Transforming

Defense

Transforming

Defense

by Christopher J. Lamb

with contributions from

M. Elaine Bunn, Charles Lutes, 

and Christopher Cavoli

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.

September 2005
Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the 

contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or any other agency of 

the Federal Government. Cleared for public release; distribution unlimited.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, provided that a standard 

source credit line is included. NDU Press would apprecite a courtesy copy of reprints or reviews.

First printing, September 2005
Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................... 1

Joint Operating Concepts.......................................................................................... 4

A Capabilities-based Approach............................................................................... 12

Global Force Planning ............................................................................................ 18

Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 31

Notes....................................................................................................................... 33

About the Authors................................................................................................... 37

v

Introduction

Transforming the defense establishment and U.S. Armed Forces remains a major 

strategic challenge for the rest of the decade 

and beyond. As a Presidential candidate in 

2000, Governor George W. Bush campaigned 

on a promise to transform America’s defense 

establishment and warfighting capabilities. In 

the Bush administration, Secretary of Defense 

Donald Rumsfeld made transformation his 

signature issue for his tenure at the Pentagon. 

Despite the resources and attention consumed 

by the war on terror, and recent decisions 

by the White House to curtail the growth of 

defense spending, the senior leadership of the 

Department of Defense (DOD) remains committed to the transformation agenda. Indeed, 

Secretary Rumsfeld insists that transformation 

is necessary for success in the war on terror, 

and it remains an integral part of his defense 

strategy.

Concern with military transformation 

predates the Bush administration. During the 

1990s, consensus was growing that the Nation 

should put more emphasis on transforming its 

military, even as it was drawing down its force 

structure from Cold War–era levels. Many 

believed that the information revolution, stimulated by advances in modern computing power 

and associated effects, was fundamentally altering social, economic, and political affairs and 

would do the same for military capabilities. 

Defense leaders came to believe that transformation was necessary to exploit the information 

revolution for a dramatic increase in military 

capabilities. They thought transformation would 

be necessary to prepare for future adversaries 

who also would exploit the information revolution and use other asymmetric approaches (such 

as weapons of mass destruction [WMD], missiles, and advanced naval mines) to counter U.S. 

conventional military superiority.

By the mid-1990s, senior DOD officials were expressing interest in a revolution 

in military affairs that would transform military capabilities, and a supporting revolution in 

business affairs that would transform defense 

planning and resource allocation processes. The 

Clinton administration made transformation a 

major dimension of the “prepare” portion of a 

new defense strategy—so-called shape, respond, 

prepare—that it articulated in the first Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in 1997. That 

report emphasized the importance of building a 

strong backbone of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, 

and reconnaissance systems (C4ISR), areas that 

were most obviously affected by the information 

revolution. However, at the time, Pentagon leadership did not otherwise make a sharp distinction between modernization programs already 

under way and transformed military capabilities. 

In other words, the tendency was to claim that 

all existing major acquisition programs help 

transform U.S. forces. During this period, most 

transformation progress was made in improving the rigor and scope of concept development 

and experimentation activities undertaken by the 

services and Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) 

to explore better means of warfighting.1

When the Bush administration took 

office, it articulated a more ambitious vision 

for the overall transformation effort. The 

breadth of the agenda is reflected in Secretary 

Rumsfeld’s Transformation Planning Guidance, which defines transformation as:

a process that shapes the changing nature 

of military competition and cooperation 

through new combinations of concepts, 

capabilities, people and organizations that 

exploit our nation’s advantages and protect 

against our asymmetric vulnerabilities to 

sustain our strategic position, which helps 

underpin peace and stability in the world.

This broad definition put transformation in a 

strategic context by noting that it includes the 

need to identify unique U.S. strategic strengths 

and potential vulnerabilities. Interestingly, the 

document also offered a more discriminating 

1
2 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

criterion that could be used to help adjudicate 

what is, and what is not, transformational and, 

hence, what programs would be favored in 

resource allocation decisions:

Shaping the nature of military competition 

ultimately means redefining standards for 

military success by accomplishing military 

missions that were previously unimaginable or impossible except at prohibitive 

risk and cost.

The implication here is that modernizing military capabilities merely improves 

the ability to execute missions under existing 

standards of performance, while transforming 

military capabilities completely redefines the 

standards for success.2 The Bush administration hoped to invest in the latter at the expense 

of the former, and fully expects that doing so 

will eventually produce capabilities that render 

previous ways of warfighting obsolete, thus 

radically changing the measures of success in 

military operations overall. 

Hence, transformation is currently 

defined both broadly, as a sweeping set of 

reforms designed to prepare the U.S. military 

establishment for a new era, and more narrowly, as a revolution in military operational 

art and science. The Transformation Planning 

Guidance provides a framework that covers 

both meanings when it describes the scope of 

transformation to include: “how we fight, how 

we do business inside the Department, and 

how we work with our interagency and multinational partners.”3

 The narrower meaning of 

transformation boils down to “how we fight,” 

while the broader transformation agenda also 

includes reforms in business processes and 

interagency and multinational relationships.

How much progress has been made on 

transformation, and what challenges lie ahead 

over the next 4 years? Many would evaluate 

progress by reviewing transformational output 

to date—that is, revolutionary new military 

capabilities fielded or begun by the Bush administration. This would require an overview of the 

many defense acquisition programs and estimates of their transformational impact. Instead, 

this paper evaluates progress and remaining 

challenges with a broader, top-down view of 

transformation. It looks in detail at three core 

elements of transformation that may well determine over time whether the Pentagon can field 

and manage transformational military forces.4

Joint operating concepts (JOCs) capture the 

most important changes in the way U.S. forces 

fight. A capabilities-based approach to defense 

planning and resource allocation is the most 

significant internal change in the DOD process. 

Global force planning is a broad term coined 

here that involves new command and control 

relationships, global posture, and global force 

characteristics. The new command and control 

relationships include interagency and foreign 

partners and should allow the Pentagon leadership to manage better a new global force posture 

and forces with global capabilities.

Evaluating progress on these three 

important initiatives—joint operating concepts, 

capabilities-based approach, and global force 

planning—demonstrates how challenging and 

far-reaching the transformation reforms initiated by the Bush administration are. This paper 

also examines the strategic rationale behind 

transformation policy, and how it has affected 

progress on the transformation agenda to date. 

To establish some context for discussing these 

subjects, a review of how the Bush administration’s transformation agenda fits in with its 

broader defense strategy is in order.

The new defense strategy rolled out 

by the Bush administration in its 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review report underscored 

the importance of transformation. The strategy called for dissuading future military 

competition, in part by experimentation with 

revolutionary operational concepts, capabilities, and organizational arrangements stimulated by a culture of innovation and risk-taking. Transformation was still understood to 

encompass both U.S. military forces and the 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 3

defense establishment. What garnered the 

most attention and gave transformation more 

immediacy than previous efforts, however, 

was the willingness of the new administration to single out specific operational areas 

as keys to transforming U.S. forces. The 

QDR report levied a requirement for transformation roadmaps that would specify timelines to develop capabilities to meet six key 

operational goals:

• protect the U.S. homeland and critical 

bases of operation

• deny enemies sanctuary

• protect and sustain power in access-denied 

areas

• leverage information technology to connect troops and their operations

• improve and protect information networks 

from attack

• enhance space operations.5

Early Bush administration defense planning 

and programming adjustments were designed 

to shift resources to these key operational 

areas. After the initial set of program and budget adjustments was executed in support of the 

transformation vision, increasingly difficult 

questions arose about the value of additional 

resource allocations in these areas. Concretely, 

how would additional investments in these priority areas produce a substantial return in the 

form of transformed capabilities?

The challenge of identifying the type, 

timing, and amount of investments in transformational capabilities was exacerbated by 

the need to justify such resource allocations in 

Figure 1. Congressional Budget Office Depiction of Budget Risks Inherent in Current Defense 

Program
4 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Responding to the terrorists 

generally, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq 

specifically, required significant increases in 

resources for current operations and led some 

to question whether DOD could both transform 

and fight the war on terrorism (see figure 1). 

Nevertheless, the Secretary of Defense steadfastly maintained that the Defense Department 

would do both at the same time and argued that 

it must do so since the possibility of terrorist 

WMD use was an example of the new security 

problems that demanded transformed military 

capabilities.

Congressional support for increases to 

the defense budget greatly reduced but did not 

eliminate the tension between a high operations tempo and transformation investments. 

Increasingly, DOD leaders were required to 

make tough judgments about where to cut back 

in order to maintain the pace of investments 

in the six priority transformation areas. The 

decisions to cut major Army programs, namely 

the Crusader self-propelled artillery system 

and the Comanche helicopter, are the most 

notable (but not the only) examples to date of 

where DOD accepted some increased risk in 

near-term operational capabilities in order to 

fund more transformational, longer-term capabilities. Indeed, other dramatic program cuts 

were made when the White House determined 

that the defense buildup had to be scaled back 

for fiscal reasons.6 In order to manage, implement, defend, and assess the impact of such 

decisions, which invariably spark passionate 

debate within the Pentagon and Congress, it is 

important for DOD to have a well-understood 

process that clarifies assumptions and generates analysis and evidence about where it is 

best to take and minimize risk while pursuing 

transformation.

Transformational capabilities are only 

obvious in retrospect. The conceptual struggle 

to comprehend and anticipate the changing 

character and conduct of war is always intense, 

as is the bureaucratic struggle to acquire 

resources in support of any given vision of the 

future. Transformation theorists argue that it is 

profitable, even indispensable, to have a rich 

competition of ideas, concepts, and prototype 

systems in order to stimulate innovation. Ultimately, however, some process for picking the 

most promising initiatives for major investment opportunities is necessary. 

In recognition of this fact, DOD published the Transformation Planning Guidance in April 2003 to organize for managing 

transformation.7 The document clarified senior 

leader and organizational roles and responsibilities for implementing transformation 

strategy. Among the most significant responsibilities, assigned by the Secretary of Defense, 

was the requirement for the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, in coordination with the 

JFCOM commander, to develop joint operating 

concepts that would depict how transformed 

forces will fight. These concepts would help 

senior decisionmakers decide between competing investment options by helping clarify 

which capabilities are most useful. The objective was to ensure that strategy and joint warfighting concepts drove requirements and programs, rather than the other way around, as so 

often was the case in the past.

Joint Operating Concepts

The JOCs directed by the Secretary 

are intended to guide the transformation of the 

joint force so that it is prepared to operate successfully against the most important security 

threats it will face in the next 10 to 20 years. 

Since new capabilities can help make possible 

new concepts of operation, and new concepts 

can help guide the development of new capabilities, both concepts and capabilities need to 

be developed in light of one another. Thus, as 

the defense program rolls forward, year-to-year 

investments can be made in building capabilities 

that both enable and in turn are informed by 

concepts of how future forces will operate.
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 5

The Hierarchy of Joint Operating Concepts

The Secretary required the Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs to develop initially one 

overarching joint concept that would capture 

the broad outline of the new American way 

of war enabled by the emergence of information technologies. The overarching concept, 

originally called the joint operations concept, 

is now referred to as the Capstone Concept for 

Joint Operations. The joint operations concept 

was constructed around the tenets of networkcentric warfare and effects-based operations8

 in 

a joint environment. It emphasizes high-quality shared awareness, dispersed forces, speed 

of command, and flexibility in planning and 

execution. The premise of the concept is that if 

U.S. forces fight first for information superiority (see figure 2), the future Joint Force Commander will be able to bring all available assets 

together rapidly to achieve desired effects better. The concept assumes the availability of the 

requisite information and the existence of more 

agile and rapidly deployable forces that can:9

• achieve common understanding of all 

dimensions of the battlespace throughout 

the Joint Force

• make joint decisions and take action 

throughout the Joint Force faster than the 

opponent

• adapt in scope, scale, and method as the 

situation requires

• rapidly deploy selected portions of the 

Joint Force that can immediately transition 

to execution, even in the absence of developed infrastructure

• create and sustain continuous pressure 

throughout the battlespace for as little or as 

much time as it takes to accomplish strategic or operational aims

• disintegrate, disorient, dislocate, or destroy 

any opponent with a combination of lethal 

and nonlethal means

• conduct deployment and sustainment activities in support of multiple simultaneous, 

distributed, decentralized battles and campaigns

Source: Office of Force Transformation, “Elements of Defense Transformation,” 16. Accessed at <http://www.oft.osd.mil/library/

library_files/document_383_ElementsOfTransformation_LR.pdf>.

Figure 2. Elements of Defense Transformation
6 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

• accomplish all of the above in an interagency and multinational context.

This broad conceptualization of the 

new American approach to military operations 

makes it clear that interoperability, information sharing, and mobility will be accorded 

greater priority than in the past. However, the 

overarching concept is too broad to describe 

the different approaches that U.S. forces will 

take for different reasons, which by extension 

require different capabilities. Accordingly, the 

Secretary also directed the development of four 

subordinate joint operating concepts, which the 

Chairman assigned to combatant commanders 

for development as follows:10

• homeland security, developed by Northern 

Command

• strategic deterrence, developed by Strategic 

Command

• major combat operations, developed by 

Joint Forces Command

• stability operations, developed by Joint 

Forces Command

These four concepts broadened the 

traditional focus of the defense establishment 

on deterring and winning wars. Major combat 

operations and strategic deterrence are traditional military competencies, but the military’s 

approach to each requires adjustment. The 

operating concept for major combat operations 

must evolve to account for evolving adversary 

strategies designed to hamper U.S. power projection into its regions by holding bases and 

lines of communication at risk with new technologies and weapons of mass destruction. The 

strategic deterrence concept must account for 

the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery. Stability 

operations, understood to encompass the range 

of problems engendered by irregular forces 

(terrorists, insurgents, saboteurs, and so forth) 

are not new, but they arguably are increasingly 

important, qualitatively different than major 

combat operations, and constitute a problem 

set for which the American military lacks a 

uniform and well-understood operating concept. Of course, the need for a new concept for 

homeland security is manifest given the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington 

on September 11.

From the beginning, defense analysts 

debated about whether these four concepts were 

sufficiently discriminating and relevant. Many 

thought that the concept for strategic deterrence 

should be better bounded, perhaps by focusing 

on WMD deterrence as opposed to deterrence 

of all threatening adversary behavior. Similarly, 

some argued that stability operations should be 

narrowed to focus exclusively on the problem of 

terrorism, and especially transnational terrorism. 

In addition, it was understood that the four concepts would still not be sufficiently detailed to 

allow individual capabilities to be assessed, so 

a third layer of supporting concepts that would 

elucidate more specific military missions (for 

example, air-to-air superiority, global strike, 

undersea superiority, forced entry, and logistics) 

would be required as well (see figure 3).11

For the time being, the four concepts 

remain the centerpiece of the Pentagon’s efforts 

to develop joint operating concepts and a critical component of its transformation strategy. 

Despite the possibility that the concepts may be 

revised in the future to align them better with a 

more diverse or narrow categorization of security priorities,12 there is value in assessing progress to date on the four extant concepts. Doing 

so illuminates some general problems and principles for concept development that are relevant 

regardless of the operating concept in question.

The Four Major Joint Operating Concepts

The Homeland Security JOC. The 

obvious need for a concept for homeland 

security is complicated by the need for careful delineation between military and civilian 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 7

responsibilities. The homeland security JOC 

envisions a layered and comprehensive defense 

requiring geographical and functional integration.13 The first layer of defense consists of 

efforts to neutralize threats in forward regions 

through major combat operations, preemptive 

attack, stability operations, and strategic deterrence. Next, joint forces counter threats that 

are transiting the “approaches” to the United 

States, and do so as far from the homeland 

as possible, through surveillance and reconnaissance, missile defense, air defense, land 

defense, and maritime interception. Finally, 

the military must detect, deter, prevent, and 

defeat direct external threats to all U.S. states 

and territories, as well as support civilian 

agencies in mitigating the effects of catastrophic emergencies.

The most difficult challenge in developing this JOC is delimiting the military 

mission and devising appropriate means of 

coordination with the many other Federal 

and state agencies that will be involved in the 

event of attacks on the homeland. Consider, for 

example, air surveillance. Whereas the Federal 

Aviation Administration (FAA) is focused on 

civilian passenger craft that ostensibly wants 

to cooperate with the FAA surveillance system, the military needs to consider stealthy 

airborne platforms that would attempt to avoid 

detection. Should the existing FAA system 

be upgraded to military detection standards, 

or augmented by existing or completely new 

military capabilities? These sorts of questions apply to many other aspects of homeland 

defense as well, including civil defense and 

consequence management operations. Regardless of the division of labor that is ultimately 

adopted, there is universal agreement that 

information will have to be exchanged rapidly 

between a large number of government organizations. This in turn raises innumerable difficulties concerning the security, reliability, and 

declassification of information. To date, drafts 

of the concept have not been able to sort out 

such vexing issues, and thus the concept is not 

sufficiently discriminating to be of much help 

Figure 3. Joint Operating Concepts Family
8 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

in assessing the relative value of competing 

capabilities.

The Strategic Deterrence JOC. Strategic deterrence is often associated with deterring the use of nuclear weapons, but it also can 

be interpreted more broadly, which is the case 

with the current strategic deterrence JOC. It 

defines strategic deterrence as “the prevention 

of adversary aggression or coercion threatening vital interests of the United States and/or 

our national survival.”14 In keeping with such 

a broad definition, the concept identifies similarly broad objectives and means to accomplish those objectives. The concept defines the 

objective of strategic deterrence as decisive 

influence over adversary decisionmaking in 

order to convince the adversary to forego 

grievous courses of action against the United 

States. This objective can be achieved in three 

ways: by denying the adversary benefits, 

imposing unacceptable costs, and affecting 

his understanding of the consequences of his 

actions. Virtually every capability resident in 

the U.S. military is applicable to these endeavors.15 In fact, defined so broadly, the concept 

must encompass not only the entirety of the 

U.S. military, but also all other instruments of 

national power (for example, diplomatic, informational, and economic). 

The net effect of such breadth is the 

same high level of abstraction and lack of discrimination that marked the homeland defense 

concept. The consequences are the same, too: 

the concept does not come to grips with the 

most significant trends in strategic deterrence, 

and it is not useful as a means of discrimination between alternative capabilities based on 

their utility for implementing the concept. 

The concept obscures several significant strategic deterrence challenges for 

U.S. military forces, including the increasingly diverse types of adversaries, weapons 

of mass destruction, and defenses that may be 

employed against them, all of which beg for a 

reassessment of strategic deterrence strategy. 

For example, despite some nonproliferation 

successes in 1990s, most notably in South 

America and South Africa, and more recent 

evidence that the danger of proliferation has 

been reversed in Libya and Iraq, the general 

trend remains that more countries, such as Iran 

and North Korea, are acquiring increasingly 

diverse sets of weapons of mass destruction 

and their delivery systems. Moreover, there 

has been a steady rise in the involvement of 

nonstate actors, some with the intent to proliferate and others with a desire to use WMD. 

The extensive supplier network of Pakistani 

scientist A.Q. Khan presents new challenges 

to traditional counterproliferation concepts, as 

does Osama bin Laden’s professed desire to 

obtain and use a nuclear or biological weapon. 

Nonstate actors such as bin Laden are unlikely 

to be dissuaded or deterred by threats to hold 

traditional targets at risk. Even state actors may 

conclude they can use some chemical or biological weapons without precipitating a U.S. 

nuclear response. 

In addition, because of the growing 

accuracy of conventional weapons, it is possible to envision their use against nuclear 

weapons. In part because of these trends, the 

United States has opted to develop missile 

defenses and to change its approach to strategic deterrence, scrapping the historic reliance 

on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty 

and an offensive strategic triad of nuclear 

intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine/

sea-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers. In its place is a new triad, consisting of 

offensive strike (conventional, nonkinetic, and 

nuclear), defenses (both active and passive), 

and a responsive infrastructure for maintaining and updating strategic capabilities. These 

changes, and the reality that an adversary can 

much more easily hold U.S. allies at risk than 

the United States (which was not the case in 

the Cold War, when the Soviet Union could

hold both the United States and its allies at 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 9

risk), demand a reconsideration of strategy for 

deterring weapons of mass destruction. Currently, the breadth of the concept means that 

this important issue goes unaddressed. As is 

the case with the homeland defense concept, 

a secondary effect of such a high level of 

abstraction is that the concept is not helpful 

for assessing the value of alternative strategic 

deterrent capabilities.

The Major Combat Operations JOC. 

The JOC for major combat operations16 envisions an effects-based approach to be used 

throughout the deployment, employment, and 

sustainment of the combined (joint and allied) 

force. The concept is focused on a regional 

power with significant antiaccess capabilities 

and weapons of mass destruction.17 The major 

combat operations JOC accounts for the information revolution and for the likelihood that an 

adversary will use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. forces. It stresses that future 

large-scale military operations will be conducted in a distributed, collaborative environment, where mass is replaced by precision and 

information dominance is the key enabler of 

success. In many ways, this continues the trajectory of warfare first established in Operation 

Desert Storm and most recently demonstrated 

by the speed and decisiveness of major combat 

operations in Iraq. Since it is an area increasingly well practiced by the United States, this 

concept is perhaps the best developed of the 

four. However, as with the others, it lacks 

much specificity and is mute on some of the 

more difficult issues that it should address.

For example, the reliance on information 

dominance raises difficult questions about how 

to preserve access and reliability of information and the extent to which information processing will occur at information hubs instead 

of on individual platforms.18 The assumption 

that the adversary will use weapons of mass 

destruction and other antiaccess tactics raises 

questions about the advisability of fixed bases 

and the best way to ensure defense of critical 

transportation nodes. In addition, as the difficult transition from combat to stability operations in Iraq underscores, there is the need to 

conclude combat operations in such a way as 

to facilitate a smooth transition to the stabilization phase of a major combat operation. 

Finally, in its current form the concept states an 

intent eventually to expand and examine major 

irregular types of warfare, which suggests an 

unfortunate potential for overlap with the concept for stability operations.

The Stability Operations JOC. The 

initial version of the stability operations JOC 

picks up where the major combat concept 

leaves off by articulating how a future joint 

force commander uses a joint force to conduct 

stability operations that precede, occur during, 

or follow conventional combat operations.19

The scope of the JOC will eventually cover 

four cases, but initially is concerned only with 

one case: stability operations in conjunction 

with major combat operations. The concept 

attempts to capitalize on lessons learned from 

recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It 

assumes that the joint force will act as part of a 

multinational and integrated multiagency operation that provides security, conducts initial 

humanitarian assistance, performs limited governance, and restores essential public services 

and other reconstruction assistance, at least 

until civilian agencies are able to take over 

these functions. Future stability operations will 

emphasize:

• pervasive knowledge and comprehensive 

situational understanding through military, 

criminal, economic, political, and financial 

intelligence

• integrated, multiagency unity of purpose 

and coherence of action

• coercive posture against obstructionists

• unified direction from legitimate civil 

authority
10 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

• sophisticated media operations

• sufficient popular support and organizational endurance to facilitate transition to 

legitimate local governance.

Stability operations will no longer be considered as preludes and aftermaths of major combat, but instead will be addressed throughout 

all phases of a major combat operation. The 

strength of the stability operations concept is 

its emphasis on the need to deal with irregular forces. It demonstrates sophistication in 

observing that there are a variety of potential 

stability “spoilers,” ranging from those motivated by greed to those with unwavering political or religious convictions, and notes that the 

former may be dealt with by a variety of means 

short of force. The concept includes many of 

the historically validated attributes of success 

in stability operations: patience, perseverance, 

all-source intelligence, discriminating use of 

force, effective use of information, and, above 

all, the need to secure legitimacy and popular 

support for military operations.

The primary difficulty with the stability 

operations concept as it is currently expressed 

is an element of ambiguity about the use of 

force against irregular forces, which are the 

factor that makes stability operations so difficult and qualitatively different from major 

combat operations. The concept helpfully notes 

that the purpose of using force is to achieve 

political objectives and, particularly, to isolate 

irregular forces from popular support by finding, fixing, and striking them. The concept also 

explicitly notes that the key metric for success 

in use of force is not the number of casualties 

inflicted or irregular forces that are caught, 

but the number that can be persuaded to ally 

themselves with the U.S.-sponsored effort. Yet 

elsewhere, the concept states plainly that most 

resolute irregular forces must be defeated by 

military means and that overmatching military power (left undefined) must be used to 

eliminate violent opposition. This element of 

ambiguity about the purpose of lethal force is 

reinforced by frequent references to the need 

for commanders to strike a balance between 

the “velvet glove” and “mailed fist,” restraint 

and “overmatching power,” and an “offensive 

mindset and a peacemaker’s heart.”

Stability operations complicated by 

resolute irregular forces do require a mix of 

relentless lethal force and integrated application of nonlethal instruments of power. However, the concept ought to be clear about the 

central purpose of tactical combat operations 

in stability operations and unequivocal about 

how force is to be applied. In this regard, the 

concept would benefit in places from less 

ambiguous language such as that contained in 

an earlier classic on stability operations: the 

1940 Marine Corps Small Wars Manual.

20 The 

manual notes that “In small wars, caution must 

be exercised, and instead of striving to generate the maximum power with forces available, 

the goal is to gain decisive results with the 

least application of force and the consequent 

minimum loss of life.” The manual argues for 

an offensive spirit in tactical operations against 

irregular forces, but not so much because it 

is possible to destroy them completely as it 

is desirable to keep them on the run and dispersed so that the political process of reform 

may continue. In describing the strategy to be 

employed in small wars, the manual argues that 

“the solution of such problems being basically 

a political adjustment, the military measures 

to be applied must be of secondary importance 

and should be applied only to such extent as to 

permit the continuation of peaceful corrective 

measures.” These and other passages in the 

Small Wars Manual explain unequivocally the 

strategic and tactical purpose of combat operations, which is a necessary prerequisite for a 

more detailed description of the concept for 

defeating irregular forces. In short, the value 

of the concept would be improved by defining 

overmatching force in terms of maintaining 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 11

relentless pressure on insurgents and terrorists 

and describing how to do so with an integrated 

use of lethal and nonlethal force applications.21

Fundamental Attributes of a Good 

Joint Operating Concept. The joint operating concept development process is still in 

its formative stages. Even so, it is possible to 

identify some common problems and potential guidelines that will help permit joint 

operating concepts to fulfill their intended 

role as the “engines of transformation.”22 In 

fact, as the brief survey of the four major joint 

operating concepts above indicates, failure to 

abide by these requirements seriously impairs 

the usefulness of joint operating concepts for 

transformation.

1. Discriminating Definitions. All 

military problems, from weapons of mass 

destruction to guerrilla warfare, have similar 

and dissimilar characteristics. The overarching 

Capstone Concept for Joint Operations must 

focus on their similarities (for example, the 

need to provide security through threat or use 

of organized lethal force) and emphasize an 

approach that will be applicable to all employment of military force (for example, by emphasizing the importance of first securing critical 

information about the specific problem at hand 

in order to employ force effectively). 

However, the underlying premise of 

the four specific joint concepts is that different approaches are required for military problems that are dissimilar in critically important 

ways. Each concept must come to grips with 

the defining characteristics of the military 

problem. Since invariably there is more than 

one way to solve a problem, deciding between 

alternative approaches to solve the core problem is the essence of a good operating concept. 

Therefore, the first priority for an operating concept is delimiting the problem with a 

discriminating definition, something that the 

Transformation Planning Guidance failed to 

do. Instead, those charged with developing 

the concepts were allowed to develop their 

own definitions. They all opted for overly 

broad definitions that substantially overlap 

with one another and thus confuse the problem being addressed. Not surprisingly, the 

recommended approaches to the problem are 

so broad that they are not readily distinguishable and thus are not useful for discriminating 

between alternative capability sets. These joint 

operating concepts do not assist with strategic 

management of the defense program by making the choices among alternative capabilities more transparent. Instead, they confuse 

strategic management of the defense program 

by obscuring the differences between both the 

problem and potential solution sets.

2. Presumptive Causal Linkages. Joint 

operating concepts should describe how a 

future commander plans, prepares, deploys, 

employs, and sustains a joint force against 

potential adversaries.23 In short, they presume 

an understanding of what will produce a successful operation. Thus, a good operating 

concept will articulate a clear path of presumptively causal linkages for resolving a clearly 

defined problem. To do so, most military theorists begin by establishing a lexicon and associated framework of essential concept components24 and then proceed to explain how the 

key conceptual elements are used to produce 

a solution to the military problem. In other 

words, the concept must provide a description 

of the objective (end) that includes the desired 

end-state and associated effects that are necessary to achieve the objective; an explanation 

of how the operation proceeds to produce 

the desired effects (ways); and identify the 

capabilities (means) necessary to execute the 

concept, preferably prioritized by their order 

of importance for success. Having failed to be 

sufficiently discriminating in the description of 

the objective, it is not surprising that all four 

major concepts developed to date tend to avoid 

presumptive causal linkages. Instead, they 

provide an inventory of possible means that 
12 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

vary in application, as circumstances seem to 

warrant. To some extent, joint operating concepts are situation-dependent, but the core idea 

requires explicit descriptions of how to execute 

the concepts rather than just a catalogue of 

possible means to employ. 

3. Risk Identification and Mitigation. 

A good operating concept not only articulates 

ways and means, but it also does so cognizant 

of alternatives and their presumed advantages 

and disadvantages. If it is a transformational 

concept, it must knowingly depart from current 

practices and be aware of how it incurs risk by 

doing so. For example, the German military 

innovators who advocated blitzkrieg tactics 

knew that their mobile forces penetrating deep 

behind enemy front lines were vulnerable to 

being cut off, starved for supplies, and defeated 

piecemeal. They estimated that their enemies 

would not be able to organize and move quickly enough to exploit this potential vulnerability, 

and they did everything possible to make sure 

this was the case.

A good concept, then, needs to identify 

ways to mitigate known risks and establish 

warning signs that it is failing to do so when 

the operations are actually undertaken. Going a 

step further, a set of metrics for assessing successful employment of a concept would assist 

with evaluating the contribution of any given 

capability to the concept’s execution. Since all 

four concepts developed by the Pentagon are 

ill-defined at the moment, none can rise to the 

level of specificity required for risk identification and mitigation. 

If the Pentagon’s joint operating concepts are to be effective tools for transformation, they must eventually become discriminating and detailed enough to allow identification 

and prioritization of transformation requirements in the defense program. They also 

must remain open to modification in order to 

incorporate new findings from experimentation 

and practical experience. Absent these characteristics, the joint operating concepts will 

not become engines of transformation, and a 

central element of the Pentagon’s much-needed 

transformation to capabilities-based planning 

will remain missing as well. 

A Capabilities-based Approach25

The emphasis on new concepts of 

operation is fueled by the conviction that 

new military capabilities permit forces to be 

employed in dramatically different and more 

effective ways. Prior to his election in 2000, 

President Bush promised “a future force that 

is defined less by size and more by mobility 

and swiftness, one that is easier to deploy and 

sustain, one that relies more heavily on stealth, 

precision weaponry and information technologies.”26 Since then, transformation theorists in 

the Pentagon have elaborated on this vision 

and promised an information-age military that 

will be less platform-centric and more network-centric, able to distribute forces more 

widely by increasing information sharing via a 

secure network that provides actionable information at all levels of command. 

Recent operations provide some evidence that this vision is already taking shape, 

as creative commanders in the field now 

exploit with good effect information systems 

developed and fielded by the Pentagon in the 

1990s. The campaigns in Afghanistan and 

Iraq seemed to validate the new Pentagon 

catch phrase for transformation: “fight first 

for information superiority.” A precise understanding of where friendly and enemy forces 

were, and the consequent ability to outmaneuver and attack the enemy rapidly and with 

great precision, were hallmarks in the combat 

phases of these operations. President Bush 

and Secretary Rumsfeld want to build on this 

progress and recognize that doing so would 

require a more systematic way to identify 

military capabilities that would best support 

transformation objectives. 

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense 

Review emphasized that DOD needed to 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 13

adopt a new approach to developing military forces, which it referred to as capabilities-based planning. Arguing that the United 

States could not know the origin of threats 

decades from now, QDR 2001 focused instead 

on the idea of anticipating the kinds of capabilities that an adversary might employ. A 

capabilities-based model would focus more 

on “how an adversary might fight than who 

the adversary might be and where a war might 

occur,” and it would require identifying capabilities that U.S. military forces would need to 

deter and defeat adversaries who will rely on 

“surprise, deception, and asymmetric warfare 

to achieve their objectives.”27

The 2001 QDR closely tied a capabilities-based approach to strategy but also made 

a reactive and proactive case for a capabilities-based approach that paralleled the case it 

made for transformation in general. It asserted 

that capabilities-based planning is necessary 

to prepare for a more diverse and uncertain set 

of security threats and to exploit informationage opportunities to produce transformational 

capabilities, such as advanced remote sensing 

and long-range precision strike. 

Thesis: The Need to Abandon Atypical 

Threat Cases and Platform-centric 

Planning

The two-part strategic rationale used 

to justify capabilities-based planning has a lot 

of appeal, and it satisfied two longstanding 

complaints about defense planning. Critics of 

Pentagon planning during the 1990s protested 

that it focused exclusively on two archetypical threat cases that were actually anomalies: 

Korea and Iraq. If the United States had to 

fight on the Korean Peninsula, it would benefit from more than 20 immediately available, 

well-trained and well-equipped South Korean 

divisions—not a circumstance likely to be true 

in most other plausible future contingencies. 

In the case of an Iraqi contingency, the United 

States would benefit from a massive amount of 

base infrastructure it developed in and around 

the Gulf region for precisely this purpose—

again, not a circumstance likely to be repeated 

elsewhere. Critics argue that since the United 

States cannot predict precisely where it will 

have to fight, planning ought not to assume 

such a specific set of cases (see figure 4). 

Allowing the entire Pentagon planning system 

to be driven by these two atypical cases for 

almost 10 years, they argued, resulted in force 

structure and program decisions optimized for 

an extremely narrow problem set. 

The other common complaint about 

Pentagon planning that capabilities-based 

planning seemed to address was the tendency 

simply to react to the systems deployed by 

potential enemies. Over the course of the 

Cold War, critics argue, the services increasingly defaulted to producing weapons that 

were qualitatively better than whatever the 

Soviet Union deployed, irrespective of whether there might be a better way to accomplish 

the mission. Since the Soviet Union was the 

predominant threat, it was enough to show 

that any given system was better than whatever the Soviet Union had. After the demise 

of the Soviet Union, the United States celebrated with an extended military “procurement holiday” during the 1990s. Now that 

recapitalization of the force could no longer 

be avoided, critics worried that the Pentagon 

was about to spend the new decade modernizing its forces by pumping out advanced tanks, 

planes, and ships that best addressed the Cold 

War requirement to project power across the 

vast oceans and stop large, multi-echelon 

mass armor attacks in the Soviet tradition. By 

emphasizing capabilities rather than threat, 

these critics hoped to shake off the old “bottom-up, stove-piped” acquisition processes 

that produced great individual platforms but 

ignored the larger issue of how joint forces 

communicate and operate together for greater 

effect. Critics wanted the Pentagon to invest 

more in information-age systems that would 
14 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

be inherently more capable, flexible, and, not 

incidentally, more applicable to a wider range 

of threats.

Antithesis: The Need to Bound Uncertainty

Although defensible, the two-part strategic rationale for capabilities-based planning 

is not without problems, some of which have 

retarded the implementation of capabilitiesbased planning since the QDR 2001 report was 

published. First, the assumption that it is easier 

to anticipate the tactics an adversary will use 

than it is to predict the identity of the adversary 

is open to challenge. Looking back at recent 

operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, one might 

argue that it would have been easier to predict 

the adversary location than the tactics. The 

United States contemplated attacking terrorist bases in Afghanistan during the 1990s, and 

Iraq was a well-recognized potential belligerent. As for enemy tactics, many would have 

predicted that the Taliban and al Qaeda would 

have quickly transitioned to a prolonged guerrilla struggle rather than attempt to hold on to 

major population centers. Also, many supposed 

that Saddam Hussein would not fight the United States again without employing weapons of 

mass destruction or using terrorism and information operations to disrupt the flow of U.S. 

forces through Gulf ports. Only in retrospect 

did it become clear that he was either not able 

or not willing to do so. 

Figure 4. Excerpts for 1997 National Defense Panel Report on Two-Theater-War Planning Construct

• Current defense strategy states that U. S. forces should be capable of fighting two regional wars at 

almost the same time. . . . This two-theater war concept is predicated on the belief that the ability 

to fight more than one major war at a time deters an enemy from seeking to take advantage of the 

opportunity to strike while the United States is preoccupied in another theater. 

• Our current forces, however, with the support of allies, should be capable of dealing with 

Iraq. . . . The risks in Korea remain high, but . . . [a]s long as we retain the ability to introduce forces into the region, we have adequate combat power within the present force structure to deal with this threat. As a result, it is our judgment that our current force structure is 

sufficient for the regional threats that we see today. 

• We are concerned that the [two-military-theater-of-war construct] may have become a forceprotection mechanism—a means of justifying the current force structure—especially for those 

searching for the certainties of the Cold War era. . . . The two-theater construct has been a useful mechanism for determining what forces to retain as the Cold War came to a close. To some 

degree, it remains a useful mechanism today. But, it is fast becoming an inhibitor to reaching the 

capabilities we will need in the 2010–2020 time frame. 

• The real issue is where we are willing to take risk. The current posture minimizes near-term risk at 

a time when danger is moderate to low. A significant share of the Defense Department’s resources is focused on the unlikely contingency that two major wars will break out at once, putting 

greater risk on our long-term security. While we cannot identify future threats precisely, we can 

identify the challenges. Our priority emphasis (including resources) must go to the future.

Source: Report of the National Defense Panel, “Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century,” December 1997. 

Accessed on April 22, 2005 at <http://www.fas.org/man/docs/ndp/part03.htm>.
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 15

Another problem is that the enemy 

tactics identified in the QDR report—surprise, 

deception, and asymmetric warfare—are notably vague. They seem tantamount to saying 

we need to be prepared for just about anything 

except what we currently think might be most 

likely. Indeed, the report claims that the “senior 

leaders of the Defense Department set out to 

establish a new strategy for America’s defense 

that would embrace uncertainty and contend 

with surprise.”28 There is a problem with uncertainty as a strategic principle, however. Taken 

absolutely, it is the antithesis of planning. It is 

not possible to plan for that which cannot be 

anticipated, and it is not possible to distribute 

resources to priority solutions if there is no 

corresponding known problem set. The only 

way to avoid this dilemma is to identify solutions that apply equally well to any conceivable security problem. Future transformation 

capabilities are often described in vague ways 

that make them seem like easy and simple 

solutions to a wide variety of problems, but in 

reality they are not so. Some capabilities obviously have broader application than others, but 

difficult choices about what capabilities merit 

the most investment cannot be avoided. 

Therefore, while it is understandable 

that the new leadership in the Pentagon wanted 

to avoid the optimistic assumption that future 

adversaries would confront U.S. conventional 

force advantages head on where U.S. forces 

have the greatest comparative advantage, just 

assuming the contrary does not get a defense 

planner very far. At worst, concentrating on 

uncertainty amounts to an abnegation of planning. The likely result is that less transparent 

and perhaps less rational influences will dictate 

allocation of limited resources.29 The only real 

advantage of emphasizing the unpredictability 

of the security environment is that it should 

stimulate planners to consider a wider set of 

possible threat scenarios against which they 

can then measure the sufficiency of alternative 

future force and capability options. 

Contrary to the popular misperception, 

however, the Pentagon already had a wide 

range of alternative scenarios before 2000. 

It did not typically analyze them for several 

reasons. Some of the scenarios did not involve 

large-scale force-on-force battles, and the 

Pentagon lacked a set of modeling and simulation approaches and tools to assess them 

effectively. In addition, although the strategy 

formally underscored the importance of atypical contingencies, in practice there were insufficient political will and analytic resources to 

investigate and act upon the requirements associated with anything other than the best-known 

warfighting scenarios. 

Justifying capabilities-based planning 

by associating it with transformational output 

is also problematic. It is true that changing the 

focus of the discussion to capabilities rather 

than threats opens the door for redefining the 

most desired capabilities. Instead of military 

requirements being defined in terms of something similar to, but better than, whatever the 

most likely enemy has, the focus on capabilities tends to open the debate to include proposals for new ways to accomplish a mission and 

thus potentially support new transformational 

capabilities. 

However, changing the terms of the 

debate does not guarantee that transformational capabilities will be identified and developed. If you are one to believe that having 

the ability to kill enemy tanks is a good thing, 

and that the best antitank capability is another 

tank, you can ignore specific threat countries 

altogether, focus on desired antitank “capability,” and still come up with a recommendation 

to build a bigger, heavier (and decidedly not 

transformational) tank. The same could be 

said about air-to-air superiority and fighter 

aircraft, and so on.

In short, contrary to QDR report 

assertions, capabilities-based planning does 

not necessarily lead to the conclusion that 

the U.S. military needs “advanced remote 
16 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

sensing, long-range precision strike, transformed maneuver and expeditionary forces 

and systems, to overcome anti-access and area 

denial threats.” 30 It only increases the possibility that these capabilities will be looked at 

seriously, particularly if the problem set (threat 

environment) is defined as robust antiaccess 

and area denial threats.

These flaws in the strategic justification 

for capabilities-based planning and the established thinking that it reflected had some unfortunate effects, which, ironically, may have 

delayed implementation of capabilities-based 

planning. The undue emphasis on uncertainty 

instead of variability in threat, and the erroneous implication that there was a dichotomy 

between capabilities and threats, retarded work 

on the Department’s illustrative planning scenarios (now called defense planning cases). If 

threat was no longer important, why pay attention to illustrative threat cases? 

Some proponents of capabilitiesbased planning understood the problem with 

unbounded uncertainty, and that some reference to threat cases was necessary. They still 

erred too much on the side of uncertainty by 

arguing that DOD should look at literally hundreds of cases and choose whatever capabilities most broadly applied to the greatest range 

of cases, irrespective of the importance of any 

given case. The problem with this approach is 

that it runs the distinct danger of sub-optimizing for the most critical cases. Not all security 

problems have equal consequences if handled 

poorly. Failure in some cases would more seriously damage the country’s security interests. 

Eventually the Pentagon recognized this and 

settled down to building a prioritized set of 

threat cases with sufficient variability, but time 

was lost in the process.

Another problem arose from the tendency to confuse capabilities-based planning with a broad vision of transformational 

capabilities that would be equally valuable for 

a wide range of contingencies and missions. 

The tendency was to devalue the importance 

of analysis and detailed studies about marginal 

utilities. What was probably needed, many felt, 

was a new vision to break the Pentagon out of 

its rut and lethargy. It soon became apparent, 

however, that the hard questions about where 

to invest marginal defense dollars still benefit 

from good analysis. The key is to make sure 

that the analysis addresses the issues senior 

decisionmakers are concerned about and that it 

does so with transparent quantitative and qualitative input and methodologies that are appropriate to the subject matter. Transformation 

leaders eventually looked more favorably on 

analysis, but the Pentagon has yet to improve 

significantly the quality and quantity of the 

analysis that it can produce in support of capabilities-based planning.

Synthesis: Agreement on Next Steps for 

Capabilities-based Planning? 

The 2001 QDR emphasis on capabilities-based planning was advantageous in several 

respects. It served notice to institutional forces 

in the Pentagon that major changes in the planning, programming, and budgeting system used 

for decades would be forthcoming. It shifted the 

terms of the planning debate to allow serious 

evaluation of a wider range of possible contingencies as the basis for planning and alerted the 

services that the usual justifications for their preferred major programs would be viewed skeptically if not deemed sufficiently transformational. However, as noted, flaws in the strategic 

rationale for capabilities-based planning tended 

to retard its implementation.

Today, there appears to be a better 

appreciation for what capabilities-based planning is and what it will require. Most now 

agree that capabilities-based planning is not 

an antidote to uncertainty and that completely 

divorcing threat and capabilities creates a false 

and deleterious dichotomy. Planning in the 

1990s focused too much on a couple of specific potential enemies, and in so doing perhaps 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 17

ceded the initiative to other possible adversaries. However, it would be just as undesirable 

to go to the other extreme and conduct defense 

planning without reference to threats. Ignoring 

threat projections altogether means never being 

able to judge how much is enough, or how good 

is good enough. Specifically, it means no standards for the adequacy of the effects a capability 

can produce, and, more generally, it means no 

reference point for assessing the value of any 

given capability. In short, if the problem cannot 

be bounded, risk cannot be assessed or resources 

prioritized. The future threat environment may 

be less certain today than during the Cold War, 

but defense planners cannot escape the need to 

make judgments about the nature of the future 

security environment and the major problems 

that it will present for U.S. security interests.

The great innovation in capabilitiesbased planning, therefore, was not the irrelevance of the threat in an uncertain world, but 

the importance of assessing and managing risk 

across a much more diverse problem set. Threat 

is not ignored; it is simply assessed with much 

greater variation, as are capabilities. It is important to look at variation in capabilities as well 

as threat. Defense officials need some means of 

evaluating the respective merits of alternative 

capability sets by objective standards, including the ability to test those capabilities across a 

broader problem set in order to assess their benefits and risks. The upshot is that capabilitiesbased planning will require the ability to assess 

and manage risk more self-consciously by looking at much greater variation in problem definition (threat) and in solutions (strategy, concepts 

of operation, and capabilities), all while paying 

attention to costs and resource constraints.

Next Steps for a Capabilities-based 

Approach

To accelerate implementation of a capabilities-based approach to defense planning 

and resource management, there is a growing 

consensus that the Pentagon will ultimately 

need to take several steps.

Establish an authoritative conceptual 

framework. First, a white paper or some other 

type of authoritative statement is needed to clear 

up much of the conceptual confusion surrounding capabilities-based planning. It should define 

capabilities-based planning, its purpose, and its 

attributes.31 Since the purpose of capabilitiesbased planning is to help senior decisionmakers 

adjudicate risks through their resource allocation decisions in an environment characterized 

by much greater variability in threats and capability options, the key to success is meaningful 

comparison of both risks and risk mitigation 

options.

Such comparison requires a conceptual 

framework, complete with taxonomy and lexicon to delimit and prioritize categories of threats 

and capabilities so that the debate about risk 

management can proceed on transparent and 

comprehensible terms. While the taxonomies 

and lexicon will change over time, it is virtually 

impossible to make comparisons across threats, 

mission areas, and platforms without a common 

set of reference points and terminology. 

To be meaningful, the comparisons must 

use common qualitative and quantitative measurements of risk. Furthermore, the framework 

must distinguish between timeframes since risk 

and capabilities evolve over time, and investments come to fruition in different time periods. 

For example, it is possible to forego near-term 

operational capability in order to prepare better for future threats. The framework must also 

distinguish between levels of analyses since the 

variables relevant to threat, capabilities, and risk 

are different at the strategic, operational, and 

tactical levels of war. 

Increase and organize joint analytic 

resources. Handling the variability in threat 

and capability options characteristic of a capabilities-based approach requires more robust 
18 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

joint analysis, and a more integrated planning, 

programming, and budgeting system informed 

by that analysis than previously was the case. 

Today the overwhelming majority of analytic 

capability in the Pentagon is owned by the services, which conduct their own internal studies 

using their own data and models, and without attention to broad trades across military 

capability areas. While useful to the services, 

these studies do nothing for the senior decisionmakers who need to assess and evaluate 

options for alleviating risk. Thus, an immediate 

first step for implementing capabilities-based 

planning is to invest more resources in joint 

analysis at the strategic and operational levels. Reorganization also is required to ensure 

effective and efficient management of these 

resources. Currently, the scant joint analytic 

resources devoted to strategic and operational 

analysis are split between offices with different 

mandates and proclivities (the Joint Staff and 

multiple offices of the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense), either in the form of assigned personnel or dollars available for contractor support. It would be better to have these diverse 

organizations combine their resources under 

the same management with a common purpose 

and work more directly in support of senior 

decisionmakers.

Institutionalize an analytic system 

that is authoritative, transparent, and discriminating. There are several building 

blocks necessary for good analysis, each of 

which tends to suffer from lack of emphasis, transparency, discrimination, or some 

combination of these factors. The Pentagon 

needs authoritative planning cases instead of 

allowing service and joint analysts to create 

their own preferred cases, and (as discussed 

above) it needs sufficiently discriminating 

and detailed joint operating concepts for how 

forces will be employed. It also needs risk 

metrics for evaluating the results of different 

concepts employed in different scenarios. The 

Pentagon also needs more diverse modeling and simulation tools that can evaluate a 

wider range of military phenomena than just 

force-on-force combat results, including the 

impact of irregular warfare, information, and 

weapons of mass destruction. Finally, it needs 

authoritative and transparent data to populate 

its models and simulations so that decisionmakers are not presented with conflicting conclusions based solely on assumptions hidden 

in different data sets.

Implementing a capabilities-based 

approach to defense planning and resource 

allocation processes will not be easy. Those 

charged with doing so often note that it took a 

decade or longer to institute the current planning, programming, and budgeting system, and 

that working through the details of a capabilities-based approach will take at least as long. 

No doubt this is true, which is even more reason to move out quickly on the prerequisites 

for capabilities-based decisionmaking that are 

already apparent.

Global Force Planning

A well-developed capabilities-based 

approach to strategic risk assessment would 

certainly assist decisionmakers with one of 

the most complex and difficult areas of transformational import: global force planning. 

A striking characteristic of the 2001 QDR is 

its emphasis on global capabilities. The 1997 

QDR noted the importance of remaining a 

global power with global presence and engagement, but said little about global capabilities 

other than mentioning the need for worldwide 

communications and a “globally vigilant intelligence system.” The 2001 QDR adopted a 

strategy that exploits emerging global capabilities and demands more of them. 

The new strategy assumed that U.S. 

forces postured and managed to contain defunct 

Soviet or 1990s regional threats could not efficiently respond to increasingly uncertain threats, 

some of which are most effectively dealt with 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 19

on a global basis and with some global capabilities. The strategy’s overall intent, therefore, was 

to provide the President with a wider range of 

military options to discourage aggression. To 

stimulate the development of such capabilities, 

the strategy adopted a much more demanding goal for deterring foreign adversaries in an 

increasingly uncertain world. Instead of relying 

on forward-deployed forces to absorb the shock 

of an enemy onslaught and hold on until more 

U.S. forces could be projected into theater, the 

new strategy required forward-deployed forces, 

augmented by global capabilities, to defeat the 

enemy attacks rapidly in a wider range of potential contingencies “with only modest reinforcement from outside the theater.” And they needed 

to be able to do so in spite of enemy antiaccess 

and area-denial threats.

To achieve this ambitious goal effectively, changes are required in three core areas: 

command and control, posture, and capabilities. A new global dimension for each of 

these areas was emphasized in the 2001 QDR 

report,32 albeit not organized under the umbrella rubric of global force planning, a term used 

for convenience here. The report promised 

changes in how global forward-deployed and 

forward-stationed forces were postured to support forward deterrence better, and it promised 

supporting changes in global force capabilities 

that could immediately augment those forces. 

In addition to long-range strike aircraft and 

special operations forces, which already are 

immediately available to supplement forward 

forces, the report noted that globally distributed capabilities and forces could also rapidly 

and precisely strike enemy targets at various 

distances.33

The report also noted that the new 

strategy would require changes in how command and control over U.S. forces is exercised, including new command and control 

assets and integrated intelligence that would 

contribute to a “Global Command and Control 

System Common Operational Picture.” It also 

called for a new joint presence policy that 

would “increase the capability and flexibility 

of U.S. forward-stationed forces and aid in 

managing force management risks,” including 

setting up choices between different combinations of force packages (that is, cross-service 

trades) based on which best support presence 

and deterrence. 

The emphasis on new global command 

and control arrangements and global force 

presence policies, when combined, represents 

a new approach to global force management. 

Along with global force posture and global 

force capabilities, global force management 

promises to have a sweeping impact on the 

way the United States will develop, deploy, 

and operate its military forces in concert with 

allies and partners.

Global Force Management 

The new approach to global force management includes tools and policies for managing global deployment of forces and associated 

risk assessments, and new combatant commander responsibilities that involve a global 

span of control over some forces and missions. 

The two reforms, which are discussed separately below, are related. Combatant commanders with new global command responsibilities 

are expected to provide expert opinion and 

inputs for the global force management system 

overseen by the Pentagon and other national 

authorities.

New Tools and Policies.

34 The driving force behind Global Force Management is 

the need to assess and manage risk better on a 

global basis. Doing so requires a more centralized approach to risk management. Regional 

commanders do not have visibility over all the 

relevant factors affecting global risk. Someone with a broader field of vision must make 

judgments about where to accept and reduce 

risks. For example, if a combatant commander 

responsible for current operations in Iraq 
20 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

requests additional forces, granting the request 

would likely require accepting risk elsewhere. 

If the forces are taken from South Korea, the 

risk to the defense of South Korea from North 

Korea may increase. National authorities must 

consider whether moving an aircraft carrier or 

bomber wing forward to that part of the world, 

or repositioning other forces, is necessary to 

draw down that risk.

Making such risk assessments and decisions is difficult. To manage and assess such 

risks on a global basis, two general sets of 

reforms are required. First, the Pentagon needs 

tools and systems that would allow a near-realtime assessment of the location and readiness 

of all units around the globe, and second, it 

needs a rapid and joint means of assessing the 

risk associated with using those forces for different purposes. The Pentagon calls the set of 

tools and processes to support decisionmaking 

the global force management process,35 and 

it projects that a prototype of the new system 

could be ready in fiscal year 2005.36

When fully functional, the Global 

Force Management process will be the essential analytic DOD tool for managing risk on a 

global scale. Previously, the practice was for 

the Secretary of Defense to apportion forces 

well in advance to regional commanders who 

based their planning on the assumption that 

those forces would be available in the event 

of war. The real world is more complicated. 

Regional commanders do not always get all 

the forces they desire, in which case they 

must adapt their plans quickly. Sometimes 

they get more than they expected or even 

needed to reduce risk to an acceptable level. 

The tendency is to push everything forward 

as fast as possible to the location of the 

immediate conflict, regardless of planning 

assumptions. When this happens, risk may 

increase elsewhere if adversaries believe the 

United States is overcommitted and unable to 

respond to their provocations. 

Meanwhile, functional commands such 

as Strategic Command, Transportation Command, and Joint Forces Command, which have 

critical wartime missions as well, often complain that they do not get a large enough say in 

which forces receive priority for a higher state 

of readiness. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

and Secretary of Defense need to be able to 

see and understand all these competing priorities and assess their import. Ultimately, they 

need to be able to advise the President with 

risk assessments that reflect current operational 

realities and not outdated assumptions. To 

improve their ability to manage all forces on a 

global basis and in near real-time, the President 

and Secretary of Defense have also adjusted 

some of the combatant commander relationships, particularly where forces with global 

reach are concerned. 

New Combatant Commander Relationships. The President, given his constitutional 

authority as Commander in Chief, ultimately 

has command and control of all U.S. forces. 

However, the President cannot oversee every 

military plan and operation on a day-to-day 

basis, nor can the Secretary of Defense. It is 

combatant commanders, under the guidance of 

the Secretary of Defense and President, who 

plan and prepare for potential military operations and, when necessary, command and control joint (and combined) military forces. In the 

past, the Pentagon organized U.S. combatant 

commands to deal with traditional contingencies occurring in one region or another, but 

those delineations are no longer satisfactory. 

Regional conflicts with significant escalation potential (especially to weapons of mass 

destruction) that could cut across regional 

boundaries—not to mention the war on terror—increase the need for global command 

and control. Consequently, U.S. defense leadership has begun to revise combatant commander responsibilities to deal with these 

cross-cutting issues better and to integrate 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 21

military capabilities more effectively with 

other elements of national power—diplomatic, 

informational, and economic.

1. Background and Record over Last 4 

Years. The Goldwater-Nichols Department of 

Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 shifted 

power and responsibilities from the military 

services to regional combatant commands. 

With its emphasis on jointness, GoldwaterNichols gave regional combatant commands 

more responsibility and authority, primarily so 

they could better address regional contingencies. Regional combatant commands—European Command, Pacific Command, Central 

Command, and Southern Command—were 

assigned the majority of general purpose forces 

with the expectation that most wars would be 

confined to one or another geographic area of 

responsibility. While functional commands 

existed, they had narrowly circumscribed roles 

and missions.37 Prestige and power clearly 

resided with the regional commands.

However, early in the Bush administration, Secretary Rumsfeld changed the nomenclature for the heads of the combatant commands from commanders in chief to combatant 

commanders. This was not merely a terminology change; it reemphasized civilian control of 

the military. The change reminded commanders 

that there is only one Commander in Chief in 

the United States—the President—and that the 

goal of the Unified Command Plan, which the 

President approves, is to ensure that the President and Secretary of Defense have a range of 

military options for dealing with whatever situations arise.

Beginning in 2002,38 and continuing 

with changes over the next several years, the 

Bush administration made major changes to 

both regional and functional/global commands, 

both creating new commands and altering the 

missions of others. These changes:

• created a new regional command, Northern Command (NORTHCOM), whose 

primary mission is homeland defense. The 

NORTHCOM commander is responsible 

for land, aerospace, and sea defenses of the 

United States, and for providing military 

support to civil authorities if needed in the 

case of natural disasters, attacks on U.S. 

soil, or other civil difficulties.39

• expanded another regional command, European Command (EUCOM), with assignment of Russia40

• created a new functional/global command 

with the merger of Space Command into 

the Strategic Command (STRATCOM). In 

addition to the nuclear deterrence and space 

missions that the new STRATCOM inherited, it also was given four previously unassigned missions:41 global strike; information 

operations; integrated missile defense; and 

C4ISR. Subsequently, STRATCOM was also 

assigned the mission of combating weapons 

of mass destruction.42

• moved the regional responsibilities of 

Joint Forces Command to NORTHCOM 

and EUCOM, freeing JFCOM to focus 

on transformation and experimentation; 

interoperability; joint concepts, joint battle 

management/command and control; and 

global force management. This change 

underscored the point that regional combatant commands do not “own” the forces 

assigned to them, but that they will be 

apportioned as the Secretary of Defense 

believes appropriate, given circumstances at 

the time.

• assigned Special Operations Command 

(SOCOM), which has long both provided 

and managed the special operations forces 

supplied to regional combatant commands, 

the overall responsibility for the global war 

on terrorism, and not just when it involves 

special operations forces.

Thus, over the last 4 years, nonregional 

commands have been given expanded responsibilities for global missions that cross regional 

boundaries—altering the previous balance 

between regional and global commands as 

well as expanding functional responsibilities 
22 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

as managers of joint capabilities—changing 

the previous balance between the services as 

capability providers and combatant commands 

as force employers. 

2. Key Questions for Next 4 Years. 

While the changes over the last 4 years have 

helped update the command structure to 

address 21st-century threats, the command 

structure may still require further changes in 

the face of current and future challenges. Several key issues are looming.

A. Regional/Global/Functional Balance. First, determining the proper balance 

in the future between regional, functional, 

and global commands will be difficult. The 

increasingly global security environment raises 

important questions about how combatant 

commands should be organized. How should 

DOD organize for missions such as the war 

on terror or combating WMD—missions that 

inherently cut across geographic boundaries? 

What is the best way to command and control 

capabilities that may operate across multiple 

time zones and more than one regional combatant command—such as global missile defense, 

space operations, global strike or intelligence, 

surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)? What 

sort of command and control arrangements are 

needed for “speed of light” capabilities—such 

as information operations, or (potentially) 

lasers? As these questions illustrate, security 

challenges are increasingly global in nature 

but also require a deep understanding of local 

regional conditions. 

Regional commands and global/

functional commands each have strengths and 

weaknesses. Regional commands understand 

the local conditions in the regions in which they 

operate—knowledge that may be essential to 

knowing how to assure allies, dissuade military competition, deter conflict, wage war, or 

secure the peace. However, some would argue 

that regional understanding is not an inherently 

military duty and is better handled by diplomats or intelligence officers. On the other hand, 

regional commands may not have the in-depth 

knowledge about all capabilities they may be 

able to employ, and must rely on either functional commands or services to provide that 

expertise. They also lack the global perspective to look across multiple regions to assess 

implications of options and actions, since their 

responsibility and focus are a particular part of 

the world. Functional commands have in-depth 

knowledge of the capabilities for which they are 

responsible—such as special operations, global 

strike, or information operations—but lack the 

in-depth regional expertise about friends and 

adversaries in the regions. They also may not 

have a broad view of all the capabilities that can 

be brought to bear in a situation—since they 

primarily know the capabilities for which they 

are responsible. In their global role, however, 

they can look across regions and consider how 

actions and challenges in one geographic area 

may affect other areas. 

SOCOM and STRATCOM have a combination of functional as well as geographically 

global missions. Both are capability providers 

to regional combatant commanders—SOCOM 

providing Special Operations Forces, and 

STRATCOM providing global strike forces. 

Both are responsible for independent global 

missions that require a variety of capabilities, 

SOCOM having the lead in the war on terror 

and STRATCOM for combating WMD. Some 

are concerned that giving a global mission to 

a functional force provider, such as making 

SOCOM responsible for the war on terror, 

will lead to applying the capability they own 

without adequately considering other capabilities—along the lines of the adage, “when all 

you have is a hammer, every problem looks 

like a nail.” If the war on terror is the Nation’s 

highest priority, perhaps it merits its own global (but not functional) command. 

Ultimately, retaining some mix of the 

three—regional, functional, and global commands—with appropriate connectivity among 

them is desirable. Some operations, including 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 23

engagement and stability operations, are best 

handled by regional commanders. Others, 

including aspects of combating terrorism, missile defense, and countering WMD proliferation, require a global perspective (and a variety 

of capabilities) but also cognizance of differing 

regional conditions that must be taken into 

account. Some functional issues such as special 

operations forces and information operations 

are best handled by joint capabilities providers 

(whether such joint capabilities providers are 

called “combatant commanders” or something 

else), but also need to be tempered by regional 

awareness. 

Another possibility is to take the “combatant” out of all the combatant commands, 

so that they serve the enduring missions of 

peacetime planning, security cooperation, integration, coordination, and synchronization, and 

have less permanent joint task forces (JTFs) 

that, as needed, are responsible for executing 

wars. Recognizing that JTFs are actually the 

warfighters could reduce tension about who 

is supporting and who is supported among 

regional/functional/global commands, since 

all would be in a support role to the actual 

warfighters for the duration of the conflict. 

Some find this idea impractical, arguing that it 

requires a four-star officer to build coalitions, 

fight wars and demand the support needed for 

combat. However, recent precedent is that in 

the circumstances where the higher rank is 

deemed necessary, the JTF commander could 

be a four-star—for example, General George 

Casey took over as the Commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq in July 2004, replacing 

a three-star (LTG Ricardo Sanchez). It is the 

four-star in the region, General Casey, who 

is in charge of operations—not the four-star 

CENTCOM commander headquartered in 

Tampa.

B. Interagency Coordination. A second key issue will center on the need to move 

beyond combatant commander integration to 

true interagency integration. It has become 

commonplace to assert that addressing current 

and future strategic problems often requires the 

integration among all instruments of national 

power—diplomatic, informational, military, 

economic, and legal. The question is how to 

make this integration real when the mechanisms for doing so are clearly inadequate. 

Interagency relationships are essential to the 

missions of all combatant commands, particularly in the pre- and postconflict stages. For 

instance, if the center of gravity for winning 

the war on terror is in influencing ideas and 

perceptions, that is not purely—or even primarily—a military function. The war in Iraq 

makes clear the downsides of not integrating 

military, diplomatic, informational, and reconstruction actions from the beginning. For commands such as NORTHCOM, where support to 

civil agencies is a key mission, essential tasks 

cannot be performed without close coordination among Federal, state, and local government agencies. Interagency cooperation, in 

short, while always helpful, has now become 

indispensable for success.

Many combatant commands have joint 

interagency coordination groups (JIACGs), 

with interagency representation. While 

JIACGs are useful to bring different agency 

perspectives together on a range of political-military matters, they are, as their name 

implies, coordination mechanisms. Civilian 

personnel assigned to the JIACGs operate 

mainly as liaisons for their home agencies and 

generally lack sufficient seniority and authority to speak definitively or give approval for 

their agencies.

A number of ideas have been advanced 

for how to improve interagency planning and 

operations, to include:

• creating a new independent government 

organization in Washington to integrate 

military and civilian planning43

• designating a Deputy National Security 

Advisor as the lead for integrating interagency planning for and implementation 
24 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

of complex operations and creating a 

new office and Crisis Action Teams in the 

National Security Council (NSC) to support 

this effort, as well as establishing planning 

offices in each agency44

• replacing regional combatant command 

“proconsuls” with regional Embassylike teams with all relevant agencies 

represented.45

Clarifying the roles and missions of 

various agencies in dealing with key security 

concerns, bolstering planning and operational capabilities of relevant civilian agencies, and enhancing the capacity of the NSC 

staff to integrate interagency planning and 

monitor policy implementation are promising and practicable approaches to achieving 

greater unity of effort. Ultimately, however, 

the U.S. Government must learn to collaborate across the various agencies that own 

requisite expertise for working complex 

foreign contingency operations in much the 

same manner that many American businesses 

have had to collaborate across organizational components (marketing, design, and 

engineering) to be successful in a dynamic 

and increasingly dangerous (or competitive) 

environment. Without such collaboration in 

Washington, DC, and in the field, it will not 

be possible to successfully execute missions 

in support of homeland security, the war on 

terror, combating weapons of mass destruction, or stability operations. 

C. Working the “Seams.” Efforts to 

resolve command and control issues within

a combatant command at least benefit from 

clearly delineated responsibilities and chain of 

command. In contrast, command and control 

issues across combatant commands, where 

there may be overlapping or interrelated 

issues, and between combatant commands 

and non-DOD agencies, where there is no 

common chain of command (below the Presidential level) and little if any joint planning 

capability, are far more complex. There will 

always be boundary lines, or “seams,” between 

organizations, where one organization’s 

responsibilities end and another’s begin. Seams 

are not necessarily bad; they allow for a reasonable span of control and division of labor. 

Seams are where organizations are soldered 

together, and as long as they do not become 

“stovepipes”—impeding coordination and integration, or letting things fall through the cracks 

between them—then “seam” is not figuratively 

a four-letter word. 

The issue is not eliminating seams, 

but preventing or mitigating their negative 

aspects: anything that prevents effective flow 

of information, intelligence, personnel, and 

units across boundaries, or competing mandates or lack of a common understanding of 

the objective, which leads to inefficient or 

contradictory activities. Making sure that the 

“commander’s intent” by all commands is 

more important than precisely how responsibilities are divided among them. There is 

probably any number of Unified Command 

Plan alignments, or interagency divisions of 

responsibility, that would be satisfactory. 

It is more important that senior leaders—combatant commanders, the Secretary 

of Defense, agency heads, NSC staff—spend 

enough time working on issues that arise from 

organizations’ intersection. That may mean that 

combatant commanders or organization heads 

focus on looking “across and up,” and leave 

it to their deputies to “look down” and manage internal processes. To work the seams may 

truly require a cultural change, since the military tends to be most comfortable with clear 

lines of authority and a chain of command that 

is clear and unequivocal. The problem is that a 

clear line of authority and command may not 

work well in the complexity of today’s world, 

where everything is related to everything else, 

and the boxes are not so neat. There may be 

many situations where the operative words 

are “coordinate and collaborate” rather than 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 25

“command and control.” Within DOD and 

commands, there needs to be increased emphasis on creating avenues for regular coordination and planning, both at the commander-tocommander level and at the working level.46

Toward a More Agile Global Posture

While new command relationships and 

management tools and systems are needed for 

global force management, a new global force 

posture is also needed to improve the ability 

to move forces quickly to problems areas that 

can only imperfectly be anticipated in advance. 

Many U.S. military units are still stationed in 

proximity to potential flashpoints during the 

Cold War, particularly in Europe, and more specifically Germany, which are now quite secure. 

Even Korea, which has remained a volatile area 

since the Korean armistice of 1953, has changed 

dramatically. Today, South Korea is a country 

on the verge of entering the short list of the 

world’s top 10 performing economies and one 

that is capable of providing for much of its own 

defense. Clearly, Cold War assumptions about 

the location and structure of U.S. forces need to 

be reexamined. 

It is easy enough to conclude that our 

Cold War–era overseas basing and force deployment are outdated; the much harder question is 

to determine precisely how force posture should 

be revised. There has been a general recognition that maintaining large amounts of ground 

forces in stable and powerful countries might be 

less important than making changes that would 

help consolidate relationships with new allies 

or better position U.S. forces for responses to 

new threats emanating from the arc of instability 

that has emerged along the southern reaches of 

the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the details of precisely what moves to make, and how and when 

to make them, are exceedingly complicated and 

have required detailed review. 

A year following the 2001 QDR report, 

U.S. defense leadership initiated the Global 

Posture Review (GPR) to consider these 

issues and make recommendations on updating basing of U.S. military forces around the 

globe. Officials on and off the record predicted 

the largest basing changes since World War 

II, describing a network of far-flung staging 

bases to support highly mobile units that would 

deploy out of strategically located new, rotationally staffed training garrisons. Inevitably, the 

result was a rising tide of expectations overseas. 

In Europe, speculation quickly followed that 

there might be brigade-sized bases with ports 

and airfields in Bulgaria, or major new training 

areas in Poland, or airfields in unnamed countries that could replace the American base at 

Ramstein. Over time, as speculation mounted, 

many countries inferred that political considerations would drive basing decisions, and they 

would be punished or rewarded for their policies 

regarding the war in Iraq or other U.S. policies. Many sources in Germany and Spain, for 

example, assumed that they would lose out on 

American bases due to their lack of support for 

operations in Iraq. In contrast, and especially 

among new U.S. allies in Central and Eastern 

Europe, expectations were clear that major (and 

lucrative) new arrangements with the American 

military were impending, in part because of 

their support for the U.S. operations in Iraq.47

As part of an effort to downplay exaggerated hopes or unwarranted concerns, U.S. 

defense and diplomatic officials sought to 

emphasize the strategic rationale for the repositioning. Moving forces from their traditional 

(especially west European) bases to new foreign locations or back to the United States was 

touted as a way to avoid the onerous training 

restrictions U.S. forces faced with increasing 

frequency in their current bases. It would also 

be a way to avoid deployment delays when 

host nations disputed the policies prompting 

the deployment of American forces. Most of 

all, however, the re-posture was touted as a 

way to increase U.S. strategic agility by moving troops closer to potential hot spots and 

thereby speeding their potential deployment. 
26 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

Not surprisingly, given the strategic rationale proffered, countries with close 

proximity to the arc of instability speculated 

that they were well-positioned candidates for 

hosting U.S. forces, and many assumed bases 

would be built eventually. In particular, some 

countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus saw 

an opportunity to secure American security 

guarantees or at least to strengthen defense 

relationships with the United States. Other, 

better-established U.S. allies, who seemed ill 

positioned to retain U.S. forces could not help 

but view proposed changes in light of their 

own domestic and international political concerns. Some countries, such as South Korea, 

expressed concern that decisions about repositioning U.S. forces would not sufficiently 

account for their strategic interests.48 Others, 

such as Japan, saw an opportunity to revisit 

long-standing sources of irritation in current 

basing relationships.49

Modest Initial Changes and Enduring Challenges. Two years after the initial 

flurry of discussion, the Pentagon in August 

2004 announced the results of the GPR. Some 

important and salutary changes were proposed. 

A logical construct for overseas deployment 

infrastructure was elaborated, foreseeing wellequipped, permanent main operating bases for 

the stationing of major forces, austere forward 

operating locations for the temporary staging 

and onward movement of forces, and cooperative security locations for use as intermediate 

staging bases. One additional aircraft carrier 

battlegroup and more submarines will be forward-stationed in the Pacific, dramatically 

cutting transit time for these platforms from 

their home bases to their anticipated areas of 

deployment. Also, for the first time since the 

Vietnam War, Guam will have the continuous 

presence of B–52 bombers on its shores.50 Army 

forces in Korea have begun a long-overdue 

downsizing that better reflects the evolution 

of the North Korean threat and the advances 

made by the South Korean Defense Forces. 

Throughout the world, headquarters will be 

streamlined, redundant echelons of command 

eliminated, and forces reoriented toward global 

employment rather than regional focus. 

Yet it must be said that the initial 

results of the Global Posture Review fell short 

of far-reaching expectations overseas. Contrary to early predictions of a politically or 

strategy-driven posture review, operational 

military logic has dominated the changes to 

date. Many of the early and more radical ideas 

for reposturing the military’s global presence 

that had strong political or strategic rationale in 

the abstract proved less attractive when operational research demonstrated that they would 

contribute relatively little to the strategic agility needed to respond to the complex security 

environment in the next 25 years. Ultimately, 

most major reposturing decisions—that is, 

those involving relocation of brigade- or division-sized units—were made more on the basis 

of operational, not political or geostrategic, 

advantages.

This is particularly true with regard to 

ground forces, whose repositioning made up 

the bulk of the major proposals for unit relocation. Strategic agility of ground forces depends 

on the capability to deploy appropriately 

trained and ready forces to the problem area 

quickly. In this calculation, geography plays 

a role, but stationing forces closer to targets 

does not necessarily mean those forces can 

deploy to their targets more quickly. The effect 

of geography on the speed of deployment 

depends on three factors: proximity of deploying forces to the port of embarkation (sea or 

air); throughput at the ports of embarkation and 

debarkation; and distance to the target area. 

These variables are not always controllable. Distance to the target area and the 

capacity of ports of debarkation will vary 

with the contingency. However, throughput at 

the port of embarkation can be considered a 

major factor when deciding whether or where 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 27

to relocate forces. Throughput depends on 

infrastructure, such as ramp-space, crash-fire 

rescue equipment, materiel handling equipment, rail or road access, sustainment facilities 

for staging forces, communications ability, and 

traffic management systems. It is hard to see 

how reposturing U.S. ground forces currently 

based overseas would improve these variables.51 Except for those in the United States, 

new locations would likely not offer the highly 

developed ports of embarkation our forces currently enjoy. Black Sea ports in Bulgaria and 

Romania would be hard-pressed to provide the 

sort of outload capacity found in Bremerhaven, 

Germany, or the Netherlands. Likewise, airbases near training areas in Bulgaria, Romania, or 

Poland would require major upgrade to equal 

even a medium-throughput facility in the West. 

Proximity of deploying forces to the 

port of embarkation is also a controllable variable, one that depends on both raw distance 

and the capacity of the transportation infrastructure between the forces’ garrisons and the 

port. Again, it is hard to see how significant 

improvements could be gained by moving 

major ground forces to locations in new countries. True, new locations might offer closer 

physical proximity of the deploying force to 

the port; however, given the state of transportation infrastructure outside of the U.S. and 

the modern countries where forces are currently located, it is not clear this proximity 

would compensate for a less developed outload 

capacity. 

In any event, U.S. forces are already 

positioned close enough to major air and sea 

ports that “fort-to-port” transit is rarely the 

time-critical path in brigade-level deployment sequences. Throughput at the port itself 

and other nongeographic factors such as the 

pace of strategic decisionmaking, the time 

required to identify and outload cumbersome and diverse ground force equipment, 

aircraft flow plans, and even material handling equipment (for example, the size and 

number of forklifts available) usually drive 

the speed of deployment. To offset disadvantages of undeveloped port infrastructure and 

make repositioning ground forces advantageous requires a significant decrease in distance to assumed targets. However, much of 

the early and most animated speculation surrounding the GPR involved moving ground 

forces fewer than 800 miles from their current 

locations. The costs in throughput and accessibility would be balanced against a mere 2-

hour decrease in flight time—hardly worth the 

effort.

Indeed, while obviously dependent on 

the contingency in question, some studies suggest that the time required to move forces to 

and through a port may be two to three times 

the time required to actually transit to the conflict area. In the first Gulf war, for example, 

it took the Army’s VII Corps, which left from 

four embarkation points in Europe, 42 days 

to load up 40,000 pieces of equipment on the 

ships, and only 20 days of transit to the Middle 

East. In short, finding ways to expedite the outloading process for ground forces may have a 

higher payoff than repositioning them or even 

investing in new strategic transportation capabilities. At least this is the case with ground 

forces. 

Repositioning naval and air forces can 

have greater advantages. These forces are platform-centric, and the fighting package deploys 

from a port, not through one. Especially for 

ships, with their slower transit speeds, this 

means that moving closer to an area of potential 

employment can significantly add to its strategic 

responsiveness. Not surprisingly, some of the 

major repositioning called for by Global Posture 

Review concerns naval forces in the Pacific 

where the distances from current bases to potential conflict areas are the greatest. 

Training requirements also helped determine GPR results. To achieve strategic agility, 

the forces that deploy must be trained and ready. 

Training and maintaining a complex modern 
28 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

force requires that three things be readily available: adequate space where the force can train; 

instrumented training areas; and high-level 

maintenance capabilities. Some countries seem 

willing to provide more space for more aggressive training than is possible in much of the 

United States or Western Europe. However, it 

is doubtful that this environmental permissiveness will be sustained over time, especially as 

countries of Central Europe integrate with the 

European Union. Furthermore, these countries 

lack the sophisticated training and maintenance 

systems needed to hone a modern force. As 

with deployment infrastructure, it is unlikely 

that the United States could easily replicate the 

systems it already possesses, or could justify 

doing so. The (probably temporary) benefit to 

be gained by environmental permissiveness 

might not outweigh the disadvantage of lowerquality training infrastructure and maintenance. 

Although excellent training can be conducted 

in many nontraditional locations, their limitations in terms of instrumentation and professional personnel suggest they should be seen 

as supplements to the primary facilities we currently possess at places such as Hohenfels and 

Grafenwoer in Germany.

Summary. Political considerations can 

and should affect strategic basing decisions. 

The presence of American forces affects our 

relationships with host countries and can be 

used as a valuable tool in reassuring friends 

and dissuading enemies. However, political considerations cut both ways. Political 

complications can also slow the speed of 

deployment when states limit U.S. options 

by foot-dragging or outright denial of transit, 

overflight, or deployment, notwithstanding 

agreements covering these issues that seem 

more permissive. State policies are politically 

determined and fluctuate over time, but large 

fixed infrastructure cannot fluctuate so easily. In the absence of the Soviet threat, which 

helped cement U.S. relationships with key 

allies, it is natural to expect a more diverse 

range of opinions and responses to American 

requests for base usage. Absent a strong and 

abiding strategic partnership with a country, it 

is increasingly precarious to “forward deploy” 

significant ground forces. Unless U.S. forces 

are mobile (amphibious or prepositioned 

materials afloat) or in locations that the 

United States reliably controls (for example, 

Guam or Diego Garcia), there is an increasing 

likelihood that local approval of deployments 

may not be granted. In this regard, the Global 

Posture Review actually concluded that political considerations reinforced military logic. 

Indeed, the largest movement of forces foreseen is the relocation of the better part of two 

ground divisions from Germany and a brigade 

from Korea to the United States—hardly the 

result anticipated abroad. The redeployment 

of heavy forces to the United States is a significant development, but one where political 

constraints on deployability were determined 

to be more important than the net effects of 

geographical location or the strategic-political 

effect of forward presence.

This is not to say that geostrategic 

positioning does not matter in a military sense; 

it matters greatly. Holding key ground, posturing for quick employment, and the consequent potential for improved deterrence all 

are important considerations influencing force 

locations. Ultimately, however, strategic agility is not simply a function of moving forces 

“closer” to the expected fight. Numerous other 

operational considerations must be taken into 

account. In the end, geostrategic reasoning 

ended up recommending a hierarchy of intermediate staging bases and ports of debarkation 

in forward locations with varying levels of 

operational capacity and fixed infrastructure. 

Unfortunately, the austere and almost temporary nature of these locations, some of which 

will consist of little more than a set of usage 

agreements, does not correspond well with the 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 29

high expectations aroused by the announcement of the posture review. 

Since the initial results of the GPR 

deflated many expectations, some of which 

were backed up with significant investments 

of political capital, the United States will need 

to mend some fences with potential partner 

states. In doing so, it should make an effort to 

demonstrate how cooperative security locations and forward operating locations can 

improve U.S. strategic agility and produce 

local benefits as well. Such improvements are 

not obvious. The United States needs to make 

a case for how rapid and locally-contracted 

infrastructural improvements still have economic and political advantages, and how a 

smaller U.S. footprint in a host nation reduces 

political friction that hurts both the United 

States and the local government. In addition, 

routine operational (or training) use of cooperative security locations and forward operating locations demonstrate the strategic reach 

they provide for U.S. forces and the deterrence value they hold for host nations. These 

activities are not cost-free for U.S. forces, 

especially during times of high operational 

tempo, but the political and strategic benefits 

justify the effort and would help smooth ruffled feathers in the wake of the initial results 

of the Global Posture Review. 

Recalibrating the Capabilities Mix

The need for new global command and 

control relationships and a new global defense 

posture in part reflects the emergence of new 

capabilities with truly global reach. Capabilities that provide rapid and, in some cases, virtually immediate response capabilities raise 

difficult command and control issues, but also 

make great contributions to the strategy goal of 

forward deterrence. National missile defense 

and global ISR capabilities were emphasized in 

the 2001 QDR, but the global reach of special 

operations forces and some types of information operations also were noted. In addition, 

long-range bombers capable of precision 

bombing and the possibility of conventional 

intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic vehicles that could deliver lethal payloads raise the promise of other global rapid 

response capabilities that support forward 

deterrence. 

Risk Management and Force Design. 

Some new global capabilities are extremely 

expensive and immediately raise complex 

investment and force design issues. Something 

must be given up in order to pay for building a 

future force that has more rather than less global intelligence, strike, and defense capabilities. 

What are the tradeoffs, and what force options 

make the most sense? This question must be 

answered on several levels. At the strategic 

level, there may be tradeoffs between investments in a more elaborate and flexible set of 

overseas base options and in forces that are not 

dependent upon bases.

Forces have differing levels of selfdeployability and sustainment. Aircraft carriers 

are completely self-deployable, bring all their 

combat power and, depending on the types of 

combat operations, weeks or months of supplies to sustain operations as well. They can 

also be replenished at sea when necessary. 

Fighter aircraft can deploy to theater with the 

aid of refueling tankers but then depend upon 

local bases to support their operations. Ground 

forces are the least self-deployable and sustainable unless configured in an expeditionary manner such as the Marines. The Marines 

deploy aboard their own ships and, once 

ashore, can sustain ground operations for about 

a month before major sustainment support is 

required. Future options could make U.S. military forces more self-deployable and sustainable, and less onerous for allies as well, but at 

quite some cost. 

For example, the Navy is experimenting with a sea-basing concept that would permit 

ground forces to attack their land objectives 
30 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

from a collection of naval platforms without 

the need for an operational pause to regroup 

after having captured an enemy port. One 

report noted that such a capability could be 

replenished from major bases within 2,000 

miles of the operation (for example, Guam or 

Diego Garcia), or perhaps even directly from 

the United States. Such a capability would significantly reduce reliance on host nation support for bases.52 Why invest a lot of resources 

in land bases that can only operate with the 

approval of the host nation government when 

the vast majority of the Earth’s surface is within reach of internationally accessible sea lines? 

Many observers believe a sea-basing 

capability makes sense in a period of shifting political relationships and loyalties. They 

believe it would be better to invest in more 

self-deployable and sustainable force capabilities than to incur the expense of trying to maintain a wide network of land bases that entail 

high political and material costs. Sea basing 

and mobile ballistic missile defense would be 

attractive to allies as well. They would be a 

less visible, and thus in some cases less politically onerous, form of American commitment, 

and their use would make the allied nation’s 

key transportation nodes less attractive targets 

to the enemy. 

Another potentially attractive operational-level trade is investing more in planning tools and transportation techniques that 

improve “fort-to-port” transit and port-to-foxhole movement such as unit containerization 

and “sense and respond logistics” that reveal 

needs and allocate resources in real time. Such 

investments might make more sense than 

expensive efforts either to lighten greatly Army 

forces or to improve their strategic mobility by 

means of high-speed vessels or novel airship 

designs. As noted above, when the total time 

to move Army units from “fort to foxhole” is 

considered, it is not the actual transit to theater, 

but the movement to the port, on-loading, and 

subsequent off-loading and reorganization for 

combat that by far take the most time. 

At the operational level, other tradeoffs in force design must be considered in 

light of growing global capabilities. Global 

force capabilities that have greater speed, 

range, and endurance generally have more 

flexibility to deal with surprise and enemy 

antiaccess strategies. Some argue that the first 

priority for operational success is to safeguard rapid movement along global lines of 

communication (sea, air, space, cyberspace). 

For example, Operation Iraqi Freedom used 

less than half the tactical air strike sorties of 

Desert Storm, but the tanker-to-sortie ratio 

was double that of Desert Storm. In short, if 

U.S. forces control space, air, and sea lines 

of communication, and can defend and transit them freely, it will be far easier to get to 

the fight faster with the most powerful joint 

strike capability, including ground forces. The 

question is how to pay for such global reach 

capabilities. Some have argued that the United States can afford to downsize some of its 

extensive forcible entry force structure, which 

ranges from diverse Army airborne units to 

Marine Expeditionary Forces. Sacrificing 

some of this force structure in favor of “flexible entry” capabilities that expand the range 

of entry points an enemy must protect would 

vastly complicate the enemy’s challenge of 

mounting an effective defense.

The argument that U.S. forces fight first 

for information superiority also raises questions 

about tradeoffs between global ISR capabilities 

and force structure that provides strike capability. If there is greater assurance of hitting a target because of more accurate and timely intelligence, fewer “shooters” are needed. A more 

specific tradeoff can be considered between 

global and theater ISR capabilities. Some prefer 

space-based ISR systems that can survey the 

entire globe in persistent fashion, while others argue that deployable, air-breathing theater 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 31

ISR capabilities are better able to surge when 

demand is highest. 

With respect to coalition operations, 

the greatest efficiencies may be possible from 

investments in command and control capabilities that permit U.S. forces to share such 

exquisite intelligence. Such investments might 

make allied forces much more capable and cost 

less than many other politically difficult and 

operationally less important interoperability 

initiatives such as common standards for logistics and transportation of military forces. Yet 

sharing command and control, and especially 

intelligence, is a security-sensitive and technically challenging enterprise. Usefully integrating the numerous sources of information 

available to the United States alone is a huge 

undertaking. Figuring out how to integrate 

allied intelligence and data sources as well, and 

to share it through a multilevel security process 

that allows different parties to access only part 

of the universe of available information, is a 

stupendously difficult challenge, but one with 

significant payoff.

Tactical capability trades must be considered as well. For example, some believe that 

mobility may be the best defense against areadenial weapons such as chemical agents that 

can be used to attack airbases and seaports. 

Rather than invest large amounts of resources 

in static chemical and biological defenses to 

protect key nodes like air and sea bases, more 

resources should be invested in long-range 

bombers, sea basing, and other global strike 

capabilities that are not so vulnerable to WMD. 

Similarly, since the easiest way to deliver 

weapons of mass destruction over significant 

distance is to use aircraft or missiles, many 

argue for greater investments in a combination of persistent theater ISR, hypersonic strike 

vehicles, and more robust theater air and missile defenses. These force capabilities, they 

argue, are more important perhaps than maintaining the size of the current tactical fighter 

forces, an area in which the United States currently holds a comfortable advantage.

Transformation’s Difficult Trades. The 

range and complexity of the choices highlighted 

by the emergence of global force capabilities 

underscore the importance of institutionalizing a 

capabilities-based approach to defense decisionmaking. Just as defense planners must now take 

into account a far greater variability in threat, so 

must they also consider a more diverse range of 

capability options. Identifying areas to reduce 

and accept risk in a deliberate manner, supported by the best possible analysis, is a major 

challenge to senior decisionmakers. 

Changes have already been made to 

facilitate the move to a capabilities-based 

approach. For example, in May 2003, DOD 

adopted a 2-year planning cycle so that it could

use the off-year to focus on key defense planning issues, fiscal execution, and program 

performance. The Defense Department also 

has adopted an enhanced planning process that 

furthers the institutionalization of capabilitiesbased planning.53 Of course the specific studies 

and trades considered by the Department are 

classified,54 but the process itself is described 

as dependent upon the development of joint 

operating concepts, risk metrics, better models 

and simulations, and supporting databases. 

However, unless the process takes an integrated look at strategic as well as operational and 

tactical level choices, it is likely to produce an 

overly narrow set of options uninformed by 

their broader strategic implications. 

Conclusion

Transformation of the U.S. defense 

establishment accelerated with the 2001 

Quadrennial Defense Review and the strong 

backing of both the President and Secretary 

of Defense. This paper only considers the 

most prominent initiatives under way in the 

Pentagon to transform how U.S. forces fight, 

how the Pentagon does business (including 
32 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

planning and experimentation), and how it 

manages, postures, and designs its forces in 

cooperation with interagency and international 

partners. The Bush administration’s commitment to transformation is driven by strategy 

considerations. The defense strategy now 

emphasizes the need to prepare for a more 

diverse and uncertain set of security threats. It 

also emphasizes the need to exploit information-age opportunities to produce transformational capabilities that will help dissuade erstwhile competitors and deter potential adversaries with global capabilities that better support 

forward deployed forces. DOD commitment 

to transformation should remain regardless of 

leadership changes and the demands of current 

operations. Thus, for the time being, the transformation challenge is to deepen, extend, and 

accelerate what has already begun. 

Progress on implementing transformation may be slowed by several factors. Of first 

order concern is the war on terror, which is 

absorbing increasing amounts of senior leader 

attention and new-term funding. It is hard to 

estimate the likelihood that the war on terror 

will derail transformation. There is always a tension between nearer-term operational costs and 

longer-term investments. Since the stakes are 

so high in the war on terror, if forced to choose 

between successful current operations and transformation investments, the former would likely 

be given the nod. However, the Pentagon steadfastly maintains that it will not sacrifice success 

in current operations to safeguard the likelihood 

of successful transformation. There would seem 

to be no reason to do so as long as the President 

and Congress are willing to support increased 

levels of Pentagon spending to fund most of the 

current operations in the war on terror. 

Certainly, the most difficult strategic tradeoffs can be avoided when so many 

resources are present. Some believe this helps 

transformation, as expensive transformation 

capabilities can be initiated and developed 

to the point where they can compete with 

established and well-understood, albeit decidedly less revolutionary, capabilities. Other 

transformation theorists believe the infusion 

of resources from the war on terrorism perversely handicaps transformation. They argue 

that critical resource shortages are a necessary 

stimulus for transformation, and that as long 

as hard choices can be avoided, the Pentagon 

will default to lower-risk and less revolutionary options. Both views seem to capture some 

truth now. The Pentagon is investing heavily 

in transformational starts without abandoning 

much near-term capability. How the Pentagon will adjudicate risk—when the tradeoffs 

between transformation, mere modernization, and current operations are more stark—

remains uncertain but should be clarified by the 

results of the 2005 QDR, currently under way 

and due to be delivered to Congress in February 2006. If senior leaders are preoccupied 

with current events in Iraq and Afghanistan, 

however, the chances that difficult decisions 

will be avoided probably increases.

Other challenges to transformation are 

clearer. One challenge is conceptual clarity. 

Uncertainty is not a principle that can form 

the basis for defense planning. It is awkward 

to insist simultaneously, as the Pentagon has 

done, on the need to assume surprise as a condition of the future security environment and 

on the need to invest heavily in global intelligence to reduce the chance of surprise. It is 

possible to argue for the flexibility to respond 

well to surprise while trying to reduce its likelihood, but there is a tension between the two. 

Why invest billions in global intelligence if the 

result is invariably surprise? Ultimately, limited resources must go to one area or another 

based on an assessment of where they do the 

most good. It is inescapably important to make 

reasoned judgments about the future security 

environment and how to respond to the most 

critical anticipated problems. 

The challenge for defense planners 

now is to cope with increased variability in 
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 33

both the threat and the options for dealing 

with a diverse set of threats. Sharply defining 

the essential elements of the security problems embodied by the JOCs would be helpful for illuminating choices and increase the 

likelihood that joint operating concepts will 

fulfill their role as engines of transformation. 

Improving JOCs would also help accelerate the 

development of capabilities-based planning, 

which in turn is necessary to properly evaluate 

options for global force management, design, 

and posture. The need to assess and manage 

risk in light of far greater threat and capability 

variability is the raison d’être of capabilitiesbased planning. The significance of increased 

variability is that it increases the complexity of 

defense planning and analysis. Complexity can 

be managed only by holding firm to several 

large, foundational ideas about what the future 

will demand (that is, relying on a “vision” of 

what circumstances require). Yet as this paper 

has argued, even within the framework of a 

coherent vision, senior decisionmakers cannot 

make tough decisions about defense programs 

without supporting concepts, organizations, 

and new modes of analysis; at least, they cannot do so very well, neither substantively nor 

politically. 

How one goes about transforming what 

is undisputedly already the world’s greatest 

military power is bound to be highly contentious. It is critically important to have a 

transparent and well-understood process that 

generates analysis and evidence about where it 

is best to take and minimize risk while implementing transformation.55 In this regard, there 

is a clear need to tighten up and accelerate 

joint operating concept development and to 

better institutionalize the other key elements 

of a capabilities-based approach into a new 

planning and resource allocation system. Such 

a system will be critically needed to support 

the difficult choices inherent in all transformation decisions, but especially for choosing 

between alternative force postures and designs 

under the aegis of global force planning, which 

puts established defense programs at risk and 

affects congressional constituencies across the 

United States, as well as numerous allied and 

friendly countries.

Notes

1

 For the Department of Defense’s own assessment of its transformation performance for this period, 

see William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense, “Emerging 

Operational Concepts Quadrennial Report, 1996–1999,” 

Report to Congress, September 2000. The report was 

required by Congress (Section 486 of Title 10, United 

States Code), which directed the Secretary to submit a 

quadrennial report on emerging operational concepts, 

new organizational arrangements, and acquisition strategies used to harness emerging technologies, capabilities, 

and changes in the international order. The report was a 

gentle prod from Congress to get DOD to move faster 

on transformation. 2

 One example was the U.S. Army’s campaign 

to revolutionize its ability to fight at night with the aid 

of night-vision devices and precise geo-location devices. 

All other land forces had to adapt to this innovation or 

risk being rendered obsolete. 3

 Transformation Planning Guidance 

(Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 2003). 4

 This paper analyzes salient aspects of defense 

transformation and assumes a rudimentary knowledge 

of defense affairs. For a more general overview of the 

current administration’s transformation agenda and its 

critics, see Ronald O’Rourke, “Defense Transformation: 

Background and Oversight Issues for Congress,” 

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 

updated December 20, 2004. 5

 The March 2005 National Defense Strategy 

changed this list from six operational goals to eight 

operational capabilities, most notably adding “operating from the global commons,” “improving proficiency 

against irregular challenges,” and “increasing capabilities of partners, international and domestic.” Other 

modifications are consistent with the original list. 6

 Greg Jaffe and Jonathan Karp, “Military Cuts 

Target Old Ways of War: Pentagon budget proposal 

would hit Navy, Air Force; Shipbuilders face squeeze,” 

The Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2005, 3. 7

 The Transformation Planning Guidance 

advertised senior leadership commitment to transformation, articulated a strategic rationale for transformation, and described a strategy for pursuing 

transformation, all in order to “mobilize the rest of the 

Department and stimulate the bottom-up innovation 
34 OCCASIONAL PAPER 

required for successful transformation.” It was intended 

to establish a process that would “define transformation 

investments that address future risk with enough specificity that they can be balanced against the other three 

primary risk areas identified in the Quadrennial Defense 

Review: force management, operational, and institutional risk.” Transformation Planning Guidance, 3. 8 Network-centric warfare has been defined 

as “the combination of emerging tactics, techniques, 

and technologies that a networked force employs to 

create a decisive warfighting advantage.” Department 

of Defense, Office of Force Transformation, Military 

Transformation: A Strategic Approach (Washington, 

DC: Office of Force Transformation, 2003). Joint Forces 

Command has defined effects based operations as “a 

process for obtaining a desired strategic outcome or 

‘effect’ on the enemy, through the synergistic, multiplicative, and cumulative application of the full range 

of military and nonmilitary capabilities at the tactical, 

operational, and strategic levels.” 9

 Department of Defense, Joint Operations 

Concepts (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 

November, 2003). 10 Transformation Planning Guidance, 15.

11 Currently, the Pentagon has two categories 

of supporting concepts: joint functional concepts (JFCs) 

and enabling concepts called joint integrating concepts 

(JICs). A JFC describes how the future joint force will 

perform a particular military function. The current set of 

JFCs include force application, protection, battlespace 

awareness, command and control, focused logistics, network-centric operations, force management, and training. JICs provide more specificity and a narrower focus. 

JICs describe fundamental tasks, conditions, and standards required to conduct narrow missions that support 

the broader JOCs and JFCs. Their level of detail permits 

more rigorous assessment of alternative capabilities. 

JICs have been developed for forcible entry operations 

and undersea superiority, and future JICs will include 

global strike operations, sea-basing operations, air and 

missile defense, joint command and control, joint logistics, and joint urban operations. 12 Recently the Pentagon categorized future 

security problems in four areas: traditional large conventional force attacks, irregular attacks by terrorists 

and insurgents, catastrophic attacks involving weapons 

of mass destruction by terrorists or rogue states, and 

disruptive challenges, such as breakthrough technologies or other novel nontechnical asymmetric tactics. 

The joint operating concepts could be aligned with these 

categories, although it is difficult to envision a concept 

for disruptive challenges, which operationally would 

seem to be highly situation dependent, and best dealt 

with as an intelligence and research and development 

challenge. Current work on the Quadrennial Defense 

Review (QDR) is exploring alternative depictions of 

the most critical security challenges as well. See Jason 

Sherman, “‘Revenue-Neutral’ Quadrennial Review to 

Squeeze Big-Ticket Programs,” Inside the Pentagon, 

January 27, 2005, 1. Sherman reports that a draft version of the QDR “terms of reference” indicate that “the 

review is set to examine four strategic problems: countering Islamic extremism, which includes “ensuring the 

demise of terrorist networks”; dealing with a “failed” 

nuclear-armed state; the military’s role in homeland 

security; and the conventional military of an emerging 

power.” 13 Department of Defense, Homeland 

Security Joint Operating Concept (Washington, DC: 

Department of Defense, February 2004). 14 Department of Defense, Strategic 

Deterrence Joint Operating Concept (Washington, DC: 

Department of Defense, February 2004). All the joint 

concepts reviewed in this paper are available online at 

<www.dtic.mil/jointvision/joc.htm>. 15 The concept identifies both direct and 

enabling means. Direct means include force projection, nuclear strike, active and passive defenses, global 

strike, strategic information operations, inducement 

operations, and space control. Enabling means include 

global situational awareness, command and control, 

overseas presence, and allied/coalition military cooperation and integration. 16 Department of Defense, Major Combat 

Operations Joint Operations Concept (Draft) 

(Washington, DC: Department of Defense, September 

2004). 17 The concept actually mentions three categories of potential adversaries for large-scale operations: conventional, high-end regional threat; a major 

irregular enemy; and a peer competitor. Although the 

peer competitor is considered the most dangerous alternative, the assumption is that no near-peer competitor 

will emerge by 2015. Furthermore, it is assumed that 

the conventional, high-end regional threat will have a 

greater impact on total capability requirements, so the 

initial version of the concept does not address a major 

irregular enemy in any detail. 18 The question of information redundancy and 

whether platforms ought to retain sufficient information-processing capability to enable them to fight independent of the network is a critical issue. Some might 

argue that it is too detailed for an operating concept or 

that it need not be addressed in such an early version of 

the concept. 19 Department of Defense, Stability Operations 

Joint Operations Concept (Draft) (Washington, DC: 

Department of Defense, September, 2004).
TRANSFORMING DEFENSE 35

20 The rise of modern insurgencies in the past 

50 years has been characterized as a new form of warfare called fourth-generation warfare. This form of 

warfare has been particularly vexing for U.S. forces 

in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, and most recently in 

Iraq. Critics of defense transformation argue that hightechnology, information-aged warfare is inappropriate 

for this type of adversary. See Thomas X. Hammes, 

Insurgency: Modern Warfare Evolves into a Fourth 

Generation, Strategic Forum No. 214 (Washington, DC: 

National Defense University Press, January, 2005). 21 U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual

(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

1940), chapter I, 1–9(f), 1–16(c); chapter II, 2–5. 22 See John F. Schmitt, “A Practical Guide for 

Developing and Writing Military Concepts,” Working 

Paper #02–4, Defense Adaptive Red Team (McLean, 

VA: Hicks & Associates, December 2002). 23 Department of Defense, Joint Operations 

Concepts.24 Some would consider the classic principles of 

war (mass, objective, security, simplicity) to be a good 

starting point. Others prefer the core military elements 

championed by some Army sources (sense, move, shoot, 

communicate, protect, sustain). A more recent example 

of an organizing framework is the three domains of 

warfare identified by the Pentagon’s Office of Force 

Transformation: cognitive, informational, and physical. 

The Office of Force Transformation asserts that the nexus of these three domains is the capabilities necessary to 

conduct network-centric warfare. 25 The QDR referred to a capabilities-based 

strategy, approach, model, and force. Our concern here 

is primarily with planning, so the term capabilitiesbased planning is used. Ultimately, a broader term such 

as approach is probably more appropriate since certainly 

the scope of reform exceeds planning. 26 George W. Bush, quoted in the 

Transformation Planning Guidance, 3. 27 QDR Report, September 30, 2001; section 

on “A Capabilities-Based Approach,” 13–14. The link 

drawn between capabilities-based planning and transformation is made even more explicit in the foreword to the 

report:

Adopting this capabilities-based approach to planning . . . entails adapting existing military capabilities to new circumstances, while experimenting with 

the development of new military capabilities. In 

short, it requires the transformation of U.S. forces, 

capabilities, and institutions to extend America’s 

asymmetric advantages well into the future. 

28 Ibid., 3.

29 Examples of such influences are service parochialism, special pleading by select offices within the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense, and imprecise studies 

based on faulty methodologies or data. 30 QDR Report, 14. 31 Such a document was called for at a recent 

Pentagon-sponsored symposium on capabilities-based 

planning. See Military Operations Research Society, 

Capabilities-based Planning Workshop, Outbrief (Long 

Version), November 16, 2004. 32 Global posture and capabilities received 

somewhat more attention than global force management 

in 2001, but subsequently it has become a major area of 

interest and activity in the Pentagon. 33 QDR Report, 26. 34 The description of new tools and processes 

to support global force management is drawn primarily 

from the Operational Risk section of the 2004 Secretary 

of Defense Annual Report to the President and the 

Congress.35 “The Global Force Management process, 

now being developed, will provide insights into the 

global availability of forces, allowing military planners 

to do quick-turn, accurate assessments of how force 

changes will affect our ability to execute plans and 

evaluate associated risk. These assessments, in turn, will 

help us match the right force capabilities to emerging 

missions while providing visibility to stress on the force 

caused by frequent deployments away from home station.” 2004 Secretary of Defense Annual Report to the 

President and the Congress, 33+. 36 According to the 2004 Secretary of Defense 

Annual Report to the President and the Congress, the 

Pentagon formally assigned roles and responsibilities 

for the new global force management process in 2004 

and work is under way on improving force structure 

data and providing new risk assessment methodologies. 

A prototype of the new system using the Army is to be 

completed in fiscal year 2005, at which time the new 

global force management process will be represented in 

the “Forces For Unified Commands” document, which 

formally assigns forces to combatant commanders. 37 They were as follows: Transportation 

Command to support regional combatant commands 

with transportation; Special Operations Command to 

support other commands with special operations forces; and Strategic Command to provide nuclear weapons and deterrence. Joint Forces Command (formerly 

Atlantic Command) had both functional (joint experimentation) and regional (U.S. and Atlantic Ocean) 

responsibilities. 38 See briefing on the Unified Command Plan 

of 2002 at <www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/

t04172002_t0417sd.html>. 39 Some would say NORTHCOM is a functional command, with a regional command’s name. 
36 OCCASIONAL PAPER

40 Russia had previously not been assigned to 

a combatant commander’s area of responsibility but 

had been in the portfolio of the Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff. 41 These “missions” could be seen more as 

capabilities than missions. 42 This change was made by a Secretary of 

Defense executive order and has not yet been written 

into the Unified Command Plan. 43 Anthony Zinni, speech at the Center for 

Strategic and International Studies, December 7, 2004. 44 Clark A. Murdock et al., Beyond GoldwaterNichols: Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, Phase 

I Report (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and 

International Studies, March 2004), 63. 45 This option might be either in addition to 

having regional combatant commands, or instead of 

them, with regional political-military issues and security 

cooperation handled by the new interagency organizations—in which case operations could be under the 

command and control of joint task forces, or functional 

and/or global combatant commands. 46 One measure of merit for evaluations might 

be “How many times did you talk to your counterpart in 

another command or agency each week?” 47 By way of just one example, Madrid’s La 

Razon reported on September 13, 2004, that Spain 

would lose U.S. bases to Portugal and Italy because 

of Spain’s decision to withdraw its forces from Iraq. 

See FBIS, EUP20040913000281. The article claimed 

that Naples would be the new headquarters of the U.S. 

Naval Forces Europe and that Gaeta (Sicily) would keep 

the U.S. Sixth Fleet originally offered to Rota (Cadiz), 

Spain. Furthermore, it reported that Oeiras (Lisbon) 

would host the standing structure of the planned North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization Response Force, and therefore Lisbon would also become the Joint Headquarters 

under the command of the vice admiral of the Sixth 

Fleet. 48 See Jong-Heon Lee, “U.S. Intent Questioned: 

Seoul seen as base for role in China-Taiwan fight,” The 

Washington Times, December 3, 2004, 17. Lee relates how 

a South Korean legislator raised concerns that the U.S. 

intention was to use South Korea as a base for potential 

military operations in the event of a conflict between China 

and Taiwan. However, the same article demonstrated that 

American diplomacy was having some effect. It noted that 

Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said South Korea was not 

opposed to U.S. forces playing a greater role in Northeast 

Asia unless it meant a weakening of the combined defense 

posture for ensuring peace and stability on the Korean 

Peninsula. Mr. Ban stated, “I admit the necessity of what 

the Americans call strategic flexibility,” and noted that the 

global security situation had changed in the past 50 years.

49 See Anthony Faiola, “Japan Plans to Press 

U.S. on Troops: Foreign Minister Seeking Reduction of 

‘Burden’ on Okinawa,” The Washington Post, October 

6, 2004, 24. Faiola reported that the Japanese Foreign 

Minister, Nobutaka Machimura, said he would press his 

country’s case for reducing what he called “the excessive burden” placed on Okinawa by the presence of U.S. 

troops while leaving adequate forces in Japan to promote security in the region. 50 Katie Worth, “B–52 Bombers Arrive: 

Andersen to host continuous rotation of aircraft,” Pacific 

Daily News (Guam), February 23, 2004. 51 See Frances M. Lussier, “Options for 

Changing the Army’s Overseas Basing,” Congressional 

Budget Office Report, May 2004, especially 47. Lussier 

concludes that options for restationing of Army forces 

overseas would only make small improvements in the 

Army’s strategic responsiveness, at least with respect to 

Germany. In part because of an excellent German transportation network (that the United States has invested 

in), the time required to deploy Army heavy units by 

sea to many potential trouble spots is not significantly 

shorter from Eastern Europe than it is from Germany. It 

also takes much longer to deploy a heavy brigade combat team from Eastern Europe than to deliver the prepositioned set of equipment that is maintained on board 

ships at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. 52 Defense Science Board, Report on Sea 

Basing, August 2003. Accessed at <www.acq.osd.mil/

dsb/reports/seabasing.pdf>. 53 Secretary of Defense, Annual Defense Report 

to the President and the Congress, 2004, 39. 54 Unfortunately, one important trade area associated with global intelligence became public recently. 

See “Disclosures about Program to Develop Spy 

Satellites Could Prompt Investigation,” The Wall Street 

Journal, December 13, 2004, 5.

55 For example, Members of Congress and 

their staffs wanted to see the operational analysis that 

drove the Pentagon’s decision to cancel the Crusader 

self-propelled artillery system. More recently, in an open 

forum discussion with defense writers, Undersecretary 

of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, promised that 

the Defense Department would provide lawmakers 

with analysis that would put proposed defense program 

cuts into context. Apparently the promise emerged in 

response to speculation about the fate of LockheedMartin’s C–130 program, which has numerous and powerful proponents on Capitol Hill. See Shailagh Murray, 

“Bush Faces Pentagon Gunfight: Proposed WeaponsSystem Cuts Stir Republican Opposition,” The Wall 

Street Journal, February 1, 2005, 4.
About the Authors

Christopher J. Lamb is a senior research fellow in the Institute for National Strategic 

Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University. He conducts research, produces scholarly 

publications, and delivers presentations to the Joint Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and 

other audiences on national security strategy and policy, as well as U.S. defense strategy, requirements, plans and programs, and strategic military concepts.

Dr. Lamb was principal author and editor for this paper, which incorporates contributions 

from INSS senior fellows M. Elaine Bunn, Colonel Charles D. Lutes, USAF, and Lieutenant 

Colonel Christopher Cavoli, USA.

This Occasional Paper will also appear as a chapter in Strategic Challenges: America’s 

Global Security Agenda, ed. Stephen J. Flanagan and James A. Schear (Washington, DC: 

National Defense University Press, forthcoming).

37