Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, speaking to the Association of the US Army Thursday night.

ARLINGTON: A candid Vice-Chairman of the Joint Staff delivered some tough messages to the Army yesterday and got in a few swipes at Congress and “the political leadership” in general.

Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld’s  raised the most hackles among the serving and retired officers gathered at the headquarters of the powerful Association of the US Army Thursday night when Winnefeld said the nation would probably not need an Army sized to do any large-scale, long-duration ground operations. The admiral did not only downplay the possibility of prolonged counterinsurgencies like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam, although he certainly emphasized the decline of COIN: He raised doubt about long wars of any kind.

“We’ve seen very recently that the American people are very wary of getting into an extended war of any type,” Winnefeld said, in a veiled reference to Syria. “We should take to heart three principles that [Maj. Gen.] Fox Conner imparted to Eisenhower and Marshall when they were both young officers: never fight unless you have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long.”

“I’m talking about a national commitment on a large scale to a long-term combat operation,” Winnefeld said when a skeptical soldier pressed him on the point during the question-and-answer session. “We just don’t see that happening in the near future. But we do need to hedge that bet by keeping enough capacity in case that’s wrong.”

“Marty and I both would say that the nation needs to keep the capacity to defeat another nation on the ground… if nothing more than as a deterrent, but we don’t see that as being a long fight. We can’t afford it,” he went. (“Marty” is Winnefeld’s boss, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, an Army man himself).

So what is the Army’s future role in Winnefeld’s vision? “If we get in another fight – and some day we will get in another fight on the ground – I think it would be a different fight: one that’s shorter, faster-paced, and much harder,” Winnefeld said in his opening remarks. “The battlefield will be a more hostile environment than it’s ever been. The fog of war, despite all of our technology, will not clear for us, and the adversary will use the tools we have employed so successfully recently, such as quality ISR and networks and precision guided weapons, against us. We will need ground forces that can handle this.”

“Speed of deployment, whether by being there already or through prepositioning or through lift, will become more important than it’s ever become,” Winnefeld went on. Getting to the war zone quickly, by the way, has been an agonizing issue for the Army since the failure of Task Force Hawk during the Kosovo campaign of 1999. Indeed, even further back, many in the Army remember the desperately vulnerable position of the much-vaunted but lightly-armed 82nd Airborne after it flew to Saudi Arabia in 1990, only to have to wait months for heavy backup to come by sea: For a stinging critique, read the Defense Science Board’s 2006 Summer Study: Search for the words “speed bump.”

Yet Winnefeld said he wanted the Army take on even more rapid-response missions. “I’d like to see the Army place more emphasis on the growth industry… of protecting American citizens abroad,” he said. “Don’t yield that entirely to the Marine Corps.” (The Marines are famed for their role in short-notice Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations, or NEOs, as well as their standard duty of protecting US embassies and consultates).

As for counterinsurgency, Adm. Winnefeld said “we are more likely to see a Desert Storm type of operation, ejecting a nation that has invaded an ally or a friend of the United States, than we are to see another decade-long counterinsurgency campaign.”

“I simply don’t know where the security interests of our nation are threatened enough to cause us to lead a future major, extended COIN campaign,” he continued, “though we very well might provide support to a nation fighting its own COIN campaign, as we continue to do today in Colombia.” (Note that supporting Afghan security forces, whether today or post-2014, was not his example of choice). “The president himself made it clear in his Defense Strategic Guidance that we will retain some capability for COIN, but only on a limited scale.”

But wait a minute, I asked the admiral when he opened the floor to questions. Smaller forces, rapid deployment, short wars, decisive victories, and no getting bogged down on the ground – doesn’t this sound a lot like the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (aka the RMA) that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld so successfully besmirched in Iraq?

“First,” Winnefeld replied, “I’d say that one of the points that we tried to make when we put together the Defense Strategic Guidance was that we were going to try to avoid institutional hubris. [As] Secretary Gates was fond of saying, we hardly ever get this right; and that’s why we’re leaving hedges there. But I still would make the point that we don’t see a situation in the real world where we will have a long counterinsurgency campaign.”

“We believe that the types of conflicts that we would be in would be shorter than 10 or 12 years,” he said, “but, potentially, we experienced four-year wars in the past,” noting that the Civil War lasted 1861-1865 and World War II (for Americans) 1941-1945.

“Our political leadership has it in mind that they will do what they can to avoid a long war,” he added, admitting that we might get drawn into one regardless.

That message did not go down well. “They’re assuming away an awful lot of risk,” one Army officer told me warily when we spoke after the event.

Less irritating to last night’s Army audience was that Winnefeld sounded deeply frustrated with civilian politicians. Asked if sequestration was here to stay, for example, he replied: “It’s the law of the land; we’ve seen no willingness on the part of the political leadership to compromise with one another to make it go away.”

Nor did Winnefeld limit himself to generalities, repeatedly citing Congress as an obstacle to specific military needs. While he began by saying the military “needed help” from the Hill, he made it very clear that help would consist largely of getting out of the Pentagon’s way.

“We’re going to need help from Congress in giving us freedom to maneuver within our own budgets [i.e. by giving the Pentagon reprogramming authority] and by removing the host of restrictions on our ability to be more efficient, “ Winnefeld said, “such as limitations on our downsizing glide slopes in all the services, and prohibitions on base closures, and a mandated pay and benefits growth glide slope that’s out of touch and simply not sustainable.”

It’s well worth noting that the vice-chairman wasn’t criticizing Congress off-the-cuff. Many of his criticisms were in his prepared remarks, made available beforehand, although in his actual remarks he elaborated, often harshly.

“Were you aware that Congress prohibited us from decommissioning ships this year or removing old aircraft from our inventory, or that they’ve placed limits on [Army Chief of Staff Gen.] Ray Odierno’s ability to downsize?” Winnefeld said. “Were you aware that, contrary to the popular narrative, the closure part of the 2005 BRAC [Base Realignment And Closure] only cost us $6 billion and is now saving us almost $4 per year, and we need new closures desperately?”

What’s more, as the Defense Department tries to balance limited funding between the size of the force, modernized equipment, and training, “we’re very worried that we’re going to lose on the readiness piece because it doesn’t have much of a constituency,” Winnefeld said. “If you are a congressman that has an F-15 squadron in your district, you don’t really care if that squadron is flying or not as long as it’s there, OK? And so that is a powerful impeller of keeping force structure at the expense of readiness.”

It was a night for harsh messages delivered in increasingly harsh times.