The Indispensable Role of Exercises in National Preparedness

The United States is unprepared to fight another major power or a coalition of powers in a multiyear, multi-theater war by the end of this decade.[1] Despite numerous warning signs, the U.S. government has not fully recognized the gravity of the threat it faces. The risk of major-power rivalry escalating into a war is already high and continues to increase as autocrats disproportionately become stronger and more capable over time relative to the United States and the West. Absent a serious, disciplined, and resourced program of national revitalization, rearmament, and emergency preparedness, the options for the United States and its allies to achieve a favorable outcome will be low. This is due to the simple fact that our adversaries are vigorously preparing and, as a result, will be better positioned for a protracted war that lasts beyond one year.

Preparedness is achieved through the development of a coherent strategy, followed by detailed planning, which in turn identifies resourcing for the strategy to be realized. Disciplined follow-through is essential. Exercises are a critical component in the process of building preparedness. As the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) explained: “To simply write a plan on a piece of paper and then not test it, in my judgement, is worse than having no plan at all, because it beguiles people into believing that something is there, and it isn’t.”[2]

Unfortunately, the United States lacks a coherent strategy with a defined theory of victory of what would be acceptable criteria for war termination. Its plans lack rigor, are disproportionately regionally focused, are limited to the initial decisive phase of conflict, and rely on overly optimistic assumptions.[3] Decisions about resourcing and weapons programs are routinely ends unto themselves, with little relationship to any warfighting doctrine that the Joint Force intends to win by.[4] Exercises, if properly constructed and prosecuted, could simulate realistic challenges to be demanding tests of plans, procedures, and force adequacy.[5] Regrettably, this is not the case. Most exercises conducted by the Joint Force lack real cogency in terms of testing plans or the force. The objectives are either disproportionately skewed toward the tactical edge of warfighting or include baked-in circumstances that guarantee victory.

To better understand why joint and service exercise programs are insufficient for the world we live in today, this commentary surveys several historical precedents and identifies weaknesses that must be addressed.

The Role of Exercises for National Preparedness during the Cold War

In the late 1970s, the United States was similarly unprepared for war. A malaise had set in after the triple shocks of the loss in Vietnam, Watergate, and the economic fallout of transitioning off the gold standard.[6] The Joint Force was hollow. It lacked spirit, manpower, and the requisite equipment and munitions to fight and win. The future did not look bright. It was then, when beset by a host of downward spiraling problems, that the United States launched a decade long, multi-administration, presidential-driven national emergency preparedness program.[7]

The spark came in 1976 when the U.S. Army executed Mobilization Exercise (MOBEX) 76. MOBEX-76 was a 31-day exercise involving 6 installations, 590 reserve component units, 31 state adjutant generals, and 18 army reserve commands to “test recently revised mobilization plans and procedures, evaluate the U.S. Army’s capability to support full mobilization for a conflict in Europe, and assess non-deploying support requirements.” The exercise identified 186 mobilization problems “associated with mobilizing and deploying both active and reserve components.”[8]

MOBEX-76 validated many of the readiness concerns held by senior U.S. government officials at the time. While many officials recognized some significant readiness problems, it was underappreciated just how unprepared the nation was for a serious regional conflict, much less a general war against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The true state of national readiness was exposed in the fall of 1978, when the U.S. government conducted a series of parallel mobilization and deployment exercises.

In the months of October and November, the Defense Department sponsored a one-day exercise focused on mobilization and deployment called PETITE NUGGET, followed by a Joint Staff–executed 21-day simulated MOBEX called NIFTY NUGGET. NIFTY NUGGET was a command post exercise involving no forces, only headquarters staff and leadership. The Federal Preparedness Agency, the predecessor to FEMA, sponsored a parallel MOBEX designated Rehearsal Exercise 78 (REX-78) “to evaluate the mobilization capabilities of other federal agencies and departments, and to determine how well DoD and the other agencies were able to work together.”[9] Combined, these two parallel exercises involved 24 military commands and 30 civilian agencies in reinforcing Europe following a simulated no-notice attack on NATO forces in Europe by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.[10]

The NIFTY NUGGET and REX-78 exercises shocked the U.S. government not because NATO lost the war but because it lost so badly. The federal government demonstrated that it was wholly unprepared for a major national emergency of this scale, that “‘come as you are’ is not, and should not be a feature of a successful mobilization scheme,” particularly if a country seeks to win a protracted general war.[11] Key observations from the exercises included the following:

  
NIFTY NUGGET and REX-78 led to a decade of strategic concentration on preparing the nation for a global general war. In the aftermath of these exercises, the federal government created FEMA to unify national emergency authorities and agencies, followed by the development of the Federal Master Mobilization Plan and the institution of an interagency exercise program to more frequently evaluate national mobilization preparedness.[15] The Defense Department’s exercise program, executed by the Joint Staff, reinforced the need for what eventually became the Reagan administration’s rearmament program, leading to the formation of U.S. Transportation Command.

The decade-long national preparedness program that followed NIFTY NUGGET and REX-78 was a major contributing factor in the decisive Operation Desert Storm victory in 1991. When one critically studies the historical record, the United States would have struggled mightily to mobilize and deploy 500,000 troops if NIFTY NUGGET had not been followed by PROUD SPIRIT in 1980, POTENT PUNCH in 1981, PROUD SABER in 1982, PROUD SCOUT in 1987, and PROUD EAGLE in 1989.[16] In addition to the aforementioned military exercises led by the Joint Staff, FEMA continued to execute its REX-series of exercises in parallel to test the federal government’s readiness to individually and collectively fulfill its obligations under the Federal Master Mobilization Plan.

A series of lower-level and supporting functional mobilization exercises were instituted within the Defense Department, which worked on identified shortfalls or what were referred to as remedial action projects.[17] These lower-level exercises were particularly noteworthy for how they sought to tackle problems with trained military manpower. In 1981–82, the army and the Selective Service System agency co-ran exercise GRAND PAYLOAD, which was a Joint Force limited test of plans for the induction of untrained military manpower during mobilization.[18] Starting in 1984, the army began running exercise CERTAIN SAGE, which was an annual army retiree muster that tested the ability to recall retirees to fill existing manpower shortages within formations, serve as replacements, and serve as force expansion cadre.[19] In 1987 the Defense Department sponsored a civilian mobilization exercise (CIVMOBEX-87) in conjunction with the exercise PROUD SCOUT to assess new guidance and workforce management authorities and test the “ability to hire additional civilians quickly and to replace civilians called to military duty.”[20]

National Preparedness in the Post–Cold War Era

Following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the decisive Operation Desert Storm victory, the United States halted and then cashiered its national emergency preparedness program and the majority of the exercises addressing large-scale mobilization problems. At the time, the consensus within the federal government was that “the need for mobilization functions on a scale sufficient to support mobilization for a major conventional war has virtually vanished,” based on the assessment that any “residual concern (i.e., the reemergence of a belligerent and expansionist Russia or a militarily capable and belligerent China) is remote.”[21]

Over the last three decades, the United States’ capability to mobilize and sustain major combat operations over months and years has not only atrophied but plausibly regressed back to the levels of preparedness during the NIFTY NUGGET and REX-78 era. One cannot say for certain, however, because no one in the federal government is even responsible for the issue of national mobilization. Likewise, there is no federal exercise program to demonstrate the true state of national readiness to respond to a wartime national emergency. The Joint Force, largely led by the army, has reinstituted mobilization planning and a MOBEX program in the aftermath of the 2017–18 North Korea crisis. However, in terms of scale and scope, participation, and senior executive involvement, planning has fallen quite short of the NIFTY NUGGET program.[2] There also remains no appreciable interagency exercise program akin to the REX series.

Continuing to avoid the matter is negligence. The U.S. government, including the Defense Department, is obligated to immediately institute an exercise program similar to NIFTY NUGGET and REX-78 to better understand the true state of the United States’ preparedness for a major national wartime emergency. This would enable fact-based resourcing decisions to be made to prepare the nation for the next major war and give the United States an improved chance to terminate a war on favorable terms. It would be better for all if no war occurred, but that scenario is a more likely if the United States is strong.

Shawn Creamer is a retired U.S. Army Colonel. He served as an infantry officer for more than 29 years, with more than 14 years assigned to or directly working on Indo-Pacific security issues and more than 5 years working on large-scale mobilization. He was a U.S. Army War College Fellow with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program. In retirement, he is serving as a fellow with the Institute for Corean-American Studies and as a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative, the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, and the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Endnotes

[1] For one assessment, see the July 2024 report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, available at https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf.

[2] “FEMA Director Louis O. Giuffrida Radio Interview—Part 1,” YouTube, video, April 21, 1983, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHVFvJ7lL4.

[3] The current construct of relying on combatant commands to develop war plans for geographic and functional support and then integrate them may be sufficient for limited wars and small contingencies, but it is insufficient for a multi-theater or global general war. This is because combatant command responsibilities and vision are too parochial and regionally focused for global war planning and prosecution. The commands are not always right, and the Department of Defense is not structured to effectively control the unified commands—geographic and functional—in a global crisis or a general war.

[4] As an example, the U.S. Army with much fanfare established the Futures Command in 2018 to develop the next generation of advanced weapon systems. Yet it embarked on what is intended to be a modernization effort costing tens of billions of dollar without a codified doctrine for the systems to achieve desired warfighting outcomes.

[5] In terms of force adequacy, while exercises do expose leader shortcomings, exercise programs should be “concerned not so much with determining who was right or wrong but rather what was right or wrong; and, where weaknesses were found, what corrective action might be undertaken.” Office of Net Assessment, Evaluation Report of Mobilization and Deployment Capability in Connection with Exercise NIFTY NUGGET (Washington, D.C.: Computer Network Corp., 1979), 3.

[6] The transition off the gold standard increased the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, exacerbating other economic stressors and producing a period of stagflation.

[7] Much of the credit lies with the officials in the Carter administration for acknowledging the problem, establishing the foundations of the national emergency program, and using the White House to drive the program. The Reagan administration assumed and advanced this program, maintaining the centrality of the White House to the process.

[8] Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1977 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979), 26.

[9] Office of Net Assessment, Evaluation Report of Mobilization and Deployment Capability in Connection with Exercise NIFTY NUGGET, 1.

[10] James W. Canan, “Up from Nifty Nugget,” Air and Space Forces Magazine, September 1, 1983, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0983nifty; and Office of Net Assessment, Evaluation Report of Mobilization and Deployment Capability in Connection with Exercise NIFTY NUGGET, 2.

[11] James Wood, Mobilisation: The Gulf War in Retrospect (Canberra: Australian National University, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, 1992), 11.

[12] Consumables include munitions, parts, and food, among other supplies.

[13] Trained military manpower includes the Individual Ready Reserve, military retirees, and the veteran population.

[14] In 2024, 25% of the Department of Homeland Security workforce fell into this trained military manpower category.

[15] FEMA has a critical role in national emergency preparedness that should not be understated. It is the responsibility of FEMA, not the Defense Department, to coordinate the federal government’s preparedness. That said, the agency cannot accomplish its mission without the Defense Department being actively involved. Quinton Lucie, “How FEMA Could Lose America’s Next Great War” Homeland Security Affairs, May 2019.

[16] Wood, Mobilisation, 5–9, 12–13; Katherine L. Kuzminski and Taren Sylvester, “Back to the Drafting Board: U.S. Draft Mobilization Capability for Modern Operational Requirements,” Center for a New American Security, June 18, 2024; and L. Dow Davis, “Reserve Callup Authorities: Time for Recall?” Army Lawyer, April 1990, 11–12.

[17] U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Exercise PROUD SABER 83 Detailed Analysis Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, April 28, 1983), XI-1–XIII-29.

[18] GRAND PAYLOAD was a live exercise of the induction process of the Selective Service System that took registered individuals and inducted them into the armed forces. It was executed in two parts, with part one utilizing existing Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) personnel as live reactors to test the induction system, while actual army accessions were used as live reactors in part two. See Herbert E. Langendorff Jr., Mobilization Processing of Untrained Manpower (Carlisle Barracks: U.S. Army War College, 1982), 69–78.

[19] Exercise CERTAIN SAGE ran annually through 1989. A typical exercise involved several hundred volunteer military retirees to test and refine recall procedures and to exercise the process of matriculating retirees back onto active duty.

[20] Headquarters of the U.S. Army, Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1989 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), 68.

[21] James Witt, “Report to the National Security Council on Implementing the National Security Resource Preparedness Responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” memorandum for national security advisor to the president Anthony Lake, April 21, 1994.

[22] Much of the credit to the resurrection of the Army MOBEX program lies with General Mark Milley, when he was the Army Chief of Staff. General Milley personally sat on top of mobilization readiness forums and mandated senior leader participation. It was a priority because he made it so. After his departure to become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the MOBEX program was viewed as important, but not a priority. The program has been sustained the last several years largely by U.S. Army Forces Command and its subordinate command, First Army. Sustained effort by both commands to not just keep the MOBEX program alive but demonstrate its importance for the nation’s ability to fight a long war has resulted in a sizable increase in interest and participation. Elements of the broader Joint Force have also started to reopen the vaults of their largely shuttered mobilization planning and MOBEX programs, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which recently named an executive agent for national mobilization. While some progress is being made, much more work is required.