?of the tabloid mavens, and probablyfor good reason. Foretelling the fu-ture can be a dicey enterprise.

This does not mean that the futureis entirely opaque. While it may notbe possible to predict specific eventsor outcomes, one can draw usefulconclusions and take prudent actionsbased on major trends and alternativescenarios.

Summer 1993 / JFQ 25

The security architecture of the Cold War and the doctrine of containment are fading away. But without aformal mechanism to redraw disputed international boundaries, we seem to be in for a prolonged period ofregional conflict. Challenges will proliferate as the world population grows, ethnic and religious antagonismsare unleashed by the end of communism, and political and military institutions undergo change. Who willbe our adversaries and how can the Armed Forces prepare for the warfare of the future? Moreover, how canwe plan sensibly in the face of declining budgets and technological developments? What should be scrapped,what must be procured, and how can rivers of information be reduced to usable products and directed towhere they are needed? Looking ahead like the great military visionaries of the past, and with the benefit ofsound analysis, we can begin to discern trends that have import for our national interests and the joint capabilities which the services will need to defend them.

Summary

What’s Ahead for the Armed ForcesBy D A V I D E. J E R E M I A H

Late each December the su-permarket tabloids runNew Year’s predictions offamous astrologers andpsychics. These forecast ce-

lebrity marriages, divorces, and dal-liances, alien encounters, disasters-to-be, and the latest message from Elvis.To my knowledge, no one ever goesback a year later to tally the accuracy

0501 Jeremiah 10/14/97 8:18 AM Page 25

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Since becoming Vice Chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, I’ve been deeply inter-ested in the tremendous change our world isundergoing. The national security paradigmof the past half-century, an architecture builton containment of communism and compe-tition with the Soviet Union, has given way.

What will take its place? What are theimplications for the Armed Forces? Andwhat should we be doing now to prepare forfuture demands? Following are somethoughts on how our world is changing andwhat those changes portend for the future ofthe American military and our overall na-tional security posture.

Elements of ChangeGreat wars leave turbulence in their

wake. World War I left a civil war in Russia, asullen Germany wracked by internal strife,and flotsam adrift in what had once been

Austria-Hungary and the OttomanEmpire. Similarly, the defeat of theAxis powers in World War II un-leashed forces that changed theface of Europe, Asia, and Africa.The passing of the Cold War nowhas map-makers scrambling forpens and fresh ink, while territorialsquabbles, civil wars, and humani-tarian tragedies are popping up likepoisonous mushrooms.

After earlier wars, nations com-monly held grand conclaves to re-

store order. Delegates to the Versailles PeaceConference after World War I tinkered withinternational boundaries and devised newstates, mandates, and protectorates. As WorldWar II drew to a close, Allied leaders solemnlybrokered territorial adjustments and other-wise laid the framework for a changed post-war world. They also agreed to create theUnited Nations, hoping its lofty councilswould find peaceful, rational ways to resolve(or at least referee) international problems.

But when the Cold War finally shud-dered to a halt, no epoch-making summit

gathered to pore overmaps, pencil in newboundaries, or for-mally induct new,odd-sounding statesinto the fraternity ofnations. Would-benew members have

been left to establish an independent politi-cal identity by their own devices. Some,such as united Germany, Slovakia, and manynew republics of the former Soviet Union,have done this through a more or lesssmooth political transition. Other aspirantssuch as Bosnia, Armenia, and Georgia foundthe path to statehood slippery with blood.

Many Americans hope that the quarrelsand feuds around the world are merely aCold War hangover. They assure themselvesthat things will “quiet down” once lingeringCold War toxins are finally metabolized.Sadly, that seems highly unlikely. The prob-lems simmering in so many parts of theworld show no signs of abating. On the con-trary, we may be in for a prolonged period ofconflict and crisis in the international arena.And the Armed Forces are in for some verydangerous years as they stand ready to pro-tect our Nation’s interests through thesevolatile times.

As it faces the future, our military isbeing buffeted by winds of change fromthree different compass points: changes inthe international community, changes inthe way our forces are organized and em-ployed, and changes in the realm of technol-ogy. Each of these is gusting with such forcethat any one alone would make our futureextremely demanding.

New World DisorderThe world is going through an incredi-

ble metamorphosis. Some changes are di-rectly related to the end of the Cold War;others have no connection with the lateEast-West conflict. The sum total of thesechanges, whatever their source, is a worldteeming with nascent crises. A new adminis-tration took office earlier this year deter-mined to make domestic issues its first prior-ity, but vexing international problemsdemand its attention with the persistence ofa salesman with his foot in the door. Whatdoes this portend?

The end of the Cold War invalidated allthe old strategic postulates of the past fourdecades. The most obvious changes rippledalong the old East-West fault lines, whereformer antagonists have become friends andpartners. The ease with which we negotiatedthe START II treaty with the Russians is a

W H A T ’ S A H E A D

Admiral David E. Jeremiah, USN, is the

second Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff. He has been Commander in Chief,

U.S. Pacific Fleet, and served on destroyers

earlier in his naval career.

A soldier standingguard outside the village of Belet Uen,Somalia, during Oper-ation Restore Hope.

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measure of thatchange: both nationsrecognize that, in achanged world, we havemuch more to gain from reducingstockpiles than from clinging to theoverlarge nuclear arsenals that were once thetokens of superpower manhood.

The spectacular collapse of the SovietUnion and its empire raises hopes that thelast Communist holdouts—namely, China,

North Korea, and Cuba—willsuccumb as well. Looking atthe likes of Fidel Castro andKim Il Sung, one can scarcelyavoid the conclusion thatcommunism is increasinglyan ideology of embittered

old men and that it may very well die outwhen they do. But the turmoil attending thedismantling of communism in the formerSoviet Union warns us of the difficulty ofgoing from a police-state dictatorship todemocracy and from a state-run to a marketeconomy. While the demise of communismin its few remaining strongholds would be ajoyous triumph (especially for the people liv-ing in those benighted lands), it is not at allcertain that this will happen without strifeand bloodshed.

The end of the Cold War has broughtchange in less obvious ways as well. Itcaused the bottom to fall out of the marketfor strategic real estate and leverage in theThird World. Nonaligned states can nolonger panhandle the United States or theSoviet Union for aid, arms, and political pa-tronage by playing one superpower againstthe other. On the other hand, the UnitedNations has finally been released from therack that once painfully stretched it betweenWashington and Moscow. Still pale, trem-bling, and rubbing its wrists, it has begun tograpple with the substantive role first envi-sioned for it nearly fifty years ago—and tosuffer new agonies from the real work of in-ternational problem solving.

The focus of our multilateral and bilat-eral security treaties is also shifting. Origi-nally intended to contain Communist ex-pansion, their value has outlasted the SovietUnion and the Warsaw Pact. In Europe, the

we must know, decide,and act faster than ourenemy at every turn

A computer screen in theNavy Space CommandOperations Center dis-playing satellite tracksand coverage areas.

U.S. Navy photo by Chuck Mussi

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Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific, our secu-rity ties and forward presence are the corner-stones of regional stability. As we saw in thePersian Gulf, existing security arrangementsform the hard nucleus around which widerpartnerships can quickly coalesce duringmajor crises. And in the future, regional al-liances such as NATO may yet become execu-

tive agents for the United Na-tions, deputized to act onbehalf of the entire interna-tional community to resolveneighborhood disputes.

For the United States it-self, the end of the East-Westconflict profoundly changedour entire strategic outlook. Afew years ago we threw away

the old strategy focused on the Soviet threatand replaced it with a new one. We calcu-lated that regional crises were the mostlikely threats, so instead of a global capabilityfor global war we now have a strategy aimedat a global capability for regional crises.

This new strategy recognizes that we nolonger have a single great adversary. It ac-knowledges new realities in international af-fairs. It recognizes the practical limits to ourown resources and relies on a smaller forcestructure. But it also recognizes that theUnited States still needs strong, capable mili-tary forces to defend its interests. And it rec-ognizes that, even with the end of the ColdWar, the world is still unstable and danger-ous. This perception is extremely importantbecause, independent of the changes arisingfrom the end of the Cold War, there is ahigh probability we will see a general wors-ening of international conditions over thenext twenty or thirty years.

A few years ago I commissioned a studythat looks ahead to the year 2025. Thatstudy, Project 2025, found some very dis-turbing trends. Perhaps the most powerfultrend is demography: the world populationwill balloon to nearly ten billion people overthe next few decades, with most of that in-crease coming in lesser developed countries.For them, population growth is like a giantmillstone crushing their hopes for eco-nomic, social, and political progress. With-out an international effort to get populationgrowth under control, perhaps one-quarterof the Earth’s population will be hungryevery day in 2025. Many governments will

be chronically unable to meet their people’smost basic needs. We may have already seenthis future in Somalia. Even among fairlywell-to-do nations, we can expect fiercecompetition for natural resources, includingenergy, unpolluted water, and perhaps evenfresh air.

There is great potential for huge migra-tions as people flee conflict or search for bet-ter economic conditions. In many areas,these new pressures will rub salt in festeringethnic, religious, or political wounds. Rightnow Europe has more refugees and displacedpersons than at any time since the end ofWorld War II, with more than three milliongenerated by the fighting in the Balkansalone. Germany’s problems with refugeesand foreign residents—plus the chillingly fa-miliar antagonisms they have aroused—con-stitute the most explosive domestic issuethere since the end of the Third Reich. Stirinto this soup the proliferation of modernarmaments, including ballistic missiles andweapons of mass destruction, and the resultis a real witch’s brew.

All this adds up to a strong likelihoodof international crisis and conflict. But re-cent events remind us that, in a world vil-lage increasingly linked by modern commu-nications, even intra-national problems cansometimes rouse the international commu-nity to collective action, either in anger orin sympathy.

More collective action is likely in the fu-ture. Traditionally, no matter how outra-geous or despicable their conduct, tyrantsfrom Idi Amin and Pol Pot to Saddam Hus-sein had little to fear so long as they con-fined their cruelty to their own territory.Their immunity sprang from the idea thatnational sovereignty supersedes any com-plaint about a nation’s internal behavior, anaxiom particularly dear to thugs anddespots. Out of respect for this rule, the fam-ily of nations has repeatedly averted its eyesfrom even the most monstrous atrocities.

This inertia is disappearing as the inter-national community slowly recognizes amoral imperative to step in to halt genocidalcrimes even when they are committed underthe claim of national sovereignty. But gettingfrom the theoretical acceptance of this idea to

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the practical how’s, why’s, and wherefore’s isanother matter. So far, the United Nations hasnot found a formula that would allow last-re-sort intervention while at the same time safe-

guarding against abuse ofthis power. (And abuse isnot an unrealistic worry.The U.N. General Assem-bly is not that far removedfrom the days when itgleefully endorsed almost

any anti-Western or anti-Israeli screed, themore venomous the better.)

In times to come, the internationalcommunity may close the loophole thattoday allows tyrants to abuse their own peo-

ple as they please. Ido not advocate adiminution of na-tional sovereignty,nor would I want toincite internationallynch mobs. Butgenocidal crimessuch as those com-mitted by the KhmerRouge in Cambodia,by Saddam Husseinagainst Iraq’s Kurdsand Shi’as, and byBosnian Serbs—whohave made “ethniccleansing” a syn-onym for wholesalerape and massacre—should not be toler-ated. The right to na-tional sovereigntyought not to be abso-lute in cases of geno-cide any more thanchild abuse carried

out in a private home should be beyond thereach of criminal law. Perhaps the commu-nity of nations will find a way to addressthis need. If so, this will become anothernew element in the international securityenvironment.

Amid these changes, there is one impor-tant constant that remains true in spite of theend of the Cold War, and in spite of all thefretful problems on the horizon: the uniqueleadership role of the United States in worldaffairs. We are not just the world’s only super-power; we are also a leader in promoting

human rights, democracy, free enterprise, andthe rule of law in international affairs. Othernations trust and respect us not just becausewe are powerful, but because we represent hu-manity’s moral conscience. We do not alwaysdo this perfectly, but on the whole we do itwell enough and often enough that we have aunique stature in the international commu-nity. General Sir Peter de la Billière, who com-manded British forces during the Persian GulfWar, expressed this very clearly when he saidrecently that “the one stabilizing influence inthe world today is the power and the com-mon sense of America.”

Consider Somalia. When I was there lastfall, Somalia looked like hell’s waiting room.But despite a lot of media exposure and inter-national hand wringing, nothing much hap-pened to help the relief agencies until theUnited States stepped forward. Then othernations followed our lead, and today Somaliahas been saved from starvation and banditryby a remarkable international effort. For bet-ter or worse, no other country, not even theUnited Nations, can mobilize internationalenergies the way the United States can. Wecannot abdicate that responsibility now justbecause we have other things on our plate.

We cannot be the world’s policeman—but we are obliged to be its most civic-mindedcitizen. To carry out this role we will needwell-trained, well-armed, and highly mobileforces. But these forces may be configured dif-ferently than in years past and find them-selves performing tasks other than the tradi-tional missions of “deter and defend.”

The Future of American ForcesA few years ago we designed a new

structure for the Armed Forces. Our principalconcern in doing this was to tailor them tothe demands of a post-Cold War world of re-gional crises rather than global conflict. Thishas already meant large cuts in forces andprograms, especially those (strategic and tac-tical nuclear weapons, forward-deployedforces in Europe, attack submarines, and soforth) that were geared chiefly toward ashowdown with the Soviet Union. Today De-fense Secretary Les Aspin is overseeing a“bottom-up” review to identify where morestreamlining or restructuring can be done.The final result will be smaller, lighter, more

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A unit of the 10th

Mountain Division coordinating withCanadian forces in Somalia.

instead of a global capa-bility for global war wehave a global capability forregional crises

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flexible, and more lethal forces than ever.More of these forces will be based in theUnited States. We are making large invest-ments in strategic mobility—the C–17 air-craft and fast sealift—that will strengthen ourability to hurry forces and their supportinglogistics to distant trouble spots.

An important part of this downsizingand realignment is a stronger-than-evercommitment to joint operations. No matterwhere we fight in the future, and no matterwhat the circumstances, we will fight as ajoint team. The Armed Forces of the UnitedStates will never again poke as individualfingers; rather they will always strike as aclosed fist. As we learned in Vietnam, whenyou go into combat, you go after a clearlydefined objective and you go to win. We willgang up with every joint resource at our dis-posal whenever summoned to battle.

The transition to a smaller force tailoredfor regional crises isgoing very well, butit could still be luredonto the rocks unlesswe are careful. Sirenvoices are alreadycalling for faster cuts,for narrowing currentbroad-based capabili-ties, or for sacrificingday-to-day readinessto retain structure orprograms.

We are already cutting our forces asquickly as we can without compromisingreadiness. The importance of caution wasburned into our memory after World War II,when our demobilization looked like a massjail break. Just five months after Japan’s sur-render, Admiral Chester Nimitz complainedthat the United States itself had “done whatno enemy could do, and that is reduce itsNavy almost to impotency. . . . [Today] yourNavy has not the strength in ships and per-sonnel to carry on a major military opera-tion.” The Army suffered a similar fate. Atwar’s end, it had six million men under arms;by March 1948, that number had shriveledto barely 530,000, most of whom were newconscripts. General Omar Bradley wrote thatas a result the Army “could not fight its wayout of a paper bag.” He was very nearly right,as the opening of the Korean war sadly

demonstrated. We need to resist attempts tospeed up our cuts lest we wind up once againwith hollow forces unready for combat.

Our forces were meat-axed after WorldWar II because our government naivelythought atomic weapons and strategic bomb-ing made other elements of military powerobsolete. Secretary of Defense James Forrestaleventually complained to Congress that pos-session of the atomic bomb had “engendered[a] . . . mistaken sense of security and compla-cency” in the country. It took the debacle ofTask Force Smith in the first days of the Ko-rean War to shake us out of this complacencyand to remind us of the need for broad-based, balanced forces. Every military situa-tion is different, and each requires a forcespecially tailored to its unique conditions.The forces we sent to Somalia, for example,are unlike those that fought their way intoKuwait and Iraq. America’s future is bestserved by a force mix that does not place toomany eggs in any one basket, but which in-stead draws on the synergy of balanced, flexi-ble joint forces.

Another proposal suggests we replace ac-tive forces with cheaper Reserve componentones. To fulfill our new strategy, we needstrong, tough, capable forces that can goquickly—within days or even hours—to thescene of a smoldering crisis. For this to bedone by Reserve units, they would have tomaintain a level of day-to-day readinessidentical to that of active forces. Such a highstandard of readiness costs about the samewhether in the Reserve, the Guard, or activeforces. Reserve combat forces with the readi-ness necessary for tomorrow’s problemswould have to be active units in all butname. A better choice is for us to maintainactive fire brigades backed up by appropriateelements of the Reserve components, espe-cially in the areas of combat support andcombat service support.

This will require a downsizing andreshuffling of our Reserve components com-parable to that taking place in the activeforces. We greatly expanded our Reserve andNational Guard forces in the 1980s to coun-terbalance the Warsaw Pact’s huge numeri-cal superiority in ground troops. Today itmakes no sense to keep that enlarged ColdWar-era force. Consequently, we have laidout cuts that will align our Reserve compo-nents to new strategic needs—cuts that will

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U.S. and Spanish air-craft used in supportof Operation RestoreHope in Somalia linethe runway at MoronAir Base in Spain.

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still leave them larger than before their ex-pansion in the last decade. But most impor-tantly, this will leave the Armed Forces over-all in a stronger, more robust, more capableposture than could be achieved by schemesthat would skew us away from a balancedstructure.

The third temptation is to create falsesavings by plundering our operations andmaintenance accounts. The superb forces wehave today—qualitatively our best ever—would be betrayed by such a policy. Combatreadiness is more than the sum of ships,planes, and divisions. It demands soldiers,sailors, marines, and airmen who are welltrained and well led. Readiness cannot beachieved or sustained on the cheap. But sincereadiness is hard to quantify, sometimes ouroperations and maintenance accounts areviewed as piggy banks we can break into forspare change. The absolute importance ofgood training and sound maintenance showsup only on battlefield ledgers, where the redink entries are written in blood.

In addition to the challenges posed bydownsizing and restructuring, our forces willalso have to adapt to changing missions. Wehave already seen a substantial expansion oftheir roles in just the past few years, every-thing from counterdrug operations to reliefefforts in Iraq, Russia, Somalia, and elsewhere.

There is nothing inherently wrong withsuch departures from traditional roles pro-vided we remember that the first purpose ofmilitary forces is to fight, not sniff outdrugs or deliver food baskets. The reasonwe are good at other things is because, rela-tive to other law enforcement or reliefagencies, we are big, have ample trainedmanpower and capable leaders, and can callon marvelous resources—including a logis-tical system that surpasses the wildestdreams of any civilian agency. But all theseadvantages are, in one way or another,byproducts of combat readiness.

The future may widen the gap betweenthe role of military force in the old sense andthe modern utility of military forces. Thoseof us in uniform have been trained to seethe two as being almost inextricably inter-twined, as Clausewitz and Mahan contend.But today and in the future our forces maybe assigned missions that have little or noth-ing to do with coercive military force in the

traditional sense—like Operation RestoreHope in Somalia.

This does not mean the old roles aregoing away. We reminded Saddam Husseinof that two years ago. We used overt militarypower to force his withdrawal from Kuwait,and later we successfully used the threat ofmilitary force to create a safe haven forKurds in northern Iraq.

But there are also situations in whichmilitary force alone can do very little. Yugo-slavia is a good example. We all wish the car-nage would stop; but injecting U.S. groundforces into Bosnia without a workable peaceagreement among all parties would be nomore successful than in Beirut ten years ago.The killing would go on, the horror wouldcontinue, and Americans would be amongthe dead. A noble desire to “do something” isnot an adequate basis for risking our servicemen and women. There are limits to what

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force can do, and we need to remember thatour military power is not the only—or ofteneven the best—way to promote peace andstability abroad.

By themselves these two big trends—continuing changes in the internationalcommunity and restructuring our forces toaddress those changes—would be amplychallenging. But they are not the onlyagents of change on the horizon. Right nowwe are surfing just below the crest of a fabu-lous revolution in technology, and that crestis about to crash down on us.

The Challenges of New TechnologySuperior weaponry has been a character-

istic of the U.S. Armed Forces for a long timeand will remain so. But to fully exploit daz-zling new opportunities, we need to stream-line our procurement system. We also needto pay attention to how we adapt new tech-nologies to military use, and to how we willcommand and control our future forces.

Like the tabloid astrologers, we cannotpredict for certain which new technologieswill prove most useful. But we can make outsome ways they will reshape our forces, andbecause of this R&D is already shifting. Weare moving away from systems that cannotbe easily adapted to exploit new technolo-gies that do not have a high degree of strate-gic or tactical mobility, or that are so highly

specialized they can onlybe used against a narrowthreat or in a unique en-vironment. We do notwant systems that lacklow-observable or stealthtechnologies. We intendto get away from systems

that need large, vulnerable logistical tails.And we may very well move away from ex-pensive, highly sophisticated platforms infavor of cheaper trucks or barges based oncommercial vehicles but crammed withstate-of-the-art long-range weapons, sensors,and communications gear.

This does not mean we are about tosound the death knell for the major capitalsystems of our services—the main battletank, the manned aircraft, and the large sur-face combatant. These will have their placein the Armed Forces of the future, al-though—and this is important—that place

may not be the central position they haveheld for the past half century or more. It isnot yet time to kill all the sacred cows, butthey should be put into a very selectivebreeding program.

We cannot be too beholden to any out-dated or obsolete system because technologi-cal change makes our day-to-day grip on techno-logical superiority all the more fragile. Ourposition is similar to that of the Royal Navy acentury ago when the British introduced anew class of large, fast, heavily armed war-ship. Overnight, the dreadnought (essentiallythe first modern battleship) made everyother type of surface combatant obsolete.The irony for the British was that this madethe rest of the Royal Navy, the strongest navyin the world, obsolete as well. The Britishhad to start over like everybody else, and thismeant competitors could take a short cut.Nations like Germany, which had neverdreamed of challenging the Royal Navy be-fore, could become formidable sea powerssimply by building fleets of dreadnoughts.

Today we are in an analogous position.Although we are by far the strongest militarypower in the world, our superiority nolonger depends on outproducing our ene-mies as we did when we were “The Arsenalof Democracy” in World War II, nor even onsuperior design in aircraft, ships, and tankslike we had during the Cold War. Increas-ingly, our superiority depends on having thelatest microchip, the latest superminiaturesensor, or the most advanced information-processing software. But right now, we havean acquisition system that is not designed toassure our superiority in those areas.

Our current acquisition system is aproduct of the Cold War. It was designed togive us large numbers of advanced systemsas rapidly as possible. This was costly, but itserved us well when we faced great nationaldanger. Over time, however, that acquisitionsystem also become risk-averse. We got soconcerned about scandals that we loaded itdown with checks and audits. These helpedus avoid procurement scandals but at theprice of driving up costs and impeding rapidtechnological progress. As a result, we havelost our technological agility.

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We desperately need to streamline ourdefense acquisition system. We need a broadfront R&D strategy so we will not be surprisedby breakthroughs in areas where our technol-ogy lags behind. We also need to compressthe time from concept to final product so theacquisition cycle can keep up with state-of-the-art technology. And we need to do allthis within the constraints of future defensespending. To get there from here, we need tostrip away some of the legislative and regula-tory barnacles that encrust the acquisition

cycle. We need to exploit shortcuts such ashardware-in-the-loop testing and computer-aided design, manufacturing, and logisticalsupport. We may need to reverse the histori-cal relationship between defense and com-mercial technologies. In the past, commercialapplications were often the spin-off byprod-ucts of defense R&D; in the future, we willprobably rely more on adapting the latestcommercial technologies for military use—achange that promises to yield new militaryapplications faster, cheaper, and better thanthe old Cold War process.

We also need to open our minds to newideas about how we can separate technologi-cal progress from costly full-scale deploy-ment. Our new regional-crisis strategy frees usfrom the need to keep large, homogeneouslyequipped forces. Instead, we can now toleratemore unique units as a way to quickly inte-grate new technology and keep a warm in-

dustrial base while holding down overall ac-quisition costs. Instead of insisting on a uni-form force structure made up, say, of a singletype of air superiority aircraft, we may se-quence new acquisitions through the force.While overall this would produce a heteroge-neous force, we could draw from it the rightmixture of sophistication and mass appropri-ate to any particular crisis. The result may bemore programs like the F–117 rather than theF–16, with our most highly advanced systemsdeployed in only a few selected units.

Technological superiorityis not just a measure of hard-ware; it is also a measure of or-ganizational adaptability. Oneaspect of this might be calledlearning curve dominance. Itrefers to the ability to developthe tactics, organizations, train-ing programs, and warfightingdoctrines to exploit new tech-nology effectively. A good ex-ample is the Germans at thebeginning of World War II.They had fewer tanks than theBritish or French, and the tanksthey had were technically infe-rior. But because they had newtactics and organizationswhich allowed them to usetheir technology more effec-tively, the German Blitzkriegcrushed the French and British

armies in a matter of weeks. We should heedsuch lessons and aggressively seek the newapplications that get the most out of our newsystems.

With longer range, greater precision, andhorizontal integration of real-time intelli-gence and targeting, future weapons will beable to strike enemy forces at great distances.In mid- or high-intensity combat, it may notalways be necessary to physically occupy keyterrain on the ground, vital airspace, or criti-cal chokepoints at sea in order to controlthem. While wars will still be won onlywhen soldiers occupy the enemy’s territory, itmay not be necessary in every case to “closewith” the enemy in order to destroy him. Wemay even reach a point at which fire andmaneuver become essentially the same thingunder some circumstances. Such elements as

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traditional unit organization, tactics, andmodes of thinking may not be appropriate tosuch a future. We need to find out what isappropriate and acquire it before our adver-saries do. Otherwise, it will be like hitching aCorvette behind a draft horse: we will not beusing our new hardware in a way that trulyexploits its capabilities.

The future also demands superior com-mand, control, communications, computersand intelligence (C4I). Good weapons, ad-vanced tactics, and flexible, efficient organi-zations will give us a superb military instru-ment. But we need to know where to point

that instrument and how to control it. Thisis where C4I comes in.

The end of the Cold War presents uswith a whole new set of C 4I problems.When the Soviets were our primary worry,we needed expensive systems to meet spe-cialized needs. We bought whole networksof hardened, redundant, focused systems togive us strategic warning or to enable us tofight a global war against a nuclear adver-sary. These assets have not become irrele-vant; but in shifting from a global strategyfor global war to a global strategy for re-gional crises, we now have a new menu ofC4I requirements.

Strategic warning now takes on newmeaning. The theater, the adversary, eventhe nature of the problem—whether it is amilitary conflict or a humanitarian crisis—can change rapidly and may be muchtougher to sort out than in the days of theold East-West rivalry. Many of our currentsystems are not designed for that kind ofwork. For example, satellites cannot tellwhether a crowd is going to a soccer matchor a civil war—admittedly sometimes thesame thing in many parts of the world.

To act quickly and effectively in futureregional crises (and especially with oursmaller force structure, more of which willbe based in the United States), we need aglobal C4I capability that can alert us veryearly to a potential problem, focus on atrouble spot as events develop, surge in ca-pacity when needed, and respond to the pe-culiar operational needs of the joint or com-bined task force commander.

No one else does this as well as we can.Our experiences in Grenada, Panama, andthe Persian Gulf taught us a lot, and the ad-vances we have made in just the past twoyears are eyewatering. But technology isspawning a new problem: an informationexplosion that threatens to choke our C4Isystems with more data than we can ana-lyze. We need to make sure that our futureefforts give us not only more, but also better,more usable information when and wherewe most need it.

We also must understand that such sys-tems fundamentally change the way we com-mand and control forces. Our traditionalmethods have emphasized the flow of infor-

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mation along verticalpaths: information up,orders and instructionsdown. But increasinglywe have architectures inwhich information flowslaterally as well. As a re-sult, knowledge is morepervasive and controlfunctions more decen-tralized. We have not yet come to grips withwhat that means organizationally, but weneed to soon.

We also need to work on end-to-end in-tegration of our C4I systems. We must be ableto know, decide, and act faster than ourenemy at every turn. The data our reconnais-sance systems gather must be transmitted inreal time to command centers, where target-ing decisions can be made in a matter of mo-ments. Then we need to send targeting in-structions to loitering cruise missiles or otherweapons that hit their targets with speciallytailored munitions packages—possibly withterminal guidance from overhead systems.And all this must happen rapidly, since fu-ture combat may resemble a game of elec-tronic cat and mouse between the enemy’shiders and our finders. (Project 2025 gives asobering assessment of so-called pop up war-fare and its implications for U.S. security.)

We need to harness this exciting newtechnology to our emerging requirements.Superior military power in the future will de-pend on superior C4I. Since our adversariesmay have access to some of the same sophis-ticated weapons technologies we do, our ulti-mate trump card will be our ability to know,decide, and act more quickly than they can.

Some Final ThoughtsIt will not be easy for us to tackle these

challenges in the years ahead. Many see ourdeclining defense budgets as just another ob-stacle, one that makes the others insur-mountable. I disagree with this view. In fact,I think the next few decades will be some ofthe most exciting and successful our ArmedForces have ever experienced.

Historically, many of our most impor-tant transformations have come during peri-ods of constrained defense spending. In the

1930s we developed a modern, capable car-rier force that later turned the tide againstthe Japanese in the Pacific. In 1945, GeneralHap Arnold made a controversial decision topush research and development of guidedmissiles when many in the Air Force howledthat this would make manned aircraft obso-lete. Despite this resistance and the slim bud-gets of the late ’40s and ’50s, Arnold’s visioneventually became reality in our ICBM forces.After Vietnam left the Nation with a foultaste for military investments, GeneralCreighton Abrams started the Army on aspiritual and doctrinal renewal that paid offspectacularly in the deserts of Iraq andKuwait. In every case, the keys to successhave been a vision of the future and the de-termination to make it become reality.

In this respect the U.S. Armed Forceshave always been lucky, not just becausethey produced visionaries like Hap Arnold,Creighton Abrams, George Marshall, and Ar-leigh Burke, but because so many servicemen and women at every level joined themin making their visions come to life. Times ofchange have a way of placing a premium noton narrow, specialized knowledge, but onbreadth of understanding and clear thinking.For this, our military education system is thebest in the world. We produce officers who,while well trained in their technical special-ties, can also calmly gaze into the eye of thetiger when it comes to problems of interna-tional politics, grand strategy, force modern-ization and restructuring, or the complexconsequences of future technology.

I place my faith in them. They are in forsome exciting times. JFQ

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