The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments today released an article entitled "The Future of Land Forces" written by CSBA Director of Strategic Studies Michael Vickers. The piece is scheduled to appear in NATO at 50, a collection of articles written by prominent individuals in the international community, which will be distributed to participants of the NATO Summit this weekend.

The article refers to the impending revolution in warfare that will have a major impact on the core strategic missions of land power: deterrence, presence, power projection, decisive battle, land control, and homeland defense. What primarily differentiates this revolutionary change from earlier periods is two factors: its reach will extend beyond state-on-state conflict, and the impetus for change will be largely driven by developments external to the military.

"Within two or three decades, major leaps in awareness and connectivity, range and endurance, stealth and speed, precision and miniaturization, and automation and simulation will transform not only the conduct of war on land, but war in several other dimensions as well," states Mr. Vickers. "By 2020, [if not sooner,] the era of tank primacy and mass armies will be over."

For example, vast leaps in commercial capabilities will provide military organizations with enhanced intelligence collection and dissemination techniques, space-based precision navigation, and communication networks. The proliferation of ballistic and cruise missile technology will create challenges in terms of projecting power into an "anti-access" or theater denial environment. This threat will require new capabilities for the delivery, employment, and sustainment of ground forces, including those operations in urban areas.

What does this mean for future force structures? While there may be shifts in technological capabilities and new challenges, there are several reasons why some armies may change little in the coming decades:

• While high-end power projection may become far more capital-intensive, lower-end operations, such as foreign stability and homeland defense, are likely to remain labor-intensive.

• Traditional forces will still be quite useful for land warfare scenarios that do not involve formidable, anti-access threats.

• Even when potential aggressors pursue "anti-access" capabilities, they will still likely hang on to their armored forces as a praetorian guard to maintain their regime's hold on political power.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) is an independent policy research institute established to promote innovate thinking about defense planning and investment strategies for the 21st Century. Our web site is http://www.csbahome.com.