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June 19, 2002 8:45 a.m. The Crusader Crusade Behind the controversy.

his week the White House issued a veto threat over the antiterrorism bill currently wending its way through Congress. At issue is the new $11 billion Crusader artillery system, which Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has determined to be "no longer relevant to our future requirements." However, some influential members of Congress disagree, as do some Army officers, and, of course, Crusader's team of contractors. The Senate is going to consider whether to go along with language in the House version of the bill that would advise the Secretary of Defense not to take any action to stop work on Crusader, which prompted the presidential warning.

The issue is not over whether Crusader is a good artillery piece. As far as I have heard it is probably the best cannon ever made. The larger argument is about "defense transformation," a much discussed but not as widely understood concept. Many confuse transformation with acquiring advanced technology, the wonder weapons of the future that will change the face of war. This is why every weapons developer in the country wants to call his system "transformational," and Crusader is a case in point. But transformation is not simply getting newer, sexier pieces of gear, it is a means of reconceptualizing threat assessment and balancing risks with resources in a rapidly changing global-security environment. In the transformational age, that mere fact that a weapon is good isn't good enough. The system has to be balanced against the type of threat it is meant to deal with and the resources required producing it.

This is the objection to Crusader, which is probably the deadliest conventional artillery piece ever designed. It would be invaluable in a massed, Fulda Gap style, symmetrical, force-on-force struggle, busting tanks and breaking assaults — but few defense planners see that particular battle taking place in the Crusader's operational lifetime, which would have begun in 2008. What the DOD now wants are more precise, more rapidly deployable systems that can better be integrated and networked with other weapons. This revolution is just around the corner, so why use scarce resources to buy a weapon which, if it isn't obsolete on arrival, won't have an enemy to fight?

In some ways the Crusaders is analogous to another controversial weapon, the B-36 "Peacemaker" bomber, a variant of which was coincidentally also called the Crusader. The B-36 was conceptualized shortly before World War II as a successor to the B-29 Superfortress (best remembered as the aircraft that dropped the A-bombs on Japan), which was then just entering its testing phase. It was intended to be able to hit European targets from the United States in case Britain fell to the Nazis. The first test version was flown in 1946, and the aircraft became operational in 1948. The B-36 was an extremely well-designed aircraft; the engineers had to overcome a number of challenges to fulfill the aircraft's demanding mission requirements. The B-36 incorporated all of the hard-learned lessons of the strategic-bombing campaigns of the Second World War. The bomber's long-range flight capability made it potentially useful for its Cold War mission of nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union. However, the Peacemaker was slow and unwieldy — the jet age had arrived, and the B-36 was propeller driven. It would have difficulty penetrating the Soviet Union and evading interceptor jets. Various attempts were made to stave off obsolescence, from mounting jets at the ends of the wings, to producing a supersonic mini-bomber (the XB-58, which later became the B-58 Hustler) that would deploy from the vastly larger B-36 after being hauled close to the target. But the writing had been on the wall from the beginning. The B-47 Stratojet made its initial test flight in 1947, six months before the B-36 became operational. You didn't need Nostradamus to see the future belonged to the jets.

This was the background to a vicious political fight between the Air Force and the Navy in the summer of 1949, known as the "Revolt of the Admirals." President Truman's defense cuts had forced some tough choices, and one of them was to cancel the Navy's planned supercarrier, the U.S.S. United States. The Navy saw the B-36 as the main adversary; in their view, it was a soon-to-be outmoded budget buster foisted on the country by the newly independent and influential Air Force at the expense of the other services. A series of congressional hearings were held, both sides played dirty, careers were ended, but the B-36 survived. It was a fight that makes the current controversy seem tame.

It was also unnecessary. A year later the Korean War and the recognition of the Soviet military threat rendered such debates passé. Between 1950 and 1955 the defense budget tripled in real terms, which temporarily settled the issue of resource scarcity. The Air Force could afford to field a variety of expensive and short-lived aircraft. The B-52 is a notable exception — it first flew in 1952, and was operational by 1955 — itself originally intended to be an interim system, it has become the most adaptable, longest-lived operational bomber platform in history. The Navy got both nuclear powered aircraft carriers and the nuclear submarine fleet. Meanwhile the neglected 1950s Army was reorganized into something called the Pentomic force and only barely managed to prevent its helicopters from becoming Air Force assets.

Today the United States does not have the luxury of a soaring defense budget or a clearly definable future threat. The defense dollars are under strain, and had been even before September 11 necessitated the Pentagon go on a war footing. The Senate is considering language to delay until next spring ending the Crusader program at a cost of $300 million — that is, an additional $300 million just to stop it. Maybe this is the cost of doing business in Washington. However, not all weapons programs are eternal. The Navy had long anticipated the advent of the DD-21 class of destroyers, but last November redirected its program towards the DD(X), which will not be a type of ship so much as a new family of advanced vessels, a test bed for experimentation. The decision was not a question of the Navy not wanting or needing a new ship, but a matter of priorities. Munitions, readiness, and missile defense need attention immediately, and it was decided that the present destroyer fleet could last a bit longer. DD(X) is an opportunity to move to a more "transformational" platform, perhaps of a kind not yet conceptualized. The Navy thinks it is a good gamble; there was no political ruckus; and the program is ten times the size of Crusader.

Note that we are not talking about an artillery piece that would be available tomorrow to go head to head with al Qaeda (even if it could). Crusader was planned to be deployed in 2008. Given the pace of innovation in wartime it is reasonable to assume that one or more of the possible successors (Excalibur, GMLRS, HIMARS, or Netfires) could be accelerated to meet the same time frame, thus successfully skipping a generation of technology. This in fact is the plan, should Crusader funding be reallocated. Of course, there are no crystal balls, no one can be certain what the future holds. But risk is a part of every business decision, and this "risk balancing" approach is central to the transformational mindset Secretary Rumsfeld seeks to inculcate in the DOD. On the other hand, maybe Congress will force the issue, and the United States will possess the most lethal artillery system the Soviet Union will ever face.

— James S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor.