The buildup to the recent defense cuts in the United Kingdom served as a call to battle for the U.K.'s military services. Anticipating steep reductions in funding, each of the three branches opened fire on their sister-organizations in the hope of redirecting budgetary knives. This development was neither surprising nor unintended. Civilian policymakers have long understood that they can benefit from inter-service conflict. When services attack one another, it provides fodder for cost-conscious budget-cutters to kill particular programs. 

But inter-service conflict can take two forms: resource conflicts and mission conflicts. While both help civilian policymakers cut costs, they do not have the same effect on the military's overall strategic preparedness. 

The conflict in the U.K. played out not as a resource conflict, but rather as mission conflict -- a fight over the bureaucratic boundaries between services on particular capabilities. As a result, rather than leading to a sound strategic re-evaluation of how U.K. defense dollars should be spent, the conflict effectively gutted the ability of the U.K.'s military to perform several key missions. 

Because different services perform different missions, not all contribute equally to certain grand strategic tasks: The Royal Navy's contribution to the counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan is severely limited, while the British army does not normally contribute to anti-piracy patrols such as those off of Somalia. Inter-service conflict focusing on resources, therefore, is about the prioritization of particular strategic goals. Each service, like any other bureaucratic organization, tends to believe that its own parochial missions fall more in line with national security goals than those of the other branches. The classic example of a resource conflict involves that of a warship versus army brigade: The units have different capabilities, perform different jobs, and suggest a different focus for national strategic priorities. Nations may find themselves forced to choose between options, but can reconcile limitations by adjusting strategic commitments. 

A different kind of inter-service conflict involves mission allocation. In the last century, the need for collaboration between air, ground, and sea assets has increased dramatically. The primary driver of such integration has been the expansion of warfare into the third dimension. Aircraft now represent an organic part of most military missions, from ground assault (close air support) and interdiction (exploitation) to anti-submarine warfare and counter-sea operations. Aircraft are as necessary to the efficient and successful execution of tactical- and operational-level military tasks as infantry, armor, and artillery. However, bureaucratic walls have been erected in both the United States and the United Kingdom placing different elements of these missions in different services. 

Conflict between services on emphasis, intra-service resource allocation, doctrine, training, and command structure thus becomes inevitable. Classic examples of such conflicts involve control over close air support and control over the aircraft-carrier air wings. In both cases, the debate is over the proper allocation of authority over an intrinsic aspect of the mission: Carriers cannot operate without aircraft, nor can modern infantry brigades operate without air support, meaning that leaders and institutions compete for control of the assets. 

These conflicts can have destructive consequences for military effectiveness and grand strategy. Whereas resource conflicts can shift a nation's strategic orientation, they typically leave a military organization with a set of tools appropriate to the solving of certain defense problems. They can even produce genuine moments of strategic decision-making. 

By contrast, mission conflicts hamstring the ability of military organizations to do the jobs that are asked of them, especially when civilians use the disputes to cut procurement. The distinction between fielding aircraft carriers without functional aircraft and fielding no aircraft carriers at all may initially seem marginal. The U.K. was forced to make that decision, choosing the former for reasons having to do with potential penalties for cancelling the already contracted carriers. But the latter situation is preferable from both fiscal and strategic standpoints. By eschewing carriers altogether, the freed resources can be committed in more efficient ways, and strategic goals developed in a realistic manner. Resource conflicts make for smaller military services, while mission conflicts produce "gut shot" services. 

In the U.K., the battle over naval aviation, which dates back more than 40 years, has elements of both kinds of conflict. In the 1960s, the RAF strove to kill the navy's CVA-01 supercarrier in favor of its own long-range aircraft and missiles, leading to the ship's cancellation in 1966. This was a classic resource conflict, and forced the Royal Navy to subsequently build small carriers capable of flying Sea Harrier fighters, leaving the navy with intrinsic strike and air-superiority capability. However, the retirement of the Sea Harrier in 2006 led to the formation of the Joint Force Harrier, which effectively put carrier-borne aircraft under dual RAF-RN authority. The conflict then became bureaucratic rather than resource-oriented. Because the RAF had little interest in maintaining the Harriers, it offered them up for sacrifice during the recent defense cuts, leaving the navy with carriers but no aircraft to equip them with. 

A similar situation developed in the United States with regards to air mobility and close air support, after disputes between the Army and the Air Force erupted during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts over the insufficiency of Air Force support for the Army. During the Korean War, the Army won the right to develop its own fleet of rotary aircraft, at the expense of some of its remaining fixed-wing assets. By the mid-1960s, the Army saw considerable promise in the development of attack and transport helicopters that could, in some cases, reduce its reliance on Air Force aircraft. The Air Force resisted the development of attack helicopters bitterly, however, successfully killing the AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter in favor of the A-10 close air-support attack aircraft. The Army persisted, and eventually won the right to maintain an intrinsic attack- and transport-helicopter capability, but was forced to give up its remaining fixed-wing transport and support aircraft to the Air Force. The Air Force had little interest in such missions, discarding the light fixed-wing transport aircraft it acquired from the Army at the earliest opportunity. 

Having killed the Army's Cheyenne project with the A-10, the Air Force now attempted to discard the murder weapon. However, Army influence and congressional pressure saved the A-10, which joined the Air Force fleet in the mid-1970s. The aircraft remained generally unpopular in the Air Force, which curtailed procurement in the 1980s. The Air Force initially resisted deployment of the A-10 in service of Operation Desert Storm, but relented at the insistence of the Army. In the early 2000s, the Air Force again commissioned a study into the possibility of killing the A-10, but backtracked in response to public pressure. 

The long-standing battle between the Air Force and the Army over close air support and air mobility was a classic mission conflict. Both services agreed on the need for the capabilities, but disagreed on procurement responsibility and authority. The Air Force also sought to deprioritize these missions in favor of air superiority and strategic bombing. As a result, the inter-service conflicts almost certainly reduced the effectiveness of U.S. ground-air collaboration in Vietnam. 

In thinking about optimal defense bureaucracy in general, and the need to cut defense spending in particular, we should prefer systems that enhance the incidence of useful resource conflict and inhibit destructive mission conflict. The best approach to accomplish that will depend on domestic politics and institutional culture, but a few basic organizational principles include: professionalism in the civilian defense bureaucracy; the development of mechanisms for services to work out mission conflicts; and flexibility in service boundaries. The first helps to minimize the damage that mission-based conflicts can have, while the latter two help the services manage such conflicts on their own when they do arise. (For nations with the luxury of starting from scratch, keeping air assets bureaucratically linked to their intrinsic missions -- which is to say not having an air force -- might also be a good recommendation.) Inter-service conflict, when managed correctly, is a great tool for civilian policymakers and can sometimes trigger strategic decision-making. But if handled improperly, it can have devastating effect on military capabilities, leading to services that are incapable of carrying out their designated missions. U.S. policymakers would do well to keep that in mind.

**Dr. Robert Farley is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His interests include national security, military doctrine, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination. His weekly WPR column, Over the Horizon, appears every Wednesday.