Quantity, not quality: Gen Cartwright

Practical reasoning, as long as we are discussing programs which seem to be the focus of this article.  If personnel, their training, and/or the cost associated with them, are part of the discussion then I would offer that the sobriquet does not and should not apply.  Though stating the obvious, when discussing personnel the opposite should remain.... "Quality over quantity," rather than "Quantity has a quality all its own."

Regardless of what Stalin might opine. Schuehle



DoDBuzz.com
May 13, 2010

Quantity, Not Quality Says Hoss; U.S. Must Rely On Allies


By Colin Clark Thursday

³You are not going to have 300 to 500 ships. You are not going to have
thousands of fighters.² At the same time, America must try and reverse its
course of the last decade, which was bringing us to the point where we would
have one ship on each coast and one plane on each coast, and focus on
quantity to help reverse that stark reality: ³We need quantity more than we
need that exquisite capability.²

There you have it straight from the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen.
Hoss Cartwright, who pulled the curtain back a bit on what he and his boss
have been ruminating about for most of May. The Pentagon must heed the
nation¹s fiscal peril because, as Cartwright put it, “you cannot build
strategy in the absence of resources.”
He and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have spent much of the last two weeks
grappling with these fiscal realities, Cartwright said during an address at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And those fiscal
realities mean America must take our friends and allies into account as we
decide what weapons to buy. ³The reality is, we don¹t fight alone. We don¹t
deter alone,² Cartwright said. The U.S. ³cannot afford to do everything
ourselves. We are not an island.² And that means the Pentagon must ³include
the capabilities of those we will be partnered with² as it builds
requirements. The services first instinct ‹ the country¹s first instinct ‹
is to say, ³We have to have the only capability. We have to fill every wrung
on the ladder with the best capability in the world.² He paused, briefly:
³We cannot do it.²

As a strategist, Cartwright is always looking ahead and keeping his eye on
the center of power ‹ politics ‹ so he knows that ³people will immediately
say, we can¹t rely on² allies in a fight.² But the truth is that America has
not and will not fight alone, and in the face of fiscal constraints our
strategy must fit those resources we do have, he said.