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This volume reveals to readers the impact of recent events on diplomacy a year or so into the post-Cold War world, describing disintegration in the East, integration in the West, new relations with old allies, changes in the Third World, and multilateral diplomacy.
This paper calls for a new NATO strategic concept and a new transatlantic compact, and envisions crafting them in tandem. Both are needed because they are intended to perform separate but interdependent functions. Whereas a new strategic concept would help energize NATO, a new transatlantic compact would help energize the overall U.S.-European partnership. Together, they would have a compounding effect, because each would reinforce and amplify the other.
In the face of growing difficulties for U.S. regime change policies in the Middle East, analysts and policy makers are considering the viability of returning to a set of policies with a greater emphasis on the status quo. A great deal of thought must be given to determining exactly how these two imperatives are to be blended together in the interests not only of overall policy coherence, but also to actually achieve the goals being sought. Serious analysis, rather than reliance on simplistic formulas, is needed. Without pretending to solve the myriad foreign policy dilemmas facing the United States and its allies, this paper offers a framework for how this analysis can be conducted, and where it can lead. The perspective is global, but along the way, insights are offered on the Middle East.
Operation Anaconda, conducted in the Shahikot Valley of Afghanistan during early March 2002, was a complex battle fought in rugged mountainous terrain under difficult conditions. The battle ended as an American victory at the cost of eight U.S. military personnel killed and more than 50 wounded. But the difficult early stages of the battle provide insights for thinking about how to organize, train, and equip U.S. forces for future joint expeditionary operations and how to pursue transformation.
This paper assesses key issues in U.S. defense spending in the next decade and is intended to serve as a guide to analyzing the fiscal year 2006 budget submission. Wartime expenses aside, the big spending increases of recent years seem unlikely to be repeated far into the future. Persistent federal deficits and growing domestic entitlement programs will constrain the amount of money that can be spent on military preparedness. The defense budget may level off just as it should rise to accommodate high operating costs and mounting requirements for military transformation. If so, budget constraints will compel a concerted effort to spend available defense funds as wisely as possible. Spending patterns and priorities will change, and tradeoffs will be necessary. If pressures on the defense budget increase, the biggest challenge facing the Department of Defense (DOD) will be determining how best to pursue two key transformation goals. The first goal is strengthening ground forces and related joint capabilities for expeditionary operations along the "southern arc of instability" in the near to mid term. The second goal is enhancing strategic dominance over future peer adversaries over the long term through acquisition of new platforms, space systems, and similar high-tech assets. Within this framework, DOD will need to address other weighty issues. Should investments in ground forces increase? If so, what priorities should be pursued? Can savings be extracted from support programs and from the operations and maintenance (O&M) budget to help fund investments? If so, how? Should spending on basic research increase? If so, can development of new technologies be accelerated while controlling costs? How should scarce procurement funds be allocated among new weapons emerging from research, development, testing, and evaluation? What is the best budget strategy for the long haul? Should the U.S. government create an overall national security budget for the interagency community? Careful analysis of each of these issues is necessary, individually and collectively. The budget and program decisions flowing from the analysis will have major implications for future U.S. forces. This study recommends focusing on enhancing expeditionary warfare capabilities, while not denuding long-term transformation. In particular, it argues that, if DOD is to pursue ambitious transformation plans for both goals, it will need to find savings elsewhere.
One of the missions of the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at National Defense University is to study the transformation of America's military and to explore the consequences of the information revolution. During the last two decades of the 20th century, through a series of internal and external studies and policy pronouncements, the Department of Defense dramatically shifted its view of the nature of future military operations and the associated equipment, doctrine, tactics, and organization that were required. The names varied ("Reconnaissance/Strike Warfare," "Revolution in Military Affairs," "Network Centric Warfare," "Transformation"), but the basic premise was the same: The explosive changes in information technology would transform the future of military operations. The benefits of this change have been well documented, but its potential vulnerabilities have been less commonly described-or addressed for corrective actions. These actions must begin with a recognition of the new relationship between traditional defense systems and modern information technologies. Traditional warfare systems are developed, ruggedized, hardened, secured, and tested to ensure the highest level of performance and availability. As military systems become more software intensive (in both computers and communications), greater time and cost increases occur because of increased system complexity and the lack of vigorous software processes, especially when compared with more mature, hardware intensive engineering and development processes. For the most part, military systems are proprietary and communicate securely with little effect on performance. Current military weapons and combat platform system acquisitions have very high costs and extremely long lead times. This high expense and long preparation is attributed, in part, to the complexity of new system designs and to the rigidity of design processes that are needed to meet mission-critical battlefield requirements of high reliability, ease of maintenance, and built-in safety systems. The acquisition process itself introduces costs and delays because it must meet legal and regulatory demands designed to ensure openness and fiscal responsibility. These methods have produced formidable systems; American superiority in high-tech weapons development is acknowledged worldwide. In contrast to military systems, commercial information systems can be developed, marketed, and upgraded within a 2-year life cycle. The introduction and adoption by industry of new technologies such as wireless, voice over Internet protocol (VOIP), and radio frequency identification devices (RFID) are rapid, with little design concern for security and privacy. Introduction of this technology in the commercial market is based on user acceptability, legal consequences, and bottom-line cost analysis, not on considerations of safety, potential loss of life, or national security policy. In spite of these potential problems with commercial systems, their advantages-rapid deployment of state-of-the-art technology (consequently, higher performance) and far lower cost (because of much higher volume)-make them extremely attractive. Thus, over the past decade, Defense Acquisition Reform has been focused on developing processes to achieve both the high-performance and low-cost benefits that come from using commercial technology while still assuming the necessary mission objectives of high reliability, rugged environmental capability, and (particularly) security. This volume examines threats and vulnerabilities in the following four areas: physical attacks on critical information nodes; electromagnetic attacks against ground, airborne, or space-based; information assets; cyber attacks against information systems; attacks and system failures made possible by the increased level of complexity inherent in the multiplicity of advanced systems.
Recent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq were characterized by the rapid defeat of enemy military forces, by relatively small deployments of American forces, and by a very limited destruction of the critical civilian infrastructure. This success can be credited in large part to the ongoing transformation of the U.S. military evident in its effective use of information superiority, precision strike, and rapid maneuver on the battlefield.
This lexicon is inten ded as a tool to he lp strip aw ay one source of the endem ic miscommunication and friction that now plagues both soldiers and civilians, governm ent and non-government, who plan, coordinate, and execute the complex set of overlapping civil-military activities and tasks th at have come to charact erize armed conflicts and their afterm ath. Collectively known as complex operations1, they demand, but too often lack, a sense of common purpose and m utual understanding be tween a wide array of planne rs and practitioners, all of whom bring with them different organizati onal cultures, world visions, and operational approaches. These disconnects can, and too often do, create conf usion, at tim es with tragic results, both on the ground and among policy-m akers. Part of that confusion stem s from the widely varied vocabulary used by these m any actors. Each organization possesses their own unique terminology, perfectly clear to them, but foggy to others. Even when words look and sound familiar they often have quite different and sometimes alien meanings. Anyone who has attended an acronym and jargon -laced coordination meeting of m ilitary, civilian government, and NGO representatives knows the frustration of trying to interpret what is meant by words that have many different connotations. It is in hopes of lessening this confusion that this lexicon has been compiled.
CONTENTSPart I- Foundations of TransformationChapter 1- Assessing New MissionsChapter 2- Harnessing New TechnologiesChapter 3- Choosing a StrategyPart II- Transforming the ServicesChapter 4- The Army: Toward the Objective ForceChapter 5- The Naval Services: Network-Centric WarfareChapter 6- The Air Force: The Next RoundPart III- Coordinating Transformed Military OperationsChapter 7- Integrating Transformation ProgramsChapter 8- Transforming JointlyChapter 9- Coordinating with NATOPart IV- Broader Aspects of TransformationChapter 10- Strengthening Homeland SecurityChapter 11- Changing the Strategic EquationChapter 12- Controlling SpaceChapter 13- Protecting CyberspaceChapter 14- Maintaining the Technological LeadChapter 15- Getting There: Focused Logistics
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