Symposium on Rebuilding American Power
Ronald Reagan Institute for Public Policy

I want to begin by contrasting the Reagan build-up with the very different defense situation that we face today. With a couple of obvious exceptions––the Strategic Defense Initiative and the B-2 stealth bomber––the Reagan build-up did not face major technological challenges. Mostly, it bought more of what was in the pipeline or moved to turn recent advances into military systems. Although R&D spending increased substantially under President Reagan, the primary features of the Reagan build-up were force structure expansion, near-term modernization of warfighting capabilities and enhanced readiness.

Preserving American military superiority in the decades ahead will require a very different approach to defense investment strategy, one that emphasizes qualitative, transformational change rather than quantitative change. During the Reagan years, Soviet military power posed a clear and present danger, but the rate of change in military capabilities was modest. Today, near-term threats are much reduced, but there is substantial evidence that we are in the midst of revolutionary change in military affairs.

The Revolution in Military Affairs
Even though the Revolution in Military Affairs, or “RMA,” as it is called, can trace its origins as far back as World War II, only within the past decade or so has it reached what might be called a potential “take-off” velocity, and its full effects will not likely become fully evident until after 2010. When it has run its course some two-to-three decades hence, however, the RMA will likely transform the conduct of war on air, land and sea and could bring war into several new dimensions: space, information and biological.

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 technology and biotechnology. The emerging RMA is being brought about by multiple and complementary advances in ten principal areas shown in the center of figure 1.

Figure 1 – The Multidimensional RMA

New classes of space- and ground-based commercial and military sensors (distributed microsatellite constellations, satellites that can track ground movement over wide areas, radars that see can through foliage and walls, micro-unmanned aerial vehicles and microrobots the size of birds and bugs) will almost certainly provide unparalleled transparency for future forces. Long loiter systems––UAVs that can remain on station for 24 hours or more––will significantly increase the operational endurance of those forces. The ability to reach out and touch someone with great precision at extended range will likely be the dominant operational feature of future high-intensity battlefields, as more accurate and lethal munitions continue to be developed for an expanding set of delivery means. Hypersonic and directed energy technologies could significantly increase the speed of future operations. The lethality of this future battlefield, coupled with major advances in automation, could cause future armed forces to increasingly substitute unmanned systems for manned systems across warfare dimensions. And since being seen will increasingly mean being killed, stealth and other forms of information protection will likely become even more essential than they are today.

Over the next couple of decades, air warfare will likely be transformed from a regime dominated by manned, theater-range, air superiority aircraft to one dominated by extended range, unmanned, stealthy platforms. The conduct of land warfare could shift from a regime dominated by mobile, combined arms, armored forces to one that is dominated by much lighter, stealthier and information-intensive forces that make heavy use of robotics. War at sea could be transformed by the emergence of land- and space-based “anti-navy” capabilities that could allow nations that develop this capability to assert a degree of surface control over adjacent maritime areas out to several hundred miles. This in turn could lead to new forms of naval power projection (e.g., increased reliance on undersea warfare and/or the application of stealth to some surface vessels). Increased commercial and military use of space and the ambition to become a global power could lead to the emergence of space warfare. New warfare tools (e.g., viruses that can attack computer networks, conventional electromagnetic pulse weapons and high power microwave weapons that can fry solid state electronics) are already emerging to attack information infrastructures and information-intensive forces. Advanced forms of biological warfare that can precisely target specific genotypes or allow pathogens to be innocuously cloaked in other organisms could also emerge in the next decade or two.

This transformation of war is by no means inevitable, but its potential implications for US military superiority are profound. Over the longer term, US ability to control the air, operate on the surface in littoral waters and conduct mobile armored warfare––the core of current US power projection capabilities––could be severely challenged. US advantages in space and in the use of information could be sharply diminished. Adversarial deployment of large-scale, long-range precision strike or offensive information warfare capabilities could lead to an erosion of some of our alliance relationships and influence. An adversary’s ability to hold merchant shipping at risk with anti-navy capabilities could exert a significant influence on trade flows, resulting in a further diminution of US influence. The US homeland could face a range of more virulent national and transnational threats, leading to a loss of a strategic sanctuary that has heretofore been guaranteed by geography and US strategic nuclear deterrent forces.

The ability of DoD to forestall exploitation of this revolution by potential adversaries will likely be limited. Some of the key capabilities, ballistic and cruise missile technology, for example, are well understood and are accessible to potential adversaries. Others, such as rudimentary stealth, cannot be too far behind. The dual-use nature of some capabilities (e.g., commercial space launch services and space-based imaging, navigation and communications services) will exacerbate the control problem, as will the continued diffusion of important non-defense scientific and technical skills (e.g., in information technology and biotechnology).

Four key strategic and technological “competitions” will likely shape much of what future warfare looks like: the first will pit anti-access or “keep-out” strategies against current and new forms of power projection; the second will be a struggle between “hiders” and “finders;” the third will be between stealth and barrage attack capabilities and air and missile defenses; and the fourth will take place between capabilities for information warfare and advanced biological warfare attack and defense. (One could conceivably add a fifth competition – space access vs. space control – or subsume it, as I did here, as a variant of the first.) The good news is that the United States will almost assuredly be superior to its potential adversaries in each side of the likely emerging strategic competitions. The bad news is that even adversarial possession of inferior but “disruptive” capabilities (e.g., stealth that is inferior to ours but still eludes our tracking abilities, or an arsenal of missiles that is large enough to overwhelm our missile defenses) could prove sufficient to transform strategic balances.

Implications for Defense Investment Strategy
For a host of reasons, the path currently pursued by the Clinton administration is unlikely to result in revolutionary change in our military capabilities by 2025. Although the administration rhetorically acknowledges the need to transform the armed forces to prepare for an uncertain future, it places dominant emphasis on near–term concerns. The military that it foresees in 2020 is a smaller but essentially similar version of the one that won the Persian Gulf War three decades earlier.

Under the Clinton plan, incremental procurement, force structure and readiness will increasingly crowd out R&D, which will then crowd out transformation. Over the course of the administration’s most recent Future Years Defense Plan, for example, R&D spending is projected to decline in real terms by 17.2%. Even more troubling, an increasing share of the administration’s R&D budget is being devoted to engineering development of a few, big ticket items, most notably, tactical air platforms, and for modifications and upgrades to mature systems. As a result, the science and technology component that funds potential leap-ahead capabilities––the “6.2” and “6.3” accounts in Pentagon budget parlance––is being squeezed even more.

A strategy for sustaining US military superiority during a period of discontinuous change must hedge against high levels of uncertainty while placing the US military on a path that will produce revolutionary advances in military capability before potential adversaries can develop the means to render the current American way of war obsolete. Such a strategy might be implemented in two stages. The first, which would roughly span the first decade of the next century, would focus on exploiting the early phase of the RMA while creating a range of multidimensional options that would posture the US military for full transformation. The second, from 2013 to 2025 or thereabouts, would be characterized by the large-scale replacement of old force structure with emerging capabilities.

The additional resources required to implement a sustained, R&D-intensive strategy through the first decade of the next century range from no increase to about $45 billion a year, depending on the scope of transformation options created, leap-ahead capabilities procured and force structure and incremental modernization cuts that one is willing to endure. The point here is that transformation is as much about how wisely we are investing as it is about how much.

RDT&E spending of $10-15 billion per annum––generated either through additional resources or the reallocation of existing resources––would fund aggressive exploration and development of a range of potential leap-ahead capabilities, including advanced sensors, communications and munitions; air, naval and ground force stealth; false image generation; hypersonic and directed energy technologies; hybrid power sources; tactical mobile robotics; computer network attack and defense; advanced biological warfare defense; and space control and strike capabilities. An additional $5 billion annually for “leap-ahead” procurement over the coming decade would allow the conversion of four Trident SSBNs to SSGN-configuration, the establishment of an experimental Air Force UCAV wing and Army “strike force” regiment and the deployment of a space-based, moving target indicator, radar constellation. Sufficient funds would also be available to expand the B-2 fleet or to substantially accelerate development of follow-on or alternative capabilities.

In the emergence of a new industry or way of war, several competing alternatives often vie for supremacy before a “dominant design” is settled upon. Hence, the creation of multidimensional options that can later be exercised is essential. Although there will almost certainly be an “efficiency” penalty associated with developing options that are not all subsequently exercised, the potential gains in future effectiveness are well worth the added cost.

Developing revolutionary military capabilities will require transformation of the US defense industrial base. Such an industrial transformation strategy would encourage (and perhaps, strongly assist) new entrants, and would transform existing DoD-industry relationships to increase the likelihood of revolutionary innovation. The former might entail changes in industry structure to make it more competitive; the latter would likely entail making independent R&D and low volume production runs more profitable.

A major challenge for defense R&D will be to leverage the transformation that has taken place in national R&D funding. Three decades ago, defense R&D investment was approximately double that of the entire civilian economy; today, private sector R&D outstrips defense R&D by a factor of five. The bulk of the increase in private sector R&D has taken place in the increasingly militarily relevant areas of information technology (to include commercial space-based services) and biotechnology. The problem, of course, is that fewer and fewer firms are finding defense R&D to be an attractive business proposition.

Today, I have spoken about defense technology strategy, which although only one component of a broader transformation strategy, is a critical one. An R&D-intensive transformation strategy of the kind I just described would leverage enduring American strengths, and make our leadership in science and technology work for us rather than against us.

By 2025, half of the US force structure could be fundamentally transformed. The US could have high-end, power projection forces that are far more stealthy, information-intensive and free of forward bases than are current forces. Unmanned systems and space capabilities could loom much larger in future US force structures. The United States could have robust, homeland defense capabilities, and could retain substantial forces for labor-intensive stability operations.

In 1981, the challenge before us was to expand American power. Today, our challenge is to transform it. Transforming our military capabilities in advance of potential rivals could allow us to shape the emerging competition in important ways. If we transform and our potential adversaries do not, we could enjoy a historically rare, revolutionary advantage in future conflicts, substantially enhancing the deterrent power of US forces. Even if we do not enjoy a long-term monopoly on the emerging RMA, early adoption of new capabilities may block or reduce the strategic gains available to potential competitors. While US dominance is clearly preferable, the risk that someone could get there before us makes transforming the US military imperative.

©1999 Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. All Rights Reserved.