ENVISIONING

JL

. M.

and

.

ENVISIONING

FUTURE WARFARE

General Gordon R. Sullivan

and

Colonel James M. Dubik

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

1995
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sullivan, Gordon R., 1937-

Envisioning Future Warfare / Gordon R. Sullivan and James M.

Dubik.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. United States—Defenses. 2. Military art and science—United

States. 3. Weapons systems. 4. Information science. I. Dubik,

James M. II. Title.

UA23.S88 1995

3 55.02'0973 '0905—dc20 95-10134

CIP

Note: The editing style of the articles incorporated in this work has

been preserved in its original published form with the exception of

minor formatting.
Contents

Preface

Land Warfare in the 21st Century

General Gordon R. Sullivan and

Colonel James M. Dubik 1

Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

General Gordon R. Sullivan 29

War in the Information Age

General Gordon R. Sullivan and

Colonel James M Dubik 43

Authors 67

ill

Preface

The strategic environment at the end of the 20th century is

characterized by two competing trends. First, the international system

has entered a period of increased instability. Second, we are witnessing

the maturation of information processing technology and its subsequent

impact on economics, politics, and the conduct of war. This collection

of three articles by General Gordon R. Sullivan and Colonel James M.

Dubik explores these trends and seeks to envision their implications on

future war.

Taken together, these articles illuminate contemporary debates in

military affairs. "Land Warfare in the 21 st Century" establishes a vision

of the strategic landscape and identifies the two broad trends of

instability and technological acceleration. "Ulysses S. Grant and

America's Power-Projection Army" examines the issues of

organizational change in the face of technological and social evolution.

And "War in the Information Age" elaborates on what the power of

information processing technology might mean for the conduct of

future war.

The ideas found in these three pieces are not definitive, rather they

should be used as starting points for understanding subsequent Army

initiatives and actions. They are important thoughts that are continuing

to grow and evolve within our institutional base of knowledge. The

challenge of realizing the maximum benefit from information

technology has been taken up in TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5, ForceXXI

Operations (August 1994). This document forms the intellectual base

of the development of the 21st-century Army. The role of the Army

under conditions of international instability is elaborated in the Army

white paper, Decisive Victory: America's Power-Projection Army

(October 1994).

The trilogy of articles in Envisioning Future Warfare can be read as

the intellectual predecessors of the Army's organizational evolution

that is still being defined through the Force XXI process. These articles

are by no means a certain prediction of the future, but they do articulate

ideas that have been seized upon by both the Army and other institutions

as indicative of the shape and outline of future battlefields. Students of

the evolution of the conduct of war and of organizational change should
Preface

find this collection a useful starting point for grappling with issues

related to the transformation of America's Army into a 21st-century

force.

^ jfcfriftfO/DQ^l , . /j£s»Cj

Randall L. Rigby

Brigadier General, U.S. Army

Deputy Commandant

VI
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

General Gordon R. Sullivan and Colonel James M. Dubik

Introduction

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war have

given rise to a national debate unmatched since the end of World War

II. Dramatic changes in the international system have forced

policymakers to reevaluate old strategies and look for new focal points

amidst the still unsettled debris of the bipolar world. At issue is the role

of the United States in a new world order and its capabilities to defend

and promote its national interests in a new environment where threats

are both diffuse and uncertain and where conflict is inherent yet

unpredictable. The degree of uncertainty in the global security

environment parallels revolutionary changes in military technology and

in the traditional concepts of how we employ military forces. Together,

these trends require greater flexibility in U.S. military strategy and

significant departures from cold war concepts of deterrence and war

fighting. This paper examines their cumulative effect on land warfare

of the future. Only by dealing with these questions today will we be

able to make the investment and force structure decisions to best

position ourselves for tomorrow.

These are times of both continuity and change, and must be

understood as such. Complex changes are never complete breaks from

the past; evolutionary and revolutionary changes coexist, each shaping

the other. This relationship between continuity and change is discussed

in the introduction to A.T. Mahan's famous work, The Influence of Sea

Power Upon History. There he tells strategists, "While many of the

conditions of war vary from age to age with the progress of weapons,

there are certain teachings in the school of history which remain

constant." Then he cautions: "It is wise to observe things that are alike,

it is also wise to look for things that differ."

This paper follows Mahan's advice. It is a description of the strategic

landscape: how much in the realm of warfare is changing and where

From Gordon R. Sullivan and James M. Dubik, Land Warfare in the 21st Century (Carlisle

Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993), reproduced by permission of the authors.
Envisioning Future Warfare

those changes are headed, as well as how much remains constant. The

essay is developed in three steps: changes in the context within which

war is fought; technological changes in the conduct of land combat;

and, continuities in the nature of warfare. Change and continuity, when

taken together, provide a foundation for examining 21st century

warfare.

Changes in the Context Within Which War Is Fought

Warfare cannot be understood properly if viewed in isolation;

international and domestic realities form its context and must be

understood as well. A survey of some of the important changes in these

two arenas, therefore, is the appropriate starting point for understanding

how warfare is and is not changing.

International Trends: Integration and Fragmentation.

The end of the cold war has unleashed contradictory trends. On the

one hand there are fledgling democracies and market economies that

clamor to be incorporated in regional and global systems; the increased

importance of transnational organizations, information and

communication networks, and financial structures; heightened

awareness of transnational problems like environmental, health,

migration, and monetary issues; and the readjustment of alliances and

relationships among the major industrial nations as well as among these

nations and their lesser-developed neighbors. As these changes

generate movement toward greater global integration, multinational

organizations assume more importance as actors in foreign affairs and

international relations. In turn, greater integration results in partial

erosion of the traditional concept of national sovereignty. The Secretary

General of the United Nations refers to this trend when he says,

relationships among nations are increasingly shaped by the continuous

interaction among entire bodies politic and economic. Such activity

almost resembles a force in nature, and indeed may be just that.

Political borders and geographic boundaries pose slight barriers to this

process.4

Accompanying the movement toward global integration in some

parts of the international arena, however, is a countervailing trend

toward fragmentation in other parts. Ethnic and religious hostility,

weapons proliferation, power struggles created by the disappearance of

the Soviet Union, elimination of the fear of regional conflicts escalating
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

to superpower confrontation, radicalisms of a number of varieties,

rising expectations of democracy and free markets coupled with the

inability of governments to meet these expectations—all are forces that

generate fragmentation, not integration. For example, "in the three

years since the cold war ended, some 4.5 million new refugees have

fled their native lands to escape the civil wars and ethnic cleansing that

too often have followed the collapse of communism." Anyone who

reads the newspaper or watches television news knows that these forces

of fragmentation are as present around the world as are the forces of

integration.

For many, the world is growing more dangerous, albeit the dangers

are different and more subtle than those of the cold war. Local and

regional "bullies" are emerging following the collapse of the former

Soviet Union, and they are amassing more and more military force.

International arms sales make high-tech weapons available to any

customer who can afford them. These sales significantly increase a third

world military force's ability to fight at extended ranges with increased

accuracy and lethality, thereby compounding the problems of an

intervention force. A sampling of this proliferation includes China's

sale of short-range theater ballistic missiles to Iran, Libya, Syria, and

Pakistan; North Korea's sale of similar missiles to Iran, Libya, and

Syria; the Commonwealth of Independent States' sale of T-72s to Syria,

SA-16s to North Korea, submarines to Iran, and T-80s, ATGMs, and

SAMs worldwide. Currently 18 countries have advanced precision

guided munitions; by early in the next century, that number is expected

to grow to over 40. Those who would consider threatening U.S. global

interests are hard at work buying the hardware that they will need and

learning their lessons from the Gulf War. Future adversaries will try to

deny American forces information, prevent buildup, inflict mass

casualties, and prolong the conflict. They will seek to deny us the

minimal cost, decisive victory that we achieved in Panama and the Gulf

and which we seek to achieve elsewhere in the future.

Domestic Realities: New Threats to U.S. National Security.

As the forces of integration and fragmentation push and pull to create

international challenges different from those of the cold war, our nation

also faces a particularly difficult and complex set of domestic problems.

The victory in the cold war did not come without costs to the United
Envisioning Future Warfare

States, and America is only now confronting some of those costs. By

maintaining a primarily outward focus for the last 45 years, America

and its allies defeated their main external threat—the former Soviet

Union. Two new sets of threats, however, emerged during this period.

The first set consists of threats to our economic security, which stem

from both internal and external sources. The internal threats involve

declining competitiveness and productivity, loss of jobs base—and its

corresponding tax base, erosion of the manufacturing base, fiscal and

trade deficit, decline of the middle class wage and standard of living,

low savings and investments, the savings and loan crisis, and the

eroding infrastructure, as well as others. Some of the major external

threats to the economic pillar of America's national security involve

our reliance on foreign oil, much of which is located in areas of the

world controlled or threatened by regional hegemons; our foreign debt

which will top $1 trillion before 1995; our loss of market share and

manufacturing base to other industrial nations; and political

instability in areas that could offer overseas markets for U.S. goods or

opportunities for expansion of U.S. companies.

To assess what these threats to American economic security entail,

strategists must understand that the rules governing U.S. economic

recovery have changed. The American economy will not heal merely

by the actions taken at home. Domestic action is necessary, but not

sufficient. "If this century has taught one lesson," says Peter Drucker,

it is that,

no part of the developed world prospers unless all do ... it is to the

self-interest of every single participant in the world economy to restore

as fast as possible the economic ties that war has cut, to restore

transnational confidence, and to restore the transnational flow of

goods and investments.

In this sense, foreign and domestic policy are two sides of the same

coin; they cannot be viewed as two separate problems.

Adverse economic trends, however, are not the only dangers to

American national security that gestated as we fought the cold war.

During that period's extended external focus, a second set developed:

threats to the nation's social cohesion. These involve "the disuniting of

America"—to borrow Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s term. The

problems of drug abuse and the resultant disregard for the rights of other

citizens and disrespect for democratic values and institutions; the
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

growing number of Americans living below the poverty line; the

decline of public education; the disintegration of the family; the

disregard for the basic rules of civil behavior; the rise of crime and of

welfare dependence; the acceptance of vulgarity as "the norm"—all

pull people apart rather than bind them together.15 Regardless of how

one sees these issues, this much is clear: these and other problems

constitute a threat to the ultimate foundation of our nation's

security—an educated, civic-minded, participative polity that is the

basis of a democratic government.

On the surface these two sets of threats—economic and

social—seem unrelated to the military or the nation's military power;

they are, however, relevant in at least three ways. First, the United States

must attend to the internal economic and social issues threatening the

ultimate foundation of its security. Heeding these threats should not,

however, push the nation to the extremes of isolationism. U.S.

economic recovery, for example, requires success both within the

nation and around the world. But solving internal threats will require

resources. Military strategists, therefore, must expect that America will

both reduce the military budget and, simultaneously, ask that its

military contribute to the challenges of domestic regeneration

Second, U.S. military strategists can expect that their political

leaders will seek ways in which to use the military element of national

power—in conjunction with, and usually subordinate to, other elements

of national power—to promote an environment conducive to political

and economic stability abroad. Such uses of the military element of

power follow from the fact that American economic security is tied to

the world at large, a world in which the cold war's veneer of stability

has been lifted, thus revealing significant unrest, fear, hatred, and

jealousy. Thus the U.S. military should expect to conduct operations,

usually in conjunction with allies and friends, that are aimed at creating

or restoring conditions favorable to economic development and trade.

When one thinks of "military operations," the image usually

includes combat forces. While such operations may be required,

strategists must begin to think differently about the use of the military

element of national power. Operations linked to strengthening or

restoring conditions favorable to global trade, investment, and

economic development may include combat operations, but not

necessarily.
Envisioning Future Warfare

The United States has established markets in nations with whom it

has alliances or friendships. America must maintain these economic

relationships and keep the normal, free-market competition between

the United States and these nations free from instability or

confrontation. Here, military operations might mean continued

presence in existing alliance organizations, combined exercises,

refinement of common operating procedures, and continuation of

exchange programs.

Many of the markets that might become available for global

economic investment, development, and integration are threatened by

regional instability. America—in conjunction with allies and friends,

as well as global and regional organizations—must do what it can to

promote the conditions in which corporations will invest, products can

be sold, and economies prosper.

The important point is: domestic actions alone will not result in U.S.

economic recovery; the current global economic conditions require

action abroad to complement domestic policies. American military

presence and operations can contribute—again, in conjunction with and

usually subordinate to other elements of national power as well as

regional and global organizations—to setting the conditions under

which economic interests can flourish. There are no historical

precedents for long-term economic prosperity absent a security

umbrella that provides the stability in which economic strategies

succeed.

Third, although the cold war is won, America must remain prepared

to protect its global interests. Local and regional power struggles were

created by the lifting of the Iron Curtain. Once restrained for fear of

sparking a superpower confrontation, a variety of bullies—some known

and some yet-to-emerge, some armed with advanced technology

weapons and some not—await opportunities to establish or expand their

power, sometimes to the detriment of U.S. national interests. When

committed to prevent a crisis from developing or to resolve one that has

arisen, America will expect its military to accomplish the mission

assigned—decisively and at the least cost in American lives and

resources.

Decisive use of military force does not necessarily entail total war.

Rather, it means overwhelming use of the military element of national
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

power relative to the strategic aims, military mission, specifics of the

situation, and threat conditions. While preserving the principle of

proportionality, decisive force is the opposite of incrementalism or

gradualism. Thus, in those crises or conflicts involving U.S. military

forces, the action will be characterized by military power employed in

an overwhelming way with as much precision as possible to complete

the mission in the shortest time possible and—again—at the least cost

in lives and resources.

In sum, American political leaders are requiring the military to

contract in both size and budget, contribute to domestic recovery,

participate in global stability operations, and retain its capability to

produce decisive victory in whatever circumstance they are

employed—all at the same time. What these four simultaneous

requirements mean to military strategists is this: (a) leverage quality in

terms of soldiers, units, training, and doctrine as well as technological

superiority to counterbalance reductions in size, (b) maximize the

benefits of maneuver and tempo used in conjunction with firepower,

(c) synchronize the contributions of all the services in ways that were

previously not achieved, and (d) maintain maximum flexibility and

balance in force structure and capabilities.

Simply put, international and domestic realities have resulted in the

paradox of declining military resources and increasing military

missions, a paradox that is stressing our armed forces. The stress is

significant. It requires fundamental changes in the way the nation

conducts its defense affairs.

Two Conceptual Shifts

Before even discussing the ways in which the conduct of land

warfare is changing, one must realize the extent of the shift in the

paradigm used by the last three generations of U.S. strategists. The

strategic paradigm of the cold war—preventing the spread of

communism—does not fit the realities of today's world; to use it to

solve new problems is to guarantee failure. This is the first—perhaps

the most important and most difficult—conceptual shift that affects the

way the conduct of land combat is changing. America needs a different

model by which to raise, equip, deploy, organize, educate, train, fight,

coordinate, and sustain her armed forces. Containment and our

"traditional" concept of deterrence—elements of America's cold war
Envisioning Future Warfare

strategic defense—require rethinking in light of current realities. The

United States no longer has a negative aim—to prevent the spread of

communism. It has a positive aim—to promote democracy, regional

stability, and economic prosperity. What some are calling "collective

engagement" is coming to replace containment. Deterrence has retained

some of its meaning, but "prevention" is beginning to emerge as a

complementary, and possibly alternative, strategic concept. This is a

significant conceptual shift from that of the cold war, but it is not the

only shift required.

The second conceptual shift involves refining the understanding of

how to use military force. The concept of "war" is usually understood

in terms of conventional combat: the armies of one nation-state or

alliance of nation-states fighting those of another. Every other act of

violence, use offeree, or form of hostility is categorized as "operations

other than war." Using these kinds of distinctions, some go so far as

to draw the following kinds of categories of violence: peacetime

activities with very low levels of violence, crises, conflicts, war, and

war termination activities.

These kinds of categories are quite useful, for they allow a strategist

to plan for the use of military force under a variety of graduated

circumstances. Further, they demonstrate that not all uses of military

force involve "going to war." Thus the categories provide a convenient

conceptual distinction and an important political one. Politically, the

United States, whether acting unilaterally or in conjunction with friends

and allies, must be able to distinguish the use of military forces in "war"

from other uses. As Bernard Brodie explains,

As American citizens we expect and desire that our nation will involve

itself in war only .. . for political ends that are reasonably consistent

with [America's] basic political philosophy. . . . We . . . also expect

that the ends for which we fight are... sought through the kind of war

that is reasonable to fight,. . . [and has a] possibility of success. . . .

[otherwise] resorting to war is simply wanton destruction of life and

goods on a vast scale.

The expectations that Brodie outlines remain part of the American

military, social, and political psyche. When the nation wages "war," all

understand that defining clear, achievable political aims; raising and

sustaining the required means to attain those aims; and ensuring the

support of the nation—i.e., national will, are absolutely vital to success.
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

Without these conditions, "resorting to war is simply wanton

destruction." Thus, military doctrine appropriately codifies the

distinction between "war" and "operations other than war."

As useful, convenient, and important as these categories are,

however, their simplicity can be seductive. Categorizing "war" as

separate from all other uses of military force may mislead the strategist,

causing him to believe that the conditions required for success in the

employment of military force when one is conducting "war" differ from

use of military force in operations "other than war." For example, when

planning for war, no serious strategist would fail to ask, "Should we

have clearly stated, achievable political aims?" or "Should the nation

allocate the necessary means to attain its political aims?" or "Should

we have some assurance that the nation supports the war?" Yet, when

debating the use of military force in "operations other than war," just

such questions may not always arise.

As the nation begins the 21st century the strategist should take

seriously Michael Howard's suggestion. "It is quite possible," Howard

says,

that war in the sense of major, organized armed conflict between

highly developed societies may not recur, . . . Nevertheless

violence will continue to erupt within developed societies as well

as underdeveloped, creating situations of local armed conflict often

indistinguishable from traditional war.21

Strategists must refine their understanding of how to use military

force to correspond with the realities of the day. Clausewitz defined

war simply as "an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will"

which "springs from some political purpose." "No one," he says,

"starts a war—or rather no one in his senses ought to do so—without

first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and

how he intends to conduct it." While his definition of "war" is less

applicable given today's political realities, his admonitions concerning

using military force are instructive. They apply aptly to the kind of

violence that Michael Howard describes as "often indistinguishable

from traditional war."

One way a nation might use its military force is to compel its

adversary, sometimes by resorting to or threatening violence, to do its

will. Such uses are both consistent with what Clausewitz called "war"

and, as Howard says, are "often indistinguishable from traditional war."
Envisioning Future Warfare

American and allied forces in Somalia, and their possible employment

in Bosnia, provide two excellent examples. When a nation so uses its

military forces, a contemporary Clausewitz would caution that nation

not to begin without first being clear about its political aims and how

those objectives are to be achieved. Objectives and concepts must be

supported by allocating sufficient military sources and by mustering

the national (or international) will to attain the political aim.

No doubt, today's global realities are different from those that

Clausewitz contemplated. Contemporary strategists confront

representatives of feudal lords, religious groups, ethnic groups, drug

cartels, crime syndicates, even transnational corporations using force

or threats offeree to achieve their objectives. Furthermore, nations now

use operations other than war—e.g. peacekeeping, peace-enforcement,

supervising cease-fires, assisting in the maintenance of law and order,

protecting the delivery of humanitarian assistance, guaranteeing rights

of passage, and enforcement of sanctions—to compel adversaries to do

their will. While these endeavors do not qualify as "war" in today's

military-politico parlance, they are examples of acts "offeree to compel

our enemy to do our will" which spring "from some political purpose."

Once again, Brodie's ideas are applicable:

Those who talk abstractly .. . [about war] find themselves matching

discourse with those who speak of dead bodies, burnt villages....The

euphemisms of the strategists can be counterproductive....the

manipulators use jargon that the man in the front lines can hardly

consider relevant to his conditions.

As useful and necessary as the distinction between "war" and

"operations other than war" is, strategists cannot allow these conceptual

categories to become the kind of euphemisms to which Brodie alludes.

Leaders and strategists must recognize the requirements essential to

success whenever military force is employed: identifying clear,

achievable political aims; planning and employing strategic measures

for achieving those political aims; raising and sustaining adequate

means to implement the strategic measures; and ensuring the support

of the nation (or coalition).

Expanding the traditional understanding of the use of military force

in war to "operations other than war" makes both politicians and

military leaders uneasy, for they find it is difficult—albeit no less

important—to identify clear, achievable strategic aims. There is an

10
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

emotional temptation to want to "do something" without first clearly

understanding what political purpose that "something" is supposed to

accomplish. Yet, as Brodie reminds us, this requirement remains

paramount, else what we do is "simply wanton destruction of life and

goods."

Changes in the international and domestic political systems have

altered the context in which military force will be applied. Reviewing

these changes is important. Changes in the conduct of land warfare

result from the interaction of a multiplicity of events, conditions,

policies, beliefs, and even accidents. Some of the changes occur in

the international and domestic arenas, others are rooted in history and

technology. The changes in military technology are as dramatic as those

in international politics.

Technological Changes in the Conduct of Land Warfare

Technological innovations, many of which were dramatically

demonstrated in the Gulf War, are giving rise to what is being called a

"military-technical revolution." This "revolution" will have a dramatic

effect on the Army and land warfare through five dominant trends:

lethality and dispersion; volume and precision of fire; integrative

technology; mass and effects; and, invisibility and detectability.

Lethality and Dispersion.

Over time, weaponry has become more lethal and individuals and

units more dispersed. Lethality and dispersion are linked. Rifling,

introduced in mass during the mid-19th century, extended the range and

accuracy of the individual weapon and artillery piece. This

development forced individuals to go to ground and disperse. As rifles

and artillery became more effective, units could no longer deploy in the

dense, shoulder-to-shoulder formations that marked the age of the

musket.

Throughout the history of land warfare, tactics, organizations,

doctrine, equipment, force mix, and methods of command and control

all changed in response to increasing lethality and dispersion. These

changes, in turn, had a corresponding effect on training, soldiers, and

leaders.

 8

The Gulf War saw an even greater increase in dispersion and

improvement in the ability to deliver long-range lethal fires. Table 1

11
Envisioning Future Warfare

indicates that this increase can no longer be described geometrically,

for the changes witnessed in the Gulf were exponential changes. MLRS,

Apache, Patriot, Lance, ATACMs, Abrams, Bradley—especially in

conjunction with space-based platforms, the weapons delivery and

maneuver systems of other services, and equipment like the laser

designator and the position guidance system—all confirm that the trend

toward increased lethality at greater ranges and increased dispersion of

individuals and units are still at work. Furthermore, the trend will result

in changes in tactics, organization, doctrine, equipment, force mix, and

methods of command—just as it did in the past.

Area occupied by

deployed force

100,000 strong

(square km)

Front (km)

Depth (km)

Men per sq km

Sq meters per man

Antiquity

1.00

6.67

0.15

100,000

10

Napoleonic

Wars

20.12

8.05

2.50

4.790

200

U.S.

Civil

War

25.75

8.58

3.0

3,883

257.5

World

War I

248

14

17

404

2,475

World

Warll

2,750

48

57

36

27,500

October

War

4,000

57

70

25

40,000

Gulf

War*

213,200

400

533

2.34

426,400

*AII figures except Gulf War column from COL DuPuy, The Evolution of Weapons and

Warfare, p. 312. The area data for Gulf War came from LTG Pagonis, Moving Mountains;

the rough number of 500,000 soldiers was used for the number deployed within this area.

Table 1. The Expanding Battlefield.

Post-industrial land forces will become more mobile, creating the

requirement to communicate over greater distances, to maneuver more

quickly, and to use fires from platforms of all services that are dispersed

over greater distances. This trend will place a great premium on the

commander's ability to make decisions quickly, the staffs requirement

to synchronize the movements of greatly dispersed units, and the

subordinate leader's responsibility to make on-the-spot decisions

within a senior commander's intent.

Greater dispersion will also place a great premium upon unit

cohesion. Long acknowledged as one of the most fundamental, if not

the most essential, building blocks of fighting power, unit cohesion

will be much harder to sustain in widely dispersed units, but no less

12
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

required. One could build a good case, in fact, that the importance of

quality soldiers and leaders and the need for excellent unit cohesion

grows in parallel with the level of dispersion.

Volume and Precision of Fire.

The second trend concerns two factors: first, volume of fire (tonnage

delivered in a given time) and precision. The volume of fire was low

during the age of muzzle-loading individual weapons and artillery. The

rate and volume of fire began to increase, however, with the

introduction of breech-loading rifles, smokeless powder, magazines,

belts, and other automatic loading devices. The move from muscle to

machine—i.e. mechanization, motorization, and aviation—also

contributed to the increased rate at which fire could be delivered. Not

only could weaponry produce more lethal effects, but also produce them

more frequently. "Ultimately the net effect of the progress in weapons

technology," Martin van Creveld points out,

was to increase enormously the volume of fire that could be

delivered, the range at which it could be delivered, and the accuracy

with which this could be done. The combination of all three factors

meant that... the battlefield became a more deadly place than ever

before.30

The trend in increased volume of fire culminated in an army's ability

to deliver tactical nuclear weapons.

Of course, with the increase in fire volume came corresponding

changes in other areas of land combat: the use of entrenchments, the

development of protected spaces on the battlefield like the tank and

infantry fighting vehicles, and organizational changes like the U.S.

Pentomic division of the 1950s and the flexible divisional structure of

the 1970s and 1980s. These evolutions affected not only weapons,

equipment, organization, and tactics, but also planning factors like

casualty rates, logistic resupply rates, and the balance among

combat/combat support/combat service support forces.

Along with an army's ability to deliver an increased volume of fire

came the rise in precision. Dragons, TOWs, laser-aimed individual

weapons; precision aiming systems such as those on the Abrams and

Bradley; longer range precision weapons systems like Apache,

LANCE, ATACMS, and MLRS; laser designators that guide artillery

rounds as well as the bombs delivered by aircraft of other services;

13
Envisioning Future Warfare

"brilliant" munitions now in development—all confirm the trend

toward increased precision accompanying increased volume.

As was the case with the growth in the volume of fire, the rise in

precision will change the weapons, equipment, organization, and tactics

of 21st-century land forces. Planning factors will be as different for the

armies of the 21 st century compared to the 20th century as 20th century

armies differed from those of the 19th.

The introduction of high-energy weapons, electro-magnetic rail gun

technology, super conductivity, and other yet-to-be-identified

technological improvements will continue the upward trend lines of

fire, volume and precision. The greatly dispersed land forces of the 21 st

century will continue to increase their ability to deliver a high volume

of precisely aimed fires with a very high first-round-hit probability.

This ability will be increased even further when one considers the result

of integrative technology.

Integrative Technology.

Integrative technology will introduce a level of precision to the

overall force, not just to individual and massed fires, that has been

impossible up to this point in the history of land combat. In the 21st

century, the systems of land forces will become an integrated circuit

that is, in turn, part of a network of combined land/air/sea/space forces.

With this integration network will come improved precision at the point

of battle.

Napoleon introduced a "visual telegraph," called the Chappe, as a

rapid means to transmit his orders. Under the right conditions, he could

communicate with his subordinates 120 miles away in about an hour.

This innovation increased his ability to coordinate the actions of his

subordinate forces.

Modern integrative technology, however, started with the telegraph

and railroad—two systems that, when joined, revolutionized warfare.

The telegraph moved information around the battlefield quickly.

Information assisted command and control, improved unity of effort,

and increased the potential for coordinated effort and agility throughout

the theater of operation or of war. The railroad provided the means to

realize the potential that the telegraph offered. Rail made it possible to

move large numbers of troops, equipment, supplies, and weapons

systems quickly. Furthermore, the management and organization of the

14
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

railroad—from the operation of loading docks to the computation of

time/distance factors necessary to schedule rail use—integrated the

information system of the telegraph, the delivery system of the railroad,

and the command and control system of the military.

First by field wire, then by the introduction of radio and aviation, the

use of integrative technology expanded in scope. Each improvement

widened the ground commander's ability to orchestrate all the

intelligence assets, weapons systems, maneuver forces, and logistical

units at his disposal. Complexity accompanied this growth, making

staffs more necessary and synchronization of functions more important.

Interestingly, two false beliefs accompanied each improvement: first,

that some extraordinary technological advance yet to take place would

result in the land commander's acquisition of "perfect, real-time"

information upon which to base his decisions and direct his

subordinates; second, that greater centralization in decision making

would yield greater combat effectiveness at the point of battle.

Realities on the battlefield, however, proved otherwise. The very

nature of war consists of fear, fog, danger, uncertainty, deception, and

friction—these are not conditions that can ever generate "perfect

information." Reports that a commander receives are often

incomplete and incorrect. An enemy commander strives to deceive his

adversary, hiding what he does as best he can; what one sees on the

battlefield, therefore, must be interpreted. Interpretation faces the same

impairments that we noted above in connection with obtaining

information. Certainly, advanced technologies, multiple collection

methods, and other means can increase the reliability of information

and aid in decision making. The realities of what goes on in combat,

however, will frustrate forever those searching for "perfect, real-time"

information. To hope for technology that will be capable of gathering

and using such information to feed a centralized military

decision-making system is to hope in vain. Developing subordinate

commanders who are able to make decisions on-the-spot within the

intent of their higher commander—that is, decentralization not

centralization—will remain vital even into the 21st century.

Withal, the search for integrative technology on today's battlefield

goes on. The links between scout and attack helicopter, between

JSTARS and weapons delivery platforms (air and ground), between

forward ground elements and rear positioned indirect fire systems,

15
Envisioning Future Warfare

between tanks of an M1A2 unit—all have produced a quantum leap in

the use of integrative technology. Like the leap produced by the

increased volume of precision fires and greater battlefield dispersion,

increased integrative technology is important in its effects. Extensive,

near-real time communications among a number of intelligence

gathering systems, maneuver systems, fire systems, and logistical

support systems provide the ground commander with a potentially

revolutionary opportunity and with monumental challenges.

The opportunity is the integration of the reconnaissance and

intelligence gathering systems (technological and human) with

command and control, fire delivery, and maneuver nodes. Once all are

linked digitally to logistical support centers, these task forces will

become combined arms task forces qualitatively different from the ones

we now have. The degree of situational awareness that a commander

will have under these conditions will be orders of magnitude better than

he has now. It would not be too bold to claim that his perception of the

battlefield will change. The computation of combat power and

logistical planning factors, the determination of the proper ratio among

combat, combat support, and combat service support, as well as a

definition of each of the operating systems and their

interrelationships—all will require rethinking. Significant further

adjustments in doctrine, organization, and command and control, as

well as service relationships, also will be necessary.

The digitization of the battlefield is a major leap ahead in the conduct

of warfare, but not a break from the past. The limiting factor in the quest

for making maximum use of integrative technology will not be the

hardware, it will be human and organizational. Integrative technologies

will enhance the ability of commanders and their units to fight with

scarce assets. The complete use of integrative technologies will

revolutionize command and staff procedures. Software will allow much

of the information now transmitted by radio and synchronized on

acetate and charts to be self-synchronized automatically, computer to

computer. Smart command and control systems will create a common

perception of the battlefield and the theater among members of a joint

task force. This perception, in turn, will facilitate the rapid massing of

combat assets—precise weapons systems and maneuver forces—to

attain objectives decisively. Such a development will not eliminate the

16
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

necessity for staffs and commanders, but the art and science of decision

making and staff synchronization will change radically.

The challenges that accompany such revolutionary advances in

information gathering and use remain as before: increasingly capable

integrative technology may, once again, generate the false belief that

centralized decision making will result in greater combat effectiveness

at the point of battle. As explained previously, however, realities of the

battlefield and the nature of war demonstrate otherwise.

Using an earlier leap-ahead technology, the telegraph, Moltke knew

that the flow of information would still never reach him fast enough

and in enough detail to allow him to command from his headquarters.

The cycle of action-reaction-counteraction on the battlefield unfolded

much faster than a headquarters could gather information, process it,

make a decision, then transmit that decision to those who must execute.

Rather than impose new and stricter demands for information to feed a

centralized decision and command system, Moltke created units and

chose commanders who were able to operate under the conditions of

uncertainty and succeed with less information. Integrative

technology will increase the tempo of action-reaction-counteraction on

the post-industrial battlefield; thus it will continue to emphasize

decentralized decision making and initiative at lower levels of

command.

The effects of the first three trends—lethality and dispersion, volume

of fire and precision, and the use of integrative technology—-join in

reinforcing a fourth: the trend toward the ability of smaller units to

create decisive effects.

Mass and Effects.

Smaller units are able to create decisive effects in three ways. The

first is simply physical. The repeating rifle and machine gun, in

conjunction with increasingly accurate indirect fires of artillery, began

to allow fewer soldiers and smaller units to concentrate the effects of

more firepower than their numbers alone would suggest. This is a

natural outcome of the first two trends. The volume of deadly fire

"emptied" battlefields, but those left on them were far more capable.

As motorization, mechanization, aviation, and communication

developed and improved, this capability increased. Ground forces not

only had at their disposal more lethal weapons that could shoot more

17
Envisioning Future Warfare

often and more accurately, but they could employ weapons systems that

were physically located at some distance from the point of battle.

Furthermore, ground forces developed the capability to move across,

or over, the battlefield much faster, more easily, and with more safety

than had their predecessors.

The second way that smaller units can create decisive effects is

organizational: mixing arms within a formation. The 19th century

version of this phenomenon began with separate infantry, artillery, and

cavalry divisions being combined under a single corps headquarters.

Over time, mixing arms descended from corps level to combat

teams—that is, mixing arms within divisions and regiments like those

of the World War II era. The next development produced what came to

be called combined arms teams as low as company and troop level. The

development of these teams at lower levels gave commanders the

opportunity to incorporate direct and indirect fires more easily. As the

inclusion of the weapons systems of fixed and rotary wing aviation

became a standard and essential element of the combined arms team,

commanders were able to add the effects of air platforms to those of

the armor, infantry, and field artillery. The result was smaller units

being able to produce decisive effects.

Maneuver is the third way that smaller units can create decisive

effects. Initially maneuver resulted from muscle power—the foot and

horse. However, machine-powered ground systems—the rail, truck,

tank, armored personnel carrier, infantry fighting vehicle,

self-propelled artillery, and protected combat support and combat

service support vehicles—greatly increased land maneuver. When land

forces began to include machine-powered air systems—the utility,

cargo, scout, and attack helicopters—the conditions were set for

another leap in land maneuver. Like the score of a great symphony,

each of these movements—first from muscle to machine-powered

ground systems then to machine-powered air systems—began quietly

and developed gradually. Each increased mobility, improved

opportunities for maneuver, and resulted in greater agility. At each step,

improved maneuver capability contributed to the land combat

commander's ability to move over increasingly dispersed areas and

converge quickly at the decisive point, thus concentrating effects of

both fires and maneuver. Each move thus increased the land force

commander's ability to operate at a faster tempo than before.

18
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

The history of land warfare reflects the manner in which various

arms have been integrated into the combat team. Initially land combat

moved from being conducted by unitary armies to being fought by

combined arms, ground-based formations. The second step took place

when combined arms, ground-based formations became combined

arms, ground/air-based units. Land combat units are currently at this

point; however, the movement is not over. The third step will take place

when land combat is waged by formations consisting of combined arms,

air/ground-based units. This is the direction land combat is now taking.

At each step, decisive effects have resulted from ever smaller units.

This development is reinforced by the increased use of integrative

technology. Recent integration of land combat units has been primarily,

but not exclusively, internal. Internal integration includes the ability of

members of a combined arms task force to talk and coordinate among

the combat, combat support, and combat service support units of the

task force. This integration was, and remains, absolutely essential. In

the 21st century, however, internal integration will not be sufficient. To

maximize the benefits of maneuver and tempo, increase the firepower

available to a land force commander, and synchronize the contributions

of all the services, land forces must be fully integrated with air and naval

forces. Only then will the commander be able to leverage completely

the complementary powers of the joint force.

Thus, when one includes the trend toward increased use of

integrative technology, another element in the trend toward a smaller

unit's capability to produce decisive effects can be postulated: the

evolution of combined arms into joint arms. The result will be fully

integrated joint task forces, including combined arms task forces of

multiple services, that can be tailored to fit the specific set of

geographic, political, and threat conditions existing in a given situation.

In such fully integrated joint task forces, true qualitative change is

possible—the whole of such a force will be greater than the sum of the

parts. Based upon the situation, an Army brigade task force in

conjunction with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, Air Force squadron, and

Navy task force—fully integrated under the command and control of a

joint task force headquarters—could produce the effects that required,

during the World War II era, a much larger force.

In sum, these trends indicate, and the Gulf War as well as Operation

JUST CAUSE corroborate, that as the size of the unit decreases, there

19
Envisioning Future Warfare

can be a corresponding increase in the effects it is able to produce if it

is equipped with the right technology used by high-quality, well-trained

and well-led troops employing proper doctrine. These trends verify that

smaller or fewer units will be able to produce decisive effects because

of the vast array of weaponry they have at their disposal and the speed

with which they will be able to acquire targets, maneuver, employ fires,

and relocate. Think of the maneuver possibilities that could be

generated for ground or air commanders by very dispersed special

operations forces or of the potentially decisive effects these very small

forces—integrated into the forces of all services—have when equipped

with secure satellite communications, laser designators, and position

guidance systems. Small teams in the right place, at the right time, and

linked in with the right systems have the potential to produce, or at least

contribute to, decisive results.

Once again, a paradigm shift is developing. Many of the old rules of

land warfare that concern the calculation of combat power have been

shattered already. Individually and collectively, the implications of

these moves toward compressing greater firepower in smaller unit

packages will require significant adjustments in doctrine, leadership,

organization, and command and control, as well as service

relationships. The limiting factor will not be technological; it will be

human and organizational.

Invisibility and Detectability.

The final trend helping to paint the picture of land combat in the 21 st

century concerns a land force's ability to hide from the enemy while

being able to detect that enemy at greater ranges. In the mid-19th

century, invisibility—the ability to hide from the enemy—took the

form of movement at night, and the use of trenches, vegetation, and

terrain to cover the deployment of troops, equipment, and supplies.

Detectability was limited to line of sight—scouts, spies, and cavalry.

The balloon and field glasses added range to the human eye as did the

aircraft when it was first introduced, but line of sight remained primary.

Electronic intelligence gathering and countermeasures as well as

electronic deception developed in the early- to mid-20th century. This

added a new dimension to detectability and invisibility. Electronic

means, especially when employed as part of a ground-air-space based

system, also provide the ground commander the capability to detect the

20
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

enemy even beyond the horizon. Using electronic means correctly, land

forces can become invisible to their enemy by appearing to be at one

place while actually being at another. General Patton's "dummy"

headquarters used to reinforce the Germans' belief that the invasion of

Europe would occur at the Pas de Calais and to cover Patton's Third

Army's deployment into France is but one of many examples of how

electronic means can produce "invisibility." Mock equipment, dummy

headquarters, phoney messages, feints, ruses, and other deception

operations also contribute to a land force's invisibility.

Holography, virtual reality, the use of micro-electromagnetic

systems, nano-technology, televideo, and other information networks

have the potential to increase the land force's invisibility to the enemy.

Integrating the information available from AW ACS, JSTARS, and

UAVs, as well as from other currently available systems and those yet

to be developed, further increases the land force commander's ability

to detect the enemy at extended distances. Advanced technological and

human intelligence systems will continue to expand the commander's

detection range, improve the resolution of the information gathered,

and disseminate the data to the proper levels via near real-time, digital

transfer. The battlefield will become more transparent to the

commander of such a force and more opaque to his adversary.

Taken together, these trends enable one to forecast what land combat

in the 21st century may be like. That forecast has two parts. First, how

will political leaders use land forces? Land forces of the 21st century

will be involved in preventing crises from occurring or from developing

into conflicts; resolving conflicts before they spread or become war; or

ending wars decisively on terms favorable to the United States and its

allies.

Preventative measures will include alerts or deployment of forces

before a crisis occurs; exchanges and contacts to promote

confidence-building; and operations that nurture stability or defuse

instability—e.g. peace enforcement, supervision of cease-fires,

assisting in maintenance of law and order, protecting the delivery of

humanitarian assistance, and the enforcement of sanctions.

Preventative measures also include those long-term relationships

that build or sustain strong regional friendships. In many cases, the

demonstrated ability and will to deploy forces that are technologically

21
Envisioning Future Warfare

superior and fully capable of decisive victory in a variety of conditions

contribute to preventing crises from occurring or from developing into

conflicts. Such capability itself contains deterrent value.

While political leaders will use land forces, as well as naval and air

forces, in a preventative way whenever they can, to focus solely on

preventative measures would be wrong. American land forces also will

be called upon to end hostilities, decisively and on terms favorable to

the United States and her allies.

Second, how will land combat be conducted in the 21st century?

Regardless of how land combat forces are used, they will be

capable—operating as part of a joint force—of detecting the enemy at

extended, over-the-horizon distances while remaining invisible to that

enemy; delivering fires—also over the horizon—to facilitate

maneuver; thus destroying the enemy force and disintegrating his

cohesion throughout the depth of the theater or battlefield. Further, land

combat forces of the 21st century will be raised, equipped, deployed,

organized, and trained to achieve overwhelming success in both

traditional war and those "operations other than war" that Michael

Howard accurately described as "often indistinguishable from

traditional war."

Each of the five trends is important in its own right. The synergism

they create, however, reinforces the changes occurring in the

international and domestic context where wars are fought and military

force is used. Together, the changes occurring in so many areas that

affect the conduct of land warfare result in a crescendo of change.

The projections identified for each of the trends and the resulting

forecast concerning the conduct of future warfare are not the result of

Buck Rogers-type speculation or Star Wars science fiction or radical

breaks with the past. Rather, they are extrapolations—sometimes

linear, sometimes not—of forces that have come together, like natural

forces combine into a thunderstorm. In the midst of such change, one

39

can only begin to understand the scope of the paradigm shift required.

However, the details provided by the trends—lethality and dispersion,

volume and precision of fires, integrative technology, mass and effects,

and invisibility and detectability—and the background provided by the

conceptual shifts outlined earlier—the passing of the cold war strategic

paradigm and the refining of the understanding of how to use military

22
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

force—provide a forecast clear enough to begin positioning the Army

for these developments.

Continuities in the Nature of Warfare

As this positioning takes place and the Army of the 21st century

emerges, strategists should not be mesmerized either by the amount of

change occurring or by the expectations of advanced technology. As

much as the conduct of warfare will change in the future, at least three

aspects will remain the same. First, the future will differ little from the

past with regard to the root causes of war. People—whether political

leaders of a nation-state or leaders of some other kind of

organization—still fight wars as a result of fear, hatred, greed, ambition,

revenge, and a host of other quite human and ever-present emotions.

They still fight when they perceive that they can accomplish their

objectives by resorting to force, or that they have no other alternative,

or that honor or pride or principle or "the gods" demand it. In other

words, they fight for what are to them fundamental reasons, even if

others do not share or understand their rationale. Therefore, strategists

must clearly and completely think through the use of countervailing

force and its possible unintended consequences.

The future will also be similar to the past with respect to a second

important aspect of war: its nature. The nature of war, even in

"operations other than war"—peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance,

or enforcement of sanctions—remains a contest of wills where one

group attempts to force its will on others. Ambiguity, uncertainty, fog,

friction, danger, stark fear, anxiety, and chance as well as leadership,

courage, comradeship, self-sacrifice, and honor—continue to describe

accurately the conditions with which military forces have had to

contend and will continue to contend. Death and destruction remain the

coins of war's realm, and no amount of technology or euphemistic

labels will alter their weight. As much as one would like to think that

simple solutions are possible, the reality is that wars are messy.

Perhaps the most important constant is this: war demands both

science and art from the leaders who wage it. To think that one without

the other will solve the problems posed by war is to err and err seriously.

The future will find predictive modelling, integrative technology,

precision guidance systems, and other high technology increasingly

useful—necessary, but not sufficient. The artistic side of war will

23
Envisioning Future Warfare

remain: creativity, intuition, leadership, motivation, decision making

under conditions of limited information. These will never lose their

importance, for they describe war's essence. Technology contributed

greatly to victory in the Battle of Britain, for example, but technology

alone cannot account for British success.

Finally, the future will resemble the past with respect to the essence

of fighting power. Technology is important to the process of generating

combat power, but one must not let the glitter of technology obscure

other sources of fighting power. "An army's worth as a military

instrument," van Creveld explains,

equals the quality and quantity of its equipment multiplied by [its]

fighting power. The latter rests on mental, intellectual, and

organizational foundations; its manifestations, in one combination or

another, are discipline and cohesion, morale and initiative, courage

and toughness, the willingness to fight, and the readiness, if necessary,

to die ^

The root causes of war, the nature of war, and the essence of fighting

power—these are several of the immutable elements concerning war.

As absolutely essential as maintaining technological superiority is,

especially in helping offset reductions in size, the simple truth is that

technology will not solve all the problems associated with war.

Prosecuting war requires both science and art. Judgment, trust,

cohesion, creativity, flexibility, and just plain guts also are absolutely

necessary. Again, van Creveld is instructive,

When the chips are down, there is no "rational" calculation in the

world capable of causing the individual to lay down his life. On both

the individual and collective levels, war is therefore primarily an affair

of the heart. It is dominated by such irrational factors as resolution and

courage, honor and duty and loyalty and sacrifice of self. When

everything is said and done, none of these have anything to do with

technology, whether primitive or sophisticated.

Those who would seek "silver bullets" must first acknowledge that

land warfare under Napoleon, Grant, Pershing, Patton, Ridgway,

Westmoreland, Thurman, Stiner, Schwarzkopf, Hoar, and Powell is

surprisingly similar. War is a matter of heart and will first; weaponry

and technology second. Thus, while strategists must understand the role

that technology plays in changing how land combat will be conducted

in the 21st century, so too must they acknowledge the ways in which

the nature of warfare remains constant.

24
Land Warfare in the 21st Century

Political and military strategists would also be wise to remember

what General Sherman wrote of General Grant's campaign plan to end

the Civil War. In April 1864, just one month prior to starting his final

campaign, Grant had sent Sherman a map upon which was sketched the

general plan for the 1864—65 campaign. Seeing the map, Sherman

understood what was in Grant's mind. In response, he wrote: "This was

as far as human foresight could penetrate."42 Sherman knew that it

would be folly to plan in detail too far into the future, for there were

too many variables and too many unknowns. Grant and his subordinates

would have to remain flexible, ready to react to situations and events

that they had no way to predict. On one hand, Grant's overall vision

remained fixed throughout the campaign. On the other hand, the

specifics remained flexible.

Sherman's words provided good advice at the dawn of industrial

warfare, and they are equally instructive at the dawn of post-industrial

warfare. By understanding the two conceptual shifts that have and are

taking place relative to the context of war, the five trends that affect the

conduct of post-industrial warfare, and what remains constant among

all that is changing, one can forecast how land combat may be

conducted in the 21 st century. Like Grant's overall campaign plan, that

forecast—albeit in outline form—can act as the goal to guide near-term

plans.

One should be skeptical of any military strategist who claims

certainty about the future of warfare, especially those who assert that

technology changes the fundamental nature of war. One should be even

more skeptical of the political strategist who believes that certainty in

war is possible. "For precision cannot be expected in the treatment of

all subjects alike ...," Aristotle reminds us. "A well-schooled man is

one who searches for that degree of precision in each kind of study

which the nature of the subject at hand admits.' Good advice for

political and military strategists alike.

25
Notes

1. Maurice Mandelbaum, The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge, Baltimore, Maryland: The

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 138,140.

2. A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, twelfth edition, Boston: Little,

Brown, and Company, 1980, p. 2.

3. Ibid.

4. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, "Empowering the United Nations," Foreign Affairs, Winter

1992/93, p. 101.

5. For a different perspective on the forces of integration and disintegration, see Paul Kennedy' s

"True Leadership for the Next Millennium," The New York Times, OP-ED, January 3,1993,

p.9.

6. U.S. News and World Report, November 30,1992, p. 36.

7. John J. Mearsheimer, "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War," Atlantic, August 1990, pp.

35—50; personal unclassified briefing from the United States Army Intelligence and

Security Command, December 1,1992.

8. The information contained in this paragraph was taken from a Deputy Chief of Staff,

Operations Briefing on December 21,1992. See also Murray Weidenbaum, Small Wars, Big

Defense, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 14—16.

9. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History, Boston, Massachusetts:

Houghton Mifflin, 1986, pp. 23—48, esp. p. 44.

10. Robert D. Hormats, "The Roots of American Power," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1991, pp.

132—149.

11. William S. Dietrich, In the Shadow of the Rising Sun, University Park, Pennsylvania: The

Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991, p. 9.

12. Dietrich, pp. 10—31; Lester Thurow, Head to Head: The Coming Battle Among Japan,

Europe and America, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1992, pp. 30,35—39.

13. Peter F. Drucker, The New Realities, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989, pp.

137—138.

14. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural

Society, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1992.

15. James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, New York: Basic

Books, 1991, pp. 31—64.

16. David Halberstam, The Next Century, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.,

1991, pp. 99—126; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment, New York:

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992, pp. 13—29, 154—183.

26
Notes

17. James M. Dubik, "On the Foundations of National Military Strategy: Past and Present,"

School of Advanced Military Studies Monograph, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, December 31,

1990; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1970, second edition, pp. 52—91.

18. For a summary of the cold war in terms of the strategic offense and defense, see Zbigniew

Brezezinski's "The Cold War and its Aftermath," Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992, pp. 31—49.

19. Preliminary Draft, Field Manual FM 100-5, Operations, Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Printing Office, August 21, 1992, pp. 5-1 through 5-6.

20. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1973,

pp. 6—7.

21. Michael Howard, The Lessons of History, London: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 176.

22. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton,

New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 75, 87.

23 Ibid., p. 519.

24. Brodie, pp. 7—8.

25. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War, New York: Oxford

University Press, 1992, p. 156.

26. Christopher Bellamy, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice, New

York: Routledge, 1990, p. 47.

27. Richard Simpkin, The Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare, New

York: Brassey's Defense Publishers, 1985, pp. 1—18, 79—92; Martin van Creveld,

Technology and War, New York: The Free Press, 1989, pp. 81—97, 167—182; Colonel

T.N. DuPuy, U.S. Army retired, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, New York: The

Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1980, pp. 190—202; James J. Schneider, "Vulcan's Anvil:

The American Civil War and the Emergence of Operational Art," School of Advanced

Military Studies Net Call, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: July 23, 1992, pp. 16—20.

28. van Creveld, Technology and War, pp. 172—182.

29. John Keegan, The Face of Battle, New York: Vintage Books, 1977, pp. 295—298; S.L.A.

Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War, Gloucester,

Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1978, pp. 36—49, 85—156; Ardant Du Picq, Battle Studies,

Ancient and Modern Battle, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The Telegraph Press, 1946, pp.

94—102; Anthony Kellett, Combat Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle, Boston:

Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, 1982, pp. 41—49; John Ellis, The Sharp End: The Fighting Man

in World War II, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980, pp. 315—352; Roger Spiller,

"The Tenth Imperative," Military Review, April 1989, pp. 2—13; and, "Isen's Run: Human

Dimensions of Warfare in the 20th Century," Military Review, May 1988, pp. 16—31.

30. van Creveld, Technology and War, p. 171.

31. Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon, Bloomington, Indiana:

Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 109—114.

27
Notes

32. Bellamy, p. 68.

33. Schneider, pp. 25—26; van Creveld, Technology and War, pp. 156—170.

34. Martin van Creveld, Command in War, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University

Press, 1985, pp. 261—275; Richard Simpkin, pp. 227—255; von Clausewitz, pp. 100—121.

35. van Creveld, Command in War, p. 146.

36. Richard Simpkin, pp. 79—86, 93—114, 133—143. Simpkin explains his concept of

"sufficient" mass on these pages. He acknowledges that the argument that smaller forces

can create decisive effects is true only up to a point. That point is identified as the one at

which the mass involved is insufficient to threaten the enemy force. To use this amount of

mass is to err on the side of deficiency. One can also err, Simpkin points out, on the side of

excess. One can employ too much mass—that is, a force so large that all of it is not usable.

Between these two extremes is "sufficient mass," that amount sufficient to threaten the

specific enemy force in question. Clausewitz expresses a similar notion in Chapter 14 of

Book Three, "Economy of Force." Here Clausewitz maintains that a commander achieves

true economy of force when "all forces are involved...[and] no part of the whole force is

idle.", p. 213.

37. Gary L. Guertner, "Conventional Deterrence and U.S. Strategy," The Washington Quarterly,

Winter 1992, pp. 141—151.

38. Howard, p. 176. None of these capabilities will obtain, however, if the nation fails to invest

in advanced technologies, for the maintenance of the American military's technological edge

is not a foregone conclusion. It requires constant attention, especially now when advances

in technology are occurring at an exponential rate.

39. Kuhn,pp.52—172.

40. Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982, p. 3.

41. van Creveld, Technology and War, p. 314.

42. William T. Sherman, "The Grand Strategy of the Last Year of the War," in Battles and

Leaders of the Civil War: Retreat with Honor, Secaucus, New Jersey: Castle Books, p. 248.

43. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans, by Martin Ostwald, Indianapolis, Indiana:

Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1962, 1094MO-25.

28
Ulysses S. Grant and America's

Power-Projection Army

General Gordon R. Sullivan

We find ourselves today at the nexus of two great transformations.

The first is social, economic and technological: the information age

emerging from the industrial. The second, international and political: a

yet-to-be defined international order replacing the bipolar Cold War

system. We also find ourselves at a time of shifting national priorities

and fiscal difficulty. The confluence of these transformations and

changes identifies this as a period of historic transition. Practice often

leads theory during such periods, for the future is too uncertain to be

precisely defined or estimated. The US Civil War was fought as the

industrial age began to mature—a period of historic social, economic

and technological transition. We have taken counsel from the way in

which General Ulysses S. Grant dealt with such a transition as we deal

with ours.

On 3 May 1864, just 53 days after being placed in command of all

the Union armies, Grant began what may have been the first campaign

of the industrial age. Prior to this campaign, annihilation was

understood as the destruction of the enemy's army accomplished via

the classic Napoleonic decisive battle. In fact, one could argue that up

to this point, the US Civil War was little more than a series of loosely

connected battles, none of which had proven to be decisive. By the end

of Grant's campaign, this classic understanding had been supplanted

by a new understanding—a historic transformation in the conduct of

war had taken place.

First, Grant expanded the understanding of "annihilation" to include

destruction of the Confederacy's main armies and its war-making

capability—infrastructure, agriculture, transportation system and

manufacturing base. Second, Grant realized that he could not annihilate

his enemy by a single decisive battle. It would take a campaign. Grant

From Military Review 74, no.l (January 1944):4—14, reproduced by permission of the

author.

29
Envisioning Future Warfare

expanded the understanding of annihilation by linking battles and

engagements conducted by his subordinate armies into a single,

coherent campaign that encompassed the entire theater of war. In doing

so, he became what we now call an "army group commander," broke

the Napoleonic paradigm that had governed military thinking from the

beginning of the 19th century and ushered in industrial age warfare.

While we cannot document whether Grant understood explicitly that

he was at the cutting edge of military art, he was certainly aware that

what had been tried before—the old paradigm, to use contemporary

terms—was not working. This awareness is revealed in Grant's

assessment of the situation when he assumed command: "The opposing

forces stood in substantially the same relations toward each other as

three years before. . . . Before this time . . . various armies had acted

separately and independently of each other, giving the enemy an

opportunity often of depleting one command, not pressed, to reinforce

another. .. . I determined to stop this." Grant had no "theory of

industrial age warfare" upon which to draw, but he had good "strategic

sense" and astute political instincts. Furthermore, he had a "genius" for

finding a solution to a complex problem that had never been solved

before, then doggedly seeing the solution carried out. He did not have

a theory of industrial age warfare, but these qualities, this genius,

allowed him to see clearly enough to craft a workable solution to the

strategic problem for which he was responsible.

Two features of the plan are important. First, Grant identified the

armies of Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston's as two of

his main objective points. Lee's army was important because it

personified the rebellion and protected Richmond, Virginia;

Johnston's, because it protected one of the major transportation hubs

of the south—Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, Grant had to make sure that

the two armies did not merge, for if they did the war would exceed

President Abraham Lincoln's acceptable political and economical

limits. His third objective point concerned resources, the war-making

capability of the South. Grant's campaign would attack selected

portions of the infrastructure, agriculture, transportation system, ports

and manufacturing base of the Confederacy. In the words of his final

report: "I... determined... to hammer continuously against the armed

force of the enemy and his resources." Grant knew that he must not

30
Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

only destroy the main Confederate armies, but also destroy the

capability of the Confederacy to raise and maintain armies.

The second important feature of Grant' s plan was that he envisioned

a campaign—not a battle—as the way to achieve victory. He conceived

of one unified campaign throughout the depth of his theater of war, a

campaign that tied together the activities of all his armies. The scope

of this vision was unprecedented. He realized that "it will not be

possible to unite [his subordinate armies] into two or three large ones..

.. But, generally speaking, concentration can be practically effected by

Armies moving to the interior of the enemy's country." This

realization is vital, for it shows that Grant was not thinking of the classic

battle of annihilation. Rather, his was a radically new vision: one of

"practical" concentration—or concentration of effects in today's

jargon. This also enabled Grant to stay focused on his strategic aim, yet

accommodate both change and failure. After Sherman took Atlanta, for

example, he was to move against Mobile, Alabama. When conditions

changed, Grant's plan was flexible: Sherman marched to Savannah,

Georgia, then north through the Carolinas. When Benjamin Franklin

Butler failed to attack Richmond quickly after his movement up the

James River and ended up on the defense, again Grant accommodated

this development.

Grant sought not merely to exhaust the South's will to fight. His goal

was annihilation, to break the military power of the rebellion and bring

the Civil War to a close on Lincoln's terms. And the campaign plan that

he developed was well thought out.

The importance of Grant's campaign plan cannot be overstated. In

this plan are combined his strategic aim, military end-state conditions,

operational objectives, identification of his main effort and the missions

of each of his subordinate theater armies. This plan unified the efforts

of all toward common objectives. Grant's end-state conditions and

operational objectives remained constant from start to finish; his means

varied as the situation directed. During the conduct of the campaign,

his subordinates exercised their initiative to take advantage of

opportunities unforeseen at the start of the campaign, but none ever

strayed from the objectives identified in Grant's overall vision.

Since Grant never claimed to be much of a theoretician, we will never

know whether he understood that his 1864 campaign was revolutionary

31
Envisioning Future Warfare

in nature. But Grant did know the "old way" would not work. So he

applied his strategic sense, political instincts and problem-solving and

leadership skills to the situation in which he found himself. He crafted

a workable solution to the strategic problem before him. Theory

followed practice.

Change

Metaphorically speaking, we find ourselves today in a situation

similar to Grant's. The social, economic, technological, international,

and political transformations are challenging the Army to change the

way it operates. We are meeting those challenges. We are a different

Army than we were when the Wall came down. We are continuing to

change. In some ways, we are on the leading edge of the revolution in

military affairs. Like Grant, we are shaping the situation in which we

find ourselves, doing what works given the problems we face. We are

undergoing a paradigm shift and trying to look into the future to see

what information age warfare is going to be like. We are not waiting

for a full articulation of a theory of information age warfare. Nor can

we wait; we are moving out. Practice is leading theory.

The Cold War Army was a "consequence" of a particular set of

post-World War II historical and technological conditions. Initially,

these conditions remained somewhat uncertain. By 1950, the set of

conditions against which we would have to create our Army started to

clarify. Our enemy would be the Soviet Union, its allies and its

surrogates. Our war would be global and possibly nuclear, with the

main theater in Europe (or at least we thought that the initial emphasis

would be in the European theater), and within a well-defined alliance

system. Further, we assumed a strong American economy and a

relatively cohesive society. To fight this war, the Army developed a

sequential operational concept: the fight would initially include

forward-deployed Regular units who would be reinforced first by

Continental United States-based Regular units using pre-positioned

equipment then by mobilized units from the Reserve Components (RC).

For the next 40 years, we studied, in an increasingly detailed way,

Soviet tactics, equipment, operational style and overall modus

operandi. We trained "against" this enemy. We created a world-class

Soviet motorized rifle regiment to fight "against" our forces at the

National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. We scripted and

32
Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

rehearsed our battle plans in general defense plan battle books, terrain

walks and field exercises. We "fought" the land campaign in countless

exercises, simulations, workshops, and symposiums. We codified our

practices and rehearsals in doctrine; developed tactics, techniques and

procedures; organized and equipped our force; and prepared our

logistics system and stockpiled supplies. So compelling was this vision,

that RC forces were "capstoned" to plans with an implied certainty that,

in retrospect, seems altogether unreal.

To be sure, there were units of the Cold War Army whose focus was

what we called "low-intensity conflict," but no one can doubt that the

primary focus of the US Army during the Cold War was the Soviet

threat in Europe. "World War III" would have been an updated version

of World War II—more "high-tech," perhaps faster paced and likely

nuclear. But it would be a war generally recognizable to Generals

George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton Jr., Field

Marshals Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, Erwin Rommel or Zhukov. The

Army—both Active Component (AC) and RC—was raised, equipped,

deployed, organized, trained, educated, sustained, resourced and

commanded and controlled with this war in mind.

Although the Cold War Army fought other wars, its focus was on

Europe and "the big one." Europe was the worst-case scenario for which

the Army had to be prepared. All other scenarios were "lesser included"

missions that we could take care of with the force structure and

equipment needed for the "warfight," namely the warfight in Europe.

This was the Cold War paradigm. It fit the realities of its day. From

relatively known conditions, the Army developed, then fine-tuned a set

of processes—raising, equipping, deploying, organizing, training,

educating, sustaining, resourcing and commanding and

controlling—that built the Cold War Army. The relationship among the

known conditions, the processes and the Cold War Army is essential.

The kind of Army we built during the Cold War was derivative of the

conditions in which we expected to use that Army and the processes

we developed to build it. The Cold War Army had a considerable degree

of flexibility, flexibility gained primarily through its size.

The relatively known conditions upon which the Cold War Army

was built are no longer valid. Ambiguity and uncertainty are the primary

characteristics of the post-Cold War transition period in which we find

33
Envisioning Future Warfare

ourselves today. Certainly, the Cold War had its share of ambiguity.

But in today's world, the areas of uncertainty are wider and nearly

unresolvable. Today, we cannot forecast with any degree of certainty

the theater in which we may be employed, the political or alliance

conditions under which we will fight, the sequence of operations that

we will follow or where our mission will fall on the operational

continuum. We do not know the tactics, equipment, operational style

and overall modus operandi of our enemy. We can neither script nor

rehearse our battle plans.

Today's basis for planning is relatively iwknown, as compared to

the relative "knowns" of the Cold War. This is the essence of our

Army's paradigm shift. All of the processes by which we built the Cold

War Army assumed a relatively known set of variables. That

fundamental planning assumption is gone.

The processes that built the Cold War Army will not produce a

power-projection Army. Processes that were designed, honed and

fine-tuned for 40 years against a relatively known set of variables will

not work under the wider degree of nearly unresolvable uncertainty that

we now are experiencing. Some will suggest a new set of "knowns"

upon which, in their view, we should build the Army. Such a suggestion

is seductive, for the processes that we used to build the Cold War Army

will work using any set of "knowns"—for the processes designed to

work from that kind of start point. If we succumb to our insatiable quest

for certainty and posit some set of "knowns" so that our planning

processes will work, we will have been seduced. No set of "knowns"

can reflect the essential reality of our post-Cold War period of

transition—uncertainty.

This uncertainty results from the two great transformations now

unfolding, as well as the shifting national priorities and fiscal

difficulties. It would be comforting and expedient to postulate some set

of knowns from which we could derive and build America's

power-projecton Army because in doing so we would be "verifying"

the adaptability of our systems to the new post-Cold War environment.

But it would be wrong for two reasons. First, we would not be facing

reality. Whatever set of knowns one postulates would not reflect the

essential reality with which we have to contend in the post-Cold War

period—that we do not know against whom we will fight, where, when,

how or even with whom. Strategic uncertainty and ambiguity is the

34
Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

essential characteristic of our world. We must learn to deal with reality

as it is, not as we want it to be. Second, in not facing reality as it is, we

could prepare the Army for the wrong war. If we postulate a set of

knowns and build a force optimized against that set, we risk violating

Michael Howard's prime principle that during times of peace, armies

cannot get "it" too badly wrong. Prior to World War II, the Army had

years to move from its interwar state of training and capability to that

required to fight the war. Such a luxury no longer exists. "Optimizing"

under extreme uncertainty such as we face today makes little strategic

sense.

The fog of peace may cloud our vision of the future, but we can see

clearly enough to know that our potential enemies—or potential allies

for that matter—will range from "armies" of agrarian societies,

religious groups, tribes, guerrilla bands or clan leaders to "industrial

armies" of nation-states to "high-tech forces" of post-industrial,

knowledge-based societies. Most likely, we will face a mix. We also

know that we must be prepared to fight in any number of cultural,

climatic and political environments. Thus, the doctrine, leadership and

organization of today's power-projection Army require a degree of

versatility not foreseen during the Cold War. The variety of missions,

range of skills and reduced budgets demands a different, and closer,

relationship among the AC and RC forces. All this is clear enough to

use in our current plans and exercises. The essential reality of our

post-Cold War period of transition is uncertainty, but that uncertainty

is absolute.

Like Grant, we have a campaign plan. It describes how we will

transform ourselves into the US Army of the 21st century. Our plan

unifies the efforts of all toward common objectives. No doubt we will

have to adjust as the situation develops and all leaders will have to use

their initiative to take advantage of opportunities unforeseen at the start

of the campaign. While our campaign plan is flexible as to how we will

move toward our objectives it is fixed with respect to the objectives it

identifies and the mission we will accomplish (see fig.)-

Growth

The US Army is growing, but not in the sense of getting larger.

Rather, in the sense of "progressive development." We are resisting the

immediate tendency to find some new "set of knowns" that we can use

35
Envisioning Future Warfare

LD91

PL 93

Communications Plan

GHQx 94 PL 95

Serving

Nation

at Home

and Abroad,

a Strategic

Force

Capable of

Decisive

Victory

GHQx94 PL 95

• Communications Plan ~

Campaign Plan: America's Army of the 21st Century

in place of the Cold War set, for this tendency is flawed. No set of

knowns will reflect the essential reality of the day: uncertainty. All will

miss the mark. This is the shift in paradigm, and what is so hard to grasp.

Over the past several years, we have thought through the implications

of this paradigm shift—implications which fall into at least these five

areas:

First, we understand that the relative knowns forming the start point

of the Cold War paradigm are actually derivative from what the nation

asked its Army to do during the Cold War—contain Communism, deter

war, fight and win if required. The start point for the post-Cold War

paradigm, therefore, should come from the same source: what is the

country asking its Army to do now? At least a partial list of these

requirements can be found in "Land Warfare in the 21st Century."

They are:

• Help "promote an environment conducive to political and economic stability abroad"—that is, "promote the conditions in

which corporations will invest, products can be sold, and economies [will] prosper." This includes doing its part to prevent the

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

36
Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

• "Contribute to domestic recovery, participate in global stability

operations and retain its capability to produce decisive victory in

whatever circumstances we are employed.

• "Prevent crises from occurring or from developing into conflicts;

resolving conflicts before they spread or become war, or ending

wars decisively on terms favorable to the United States and its

allies."

Second, realize that our future wars will not look like the armies of

one nation-state or group of nation-states fighting another. This

understanding of war is too narrow, it always has been. But the stakes

of the Cold War were so high that the variety of war was often

overshadowed by the narrow understanding. This narrow view,

however, is not useful in helping to identify appropriate solutions to the

real problems that we face now and will face in the future.

Contending armies of nation-states do wage war, that much is

accurate. But war's realm is larger. The Zionists waged war to realize

their goal of an Israeli state, so did the Palestine Liberation

Organization. Vladimir I. Lenin and Mao Tse-tung waged war to down

established governments, as are the Shining Path in Peru and drug

cartels in Colombia. Serbia and Croatia are fighting a war to exend their

territory at the expense of Bosnia. Mohammed Farrah Aideed and other

warlords are fighting to determine who will rule Somalia. A similar

power struggle is now raging in Haiti. The examples go on.

War involves the use of violent force to compel the submission of

one's opponents and to attain one's political aim. Wars can be, and in

other periods of history have been, waged by states, corporations,

religious groups, terrorist organizations, tribes, guerrilla bands, drug

cartels, clan leaders or others. Nation-states do not have a monopoly on

war making; war can be waged by a variety of entities. The realm of

war is one of violence, force, dominance and submission—to compel

the submission of an opponent and attain a specific political purpose.

The realm of war is wide; its forms, many. We are "warfighters" in all

these senses. We fight the nation's wars, not the ones we choose.

Third, resist the temptation to quantify or precisely define what in

essence is unknown, and quite possibly unknowable. As we get closer

to the end of the transition period we are now in, we may be able to

describe some set of known threat conditions. Right now, that is not the

37
Envisioning Future Warfare

case. Thus, we cannot use some set of knowns as the basis for building

the power-projection Army just because without such a start point, our

models will not work. This is Cold War thinking. Models do not run

the Army; reality does. Under conditions of relative uncertainty, we are

concentrating on:

• Versatility of mind, organization and execution means that the

power-projection Army requires the very best leader development

program in the world, one that will create leaders who are comfortable with change and uncertainty. We are changing our school

and training systems to ensure that our leaders can succeed under

extremely ambiguous conditions. More junior leaders are finding

themselves in situations where they are required to read and react

to sophisticated nuances at the tactical level, and sometimes at the

operational and strategic levels. The Army's leader development

program will educate our current and future leaders to this new

standard. Versatility also means that we must be able to build,

quickly, resilient organizations. A resilient organization is an

organization that adapts itself to the requirements of a particular

situation. Task-organized structures will be too narrow for future

requirements; tasks will change as the situation develops. Resilient organizations are situation-organized. They will be able to

adapt to changes in task and react to political and military nuances.

Last, the Army is extending the concept of versatility to execution—the ability to succeed under any conditions. This kind of

versatility comes from excellence in the basics.

• Excellence in the basics and quality people: As any winning coach

knows, "You cannot defend against well-executed basics, and it

takes good people to make a good team." America's power-projection Army is in the process of identifying what its core strategic, operational and tactical competencies are and developing an

excellence in them. Without excellence in the basics, versatility

is impossible. Concentration on basics will mean that we reduce

the numbers of tasks on a unit's mission-essential task list

(METL), not increase them. Football has six basics—run, pass,

catch, block, tackle and think. Hockey has five basics—skate,

pass, check, shoot and think. In this time of ambiguity and

uncertainty, we are structuring our approach to training in a

similar way. We will develop the ability to adapt to changes in

38
Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

task and react to the political and military nuances of a particular

situation by focusing on excellence in the basics and initiative in

our troops and leaders. Versatility in mind (leader development)

and organization (building resilient organizations) plus excellence in the basics (reduced METL) will result in versatility in

execution.

All of the above, however, depends upon the quality of the people

we bring into the Army and of the soldiers we retain. Information age

warfare fought under extremely ambiguous threat, geographic and

political conditions will require an unprecedented degree of discipline,

quick thinking, cohesion and technical competence—all depend on

quality people. The Army cannot hope to acquire these characteristics

without high recruiting standards complemented by the right mix of

high quality of life and tough, challenging training under realistic

conditions.

• The right menu and numbers of forces include combat, combat

support and combat service support; light, heavy and special

operations forces (SOF); AC and RC. Uncertainty requires depth

on the bench. We are going to have to build resilient organizations

by mixing and matching units as the situation requires. We

understand that this means that we need the right menu and

number of trained and ready units from which to choose. This

menu will provide the depth necessary to win regardless of the

size or duration of the mission, regardless of the threat conditions

and political constraints. Also, the "menu of forces" will have to

be affordable. Hence, the emphasis on "America's Army" in the

post-Cold War period.

• America's Army must be based on a new AC/RC partnership.

Meeting the requirements of affordability, accommodating uncertainty and creating a depth of capability—all mandate a total force

policy in America's power-projecton Army different from that of

the Cold War Army. We have been re-crafting this new policy for

several years. The "AC first, RC follow" sequence of the Cold

War era no longer applies to the post-Cold War world. The reality

is: the use of AC and RC simultaneously—this is happening right

now. Today, soldiers of all three components, civilians and contractors are deployed around the world on operational missions.

39
Envisioning Future Warfare

This pattern will continue. America's Army will grow more

seamless. A power-projection Army needs connectivity to America, and a more complete integration of the components will

provide that connectivity. We are building a force structure, a

mobilization system and access policies that recognize these

realities. This will require regulatory changes, maybe even legislative. It will also require a "paradigm shift" in thinking in both

the AC and RC, a shift we are making. AC and RC forces will be

mixed in ways and assigned missions previously not required.

Fourth, we must reexamine each of the processes by which we build

the Army. The processes that created the Cold War Army cannot create

the power-projection Army. The names of each of the processes will

probably remain the same—raising, equipping, deploying, organizing,

training, educating, sustaining and command and control—but how

each process works and what it produces must be different. Ford does

not build a Taurus on a Fairlane assembly line. We cannot build a

power-projection Army with Cold War-Army processes.

The following are a few examples: the process by which we call up

RC forces developed to bring the nation to total mobilization for global

war must change to reflect more precise requirements associated with

regional wars (understood in the broader sense) and operations other

than war. Research and development, part of the equipping process,

must be altered to reflect the pace of technological change. The training

process is both expanding and contracting. It is expanding relative to

the conditions under which the Army must be prepared to operate and

contracting relative to the numbers of tasks. These changes—and many

more—are going to be required to shift our Army from a Cold War total

force to America's power-projection Army. We have made and are

making some changes right now, but we still have a long way to go.

Fifth, we need to encourage intellectual vitality. Times of great

change require new ways of thinking, deciding and acting. The revised

US Army Field Manual 100-5, Operations, Louisiana Maneuvers,

battle labs, creative scenarios at our CTCs and a host of other ongoing

programs all are helping to create the sense of intellectual vitality that

permeates our Army, but we have to do more. We must continue to tap

the intellectual resources of our Army. We must continue reading,

studying, discussing and debating what the future holds for the Army

and how we might best prepare for that future. We cannot break from

40
Ulysses S. Grant and America's Power-Projection Army

our values, for they are the heart and soul of our profession. But neither

can we be held captive by "what worked before." The future will be

fundamentally different from the past in ways we have not yet begun

to understand. Martin Blumenson said of Patton during the interwar

years, "He pondered and acted on new ideas and innovations in

procedures, techniques and equipment, in the hope of advancing his

profession and the well-being of his troops.' Our challenge is to come

to grips with the future. We must all become professional thinkers.

The many ways in which the Army has already changed as well as

those now under consideration are all examples of growth. We are

changing, but we are neither throwing the proverbial "baby out with the

bathwater" nor changing for change's sake. We have recognized the

shift in paradigm from the Cold War Army to America's

power-projection Army. And we are acting upon that recognition. We

are positioning America's Army for the 21st century right now.

We have no "theory of information warfare" upon which to rely, but

we understand what is going on. We have new doctrine and a campaign

plan—and we are using them and the Louisiana Maneuver process as

our guide. Like the great campaigns of history, we are prepared to adapt

as we move, but we are moving out and we will continue to do so. This

is nothing new to our Army.

Early in the century, Elihu Root, Lieutenant General John M.

Schofield and General Francis A. March created the professional Army.

Just prior to World War II, Marshall and Lieutenant General Lesley J.

McNair crafted the modern, mass Army. Following the Vietnam War,

Generals Creighton Abrams and William E. DePuy began building the

Army that triumphed in the Gulf. We are building America's

power-projection Army in this tradition.

The two great transformations, as well as our shifting national

priorities and fiscal difficulties provide the reason to move the Army

into the 21st century. The campaign plan is our map; growth is our

direction; continuity, our compass. America's Army is the most

competent army in the world today, and we are changing to make sure

that we remain so in the future.

41
Notes

1. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, ed. E. B. Long (New York: Da Capa

Press, Inc., 1971), 364—65 and 419.

2. Grant, "Report of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, US Army Commanding Armies of

the United States, Including Operations March 1864—May 1865," DwightD. Eisenhower:

the Professional Soldier and the Study of History, ed. Richard M. Swain (Fort Leavenworth,

KS: US Army Command and General Staff College, 1990), 27.

3. David L. Wilson, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 10 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois

University Press, 1982), 245—46.

4. See Peter F. Drucker, Post Capitalist Society (New York: Harper Business, 1993), especially

78,113—14 and 183 for examples of practice leading theory in the case of "pension fund

capitalism" and "knowledge as an economic resource."

5. Michael Howard, "Military Science in an Age of Peace," Journal of the Royal United

Services Institute for Defence Studies (March 1974).

6. GEN Gordon R. Sullivan and LTC James M. Dubik, Land Warfare in the 21st Century

(Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993), 6—8 and 24.

7. Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning A bout Organization from

an Orderly Universe (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1992), 18—23.

8. Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1972), 19.

42
War in the Information Age

General Gordon R. Sullivan and Colonel James M. Dubik

Just as the industrial age changed military forces, so will the

information age. Industrial nations furnished their militaries with

"tools" very different from those that an agrarian nation provided.

Information-based nations will equip and organize their armies

differently than their industrial counterparts did. Whether the

technological changes cause the organizational and conceptual, or vice

versa, is not the issue. This is the issue: the dawning of the information

age will fundamentally change the conduct of warfare—just as the

industrial age did a century and a half ago. It is happening now.

Prior to industrialism, James Schneider explains, the "strategy of a

single point was the dominant military paradigm," and Napoleon's

decisive battle was the model. But the period 1860—1939, during

which industrialization was driving toward maturity, brought a new

paradigm.

The Industrial Age

The military objectives required to ensure victory during the

industrial age expanded. They included not only the enemy army—the

main objective point for Napoleon and other armies prior to

industrialization—but also the enemy's war-making capability and

resources: infrastructure, manufacturing base, and raw materials. An

army could not achieve these expanded objectives in one decisive

battle. Thus, over time, distributive campaigns replaced the Napoleonic

strategy of a single point and decisive battle. A campaign—a sequence

of battles, engagements, and major operations conducted over time,

throughout a specified geographic area and linked together into a

synchronized whole—replaced the notion of a single decisive battle.

Finally, to conduct these kind of campaigns, whether offensive or

defensive, required large, dispersed armies that could be coordinated

to common effect.

From Military Review 74, no. 4 (April 1994):46—62, reproduced by permission of the authors.

43
Envisioning Future Warfare

6

AC

\

I

f" ^

Revolution

Observe: telescope

Orient weeks

Decide: months

Act a season

1776-1783

V ^

^ OBSERVE

THE

T DECISION

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* DECIDE

nformation is the

Civil War

Observe: telegraph

Orient days

Decide: weeks

Act a month

1861-1865

ORIENT

j currency of co

"| TIME AND COMMAND

World War II

Observe: radio/wire

Orient hours

decide: days

/Act: a week

1939-1945

L^

mmand

)

Gulf War

Observe: near real

time

Orient: minutes

Decide: hours

Art a day

^ 1990-1991 ^

Tomorrow

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time

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Decide: immediate

Act hour or less

20?? ^

Figure 1

The commanders of these armies needed a different set of skills than

their predecessors. By Napoleon's time, armies were no longer unitary.

They were subdivided into divisions and corps. As forces grew in size,

armies and army groups emerged. The military became a profession;

specialization took effect, and the staff system evolved. A military

education system emerged in industrial nations to ensure that officers

had the conceptual, technical and organizational skills necessary to

synchronize the efforts of the disparate parts of their military

machines. The concept of time itself changed (see fig. 1).

Mixed in with the development of the new set of conceptual,

technical and organizational skills came an explosion of technical

innovations. The rifled musket, smokeless powder, the rifle and the

machine gun; breech loading and belt loading; processed food; steam,

then gasoline-powered engines; indirect artillery fire; the railroad and

the telegraph; mechanization and motorization; and a host of other

inventions all affected the range and lethality of weapons as well as the

overall conduct of warfare. Other innovations such as administrative

and accounting procedures, preprinted forms, maps, the technical

means to coordinate large numbers, accurate portable clocks, the

telescope and many other nonmilitary inventions also took effect. Front

and rear were unified first by rail and ship, then by air. This unification

allowed for the continuous flow of personnel, units and supplies. Thus,

large, geographically separate formations—controlled by a

professional and ever-growing staff—could act as one unified force and

44
War in the Information Age

"grind on" toward victory despite casualties in personnel or materiel.5

The ultimate result: war, conducted and sustained over years in the

multiple theaters of two world wars, then a half-century global "cold"

war.

Technical advances affected the conceptual and organizational, and

vice versa. An advance or change in one impacted upon the others. What

is clear, however, is that the industrial age had a dominant method of

conducting war, and this method differed from that of the agrarian.

Thus, industrial armies were fundamentally different from their

agrarian predecessors. The whole approach to war changed. For

industrial armies, "objectives" were distributive: enemy forces, as well

as infrastructure, manufacturing base and resources. Industrial armies

had to be raised, equipped, trained, educated and organized to conduct

sequential, distributive operations throughout the depth of a theater, or

multiple theaters, and to sustain such activities over time. Industrial

armies needed continuous logistics and mobilization, from rear to front

and back; centralized communication; large, bureaucratically

organized staffs; and large, durable formations.

Both world wars epitomized industrialism. In World War II, the

United States became a "war machine" capable of continuous, long-run

production and mass output of arms, men, units and equipment. Forrest

Pogue describes the plan for victory as one in which the United States

would "create air superiority, strengthen naval forces, create industrial

production sufficient to arm the defenders of the Western Hemisphere,

outfit task forces for operations in the Atlantic and in the European

theaters, and furnish weapons and supplies for friendly powers

wherever they might be." Three characteristics of the World War II

model are:

• An industrial base and a training base.

• Long runs of mass-produced equipment, people and units to be

mass distributed from the base to the front and returned from the

front to the base if needed.

• Sequential campaigns and operations—the "ever-forward-moving front line" moving east from the English Channel, west from

Russia or north toward Japan.

45
Envisioning Future Warfare

This was also the model that continued beyond the world wars. It

was the model with which America and its allies won the Cold War. It

is how our Army has been raised, equipped, deployed, organized,

trained, educated, sustained, resourced and commanded and controlled

for well over 50 years.

It is the model that mirrored the three central governing concepts of

the industrial age:

The Machine as a Model. Machines are mechanical systems. They

consist of standardized, interchangeable parts, each with a single,

special function. The parts fit together into a synchronized whole. When

the machine is turned on, it works automatically, grinding out its

product—each like the other. Using this model, work was simplified to

the point where almost anyone could be trained to perform repetitive

tasks effectively. Taylorism, the method of factory management first

developed and advocated by Frederick W. Taylor, dominated

management theory. The idea that there was "one best way" produced

workers who were permitted only to do one, single thing. Work became

rote; management, rigid; and outcomes predictable.

The "military machine" and the "wheels of business" are just two of

many machine metaphors applied to life in the industrial age. And what

controlled these machine-like organizations? A "grinding bureaucracy"

whose defining characteristic was routine and was composed of

standardized, interchangeable parts (people), each with a specific

function (specialties) that, when put together (departments), would

automatically grind out its product (integration and control) using a

"scientific" approach (system analysis).

Paced, Sequential, Continuous, Long-Run Production. Machines

run at a preset, regular, "conveyer-belt" pace. If one increases or

decreases the pace beyond the machine's set parameters, one risks

breaking the machine or producing imperfect goods. Machines of the

industrial age, and the organizations modeled after them, worked in

sequence. Henry Ford's famous assembly line became the model not

only for manufacturing but also for government, business and most

other organizations. Business processes were sequential. Concept

development, design, production, marketing, sales—each followed the

other, but only after a centralized decision approved movement from

one "department" to another. Bureaucracies perfected the assembly line

46
War in the Information Age

approach. Industrial age machines and organizations were efficient

because they ran continuously, producing the same product. Retooling

a manufacturing line to produce a different product was a major

operation that often included closing down part of a plant for weeks or

months.

Mass Output. Perhaps the most recognizable characteristic of the

industrial age was mass: mass production, mass media, mass markets,

mass advertizing, mass consumption, mass education, mass

distribution, mass movements and mass religions. "A lot of like

things": this is what machines—whether corporate, political, economic

or social-welfare or military—produce best and cheapest. This is what

they are "good at." In sum, this is what industrialism is all about.

These governing concepts provided the context within which we

lived our social, political, economic, and private lives. Within

"industrialized" nations, new political architectures emerged,

sometimes from debate, often from conflict, occasionally from civil

war. The story of one age replacing another is a story of tension, chaos

and an associated nontrivial potential for violence. Change is unsettling,

especially when so much changes; when fundamental values and

structures are challenged; and when the future is so uncertain.

But the dominance of the industrial model is over; the industrial age

is passing. The information age has been colliding with the institutions

of the industrial age for two decades. The result will not be the complete

elimination of industrial structures and institutions, but the information

age is coming to dominate the industrial. The transformation from an

industrial to an informational society will be as profound as the shift

from an agricultural society to an industrial one.

The Information Age

The information age—as the industrial age did before it—will affect

social, political and corporate structures, as well as most other public

institutions and organizations. And it will alter our private lives too.

The entire economy of some nations already is beginning to take on

a new structure—more diverse, easily tailored, decentralized, faster

paced and complex. A new set of principles and new governing

concepts are beginning to take shape. The details remain partially

47
Envisioning Future Warfare

obscured, but the outline is clear. The governing concepts of the

information age are taking the following shape.

The Network as a Model. Industrialism employed Sir Isaac Newton's

perspective: "In the machine model,... things can be taken apart...

then put back together without significant loss."14 Replacing this

perspective, however, is a more holistic one in which relationships

among the parts gain importance. In a network, processes—the web of

relationships that enhance the flow of information among the parts of

an organization, factory or corporation—determine the organization's

ability to be effective and competitive in the information age.

Responsibilities will remain hierarchical, but the efficacy of

hierarchical organizations will diminish as information-sharing

networks become the norm. This requires that organizations develop

"a sophisticated information network that gathers precise and

exhaustive data on markets and customers' needs, combining it with

the newest design methods and computer-integrated production

process, and then operating this system with an integrated network that

includes not only highly skilled employees of the company but also

suppliers, distributors, retailers and even customers." Successful

networks require high-quality, sophisticated workers and managers.

Workers in an information age corporation are not "standardized,

interchangeable parts" with little to contribute other than their single,

specialized function along an assembly line or in a bureaucracy. Rather,

workers are becoming—and in successful organizations, they already

have become—contributors, collaborators, communicators and

members of teams. Training and education of workers—as well as

worker longevity, loyalty and trust—are absolutely paramount in

information age corporations. Quality is key as never before.

In a corporation organized as a network, middle management

positions disappear as two of their main functions—information

transfer and worker supervision—dissipate. Computers "talking" to

themselves by digital transfer of information, and empowered workers

becoming more self-regulated, are making much of middle

management obsolete. Staffs, as they have developed during the

industrial age are changing dramatically. Bureaucracies will not vanish,

but they will be organized around information, not functions. Spans of

control will grow larger- organizations, "flatter"; and "process action

teams," more prevalent.

48
War in the Information Age

Leaders will guide by vision and policy, not by procedure-based

rules. Decision making under these conditions will also change. Most

decisions will be decentralized. Of those that remain centralized, many

will be made in a participative way; fewer will be made by a single

leader or manager. Successful corporations will become adaptive,

constantly learning and "self-renewing" in response to external

realities, internal changes and market conditions. But however

decisions are made, successful organizations will have to speed through

the decision cycle faster than their competitors. Speed—which is

emerging as perhaps the dominant mark of the information age—is one

of the most important advantages of the network over the machine.

Near-Simultaneous, Continuous, Short-Run Production.The preset,

regular, "conveyer-belt" pace of the machine age is over. Only

fast-paced, adaptive organizations will succeed in this new era of

competition. Today, competition comes not only from traditional

adversaries in traditional sectors, but also from disintegrating barriers

to previously insulated and protected markets. Few corporations can

now predict from where their next "peer" competitor will come.

Competition now arises unexpectedly, from anywhere.

To deal with this degree of uncertainty, information age corporations

seek "to compress product development time, to shrink the interval

between the identification of the need for a new product and the

beginning of its manufacture." Again, the time between observed

need, through decision, to action, will get shorter and shorter. Thus,

speed in identifying, then meeting new market needs grows in

importance. The inflexible machines and stiff bureaucratic processes

of the industrial era justified their expense through mass, but the speed

of an information age corporation will turn this industrial world inside

out.

Information age corporations beat their competition by compressing

time; expanding market share, productivity and profitability;

eliminating the "assembly line" mentality; and reengineering overly

bureaucratized organization. These are keys to success in the

information age. The most basic and common feature of a reengineered

business is the adoption of the network as their organization model

instead of the assembly line attitude. In a network organization, "many

formerly distinct jobs or tasks are integrated and compressed into

one."21

49
Envisioning Future Warfare

Mass-Customized Products, Precisely Targeted, NearInstantaneous Distribution. Advertising and marketing were the tools

to convince the customers to accept mass-produced products. Low

prices and sheer abundance helped make this acceptance complete. But

"demassiflcation" is becoming more common, with the niche market

replacing the mass market. Corporations are able to customize a

specific product or service in response to particular customer

requirements. Cost-effective, near-instantaneous, mass-customized

products and services are now available. Custom design, instant

delivery, a product or service adapted to the customer, not vice

versa—these are the hallmarks of the information age business.

Information age production machines can reset themselves, thus

allowing continuous-flow, fully customized production. Mass

production will continue to have a place in industry, albeit a smaller

one. In the information age, profitability will not result from mass but

from precision: first, in identifying the needs of a particular market

segment; second, in developing and producing a product or service

customized to that specific segment; and third, in delivering that

product or service—all faster than one's competitor. Constant

innovation and speed will become two important ways to retain one's

competitive advantage.

As the information age develops, corporations will not simply spend

money on new technology and then use it in old ways. They will not

simply ask how they can do things faster and better. These are actions

that already will have been taken in the early stages of the information

age. Rather, corporations will ask, "Why do some things at all?"

Success will come to the corporations that can exploit the full potential

of computer technology within new organizations and develop new

attitudes toward workers and work processes, new ways of operating

and new management concepts—as1 these new technologies,

organizations and concepts are developed. That is, success will come

to those who "unlearn" the rules of the industrial age and adopt the new

practices of the information age the fastest.

Information age principles and governing concepts will provide the

framework within which we will live our social, political, economic

and private lives. In The Power Game, for example, Hedrick Smith

describes how the pace and demassification of the information age have

already changed our political processes. In Reinventing Government,

50
War in the Information Age

David Osborne and Ted Gaebler suggest ways in which government

can deal with this new political landscape. In Changing Fortunes,

Paul Volcker and Toyoo Gyohten describe similar changes, required

for similar reasons, in the world monetary system. And in "The Tales

They Tell in Cyber-space Are A Whole Other Story'' Jon Katz describes

how information age technology is changing and will continue to

change the publishing world and the movie industry. Changing also

are our understanding of national sovereignty, the international order,

threats to our nation's security, the nature of economic competition, the

requirements to succeed in that competitive environment, America's

role in the global community and many other long-held beliefs. We live

in a time of transition between the industrial and information ages. It is

a time of confusion, uncertainty and change—at times, chaos. Success

will come to those organizations that lead their sectors under these

near-chaotic conditions.

Ultimately, the information age will come to dominate, but vestiges

of the industrial and the agrarian ages will remain. While some parts of

the world become information based, others will remain industrial or

agrarian. Still others will be in between. Even within nations, all three

"ages" may coexist. Ours will be a world characterized by variety,

increased complexity and uncertainty. Our requirement: adapt.

With respect to change, some like to compare today's Army to its

Cold War self. In the spring of 1990. we had nearly 6,100 soldiers

operationally deployed in 45 countries. Now, we have 21,500 soldiers

in over 70 countries—about a 300-percent increase in operational

tempo. During this same period, we reduced the size of the

Army—active, national guard, reserve and civilian—from 2 million to

1.5 million, a 25-percent reduction; shrank our force structure from five

to four corps, 18 active divisions to 12, and 10 national guard divisions

to eight; returned nearly 150,000 soldiers to the United States from

bases overseas; and cut our budget by about 40 percent (see fig. 2).

About half of all Department of Defense base closings and personnel

reductions accomplished so far have come from the Cold War Army.

But the real story of America's Army is not in how it compares to the

past, but in how it is transforming for the future.

This transformation—from a Cold War total force to America's

Army of the 21st century, Force XXI—is growth, certainly not in the

sense of getting larger but in the sense of "progressive development."

51
Envisioning Future Warfare

TRANSFORMATION:

FORWARD DEPLOYED TO POWER PROJECTION

Expanding Missions

125,000 soldiers stationed overseas

Daily average of 20,000+soldiers

deployed to more than 60 countries

300% increase in operational

deployments since 1990

Repositioning Forces

1999 75.2% 13.7%

Diminishing Resources

650 installations closed worldwide

35% decrease in materiel base

Figure 2

Such transformation is not new to the Army; we have "reinvented"

ourselves before. But we have tended to follow society's lead. Today

we are helping to lead America into the information age. We understand

the enormity of the tasks before us now. Thus, we understand the

imperative to let intellectual change lead physical change. Over the past

several years, we have fostered an intellectual debate within the Army

to help come to grips with the transformation we have undergone and

are undergoing. We are positioning the Army for the information age.

The future will find that the concept of "war" is expanding in at least

two ways. First, we will no longer be able to understand war simply as

the armies of one nation-state or group of nation-states fighting one

another. Somalia again demonstrates that this understanding is too

narrow—it always has been. Nation-states do not have a monopoly on

warmaking; a variety of entities can wage war and have done so in other

periods of history—corporations, religious groups, terrorist

organizations, tribes, guerrilla bands, drug cartels or other crime

syndicates, clans and others. Further, agrarian age enemies can buy and

employ information age weaponry. Information age technology will

bring variety to the military sphere as it is bringing it to the economic

sphere. The net result is a blurring of the distinction between "war" and

"operations other than war."3 Military "competitors" will arise

unexpectedly, and the conditions for decisive victory will differ with

each use of military force. Unlike during the Cold War, we do not have

the luxury of focusing primarily upon one set of threat, geographic, and

alliance conditions.

52
War in the Information Age

The second way in which the concept of war is expanding concerns

conventional combat. The information age will change the scope of war

as compared to the industrial age, just as the industrial did relative to

the agrarian. Agrarian states cannot regenerate their warmaking

capability; therefore, an armed force has only to defeat an agrarian

state's army, or navy in some cases, to achieve victory. Victory against

an industrial state, however, requires that an armed force be prepared

not only to destroy sufficient portions of the enemy forces, but also

infrastructure, resources, and manufacturing base—that is, destruction

of warmaking capability. Victory over an information-based state goes

one step further. It will entail not only sufficient destruction of the

armed forces and physical warmaking capability, but also dominance

of its information system.

Thus, variety and ambiguity are characteristics of the information

age—variety and ambiguity in the kind of enemy we might face, the

kind of war we might fight, the requirements of victory and the

conditions under which America will use its Army. Joint forces;

coalitions, sometimes ad hoc; interagency operations; precise rules of

engagement, executed under the eye of near-instantaneous, global

media; perhaps unreasonable expectations concerning casualties;

decreased time between observed "crisis" and "troops on the ground,"

as well as between arrival in-country and mission completion—all will

make each use of military force unique. Information age

"tools"—speed, customization and precision—have already arrived on

the battlefield. Only high-quality soldiers, leaders, staffs and

organizations that can use customization, precision, and information to

their advantage will succeed in this environment. The military

requirements of the information age are upon us today.

The kind of army that can use information age "tools" and succeed

under these conditions differs from the mass-production army of the

industrial age. Successful information age businesses and corporations

have had to unlearn industrial practices and apply new principles and

concepts to their organizations, processes, and operations. We, too,

have come to this realization. Certainly, the application in the military

will not be exactly the same as that in the corporate world, for the two

cultures are fundamentally distinct. Recognizing this essential

distinction is important. We must also acknowledge, however, that the

53
Envisioning Future Warfare

governing concepts of the information age will change army

organizations, processes and operations—as well as the conduct of war.

Distributive campaigns that developed during the industrial age will

fade. Emerging in their stead will be simultaneous operations resulting

in the near-instantaneous paralysis and destruction of enemy forces,

warmaking capability and information network throughout the depth

of a theater.

Information age armies will develop a shared situational awareness

based on common, up-to-date, near-complete friendly and enemy

information distributed among all elements of a task force. First,

operational and tactical forces will know where their enemies are and

are not—whether those enemies are "agrarian" enemies like Somalian

war lords or Haitian strong men, "industrial" enemies like those in

North Korea or yet-to-emerge information age peers. Of course, this

"knowledge" will never be absolute, and it is folly to assume it ever

will become "perfect." It will be, however, of an order of magnitude

better than that achieved even during the Gulf War. Second,

information age armies will know where their own forces are, much

more accurately than before—and deny this critical information to the

enemy. Last, this enemy and friendly information will be distributed

among the forces of all dimensions—land, sea, air and space—to create

a common perception of the battlefield among the commanders and

staffs of information age armies. This shared situation awareness,

coupled with the ability to conduct continuous operations day and night,

is what will allow information age armies to observe, decide, and act

faster, more precisely and more decisively than their enemies. Speed

and precision are becoming the dominant requirements of the

battlefield.

Speed and precision result from maneuver platforms, fire support

and sustainment systems, and command and control platforms that are

linked digitally. In information age armies, these will be organized as

part of a joint network that includes the platforms and systems of sea,

air and space forces. Future war is joint war; the whole of such a force

is greater than the sum of its parts.

Direct fire will be redefined in the information age—armies will be

able to shoot or move "directly" against enemies and targets even

though they may be thousands to tens of thousands of kilometers

54
War in the Information Age

away. Finally, all of these capabilities will be exercised under the

watchful eye of independent, global, instantaneous transmitting media.

America's information age Army must be able to use these

capabilities to defeat a variety of enemies—agrarian, industrial or

informational. Therefore, we must be prepared to destroy or control

armies—whether conventional forces of nation-states or those of feudal

lords, religious groups, drug cartels, ethnic groups, crime syndicates,

transnational corporations or other entities that may emerge in the

information age of the 21st century. Of course, we must still contend

with the factors of infrastructure, production base and information

grid—again, whether in agrarian, industrial or information societies.

The military sector will come to reflect the variety of the information

age social, economic, political and private sectors.

Information age armies will differ from those of the industrial age.

First, they will be more flexible and versatile. They will also tend to be

smaller, yet more capable—but only if they are equipped with the

modern technology, are well-trained and led, use up-to-date doctrine

and are organizations that "fit" their technology and doctrine.

History suggests, however, that no peacetime army has ever gotten

all this exactly right. As Michael Howard points out, in times of peace

all armies will be wrong; successful armies are those that are not too

badly wrong. And in time of war, successful armies are those which

can adjust quickly. Therefore, strategic common sense dictates that

optimizing a force in peacetime entails significant risk; some

"redundancy" and "insurance" must remain.

Second, information age armies will differ from those of the

industrial age in the processes used to create and sustain information

age capabilities. For example, force structures that can exploit and

maximize speed and precision will replace industrial age force designs.

Information age forces will not be attrition based—force allocation

"rules," as well as personnel and equipment replacement or loss factors,

will change. Also an acquisition process able to keep a pace closer to

the rate of technological innovation and production will replace the

current industrial age process. Decision-making processes will also

change. They will include a mix of artificial and human intelligence

and become much less a sequential process and more a simultaneous

one.

55
Envisioning Future Warfare

This very short list of examples contains only a sampling of how

fundamentally different information age armies will be as compared to

their predecessors. The industrial model of mass mobilization,

production, employment and logistics is passing. This model is being

replaced by one of versatility, speed and precision. This new model will

affect all levels of war—strategic, operational and tactical—in ways we

are only beginning to understand.

The new information age model will also affect the use of military

force. The variety of conditions under which America will employ its

information age Army, especially in light of near-instantaneous global

media coverage, will require very close strategic-, operational- and

tactical-level coordination. Currently, this requirement is understood

when the nation conducts what all clearly recognize as war. To some,

this requirement is less clear in those cases involving employment that

we now label operations other than war.

The information age will not allow us the luxury of this artificial

distinction. Any use of America's information age Army in a situation

in which one or more of the parties are using violence to compel others

to do their will requires that we approach the situation as war and forge

very strong civil-military and interagency links.

While much will change in the conduct of war in the information

age, the nature of war will change little. Information age war will not

be remote, bloodless, sterile or risk free. Information age war, in all its

variety, will remain war. Death and destruction will remain the coins

of war's realm. And the values of these coins will not diminish,

regardless of how much advanced technology is available to an

information age army. Nor will information age war be without

uncertainty or ambiguity, for there will remain thinking, deceptive,

cunning enemies about whom we will never be able to have complete

knowledge.

Even in the information age, the human heart and will govern action

in war. Some person, as a member of a group, must still rush, drive, sail

or fly forward in the face of possible death or maiming. Courage,

selflessness, comradeship and leadership are not diminished by

changing technology, organizations or concepts. And as long as human

beings produce, distribute, finance, sell and use their goods on land,

56
War in the Information Age

soldiers and armies will remain the ultimate guarantee that a nation's

vital interests and security can be protected or advanced.

Finally, the root causes of war will remain constant. People still start

wars, whether they are political leaders of nation-states or leaders of

some other organization. And they start them as a result of fear, hatred,

greed, ambition, revenge or a host of other quite human emotions and

rationales. People will fight when they perceive that they can

accomplish their objectives by resorting to force, or that they have no

other alternative, or that honor, pride, principle or "the gods" demand

it. People, therefore, will be needed to end wars. There is no purely

technological solution to war, because war, in the final analysis, can

never be divorced from its human dimension. Although the conduct of

information age war will change substantially, the nature of war

remains relatively constant.

The information age is not fully upon us. Some of the ideas described

above are still nascent; others, however, are clearly visible and

developing quickly. Industrialism's governing concepts have been

fading for the past 20 years. It may take a decade or two more for

industrialism to pass, but the pace of technical innovation in the

information age is fast. So is the growing understanding of the kinds of

organizations and processes that will succeed in the ambiguous, diverse

and ever-accelerating conditions of the information age.

Implications and Conclusions

We are neither idealizing the information age nor ignoring the

obstacles that lie before us as we transform America's Army. We are

well along an ambitious journey, but resources are limited. We are

balancing our dollars among funding current operations; resourcing the

recruiting and retention of quality people; and paying for training,

leader development and base operations, as well as those programs

involved in moving America's Army into the information age.

We understand this challenge. We understand, too, that there is no

"time-out" from our requirements to be trained and ready, to succeed

at whatever the nation asks of us and to provide a quality life for our

soldiers and civilians. But we are moving out, and have been. We are

forecasting as accurately as possible the military requirements of the

information age, then making anticipatory policy and program

decisions so as to position America's Army to meet these requirements.

57
Envisioning Future Warfare

We are developing a menu of forces and capabilities within

America's Army that will provide today's and tomorrow's National

Command Authorities and commanders in chief what they need. We

are digitizing the battlefield right now. We are in a process of upgrading

intelligence, maneuver, fire support, sustainment and command and

control platforms with advanced technologies that can gather, sort and

distribute information among themselves. These technological

insertions and upgrades will allow our task forces to observe, decide

and act faster and more precisely than before. We will be able to mass

effects—of fire support or maneuver forces—from dispersed locations,

nearly simultaneously.

We are building the information age requirements of speed and

precision into America's Army today. This is the lethal, digitized force

that gives meaning to the newly added operational tenet of "versatility."

We have identified units to experiment with information age

technologies, organizations and processes. We are adding depth to our

force by building a seamless Army, leveraging the unique capabilities

of our active, national guard and reserve forces, as well as our civilian

work force. We are creating versatile leaders and organizations able to

succeed in ambiguous, hyper-diverse conditions—under the eye of the

media and within the established rules of engagement. We are

reengineering our major subordinate commands. And we are remaining

steadfast in our belief that all of this rests upon acquiring and retaining

quality people and providing them and their families a quality life.

We will continue our doctrinal adaptation to the developing

information age. The next edition of US Army Field Manual (FM)

100-5, Operations, will capture the variety of the information age,

describe the seductively flawed distinction between war and operations

other than war, and flesh out the principles governing the conduct of

warfare in the information age. FM 101-5, Staff Organization and

Operations, will adjust the decision-making processes and describe

staff functions, duties and relationships for a digitized force. Other

doctrinal manuals will follow suit.

The organizations of our battalions, brigades, divisions and corps

will evolve over time to a size and composition that will provide the

versatility needed to succeed on a variety of information age

battlefields. That evolution will result also from finding the mix of

58
War in the Information Age

soldiers, leaders, skills, functions and equipment that will optimize

information age technologies. The organization of the institutional

Army will also change. Throughout the industrial period, and

culminating during the Cold War, we created and refined a set of

policies, programs, procedures and models upon which we based our

personnel, mobilization, training, education, equipment, sustainment,

deployment, employment, and command and control processes. We

then built a set of organizations around these processes and created

industrial-style bureaucracies to run these processes. Appropriate for

their time, these processes—as well as the organizations and

bureaucracies we built to run them—are quickly becoming outmoded

by the accelerating pace and variety of the information age. They are

changing now and will continue to change.

Four basic forms of information will be the core upon which

America's information age Army processes and organizations will be

built:

• Content information—simple inventory information about the

quantity, location and types of items.

• Form information—descriptions of the shape and composition of

objects.

• Behavior information—three-dimensional simulation that will

predict behavior of at least physical objects, ultimately being able

to "wargame" courses of action.

• Action information—information that instantly converts to action.37

Leveraging these forms of information will allow Army

organizations to maintain quality, increase "productivity" and

effectiveness, even while reducing in size—similar to civilian

corporations of the information age.

New training strategies are also emerging. Hands-on,

performance-oriented training will remain valid, useful, and essential.

So will range firing and field exercises. Practicing under stressful,

realistic field conditions will never go out of style, nor should it. But

more and more, a variety of simulations and other computer-assisted

programs will precede or follow hands-on and field practice. The

limited training option of the industrial age—live or rudimentary,

59
Envisioning Future Warfare

constructed simulation—are already passing. The information age will

give commanders a much more robust and sophisticated set of options:

live operations and constructed simulations, as well as interactive,

virtual-reality simulated exercises. These kinds of simulations do not

replace live operations; they will allow us to do more.

Simulations, often distributed, and sometimes virtual, will form an

essential part of the information age training strategy. Simulations will

intensify individual, leader and collective training. Soldiers, leaders and

organizations can be "immersed," repetitively and to increasing degrees

of difficulty, in a variety of simulated scenarios and virtual-reality

situations. This immersion will provide preparatory, remedial and

reinforcement training—all excellent augmentations to the kind of

hands-on field training essential to producing a trained and ready army.

When incorporated with distributive technologies, a training strategy

of this kind will enhance not only the readiness and proficiency of the

active force, but also that of the national guard and reserve forces. We

are testing these kinds of training strategies in our Army today.

The materiel of the early stages of the information age may look

much like what we have now. But the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles,

artillery pieces, rocket launchers, helicopters, command and control,

engineer and logistical support vehicles and trucks will be "smarter."

They will gain their "smarts" through computers, other advanced

technologies and from internetting. Further, they will be linked to

similar systems of other services. The joint, digitally integrated force

that results will need supply, maintenance and service systems different

from those that supported the mass army of the industrial age. Thus, we

will have to alter the rule by which combat, combat support and combat

service support are "associated" in our current Total Army Analysis

models. We will also have to alter the support planning factors in our

logistic manuals and wargames. Otherwise, we will produce a gap

between operational potential and sustainment capability. As the

information age progresses and inventions not yet conceived become

reality—as was the case during the industrial period—we must be ready

for whatever will follow our current set of maneuver, fire support,

logistics and command vehicles.

Last, our leader development program will shift to accommodate the

new conceptual, technical and organizational skills required of

information age officers and noncommissioned officers. Using more

60
War in the Information Age

information, coming faster; making decisions at a faster rate; executing

over increasing distances in decreasing time and under more diverse

conditions; orchestrating the maneuver and fire systems of all services;

and creating and maintaining cohesion among more dispersed

units—all under the watchful eye of near-instantaneous media

coverage, leaders of America's information age Army will "think

differently" than those of the industrial age. At first, this difference will

be only one of degree. As the information age matures, however, the

difference will be one of kind.

The Army's institutional response to the demands of the information

age is Force XXI, a structured effort to redesign the Army—units,

processes and organizations—from those of the industrial age to those

of the information age. Force XXI, a process that applies to warfighting,

Title X responsibilities, and to all components—will enable America's

Army to protect and defend the nation and provide decisive victory in

the information age.

Change of the magnitude we are attempting is not easy. Nor is it

uniformly embraced. Yet we Americans are fortunate to have as one of

our cultural characteristics a pragmatic attitude: "If it is better and

makes sense, let's get on with it." We must continue to capitalize on

this attitude in America's Army.

Ours is a time of rapid change. As such, it is not only a time of

uncertainty, it is also a time of opportunity. Success in the information

age will go to those who have the courage to challenge themselves, who

constantly innovate, learn and adapt as they go. Positioning America's

Army today so that it will succeed in the information age is a historic

task. Our use of digital information and the network of systems that will

connect America's Army of the 21st century will help us to make our

Army better able to serve the nation, just as the use of assembly lines

and industrial processes did in the past.

While we know that the conduct of war is changing, we realize that

war will not become "remote" or "bloodless." We also know that the

nature of war is not changing. We know, too, that none of us has a clear

picture of the future. No one conception of what the information age

will bring is entirely complete and correct. But the foregoing

description, drawn from a number of diverse sources, is an accurate

enough forecast for the purposes of action. We need not wait any longer,

61
Envisioning Future Warfare

and we have not waited. We are moving America's Army toward the

21st century now.

There is no "final objective" in the classic sense, no decisive battle

or unconditional surrender. Ours is a journey into the future, and we are

moving out with confidence.

62
Notes

1. That different cultures have distinct ways to make war, even distinct concepts of what war

is, is a major theme in John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1993), 386—92.

2. James J. Schneider, "Vulcan's Anvil: The American Civil War and the Emergence of

Operational Art" unpublished paper, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort

Leavenworth, Kansas, 16 June 1991,1.

3. Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985),

103—88 and Technology and War (New York: The Free Press 1989), 137—49; T. N. Dupuy,

A Genius for War (Fairfax, VA: Hero Books, 1984), 44—69.

4. Schneider, 9—10.

5. J. F. C. Fuller, The Conduct of War: 1789—1961 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1961), 86—94;

Van Creveld, Technology and War, 111—23 and 153—66; and Schneider, 2—9.

6. This article limits its discussion to armies. This should not be taken to mean that the overall

argument of the paper does not apply equally to navies and air forces-—it does. Applying the

argument to navies and air forces, however, lies beyond the scope of this paper.

7. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939—1942 (New York: Viking

Press, 1965), 139—65; quoted, 157; see also Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants

(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1981), 2—7.

8. William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation, 28, 162—167 and

244-45.

9. Davidow and Malone, 166—67.

10. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti- War, 19.

11. For one interpretation of the unsettling nature of periods of transition, see John Lukacs, The

End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age (New York: Ticknor and Fields,

1993), 282.

12. John Naisbitt, Megatrends, 9.

13. For other ways of looking at the principles and "governing concepts" of the information age

corporation, see Don Tapscott and Art Caston, "Seven Key Drivers of the New Business

Environment," Paradigm Shift, 6—10; Alvin Toffler, "The Corporate Identity Crisis," The

Third Wave, 226—43; Davidow and Malone, "A New Kind of Business," The Virtual

Corporation, 1—19; or Peter Drucker, "Labor, Capital, and Their Future," and "The

Productivity of the New Work Force," Post-Capitalist Society, 68—96.

14. Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler

Publishers, 1992), 8—9 and 25-45.

15. Naisbitt, 211—29.

63
Notes

16. Davidow and Malone, 6, 139—61 and 217—38; Michael Hammer and James Champy,

Reengineering the Corporation, 50—101; Alvin Toffler, Powersoft, 180—89.

17. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, 68—74, especially 83—109 and The New Realities,

207—31; Davidow and Malone, 167—74 and 184—216; Alvin Toffler, Powersoft,

204—32; and Tapscott and Caston, 10—13.

18. Wheatley, 75—99; Alvin Toffler, Powershift, 190—203.

19. Tapscott and Caston, 4—5.

20. Davidow and Malone, 89.

21. Hammer and Champy, 51.

22. Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, 155—207 and 349—61.

23. Davidow and Malone, 3—7,24,42,49,107,137,141,157—58,162,219 and 222.

24. Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, 184; Davidow and Malone, 219—21, 223—29, and

235—38.

25. Naisbitt, 19—25. The author describes the three stages of technology: first, application of

technology in ways least threatening to existing organizational norms; second, using

technology to improve what we already have; and third, new directions, He then goes on to

argue that we are now in this last stage of technological innovation—the most threatening,

yet most productive and innovative stage.

26. Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, 20—57,119—57, and 333—450.

27. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government (New York: Addison-Wesley

Publishing Company, Inc., 1992), especially xv—24 and 311—31.

28. Paul Volcker and Toyoo Gyohten, Changing Fortunes (New York: Time Books, 1992),

3__17? 59—100, and 287—310.

29. Jon Katz, "The Tales They Tell in Cyber-space Are a Whole Other Story" New York Times

(23 January 1994):Section 2: 1 and 50.

30. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, 18—25; Davidow and Malone, 12.

31. This number excludes those soldiers permanently stationed overseas.

32. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, 9—12 and 44—56

33. General Gordon R. Sullivan and Lieutenant Colonel James M. Dubik, Land Warfare in the

21st Century (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993).

34. Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 192—227;

Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, 81—85.

3 5. For a more complete description of the technological changes and trends already at work in

land combat, see Sullivan and Dubik, Land Warfare in the 21st Century, especially 12—25.

64
Notes

36. Michael Howard, "Military Science in an Age of Peace," Journal of the Royal United

Services Institute for Defence Studies (March 1974).

37. Davidow and Malone,, 67—72.

38. Retired Lieutenant General Fredric J. Brown, The U.S. Army in Transition II (New York:

Brassey's, Inc., 1993) 99—106,116—24, and 137—44.

65

Authors

GENERAL GORDON R. SULLIVAN is Chief of Staff of the Army.

He received a B.A. degree in history from Norwich University in 1959

and was commissioned in Armor through ROTC. He also has an M.A.

in political science from the University of New Hampshire and is a

graduate of the Army War College. He served two tours in Vietnam, in

1962-63, as an advisor with the Vietnamese 21st Infantry Division and

as a MACV intelligence officer, and in 1969-70 with I Field Force

Headquarters. Sullivan also served a tour in Korea and four tours in

Germany. He commanded the 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) at

Ft. Riley, Kansas, and was the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for

Operations and Plans.

COLONEL JAMES M. DUBIK is assigned to the personal staff,

chief of staff of the Army, Washington, D.C. He received a B.A. degree

from Gannon University, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and

an M.M. A. S. from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

(USACGSC). He is a graduate of the USACGSC and the School of

Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has served

in a variety of command and staff assignments including commander,

5th Infantry Battalion, 25th Infantry Divison (ID); and inspector

general, 25th ID, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

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