• Reduce uncertainty concerning how best to meet emerging threats;

• Determine the proper mix of emerging and legacy systems in the future force;

• Enable militaries to buy options on emerging operations, which can be fully and rapidly developed if and when a threat emerges;

• Complicate, to some extent, the planning of would-be enemies by developing access to a wide range of military capabilities and forms of operation;

• Enable innovation and transformation within limited means by helping to avoid:

• large-scale production of legacy forces that are declining in value;

• premature serial production of emerging systems; and

• production of systems that may appear promising, but that actually offer little in terms of military capability; and

• Identify and solve the practical problems involved in developing new operations, force structures and systems that cannot be determined through studies and analyses alone.

As a result of the ongoing military revolution, the United States will almost certainly have to change fundamentally the way in which it projects military power. This is because the forward bases that support and sustain the deployment of American forces will be increasingly held at risk, principally by an enemy’s ballistic and cruise missile forces. The problem will be compounded by the growing difficulties US maritime forces will encounter in littoral operations. The challenge of operating in such an environment must be met before it develops to the point where US security interests are threatened. Military experimentation is a critical means for accomplishing this task.

Unfortunately, the Defense Department’s rhetoric asserting the need for military transformation and its support for joint experimentation has yet to be matched by any great sense of urgency or any substantial resource support. Those military experiments that are undertaken focus more on fighting the last war better than on preparing to meet the threats and challenges of tomorrow. If it is to meet emerging challenges in such a way as to preserve the current level of national security, the Defense Department will have to effect significant changes in its approach to military experimentation, and increase dramatically the priority accorded to experimentation. At present, the Department’s effort is poorly focused and woefully under funded.

Experimentation: Back to the Future
In January 1929, the United States Navy undertook a major exercise titled Fleet Problem IX, part of a series of exercises undertaken by the Service during the years between the two world wars. Despite the isolationist mood of America at the time, compounded by tight budgets and arms control constraints,¹ the Navy persisted in conducting these exercises as, among other things, a means for determining the influence of continuing rapid advances in aviation technology upon sea power.

Fleet Problem IX took place off the coast of Panama. Present for the first time in the fleet problems were two ships of radically different design. These ships, the USS Saratoga and USS Lexington, were aircraft carriers. During the exercise, Vice Admiral William Pratt, commander-in-chief of the US Fleet, authorized Rear Admiral Joseph Reeves, commanding the Saratoga, to execute a high-speed run toward the Panama Canal. Reeves then “attacked” the canal with a 70-plane strike force launched 140 miles from the target.

Following Fleet Problem IX, Admiral Pratt observed, “I believe that when we learn more of the possibilities of the carrier we will come to an acceptance of Admiral Reeves’ plan which provides for a very powerful and mobile force . . . the nucleus of which is the carrier.”² The following year, upon becoming Chief of Naval Operations, Pratt stressed that carriers be placed on the offensive in war games and fleet exercises. Through such exercises, involving experimentation with new kinds of equipment, doctrine and formations, were sown the seeds that brought forth the fast carrier task forces that enabled the Navy to defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.

Eight years after Fleet Problem IX, on the North German Plain in Europe, a new and very different formation appeared in exercises conducted by the German Army: the panzer division. The panzer division was a combined arms formation, possessing large numbers of fast tanks with extended ranges and centered on a doctrine that called for rapid, deep penetration operations as a means for achieving a quick victory. This represented a dramatic departure from Germany’s World War I experience against its principal enemy, France. That conflict was dominated by slow-moving forces employing heavy firepower and engaged in a gradual war of attrition. In the maneuvers, after a 60-mile approach march, the panzer division went into the attack forcing the enemy to commit its reserves. The following day the panzer division not only broke through the enemy front but also penetrated deep into its rear. The enemy position quickly became untenable, and the issue was essentially decided only four days into what had been planned as a seven-day exercise. General Franz Halder, who witnessed the spectacle (and who would become Chief of the German General Staff a year later), was stunned by the “fluid mobility” of the panzer operations.³

Many other exercises were conducted during the 1920s and 1930s by the German military. They included not only experiments in mechanized warfare but also with various radio communications schemes and the use of aircraft to provide reconnaissance and close air support for rapidly moving ground forces. These exercises were indispensable in enabling the German high command to develop a devastating new form of land warfare known as Blitzkrieg—lightning war.

Today the United States military finds itself in a period somewhat similar to the one confronted by the two military organizations cited above. As in the interwar era, rapidly progressing technologies have emerged, creating a military revolution (revolution in military affairs in Pentagon-speak) which will produce dramatic changes in the instruments of war and the way in which military operations are conducted. But as with naval aviation and mechanized ground operations seventy years ago, it is not yet clear how this revolution will play out.

The Risk of Staying on Our Current Path: The Case of Power Projection
Despite all the uncertainties the US military must confront in preparing for the future, two things seem certain. First, the incentive is high for would-be adversaries to present the American military with very different challenges than those US forces confronted during the Gulf War. Second, the diffusion of military technologies and rapid progression of military-related technologies will offer such adversaries the means to achieve this goal. This possibility is particularly true with respect to the traditional form of US power-projection operations, which form the core of the United States’ current Two Major Theater War (MTW) defense posture.

The United States’ two MTW defense posture is founded on its ability to project power rapidly, and decisively, to threatened regions around the globe. The Defense Department’s last Quadrennial Defense Review, conducted in 1997, concluded that “it is imperative that the United States now and for the foreseeable future be able to deter and defeat large-scale, cross-border aggression in two distant theaters in overlapping time frames . . . .”⁴ Along these lines, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s vision statement, Joint Vision 2010, declares that “power projection . . . will likely remain the fundamental strategic concept of our future force.”⁵ However, the US military’s traditional method of deploying and sustaining air and ground forces at or through ports and airfields is almost certain to be put at risk by the growing proliferation of national and commercial satellite services and missile technology. Growing access to these satellite services will allow even regional rogue states to monitor US deployments into forward bases and (unless one makes heroic assumptions regarding the effectiveness of missile defenses) hold them at risk through the employment of large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles. Senior US military leaders have already voiced strong concern over our ability to deal with such a contingency. General Ronald Fogleman, when Air Force Chief of Staff, observed that

Saturation ballistic missile attacks against littoral forces, ports, airfields, storage facilities, and staging areas could make it extremely costly to project U.S. forces into a disputed theater, much less carry out operations to defeat a well-armed aggressor. Simply the threat of such enemy missile attacks might deter U.S. and coalition partners form responding to aggression in the first instance.⁶

Over the past ten years, it has become evident that proliferating weapon and information technologies will enable our foes to attack the ports and airfields needed for the forward deployment of our land-based forces.

I anticipate that the next century will see those foes striving to target concentrations of troops and materiel ashore and attack our forces at sea and in the air. This is more than a sea-denial threat or a Navy problem. It is an area-denial threat whose defeat or negation will become the single most crucial element in projecting and sustaining U.S. military power where it is needed.⁷

[I]s, by far the trickiest part of the American operational problem. This is the proverbial “Achilles heel.” India needs to study the vulnerabilities and create covert bodies to develop plans and execute operations to degrade these facilities in the run up to and after commencement of hostilities. Scope exists for low cost options to significantly reduce the combat potential of forces operating from these facilities.⁸

As potential adversaries look for ways to deal with US military preponderance, they seem to have little inclination to create their own version of the Iraqi military, as it existed at the time of the Gulf War. Iran, for example, seems far more interested in fielding anti-access systems, such as ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, submarines, and advanced anti-ship mines, than military systems such as tanks and combat aircraft that proved largely ineffective for the Iraqis in 1991.

In assessing the emerging threats to US power-projection forces, the National Defense Panel (NDP), in reporting its findings, unanimously agreed upon the need to “radically alter the way in which we project power.”¹⁰ The NDP concluded that the US military must develop the capability to execute the following missions (among others) within the next decade:

• Inserting and extracting forces in the absence of forward bases;

• Resupplying forward forces through airlift and sealift operations when access to forward ports and airfields is at risk;

• Seizing and controlling key terrain (including urban areas) if our ground forces must operate dispersed; and

• Achieving air superiority against an enemy’s missile force.¹¹

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are difficult to come by. Moreover, barring a dramatic increase in projected defense budgets, the Defense Department will have to prepare for these challenges with roughly the same resources that it has today and perhaps less. Simply put, the Pentagon cannot afford to think rich about preparing for emerging challenges, it must think smart. It cannot build a military for every prospective threat, nor can it afford to proceed with a modernization program that is oriented on meeting today’s challenges, but which will prove ineffective against those that are emerging.

Yet the Pentagon risks doing precisely that when it undertakes large-scale production of a new armored combat system, aircraft or class of ships without having a good understanding of how they will compete against tomorrow’s threats. For example, in the power-projection case cited above:

• How does the Air Force plan to deploy its new F-22 fighters to forward bases against the kind of theater denial described by General Fogleman or employ the fighter to achieve air superiority against an enemy’s missile force?

• How does the Army plan to deploy and sustain its heavy, digitized divisions in the absence of forward base access?

• How does the Navy plan to move its carrier battle groups safely through narrow straits so as to influence the battle ashore, since it is buying F/A-18E/F carrier-based aircraft, whose range is inferior to that of the A-6 attack aircraft they are replacing?

Military experimentation is one of the keys to defense planning in an era of high uncertainty and rapid technological change. Experimentation with innovative operational concepts that employ emerging military systems and radically new force structures has historically been an essential ingredient to preserving, or gaining, an advantage in military capability. For example, the twenty-one large-scale fleet problems undertaken in the 1920s and 30s were crucial to the US Navy’s developing the principles, doctrine, trained personnel, defense industrial base, and systems mix that enabled the fast carrier task forces to supplant the battleship-dominated fleet during World War II. Similarly, the numerous field exercises conducted by the German military in the 1920s and 30s were indispensable to developing the highly coordinated, mechanized air-land forces and operations of blitzkrieg that enabled the rapid conquest of France.

The Need for Military Experimentation
Military experimentation at the operational level (i.e., the level at which military campaigns are waged) confers several critical benefits, both to defense planners and to those concerned with fiscal accountability. These benefits include:

• Reducing uncertainty concerning how best to meet emerging threats. Take the problem of projecting power in the absence of forward bases. Joint experimentation would permit military leaders to try out different operational concepts for deploying forces into theater, conducting extended-range precision strikes, determining if secured access to forward bases is possible, and identifying how to sustain the operation for a period sufficient to achieve its objectives. Through such experiments, commanders can develop a far superior feel for those operational concepts that might succeed in such a threat environment and for the force mix and systems requirements needed to support such operations. Equally important, experimentation enables military leaders to determine those force elements and modernization plans that will likely diminish in value over time. This proved to be the case with Germany’s development of blitzkrieg. Experimentation enabled the German military to work through the coordination problems associated with fast-moving mechanized formations, other ground formations and supporting air units.

• Determining the proper mix of emerging and legacy systems. Experimentation also assists military organizations in determining those new systems and capabilities that will be required, those existing (or legacy) systems and capabilities that should be sustained, and what kind of mix should be established between the two. The Germans, for instance, used a series of exercises to experiment with different panzer division designs. Over the course of these exercises, they found their initial design was far too tank heavy in proportion to the other elements of the division, such as artillery and engineers. Consequently, the number of tanks in the initial division design was reduced by 50 percent. The proportion of certain supporting forces (e.g., engineers) was increased. Finally, supporting elements such as engineers and legacy systems such as artillery were motorized to better enable them to support the tanks’ rapid advance. In this way, exercises proved critical to the Germans’ ability to determine the proper mix of new (e.g., panzer, airborne, radio communications, reconnaissance and attack aircraft) and existing (e.g., artillery, engineers, logistics) capabilities required for mechanized air-land operations.

• Enabling the buying of options for the future. Experimentation that identifies new forms of military operations and new force elements can permit the US military to exercise those options quickly when the threat emerges. For example, in the early 1960s the US Army conducted extensive experiments to assess the potential of airmobile and air assault operations. These experiments gave the Army an important option when, in the summer of 1965, it was ordered to send large forces to Vietnam. The first division selected for deployment was the Army’s newly formed First Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Similarly, the US Navy that entered World II was, first and foremost, a battleship navy. However, through its Fleet Problems, the Navy created the option of carrier-based operations that it moved quickly to exercise following Pearl Harbor.

• Complicating the planning of would-be enemies. Importantly, experimentation that enables the US military to buy options can also greatly complicate the planning of would-be adversaries. For example, in the 1930s the Imperial Japanese Navy had to counter a US Navy that was exploring a range of options for naval aviation, to include the deployment of large (USS Saratoga and Lexington) and small (USS Ranger) carriers, the use of sea planes, air ships and land-based aircraft, as well as proposals for launching a class of flying-deck cruisers. In this manner, experimentation can play an important role in dissuading other militaries from entering into a competition in the first place.

• Avoiding legacy force lock in. Experimentation through war games, simulations and field exercises provides a means of avoiding the purchase of large numbers of legacy systems under the assumption that, since they dominate conflict today, they will do so for the foreseeable future. Arms control in the form of the Washington Naval Treaty proved serendipitous for the US Navy during much of the interwar period, as it banned the construction of battleships. Similarly, the Versailles Treaty disarmed the German military, leaving it unable to field large numbers of major military systems. As a result, German military leaders conducted simulated exercises leading to the conclusion that the horse cavalry had a very limited future. In this way both militaries were able to avoid producing large numbers of military systems that were dominant in the existing military regime but whose utility would decline rapidly in the soon-to-emerge regime.

• Avoiding false starts. Experiments can help military organizations avoid buying in too early during a period of transformational change in military capabilities. The US Navy’s first carrier designed from the keel up, the USS Ranger, was commissioned in 1934. Although some Navy leaders had pressed for construction of five Ranger-Class carriers, war game analysis and fleet problems soon indicated that, at roughly 14,000 tons, the Ranger was far too small to meet many of the demands of future fleet operations. As it turned out, the Essex-Class carriers that formed the backbone of the Navy’s fast carrier task forces in World War II each displaced nearly twice as much tonnage as the Ranger.

• Avoiding dead ends. Military systems or capabilities that appear promising, or even revolutionary, sometimes fail to live up to their promise. In this case, the problem is not buying in too early; rather, it is to avoid buying in at all. The experience of the US Navy during the development of naval aviation in the interwar period again provides an example of how rigorous experimentation and operational exercises can help avoid accumulating military capabilities that lead, not along the path to transformation, but to a dead end. In 1930 the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics proposed the construction of eight 10,000-ton flying-deck (or flight deck) cruisers. The ships—half cruiser and half flight deck—were subjected to war game experiments at the Naval War College and some experiments with surrogates in the fleet. These experiments painted a distinctly unfavorable picture of the hybrid ship, and it sank beneath the Navy’s programmatic waves, never to be heard from again.

• Identifying and solving practical problems. Planning exercises and war games can only go so far in identifying new forms of operation and new military system requirements. As with many things, the devil is often in the details. For example, war games conducted at the Naval War College in the early 1920s indicated the importance of maximizing carrier aircraft compliments and aircraft sortie rates.¹³ It was not, however, until a prototype carrier (the USS Langley) was launched that the Navy could determine precisely how this goal was to be achieved. Under Captain Joseph Reeves, the Langley conducted a series of experiments that led to such innovations as crash barriers and the deck park, which enabled the ship to more than double its aircraft complement and dramatically increase its sortie rate. Similarly, the German Army’s field exercises and operations in the late 1930s enabled it to solve critical issues with respect to fuel and spare parts requirements for its panzer formations, and the means by which the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, would function as a highly mobile source of reconnaissance and fire (close air) support. Experiments like these were essential to both militaries’ efforts to transform to dominate the emerging conflict environment.

Vigorous. Experiments must be conducted on a frequent basis, and funding, forces and equipment (to include prototype equipment and surrogates) must be made available to support them. Unfortunately, the Defense Department leadership’s rhetoric asserting the need for military transformation and experimentation has not been matched by any great sense of urgency or any substantial resource support. For example, the establishment of Joint Forces Command for the purpose of undertaking joint experimentation was not a Defense Department initiative. Rather, it was the consequence of congressional leadership and the recommendations of an independent panel of experts.¹⁴

The Pentagon’s budget for Joint Forces Command’s experimentation efforts stands at a meager $41 million for FY 2000. The Clinton Administration’s request for FY 2001 is for $49 million. Such funding levels are at least an order of magnitude lower than what is required to conduct a vigorous, sustained level of field experiments at the operational level. For example, in 1999 one Service, the Air Force, spent more than $60 million—over 50 percent more than the Joint Forces Command’s entire budget for joint experimentation—on one exercise.

According to the general in charge of JFC’s experimentation efforts, owing to funding shortages, the command is able to explore only half the warfighting concepts it has identified.¹⁵ The command’s first major exercise, or Major Joint Integrating Experiment, is not scheduled to occur until 2004, some six years after being tasked with the responsibility for joint experimentation.

This is not to say that a vigorous program of experimentation would necessarily involve enormous sums of money. To be sure, it would probably involve an investment of several billion dollars a year. However, the payoff in terms of improved military effectiveness and efficiency—through avoiding such funding sinkholes noted above as premature lock in, false starts, and dead ends—promise to more than justify the modest investment.

In any event, the current DoD approach to experimentation stands in stark contrast to the sense of urgency that has historically characterized successful military transformations. Consequently, it is difficult to conclude the Defense Department’s effort to date represents a serious effort to exploit the potential of experimentation to support and inform military transformation.

Long-Term. Experimentation must be an enduring element of what the US military does, similar to forward presence operations and training activities. Here some Services deserve credit for attempting to develop a long-term approach to experimentation. The Marine Corps, for example, has sustained a series of exercises and experiments under the rubric of Sea Dragon, which includes the Hunter Warrior, Urban Warrior and Capable Warrior activities. The Marines apparently intend to pursue these experiments on an enduring basis as a means for preparing to meet emerging challenges, while looking for ways to exploit advances in technology to support future operations.

They also have explored innovative ways to surmount the lack of emphasis, and resourcing, accorded to such enterprises by the senior Defense Department leadership. For example, the Marines have identified urban control and eviction operations as being a key element of the post-transformation operational environment. Yet they confront the fact that the combat towns on US bases, while excellent for training small units in basic tactics, do not offer the complexity or the communications interference that cities do. While the National Defense Panel recommended a Joint Urban Warfare Center be established to enable training and experimentation in an urban environment, the Defense Department declined to act upon it.

Absent such a training facility, the Marines have tried to conduct small-scale exercises in selected urban areas. One of their more innovative efforts involves an attempt to work the problem of providing close air support in an urban environment. The Marines commissioned the construction of an Urban Close Air Support (CAS) Facility at their Air Station in Yuma. The complex includes 167 buildings constructed from shipping containers and empty cluster bomb unit containers. The buildings range in size from one to five stories, and are configured in various shapes. In cases such as this, it appears that experimentation is being sustained almost in spite of efforts at the senior Defense Department level.

Comprehensive. Experimentation must take place at all levels (tactical, operational and strategic) of warfare and also among all principal organizations involved, to include all the Services and, where appropriate, other governmental and non-governmental elements. As noted above, such experimentation implies a level of effort on the part of the Defense Department that simply does not as yet exist. To date, experimentation has been heavily weighted toward the tactical level of warfare. While such experimentation is desirable, it must be informed by how military organizations believe they will have to fight at the operational level.

For example, the Joint Forces Command’s first experiment involved attacking critical mobile targets, such as mobile ballistic and cruise missile launchers. However, the specifics of how the military accomplishes this task are greatly influenced by considerations at the operational (and strategic) level. Consider, for example, how the experiment’s conduct would change if it was assumed that forward bases were either unavailable or placed at unacceptable risk (e.g., by the very missile forces that are the target of US operations). How the military goes about solving the critical mobile problem at the tactical level is thus influenced enormously by operational level considerations. In sum, experimentation that focuses on the tactical level of warfare in the absence of considering the requirements imposed by the military competition at the operational level risks arriving at irrelevant, or impractical, solutions to accomplishing the mission.

Focused on Post-Transformation Challenges and Opportunities at the Operational Level of Warfare. While experimentation must be comprehensive, history indicates that its principal focus should be oriented on meeting a challenge—or exploiting an opportunity—at the operational level of warfare (i.e., the level of warfare at which campaigns are fought). Furthermore, experimentation must be directed at preparing for the next war, not at becoming more proficient at waging the last. As noted above, failing to take these factors into consideration runs the risk that experimentation, no matter how vigorous, well-funded, and enduring, will arrive at some very good solutions to the wrong problems. This, regrettably, is all too often the case with current experimentation.

Again, consider the recent simulation conducted by Joint Forces Command dealing with engaging critical mobile targets (e.g., mobile ballistic and cruise missile launchers). The simulation assumed the availability of forward bases to support such operations, as was the case during the Great Scud Hunt of the Gulf War. Similarly, the Air Force’s Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX) 99, involved the rapid deployment forward of an Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) to fixed forward bases. This, despite a growing chorus of military leaders—including an Air Force Chief of Staff—and blue-ribbon expert advisory groups cautioning that attempting to operate out of such bases will be a risky proposition until enemy missile forces have been neutralized. Similarly, the Army vision, with its emphasis on deploying a brigade to a forward base within 96 hours may, like the Air Force, only find itself getting to the enemy missile ambush point (i.e., fixed forward base) more quickly.

On a brighter note, in a small way the Marines, through experiments like Hunter Warrior, are attempting to confront a post-transformation challenges at the operational level: “How do we sustain our forces in a world that will feature fewer and fewer overseas land bases and where a large build-up of supplies and equipment ashore may be impractical because of geographical, political, or threat conditions?”¹⁶ Nor is the Air Force wholly ignorant of this challenge. In 1995-96 the Air Force sent three specially created AEFs to unimproved airfields in Bahrain, Jordan, and Qatar. And the Army had wargamed the forward basing problem, although it has yet to conduct experiments based on the games’ insights with respect to the anti-access challenge. These are modest steps, to be sure, but ones that could be encouraged by a comprehensive Defense Department effort to exploit experimentation in support of transformation.

Conducted at the Service and the Joint level. The US military plans to fight as a joint force, which draws upon all the Services’ capabilities. This makes sense as modern technology has enabled each of the Services to operate far outside its traditional battle space—and into the battle space of its sister Services. Joint experimentation should therefore encourage a friendly, but spirited, competition among the Services to determine the proper mix of Service capabilities required. To its credit, the Army has sought to expand the major exercise on urban operations it has planned for September 2000—now known as Joint Contingency Force Advanced Warfighting Experiment, or Millenium Force 2000—to include participation from the other three Services, as well as the staff of Joint Forces Command. Once again, however this represents a bottom up approach by the Services, as opposed to top down encouragement from senior DoD leaders.

To be sure, there are operations or campaigns that one Service may dominate (e.g., antisubmarine warfare, long-range precision strike, space control). Here Service experimentation might assume primacy over joint experimentation. However, given current and projected technology trends, such cases at the operational level will likely be increasingly rare.

Exploited in Developing Future Requirements. It almost goes without saying that the insights and lessons derived from experimentation must be harvested if innovation and transformation are to succeed. Focusing on post-transformation challenges and opportunities helps to ensure that the military is addressing the right questions with respect to future warfare, and thus can get the right answers with respect to emerging requirements. These insights mean little, however, unless they influence the way requirements are determined, budgets are shaped, resources are allocated, institutions are adapted, and forces are developed.

At present it is unclear how this is to be accomplished. Even if one assumed a robust level of Service and joint experimentation focused on emerging challenges, it is not clear how the insights will be translated into new requirements. As one senior general officer put it, “Do you fund these things and do an experiment and you find out great things, but then you have to wait another two years or so before you get it into the normal budget process?”¹⁷

Indeed, in recent years both the Defense Department’s Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) and its Joint Warfighting Capabilities Assessments (JWCAs) approach, have seemed incapable of effecting significant changes in Service budget shares or program focus, despite Defense Secretary Cohen’s declared determination to transform the US military¹⁸ Promising new capabilities or force elements, such as unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), moving target indicator (MTI) satellites such as Discoverer II, the arsenal ship, Strike Force, the Deep-Strike Brigade, the Streetfighter littoral operational concept, and Trident SSBN conversion to conventional missile carriers, have been terminated, delayed or are in jeopardy. Yet support for programs, such as modernizing the tactical air forces and heavy divisions continues unabated, even though it is far from clear they would fare well in an anti-access power-projection environment.

Conclusion
If it is to meet emerging challenges in such a way as to preserve the current level of national security, the Defense Department will have to effect significant changes in its approach to military experimentation, and increase dramatically the priority accorded to experimentation. At present, the Department’s effort is poorly focused and woefully under funded. The potential gains from a properly directed and funded experimentation effort are clear. One only has to look at how the blitzkrieg form of warfare upset the military balance in Europe and how the US Navy’s fast carrier task forces turned the tide in the Pacific during World War II to see the payoff of successful military transformation, and, by extension, the importance of a well-designed program of experimentation. The potential costs from continuing along the current path are clear as well. They include investing in false starts and dead ends, of arriving at the right solutions to the wrong threats, and, ultimately, the risk of paying a price in jeopardized security interests, national treasure and the lives of young American men and women in uniform.

1. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 had, among other things, banned the construction of battleships and limited carrier tonnage among the major naval powers. In addition, in 1928 the United States signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war.

2. Clark G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1968), p. 17.; and “Remarks by Commander Black Fleet, W. V. Pratt,” Fleet Problem IX. Pratt flew his flag from the Saratoga on the return cruise, “partly as a badge of distinction, but most because I want to know what makes the aircraft squadrons tick.”

3. Robert M. Citino, Path to Blitzkrieg, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), p. 241.

4. Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, May 1997), p. 12.

5. Joint Vision 2010 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, n.d.), p. 4.

6. Bill Gertz, “The Air Force and Missile Defense,” Air Force Magazine (February 1996), p. 72.

7. Admiral Jay Johnson, “Anytime, Anywhere: A Navy for the 21st Century,” Proceedings (November 1997), p. 49.

8. Brigadier V. K. Nair, War in the Gulf: Lessons for the Third World (New Delhi, India: Lancer International, n.d.) p. 230.

9. Defense Science Board, Final Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Globalization and Security (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, December 1999), p. vi.

10. The National Defense Panel, Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century (Washington, D.C: n.p., December 1997), p. 33.

11. Ibid, p. 35.

12. Ibid., pp. 44-48.

13. A sortie is one mission flown by one aircraft.

14. NDP, pp. 68-72.

15. William H. McMichael, “Joint Experiment in Expeditionary Force,” Air Force Magazine (January 2000), pp. 46-50.

16. LTG John E. Rhodes, “Concerning Marine Corps Experimentation Efforts,” Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, October 20, 1999.

17. William H. McMichael, “Joint Experiment in Expeditionary Force,” pp. 46-50.

18. M. Thomas Davis, Managing Defense After the Cold War (Washington, DC: CSBA, 1997).