The United States today faces a challenge that is unprecedented in the nation’s history: transforming its armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which now exists, while sustaining the military’s ability to play a very active role in supporting U.S. near-term efforts to preserve global stability within a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement.
The Defense Department confronts this era of transformational change, both geopolitical and military-technical, within an environment of declining resources for defense. Consequently, there is the risk that if the wrong transformation path is chosen (or if no attempt is made at transformation), it will prove difficult, if not impossible, for the Pentagon to buy its way out of mistakes. It also is important to begin the transformation process soon. It is no exaggeration to say that, given the time it takes to field new military systems, develop new doctrine, and field test new combat organizations, the U.S. military twenty years hence is already being formed (and limited) by decisions being made today.
This CSBA Backgrounder was given as a presentation on September 1, 1997 at the dedication conference for the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at the Texas A&M University.
Introduction
The United States today faces a challenge that is unprecedented in the nation’s history: transforming its armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which now exists, while sustaining the military’s ability to play a very active role in supporting U.S. near-term efforts to preserve global stability within a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement.
The Defense Department’s recently completed Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) continues to accord primary emphasis in the defense program to preparing to fight, nearly simultaneously, two regional conflicts on the scale and nature of the Persian Gulf War.1 This emphasis seems misplaced. So too, in many respects, is the current debate over “How much is enough?” to sustain such a defense posture. Indeed, in a period of major geopolitical and military-technical change, the defense debate seems dominated by consideration over how best to wage the last war more efficiently, as opposed to preparing to meet new challenges both efficiently, and effectively. In this respect, the situation is akin to observing France’s deliberations in the late 1920s over how much it would cost to construct and maintain the Maginot Line, designed to deflect a World War I-style German assault, while ignoring the strong incentives the German military had for exploiting rapidly emerging technologies to avoid a repetition of that war’s outcome.2
As will be discussed presently, a U.S. military oriented toward meeting the challenges encountered in its Desert Storm operation is likely to depreciate rapidly over the next two decades, while its principal value will be realized during a period of relatively low risk to the national security. Thus the defense “train wreck” which some Cassandras speak of is not, at its core, budgetary in nature, it is strategic.3
Why the need for a military transformation? After all, the strategic environment in which the United States finds itself today is far more favorable than that which existed during the Cold War. It could be argued that the United States’ military superiority over any prospective near-term challenger is so great that it is unlikely to confront a major threat to its vital interests over the next ten years, or perhaps longer. The Defense Department describes this period of relatively low danger as one of “strategic pause;” but that is not to say that the United States should take a “strategic holiday.”
Indeed, historical patterns over the last three hundred years strongly suggest that competition among the great powers is the rule, rather than the exception.4 The strategic environment today is characterized by far greater uncertainty than existed during the Cold War. Simply stated, the United States does not know when it will face another major challenge to its security, who might pose such a challenge, or how the challenger would choose to compete.
Moreover, technology eventually diffuses. The United States’ seeming military “monopolies” (for example, in weaponry such as precision-guided munitions (PGMs), stealth technology, and in the exploitation of space for military purposes) will almost certainly not endure beyond the next decade. Technology diffusion will allow future U.S. adversaries to present the U.S. military with new, and far more difficult, military “problems” to solve than those encountered during the Gulf War. The principal challenge before the United States military is not to be found in its ability to fight and win two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts of the magnitude and type of Desert Storm. Rather, it is in the military’s ability to extend its current advantage in military effectiveness in a world of rapidly changing — and far more formidable — challenges. This would contribute to an overall U.S. national security strategy whose principal goal should be to avoid yet another cycle of the great power military competition and conflict that has dominated this century.
The need for a transformation strategy also is being stimulated by a growing awareness that the world is likely entering into a period of military revolution.5 Such periods are characterized by discontinuous leaps in military effectiveness, and dramatic shifts in the military “tools” available to commanders, in the ways in which armed forces fight, and in how they organize for combat.6 This century has witnessed two such periods of military revolution. The most recent is the nuclear weapon-ballistic missile revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. An earlier revolution occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. It was characterized by the transformation of warfare on land, which culminated in the blitzkrieg; at sea, with the rise of naval aviation and carrier battle groups; and in the air, with the emergence of strategic aerial bombardment.7 The emerging military revolution may offer the U.S. military an opportunity to better prepare for new challenges.
The Defense Department confronts this era of transformational change, both geopolitical and military-technical, within an environment of declining resources for defense. Consequently, there is the risk that if the wrong transformation path is chosen (or if no attempt is made at transformation), it will prove difficult, if not impossible, for the Pentagon to buy its way out of mistakes. It also is important to begin the transformation process soon. It is no exaggeration to say that, given the time it takes to field new military systems, develop new doctrine, and field test new combat organizations, the U.S. military twenty years hence is already being formed (and limited) by decisions being made today.
Recognizing this, in August 1996 the Congress passed legislation requiring the Defense Department to undertake “a comprehensive examination of defense strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program and policies with a view toward determining and expressing the defense strategy of the United States and establishing a revised defense program . . . .”8 The Defense Department has dubbed this examination its Quadrennial Defense Review, and asserts that, given the resources available, the defense program it has produced offers an optimal blueprint for the first two decades of the next century.9
The Emerging Military Regime
What new challenges will the U.S. military confront early in the next century? While no one can say for certain, the broad outlines of a post-transformation conflict environment are beginning to emerge. General John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently observed that “Accelerating rates of change will make the future environment more unpredictable and less stable, presenting our armed forces with a wide range of plausible futures.”10 Much of this change is being stimulated by rapid advances in information and information-related technologies, which are transforming societies and economies, and which seem likely to effect major changes in warfare. General Shalikashvili notes that “the emerging importance of information superiority will dramatically impact how well our armed forces can perform its [sic] duties in 2010.”11
Indeed, this emerging military revolution is characterized, in part, by a rapidly growing potential to detect, identify, and track a far greater numbers of targets, over a far larger area, for a much longer period of time than ever before, and to order and move this information much more quickly and effectively than ever before. This seems likely to produce a very different kind of competition between “finders” and “hiders” than we have seen in the past. A reconnaissance architecture, comprising a network of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, remote sensors, and “networked” individual soldiers, among other elements, may allow the military organization that possesses it to create a condition of information superiority, in which most of an adversary’s forces and infrastructure are clearly identified, while the bulk of friendly forces remain shrouded from the enemy. Under such conditions, a reconnaissance architecture could dissipate much of the “fog” of war for the side which can exploit it, and substantially reduce the “friction” that dilutes military effectiveness.
On the other hand, the “hiders” will seek to frustrate the efforts of the “finders” through a variety of means, including strikes against the reconnaissance architecture and passive measures such as stealth, electronic countermeasures, and the dispersion, cover, and concealment of forces. Thus while it will be important to seek information superiority to realize the enormous boost it could provide to military force effectiveness, it is not at all clear that this condition will be easily achieved. What seems clear is that those military organizations that are not prepared for such a competition will likely find themselves at a great disadvantage.
The importance of creating as much of a favorable information “gap” between friendly and enemy forces as possible is highlighted by the rapidly growing potential of advanced military organizations (the United States military in particular) to engage a far greater number of targets, over a far greater area, in far less time, and with much greater lethality, precision, and discrimination than ever before. Combined with information superiority, such a capability could be an instrument of decisive advantage for the force which possess it, especially if the “hider-finder” competition is resolved in favor of the “finders.” As this new military regime emerges and matures, it will present the U.S. military with challenges and opportunities that are dramatically different from those of today.
New Challenges
The Defense Department’s depiction of the future conflict environment is summarized in its publication, Joint Vision 2010. It declares that “power projection, enabled by overseas presence, will likely remain the fundamental strategic concept of our future force.”12 Yet Joint Vision 2010 also recognizes that power-projection operations may have to be executed far differently in the future than they were in the Gulf War, declaring “Our most vexing future adversary may be one who can use military technology to make rapid improvements in its military capabilities that provide asymmetrical counters to U.S. military strengths . . . .”13
Recently retired Air Force Chief of Staff, General Ronald Fogleman, voiced concerns over a particularly vexing asymmetric challenge when he spoke of the consequences of facing a competitor that has chosen to invest primarily in a missile force, as opposed to an air force. The general observed, “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 [region], much less carry out operations to defeat a well-armed aggressor. Simply the threat of such enemy missile attacks might deter the U.S. and coalition partners from responding to aggression in the first instance.”14
According to a recent study by the Defense Science Board, a regional power’s development of this kind of “anti-access” capability by 2010 is certainly plausible, even given relatively severe resource constraints.15 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 antiship mines, than in military systems such as the tanks and combat aircraft that proved largely ineffective for the Iraqis during the Gulf War.16 Indeed, what Third World regime today is looking to create its own version of the Republican Guard? A major power like China may not choose to increase its military leverage in East Asia by “aping” the U.S. Navy’s affinity for carrier battle groups and the U.S. Air Force’s emphasis on manned tactical combat aircraft. Rather, Beijing might follow an asymmetric competitive path, developing an ability to isolate Taiwan through long-range blockade forces comprising precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles, and close-range blockade forces centered around submarines and advanced anti-ship mines.17
These types of forces, employed as described, could hold Taiwan’s major ports and airfields at risk, posing a very different kind of blockade from that imposed, for example, on Iraq during the Gulf War. As one retired Indian general officer observed, the issue of access to forward bases is “by far the trickiest part of the American operational problem. This is the proverbial ‘Achilles heel.’ India needs to study the vulnerabilities and . . . 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 [forward base] facilities.”18
Anti-access forces will almost certainly benefit from commercial space-based systems capable of providing imagery, communications, and position location. In 1996, commercial investment in space exceeded military investment for the first time, and the trend is almost certain to continue in the coming years. Over the next decade, between 1,200 and 1,500 commercial satellite launches are planned.19 This will increase the number of commercial satellites in orbit by an order of magnitude. States seeking to boost their anti-access forces will tap into the growing number of countries and multinational consortia operating satellite constellations who are willing to sell their services to anyone able to pay for them. The United States military, which anticipates employing commercial satellites for well over half of its space-based communications, also will be a principal customer of these space consortia, which include firms such as Globalstar, Iridium, and Teledesic.20
The economic value of space assets will also grow, with associated investment in space reaching roughly $500 billion for the period 1996-2000, and annual growth rates reaching as high as 20 percent.21 Thus by the end of the next decade, the U.S. military will likely be confronted with the responsibility for protecting sizable economic assets in space (some of which will also support military functions) as well as its own space platforms, and denying an enemy the use of space for military purposes during periods of crisis and war.22
The new challenges facing the U.S. military — establishing information superiority, defeating anti-access capabilities, and establishing control of space — will be formidable. But they should not come as a surprise. Capabilities such as long-range precision-strike and the use of space to support terrestrial military operations are not monopolies that have been awarded to the United States military in perpetuity. Indeed, previous periods of military revolution have found a technological leader’s advantage to be fleeting.23
Nor are these the only major new challenges that will likely appear over the next decade or two. Other relatively new challenges may emerge out of political and economic imperatives, or from demographic trends. For example, the United States and its NATO allies have recently moved to admit three central European nations, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, with the possibility of more new eastern members to follow. This has pushed both NATO’s borders, and its military commitments, further east, and further inland. The Pentagon, which now focuses principally on developing forces for conflicts in the world’s littoral regions, may, early in the next century, find itself having to project military power far inland against an opponent with an anti-access capability.
This condition may also obtain as a consequence of an emerging “Great Oil Rush,” to tap the enormous oil reserves of Central Asia, a region that is both remote from the world’s littoral, and politically unstable as well. The United States has demonstrated its willingness to wage war, if necessary, to preserve its access to oil. Consequently, if this region emerges as a major supplier of oil, the U.S. military may also be required to project power into Central Asia as well. Not only would such operations be remote from the littoral (thereby greatly limiting the ability of maritime forces to support such operations), they also would suffer from the absence of the relatively extensive forward-basing structure that the United States has built up over decades in Europe, the Far East and, to a lesser extent, the Persian Gulf.
Another challenge for the U.S. military that will almost certainly emerge is exercising control over urban areas as a mission in peacekeeping operations, and evicting enemy forces from urban areas. Simply put, more and more of the world’s population is residing in urban areas. The trend toward urbanization is particularly pronounced in Third World states, where the United States military also sees significant potential for engaging in major theater wars (MTWs).
In future conflicts, be they major theater wars or peacekeeping operations, the U.S. military may find itself confronted with the “eviction” problem that faced the German Army at Stalingrad in 1942, U.S. forces in Hue in 1968, and the Israeli Army at Beirut in 1982, or the “control” problem that recently confronted U.S. forces in Port-au-Prince and Mogadishu, and which British forces face in Belfast and Russian forces encountered in Grozny. As the Marine Corps Commandant, General “Chuck” Krulak has stated, “If the regional players (state actors and nonstate actors alike) become embroiled in crises, we will likely find urbanized terrain our future battlescape.”24
Urban warfare is substantially different from other forms of land combat, requiring substantially different operational concepts and force structures than warfare in open terrain.25 Urban warfare also tends to be manpower intensive, and typically dilutes the effectiveness of advanced military systems. Both of these characteristics work against the U.S. military’s preference to minimize the risk of casualties and to emphasize its comparative advantage in sophisticated military equipment.
Uninvited Guests
In developing a transformation strategy, the U.S. military will also need to consider some unwelcome, “uninvited guests,” in the form of weapons of mass destruction and unconventional warfare, which may well become interrelated problems over the next decade or two.
While earlier military revolutions typically displaced many of the central forms of military power that preceded them (e.g., cannons obsolescing castles; carriers supplanting battleships), the emerging military revolution will not likely produce the same kind of result with respect to nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction — chemical and biological — are almost certain to cast a long shadow over the emerging military regime. These weapons may, in fact, represent a key element in a regional power’s anti-access capability.
At the other end of the conflict spectrum, unconventional warfare may no longer be synonymous with low-intensity, or low-technology, conflict. Ever greater destructive power, especially in the form of chemical and biological weapons, seems likely to be available to small groups involved in terrorism, subversion, insurgency, and ethnic conflict. Moreover, the information revolution — represented by fax broadcasts, cellular phones, the internet, and the global positioning system — promises to enhance such groups’ effectiveness by improving dramatically their ability to coordinate their activities, and to influence the media and the public directly.26
The United States will likely be confronted with the growing challenge of defending against nontraditional homeland attacks by chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The recent use of sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system and the confiscation of biotoxins in the possession of criminal elements within the United States indicate that the barriers to acquiring these weapons are eroding rapidly.27 The ability of small groups to execute these kinds of attacks may make them instruments of both terrorism and state conflict. Regional rogue states might view the threat of WMD attacks by nontraditional means as both a deterrent to future Desert Storm-like U.S. air campaigns on their homeland, or perhaps as a means of executing covert strikes against the U.S. homeland which leave “no fingerprints.” Finally, as the United States continues its shift from an industrial-based economy to the world’s first information-based economy, it also may be confronted with the challenge of defending against electronic attacks on its economic and social infrastructure.
The QDR: Talking the Talk…
The QDR, which was released in May 1997, represents an improvement over its predecessor, the so-called Bottom-Up Review, which was completed in September 1993. However, it also suffers from major shortcomings.28 Despite its declarations to the contrary, the QDR actually places the U.S. defense program’s principal emphasis on meeting near-term requirements, such as major theater wars and smaller-scale contingencies.
To its credit, the QDR acknowledges that the U.S. military will likely face very different challenges over the long-term than it does today. The QDR even subscribes to the contention that, for the U.S. military to “meet the demands of a dangerous world . . . throughout the period from 1997 to 2015,” it must not only “meet our requirements . . . in the near term, [but] at the same time we must transform U.S. combat capabilities and support structures to be able to shape and respond effectively in the face of future challenges.”29
Yet the resulting QDR defense program differs little in form from that of the 1993 Bottom-Up Review, which offered a smaller, but similar defense program to that established by the Bush Administration’s 1991 Base Force, which was conducted before the Soviet Union passed into history. The QDR’s recommended changes in force structure and modernization programs are incremental, and appear driven not so much by the strategic imperative to effect a transformation of the American military, but rather by a fiscal imperative to reduce an overly ambitious Bottom-Up Review defense program that could not be sustained by the resources projected to be made available to the Defense Department.
This view is seconded by the National Defense Panel (NDP), which was mandated by the same Congressional legislation that established the QDR, and which was tasked with evaluating the results of the QDR. The NDP concluded that the QDR suffers from “insufficient connectivity between the [call for a transformation] strategy on the one hand, and force structure, operational requirements, and procurement decisions on the other.”30
To be sure, the QDR emphasizes exploiting the “revolution in military affairs” as a means for helping the U.S. military prepare to meet the very different challenges of the future.31 However, it is difficult to identify the QDR’s strategy for doing so. While the military services are independently (and unevenly) engaged in some very interesting initiatives to develop a better understanding of the post-RMA military regime’s opportunities and challenges, and to identify the systems, operational concepts, and organizational changes that will be required if the U.S. military is to sustain its competitive advantages, one strains in vain to find a “guiding hand” at work fashioning an overall transformation strategy.32
Tight Shoes: The Long-Term Budget Challenge
The QDR should also be given credit for its efforts to bring the defense program into balance with the resources projected to be made available for sustaining it. It clearly recognizes that migration of funding out of modernization programs and into the O&S (operations and support) accounts has become both a clear trend and a potential serious long-term problem.33
However, the QDR offers what will likely prove only a temporary “fix” to this problem. The reason is that, relative to the BUR, the QDR expands the range of challenges for which U.S. forces must prepare, but does so with no corresponding increase in resources, no apparent increase in risk, and no elaboration of priorities. This happy state of affairs (static budgets and increased commitments, with no corresponding increase in risk) could be effected if the Pentagon were either to field far more effective forces (e.g., by vigorously exploiting the emerging military revolution), or become far more efficient in its management of existing resources. Yet neither condition seems likely to obtain.
As with previous defense plans, the QDR assumes that major efficiency savings will be realized in the “out years,” allowing the Defense Department to avoid more “tough choices” today (e.g., with respect to force structure and modernization cuts).34 And although much is made of exploiting the military revolution, no “transformation” wedges have been programmed into the budget to facilitate it. Vigorous experimentation and innovation characterize periods of military revolution. As new systems, operational concepts, and military formations are identified, funding will be needed to transform the existing force. Not only is the QDR unclear as to where this funding will come from, it also risks another episode of “O&S migration” (from the research, development, test and evaluation account, and from the procurement account) by failing to explicitly decrease near-term commitments (e.g., the two-major theater war posture, forward presence levels, and peacekeeping operations tempo) — that is to say, by failing to accept increased near-term risk.
Over the long-term, the QDR’s recommended cuts in force structure and modernization plans, if coupled with its proposed two new rounds of base closures could yield annual savings of $7-8 billion. However, achieving these savings will be difficult, given Congress’ reluctance to support some of these measures, including further base closures and reductions in the National Guard. In any case, such savings would not be sufficient to eliminate the gap between the cost of DoD’s long-term plans and projected funding levels, which prior to the QDR was estimated at $20 billion per year after the turn of the century.35
The situation becomes gloomier still when one examines the provisions of the balanced budget agreement recently agreed to by the Clinton Administration and Congress. The QDR assumes that DoD funding levels will remain at roughly $255 billion (FY 1998 dollars) annually over the long term. However, it is quite possible that the balanced budget agreement could lead to defense budgets in the $235 range early in the next decade.36 Given the QDR’s emphasis on near-term challenges, such as the two major theater war capability and engagement in smaller-scale contingencies, budget shortfalls could “crowd out” investment in preparing for future challenges, further hobbling efforts to effect a transformation of the American military.
Military Transformation: Why Now?
Given the magnitude of the transformation involved, the natural tendency of senior defense decision to worry about today’s problems, and what seems likely to be substantial annual shortfalls between the QDR defense program and the resources available to sustain it, the temptation to defer the development and execution of a transformation strategy is likely to remain strong. Yielding to such a temptation, however, would be a grievous error, for the reasons elaborated upon below.
Military transformations typically take a considerable amount of time, at least a decade and often closer to a score of years, to play out. Indeed, today even those military systems that are placed on a “fast track” for development and fielding often take ten years or more to reach forces in the field. Considerable additional time is required to determine how best to employ new military systems, and to make the appropriate force structure adjustments.
Periods of military revolution also are characterized by an increased risk of strategic surprise, such as that which occurred with submarine warfare early in this century, and which might occur again with the onset of anti-access capabilities and competition in space. Given these considerations, senior Defense Department leaders must begin now to develop and execute a transformation strategy if the U.S. military is to be prepared for the very different kinds of challenges which they may confront over the long term.
Moreover, as noted above, military revolutions typically find the effectiveness of certain military systems in rapid decline. The displacement of the horse cavalry by mechanized forces is but one example. However, it is far from clear in advance which military systems, operational concepts, or new force structures will prove effective, and which will not. Put another way, not only will a transformation strategy need to be initiated soon, it also will have to take into account military-technical uncertainty. But how?
For a start, the military services will have to tap into rapidly advancing technologies to develop new military systems that can be applied within the framework of new operational concepts (e.g., long-range precision strike), and executed by new kinds of military organizations. It is this combination of technology, emerging military systems, new operational concepts and force restructuring that often produces the discontinuous leap in military effectiveness characteristic of military revolutions. Greater emphasis should be placed on experimenting with a variety of military systems, operational concepts, and force structures, with the goal of identifying those that are capable of solving emerging strategic and operational problems, or exploiting opportunities, and of eliminating those which are not.
The result would provide the Defense Department with strategic “options” on a range of military capabilities. These options could be retained to dissuade prospective competitors from resuming a high level of military competition. In the event dissuasion or deterrence fails, these options could be exercised to support U.S. forces’ efforts to prevail in war. Furthermore, the creation of strategic options does not necessarily involve a defense budget “train wreck.” Recall, for example, that the U.S. military developed the foundation for strategic aerial bombardment, the carrier navy, modern amphibious warfare, and mechanized air-land operations during the relatively lean budget years of the 1920s and 1930s. What it does imply is a different set of budget priorities, and a different apportioning of security risk.37
While the defense budget need not be a major barrier to transformation, such barriers can appear in the form of budget politics, old ways of doing business, and misplaced notions of efficiency. Supporting experimentation and innovation in a period of great change and uncertainty implies a heightened tolerance of honest failure. There should be some “wildcatting” involved in trying to identify the solutions to new military problems and opportunities. By contrast, if a “no mistakes” approach to transformation is adopted, the result will likely be a “smaller but similar” U.S. military, as strong incentives will exist to deviate as little as possible from what is “proven” to be effective in today’s military. In effect, the desire for efficiency may well crowd out the innovation that will enable the transformation to a far more effective military.
In some instances, effecting a military transformation will mean greater competition among the military services, not less. Congress and many military reformers have — in many cases, quite rightly — decried the amount of overlap and redundancy that exists among the four military services. However, competition among the Services can also assist in determining how best to exploit new capabilities, or how to solve emerging challenges. This kind of competition should be encouraged. Allocating a new mission to one military service runs the risk of falling into the trap of false efficiencies. In the case of the anti-access challenge, for example, it is not yet clear whether the solution is to be found in Air Force long-range precision strikes, strikes from a Navy task force comprising a “distributed” capital ship (i.e., carriers, and arsenal ships and Trident “stealth battleships” fitted with hundreds of vertical launch systems for long-range PGMs, all linked by an expanded version of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability battle-management network and Marine “infestation” forces), Army forces employing long-range missiles and weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or a combination of these capabilities, or perhaps something quite different.38
America’s military leaders seem divided as to how best to proceed. Some see a future that is indeed very different from today, one which will require major changes in the U.S. armed forces. Yet, for many there also is the temptation to emphasize today’s threats and challenges, even if they seem small relative to those encountered during the Cold War, or those which might be confronted over the longer term. This is natural; no commander wants something to go wrong on his “watch.” There also is the fear among some senior military officials that, if they attempt a transformation, their service will become a victim of the “volunteer’s dilemma.” Simply put, if they “volunteer” to accept increased risk in the near term (say, by reducing the size of their force structure, or adopting a “staggered,” or “tiered,” readiness posture) while the danger to U.S. security is relatively low in order realize savings to invest in transformation, they risk having these funds siphoned to fill other priorities, such as reducing the federal budget deficit.39 Thus, from the military services’ perspective, there are strong incentives to support the QDR defense program, even if it seems increasingly inappropriate for the future.
Conclusion
The United States military today has a commanding advantage in military capability. But in a period of great geopolitical and military-technical change and uncertainty, it is far from clear that this advantage will be sustained over the long term. If, as seems likely, we are in the early stages of a military revolution, it will yield both new challenges for the U.S. military, and new opportunities as well, which will ultimately require some major changes in existing operational concepts, and perhaps the emergence of new operational concepts — such as information superiority, long-range precision strikes, and space control.
The U.S. military will almost certainly have to undertake a major transformation if it is to meet emerging challenges and exploit new opportunities in a way that will preserve its current relative advantages and support what should be the principal U.S. national security objective: ensuring that the next century is not scarred with the global conflicts and cold wars that have characterized this century. Finally, because military transformation will likely require a decade or more to complete, it is important that the Defense Department develop a transformation strategy that can be initiated in the near-term future.
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The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is an independent, policy research institute established to promote innovative thinking about defense planning and investment strategies for the 21st century. CSBA research makes clear the inextricable link between defense strategies and budgets in fostering a more effective and efficient defense, and the need to transform the U.S. military in light of the emerging military revolution. CSBA is directed by Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich.
