government its findings and recommendations which will detail programmatic rationale, milestones, and associated implementation costs. Equally important, the recommendations will identify consequences should the recommendations not be accepted.
Successful transformation matters for Poland, as well as for the United States. A strong, robust, well-trained, and interoperable military strengthens both NATO and European Union capabilities. An employable Polish military possessing many common and interoperable capabilities enjoyed by U.S. forces, and at readiness levels to rapidly react to various regional or global crises and threats, enhances U.S. interests to restore and strengthen international security. In many respects Poland has demonstrated its capabilities and proficiency in deployments throughout the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Transformation matters. In 2002, the Polish Ministry of National Defense joined the U.S. Department of Defense in a joint Defense Transformation Initiative to cooperate on shaping the capabilities of the armed forces through unit training, partnership activities, and force development. This vehicle will continue to serve, support, and reinforce practical aspects of transformation such as concept development, experimentation, and instrumentation.
The importance of Poland’s successful military transformation for the United States was recently underscored in the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review document, “Building Partnership Capability Execution Roadmap.” The roadmap seeks to enhance the capabilities of, and cooperation with international partners. Its objective is to improve security cooperation effectiveness.3 The method to improving security cooperation effectiveness will require a combination of intellectual, military engagements, and financial support.
Poland is prepared to successfully transform its military. The SDR recommendations will provide a context to issue a clear vision, establish priorities, and allocate resources. The Polish government must also encourage public discussion of defense and military matters, and begin thinking in state categories and not in partisan political terms. The United States has the opportunity to support the Polish military transformation, while concurrently achieving its roadmap objective of enhancing the capabilities of and cooperation with this important ally.
1. Strategiczny Przeglad Obronny (Strategic Defense Review) in http://www.spo.mon.gov.pl//.
2. Wojciech Luczak, “Strategiczny Przeglad na Finiszu” (The Strategic Defense Review at the Finish Line), Raport, 03/06, pp. 4-8.
3. See: DoD Document: QDR Building Partnership Capability (BPC) Execution Roadmap, 15 May 2006, p. 14.
Peter J. Podbielski is a retired Colonel, U.S. Army, with extensive Foreign Area Officer expertise gained through numerous Central European postings and Washington DC assignments. He continues to pursue his regional interests as an Associate Scholar with CEPA.
The Center for European Policy Analysis is a Washington, DC-based non-profit, non-partisan public policy research institute dedicated to the study of Central Europe. An affiliate of the National Center for Policy Analysis, CEPA provides a forum for scholarly research, writing, and debate on key issues affecting the countries and economies of the Central European region, their membership in the European Union (EU), and relationship with the United States.
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