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The Revolution in Military Affairs:A Framework For Defense Planning (U)6. AUTHOR(S)

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13. ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 words)The author argues that the current revolution in military affairs ispart of a larger sociopolitical transformation. The new technolo-gies both propelling and resulting from this transformation arehaving a profound impact on warfare. The author urges military andcivilian strategists, planners, and decision makers to think aboutarmed conflict in ways so novel that those used to dealing with "theunchanging truths about war" may feel threatened. To help under-stand the ambiguities and complexities presented by the RMA, heoffers a framework of four principles for defense planning.

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revolution in military affairs (RMA); information, 49sensing, and precision strike technologies 16. PRICE CODE

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Ado3 GIqe1!eAV IeB

THE REVOLUIO

IN MILITARY AFFAIRS:

A FRAMEWORK

FOR DEFENSE PLANNING

Michael J. Mmerr

June 10, 1994

-4 7 14 052

MI QUAKTI8E~

The views expressed In this report are those of the author and do notnecessarily refted the official policy or position of the Department of theArmy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Comments pertaining to this report are Invited and should be forwardedto: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, CarlisleBarracks, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may be conveyed directly to theConference Organizer, Dr. Earl H. Tilford, Jr., by calling commercial (717)245-3234 or DSN 242-3234.

This study was originally presented at the U.S. Army War College FifthAnnual Strategy Conference held April 26-28, 1994, with the assistance ofthe Office of Net Assessment. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased topublish the paper as part of its Conference Series.

A0801111111 PorNTIS GRA&IDTIC TABUasanounce 0iUSt itication

BYDi tributi_

Avallabi 1lty Codesis Avai

Nut Spec 181

fi bt iPD, n Ay VJai Co! -g 's Stratogic StudioshoeAcd 4s Rlih Annual Stratcgy Conforcrnco. Tho

~clmc tinis voz'c con Orcnco was "'rho Revolution in MilitaervPfaRirs: Dafin~ng an Army for the 21st Century." Scholars,so~dscrs, and defe nse ana.lysts from throughout the nation andEuhropo gatharod to consider the vitally important impact thatrapid technological advances havo on strategy, operations,traning and forco structure.

The Luthor of this monograph, Dr. Michael J. Mazarr,argjuos that the current rovolution in military affairs is part of alargor coclopolitical transformation. The new technologies bothpropelling and resulting from this transformation are having aprofound impact on warfare. Dr. Mazarr urges military andcivilian strategisis, planners, and decisionmakers to thinkabout armed conflict in ways so novel that those used tocdoaling with "the unchanging truths about war" may foolthreatened. To help deal with the ambiguities and complexitiespresented by the RMA, Dr. Mazarr offers a framework of fourprincip',es for defense p~anning.

Whether or not the reader accepts the frameworksuegostad by Dr. Mazarr, one cannot but be impressed by thoeimnplications, ihe RMA has for warfare. Accordingly, thismono-raph warrants careF : consideration.

J~N W. MOUNrCOASTLE~o!oiel, U.S. Armay

Director, Strategic Studies Institute

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHOF THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL J. MAZARR is Legislative Assistant and Chief Writerini the office of Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-OK). Dr. Mazarr holdsA.B. and M.A. degrees from Georgetown University and aPh.D. from the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs.He is an Adjunct Professor in the Georgetown UniversityNational Security Studies Program, and he served in the U.S.Naval Reserve for seven years as an intelligence officer.Before coming to the House, Dr. Mazarr was a Senior Fellowin International Security Studies at the Center for Strategic andInternational Studies, where he directed a number of majorprojects. He has authored five books, edited five anthologies,and published a number of scholarly articles.

iv

THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS:A FRAMEWORK

FOR DEFENSE PLANNING

In the summer of 1805, the luck of the French Empireseemed to have run short. Napoleon's bold plan to leapfrog thechannel and invade England had collapsed, and his legionssat idly opposite England. To the east, Russia and Austria hadunified against France and appeared ready to crush the youngEmperor. Prussia stood by, refusing allisnce with the Russiansand Austrians but eager to join In the post-war autopsy oncethe French had received a death blow.

Within a few months, Napoleon had smashed the combinedRussian and Austrian armies, demanded and received amilitary alliance with Prussia, and once again dominated theEuropean balance of power. The way in which Napoleonachieved this dramatic tum of events says a great deal aboutthe nature, and inherent risks and opportunities, of a revolutionin military affairs. Seeing that his English adventure waschecked, Napoleon wheeled his army and drove it rapidly tothe east, covering 15 miles or more a day. His goal: to destroythe Russian and Austrian armies before Prussia had becomeengaged.

In this grand strategic maneuver, Napoleon took fulladvantage of the evolving revolution in military affairs. Heemployed a massive army produced by universal conscriptionand the advent of a truly citizen-based military force. Hepushed this force along using the most advanced logisticsplanning of his day. And he operated based on a decisivenotion of strategic action that would lay the groundwork forfundamental military tenets that survive to this day.

Once engaged in battle, in this case at Austerlitz, Napoleonemployed operational tactics as bold and decisive as his

10.trategic vision. His combined-arms formations maximized thefighting power of his army, and he used some of the mostsophisticated battlefield communication techniques of the time.

Napoleon emerged during the infancy of a profoundrevolution in military affairs. This revolution, incorporating suchnow features as citizen armies, long-range rifles and artillery,and mechanization, would transform the nature of warfareduring the 19th century and much of the 20th. Napoleon'soperations were a preview of a new era of warfare-warfare ofthe industrial age-that would come to full flower in the twoWorld Wars of the 20 century.

Through his foresight and genius, Napoleon made himselfthe beneficiary, rather than the victim, of these events. Hisbrilliant maneuver in the fall and winter of 1805 ensured his rulefor another decade.

iI

The transformation we face in the nature and conduct ofwarfare is no less fundamental than that of Napoleon's time. Apowerful combination of social, technological, and politicaldevelopments is revising the role of military force in nationalpolicy and changing the way wars are fought. In responding tothis dizzying pace of change, our challenge is the same asNapoleon's: to seize the opportunities of this new era inwarfare, to make it work for us rather than against us.

No true revolution in military affairs is a narrowly militaryphenomenon. It is, in the most fundamental sense, the productof a broad social and political transformation which gives riseto new military organizations and technologies.1 Together,these changes demand substantial reforms in existingmethods of conducting warfare.2

The revolution in military affairs underway today is, ofcourse, the revolution in information, sensing, and precisionstrike technologies. 3 Modern military forces can conduct theiroperations with an unprecedented, and revolutionary, degreeof precision. Once able only to guess at where they were,today's soldiers can instantly determine their precise location

2

C

through the Global Positioning System. Where once a 0commander might have little idea where his troops were, today 0military leaders can watch battles unfold on computer screensand Issue moment-by-moment corrections.4

One finds little discussion of these ideas in the U.S.Department of Defense's recently-completed Bottom-UpReview.5 Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin initiated thereview with the laudable goal of rethinking the basis for U.S.defense planning. It placed emphasis in many of the rightareas: readiness, keeping forces for more than one regionalwar, acquisition reform. And the review built a substantialconsensus in the Pentagon behind the new force structue.

Nonetheless, the review offers a classic example of militaryleaders planning to fight the last war. The report's proposedforce for a single regional contingency-four to five Armydivisions, four to live Marine brigades, 10 Air Force fighterwings, 100 heavy bombers, and four to five carriers-mirrorsalmost exactly the forces deployed in Operation Desert Storm.The review offers precious few thoughts on new technologiesor techniques that might change the nature of war in comingdecades.

Such a limited focus was probably inevitable in the review, Iwhich focused on defense planning for the next 7 years, notthe next 20 or 30. But deeper thinking is now called for, and isin fact underway throughout the Department of Defense.6 Weare in the midst of a revolution in military affairs (RMA). It is apost-nuclear revolution, a return to an emphasis on nonnuclearwarfare, both conventional and unconventional. It stems,among other things, from an increasingly decentralized,information-based society, an interdependent world economy,and the dramatic effects of new military and civiliantechnologies.

And if we look carefully, the RMA can provide a coherentframework for thinking about the future of warfare and defensepolicy. It points to those principles of defense planning andmilitary art that will dominate warfare in the coming decades.

This monograph'a purpose is to lay out that framework andthose principles-to describe where the revolution in military

3

~ -. ~-~nr.r. . .- - -

affairs leads us in military planning. It begins by looking at thefuture of warfare and world politics, to determine what 0challenges will confront the U.S. military in coming years. Itthen offers four principles as the framework for future U.S.military strategy: information dominance, synergy,disengagement, and civilianization. Each represents not a newphenomenon, but merely the culmination of historical trends.Each alone embodies an evolutionary change in the nature ofwarfare; together their effect is revolutionary.

One important question needs to be asked at the outset: Isthe RMA a revolution in warfare or in the weapons, doctrines,and organizations which fight it? The answer is both, and infact the two interact. The nature of war itself is indeed changing.Conventional, head-to-head clashes of high-technology fieldarmies have been for several decades giving way to guerrillaconflicts, mixed regular and irregular wars, terrorism, non-stateconflict, and a host of new information-based military efforts.

Even traditional, high-intensity war has changeddramatically from the days when it consisted of a search forthe single, decisive battle against the enemy army in the field.Modem war involves simultaneous, high-precision attacksacross a range of civil and military targets to achieve a decisiveresult. 0

This change in the nature of war is spurred by, but alsosomewhat independent from, a second revolution underway inthe nature of the weapons, doctrines, and organizationsavailable to the U.S. military. In some cases, the tworevolutions are closely intertwined; thus the technology ofinformation warfare changes the nature of large-scale combat.In other cases, however, a substantial mismatch may arisebetween the two parallel revolutions, as when high-tech U.S.information war units are unable to conduct guerrilla warfare.

Any framework for defense planning must thereforeaddress itself to this complex and shifting mosaic of thenebulous "revolution in military affairs. Our goal must be tounderstand the two layers of that revolution and build a militaryinstitution capable of responding to both. The four principlesoutlined below represent one effort to do so.

4

In his latest novel, Caudmn, Larry Bond paints an unhappypicture of world politics in the next century. Harmony in the ADWest has collapsed, the victim of a full-scale global depression,trade wars, resurgent authoritarianism In Germany and (of allplaces) France, and conspiring European industrialists. Theugly face of war returns to Europe-and not, as might beexpected, initially between the West and a resentful,nationalistic East, but rather among the very Western nationswhich had supposedly transcended the practice of warfareItself.

Bond's scenario is simplistic and somewhat far-fetched, tobe sure, but It is nonetheless disturbing. For he has tapped intothe most hotly-debated foreign affairs issue of the day: thefuture of international politics. With the end of the cold war,everything we thought we knew about the world communityhas been turned upside down. What was predictable hasbecome unpredictable. Governments and regions that werestable heve collapsed into hostility and civil war.

These developments force us to ask basic questions anew:What will the world look like 5, 10, or 20 years from now? And Iin that context, what is the future of warfare?

A close examination of the nature of world politics and ofthe factors that give rise to conflict suggests that any effort toexplain or model or predict the behavior of nation-states or thefuture of warfare is doomed to fail. New mathematical theoriesof nonlinear, unpredictable relationships-the chaos theorypopularized in the book and movie Jurassic Park-provide amore telling portrait of international relations than the moretraditional, linear models in favor for the last four decades.

In general terms, linear systems rely on equations whoseelements can be written on one line, and which share thecharacteristics of proportionality (where changes in input areproportional to changes in output) and additMty (meaning thatthe whole is equal to the sum of the parts). Linear equationscan be terribly complex, but they are nonetheless deterministic.Knowing the inputs means knowing the outputs; to understand

5

!I

II

Ia system now is to understand it later, to be able to forecastand predict Its behavior and development.7

Nonlinear, or chaotic, systems do not enjoy thoseconvenient features of predictability and determinism. Chaoticsystems are characterized by random interactions, complexfeedback loops, and wild changes in results based on smallvariations in initial conditions.8 These factors combine toproduce events that do not conform to clear, predictablepatterns. The bigger and more intricate a system, the harderprediction becomes; the more points of interaction, the morechance and chaos.9

One aspect of chaotic systems makes them especiallyunpredictable, a phenomenon known as 'sensitivedependence on initial conditions.' Tiny changes in initialassumptions or circumstances (in fact, immeasurably smallchanges) can produce completely different outcomes. Thisfeature of chaos is perhaps most evident in the weather: asdemonstrated by computer models, weather patterns canevolve dramatically, even wildly, based on trivial shifts in windsor temperatuere. 10 This phenomenon is sometimes called the'butterfly effect,* after the tongue-in-cheek metaphor of somechaos theorists that a butterfly flapping its wings over Beijing 1could, through a series of complex interactions, produce athunderstorm over New York.

But chaos does not imply total disorder. A form of orderarises even within chaotic systems. This order is manifest inthe form of "attractors," a set of points around which chaoticresults tend to group. Chaotic systems have their own rules,their own trends, their own tendencies. These trends are notlinear-they cannot be fully predicted-but they existnonetheless.

From this brief description, it should be readily apparent thatworld politics is chaotic. It is a complex system with manyinterdependent actors and ,ables, and every action begetsunpredictable reactions. Very soon, even the most complexlinear models of the behavior of nations break down, as eventsspin out of the control of forecasting.'

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I

World politics Is especially susceptible to the butterflyeffect. As the eminent historian Robert Conquest has put it, "Inhistory and politics, in fact, the accidental, the totallyunpredictable, is often decisive." Moreover, Conquest argues,*the decisive turn may be due to some quite trivial occurrence,hardly entering into the observer's consideraion.012

John Lewis Gaddis makes this case forcefully in a recentessay that asks why political scientists did not do a better jobof predicting the end of the cold war. Against the trend ofInternational relations theories that have tried, in the words ofHans Morgenthau, to develop a predictive "science ofinternational politics," Gaddis argues that the chaotic elementsof world politics make prediction fruitless. "Surely humanaffairs, and the history they produce," Gaddis concludes,"come closer to falling into the unpredictable rather than thepredictable category." Not only are "the potentially relevantvariables virtually infinite, but there is the added complicationof human self-awareness, which adds an even further twist tothe feedback loop. 13

The essentially chaotic nature of world politics is mirroredin warfare. Combat itself is a chaotic enterprise, dominated bysuch elements as feedback, sensitive dependence on initialconditions, and chance. At least one observer contends thatthis conclusion represents Clausewitz's central message. '4

Martin van Creveld similarly suggests that the relationshipbetween technology and warfare-an intersection at the core ofthe RMA-is chaotic. "Given the sheer number of the points ofcontact between technology and war," van Creveld points out,"it is exceedingly difficult to discern long-term trends,"especially because the nature of technology and itsrelationship to war "are connected, interacting, andinterchangeable." Van Creveld writes that "the interaction oftechnology and war at any given time has been as much theproduct of the arbitrary and the accidental as it was of theinevitable and the necessary.m15

It therefore appears that the future of international politics,the future of warfare, and the operational details of war defyprediction. The history of each of these three subjects is written

7

OMAN

$ In chaotic, rather than linear, form, and U.S. military plannerscannot reliably know how they will evolve In the future.1

This may seem like a common-sense conclusion, but totake It seriously Is to draw some very specific Implications fordefense planning. Over the next two decades, U.S. plannerswill face a shifting, erratic menu of conflict. Small changes Inworld politics or national behavior can have dramatic andunpredictable effects. Traditional, comfortable ways of war wilgive way to dramatic new forms of high-technology combat andto ever more sinister forms of irregular warfare. As we respondto these changes, the model of chaos offers strict cautionsabout the degree to which we can influence the outcome ofpolitical or military events. 17 In developing a framework formilitary planning, therefore, the United States cannot make anydecisive assumptions about the precise enemies or conflicts itwill face during the next two decades.1e

Accepting these ideas would entail rejecting analyses thatnominate one form of warfare as the singular or dominantthreat in the future.' 9 It would deny the truth of end-of-historyoptimism and the belief that major war is impossible, whetherbecause of cultural factors or because of a shift to a"geoeconomic" era.2° At the same time, it would reject realistpessimism that suggests large new wars are Inevitable.'Anything, quite simply, is possible.

This model of international relations and warfareestablishes a difficult challenge for military planners: to find abroad framework capable of guiding decisions on militarydoctrine, force structure, organization, and procurement thatwill preserve U.S. capabilities at each level of warfare, fromoperations short of war to peacekeeping andcounterinsurgency missions to major war.22 This monographnow turns to outlining such a framework.

IV

At the base and core of the RMA, the substructure thatholds its framework in place is information. Information hasalways been the cornerstone of warfare, the pivot on whichdecisions and strategies turned, and this Is more true now than

8

ever. As the military revolution of the Information age, the RMAIs Itself a function of the Incredibly rapid, precise, and broadlyshared information that now circulates among modem militaryunits. 23

It is easy to see why information resides at the core of theRMA.0 Knowledge of the enemy's location provides the basisfor military action. Precise location of enemy targets isnecessary for precision-guided munitions. Amid the swift paceof modem battle, the rapid exchange of information about thestatus of the fight and reliable, real-time command and controlare indispensable to success.25 To achieve mastery of thisrealm, U.S. forces will seek information dominance-ecquiringthe necessary information for friendly forces while denying it tothe enemy.

These facts are all well-known to military professionals bynow. The phrase "information warfare" abounds in militaryjournals and books on defense planning. What specific

*implications does it hold for military planning?27

First and most fundamentally, conducting warfare in theinformation age will require a doctrine for information warfare.Military planners must have a precise idea of how informationfits into operations and how it should be handled and Idisseminated.28 In basic terms, this doctrine should provide forthe acquisition and sharing of information by friendly forces anddenying those things to the enemy. It should establish a planfor "getting inside the enemy's decision loop," as U.S. andcoalition forces did so successfully in the Gulf War. Informationdominance also represents a far cry from the war of singlebattles characteristic of Clausewitz's thought; warfare nowinvolves simultaneous operations against a broad spectrum ofmilitary and civilian targets.29

A doctrine for information warfare will have to address ahost of issues. One is hierarchy. Removing unnecessary layersof authority by streamlining decision making has been ahallmark of civilian exercises in total quality management, andto some extent is relevant to military command structures aswell. Insightful military leaders have spoken for years about thenotion of "powering down," having as many decisions as

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possible made at lower levels to promote efficiency andIniiative.30 At the same time, hierarchy Is essential to effectivecommand and control, and to a certain extent betterinformation will allow more decisions to be taken at a higherlevel-the all-seeing task force commander. And yet centralizedcommand structures are especially vulnerable in an era ofprecision weapons, a lesson taught again to Iraq in the GulfWar.

Such a doctrine must also answer the question of how muchand what kind of information, and Information technologies, theUnited States will share with its allies. Coalition warfare seemsto be an established trend. At a minimum, effectivecommunication with allied forces will be a must; and yet somein the Defense Department will certainly object to transferringor sharing their most advanced command and controlequipment. This effect is an example of a disturbing trend: allfour principles outlined in this monograph make it more difficultfor the United States to integrate allies into its military effortsprecisely at the moment when political incentives demand thatit do so to a degree unprecedented since 1945.

A doctrine for information warfare will also lead to a newunderstanding of "intelligence." Traditionally, intelligence, bothstrategic and tactical, has been partly divorced from theconduct of battle. Facts about enemy strategic intentions, oreven the location of a moving enemy tank brigade, weregathered by intelligence units, analyzed, and eventually sentforward to combat units-which often discounted their veracity.Even in the Gulf War, this process often took as long as 48hours.

The future may see the gradual disappearance of aseparate and distinct function called military intelligence. FrankKendall of the Defense Department has argued that newtechnology "blurs the operational planning and intelligenceboundary to the point of invisibility.031 U.S. forces will needinformation about enemy movements on a real-time basis.Those facts will no longer be able to be cordoned off in a distinctorganization separate from warfighting units. Intelligenceofficers as such may continue to exist, but they will be moreintegrated than ever before into actual military operations-an

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example of the Importance of synergy, which will be discussedbelow.

The authors of an information doctrine will confront thornyIssues related to democracy and freedom of the press. AnInformation revolution Is taking place in the media just as it IsIn wafte. Television networks may soon have observationsateliltes"of their own, reporters with tiny hand-held camerasable to move around the battlefield, and other Intrusivetechnologies. Future U.S. political leaders will have to decidswhether to restrict or shut down such broadcasts, and If so bywhat criteria.

Information warfare also demands new kinds of militaryorganizations. At the extreme, looking at the variedrequirements and possibilities of Information warfare, MartinUbicki and James Hazlett have proposed the creation of an"information corps."3

A very different kind of information war doctrine will berequired for irregular warfare. Control of Information In aguerrilla or low-intensity conflict environment is just asImportant as in high-intensity war, perhaps even more so. Afterall, guerrilla warfare Is essentially Information warfare-acontest of military hide-and-seek and political allegiance. In thissort of war, obtaining Information about the enemy andcontrolling the political debate are essential. But the means bywhich it is applied will be very different from conventional war.In particular, information war in unconventional conflicts willrely on human intelligence, special forces, and advancedsensors capable of detecting guerrilla groups. It also suggestsan expanded role for psychological operations and civil affairsunits, perhaps even, as the Tofflers have proposed, thecreation of a "rapid reaction contingency broadcasting force. 3"

War In an information age carries a number of risks as well,and the architects of a new doctrine must take them intoaccount.3 For one thing, vast amounts of information can beas crippling as they are liberating. Alroady U.S. troops in theGulf War have begun to speak of Information overload on thebattlefield, the profusion of so many facts and orders that theresult was confusion and frustration. Flexibility could be the first

11

caoualty In a now, rigid hierarchy of interwoven and automatedcommand. In computer-driven warfare, units mightincreasingly be viewed as pawns in a game rather than asautonomous fighting forces capable of initiativo

Clausewitz's venerable notion of friction suggests theparticular danger of this trend. Things go wrong in war. Plansgo awry, units fail to complete their assigned missions,commanders become confused. War, as suggested above,like international politics, is a chaotic enterprise. Any doctrineof information that relies on neat, linear control is bound toreceive a nasty shock when it confronts the enemy and the fogof battle.

This result is especially likely because the sophisticatedtechnologies that support information warfare-satellites, forexample, along with computers and downlink stations andother tools-are often very sensitive pieces of equipment thatcan themselves be disabled by a cunning enemy. As Alvin andHeidi Toffler have pointed out, militaries have no monopoly oncomputer technologies, and ingenious hackers could destroyU.S. computers with a well-placed electronic virus.3 The U.S.military must study much more carefully its informationvulnerabilities-whether to an anti-satellite weapon, anelectromagnetic pulse, or the use of guerrilla warfare tactics byan enemy unwilling to be massacred on a traditionalbatlefield.3

V

The RMA points to a second principle of defense planning,one which, like information, serves as a force multiplier bymagnifying the fighting ability of existing military units. Thissecond principle is synergy-or, to use a more common term,jointness. It is the ability of different services, branches, andweapons to fight effectively together, to marshal their uniquecapabilities into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.Most revolutions in military affairs are indeed only revolutionarywhen their vadous aspects work together, and the presentRMA is no different.

12

Acvances in military technology have made synergy moreimportant than ever. The faster and more precise warbecomes, the more need there is for tight and continuouscooperation among various kinds of forces.37 Precision-guidedweapons are useless without adequate targeting data. Stealthybombers will hardly be worth the price if they arrive over thetarget only to drop dumb bombs. The ability of units to move,on the ground or in the air, with lightning speed will be wastedif the command and control system cannot keep up.3

Synergy is intimately related to the revolution in informationmentioned above. Communication is the lifeline of synergy, themeans by which various parts of the force are able tocooperate. Interoperable command and control systems thustake on critical importance because they stand at the junctionbetween two principles of the RMA. 39

Over time, the evolution of synergy within the military mayhave one especially notable effect: it might overwhelm thecurrent roles and missions debate. To begin with, one shouldrecognize that redundancy is sometimes good4° and that,partly as a result, the fiscal savings to be found in eliminating"wasteful redundancies' are bound to be disappointingly small.Synergy should not be perceived as rooting out all aspects ofredundancy, but rather making the various forces work bettertogether.41

In the current, tender moment in defense planning,moreover, a divisive debate over roles and missions could dogrievous harm to the ultimate goal of synergy. Interservicerelations are already on eggshells, as the services scramblefor their piece of a shrinking defense budget and try, in theprocess, to continue the trend of jointness. If a roles andmissions review were to launch a full-scale attack onestablished means of doing business, save $10 billion andleave, amid the rubble, new loathing between the Army andthe Air Force, the exercise would have been a failure, not asuccess.

Finally, the supposed either-or choices offered byadvocates of a roles and missions review will seldom be soeasy. As a major military power, the United States will continue

13

to maintain cortain classes of weapons-fighters, strategicbomber3 (probably), aircraft carriers, tanks, and soon-indefinitely. 42 Only relatively marginal systems orcapabilities will be capable of elimination based on areadjustment of roles and missions.

The lesson is clear enough. To portray the roles andmissions review as a budgetary exercise is a serious mistake.In the long run, the goal is synergy, which will produce its ownefficiencies. Military planners must not allow an angry debateover roles and missions to slow progress toward that goal.

In fact, the RMA and its principle of synergy can help solvethis problem by eventually taking the roles and missions debateoff the table. Questions of which service will perform which role,mission, or function are likely to give way to a broader and morefundamental question: How can the capabilities of the variousservices be marshalled to accomplish specific jobs? Militaryplanners will simply discard the notion that missions belong, inany meaningful sense, to one or another service. When all theservices are viewed as a single, cooperating, organic whole,the scope of the roles and missions debate changescompletely. This argument replicates the distinction, made byAdmiral William Owens, between uspecialization" andsynergism" as models of jointness.43

An even tougher challenge than promoting synergy amongU.S. military services is doing the same thing withinmultinational coalitions. Coalition warfare is a growth industry,and U.S. military planners must find ways to maximize theproficiency of those coalitions and to make sure that the UnitedStates is playing the most efficient role possible in them. Thismeans, at a minimum, a reliable means of command andcontrol within a coalition enterprise. It means peacet'rmeexercises, military-to-military contacts, and full-time fiairinofficers. Again, coalition operations are becoming morechallenging even as they become more necessary.

Finally, the concept of synergy also stands at the core ofirregular warfare. In unconventional war, it is the combinationof political, economic, and military elements of strategy that isdecisive. As was so often said during the Vietnam War, military

14

means alone could not win a guerrilla war, only a broaderapproach will work. That Is as true in Somalia or the Sudannow as it was In Vietnam then, and It displays, once again, theImportance of the principle of synergy.

A renewed emphasis on synergy therefore carries anumber of Implications. Most Important to such progress willbe a growing emphasis on jointness. The U.S. military needseven more joint assignments, joint schools, joint exercises, andjoint thinking." A Joint Warfighting Center is already in theprocess of being created.4 The continued evolution of a muchmore detailed joint doctrine Is especially important." Flexible,all-arms combat teams incorporating land, sea, and air forceswill become even more ubiquitous in the future, and the militaryshould assemble and train such units together more frequentlyin peacetime, a trend already underway with adaptive jointforce packaging In the Atlantic Command 47 and with theimminent formation of Joint Task Force-95. The next logicalstep, as proposed by Admiral Owens, is the creation of jointcommands at the level of corps, fleet, and air force to operate"jointly on a continual basis."O

Second, when contemplating peacekeeping orcounterinsurgency operations, U.S. defense planners mustkeep in mind the necessary synergy between political,economic, and social as well as military factors. This calls forcloser military coordination among U.S. and allied militaryforces, international relief organizations, U.S. and allied foreignaid offices, and political aralysts and experts. It suggests theneed for U.S. forces permanently trained in the unique synergyof irregular war, or, at a minimum, permanent liaison officersbetween U.S. military forces and these other actors.

And third, military planners must extend the principle ofsynergy into the realm of procurement. Completestandardization would be a mistake. But in at least a fewinstances, services can work together on joint prnjects underthe direction of joint program offices. One major example, onwhich some cooperation is already underway, is a newgeneration of tactical fighter. But by far the most importanttarget for joint procurement Is an Integrated command, control,and communications system. 49

15

VI

A third principle suggested by the RMA is disengagedcombat. In the future, U.S. and allied military forces are likelyto conduct their operations at a healthy distance from theirenemy. This fact cardes a number of implications for forcestructure and technologies.

Close contact with the enemy has always been a perilousendeavor. It exposes U.S. forces to direct fire and the risk ofsubstantial casualties. This is especially true when the UnitedStates confronts the Soviet-style armies still common inregional aggressor states; the militaries of North Korea, Iraq,Iran, and other rogue nations rely heavily on masses of armorand artillery operating in close contact, on direct fire andrelatively close-range indirect fire, to wear down theiropponents.

The spread of weapons of mass destruction will make closecontact even more deadly. Chemical and biological weaponsare frequently deliver6d by artillery or short-range attackaircraft. Until long-range ballistic or cruise missiles have spreadfurther, nuclear weapons in the hands of regional aggressorswill probably be carried by attack aircraft as well.50

In high-intensity war between modem states, moreover,close contact is becoming increasingly lethal. The RMA ismaking it easier for military forces to locate and destroy theenemy than at any time in history. One need only imagine whata war would be like between two sides with the U.S. capabilitiesdisplayed in the Gulf. Eventually, the movement of large-scaleforces on the battlefield may be tantamount to suicide, andmodem mechanized warfare may become the contemporaryequivalent of the Somme.51 The first hints of this in recent timescame via the massive attrition rates of the Arab-Israeli wars.5 2

In broader terms, Clausewitz's notion of friction or the fogof war-perhaps the most fundamental fact of life for militaryleaders in battle-becomes thickest in close quarters. It is therethat units become misplaced, the mixture of enemy and friendlyforces becomes confused, communications are disrupted,orders are mislaid, and things generally go awry. Disengaged

16

i-i o ,"L fcm-w. C''I butt they m.._'yhoi ri -owhlt ar;cr~pplinoj tint thclo cf tho closo battle.

Ictm ani opat at ial poropwcivo, shorofor o, U.S. forcesimvo kxr rea so os to avoid cloce combat. Another reason io

political. It is otcnr said that, in an ora of television wars andiow tolerance for foreign adventures, U.S. operationalcc nmando~s must cavoid casualties at ali costs. And now theCul War may hnvn established an incredibly demandingstandard again st which future conflicts will be judged. Anythingthat helps minimize casualties would therefore greatly increasoU.S. frcecdor of action, and disengaged combat would havesuch an effect.

All of this suggests that U.S. forces may endeavor to remainas far apart from their adversaries as possible in future wars."3

U.S. forces will use their superiority in sensor tachnologies,weapons, and command and control to remain out of range ofthe enemy's main weapons while inflicting damage upon it.This is, obviously, not a new principle; the tactics planned forthe thin-skinned British battle cruisers before World War I cometo mind as an example of disengaged combat. This principlewas already at work in the Gulf, where U.S. tanks andhelicopters stood off at 3,000 yards or more and destroyed Iraqitanks at will, and where U.S. aircraft flew higher than 10,000feet, avoiding antiaircraft guns while using advanced sensorsto achieve pinpoint accuracy with their precision-guidedwoaponls.5

Admiral David Jeremiah has spoken of this process. "Withlong-or range, greater precision, and horizontal integration ofreal-time intelligence a,)nd targeting," hie argues,

future woeapons wi!I be abla to strike enemy forcms at greatc'istanc*3. In mid- or high-intensity combat, it may not always b3necessary to physically occupy key terrain on the ground, vitalairspaco, or critical chokepoints at cea in order to control them.While wars will still bo won only whcri soders occupy the enemy'sterritory, it may niot bo necessary in every cas3 to 'close with' theenamy in order to doztroy hiat.

17

Jeremiah correctly warns that current ideas about 'unitorganization, tactics, and modes of thinking may not beappropriate to such a future."5

Disengaged combat reflects the culmination of a historicaltrend. For centuries, warfare consisted of the sum of athousand Individual Littles fought with personal weapons.Warrior culture stressed physical strength, courage, and thewillingness to kill and be killed in brutal fashion. As Sir MichaelHoward has recognized, however, the progress of civilizationhas generally served to water down such values in Westernpopulations, so that by World War II U.S. and British forcesgenerally eschewed close combat. They preferred to call in theartillery rather than fix bayonets.'6 This trend continued throughKorea and Vietnam, and stood in sharp contrast to the suicidalsacrifices routinely made by Chinese, North Korean, andVietnamese units during those conflicts.

U.S. forces might achieve this goal in a number of ways.They could pursue disengaged combat strategically, by usingforces divorced from the actual theater of combat-distant navyships launching air strikes or cruise missiles, tactical air powerbased in a neighboring country, strategic bombers flying fromthe United States. The Air Force's new ideas of strategic *airpower-simultaneous precision attacks against enemycommand and control centers, power and communicationsgrids, and transportation nodes-represent a form ofdisengaged warfare, allowing U.S. forces to place emphasison targeting enemy assets besides, though including, militaryforces in close combat.

Tactically, a U.S. joint force commander would seek to fightthe enemy without ever placing his (or her) forces within rangeof most enemy weapons. Using the greater accuracy ofadvanced sensors and precision weapons, U.S. forces couldjockey just out of range of enemy artillery, tanks, and battlefieldmissiles, picking them off in turn, Such a practice mightestablish a hierarchy of enemy targets: those with the longestrange-aircraft and missiles-would be destroyed first, followedby artillery, and finally mechanized or infantry combat units. Asthe enemy's ability to strike out diminished in range, U.S. forces

18

I)

* *

would gradually advance on it and reduce the separation Inforces, gaining In effectivenes as they did so. 7

A doctrine of disengaged combat could help ease thepressure on U.S. defense industrial base policy. Given themassive attrition rates experienced in modem war, someobservers see the major vulnerability in the industrial base asa loss of surge capacity.58 With only a handful of suppliers leftfor each major weapons system, the industrial base wouldhave insufficient slack to surge production and make up lossesonce a war began. Disengaged combat, by reducing theattrition to U.S. forces, would help hold casualty rates downand therefore reduce the need for surge production.

Disengaged combat holds little relevance to irregularwarfare, and in fact may be the only one of the four principlesthat does not apply to both conventional and unconventionalcombat. '. the ideal world, U.S. peacekeeping andcounterinsurgency forces would be deployed in a manner thatdoes not make them vulnerable to guerrillas or partisans butallows them to make use of their own weapons. But that willseldom be possible.

A corollary to disengaged combat is nonlinear combat.Irregular warfare has long been nonlinear; as we heard so often *about the Vietnam War, there was "no such thing as a frontline.* If, as some have argued, irregular conflict represents themajority of future conflict, warfare as a phenomenon willtherefore become that much less linear. The increasinglethality of the close battle suggests that even traditional,high-intensity combat will be increasingly nonlinear; thegrowing risk to large-scale deployed military forcesencourages decentralization and dispersion. It emphasizes thevalue of more agile and hard-to-detect units such as airmobileor light mechanized forces as a substitute, in some cases, forheavy armor.

Rather than large units moving solidly in a single line ofadvance, future warfare might therefore see a more confusedpatchwork of dispositions, with U.S. and allied units in front of,among, and behind enemy forces. This trend is already evidentin Airland Operations, which conceives a deep battle of several

19

-A.

lines. Future warfare may look like AirLand Operationsrefracted through a multisided crystal, with each of its layers ofoperations broken into pieces and slices.m

The logical end-point of such developments is thereplacement of the notion of concentration of mass with oneemphasizing concentration of fire. No longer will units have tobe massed together to achieve their effect. Instead, thecombination of precision weapons of long range and advancedcommand and control systems will allow widely dispersedforces to focus their fire on specific points. Artillery and missileunits tens of miles apart, special forces units across thebattlefield, ships dozens or hundreds of miles offshore, andaircraft-including perhaps strategic bombers flying direct fromthe United States, and bombers firing cruise missiles fromhundreds of miles away-could all direct their attack against asingle enemy tank division, regiment, or battalion. "We mayeven reach the point," Admiral Jeremiah has pointed out, "atwhich fire and maneuver become essentially the same thingunder some circumstances."4

The implications of a strategy of disengaged combat arerelatively straightforward. Because this trend was alreadyunderway at the time of the Gulf War, and in fact for some yearsbefore that, it does not suggest any dramatic new departuresfrom current plans. But it is a useful reminder of those areasthat deserve emphasis in defense planning.

Full implementation of a strategy of disengaged combat forconventional warfare will require a thorough doctrine, and U.S. Iforces must be trained and exercised in its principles andfamiliar with its requirements. Joint exercises will be especiallyimportant because, as with all elements of the RMA, synergyis critical to disengaged combat: it is only through efficientcollaborative operations among air, land, and sea forces thatthe principles of disengaged combat could be put into practice.

In a strategic sense, the pursuit of disengaged combatrequires the ability to find and hit enemy targets over thehorizon, rather than weapons systems suited for the closebattle. It places a premium on intelligence, long-range sensors,long-range standoff munitions, precision targeting and

20

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guidance, advanced optics, and the like-eli things designed tolocate and hit the enemy at great distance, rather than to driveup and destroy him in a slugfest. Here we see one element ofthe trend toward the decline In Importance of heavy, (4mechanized ground forces: such forces are designed to fighta war that U.S. commanders should attempt to avoid, not bringabout.

More broadly, developments in warfare are reducing therole of major military plaforms-heavy ground vehicles, largecapital ships, and advanced aircraft. With the long range ofmodem sensors and precision weapons, the vehicles thatdeliver those weapons-major platforms-need be less capablethemselves. Thus Admiral Jeremiah suggests that 'we mayvery well move away from expensive, highly sophisticatedplatforms in favor of cheaper trucks or barges based oncommercial vehicles but crammed with state-of-the-artlong-range weapons, sensors, and communications gear.'The place of major platforms in the military "may not be thecentral position they have held for the past half-century ormore," Jeremiah concludes.61

In both its strategic and tactical guises, disengaged combatrequires great agility on the part of U.S. military forces. Land,naval, and air units must be capable of redeploying at amoment's notice, of moving about the battlefield rapidly. U.S.defense planners have already put in place the building blocksof both strategic and tactical agility. Robotics and unmannedvehicles can also play a major role in both strategic and tacticaldisengaged combat, supplementing and in some casesreplacing manned vehicles in battle areas close to the enemy.In this sense some U.S. systems could fight an "engaged'battle while U.S. personnel remained at a safe distance fromthe enemy.

Moreover, and in a much more fundamental sense, the kindof unprecedented tactical agility required for disengagedcombat may in fact call for more than speedy tanks. It mayeventually lead the army to profound organizationalinnovations. Two such changes that are most likely are anincreasing reliance on "middle-weight" forces employing lightarmored and mechanized units,8 and a shift to the reinforced

21I)

.... ...... ....... -. -- , -"._ .. - , .-.... ....

L.1

brigade as th basic combat unit of the army, replacing theImore unwiely division

Dsegaged combat also suggests a growing role for IceSpecial opertion forces. They are uniquely suited to operateIn tho resulting no-man's land between U.S. and enemy forcesas wel as far behind enemy Ones, directing fire and launchingdianuptiv raids. On a strategic lel, special operations forcescan partlciate In the strategic air campaign aimed at enemycenters of gravity, going after enemy leaders, command posts,military depots, energy supplies, and the like.

Finally, reliance on a stralegy of disengaged combat alsocarries unpromising Implications for coalition warfare. If U.S.allies did not enjoy similar capabilities, how would U.S.connanders work them into such an approach to war? Wouldthey merely be used to mop up? Or could select alliesparticipate In the disengaged attacks at both the strategic andtactical levels? The Gulf War suggests that a U.S. commandermight make use of each of these alternatives.

V.

Finally, the revolution In military affairs points in thedirection of the civillanizatlon of war. In areas from the conductof warfare, the organization of force structure, and policiestoward the defense Industrial base, the RMA will make use ofcapabilities resident more in the civilian world than in areastraditionally thought of as the defense establishment. Becauseof the RMA, the line between military and civilian endeavors Isblurring.6

Of course, this has always been true for irregular warfare.The myriad of social, political, and economic factors involvedin peacekeeping or counterinsurgency operations has alwaysmade them far more than purely "military" struggles. Indeed,many critics of U.S. policy in Vietnam argued precisely that theUnited States was treating the conflict sea military one, whenIn fact it was something more than that.

All of this remains true for the irregular wars of today. Theneed to consider nonmilitary factors may be magnified by a

22II

' ,1

growing cause of rmiiM conflict the environmeft And ifirregular war is indeed becoming the dominant form of conflictthen war is indeed becoming a lesia" entqs.

Even in the realm of major conventional war, however, theboundary between militay and civilian efforts will dim. Theaccelerating rate of technology is one reason. Because of theremarkable advance of technology and the stifling system ofmilitary procurement, civilian computers, engines, optics, andother systems are far outpacing their military equivalents.Civilian products are also far cheaper. This fact has been oneof the major spurs to the current drive for procurement reform,which aims at making a wider range of civilian technologiesavailable to the military.

More fundamentally, future warfare will be informationwarfare, and it is therefore built upon a foundation of civiliantechnologies. When the primary focus of war was killing, itsprimary tools were the implements of killing; and the mostadvanced versions of those were built exclusively for militaryuse. The technology of war, therefore, was self-generating.

*Today, the trend is in the opposite direction: thesubstructure of war will be information dominance, and itsprimary building-blocks are computers, communicationsystems, satellites, and sensors. The essence of war is comingto rest on a foundation of civilian, rather than military,technologies.64 Alvin and Heidi Toffler have discussed theultimate implications of this trend in their book War andAnti- War When the instruments of war are no longer tanks andguns but computer viruses, microscopic robots, and obscuregerms, militaries, and indeed nation-states themselves, willlose even more of their monopoly on "force.00 Nonlethalty andcivilianization are closely related phenomena.

The nature of armed forces Is also changing to place moreemphasis on reserves and militias, and thus on thecitizen-soldier elements of military institutions. This trend iscurrently most apparent in Europe. After maintaining verysubstantial active-duty forces during the cold war, moot NATOmembers are rushing to demobilize. Soon NATO'snon-American nations will maintain barely 50 active-duty

23

M AIL

S

iS

brigades, relying on large reserve forces for the bulk of aresponse to any new Russian provocations. Here in the UnitedStates, the Bottom Up Review force's ability to fight twocontingencies hinges on the participation of 15 National Guardcombat brigades. In a time of budgetary frugality, forcestructure trades off with modemization and readiness; thistradeoff Is frankly admitted by the architects of the Bottom UpReview, and Is increasingly evident in nations like China andJapan, as well.

Th': shift to smaller active-duty forces remains uneven at'.,,t. Recent developments in Russia, where reformers onceproposed active armed forces as small as 1.2 million, havehalted reductions at almost double that number. Andeverywhere, the trend toward smaller active-duty forcesdepends on a continuation of current trends, which, given thechaotic nature of world politics, can hardly be guaranteed.

Nonetheless, if something like current trends persist at leastfor a time, and if democratic reforms take root in Russia andChina, the rush to demobilize may continue. If so, defenseplanners may be forced into a more serious consideration ofconcepts like civilian-based defense. In the future, militiasequipped with small arms, light anti-armor weapons, andperhaps the cast-offs of active forces like tanks and MLRSmight provide the basic form of deterrence against an attackeron the country's homeland. Nonviolent conflict and resistancemay assume many roles formerly held by military force,especially in low-intensity conflict. 6"

Such a defense could be stiffened by the talents of peoplewho work on the cusp of military and civilian endeavors.Computer hackers could cripple an enemy's stock market witha virus; space-age computer experts could reprogram theirmicromachines or nanomachines to invade and destroy theradios of passing enemy units; satellite operators could provideintelligence on enemy movements and jam enemycommunications. These types of "military personnel" wouldneed very different qualities, and have very different personalcharacteristics, from the sort of people who have traditionallysought military careesre7 Meanwhile, smaller, sophisticated

24

4 ?

7S

active-duty forces would Conduct edtnay tu In-ne and o1r to n@Gn'score 6Mme *NM i .This kind of arrangement would have Important socialramfictios.The gul between civlian and military Nf.

seemingly narrowed by te prominent role for reves andmilitias, might In fact widen because of the elite,sup-specallzed nature of miliary forces. Different forms ofrecritment might be required for the two force: reservistsmight be conscripted while active-duty forces were composedof volunteers, a twist on the distinction which the Frenchalready maintain today.

The ultimate result of such a trend Is, of course, thedisappemnce of active-duty m litary forces altogether. As thefabric of society is Increasingly woven from fiber-optic cables,civiian technicians of the future could conduct all the deterrentthreats and destructive actions that comprise what might bedescribed as "warfare" from a computer terminal. This, ofcourse, is the stuff of science fiction, and not a result we or ourchildren are likely to live to see. But It Is hardly out of thequestion.

Nonlethal weapons play an Important role in this ame trendtoward cvillanized warfare. In the future, U.S. force will seek P •to kill as few enemy civillans, do as little collateral damage,and-in a new twist-kll as few enemy soldiers as possible. Thisshift will come about because it is both possible anddesirable.m

Various new technologies grouped under the generalheading of "nonlethal weapons" will deepen and accelerate thistrend. Microwave generators capable of incapacttig troops,lasers capable of temporarily blinding them, slippery geb thatcan prevent the use of roads or bridges, and a whole panoplyof electronic warfare gadgets will allow U.S. and aied forcesto conduct certain military operations, In some c1rcumsances,without threatening a single life. U.S. forces wil be able toachieve some "nifery" obotie os-sizing a stategic location,knocking out enemy command and control, disabling an enemyunit In the field-without firing a shot

25

Ia

-~- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .. "4.. ,. , .- . -,7. - ,. . .- ;- , , T '... A - .. . . ..

These resut, of course, wI take decades to achieve. Mostnorne"hlechclogie remain on the drawing board. Evenwhen they are fielded, tey may not be appropriate for all, oreven very many, missions. As long as U.S. enemies keep usingguns, war will remain a lethal enterprise, and U.S. forces wiloftn need to shoot back. And the adoption of a fully nonlethalstrategy might undermine deterrence, suggesting to futureSaddam Huseins that, not only would they not risk theirregime with agreson-they might not even risk the lives oftheir soldiers." For the time being, the Defense Departmentviews nonlethal weapons as an adjunct to, not In any way areplacement for, traditional military systems70

Nonetheless, nonlethal weapons and tactics will gainground in coming years, for a number of reasons. Given themedia focus on war and the semi-Isolationist mood of theAmerican people, the corollary to the need for low U.S.casualties is the requrement for low collateral damage. TheAmerican people might not long tolerate an operation involvingmarginal national interests that necessitated the destruction ofenemy cities or the slaughter of tens of thousands of enemysoldiers. The public revulsion, and subsequent militaryrestraint, surrounding the famous "Highway of Death In theGulf War is an example of this phenomenon. Uke disengagedcombat, therefore, nonlethality will expand U.S. flexibility andfreedom of action In using force.

Nonlethal capabilities will be especially important inirregular war, where, along with high-tech sensors andcommand and control systems, they could effect a truerevolution in the nature of peacekeeping andcountedneurgency tactics. Crowds of demonstrators could beIncapactated rather than kdW. Guerrilla groups could bedenied the use of roads and trais through the use of a greasyoil rather than bombing runs. Terrorists operating at night couldbe blinded by lasers when they approached U.S. forces.Circuitry in radios and computers of rebel groups could bedestroyed with targeted electromagnetic bursts.

Again, these capabilities will only become available overthe next decade. But together they could change the way U.S.and allied military planners view missions in irregular warfare.

26

A

!a

And they iolm a question for fuure gerations of defensepWWes: Must war kve ing? Or would any nonr--halendeW case to be war and become something else?

4 V.IThe rvolution In military affairs therefore suggests a

framework for defense planning composed of four pirs. Theyare Infomatlon dominance, synergy, disengaged combat andcIvIlianiation. A number of implications have already beendrawn from each of those principles. This final section outlinessome broader and more fundamental lessons of the frameworkas a whole.

it Is Inteest to note, at the outset, how the four principlesfit together like pieces of a puzzle, mutually dependent andreinforcing. The lines of intersection are simply too numerousto mention. Information's dominant role creates the need forand possibility of synergy and promotes the cillanizatlon ofdefense policy. Disengaged combat relies on accurate,real-time targeting Information for success, and mayincreasingly be conducted through civilian or nonlethal means.

Uke past revolutions in military affairs, the present one isan organic whole. Any one element pursued in Isolation will I )offer only a shadow of the RMA's true potential.

it is important to note that, while al four principles apply tob conventio and unconventional war, not all of themapply In equal measure to both, and applying the principles tothose very different forms of warfare will require two verydifferent doctrines. Information domkinoe in conventionalconflict means a very different thing from that same principleIn guerrilla warfare. Disengaged combat Is simply not possibleIn irregular war, and, as a result, traditional "warriorvalues'-physcal toughness, courage, the willingness to giveone's le for a cause-will continue to be at a premium In mostforms of Irregular war.

Will the RMA change the essence of warfare? Th answerdepends upon one' definitions. Cassical military strategy, asreprs' in the works of Claueewltz and Jomini, sought to

27

IO

mass forces at a critical point and attack the enemy's center ofgravity In a decisive battle. Some have argued that the RMAwill invalidate such a model of warfare: forces will no longer bemassed, the enemy will no longer be directly engaged, forceswill no longer fight "through" a decisive point along lines norseek a decisive battle in close combat. On the other hand, onecould argue that these same concepts remain valid, but in adifferent sense: U.S. forces will mass fire and other militaryeffect against enemy centers of gravity to win decisively.

This different understanding of warfare may come to relymore on the foundation of Sun Tzu than Clausewitz or Jomini.Sun Tzu's notion of winning a war without fighting a battle-atleast a traditional, close battle-may become the dominantpreoccupation of military institutions. Maneuver, guile, andlong-range strike, rather than vast tides of close-combatattrition, will be the watchwords for U.S. commanders in thefuture.

It is therefore unsurprising that all four principles havealways been true, to a greater or lesser degree, of irregularwarfare. It was always nonlinear, based on civilian political andsocioeconomic factors; successful strategies to fight irregularwar always employed a high degree of synergy and "civilian"tools among their various political, military, and economicelements. This suggests that future U.S. military leaders willneed more of the flexibility and innovativeness of thoughtcharacteristic of the great generals of guerrilla warfare, whohave always looked to Sun Tzu rather than Clausewitz forinspiration.

in this sense, the RMA is about the blurring of lines, andmay therefore work to change the fundamental essence ofwarfare. Distinctions between military and civilian technologiesand endeavors, between strategic and tactical operations,71

between conventional and unconventional war, and betweenwarfare and law enforcement are all breaking down. What mosthistorians nominate as the "essence" of warfare-two enemysoldiers braving death to kill each other on the battlefield-willremain valid in most types of combat, but not all of them. Thequestion is how much of warfare comes to reflect a new

28

war-fomi, as tho Toffle s cal it, and how fundamontal thischango bocomes.

Several specific lessons emerge from this discussion of thelikely future of warfare. One stands out as especially important:the quality of military personnel. Only highly Intelligent,superbly trained, well-equipped troops with high morale andwide experience will be able to flourish in the incrediblydemanding atmosphere of future war. This is true of bothconventional war, which is becoming faster and more complex,and irregular war, which calls for a unique blend of soldieringskills and socioeconomic sensitivity.

indeed, high-quality troops provide a hedge against errorsin exactly the sort of framework for defense planning proposedin this monograph. Clausewitz recognized that:

it is simply not possible to construct a model for the [conduct] of warthat can serve as a scaffolding on which the commander can relyfor support at any time. Whenever he has to fall back on his Innatetalent, he will find himself outside the model and in conflict with it;no matter how versatile the code, the situation will always lead tothe consequences we have already alluded to: talent and eniusoperate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.'2

Measures to recruit, train, and retain high quality troops in allbranches of the military must therefore be among our toppriorities. 73 This means, among other things, jealouslyguarding military pay raises and other benefits, opposing cutsin operations and maintenance accounts,74 providing forrealistic and extensive peacetime training, developingsimulation capabilities and other high-technology trainingdevices, and attempting to keep the forces equipped withmodem systems. Technologies may drive the RMA, but peopleand organizations will carry it out. In addition to smart weapons,therefore, the RMA calls for smart organizations and smartpersonnel.

A second major lesson of the new framework for defenseplanning concerns acquisition reform. The U.S. militayprocurement system cannot keep up with the demands of 21 stcentury warfare. Civilian technologies are outpacing militaryones, and if, as argued above, future war will come to rest on

29

a foundation of civilian information technologies, this gap couldbo deadly. If the Defense Department's software forcombatting computer viruses, for example, is three or fouryears behind the viruses in the hands of an Iraqi hacker, theUnited States will confront a strategic vulnerability.

This lesson points to the urgent need for the kind ofacquisition reforms, described by Defense Secretary Perry,that would make civilian equipment more accessible to themilitary by chopping away at the intervening wall of uniquerequirements and govemment regulations.

In the long run, however, this same trend may force us toask more fundamental questions and reconsider the wholenotion of a "defense industrial base." If, as suggested above,our emphasis on major platforms declines, we may be able tofocus our efforts on preserving a very narrow slice ofbusinesses-those that produce, not bombers or submarines,but advanced sensors, precision-guided weapons and theirwarheads, ammunition, and command and control systems.That set of industries is a much more manageable challengofor a U.S. industrial base policy than the current, vast defensebase focused on producing major platforms.

Third, the revolution in military affairs renders a decisivejudgment on the future military fortunes of totalitarian states.Such societies and their military establishments suffer fromrigid, centralized, hierarchical command structures; slow,predictable patterns of technological innovation; and aninability to encourage the qualities of initiative and self-reliancein their military officers. The militaries of totalitarian statescannot implement any of the six elements of the RMA. Theybelong, as a collective group, in the dustbin of military history.

In coming decades, no totalitarian state should be able tostand up to the onslaught of democratic nations wielding theprinciples of the RMA. This conclusion carries dramaticimplications for the threat posed by such nations as Iraq, Iran,North Korea, and a potential renewed totalitarianism in Russia.It suggests that these threats might not be nearly as great astheir numbers would suggest. The easy coalition victory in the

30

Gulf War might, after all, be ropicable in- other cases in whichthe Unitod States is fighting a totalitarian regime.75

Fourth, the RMA points to the need for dramaticorganizational reforms in the Department of Defense. Jointoffices should control doctrine and procurement. Hierarchiesshould be reduced to speed innovation and responsiveness.As Admiral Owens has proposed, joint commands should beestablished in peacetime. And expanded investments shouldbe made in what Lieutenant General Frederic Brown has calleda "bureaucracy of change"-those institutions, such as theArmy's Training and Doctrine Command, that promotestrategic thinking and doctrinal innovation.

If Sun Tzu is to be the new doctrinal inspiration for the U.S.military, then the virtues and values of special operationsforces may well be the organizational model for the future.Special operations units are small, agile, flexible, able to takeon a wide range of missions, highly t,'ained and motivated, andimbued with the need for decentralized initiative. They usestealth and guile rather than brute force to achieve theirobjectives. These same principles will dominate the doctrinesof the regular U.S. military in the years to come.

Fifth, the RMA suggests that a reevaluation of U.S. coalitionstrategy might be in order. It suggests, first of all, that the mosthelpful and appropriate place to get allied help in managing theburdens of the new world order will be in operations short ofwar, especially peacekeeping and peacemaking. These kindsof operations and conflict call for traditional military skills ratherthan high-tech wizardry, and they are precisely the morecommon, every-day endeavors that the United States will notbe able to conduct on its own. Beyond that, U.S. commanderswill be increasingly challenged to integrate other military forcesinto their operations in a meaningful way.

Sixth and finally, the RMA underpins the denuclearizationof U.S. defense planning. As Soviet military analystsrecognized a decade ago, modem conventional weapons canassume many missions previously assigned to nuclearweapons. Modern U.S. conventional forces, combined with thecollapse of the Soviet Union, mean that the United States need

31

not threaten nuclear war to deter conventional attacksanywhere In the word today. At a minimum, this would allowfor a doctrine of no first use of weapons of mass destruction,reserving the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons for threats ofretaliation against nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.76

Nor is it even clear that, 10 or 20 years from now, the UnitedStates will need to threaten a nuclear response to nuclearattack. A number of analysts have already proposednonnuclear retaliation against small nuclear attacks by regionalproliferators,77 and Paul Nitze has gone even further. TheUnited States might consider, he writes, "converting itsprincipal strategic deterrent from nuclear weapons to a morecredible deterrence based at least in part upon 'smart'conventional weapons." Conventional weapons, Nitze pointsout, are "safer, cause less collateral damage and pose lessthreat of escalation than do nuclear weapons. They thus offerfar greater flexibility. And he s'jggests provocatively that sucha nonnuclear deterrent might someday 'overcome' even the 0threat posed by "a first-class strategic [nuclear] arsenal, suchas that of Russia. 78 The RMA therefore provides the UnitedStates with both the incentive and the means for elbowingnuclear weapons to the margins of world politics.

Taken together, these broad implications and the entirety 0of the preceding analysis points to a specific set of priorities forfunding in the years ahead. Figure 1 summarizes thesepriorities. These capabilities, weapons systems, and types offorces would provide the greatest leverage in the emergingrevolution in military affairs. I

I

32

-w ~ -

tePrioriim for U.S. Deftnee Invmbent In wts 19mm.

A new o chft for informaonamsed, disengaged, civlmnized wafareGOMWa CI)O -"os YHIV-qust miltary forces Restrict platform development in )Joint and combined command, favor of long-range, standoff

control, and communications precision strike systemssystems Nonlet weapons

Joint schools, doctrinal centers, and Core of stealthy aircraftprocurment bodies Smaller, stealthier shos

Capabities for information Unmanned vehiclesdominance: dena systems,systems for assessment and Force Structursdissemination Special operating forces

Defense against chemical and Ught mechanized ground forcesbiological attack Brigade-sized task forces

Advanced sensors-visual, Joint peacetime commandsthermal, etc.

Strategic agility

Figure 1.

Ix

Warfare is changing, perhaps more rapidly andfundamentally than at any time in recent history. In the comingyears, U.S. defense planning will be hard-pressed to keep pacewith the metamorphosis of conflict. To benefit from the RMA,the U.S. military, whether it is engaged in conventional orirregular war, will need to reform the way it plans, thinks,procures, and fights. Such transforming innovations will requirea framework, some basic set of principles to help guidedecisions during a period of dizzying change.

This monograph has proposed one such framework. It mayhave misidentified the principles; it may be wrong in many ofits major assertions. Some military officers and defenseplanners, accustomed to relying on certain *unchanging truthsabout war," will undoubtedly reject some of the more dramaticsuggestions offered above. And perhaps they will be right.

33

Ask--6 :- AI

But this report has tried to convey something of the possiblesweep and momentous importance of the trends now at workIn the nature of war. It Is based on the conviction that, whetheror not every element of Its long-range thinking is correct, thearchitects of U.S. defense policy ignore these trends at theirperi.

The United States enjoys a proud tradition of innovativemilitary thinkers and the development, in peacetime, ofimportant new capabilities. If this tradition is to continue, U.S.defense planners will need to be more far-sighted than ever.For the changes of tomorrow are coming faster and with moreforce than the changes of yesterday. It may no longer beenough to avoid fighting the last war;, now we may need to bethinking about the war after next.

ENDNOTES

1. This is the central theme of Alvin and Heidi Toffier, WarandAnti-WarSurvival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, Boston: Uttle-Brown, 1993.

2. Michel Mazarr, principal author, The Military Technical Revolution,Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993, pp.16-17.

3 See Mazar. The Military Technical Revolution; and Frank Bamaby,The Automated BsttIefiid, Now York: The Free Press, 1986. During thecold war, Soviet military arqdysts contended that modem history had seenthree true revolutions in military affairs. The first was the revolution in massarmies, weaponry, and mechanization, just underway in Napoleon's time,which became fully evident In the two World Wars. The second was theadvent of nuclear weapons, which completely changed the nature oflarge-scale warfare and may, in fact, have made such warfare inherentlysuicidal. The third RMA outlined by Soviet analysts was the one underwaytoday.

4. On the elements of the RMA see Frank Kendall, "Exploiting theMilitary-Technical Revolution," Strategic Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring 01992, pp. 23-30.

5. Las Aspin, Secretary of Defense, Report on the Bottom-Up Review,Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, October 1993. The reportcontains a few references to the "revolution in weapons technology (p. 33),but no sustained discussion of the nature of the military-technical revolution. 0Indeed, the report hardly discusses the nature rf warfare at all.

34

Af

L . . . • a _ ... _ ... . ... . .,,,,. , . ,a l .. . .. .. .. .. I, ,i . ... .. . . i. . . .. ..J n . . .. .. .. .. . . .

6. Se, for example, Theresa Hitchens and Robert Holzer, "DoD Eyes21st Century Now," Defe News, March 28-Aprl 3, 1994, pp. 1, 52.Defese Secretary Perry has spoken of an emphasis on the RMA as oneof the legacies he Intends to leave, and has formed a large study group onthe RMA within the Defense Deparment.

7. David Ruelle, Chance and Chaos, Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1991, p. 29.

8. A basic Introduction to chaos theory is James Glelck, Chaos: Makinga New Sacice, New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

9. Ruefle, Chance and Chaos, p. 81.

10. As one writer has put it, "Because of this sensitivity, causingmicrolevel effects to be exponentially amplified over time, long-termpredictability from the observation of previous behavior becomesImpossible in chaotic systems. Current behavior becomes unrelated toprevious events. . ." Diana Richards, OA Chaotic Model of PowerConcentration in the International System,* International Studies Quarterty,Vol. 37, 1993, p. 58.

11. An Interesting discussion of this point can be found In chapter 8 ofAlasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame, IN:University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, pp. 84-102.

12. Robert Conquest, "History, Humanity, and Truth," The 1993Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution onWar, Revolution, and Peace, 1993, p. 16.

13. John Lewis Gaddis, "international Relations Theory and the End ofthe Cold War," Intenational Security, Vol. 17, No. 3, Winter 1992-1993, p.29. Cf. pages 27-29, 31, 39, 52, and especially 53-55 in Gaddis for furtherdiscussions of this point. And see also Gabriel A. Almond and Stephen J.Genco, 'Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics,' World Politics, Vol. 20,No. 4, July 1977, which makes roughly the same argument.

14. Alan Beyerchen emphasizes that the elements of interaction andfeedback noted as characteristics of war by Clausewltz are also basicelements of chaos. For example, the notion of 'war as continuation ofpolitics' implies an interaction, not a linear set-subset relationship. War isthus described, in good chaotic terms, as man energy-consumingphenomenon involving competing and interactive factors, attention to whichreveals a messy mix of order and unpredictabilty.' Beyerchen, 'Clausewltz,Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictablity of War,' International Security, Vol.17, No. 3, Winter 1992/1993, pp. 66-75. I

35

-~~-s ..... w' ~ .

415. The more one knows about technology and I effect on war, van

Creveld concludes sadly, th more difflcult it becomes to Iety trend4and make predictions. Martin van Creveld, Tocfnology and War, NowYord: Free Press, 19S9, p. 313.

16. The revolution In military affairs points to a strategy of 'managementof uncertainty,' argues Ste n Peter Rosen, rather than Opredictions ofwhat future wars would be lke. It is a mistake to tailor forces and strategiesfor one scenario to the exclusion of other. U.S. planners need to "constructa wide range of scenarios and conduct Imaginative conflict simulations Inorder to explore the shape of potential wars'; Rosen, Winning the Next War/nnovaton and the Modem MiW/fary, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.Alan Beyerchen's analysis of Clausewitz draws similar conclusions formiltay art. 'The elegance of military axioms," he warns, echoing what hebelieves to be the true message of Clausewitz, *is a mirage shimmeringabove the distant abstractions of implicitly idealized, isolated systems; thedenseness of Clausewitz's forest of caveats and qualifications morefaithfully represents the conditions and contexts we actually encounter";Beyerchen, "Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War,' p.89. -The work of Clausewitz," Beyerchen concludes, 'indicates that knowinghow the system functions at this moment does not guarantee that it wilchange only slightly in the next. Although it might remain stable, it mightalso suddenly, (although perhaps subtly) pass a threshold into a thoroughlydifferent regime of behavior. And the causes of such changes in a complexsystem can be imperceptibly small'; Ibid., p. 90.

17. As the chaos expert David Ruelle has argued, * 4

The textbooks may give you the impression that the role of thelegislators and government officials is to find and implement anequilibrium that Is particularly favorable for the community. Theexamples of chaos in physics teach us, however, that certaindynamical situations do not produce equilibrium but rather achaotic, unpredictable time evolution. Legislators and governmentofficials are thus faced with the possibility that their decisions,intended to produce a better equilibrium, will in fact lead to wild andunpredictable fluctuations, with possibly quite disastrous effects.

Ruelle, Chance and Chaos, pp. 84-85. The same may be true in economics,suggesting that traditional efforts by government to achieve this or thateffect with a pinch In Interest rates and a prod in money supply may be farless effective than commonly assumed; see Charles R. Morris, "It's Not theEconomy, Stupid," The At/antdc Monthly, July 1993, pp. 49-62.

18. As a side note, it may be Interesting to consider whether this broadunpredictability of political events helps account for the causes ofdeterrence failure. Why supposedly rational national leaders would take

36

i

seemingly irrational decisions to defy dorn threats-as Argentna did In1982, for example, or Iraq in 1990-has long been the subjec of daeba. Achaotic model of world politics allows us to see detrrence fauee as naturalsubsets of an overa order that does not coform to linear, "radiona model.Indeed, a thorough analysis of the causes of detrrence faikr beas outthis point. For an argument that the practice of deterrence is inherentlyflawed-a conftntion that a chaos mndel of world politics would support-seethe chapters in Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Jarce Gross Stein,ode., Peydxlg and Deference, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 19065. Michael J. Mazarr, Don M. Snider, and James A. Blackwell,DeW Stonn: The Guli War and What We Leamed, Boulder, CO: WestvlewPress, 1991, chapters 2 through 4, applies these same theories ofdeterrence failure specifically to the Iraqi case.

19. See, for example, Martin van Creveld's argument about non-statewarfare in The Twnsfoaton of War, New York: The Free Press, 1991.Van Crevaid is no doubt correct that non-state, non-trinitarlan warfare willbe morne prevalent in the future. Chaotic models would merely suggest thatit Is impossible to claim, as van Creveld appears to do, that they will be theon/y kind of war. His book was published before the Persian Gulf War, andone wonders if he would admit that the war provides any counterevidenceto his claim. It was, after all, a traditional state-versus-state war in almostevery sense.

20. See, for example, the claims of John Mueller, Retreat fromDoomsday: "he Obsolescence of Major War, New York: Basic Books, 1989;and Edward Luttwak, "From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics," The NationalInterest, No. 20, Summer 1990, pp. 17-23. Other elements of this debateare offered in Sean M. Lynn-Jones, ad., The Cod WarandAfter: Prospectsfor Peace, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

21. See John Mearshelmer, 'Back to the Future: Instability In EuropeAfter the Cold War,* Intemational Security, Vol. 15, No. 1, Summer 1990.

22. Let me make one point very clear at the outset: I do not assumethat all weapons, doctrines, or technologies of the RMA are equallyapplicable to conventional and unconventional war. As a much moreambiguous phenomenon than conventional war, in which social, economic,and political factors predominate, irregular war is immune to many of thetechnologies of the RMA. It is not immune to all of them, however; and thismonograph will contend that the six principles outlined below are equallyapplicable to regular and irregular war. But applying the principles willrequire two (or more) very different doctrines. In general, my comments willfocus on the role of the RMA In conventional war.

23. These comments hint at the definition of information I have in mind:it is a broad one, encompassing facts (about the enemy, about friendly andallied forces, about terrain, weather, weapons systems, and the Ike) as well

37

,I

•.- d -

w conweandl - oonui (the exchange of facts and orders). The seminalumxet work I the field of the FMA arid command and control is Kenneth

Allmd. Cowwa4 Coind/, and the Coumon Deee, Now Haven: YaleUr*veulty Pr, 1g0o. See also General Gordon R. Sullivan, 'War in the

inafton Ag,' ~ Review, forthcoming; Suvan's auerb, and&61gidpiiplace echose imany of the theme preeented I this Section.

24. For more details on Informstion warare, see Alan D. Campen, ed.,The Fh Itdonutaon War, Farfax, VA: AFCEA International Prow, 1992;Martin "lld, "Soon and Security in the 21 st Century,' Strmtgc ReviewVa. 20, No. 3, Summer 192, and Ubidd and James Hazlett, 'Do We Needan Information Corps?* Joint Force Quante, Vol. 1. No. 2, Autumn 1993,pp. 88-97.

25. Martin van Creveld has spoken of the critical Impoance, of the•frastructurem of war, the logistical and communications network that Ilnksa force together. This Infrastructure, van Creveld notes, "goes a long wayto dictate ft charactr of organization, logistics, Intelligence, strategy, eventhe concept of battle Itself. Without it the conduct of armed conflict wouldbe Impossible, and its very existence, inconceivable'; van Creveld,Technology and War, p. 311-312. In the past, this infrastructure was basedon roads and rail; In the future, the military will increasingly rely on aninlomational infrastructure based on the computer chip and the fiber-opticcable.

26. See Mazarr, The Military Technical Revolution, p. 20. It could beargued that the Air Force's strategy of the strategic application of airpowerto enemy critical nodes is an example of Information dominance, becausemany of those nodes are command and control or information-relatedtargets such as radars, telephone networking stations, and radio facilities.

27. One Interesting result is to strengthen the chaotic nature of warfarementioned earlier. Information flows are rapid and unpredictable; advancedcommand and control systems magnify the feedback loop characteristic ofchaotic systems and accelerate the feedback process. Ken Allard refers tothe "organized chaos of information gathering.' Allard, "The Future ofCommand and Control: Toward a Paradigm of Information Warfare,'chapter to be included in Michael J. Mazarr and Benjamin Ederington, eds.,Turning Point: The Gulf War and the Future of U.S. Military Strategy, NewYork: St. Martin's Press, forthcoming; cited from mimeographed draftchapter, p. 27.

28. Ken Allard argues that such a doctrine could become the centralorganizing principle for U.S. military forces, replacing the service-orientedparadtgms of today. The American defense establishment 'has a longhistory of organizing concepts that fall short of capturing the essence ofwhat it means to be a superpower with land, sea, and aerospace forces aswell as global interests,' Allard writes. "The information war

38

I -All

paradigm-Inchoate, uncertain, and Indistinct though it 1-,'eresents apossible alternative, precisely because it embraces each of theseoperational environments as well as the electromagnetic spectrum." Allard,'The Future of Command and Control," p. 31. With such projects as C41 forthe Warrior, Corporate Information Management, and the Navy's Space andElectronic Warfare Initiative, the Defense Department Is laying fertile groundfor the latter-day architects of such an Information warfare doctrine.

29. See Sullivan, "War In the Information Age.*

30. See, for example, Brown, The U.S. Army in Transition Ii, pp.161-162.

31. Kendall, "Exploiting the Military Technical Revolution,' p. 26.

32. Martin C. Ubicki and James A. Hazlett, 'Do We Need an InformationCorps?" Joint Force Quaterly, No. 2, Autumn 1993, pp. 88-97. Their notionis that such an organization would help integrate information warfarefunctions, encourage innovation in this area, and help grant Informationwarriors a unique ethos and culture. The obvious objection Is that the natureof Information belies such an organizational innovation: information lies atthe core of all military operations; we cannot-and should not-attempt to splitit off into a separate institution. Such an action flies in the face of the synergyand integration information warfare demands. But Ubicki and Hazlettcorrectly recognize the fact that, without institutional muscle, informationwarfare will continue to be viewed In a dozen different ways by the services,and its equipment and personnel will continue to get short shrift whencompared with warfighting platforms. An alternative Idea might be thecreation of a joint, unified Information Command. While recognizing thatinformation Is integral to all military operations, this command would takecontrol of some relatively unique Information-related functions. It couldmaintain intelligence and attack plans designed to collapce an enemy'sinformation network, plot computer virus assaults, seek ways to deny criticalinformation to the enemy, and so on. The model here, of course, Is SpecialOperations Command. Obviously, special operations are an Integral part ofnearly every military effort. But having their own unique command has giventhese forces better influence, budgetary authority, prominence, and pride.An Information Command could do the same for Information warriors.

33. Alvin and Heldi Toffier, War and Anti-War, p. 238.

34. The points which follow, and other peris of Information warfare, areoutlined in greater detail and eloquence in Eliot Cohen, 'The Mystique ofU.S. Air Power," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 1, January-February 1994,pp. 112-116.

35. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, pp. 149-150.

39

36. The overall System, writes Ken Ailard, must be *capable of winningeven after the computer dies'; Allard, "The Fuiure of Command andControl,* p. 13.

37. GeneraJ Sullivan argues that networks provide the most tellingmodel for war In the Information age-nterdependent webs of relationships,rather than the stand-alone capabilities of earlier eras. See Sullivan, 'WarIn the Information Age.'

38. Defense Secretary William Perry, before joining the Clintonadministration, wrote of the Interdependence of U.S. combat systems In theGulf that 'The effectiveness of the coalition's defense suppression tacticsdepended upon the preclsion-gidled weapons; the effectiveness of theprecision-guided weapons in turn depended on the Intelligence data thatIdentified and located targets; and the very survivability of the Intelligencesystems depended on the effectiveness of the coalition's defensesuppression systems'; William J. Perry, 'Desert Storm and Deterrence,'Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 4, Fall 1991, p. 76. Army Chief of Staff GordonSullivan points to the accelerating trend of combined-arms units and theneed for land forces 'fully Integrated' with naval and air forces; GeneralGordon L. Sullivan and Colonel James M. Dubik, USA, 'Land Warfare Inthe 21st Century,* MIltartyReview, Vol. LXXIII, No. 9, September 1993, pp.27-28. A Navy officer similarly speaks of "joint Integrated strike forces' builtaround a carrier or a division that would nurture personal contacts andexercises down to mid-level officers; Commander James Stavrtdls, USN'To Begin Again," U.S. Naval Institute ProceeOings, Vol. 119, No. 7, July1993, pp. 38-39.

39. Yet even today, each service buys Its own command, control, andcommunication systems, an arrangement that will not long survive the RMA;Allard, 'The Future of Command and Control,' pp. 78, 14, and 24.

40. See Stephen Peter Rosen, "Service Redundancy: Waste or HiddenCapaility?' Joint Force Quarty, No. 1, Summer 1993, pp. 36-39.

41. As Martin van Creveld and Edward Luttwak have repeatedlyemphasized, the quest for 'efficiency" In the organization of military forcesmay be chimeric. Because war, as suggested above, remains a chaoticenterprise, attempting to Impose linear models of efficiency and 'streamline"the military, as van Creveld puts it, to create 'a perfect one-to-one fit"between means and ends-or, In this case, between weapons systems andmissions-Is a dangerous mistake. As a result, a solution that attempted toeliminate "any redundant or idle resources' would, when fighting a war, "beuseless or worse.' Van Creveld, Techology and War, pp. 318, 317. VanCreveld continues that:

The conduct of war against an intelligent opponent differs from themanagement of a large-scale technological system precisely in that

40

officisncy and ffectivene.s, t1 concentration and employment ofthe greatest possible force on the one hand and military successon the other, are not the same even in the short run, or (one mightwell argue) particularly in the long run. On the contrary, there areany number of occasions when military effectiveness is not onlycompatible with diminished efficiency but positively demands thatit be sacrificed.

ibid., p. 315. Van Croveld gives as an example the long-desired goal ofstandardization which, In addition to simplifying the procurement of spareparts and the like, also "make[s] things easy for the enemy'; Ibid., p. 319.

42. For example, merely because a narrow interpretation of a fewmissions would suggest that B-2 bombers could perform many of the attackmissions of carrier air does not suggest we can henceforth stop buildingcarriers, which have a variety of political uses and unique military value thatbombers do not. And as van Creveld argues, eliminating redundancybenefits the United States by saving money in peacetime-and benefits ourenemy, by reducing the number of weapons he must confront, in wartime.If an enemy could prepare only for B-2 attacks and need not worry aboutcarrier-based aircraft, special forces raids, or cruise missiles, its task wouldbe considerably simplified. Some will object that this claim denies the trueimplications of the RMA. How can we be so sure we will have aircraft carriersif the nature of war is changing so rapidly? The point is a good one, but itdces not deny my claim here. The RMA may eventually require the U.S.military to replace aircraft carriers, tactical aircraft, and large ground forceswith some new kinds of armed forces, but this will only occur after somedecades; in the meantime, we can be reasonably certain that thesesystems, or something like them, will continue to exist. But even moreimportantly, once the RMA has brought a new generation of armed forcesinto being, the same argument being made here will prevail: each "service"will best use its capabilities by deciding how it can participate in a given"mission," rther than whether it can do that mission all on its own.

43. Admiral William Owens, "Living Jointness," Joint Force Quarterly,No. 3, Winter 1993-1994, pp. 7-14.

44. A superb example of this Is the Joint Force Quarterly, published bythe National Defense University, which contains articles on all aspects ofjoint force operations.

45. See 'Joint Warfightir'g Center," Joint Force Quarterly, No. 2,Autumn 1993, pp. 112-113.

46. Robert A. Doughty, "Reforming Joint Doctrine,' Joint ForceQuarterly, No. 1, Summer 1993, pp. 40-47.

41

47. Admiral Paul David Miliar, OA New Mission for Atlantic Command,"

Jont Force Quarferly, No. 1, Summer 1993, pp. 80-87.

49. Owens, "Living Jolntnoss," p. 9.

49. Kundall, "Exp!oiting the Military Technircl Revolution," p. 28.

50. Of cour'se, aircraft have ranges of hundreds of miles, end so are notrestricted to close combat operations; but enemy aircraft will often targetU.S. forces deployed In the field, and if those forces can maintain aseparation from the enemy, they may have better opportunities to Interceptattacking aircraft.

51. Miartin Libicki writes that the future battlefield will be composed of"a dense grid of millions-perhaps billion3-of sensors and emitterswhich.. .illuminate, classify and target everything large enough to be worthdestroying" backed up by "armies of precision guided munitions, grownsmaller, lighter, (faster and cheaper) which are directed to destroy whateverlooks interesting." As a result of this deadly marriage, combatants will beable to create "a joint killing field, virtually impenetrable to the other exceptat very high cost,- as in World War I. "This has the potential of reducing allwar to siege operations," he concludes. Ubicki, "Silicon and Security In theTwenty-First Century," pp. 63-64.

52. General Gordon Sullivan and Colonel James Dubik have proposeda number of trends in land warfare, and two of them bear on this point. Theyargue that the increasing lethality of weapons will require greater dispersion,and point out that this trend has been underway for some time. In antiquity,they argue, armies fought in a concentration of 100,000 men per squarekilometer, by the Napoleonic era, this had declined to 4,800 men per squarekilometer; In World War I it was down to 404, in World War II to 36, and inthe Gulf War to a minuscule 2.34 men per square kilometer. As a result,invisibility is of increasing importance to ground forces. Sullivan and Dubik,"Land Warfare in the 21st Century," pp. 22-23, 28-29. These sameprinciples hold at sea and in the air as well.

53. This principle partly contradicts the age-old dominance of attritionin U.S. milltarl planning. As Robert Leonhard has suggested, in U.S. Armydoctrine, "Virtually every effort.. .seems bent on fighting toe-to-toe with aprepared enemy, leaning into his strength, and outlasting him rather thanoutthinking him." Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-WarfareTheory andAirLand Battle, Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1991, p. 4. AirLandBattle began a trend away from this line of thinking (although Leonhardcontends it is a weak trend so far); disengaged and nonlinear combat willcontinue along that same line.

54. Again we see the implications of simultaneous warfare-thousandsof attacks all at once against a spectrum of targets throughout the theater

42

of operations. This is what Frank Kendall has in mind with his "Joint AttackWarfare Strategy"; see Kendall, "Exploiting the Military TechnicalRevolution," p. 28. See also Frederick R. Strain, "The New Joint Warfare,"Joint Force Quarterly, No. 2, Autumn 1993, pp. 18-22.

55. Admiral David E. Jeremiah, "What's Ahead for the Armed Forces,"Joint Force Quarterly, No. 1, Summer 1993, pp. 33-34.

56. Sir Michael Howard, "How Much Can Technology ChangeWarfare?" Presentation to the Fifth Annual Conference on Strategy, U.S.Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, April 27, 1994.

57. Nonlethal weapons can also play a role in disengaged combat. Byimmobilizing or rendering inoperable enemy troops and equipment,non!ethals could help achieve U.S. strategic and tactical goals without directcomoat. That they would do so without Imposing massive casualties maybe a good or a bad thing, depending on the requirements of the moment.Ironically, in this sense nonlethals can be seen as analogous to tacticalnuclear weapons. Both are an unusual and unique form of military tool whichdoes not engage the enemy directly in a traditional form of force-on-forcebattle, but which instead breaks up its forces and renders them ineffective.Nonlethals simply offer a far more humane way of doing so.

58. See Bamaby, The Automated Battlefield, pp. 144, 148.

59. The U.S. European Command has already developed a concept fora nonlinear battlefield; see Kendall, "Exploiting the Military TechnicalRevolution," pp. 24, 26.

60. Jeremiah, "What's Ahead for the Armed Forces," p. 33.

61. Ibid., p. 32. Frank Kendall agrees that changes in warfare imply "agreater reliance on fire support systems and less reliance on close combatoperations." Martin Libicki, looking at the increasing lethality of thebattlefield, points out that "it is hard to understand how the large platformswith which wars are now fought will be anything other than dinosaurs severaldecades hence"; Libicki, "Silicon and Security," p. 64.

62. This case is made in Michael J. Mazarr, Light Forces and the Futureof U.S. Military Strategy, Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1990. See alsoUeutenant Colonel Craig Whelden, USA, "Light Cavalry: Strategic Forcefor the Future," Military Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 4, April 1993, pp. 13-20;and Peter F. Herrly, "Middleweight Forces and the Army's DeployabilityDilemma," Parameters, Vol. XIX, No. 3, September 1989, pp. 46-59.

63. Of course, one of the oldest themes in military history is that "waris a continuation of politics." In a strategic sense, therefore, one could arguethat war should never be, and indeed has not been, divorced from "civilian"

43

concems. My arr'iment here is that, at the tactical level, the actual practiceof warfare will become more and more "civillanized.'

64. Martin Lbicki makes this point in dramatic fashion in "Silicon and

Security.' "Military power,* he writes, "(If such a concept makes sense In

such an era) is likely to belong to those who can best master the

technologies and economics of building and running" Information grids (p.

64). The revolution in I. 7'rmatton technologies, he points out, "is being

pushed, not by military but by commercial developments.'(p. 65)

65. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti War, see especially pages87-220 for a discussion of these new 'war-forms."

66. See, for example, Gene Sharp, Civilian-Based Defense: APost-Military Weapons System, Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1990; and Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent

Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the 20th Century, Westport, CT:

Praeger, 1994.

67. See Ubicki and Hazlett, 'Do We Need and Information Corps?*

68. See Harvey M. Sapolsky and Shaion K. Weiner, 'War Without

Killing,' Massachusetts Institute of TechnoloW Breakthroughs, Vol. 2, No.

2, Winter 1992-1993, pp. 1-5.

69. Eliot Cohen argues all of this, and pours cold water on the notion

of nonlethal technologies, in 'The Mystique of U.S. Air Power," pp. 120-123.

70. Barbara Opall, 'DoD to Boost Nonlethal Options,' Defense News,

March 28-April 3, 1994, p. 46.

71. See, for example, Douglas A. MacGregor, 'Futura Battle: The

Merging Levels of War," Parameters, Vol. 22, No. 4, Winter 1992-1993, pp.

33-47.

72. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated and Indexed by Michael

Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, p.

140.

73. This point is axiomatic in virtually all studies of the future of warfare.

See Rosen, Winning the Next War, pp. 251-253; Bamaby, The Automated

Battlefield, p. 144; Major General William M. Steele and Colonel Edward E.

Thurman, USA, 'The Mind is the Key to Victory,' Military Review, Vol.

LXXIII, No. 7, July 1993, pp. 12-19; and Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver, p.

241.

74. This is especially true when the cuts are Indirect and therefore less

visible. A number of the Defense Department's so-called "new initiatives,'

44

such as peacekeeping, defense conversion, and environmental cleanup,are being funded parly out of the overall DoD operations and maintenanceaccount. The claimed increase in O&M funds for FY1995, some $5 billiondollars, has in fact been wiped out by a similar increase in spending on )environmental restoration. If we are not careful, we will create hollow forcesin the name of readiness.

75. There are exceptions, of course; if we are attacking into NorthKorea, for example, the combination of the North's dug-In defenses and itspeoples' desire to protect their homeland would make the North a tough nutto crack.

76. With conventional deterrence fading as a mission for nuclear forces,chemical and biological deterrence might not last much longer. Strategicconventional attacks of the sort described above, along with political andeconomic sanctions imposed by increasingly robust internationalorganizations, should provide plenty of options for deterring, and ifnecessary retaliating for, chemical or biological use.

77. See, for example, Seth Cropsey, 'The Only Credible Deterrent,'Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2, MarchiApril 1994, pp. 14-20; and LewisDunn, 'Rethinking the Nuclear Equation: The United States and the NewNuclear Powers,* The Washington Ouartery, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 1994,pp. 5-25.

78. Paul H. Nitze, Is It Time to Junk Our Nukes?' The WashingtonPost, January 16, 1994, pp. C1, C2; emphasis added. 0

*U.S. GOVERWQEMNT PRINTING OFTFICE: 1994-504-111/00051

45

A '

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William A. Stofft

Commandant

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

DirectorColonel John W. Mountcastle

Director ofA Research4~ opfemence OrganIzer

Dr. Eruu 9-1 Tfife-r, Jr.

Mrs. Marianne P. Cln

SecretaryMs. Rita A. Ru!,, .e

Cover DesignMr. James E. Kistler

Confarence Cover ArtistMr. Lawrence C. Mil11ler

3 CompositionMr. Daniel B. Barnet