Transforming Transformation \--\
Will it Change the Character of War?

Arthur K. Cebrowski

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

**only and do not represent the views of the US Government.**

Transforming Transformation \--\
Will it Change the Character of War?

Arthur K. Cebrowski

*\"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable
it.\"*

\--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Our inability to predict the future does not mean that we know nothing
about it, at least within reasonable bounds. Just as there are
constants, so are there trends -- growing ethnic and religious strife,
the reshaping of nation-states, shifting and emerging economic centers,
the escalating value of information and learning, the proliferation of
information technologies in relatively undeveloped societies and
nations, and the emergence of global, transnational terrorism. These
trends and others are reshaping our government, our economy and our
society. Their scope and pace are transforming transformation \-- and
the character of war.

New threats are emerging from societies and people who remain
disconnected from the larger evolving global system. Great power war has
been taken off the table, and we have become so proficient in
conventional state level conflict that the locus of violence has shifted
to the level of the individual actor. This is a more nuanced threat \--
one defined by the vague, the inconsistent, and the irrational
dimensions that we are still at a loss to measure. We are discovering
that our forces must be rebalanced and realigned to the new strategic
context. If the character of war were not changing, these realignments
would not be necessary.

The challenges facing us do not merely require us to redefine the
military piece of national security for an environment lacking a
\"traditional\" battlefield threat. We must forge the broader internal
and international security instruments necessary to support U.S.
leadership in a world where accelerating change and increasing ambiguity
are dominant features, and where threats can adapt and evolve more
rapidly than we are transforming.

The transformation started at the beginning of the administration has,
itself, been transformed. But we must move faster \-- increasingly, the
pace of transformation is not one we set for ourselves. National defense
is no longer just about the Department of Defense...Homeland defense is
no longer an abstraction to the average American citizen, nor is it
conducted solely at long range. This is no longer just about projecting
power \-- rather, it is about exporting security.

Our view of strategic response has been altered. Responsive means
*reactive* -- that we have ceded initiative to an adversary and are
prepared to act in the wake of an attack. The President's *National
Security Strategy* recognizes that the consequences of a potential WMD
attack mandate that we be *preventative*. This is a different approach
reflecting a different role for defense in national security and a need
for different capabilities. For example, if we are going to be
preventative rather than just punitive, a change in intelligence
capabilities is indicated. Clearly, we have to know more sooner. We must
acquire the ability to better identify and understand potential
adversaries. This calls for different organizations, different systems,
and different ways of sharing intelligence. We need the ability to look,
to understand, and to operate deeply within the fault lines of societies
where, increasingly, we find the frontiers of national security.

There used to be some general agreements about the capabilities needed
in our forces. These addressed where we should deploy military forces,
the method of deploying and using those forces, their general structure
and how we should organize them, and the kinds of technology they should
possess. These have been dashed on the hard shoals of reality. The scope
and the pace of geo-political change compel organizations and doctrine
that can readily adapt and retain flexibility within increasingly
complicated operating domains. Increasingly, whether in business or war
\-- adaptivity equates to effectiveness and survival. The nation\'s
military force must be an adaptive instrument of national power. It must
provide *political* utility across a much more diverse and difficult
range of scenarios and circumstances. This force must act as a flexible
instrument of policy engagement, not simply provide a larger sheaf of
thunderbolts.

There are two ways of deciding what U.S. forces ought to be. One is
inductive, an approach that looks for weaknesses, gaps, deficiencies,
and problems, and determines how to correct them. This is the way
Pentagon planners went about designing U.S. military forces for over
half a century. Over time, however, our force planning process took on
the patterns and predictability of the threat it sought to counter. In
the 1950s, for example, the combined average design, development,
engineering, and production time for aircraft and tanks was less than a
decade. By the late 1970s it was approaching two decades. There were
exceptions, but the increasing length of the cycle was pronounced, and
all other dimensions of the U.S. military reflected the pattern. In
general, during the Seventies and Eighties our forces were designed by
the Soviet Union. In the Nineties, they were defined by the inertia of
what was already in the program. Now we must think for ourselves.

The most significant shift in our approach to force planning is the rise
of deductive thinking and capabilities-based planning.
Capabilities-based planning provides a framework for understanding some
of the persistent and emerging challenges before us. While the reality
is far more complicated, these challenges have been grouped as
*traditional, irregular, disruptive,* and *catastrophic.* They indicate
how we must balance the force and how we balance risk \-- not just
technical risk, but all types of risk. Part of capabilities-based
planning is a conscious search for the unexpected, the deviations from
the usual, and the bounds of feasibility. This is an indicator of the
direction of future force capabilities. We once justified systems based
on their capabilities against *traditional* battlefield challenges. To
the degree that a system provided capability against *irregular* or
*catastrophic* challenges, it was an additive \"good.\" But
increasingly, new capabilities that address only traditional threats
will simply be moved off the table. Now we expect to justify systems
based on their capabilities against *irregular* or *catastrophic*
challenges \-- the degree of capability provided against *traditional*
challenges will be the added benefit. This says a lot about the programs
that will be vulnerable when the budget is under stress. We have yet to
see this justification used for many of the largest and most expensive
programs in the Department. We have been living the contradiction of
buying a force for great power war, only to discover that it has to fit
an operational shoe it wasn\'t designed to wear. These changes were
predictable...and ignored.

The need to transform the role of defense in national security and the
organizations and processes that control, support and sustain it cannot
be ignored. To do so is an act of denial -- denial of the profound
change occurring in our world everyday. There is a wealth of evidence
that we have passed the tipping point in transformation. Yet, while we
may have left the starting blocks, we shouldn't anticipate the tape.
Transformation is a continuing process -- a race we run against our own
self-satisfaction, complacency and hubris as much as the challenges of
potential adversaries. Transformation seeks to create our future, and to
shape that future for a greater good, not simply fall victim to other
inertias on the global stage. It does so, in part, by co-evolving
organizations, processes, and technology. However, transformation begins
and ends with culture. Transformation is first and foremost about
changing culture. Culture is about behavior -- about people -- their
attitudes, their values, their behaviors, and their beliefs. What we
believe, what we value, and our attitudes about the future are
ultimately reflected in our actions -- in our strategies and processes,
and the opportunities they create.

**Opportunities in the Information Age**

There are two vectors for transformation acting simultaneously on the
force and how it is used. The first is the appearance of the
civilization's third great period of globalization; the second, and
*more important* is society's movement from the industrial age to the
information age. Both phenomena involve much of the world including
developing nations. This presents not only new rules and challenges for
security, but also creates new opportunities for success.

One of the compelling features about these phenomena is that both are
happening simultaneously. Globalization II was about well-developed
rules. In business terms, it was a \"mature market.\" We understood it
well, and we knew what returns and what margins existed in that market.
But, we also understand that even as the "market" for national security
is growing, the customer base for the capabilities of this earlier era
is shrinking. Globalization III presents unwelcome new "markets" for
national security, and a realization that the rule sets governing our
previous approach to national security are increasingly unsuited to the
scope and pace of the challenges we face. We've also relearned that
national security is not just about Defense.

Just as the character of the new globalization is altering the
geo-political landscape, so too are we learning that movement of
societies from the industrial age to the information age is altering the
efficacy of the methods and means that have defined our military
capabilities for the better part of a century. Many well-developed
concepts, tools and capabilities of the industrial age are simply
inadequate to the pace, rules and relationships of the age of
information.

![](media/image2.wmf)

**"It's the [Behavior]{.underline}..."**

As discussed above, the current and future strategic environment is easy
to describe in terms of change. Some see complexity, and still others
say the magnitude of change suggests uncertainty. But, the labels we
attach to this strategic entropy are less important than our
intellectual response. With the increased use of words such as
\"change,\" \"uncertainty,\" and \"complexity\" the transforming of
transformation should not be a surprise \-- nor should its impact on the
character of war.

Warfare, conflict, and instability are inherent features of our world.
Warfare is a pattern of human behavior that spans recorded history. The
*nature* of warfare, and conflict between nations and states is
fundamentally unchanging \-- it is organized force for political ends.
However, because war is both a political action and a social
institution, the *character* of warfare is changing just as societies,
political entities and technologies change. Accordingly, our American
fixation has been the technical and industrial, means of waging war. Our
collective over-awe at the significance of our industrial achievements
often leads us to expect strategic effects from systems and capabilities
designed for tactical or operational impact. The result is a growing
imbalance between our current capabilities and the range of security
challenges for which our technology isn\'t the sole answer. As the
eminent historian Michael Howard has written:

*\"Let me repeat the analogy about the drunk who lost his watch in a
dark alley, but was found looking for it under a lamp post because there
was more light there. The light provided by our knowledge of
technological capabilities and our capacity for strategic analysis is so
dazzling as to be almost hypnotic; but it is in those shadowy regions of
human understanding based on our knowledge of social development,
cultural diversity and patterns of human behavior that we have to look
for the answers.\"*

The predominant pattern of *human behavior* in the information age is
*network* *behavior*. Network-centric warfare is about human behavior in
a networked environment, and in warfare, human behavior ultimately
determines outcome.

**New Metrics**

The changing face of warfare takes on the characteristics of its age.
Nations, states and others who wage war, do so in ways appropriate to
their culture, values and resources. As network behavior in the form of
organizations, doctrine, strategy, processes and communication are
valued upward, the character of warfare is being altered and we see new
metrics emerging \-- metrics that define the entry fee characteristics
for future forces. At one level they are access, speed, distribution,
sensing, mobility, and networking. These metrics are scale-free and are
as valid at the tactical as they are at the operational and the
strategic levels of war. And they are as applicable in stability,
reconstruction and peacekeeping as they are in high intensity combat.
Our forces are moving toward these metrics. We've seen it in combat
operations in Iraq -- in both major combat operations and beyond. But as
laudable as this shift has been, it's not enough.

Reliance on well-trained and competently led troops is a constant in
warfare. While that won't change, the characteristics that create new
competitive advantage are changing with the age. They have had their own
enduring relevance, but the particulars of the current age have changed
their meaning and sharply revalued them upward. These four metrics for
success in the information age, suggest the essential characteristics of
future forces. They are the ability to:

> \- create and preserve options
>
> \- develop high transaction rates
>
> \- develop high learning rates
>
> \- achieve overmatching complexity at scale

**Creating and Preserving Options**

In information age operating environments \-- where accelerating change
and ambiguity dominate \-- competitive advantage often depends on the
expense and choice of options. Due to increased competition in the
global arena, nations, organizations, and businesses recognize that the
most competitive strategy for enduring survival is the creation and
preservation of options. An option is the right, but not the obligation,
to take or preserve an action in the future. Options allow
organizational adaptation in a rapidly changing battle space,
particularly those dominated by increasing complexity.

The ambiguities resident in a complex adaptive environment demand
flexibility. In financial markets, the value of flexibility is
calculated and robustness is recognized as a requirement for survival.
In this context, robustness is described as a function of variety,
diversity, scalability, high numbers or transaction rates, and options.
An options model for success and survival in warfare is similar to
profitability and solvency in the global market place - mitigation of
risk by hedging against the uncertainty inherent in rapid and
accelerating change. While losses in combat, both in personnel and
materiel, are disproportionately higher to losses in any single business
endeavor, solutions for either are similar. The similarity resides in
the valuation of flexibility. Options are a means to provide that
flexibility.

In these dynamic times, the popular Pentagon practice of picking winners
and losers early in the name of efficiency is perilous and wrong. Why?
In short it's about competition. We end the competition of ideas far too
early in many of our processes, and the loss is not just to the firms
involved, but also to the government. This diminishes institutional
learning and decreases the generation of options. In force building,
options develop through a richer mix of approaches to similar problems
-- the consequence of which is higher learning quality at higher
learning rates -- both for the process and the products that are built.
In combat, options generation appears in new organizational forms of
well-networked combined arms capability with the ability to develop and
act on shared situational awareness. Hence, combatants can reach for a
broader set of tactics -- or, in a word, more *options.* Options,
whether in force building or actual combat, complicates an opponent\'s
situation by increasing his risk of an inappropriate action or even
paralysis.

Providing the tools necessary to create value and ensure competitive
advantage should not be based on deterministic methods. Avoidance of
attempts to predict the future is critical. Instead, we must hedge
against potentially harmful contingencies by considering and making
uncertainty a positive trait rather than a negative one. The resulting
upstream influence provides the nation and its defense establishment the
opportunity to create security value by establishing future competitive
positions early. The subsequent policy objective of dissuasion is thus
more clearly supportive of a *preventative* strategy and could
potentially displace some punitive elements of previous deterrence
options. Although sometimes difficult to quantify, present value of
future capabilities and options for these can have a powerful dissuasive
effect.

**Transaction Rates and Learning**

The complexity of warfare in the information age compels increased
speed. In this context, \"speed\" is a time-based competition or
\"transaction rate.\" Some might call this tempo, others might call this
operational speed. In increasingly dynamic battle space, the effects of
transaction rates are only amplified \-- either as a shortcoming or an
advantage. Locally, high transaction rates can be thought of simply as a
number of interactions. More broadly, transaction rates are about the
numbers of actors, and the number of interactions with the competition
and the environment. The quality of those interactions over time
determines learning and success.

As the pace of change in the information age accelerates, so must the
institutional transactions that create capabilities from "learning."
Stagnation of institutional learning comes at the expense of future
advantage. The world is watching \-- as we perfect the comfortable and
familiar "known," new knowledge enters our force glacially, and we
become a strategically fixed target. Our adversaries are adapting and
evolving at the speed of business while we\'re operating at the speed of
doctrine. If we are to take advantage of what the new age offers, faster
institutional learning is critical. This is why transformation includes
the transformation of the management of defense.

**Overmatching Complexity at Scale**

William Ross Ashby\'s \"Law of Requisite Variety\" posits, \"the larger
the variety of actions available to a control system, the larger the
variety of perturbations it is able to compensate.\" In other words, the
more robust the capabilities in our force, the more options we have
against complex forces and in complex terrain.

Enemies under pressure always retreat to more complex terrain -- from
the high seas to land, from open land to cities and jungles, and
ultimately to very complex social and political domains. A working
definition of complexity is the number of entities, the variety of
entities, and the relationships among them. In general, a more complex
force prevails over a less complex force. We have little difficulty
understanding complexity in a physical sense \-- this is why we like an
enemy to mass; anything we can reduce to a solitary element has less
complexity and is therefore vulnerable to our combined arms
capabilities. This is the basis of center of gravity concepts. This is
also why a guerilla force can give an armored division fits \-- low
mass, low technical sophistication, but very high complexity.

Scale matters as well. In complex environments, the generation of high
transaction rates requires matching scale with scale while over-matching
complexity. This is also why some urban fights go on for extended
periods. There is an imbalance in scale, the transactions rates at the
tactical level of war undergo a dramatic increase in number and
character, and the metrics for success shift from mass and fires to
information, intelligence, and mobility \-- an area where the
\"outsider\" is at a distinct disadvantage.

There are clearly different dimensions of complexity. We live in a
physical world where \"real\" is defined by those things we can touch,
hear, and smell. Accordingly, we traditionally conceptualize the battle
space in physical terms, and develop, acquire and employ capabilities
that have value in the physical world. In short, it is what we know and
do best. Increasingly, however, the most complex elements of the battle
space are non-dimensional. The liability of that term is that it
suggests a battle space that doesn\'t exist in fact or form, and is thus
unconsciously diminished in importance. The emerging reality is that
non-dimensional battle space now defines a new strategic commons, and
comprises the most complex battle space in the conflicts of the 21st
century.

**The New Strategic Commons**

Alfred Thayer Mahan once described the sea as \"a wide common.\"[^1]
This common was the international domain of trade and intercontinental
communication. Nations and states aspired to access and command of this
common for the purpose of establishing and protecting their own unique
competitive advantages globally or regionally. The entry fee necessary
to participate on this strategic common was an economic vitality
sufficient to sustain a strong and capable ocean-going navy. To the
degree this was possible, participation in this great common sustained
or diminished a nation\'s position of power. Command of this common was
synonymous with \"command of the sea.\"[^2] Mahan did not foresee the
advent of flight or the progress of flight into space, but he would
likely agree with more recent additions to the concept \-- air and
space.[^3]

The new strategic common of the 21st century is cyberspace. But, it is a
much more complex domain than that label suggests. Cyberspace is not
simply \"the internet.\" The new strategic common is the domain of
information and cognition that includes the channels of mass media and
finance. Like its conceptual predecessors, it is an international domain
of trade and intercontinental communication. Increasingly, it can
increase, sustain or diminish a nation\'s position of power in economic,
diplomatic, or military terms. However, it differs from its conceptual
predecessors in four fundamental ways \-- first, the entry fee for
access and participation is very low and is thus aspired-to, influenced,
and controlled less by nations and states than by individuals,
organizations and institutions; next, where the sea, air and space were
defined by their physical mediums, cyberspace is essentially
non-dimensional \-- it is increasingly a *creative* and *cultural*
common defined by information, perception, cognition and belief; third,
there is more being made \-- it is expanding non-linearly by the second;
and finally, its characteristic interactions more closely approximate
the human condition, making it an enormously complex operating domain.

This domain is non-dimensional \-- the domain of political victory or
defeat. Yet, this complex non-dimensional battle space increasingly
gives us the most problems. We profess a desire for access to the
political domains of victory, yet the weight of our operational approach
to this complex domain is largely measured only in physical terms.
Occupying the physical battle space does not assure victory in the
political domain. Political victory may be influenced by our
capabilities and actions in the physical world, but is increasingly a
by-product of our action or inaction in the new strategic common. It is
unlikely that our forces will be denied military victory, but we may be
denied political victory because we understand and act less in this
complex battle space where political victory will be determined in the
21st century.

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**Winning the Battle for Our Future**

The battle for our future has already begun. The strategic landscape is
changing and reshaping itself in new forms and patterns everyday. With
such diverse change happening around us, it is inconceivable that narrow
solutions will answer broader strategic demands. We must recognize not
only the enduring nature of strategic change, but most importantly, that
the pace of change is accelerating and is not one we set for ourselves.

Changes in the strategic environment suggest alteration of the
strategies, processes and policies that govern force development. Our
potential challenges are shifting. The trends suggest that a hedging
strategy against a \"peer competitor\" is adequate to keep great power
war off the table. Our organizing principles and the weight of our
intellectual effort and investment strategy must shift from
*traditional* battlefield challenges to the *irregular, catastrophic,
and disruptive.* We also need organizations, processes, and a strategic
approach to \"cost\" capable of delivering the requisite capabilities
with dramatically decreased cycle time. A strategic approach to cost
would include:

-   Strategies for divestiture and devolution of processes and
    capabilities

-   Suppressing the monetary cost of war

-   Cost imposing strategies

-   Mitigation of cost imposing strategies

-   Reversing the current trend of paying more for decreasing returns

Cultural and societal change on a strategic scale is altering the
character of war. Our future forces must certainly possess military
utility with technologies like \"information\" and \"precision.\" More
importantly, they must also provide *political* utility across a wider
range of scenarios and circumstances.

To court stasis is to invite defeat. In order for our forces to compete,
survive and win the future, we must do these things today: First, we
must create new organizational concepts for networked combined arms
capability. In a battle space that includes both physical and
non-dimensional elements, \"combined arms\" must include organizational
and doctrinal tools for success in both. We need the capability to see
and operate into the fault lines of societies where, increasingly, the
frontiers of national security reside. Second, to match \"scale with
scale\" we must increase the number of independent entities available to
act over a wider battle space while altering our organizational and
doctrinal constructs to push information and decision-making to the
lowest possible level. Third, we must provide the network connectivity
necessary for situational awareness and the ability to decide and to act
independently or in concert. Finally, we must capitalize on the
principle of simultaneity. This is our future \-- this is how we must
fight in the age of the small, the fast and the many.

*Arthur K. Cebrowski is the Director, Office of Force Transformation in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is a retired Vice Admiral and
former President of the Naval War College.*

[^1]: *Barry R. Posen,* "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation
    of U.S. Hegemony," *International Security*, Vol. 28, No. 1, Summer
    2003, pp. 5-46.

[^2]: *\"Command of the sea\" comes from Paul M. Kennedy in* The Rise
    and Fall of British Naval Mastery *(London: MacMillan, 1983, first
    published Allen Lane in 1976) and is used in Barry Posen\'s
    discussion of \"...command of the commons...\" on page 8 of the
    reference 2 footnoted below.*

[^3]: *For extended discussion of the strategic commons, see, Barry R.
    Posen,* "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S.
    Hegemony," *International Security*, Vol. 28, No. 1, Summer 2003,
    pp. 5-46.