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 What is a Revolution in Military Affairs?Military revolutions are major discontinuities in military affairs. They are brought about by changes in military relevant technologies, concepts of operation, methods of organization, and/or resources available, and are often associated with broader political, social, economic, and scientific revolutions. These periods of discontinuous change have historically advantaged the strategic/operational offense, and have provided a powerful impetus for change in the international system. They occur relatively abruptly–most typically over two-to-three decades. They render obsolete or subordinate existing means for conducting war.
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Solid-State Laser Weapon Systems: Bridging the Gap -- or Bridge Too Far?
05/20/2009 presentation slides from congressional conference
Directed Energy Discussion
05/20/2009 presentation slides from congressional conference
High Energy Laser and High Power Microwave
05/20/2009 presentation slides from congressional conference
Near-Term Prospects for Battlefield Directed-Energy Weapons
02/05/2008 Technical challenges that have long delayed the fielding of directed-energy weapons for battlefield use finally appear to be giving way to technical and engineering progress. CSBA investigates whether SSL technology has matured sufficiently to be employed in tactical environments.
Think Tank Warns Against Deferring LRSS Programs
02/03/2009 Announcement of the Release of New Report on Long-Range Strike
The Case for Long-Range Strike: 21st Century Scenarios
02/03/2009 The report examines the needs, specifications, rationales and urgency for land-based, penetrating, long-range strike system (LRSS) in light of the security environment confronting the United States in the early twenty-first century.
A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era
04/13/2007 Slides from Future Defense PLanning Needs seminar for Senior Congressional Staff
Six Decades of Guided Munitions and Battle Networks: Progress and Prospects
03/01/2007 The research and analysis underlying this report began in 2003 and aimed at answering the following question. How has the maturation of non-nuclear guided munitions during the late 1980s and early 1990s affected the conduct of warfare by advanced militaries, especially by the various combat arms of the US armed forces?
Evolving Military Affairs
05/22/2006 Significant change in the security environment is under way. However, the Pentagon is yet to catch up with these changes in the way wars are conducted.
The Quadrennial Defense Review: Rethinking the US Military Posture
03/14/2006 Executive Director, Andrew Krepinevich, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on March 14th, 2006.
The Revolution in War
12/01/2004 Michael Vickers and Robert Martinage offer an insight of a decade-long assessment on the changing nature of conflict and the Revolution in Military Affairs.
Matching Resources With Requirements: Options for Modernizing the US Air Force
08/01/2004 Can the Air Force afford its modernization plan? Steven Kosiak finds it unlikely and provides four alternate models for maintaining air superiority.
Future Warfare 20XX Lessons Learned Final Report
12/01/2001 A final report on Future Warfare 20XX Wargame Series
RMA and the Future of Land Forces: Era of Tank Primacy is Over
04/20/1999 Press release on CSBA's predictions for the future of land forces
Emerging Threats, Revolutionary Capabilities And Military Transformation
03/05/1999 Testimony of Andrew Krepinevich before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Innovation: Element of Power
07/00/1998 Translation of L. Murawiec's article on Transformation and the RMA
The Military Revolution And Intrastate Conflict
10/00/1997 A discussion of the impact the RMA will make on intrastate conflicts
Transforming The American Military
09/26/1997 A presentation given on September 1, 1997, at the dedication conference for the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at the Texas A&M University
Air Force of 2016
10/00/1996 Report on ways the Air Force could transform itself in preparation for threats in and around 2016.
A New Navy For A New Era
05/00/1996 Analysis of the way the Navy needs to transform to counter future threats
Perspectives On The Revolution In Military Affairs
04/24/1996 Perspectives on the RMA range from denial that a revolution is currently underway, or even exists, to the view that we are entering a period of continuous revolutionary change in which discrete military regimes will no longer be discernible. |
Historical Examples of Military RevolutionsBeginning with the rapid rise of the chariot to battlefield dominance in the eighteenth century BC, the historical record provides evidence of at least a dozen cases of revolutionary change in the conduct of war: Chariot, Iron Age Infantry, Macedonian, Stirrup, Artillery/Gunpowder, Napoleonic, Railroad, Rifle, Telegraph, Dreadnought/Submarine, Air Superiority/Armored Warfare, Naval Air Power, and Nuclear Weapons. The modern period in general and the past two centuries in particular have witnessed the greatest rate of change. Since the early fifteenth century, the conduct of war has been radically altered eight times. Six of these transformations have occurred within the past 200 years alone. The Napoleonic RevolutionDuring the last decade of the eighteenth century, a social and political revolution in France transformed war. The advent of universal conscription–the levée en masse–dramatically expanded the size of armies and increased their reconstitutability. Equally important, the new conscript armies–composed of literate citizen soldiers–had a fundamentally different relationship to the societies from which they were drawn. All-weather roads and a new form of military organization–the corps–transformed logistics, and mass column assaults and mobile artillery transformed tactics. The Railroad, Rifle, and Telegraph RevolutionThe commercial development of the railroad and telegraph and the military development of the breech-loading rifle between 1840 and 1870 revolutionized war on land. The railroad revolutionized logistics, the rifle transformed tactics, and the telegraph fundamentally changed strategic command and control. With the advent of the railroad and telegraph, time, i.e., speed of mobilization, became a critical measure of military effectiveness. The large-scale movements of armies made possible by the new industrial infrastructure also gave birth to a new level of war–the operational level. By often giving statesmen a better sense of the overall military situation than that possessed by senior commanders in the field, the telegraph also transformed civil-military relations. The Dreadnought/Submarine RevolutionThe advent of steam propulsion and metal construction in naval shipbuilding ushered in a period of near constant technological change during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The completion in 1906 of the H.M.S. Dreadnought–the world’s first all-big gun, turbine-driven battleship–provided existential evidence of another revolution in military affairs. With its uniform main armament–ten 12 inch guns–Dreadnought could outshoot any older warship. A principal impetus of the Dreadnought Revolution–the submarine–proved to be equally revolutionary. As a result of the increasing threat that these new weapons posed to battlefleets, the long-standing naval strategy of close blockades of enemy ports had to be abandoned. Even more important, the "hierarchy of power" in naval warfare, which had been established with the advent of the capital ship more than three centuries earlier, had been severely undermined. Armored Warfare/Air SuperiorityThe stunning victory of German forces over the French, British, Dutch, and Belgian armies in May-June 1940, marked another departure in land warfare. From then on, the unit of account in measuring any army’s strength would no longer be the number of soldiers it had under arms. While the development of armored warfare depended upon the maturation of the dominant technology–the tank–technology itself was not sufficient to effect the revolution. Several other developments–in supporting technologies (e.g., tank radios), organization (combined arms formations and supporting air arms), operational concepts (deep penetrations on narrow fronts and air superiority), and climate of command (mission-oriented tactics, or Auftragstaktik)–were essential components of the transformation launched by the blitzkrieg. Naval Air PowerWorld War II also saw a transformation of war at sea. With the advent of naval air power, fleets that formerly could not engage their enemy unless they were in visual range could now hurl blows at one another from distances of hundreds of miles. Moreover, whereas naval battles had previously been characterized by gunnery duels, destructive force could now be delivered in great pulses of power. As with armored warfare, the breakthroughs in carrier warfare depended upon a number of developments: modifying airplanes so that they were rugged enough to withstand the problems associated with landing and taking off at sea, developing techniques to manage space on a crowded deck, employing carriers in combined strike forces to attack land and sea targets, etc. By the autumn of 1943, when American building programs began to amass the sheer numbers of platforms required for sustained large-scale carrier operations, the transformation of war wrought by the ascendance of naval air power had become complete. The Nuclear RevolutionThe detonation of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided evidence of another military revolution. Far exceeding the prophesies of even the most zealous pre-war strategic bombing theorists, subsequent developments in intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear fusion brought the prospect of nearly instantaneous destruction of whole societies into the strategic calculus. As with previous revolutions, the advent of nuclear weapons saw the emergence of new warfighting doctrines and military organizations. In the minds of most strategists, however, the sole purpose of the new weapons had shifted from warfighting to deterrence. Emerging RMAWhile the current Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) can trace its origins as far back as World War II, the advances in military capabilities on which it is based have begun to accelerate during the past decade, and are likely to continue to do so through 2025. As was the case with several previous transformations of war, this still emerging military revolution is closely linked to broader, societal transformations, in this case, twin revolutions in information technologies and biotechnology. Military capabilities are being transformed because of advances in ten principal areas:
Four strategic competitions will likely shape the transition to a future warfare regime. The first will pit evolving anti-access or area-denial capabilities against current and new forms of power projection. The second will take place between hiders and finders. The third will pit capabilities for stealth/barrage attack against missile and air defenses. The fourth will be an offense struggle of information warfare and advanced biological warfare attack and defense. Based on current trends in military capabilities, several preliminary assessments can be made about the likely outcome of these key competitions:
New classes of space- and ground-based, commercial and military sensors (electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar, moving target indicator, SIGINT geolocation, foliage penetration, see-through-wall radar, micro unmanned aerial vehicles and robots) and increasingly dense sensor webs will provide future forces with unparalleled transparency. Space-based telecommunications constellations, robust network switching, fiber optic grids, and widely available cryptography will provide secure, broadband, long-haul communications. Emerging power projection capabilities (chiefly, ballistic and cruise missiles and high-altitude, long-endurance UAVs) will likely witness a several fold increase in range. Wide area and very low circular error probability (CEP) precision strike will become ubiquitous, as new classes of munitions (e.g., GPS- and laser-guided, acoustic- and thermal homing, improved explosives) continue to be developed for an expanding set of delivery means. New methods of electronic attack, enhanced non-lethal capabilities (and perhaps the advent of precision biological weapons) will add additional precision to future military tool kits. New classes of long loiter (both reusable vehicles and munitions) and unattended systems (e.g., missiles in a box) will significantly increase operational endurance. Stealth will likely be applied to a wider range of air, ground, sea, and perhaps space assets. Missile-based, long-range, precision-strike capabilities and applications of hypersonic technology and directed energy will increase significantly the speed of future operations. Unmanned systems will increasingly substitute for manned systems across warfare dimensions. Simulation advances will transform military planning and training. When this revolution has run its course some two-to-three decades hence, the conduct of war could be transformed on air, land and sea, and war could emerge in several new dimensions: space, information and biological. For a discussion of how the emerging RMA could affect the US strategic deterrent, see Andrew Krepinevich and Robert Martinage, The Transformation of Strategic-Strike Operations. The authors say that a strong case can be made for the United States taking steps to create a new strategic-strike triad, relying on emerging conventional precision- and electronic-strike capabilities to form two of the three legs, with a smaller, but modernized, nuclear force comprising the third. LandPost-military revolution ground forces will likely be dramatically smaller and more stealthy, with most of their combat power exported offshore. These forces will probably enter a theater clandestinely using dispersed, transitory entry points, and will probably fight from non-contiguous positions and with a 360-degree orientation. Networked forms of small unit organization and tactics centered around the individual soldier or combat system are likely to emerge to take advantage of the enhanced coordination and information protection capabilities offered by advanced information technologies. Multidimensional deep-strike capabilities–stealthy intercontinental bombers, UAV strike tenders, arsenal ships, long-range, land-based missiles, trans-atmospheric vehicles, and space-to-ground attack satellites–could impose significant costs on ground force operations, through both reduced operating efficiency and virtual attrition as forces are withheld from combat in order to avoid being destroyed. Non-linear battlespace and increasing stealth and mobility would make it easier for small, dispersed ground forces to decline battle, which could cause conventional ground operations to resemble high-intensity guerrilla warfare. While dramatically reduced force-to-space ratios might create substantially enhanced opportunities for maneuver, the lack of enemy force concentrations could frequently limit the effects of ground maneuver to the tactical level. Air-ground close combat forces could, however, provide enormous operational leverage against an enemy’s deployed, land-based deep-strike systems or protected information systems. Success against these targets could have the effect of at least partially de-modernizing one’s adversary. Maneuver forces may no longer be the supported arm in ground combat. Friendly ground force movement might be used primarily to get an opposing force to move, thereby putting it at a relative positional disadvantage. The inability to protect friendly forces from attack by residual, long-range strike systems will likely make the traditional occupational function of ground forces extremely problematic. Under the new military regime, seizing territory could become easier to accomplish than physically holding it. Indirect land control–through an interlocking network of deep-strike systems, coupled with the indirect presence of close combat forces–might be the most that often can be attained. Air-delivered, automated missile pods deployed over remote areas could substantially enhance multidimensional long-range precision-strike capabilities and make enemy seizure of friendly territory extremely problematic. Extended-range missiles in these stand-alone pods could be cued from sensor UAVs, or be command-activated by deployed ground forces. Such a capability, moreover, would have almost unique attributes for forward deployment–e.g., uncoupling from theater bases, difficulty in acquiring as a target and unmanned presence–and could add substantially to the maintenance of sustained theater firepower. Distributed, ground close combat forces, if they are to be more than spotters for LRPS systems, will require significant advances in lethality, operational mobility and protection. One far-term technology that holds substantial promise if the formidable power challenges it entails can be solved is the exoskeleton–an armored, integrated, personal mobility system. Such systems might allow protected cross-country movement at speeds approaching forty miles per hour and permit individual soldiers to be equipped with a powerful suite of weapons, sensors, information warfare capabilities, and communications systems. Individual exoskeleton-equipped soldiers could have organic micro-UAVs and robotic helpers for surveillance and logistics, and might operate as a network of air-droppable, information warfare-intensive, mobile armored infantry. AirAir power could be transformed by the increasing substitution of unmanned for manned systems and the wide application of signature management techniques. As it passes through this transformation, the Air Force will have to transcend the essence of its founding identity: manned flight. This will pose challenges not only to its core institutional culture, but also to its warrior ethos. Broadly conceived, air power will likely be fundamental to the operations of almost all military organizations in the new military regime. The organizational challenge of this new regime will be to insure that increased diffusion does not result in a less focused military instrument. Air power’s principal operational challenge in a long-range strike dominated world is the vulnerability of in–theater bases. Aircraft will be most vulnerable when concentrated on the ground. Aircraft lacking intercontinental range, the freedom to operate from bases within a strategic sanctuary, or whose operational task requires them to land in theater will likely be forced to operate from dispersed, unimproved, transitory airfields during periods of limited visibility and with the active support of information warfare deception operations. Stealthy intercontinental bombers may dominate the airborne, penetrating component of deep-strike forces. The substantially increased use of ballistic and stealthy cruise missiles launched from sea and land-based platforms, however–and perhaps the advent of space-to-ground attack satellites as well–could also consign these aircraft to a more limited and specialized role in long-range strike operations. New intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) systems should greatly enhance strategic attack. Highly fused ISR systems and processes should permit greatly enhanced identification and understanding of adversary target systems. Warfare at the strategic level, however, will continue to be constrained for the foreseeable future by the presence of strategic nuclear deterrent forces. Stealthy unmanned aerial vehicles will likely play an increasing role in strategic reconnaissance and should dominate airborne reconnaissance at all ranges. The advent of UAV-based air operations could also form the backbone of a theater communications network, particularly if used in conjunction with space systems. Stealthy, weaponized, loitering unmanned aerial vehicles could come to dominate much of the close-strike mission. As a consequence of both the dramatically increased effectiveness which multidimensional long-range strike forces will likely possess and the unique loitering capabilities of weaponized UAVs, short-range artillery could largely disappear from the future battlefield. Stealthy, weaponized UAVs may become so effective–even in built up areas–that they could frequently be the preferred means of engaging in close combat. The character and attainability of air superiority in a missile-dominated air warfare regime would be fundamentally altered. The very high operating altitudes and low observability of many UAVs will significantly complicate efforts to attain traditional air superiority. The widespread application of stealth to aircraft of all kinds could bring back renewed emphasis on visual engagement, rendering the attainment of all-weather, day/night air control even more problematic. In such an air warfare regime, stealthy manned fighters would likely be limited to a very specialized role, most likely in extended range, offensive counter air operations against enemy battle management aircraft, airborne battle lasers and air launched cruise missile (ALCM) carriers. As air forces are forced to mount close strike, counter air and presence operations from extended ranges, new combat systems, such as UAV strike tenders, could be developed. Such a system might encompass an intercontinental-range, high-endurance, stealthy mother ship capable of launching, controlling, recovering, rearming, and refueling a squadron of strike and air control UAVs. Coupled to a fleet of stealthy and non-stealthy air refuelers, UAV strike tenders–essentially aircraft carriers in the sky–could be critical in preventing/limiting territorial occupation by hostile power-projection forces. Strike tenders and their complement of strike and air-control UAVs could also work to gain and maintain an air occupation over contested territory. The application of stealth to both inter and intra-theater air mobility operations will likely prove critical to the safe insertion and sustainment of ground forces into a theater. Relying perhaps on a combination of signature reduction and signature management, stealth would have to be applied to both transport and aerial refueling aircraft. New forms of precision resupply, perhaps using stealthy parafoils, may also be required. Force extraction will likely become an even higher risk endeavor for future air mobility forces. SeaThe ability to dominate extended sea areas using land- and space-based assets and the replacement of manned aircraft with missiles for naval strike could transform war at sea. Long-range, land-based, stealthy weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles could by themselves become a major anti-navy capability. A reconnaissance-strike architecture of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, and mobile, land-based missiles could enable small naval powers to contest control of the sea for extended distances from their borders. This land-based defense of the sea system could have far lower barriers to entry (cost and learning) than carrier battlegroup operations, enabling those competitors who pursue it to leapfrog the carrier era and become major maritime competitors. Integration of brilliant mines, sea-based sensors and stealthy attack submarines could substantially enhance land-based sea denial, with the result that most naval operations could be driven sub-surface. The capital ship of the fleet in 2020 might be an "arsenal ship," a missile firing submersible armed with cruise and conventional ballistic missiles. (Arsenal ships are initially likely to emphasize surface designs, and become undersea platforms only as the anti-navy threat described above evolves.) Arsenal ships might be armed with anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand missiles. A distributed power projection navy might include several classes of arsenal ships and other submersible power projection forces in the fleet. In addition to arsenal ships, a submersible power projection fleet could include submersible UAV carriers, mine countermeasures ships (which could employ unmanned undersea vehicles for mine detection and classification), and undersea amphibious assault, fleet replenishment, and maritime prepositioning ships. Undersea warfare could become even more complex if the seabed were to attain sufficient economic value as to warrant its positional defense. Establishing complete sea control against an adversary with a robust land-sea-space defense system could require winning not only the undersea battle, but the space and the land battles as well. Attack submarines will likely remain essential to achieving undersea control, which might be all that could be expected against a large adversary with a robust anti-navy capability and a strategic nuclear deterrent.Future amphibious operations could be far smaller in scope and more covert as to means of entry. As the anti-navy threat evolves, amphibious forces might be forced to conduct their assaults and sustain their operations from under the sea or from strategic distances via stealthy airlift. SpaceAccess to space will be nearly ubiquitous. Broadband communications traveling through distributed satellite constellations, coupled with the widespread availability of advanced encryption algorithms, will guarantee access to survivable and secure communications paths. A wide range of potential adversaries will also have access to precision location data provided by the Global Positioning System, the Russian GLONASS constellation, or other networks. Precision location information will provide these adversaries–state and non-state–with the ability to locate friendly and hostile forces to within several meters and employ stand-off weapons with great precision, especially against fixed targets. High-resolution satellite imagery will allow them to collect information on locations to which they were previously denied. Even niche space competitors may seek to deny the United States the use of its space systems to support terrestrial operations. They may, for example, jam satellite communications to hinder the ability to command and control forces, or interfere with GPS signals to reduce the effectiveness of US precision guided missiles (PGMs). The means for doing so include attacks upon communications and reconnaissance satellites by information warfare, air- and space-based jammers, and direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons (ASATs). A niche opponent might, in extremis, even decide to detonate a nuclear weapon in space, destroying both nearby satellites and damaging others. Space could become an integrative and independent theater of operations. While several political obstacles, including treaties, would have to be overcome to weaponize space, weaponization is technologically feasible, and potential adversaries of the United States may have strong incentives to pursue it. Counterspace operations could include direct-ascent and space-based ASAT systems, as well as soft kill systems to spoof or temporarily disable space-based capabilities. Space-based lasers could be dominant space control (and terrestrial attack) weapons, with opposing constellations likely providing competitors with strong incentives to strike preemptively. To avoid a space "Pearl Harbor," second-strike counterspace forces would appear to be essential in such a regime. Systems which might provide an assured second strike counterspace capability include stealthy, information warfare satellites for temporarily blinding or disabling surviving enemy space based lasers, coupled with submarine-launched, direct-ascent ASATs. Against an opposing force capable of counterspace warfare, several space systems (ASATs, space-to-ground, direct-attack satellites and multipurpose, rapid launch lightsats) may also need to be held in strategic reserve if the effects of an opponent’s first strike are to be minimized. The increasing robustness of terrestrial systems–high endurance UAVs and fiber optic communication systems–and the proliferation of dual-use commercial space systems should offset somewhat dependence on military space. Space-to-ground attack capabilities could also appear in the next two to three decades, particularly for use against fixed, hardened targets, adding a new dimension to global precision-strike capabilities. Trans-atmospheric vehicles might provide an equivalent rapid global precision-strike capability without violating existing space treaties and with reduced vulnerability to a first strike. The trend toward increasing satellite vulnerability will likely force a search for methods of improving protection, perhaps through the application of low-observable technologies or the development of substantial trans-orbital maneuver capabilities. If permanent locations in space acquire significant military or economic importance, defense of space assets would become even more important. For more information on the military use of space, see The Military Use of Space: A Diagnostic Assessment, by Barry Watts. InformationInformation warfare will likely emerge as a new warfare area and be integral at all levels and in all dimensions of warfare. The information aspects of war–information acquisition and denial, information strikes, information-based protection, and information-based movement–will likely permeate all operations. The emergence of war in the information spectrum, moreover, would add qualitatively new means for destroying enemy targets and target systems and disrupting enemy operations. Electronic commerce and financial flows, for example, might be most effectively attacked through information warfare. Independent information warfare operations could include covert attack with adaptable, time-phased computer viruses, followed by overt attack using anti-satellite and media override operations, conventional electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) for area effects, and high power microwave (HPM) beam attacks to disable specific targets. Integrated information warfare operations might be used to mislead an opposing force as to the size, location and orientation of friendly forces in addition to temporarily or permanently disabling its sensor and information processing systems. Information warfare at the strategic, operational and tactical levels could be the principal means of maximizing relative frictional advantage over an adversary. It may well be that greater operational advantage will accrue from making the enemy’s environment more opaque (through destruction or deception) than it will from making one’s own environment more transparent. The ultimate goal of information warfare would be to not only desynchronize and disable enemy operations, but to actually turn his systems against him. This is likely to seldom be achievable, however, against protected systems. Non-destructive information warfare operations could be shaping or paralyzing. Shaping operations could be central to force mobility and operational effectiveness. Shaping maneuvers could be used to deceive enemy information systems as to force locations (including theater entry points and close combat positions) or force posture (including force baiting operations to induce an enemy to move or fight on one’s terms). Decoys and information-projection operations could become key operational capabilities in a long-range, precision-strike-dominated regime. Paralyzing operations could be used to induce information overload of the enemy’s theater command and control system during periods of heightened friendly signature or as a key operational element of an endgame strategy. BiologicalCurrent and future advances in molecular biology could lead to advanced biotech based forms of warfare. Among them could be the use of genetic-specific agents that distinguish between population groups, perhaps by ethnicity, age, gender, or other physical characteristics. Bio-tech warfare with such agents could be destructive or nondestructive, much the same way that information warfare could be. Another application of the bio-tech revolution could be biological support of combat forces, such as with sensors, organic-based materials (e.g., camouflage) and perhaps even organic-based silicon computing. As with information warfare, advances in biological warfare could affect strategy in profound ways. Foremost among them is that the decentralized nature of bio-tech capabilities means that non-state actors increasingly will have access to even the most sophisticated weapons, sensors, etc. Additionally, the effects of biological warfare may be more easily reversible than conventional strike because there could be less physical destruction to overcome and because advances on the offensive side, once identified, are counterable with defenses such as vaccines or gene therapy. Differing Perspectives on the Emerging RMAAlthough there is an increasing sense that we may be witnessing another period of transformational change in the conduct of war, several sharply divergent views on this emerging revolution in military affairs, or RMA, are readily identifiable. Current perspectives on the RMA can be characterized by the assumptions they make about the rate and scope of change in the conduct of war. These perspectives range from denial that a revolution is currently underway - or in the more extreme variant, that revolutions do not even exist - to the view that we are entering a period of continuous revolutionary change in which discrete military regimes will no longer be discernible. Each of these divergent schools of thought on the emerging RMA is summarized below. The Revolution Does Not Exist.Those holding this view - among whom are several former and current senior US flag officers - argue that current change is evolutionary, not revolutionary, and that existing military capabilities will be changed only at the margin over the course of the next two to three decades. Proponents of this school argue further that there is little prospect for more radical change, given both an austere defense fiscal environment and the absence of any significant strategic rivalry within the international system. The Revolution Has Arrived.The core belief of this group, primarily but not exclusively associated with the most radical air-power theorists, is the dominance of air power, which is seen as a result of dramatic advances in the striking power (via precision) and penetrability (via stealth) of modern aircraft. The revolutionary impact of air power became evident, proponents of the revolution has arrived school argue, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Revolution Is At Hand.There are two variants of this approach. The narrower view argues that the Persian Gulf War only foreshadowed the dominance of air power, and that a revolution will only be realized after the B-2, F-22, and new precision and wide-area, air-delivered weapons are employed. Closely related to this air-power based revolution is at hand perspective is the view advocated by some civilian strategists within the Office of the Secretary of Defense that the military revolution will be brought about within the next five to ten years by material already in the current US force structure or programmed for in the Future Years Defense Plan. In this latter, broader view, the RMA is seen as an inevitable output of near-term US military strategy. The Revolution After Next.An alternative, but potentially equally radical vision is the notion of a military revolution derived from the ongoing revolution in biotechnology. This revolution's potential effects are likewise not restricted to the conventional realm, and they are also viewed not merely as a twin of an information revolution-derived RMA, but as a dominant means of waging war. Hence, the notion of the next revolution. This view is derived from the belief that an enduring or sustained information revolution will spawn a series of military revolutions, with increasingly short intervals between them. In this view, the idea of a military regime as a relatively stable equilibrium will itself become obsolete. Here, a rising RMA tide lifts all boats. While proponents of this view ostensibly buy into the notion of an emerging revolution in military affairs, like those who argue that the revolution does not exist, or that it is at hand as an inevitable result of current US force planning, they envision a revolution which does not render existing military operations obsolete or subordinate, but, instead, makes each of them more effective. According to the middle-grade officers from each of the services, who have advanced the notion of a revolution without pain, land warfare would still be centered on mechanized—although digitized—combined arms field armies, naval warfare would still be centered around carrier battle groups and amphibious task forces, and air warfare would still be centered on manned air superiority and attack aircraft. The Hidden Revolution.This idea, which has been most forcefully advocated by Admiral William Owens, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasizes joint warfighting and the centrality of long–range precision strike and information supremacy. This vision of an emerging RMA is largely limited to its impact on land combat. While naval and air combat may rely more on information dominance and increased range, the conduct of war in these dimensions is not seen as changing as radically as the conduct of operations on land. No new platforms or new observable combat formations are brought into existence by this RMA—which is munition and C4I driven—hence the notion of a hidden revolution. The Multidimensional Revolution.Extending the hidden revolution further is the notion that the RMA will transform not only land operations, but also sea and air combat, in addition to bringing warfare into two new dimensions: space and the information spectrum. This vision of the RMA sees future land combat dominated by deep strike operations and non-linear close combat by small, highly mobile, stealthy formations. It sees naval warfare driven below the surface as land and space-based systems are increasingly able to dominate extended sea areas. It envisions large-scale substitution of unmanned for manned systems. It sees reduced need for air superiority operations, but increased need for air mobility operations. It sees the emergence of space warfare as a distinct warfare area via counterspace operations and space-to-ground attack, and the emergence of independent as well as integrated information warfare. The Micro Revolution.An even more radical extension of the hidden revolution is the notion of a platformless micro revolution. Here, the idea is that a proliferation of inexpensive, micro sensors and weapons systems will make all movement impossible and all existing platforms and forms of combat obsolete. Thus, the micro revolution would potentially render not only the current conventional warfare regime obsolete but also the strategic nuclear regime. |