A Road Map for Elon
In 2022, I published a small book, Reforging Excalibur: Creating a Sustainable and Relevant Defense for 21st-Century America. It received no notice, which did not surprise me. Its recommendations had no chance of being enacted so long as the Establishment was in power. But on January 20, 2025, the United States will get its first anti-Establishment administration in living memory. My little book offers Elon Musk exactly the roadmap he needs in reducing the size and cost of our vast defense bureaucracy.
Reforging Excalibur is divided, like Gaul into three parts: Where we are, where we need to go, and how to get there. Where we are is facing a world where our national strategy is obsolete. It still views our main threats as coming from other states in yet another round of Great Power competition. The real 21st century threat is state collapse with a resulting spread of stateless disorder and Fourth Generation warfare that thrives in disorder. Instead of seeing Russia and China as Great Power enemies, we should be seeking an alliance of both with ourselves in defense of the internal state system. That includes shifting the axis of conflict from east-west to north-south.
The other strategic threat we face is our own rising budget deficits and national debt. If we are to do what President Trump and Elon Musk seem to want to do, namely balance the federal budget, we have to cut spending. The good news my book offers is that a military designed against Fourth Generation, non-state threats can cost a great deal less than what is currently required to maintain four very well financed clubs for World War II reenactors.
Reforging Excalibur seeks to reduce the defense budget to about $100 billion for non-nuclear forces. That’s a cut of about $750 billion annually, a number that would help Elon meet his goal of two to three trillion dollars in savings. Moreover, we would end up with armed forces more effective against the real enemy, stateless disorder, than those we have now. Our current forces are one-trick ponies, and the one trick is putting firepower on targets. In Fourth Generation war, that almost guarantees you lose.
What do our reformed armed forces look like? Geography dictates that we must be a naval power, and our remodelled Navy would still be able to control waters that are important to us. But we would no longer buy vastly expensive surface warships that, for the most part, cannot take even one hit and keep fighting. The proliferation of anti-ship missiles and drones means “the emptiness of the battlefield” that evolved in land warfare by the end of 1914 now applies to the sea as well. The good news is that, by building new surface ships on large merchant ship hulls and using the surplus tonnage for protection, we can create warships that both can take hits and keep fighting and are a great deal cheaper to construct. In peacetime, most would be in merchant service with crews made up of Navy reservists, which would also revitalize our almost-vanished merchant marine.
As to the other services, most Air Force missions and aircraft would be taken over by the Air National Guard, which can do them cheaper and usually better. Because our geography dictates our land forces must be sea-mobile, the Marine Corps would be larger than the Army. Recognizing that the most important mission in a world where conflict is north-south and immigration is the most dangerous form of invasion, the National Guard would become our most important service, with the Coast Guard second.
The Establishment would say such large changes are impossible. But Reforging Excalibur offers an anti-Establishment administration what it needs: a more effective national defense at a greatly reduced cost. I think Elon will recognize that as a bargain.