TRANSFORMING DEFENSE

Edited by

Conrad C. Crane

December 2001
*****

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do

not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of

the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This

report is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War

College, 122 Forbes Ave., Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. Copies of this report

may be obtained from the Publications Office by calling commercial

(717) 245-4133, FAX (717) 245-3820, or via the Internet at

Rita.Rummel@carlisle.army.mil

*****

Most 1993, 1994, and all later Strategic Studies Institute (SSI)

monographs are available on the SSI Homepage for electronic

dissemination. SSI’s Homepage address is: http://carlisle-www.army.

mil/usassi/welcome.htm

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail

newsletter to update the national security community on the research of

our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and upcoming

conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a

strategic commentary by one of our research analysts. If you are

interested in receiving this newsletter, please let us know by e-mail at

outreach@carlisle.army.mil or by calling (717) 245-3133.

*****

ISBN 1-58487-079-6

ii
CONTENTS

Foreword ..........................v

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Part I: Historical Overview of Transforming

American Defense .....................1

1. Peacetime Transformation in the U.S. Army,

1865-1965

Brian McAlister Linn ............... 3

2. The American Military Tradition and Post-Cold

War Operations

Frank N. Schubert ................ 31

3. Army Transformation: A Tale of Two Doctrines

David Jablonsky ................. 45

Part II: Transformation Plans and Barriers. . . . . . . 89

4. Technology and Complexity: The Modern

Military’s Capacity for Change

Chris C. Demchak and Patrick D. Allen ..... 99

5. What Do We Really Know About an Uncertain

DoD Budget?

Leslie K. Lewis and Roger Allen Brown .... 137

Part III: External Views of Transformation . . . . . . 165

6. The United Kingdom’s View of U.S. Army

Transformation

W. H. Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

7. American Defense Transformation: A View From

Ukraine

Leonid I. Polyakov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

iii
FOREWORD

Even before the Bush administration in Washington

began its defense reviews, the topic of transforming

America’s armed forces to meet the security demands of the

post-Cold War era and beyond was receiving much

attention. The sharp debates about the direction and impact

of President George W. Bush’s and Secretary Donald

Rumsfeld’s plans for defense reform have magnified that

trend. For that reason, the theme of the Twelfth Annual

Strategy Conference conducted by the U.S. Army War

College in April 2001, “Transforming Defense in an Era of

Peace and Prosperity,” was especially timely. The ideas and

issues presented in this collection of papers from that

gathering will educate and inform anyone interested in the

past and future course of American defense reform.

Though conference attendees had many differing

opinions about the barriers to defense transformation and

how to overcome them, a broad consensus formed that some

change is essential to meet future security requirements.

They observed at the time that it is ironic that the peace

which creates the prosperity and wealth to fund

transformation and permits a window of time to achieve it,

also decreases public interest and urgency to accomplish it.

The terrible events of September 11, 2001, appear to have

dispelled public disinterest in the nation’s military

capabilities, and may provide increased impetus for the

drive for defense reform. If the opportunity is squandered,

or the wrong choices are made, the costs to the nation

someday could be catastrophic.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute

v
PREFACE

From April 17-20, 2001, the U.S. Army War College

sponsored a major conference to examine the many issues

and questions surrounding the transformation of the U.S.

Armed Forces from a Cold War paradigm into a defense

establishment ready to meet the complex challenges of the

future. The conference brought together at Carlisle

Barracks over 230 American and foreign academic,

business, government, media, and military representatives.

A series of enlightening—and sometimes troubling—

discussions highlighted the many opportunities and

challenges involved in executing long-term and extensive

defense reform. The conference focused on five general

themes: an historical overview of defense transformation,

change and organizational dynamics, global perspectives on

American defense reform, financing the process, and service

plans to execute it.

This collection regroups papers and presentations from

the conference into three categories: Historical Overviews of

Transforming Defense, Transformation Plans and Barriers,

and External Views of Transformation. Each section

contains an introduction describing the essays that follow,

as well as summarizing other relevant conference

presentations and discussions bearing on the topic. If

presenters did not produce a formal article for publication,

their key arguments are still described in the introduction.

The conference concluded while the outlines of the Bush

administration’s national security strategy and defense

budget were still very vague. Details that emerged shortly

thereafter, including the passage of a large tax cut,

highlighted some of the specific directions—and

difficulties—near-term defense reform would feature. The

terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have altered

some of those parameters, but have also highlighted anew

the evolving nature of future threats and the need for

vii
expanded military capabilities. The issues and arguments

covered in this collection look backward into the past and

forward into the future to illuminate views of the process

and problems of American defense transformation for

affected decisionmakers. The road ahead is still unclear, but

it must be traveled if the United States is to retain its

dominant military power. This collection will provide some

guideposts and warnings that will be useful along the way.

CONRAD C. CRANE

Editor

viii
PART I:

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF TRANSFORMING

AMERICAN DEFENSE

American history is replete with examples of eras and

circumstances requiring military change, and they were

often cited by conference panelists and commentators to

illustrate points of discussion. The three essays in this

section are a product of the first session of the conference,

intended to provide some broad perspectives on this

historical basis for defense transformation. Dr. Brian Linn

from Texas A&M University opens with an analysis of a

century of peacetime change for the Army. Focusing on

contemporary and modern issues and problems, he

concludes that real “peacetime transformation occurs when

there is substantial public and political support and a clear

and present danger to the continental United States.” He

also notes that there is danger in imposing military change

without thinking through all the consequences. Dr. Frank

Schubert, Chief of Joint Operational History in the Joint

History Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

compares the employment of American military forces since

the end of the Cold War with the traditional roles they have

served for the nation. He finds that although there are some

differences, the Armed Forces’ disparate missions in the

1990s fit the historical pattern of the nation’s military

experience. Dr. David Jablonsky of the Army War College

ends this section with a further examination of the 1990s.

He explains how the juxtaposition of the so-called “Powell

and Clinton Doctrines” have created a demanding list of

requirements for the Army that has energized the drive for

service transformation, while producing an “essentially

conservative approach to a revolutionary process.”

1
As a follow-up to the presentation of these papers, Dr.

Richard Betts from Columbia University gave a provocative

address entitled “Looking Forward by Looking Backward.”

He used the period between the World Wars to illustrate the

limited utility of historical comparisons, and highlighted

the uncertainties that the future holds. Though wary of too

much peacekeeping, he predicted that similar missions will

predominate. Consequently, the Army as well as the other

services will have to simultaneously develop new

warfighting technologies while improving their capability

to conduct peace operations. If history provides any useful

lesson to guide transformation, it is that there is great risk

in establishing military forces too specialized for specific

contingencies. They must be able to perform a myriad of

missions, and will assuredly also eventually have to fight an

unexpected major war in an unexpected place.

2
CHAPTER 1

PEACETIME TRANSFORMATION

IN THE U.S. ARMY, 1865-1965

Brian McAllister Linn

Today’s officers may not appreciate just how great a

transformation the Cold War imposed on the U.S. Army. As

they struggle to articulate an Army Vision for the 21st

century, they continue to define the Army’s “traditional”

strategic purposes as support for the nation’s allies, land

dominance, promoting regional stability, meeting small

scale contingencies, deterring aggression, and, if necessary,

fighting a major theater war anywhere in the world.

Virtually no one can remember that until just 60 years ago,

the Army’s missions were interpreted far more narrowly as

the protection of the continental United States and,

secondarily, the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine and

the guarding of overseas interests. Not until the Cold War

did the U.S. military adopt a looser construction of its

mission, one that incorporated the protection of the “Free

World” and the fighting and winning of the nation’s wars.

Now that the Cold War has ended, the Army’s next

transformation may be a return to its historic role of

homeland defense.

In order to understand the complexity of transforming

defense in an era of peace and prosperity in the United

States, it is essential to have some context, some

understanding of past efforts at military change. Anyone

who has sat through briefings in which senior officials

dramatically flash PowerPoint slides detailing the lessons

of the past, is aware of the shallowness of much of today’s

3
historical analyses. To escape such superficialities, it is

necessary to avoid some of the common weaknesses in the

current discussion of historical transformation. All too

many start at a point from which the “correct solution” has

been revealed, and then work backward to determine the

precise moment when the institution succeeded or failed.

This approach produces studies in which blitzkrieg, or

strategic bombing, or Air-Land Battle is portrayed as the

unfolding of a divine plan. But the benefits of case-studies

which minutely retrace a preordained path are of little use

to those grappling with the problems of the present; much

less are they suitable guides for the future. A second failing

is to study change by focusing on the ideas, institutions, or

technologies which proved of most importance in the

following war. But to truly explore military transformation

it is necessary to examine how the armed forces prepared, or

did not prepare, to fulfill their nation’s strategy and their

service’s mission. This, in turn, means that at least as much

attention must be paid to contemporary peacetime needs as

to anticipated wartime ones. This last point is of particular

importance when the nation’s armed forces are tasked with

executing a strategy of deterrence. A final, and frequent,

error is to rely on a few examples, usually taken out of

context, which have been repeated so often that their

“lessons” are accepted without question. Rarely is there

sufficient effort to go beyond the cliché and question—to cite

one of the more popular contemporary analogies—whether

comparing the blitzkrieg and the Maginot Line is actually

relevant to American defense needs in the 21st century.

This chapter takes a linear, chronological approach and

focuses specifically on peacetime transformation in the U.S.

Army over a relatively long period, the century between

1865 and 1965. It will describe the circumstances

encountered by military reformers in four historic periods of

peace, and will try to show their perception of the task of

defending the nation’s interests in successive eras of

dramatic change and innovation. It will seek to identify not

only the problems that later scholars have noted, but the

4
problems and issues that the officers at the time saw as

crucial. Through this, there may emerge a more balanced

appraisal of the U.S. Army’s successes and failures in its

recurrent attempts to adapt better to the changing needs of

the nation’s defense. Such an overview may not produce

ready references and convenient lessons, but it will provide

a far better appreciation of the transformation process itself

and the difficulties inherent in radical change.

To some, this period between 1865 and 1965 is a

rags-to-riches story in which the Army, through its

professionalism and effectiveness, transformed itself from a

small frontier constabulary to the military arm of a

superpower. But what is less clear is how this process was

achieved, and whether it can be replicated so that the Army

can now transform itself for the challenges of a new century.

For our purposes, it may be useful to divide the century

between the end of the Civil War and the commitment of

ground forces to Vietnam into four distinct periods of

prolonged peace: from 1865 to the Spanish-American War of

1898; the period from 1899 to the American entry in World

War I; the 1919-41 interwar era; and the Cold War era of

1953 to 1965, the period between Korea and Vietnam. Each

of these was a period of peace, but also of profound changes

in the international strategic environment, in the Army’s

operational capabilities, and in military organization and

technology.1

The four decades between the end of the Civil War and

the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 have

been termed by one military historian “the Army’s Dark

Ages,” and by military analyst Samuel Huntington as the

“years of isolation.”2 Even though marked by early fiscal

retrenchment, sectional violence, and periodic panics, this

was a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. The

Army, however, benefited but little from the nation’s good

fortune. The Civil War demobilization was rapid and brutal:

within 11 years the million-man Union Army had been

reduced to some 28,000. The mobile commands—infantry,

cavalry, and field artillery—were scattered across the

5
Western frontier in company posts, engaged in unremitting

company drill, fatigue duty, and little more. When these

units took to the field, it was on difficult and sensitive

operations such as the pacification of Native American

tribes or strike breaking. Dominated by Washington

bureaucrats and aging Civil War veterans, the Army was

badly equipped, poorly paid, demoralized, and held in low

public esteem.

Historians have traditionally taken as their starting

point the reforming agenda of Emory Upton and his

supporters which took form in the late 1870s. Inspired by

Prussia’s example, Upton advocated the creation of a

general staff, lifetime professional education for officers,

and the concentration of mobile forces into large tactical

units. Most controversial was his proposal to forsake the

nation’s traditional military organization of the small

peacetime Regular Army and a large wartime

citizen-soldier volunteer force, and replace it with a

cadre-reserve system capable of mobilizing 150,000

soldiers. According to the standard account, public apathy

and congressional obstruction eventually drove Upton to

suicide, and only the persistence of his admirers kept his

ideas alive, to triumph 3 decades later under Secretary of

War Elihu Root. And in the meantime, a series of

incremental changes—the adaptation of a modern rifle, the

closing of redundant and isolated posts, the development of

officer education—all helped prepare the ground for later,

more substantial, reforms.3

This emphasis on Upton and on organizational reform

obscures the reality that in the period 1865 to 1898 some of

the Army’s most effective spokesmen were those who

focused on its role in homeland security. These officers were

not necessarily opposed to Upton’s agenda—some were

enthusiastic supporters—but they concentrated on their

service’s role in the national defense. In a series of articles

and reports, they argued that steam transportation, new

weapons, and the advent of the mass army had created a

new threat to American security. The risk of invasion might

6
be, in the words of General William T. Sherman, “simply

preposterous,” but there was an increased danger that a

rival Great Power might stage a sudden raid on a port city to

extract political or financial concessions.4 To overcome this

peril, these reformers offered a technological solution based

on improving both the construction and weaponry of harbor

fortifications, and on increasing the technical skills of the

coast defense garrisons. They adapted their view of future

war to the parameters of the nation’s traditional national

security policy—envisioning the Army’s task primarily in

terms of deterrence and repulse, not the destruction of rival

military forces or the conquest of territory. Rather than

disdaining civilian interference, as Upton did, officers

worked closely with Secretary of War William C. Endicott

and with Congress on a special Board on Fortifications or

Other Defenses, often referred to as the Endicott Board. The

Board effectively harmonized three crucial components:

new military technology, the Army’s primary mission, and

the traditional defense policy. It alerted citizens to the

change in the strategic environment and the emergence of a

new threat to the nation’s security, and it outlined a clear

solution. Moreover, unlike Upton’s, their views were

actually accepted: the 1885 Report of the Board on Fortifications

or other Defenses led to Congressional authorization for the

revamping of major coastal fortifications.5

The 2 decades following the Spanish-American War are

often portrayed as the most successful peacetime change

the Army has ever experienced. Aided by progressive Army

reformers, between 1899 and 1903 Secretary of War Elihu

Root created an Army Chief of Staff and a General Staff,

almost tripled manpower, reorganized the military

education system, founded the Army War College, began

turning the National Guard into the primary federal

reserve force, and made many other, if less important,

improvements. These “Root Reforms” have been seen by

many as signaling an almost revolutionary transformation

of the Army from a constabulary to a modern military.

Indeed, in a recent address to the Army War College, Army

7
Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki drew a direct historical parallel

between the current situation and that faced by Root and

his military advisors a hundred years ago.6

The era of the Root reforms may still be a powerful

symbol to today’s high command as they seek to rally for

tomorrow’s challenges, but it is important to keep the

military reforms of 1899-1903 within their historical

context. Root’s 1899 declaration that the real object of an

army is to prepare for war has been quoted approvingly by

generations of military writers, who have then

claimed—post hoc—that it marked a primary shift in the

U.S. Army’s mission from constabulary duties to fighting

the nation’s wars. However great the progress since Root, it

is important for the historical record, if not the popular one,

to note that this was not a transformation that the

Secretary or his military allies intended. A closer reading of

Root’s 1899 report makes it clear why he thought reform

was necessary: to improve the nation’s continental defenses

and to provide troops for the newly acquired overseas

possessions.7 He had no intention of engaging in Great

Power conflicts overseas; rather he wanted a balanced

mixture of mobile forces and fortifications that could more

effectively protect the homeland and the territories. Root’s

successor, William H. Taft, showed a clear appreciation of

Root’s priorities when he secured funding for a new coast

defense construction program. In other words, Root’s

reforms were inherently conservative and proposed no

radical alteration of the Army’s traditional mission. As in

the case of the Endicott Board, successful change was linked

with powerful political support, but only for very specific,

and limited, objectives. When reformers moved too far away

from their service’s traditional mission, they were

unsuccessful.

A second, and related point, is that the Root era of

accelerated reform was of rather short duration—perhaps

no more than 4 years. Taft slowed the pace dramatically, in

part because he had to clarify much of the confusion created

by Root. The rest of the decade witnessed bitter resistance to

8
change from entrenched interests and a rapid diminution of

political support for military reorganization. It was not until

2 decades after Root’s first report that the Army was able to

implement fully the reformers’ program, and then only

because of the demands of sending millions of soldiers to

fight in Europe—-a scenario neither Root nor his military

assistants envisioned in 1899.

Root’s legacy was less impressive in other areas. Some of

his institutional reforms, most notably joining the coast and

field components into the Artillery Corps, created a great

deal of organizational and personnel turbulence. He, or his

military advisors, failed to appreciate either the impact of

new military technology or the need to integrate weapons

system and doctrine. The Army did produce excellent small

arms and a very good field gun, but, as numerous critics

have noted, it remained unaware of the revolutionary

implications of such military technologies as the airplane,

the internal combustion engine, and the machine gun.

Although a great improvement on earlier tactics, the 1905

Field Service Regulations and its successors still championed

an anachronistic belief in the power of the individual

rifleman and the tactical assault.8 As one analyst

recognized in the years prior to World War I, the Regular

Army saw its mission as “to fight at the drop of a hat,” but

only if such fighting was limited to “some minor

disturbance” in Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean.9 The

deadly insularity of this viewpoint became apparent in

1917, when the absence of both a training system and a

reserve force led to a chaotic mobilization and a 1-year delay

before the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) could

undertake combat operations.

Historians have also failed to appreciate the unforeseen

consequences of the Root transformation, particularly in

the areas of morale, manpower, and readiness—all issues of

vital importance to today’s officers. Far from reforming and

professionalizing the officer corps, the decade after Root’s

appointment was characterized by widespread accusations

of favoritism and careerism. This was especially true of the

9
higher command, which was widely criticized for its

distance from the needs of the field army. The selection of

Leonard Wood, a medical officer with very limited command

experience but impressive political connections, to Army

Chief of Staff may have marked the nadir of faith in the

promotion system and the senior leadership. Root and his

successors also failed to solve the Army’s persistent

manpower problems. The Philippines alone needed a

garrison roughly half the size of the pre-1898 Regular Army,

and to this was added the requirements for garrisons in

China, Panama, and Hawaii, for deployments into Cuba,

and, after 1910, for duty on the Mexican border. Indeed, for

most of the early 1900s roughly a third of the army was

assigned overseas, and in 1 year the figure was closer to

half. The demands of overseas service, recruiting, working

with the reserves, and education took so many officers from

their commands that in 1905 the Secretary of War warned

absenteeism was “a menace to the discipline of the Army

and its effectiveness as a fighting machine.”10 Coupled to

this were the terrible, and often overlooked, effects of

prolonged service in unhealthy climates. Not until 1908 did

the rates for disability discharges and admission to hospital

for sickness return to the levels they were prior to the

Spanish-American War. Living conditions were often

appalling, as officers and their families were shuttled from

one set of dilapidated, vermin-infested quarters to another

thousands of miles away. Small wonder that there was a

marked increase in resignations, and that in 1907 the Army

could fill less than two-thirds of its authorized vacancies for

second lieutenant positions.11

The turbulence was perhaps even worse in the enlisted

ranks—so much so that in 1906 Taft told Congress that “the

army we have now is nothing but a skeleton army.”12 The

desertion rate rose by 5 percent between 1898 and 1905.

Reenlistments plummeted as veteran soldiers and

noncomissioned officers (NCOs) left the service—because of

disease, disgust, or jobs in the civilian sector that paid ten

times as much as their military benefits. Not surprisingly,

10
the outflow was greatest among the long-service, highly

skilled specialists most able to transfer their skills to the

market. These experienced personnel were replaced by

recruits who often failed to meet the minimum admission

standards. For their part, soldiers complained bitterly that

instead of training to defend the nation, they served as

common laborers, garbage men, farm hands, kitchen help,

and domestic servants. A series of investigations into the

causes of soldiers leaving the service—legally and

illegally—revealed the same complaints: low pay, overwork,

limited or nonexistent recreational facilities, confusing or

misleading enlistment contracts, frequent changes of

officers and stations, inexperienced or incapable NCOs, and

recruits of low intelligence and morals.13

So what can be learned from the peacetime

transformation in the Root era? The first insight is the

historical truism that those who seek to learn lessons from

history all too often disregard information which

contradicts the “lessons” they want to extract. This is

especially true of those who hail the Root reforms as a model

for change without studying their immediate consequences.

Second, it is important to appreciate the Root reforms for

what they were—an effort to prepare the army to execute

better its traditional mission of continental defense. Third,

transformation had many side-effects far beyond the

reformers’ intent. Although it is unfair to blame Root for

Army woes in the 1900s, he shares some responsibility for

an overall decline in morale and for increased personnel

turbulence. Fourth, transformation needs to be followed

through and its effects are gradual, not immediate. Fifth,

the benefits of Root’s improvements were uneven and were

chiefly shared by a very small group: influential reformers,

general staff officers, political generals such as Leonard

Wood and John J. Pershing, and the students at the

Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth

and the Army War College who rose to command in World

War I. But if you look to the field army—to the thousands

exiled overseas in unhealthy and hostile climates, to the

11
demoralized recruits, to the companies stripped of their

officers, to the torrents leaving the service—then

transformation assumes an entirely different, and far less

positive, meaning.

If the Root era is too often uncritically perceived as one of

successful organizational change, the period between World

War I and World War II is often derided as the time when

the U.S. Army failed to adjust to new developments in land

warfare—particularly in mechanized warfare, operational

doctrine, communications, and combined arms warfare.

The Army’s delinquency appears especially egregious when

contrasted with such innovations as blitzkrieg, amphibious

assault, and strategic bombardment.14 Because the

interwar era has assumed such importance in the current

military transformation debate, it is worth exploring the

Army’s experience at some length. To do so, it is necessary to

ask questions which are too often ignored. What were the

nation’s military needs? What was the Army’s mission? In

what areas did the Army successfully adapt? What factors

inhibited transformation?

In their efforts to expose the failures in preparation for

World War II, critics tend to overlook the national strategic

context in which the interwar U.S. Army operated. Unlike

that of its later adversaries, American policy was not based

on disrupting the global balance of power and carving out a

new empire. Accordingly, there was no need for military

organizations to wage aggressive wars of conquest. Rather,

for most of the interwar period the Army’s mission was the

protection of the homeland and, trailing considerably

behind in priorities and allocations, the defense of overseas

territories. It is also important to recognize that the

“interwar period” actually consists of two distinct eras,

divided roughly by decades. In the 1920s the United States

was internally prosperous, its government placed much

faith in the international security framework established by

the Washington Naval Treaties of 1921, and the world was

at (relative) peace. In the 1930s the United States was

struggling with economic depression, faced an aggressive

12
Japan and an increasingly hostile Germany, and wars and

rumors of wars were common. Not surprisingly, over these 2

decades the Army’s prescriptions for reform shifted along

with the changing domestic and international situation.

The primary threats to the nation’s security in the

immediate post-war period were a major war with a

British-Japanese coalition and policing the ever-turbulent

Mexican border. As is the case today, achieving such widely

disparate missions required correspondingly different

capabilities, weapons systems, and organizations. To

counter the first danger, the Army had to develop a strategy

and force structure to defend the Atlantic coast and the

Pacific territories. To counter the second, it needed light,

mobile combat units capable of operating in the Southwest’s

rugged terrain. This, in turn, suggested the Army continue

to improve the coast defenses, maintain a horse cavalry

component on the border, and develop plans to mobilize a

large field force in the event of a major conflict. Only by the

most fanciful stretch of imagination would the nation or the

Army require a combined arms force built around air and

armored spearheads.15

In the immediate aftermath of the Great War, both the

United States and its armed forces had a number of

successes in adapting to the changes in the strategic

situation. The 1921 Washington Naval Treaties dissolved

the Anglo-Japanese alliance, greatly lessening the danger

of a two-ocean war and greatly enhancing continental

security. The 1920 National Defense Act appeared to

demonstrate that both the army and the nation had drawn

the correct conclusions from the war. Designed to create a

new military organization for the post-war security

situation, it abolished previous distinctions—and

rivalries—and created a unified “Army of the United

States” built around a 298,000-man Regular Army, a

435,000-man National Guard, and a potentially larger

federal organized Reserves. Army service journals lauded

the Act as the first real declaration of a national security

policy in American history.16

13
Within the Army itself, there were many indications of a

rapid and successful assimilation of the lessons of the

Western Front. The Army’s post-war operational doctrine,

the 1923 Field Service Regulations, embodied an effective

combined-arms system. Equally impressive was Brigadier

General William G. Haan’s “Positive System of Coast

Defense.” Issued in 1920, it addressed the long-recognized

problem of protecting the coastal areas between the

fortresses. Haan recognized the similarity between crossing

No Man’s Land and an amphibious assault, and he created a

flexible defense in depth that would have channeled the

attackers into killing zones, pinned them on the beaches,

and then struck them with overwhelming firepower. It was

a doctrine well-suited to the Army’s core missions of

protecting the continental United States and the Pacific

possessions.17

These early successes were, unfortunately, not

continued for the rest of the interwar era. Under Republican

administrations determined to practice fiscal restraint,

encourage business, and avoid foreign entanglements—

policies enthusiastically accepted by the voting public—the

United States put its trust in diplomacy, tariffs, arms

treaties, and isolationism. No sooner had the National

Defense Act been passed than Congress all but abrogated it.

In the years between 1923 and 1936, it was not unusual for

the Regular Army and National Guard to be manned at less

than half their authorization, and the Reserves remained a

hollow force. For most of this period, the Army fielded only

one active division—and that was the half-strength force

stationed in Hawaii. Successive chiefs of staff and

secretaries of war drew both White House and Congressional attention to the rapid decline of the nation’s defenses,

but to virtually no effect.

Although the major inhibitions on transformation

during the interwar period were political and popular

indifference and a complete lack of financial, materiel, or

manpower resources, the Army bore some responsibility for

its problems. The Army leadership failed to recognize that

14
transformation is a continual process—what was progressive in the early 1920s too often became a major brake on

innovation within a decade. This is especially true in the

crucial field of developing technology. With some

justification, Congressmen such as Ross Collins could

complain that the Army’s own leadership was its most

effective barrier to modernization. Chief of Staff Douglas

MacArthur’s 1934 report bemoaned the fact that the army

could field only a dozen tanks built after World War I, but he

himself had dissolved his predecessor’s experimental armor

force on the parochial, even reactionary, argument that the

mechanized force violated the mission boundaries between

the combat branches. Army conservatism and lethargy was

apparent as well in the long delay to develop and distribute

even the most basic of weapons. Despite the widespread

belief that mortars and rifles—not tanks—would provide

infantry sufficient firepower to fight through enemy

defenses, the Army took over 2 decades to issue the

semiautomatic M-1 rifle, and soldiers were issued the

obsolete Stokes mortar right up to the outbreak of war.18

On the face of it, the Army’s institutional conservatism

and resistance to change is nowhere more apparent than in

the interwar Coast Artillery and the Cavalry—two

branches poles apart in their traditions and missions. Coast

Artillery officers remained fixated on their weapons and

technical skills, apparently oblivious to the fact that their

marvelous long-range guns were helpless against

airplanes.19 The case of the interwar cavalry is even more

revealing. From the Cavalry Journal one can cull numerous

examples of anachronistic thinking and an almost bizarre

resistance to innovation and change. Major George S.

Patton, for example, in a 1922 article explaining the

cavalry’s poor showing in World War I, declared that

mechanized warfare and firepower were highly overrated:

“The bayonet charge and the saber charge are the highest

physical demonstration of moral victory. The fierce frenzy of

hate and determination flashing from the bloodshot eyes

squinting behind the glittering steel is what wins.”20 It

15
would be comforting to follow the path of some military

commentators and hold up the Cavalry and Coast Artillery

as cautionary examples of military institutions that refused

to change, and thus doomed themselves to irrelevance and

extinction. But this is ultimately unsatisfactory as an

explanation of the difficulty of peacetime reform.21

Rather than seeking to assign blame, it is better to

recognize the historical context in which these two branches

operated, and not to allow our knowledge of World War II to

obscure the reality these officers faced in the 1920s. Coast

Artillery officers such as Johnson Hagood and Stanley

Embick were among the interwar army’s most original and

innovative strategic thinkers. Far more than most, they

tried to tie the army’s force structure to its assigned

mission—that of protecting the continental United States.

Veterans of Soissons or the Meuse Argonne might laugh at

Patton’s romantic call for a return to the saber, but they

could find little to refute his assertion that Western Europe

was the only region in the world where both resources and

transportation networks allowed for the efficient use of

tanks. Since neither Patton nor any other officer envisioned

another American expeditionary force to Europe, it made

far more sense to structure the post-war U.S. Army to fight

in the jungles of the Philippines, the deserts of Mexico and

Texas, and the mountains and forests of Canada. For such

locations there appeared little need for armor but a great

need for cavalry.22 Ultimately the Cavalry and the Coast

Artillery were of little importance in World War II, but

throughout the 1920s, both branches were fulfilling

missions that were an essential part of the nation’s defense

policy.

In retrospect, it appears that much of the criticism

directed against the interwar Army for its conservatism and

failure to innovate is not particularly useful as a guide for

current issues. At least in the years immediately following

World War I, the Army and the nation appeared to have

made a successful transformation for the challenges of the

post-war world. The heart of the interwar Army’s problem

16
reinforces the lesson of earlier examples: that peacetime

transformation is most likely when both public and political

opinion supports it. Given that for most of this period the

nation was secure from attack, the Army could not argue

that it was incapable of fulfilling its primary mission.

Equally importantly, throughout the 1930s the nation was

in a state of economic depression, isolationism was

rampant, and Army needs had a very low priority. In such

circumstances, criticizing military leaders for their inability

to anticipate future dangers or recognize the significance of

specific technological and doctrinal developments is both

intellectually unrewarding and mean-spirited. More

importantly, it does very little to help today’s officers

anticipate future dangers.

The peacetime Army that served in the era between the

Korean and Vietnam conflicts, roughly from 1953 to 1965,

may have faced greater challenges to the nation’s security

than any of its predecessors. The onset of the Cold War led to

the appearance, for the first time, of an opponent with the

ability to strike deep into the continental United States. The

nation’s commitment to foreign governments and NATO

insured not only that large military forces would be

permanently deployed overseas, but that the United States

would now fight as a member of a coalition. The new

emphasis on coalition warfare also applied within the U.S.

armed forces—for any war would require all the services to

work together. Yet at the same time, there were a number of

similarities to the U.S. Army’s traditional priorities:

continental defense was a cornerstone of Dwight D.

Eisenhower’s New Look, and the inheritors of this

mission—the gunners in the HAWK and NIKE batteries—

received a disproportionate amount of funding and

resources.23

As in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the

United States moved rapidly to transform its defense

establishment towards the challenge of the post-war world.

The National Defense Act of 1947 and its 1949 amendments

radically restructured the nation’s armed forces, creating a

17
unified National Military Establishment, a Secretary and a

Department of Defense, and, to provide the President with

the corporate wisdom of the armed forces, a Joint Chiefs of

Staff (JCS). The president, in turn, could expect the Chiefs

to implement the federal government’s policies, ensure a

coordinated and rational approach to national defense, and

oversee their respective services’ adherence to the national

security policy. In practice, the results of this transformation were less than impressive. According to his

biographer, President Eisenhower “was nearly driven to

distraction” by the service chiefs’ resistance to his New

Look, their constant bickering and in-fighting, their

recurrent challenges to his budgets, and their refusal to

accept any decision as final.24 The Army was particularly

recalcitrant, as witnessed by the “revolt of the colonels,” by

the controversy surrounding General James M. Gavin’s

retirement, and by two books from former Army Chiefs of

Staff criticizing Eisenhower’s military policies.25

Much of the reason for the Army’s prominent role in the

1950s interservice battles was that its historic mission, and

its entire relevance as a combat service, appeared at stake.

The smoke had barely cleared from Hiroshima before

aviation enthusiasts were claiming that the U.S. Air Force

was the only service capable of winning a war with the

Soviet Union. One general informed students of the 1956

class of the Army War College that as long as it had a

superiority in air power, the United States required only an

army big enough to guard the tomb of the Unknown

Soldier.2 6 Even more disturbing, both President

Eisenhower and Congress appeared to agree. Eisenhower’s

New Look stressed the primacy of nuclear weapons and air

power, and throughout the 1950s the Air Force received

almost twice as much money as the Army.

In their efforts to revive their service’s place in the

national defense, army planners had to adjust to the

transformation in warfare wrought by the atomic bomb.

Nuclear weapons appeared to negate a major challenge to

what had emerged as the U.S. Army’s major strength in

18
World War II—the accumulation, distribution, and

coordination of massive amounts of resources and

manpower across time and space. Nevertheless, Gavin was

not alone in his recognition that a few tactical nuclear

weapons would have made the massive concentration of

men and resources on the Normandy beachhead a death

trap. The Korean War sent an even stronger message that

the Army had to change. In the early fighting of 1950 the

power of Russian armor and the sophistication of Soviet

tactics proved a rude shock. Even more discouraging was

the recurrence of complaints similar to those of 1944—that

American combat units were fighting with inferior weapons

and equipment, and that their combat organizations were

inefficient and weak. In response, the army greatly

increased the firepower and endurance of its tactical

units—but such reforms were achieved at such a cost in

mobility that they were of debatable use on any battlefield

but Korea.27

Thus, by the mid-1950s, the army high command was in

a distinct quandary. The rival services were doing so much

better in the annual budgets that the Army was threatened

with the equivalent of the NCAA “death penalty” for

recruiting violations—it would fall so far behind in

research, development, training, and transportation that it

would never catch up. The atmosphere in Eisenhower’s

administration was, according to one officer who served

there, “brutal. . . it seemed obvious that the Army was going

down” and could expect no support for its “traditional”

missions.28 Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, “Engine

Charlie” Wilson, despised Chief of Staff General Matthew

B. Ridgway and the Army. The JCS Chairman Admiral

Arthur Radford championed “more bang for the buck”

nuclear weapons and refused to pass on Army objections to

the policy of massive retaliation.

Faced with what many officers interpreted as a threat to

the existence of their service, the Army undertook

comprehensive, total—and in retrospect often poorly

executed—effort to create an atomic-era military force. Both

19
the need for institutional survival and Eisenhower’s New

Look policy drove the army towards creating the Atomic

Field Army [ATFA] which would allow the army to stake its

claim on the nuclear battlefield. Determined to break the

Air Force’s monopoly and provide its own units with a

nuclear capability, the Army rushed into production a

massive 280-mm artillery piece. Amid great publicity, on

May 25, 1953, “Atomic Annie” fired an 800-pound atomic

warhead at a target over six miles away. Unfortunately, this

great photo op was about as good as it got: the 280-mm gun

soon proved to be all but unusable in any foreseeable combat

scenario. Weighing 85 tons, it required two tractors to move

it and was so unwieldy that it could take an hour of careful

maneuvering to get it under a bridge. Its instability and

propensity to slide or tip when maneuvered on anything but

firm and level ground earned it the nickname the “Widow

Maker.” To complicate the Army’s problems further, the gun

was very unpopular among Europeans. Within 2 years it

had been surpassed by other weapons, and was taken out of

service within a decade.29 The Redstone Missile project

offered the Army a chance to develop its own long-range

tactical and theater-level nuclear threat, but at the cost of a

bitter, and ultimately unsuccessful battle with the Air Force

which lasted throughout the 1950s. The Army also explored

the possibility of short-range tactical missiles which could

be used by smaller and smaller units. The logical extreme of

this was the infamous Davy Crockett—a light, portable

rocket that could lob a tactical nuclear warhead slightly

over a mile, vaporizing enemy tanks and its own crew in one

mini-mushroom cloud.30

Having staked its claim, the Army soon found

unforeseen problems in transforming to fight on the nuclear

battlefield. At the Infantry School, the Combat

Developments Office tried to turn the Army’s vision of

small, highly mobile, and well-armed forces into a practical

plan for a series of combat vehicles immune to nuclear

blasts and radiation. Such vehicles needed to be easily

transportable by air to rough and primitive airfields, so they

20
needed to be light and compact. They also had to have great

range, because the contaminated area might extend for

hundreds of miles and fuel might be unavailable. Finally,

these vehicles needed powerful weapons systems to allow

them to take on the heavier and more numerous Soviet

armor. Unfortunately, a vehicle which combined all these

attributes did not exist. Ultimately, the only solution they

could come up with was for the Army to build a vehicle of

some as yet undiscovered substance, which would use an as

yet undiscovered fuel source, and would fire an as yet

undiscovered weapon.31

An even more famous, or infamous, example of the

Army’s effort to transform itself was the pentomic

experiment of 1956 to 1961. Although much ridiculed, in its

original incarnation it was an innovative concept of

considerable merit when the specific circumstances for

which it was designed are considered. The pentomic

organization grew out of the army vision of the atomic

battlefield: “battle groups” would be speedily transported to

the target from widely separated locations; they would

concentrate to seize the objective; then rapidly depart before

the enemy could launch a nuclear counterstrike. The

pentomic era was inaugurated with much fanfare in 1956,

when Chief of Staff Maxwell D. Taylor’s World War II unit,

the famous 101st Airborne Division, was reactivated. As

described by one of the division’s first battle group

commanders, the 101st was a “light, lean, and mean”

force—the forerunner of today’s air assault and air mobile

divisions—that could also deliver devastating firepower,

including its own organic tactical nuclear weapons.32

Within 5 years, the Army repudiated the pentomic

experiment. There were a variety of problems, some of them

more reflective of the Army’s convoluted bureaucratic needs

than of inherent weakness in the pentomic organization.

Officers protested that the battle group structure cut out all

combat commands between captain and colonel. The key

technologies that would have allowed the divisions to

maneuver on the nuclear battlefield—not least the infantry

21
combat vehicle mentioned above—were never developed.

The Air Force dragged its feet in developing the air

transportation necessary to deploy the battle groups

overseas. Perhaps the most serious problem was that the

pentomic organization was unsuited to anything but the

nuclear battlefield. In the post mortem, virtually everyone

denied responsibility for the experiment. The 101st’s

commander, then Major General William Westmoreland,

although a protégé of the Chief of Staff, placed the blame

elsewhere: “I was never enthusiastic about the [pentomic]

organization, and General Taylor knew it at the time.”33 For

his part, Taylor intimated he was only the executor of

policies that his predecessor, Ridgway, had committed to

long before. The Army’s official history branch in turn

blamed Eisenhower’s New Look. In its origin, development,

brief history, and termination, the pentomic experiment has

much to teach today’s Army about the dynamics and pitfalls

of top-down transformation.

In assessing the Army’s effort to transform itself after

the atomic revolution, one would have to judge it a failure.

There were some successes—particularly in the areas of

strengthening the NATO alliance, in logistics and aviation,

and in airmobile warfare. Nevertheless, a fair assessment

would be that, especially in relation to other services, the

period between Korea and Kennedy was not a happy one for

the Army. At times it seemed willing to embrace any fad or

fancy that would show that it was still useful. In a revealing

aside, Chief of Staff Taylor admitted that he chose the term

“pentomic” because it had the ring of a Madison Avenue

advertising campaign. Similarly, Taylor’s Vice Chief of Staff

General Clyde D. Eddleman recalled admiringly that

among the Chief’s accomplishments were that he “dressed

the Army up a great deal” with a flag, an official song, and

new green uniforms.34 It was not until the 1960s, with

presidential and popular acceptance of “Flexible Response,”

that the Army once more emerged as an equal partner in the

defense establishment.

22
This overview of a century reveals some general rules

which may serve as guides for the current discussion on

military change. First of all, the success of a military force’s

ability to reform itself must be considered within the context

of the service’s primary purpose. For most of the century

covered in this chapter, the U.S. Army’s mission was

homeland defense, and it is by that criterion that its success

or failure should be judged.

A second rule is that for the American Army, radical

change occurs only in certain circumstances, most

particularly when it is supported by the political

establishment and when it is perceived as allowing the

Army to execute better a well-recognized and accepted

mission. The Endicott Board, the Root reforms, and even the

1920 National Defense Act are all examples of this. When

political or popular support is lacking—as in the case of

Upton’s proposals, the post-World War I era, or the

1950s—then reform is either minimal or stillborn.

A third rule is that successful change often spawns a

host of unforeseen problems. The Root era witnessed a

decline in Army manpower, readiness, and morale.

Although it is fashionable to hail change and damn

conservatism, there are great dangers in imposing change

without thinking through the consequences.

Fourth, the success of Army transformation must be

assessed against the specific challenge soldiers at the time

faced. The 1920 Defense Act, for example, in conjunction

with the Washington Naval Treaties, appeared to provide

Americans with a rational military policy and an Army

suitable for all foreseeable contingencies. Only from the

perspective of the late 1930s does it appear inadequate.

Finally, the forces which are most necessary to

transform in peacetime may not be the ones who bear the

burden in war. If history is to be of any use in studying

peacetime change, it is necessary to study not only the

combat arms that were used in later wars, but the agencies

responsible for enforcing strategy in peace. Under this

23
criterion, for most of the Army’s history, the Coast

Artillery—a branch that with a few minor exceptions did

not fire a shot in anger in 130 years—was one of the most

effective agents of the nation’s strategic interests.

Thus, to sum it up at its most basic: historically,

peacetime transformation occurs when there is substantial

public and political support and a clear and present danger

to the continental United States. Anything beyond the

realization of this objective may generate a great deal of

rhetoric, but rarely does it result in long-lasting political or

financial investment.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 1

1. The first period, the 4 decades after the Civil War, witnessed most

Western powers adopt the Prussian general staff model, the mass

conscript army, and rapid-fire long-range weapons. The 2 decades

preceding World War I also saw a host of developments, including the

adaptation of the airplane and the internal combustion engine for

military purposes. In the 2 decades after the Armistice, improvements

in existing technology allowed for the development of fast, mobile,

combined arms warfare on an immense scale. Finally, in the years after

World War II and Korea, there were the military challenges of the

atomic bomb, the Cold War, and the emergence of militant nationalism

in the Third World.

2. William A. Ganoe, “The Army’s Dark Ages,” Chapter 9, The

History of the United States Army, New York: D. Appleton-Century Co.,

1942, pp. 298-354; Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State:

The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, New York: Vintage

Books, 1957, pp. 226-230. Ganoe argues that 1881 marked the start of a

“renaissance,” but that the main reforms occurred after 1898. For a

contrasting view, see John M. Gates, “The Alleged Isolation of U.S.

Army Officers in the Late 19th Century,” Parameters, Vol. 10, Spring

1980, pp. 33-42. For overviews of the U.S. Army during this period, see

Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A

Military History of the United States of America, Revised Edition, New

York: Free Press, 1994, pp. 248-283; Russell F. Weigley, History of the

U.S. Army, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 265-292.

3. Huntington, pp. 23-37; Ganoe, pp. 355-396, 412; Stephen E.

Ambrose, Upton and the Army, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1964; David J. Fitzpatrick, “Emory Upton and the

24
Citizen Soldier,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 65, April 2001, pp.

355-389.

4. William T. Sherman, Annual Report of the War Department

(RWD), 1880, chap. 1, p. 5. A number of the most influential officers

discussed the dangers of a sudden raid: Sheridan in RWD 1884, 1:49;

John M. Schofield, Forty-six Years in the Army, New York: Century Co.,

1897, pp. 456-458; Arthur L. Wagner, “The Military Necessities of the

United States and the Best Provisions for Meeting Them,” Journal of

the Military Service Institute (JMSI), Vol. 5, September 1884, pp.

237-271; John Gibbon, “The Danger to the Country From the Lack of

Preparation for War,” JMSI, Vol. 11, January 1890, pp. 16-18. On the

Regular Army’s view of its role in the national defense, see the

testimony of Winfield Scott Hancock and others in Ambrose B.

Burnside, “Report on the Reorganization of the Army,” Report 555, 3rd

Session, 45th Congress, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing

Office, 1878.

5. Report of the Board on Fortifications or other Defenses, Appointed

Under Act of March 3, 1885, Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Printing Office, 1886. On coast defenses and their importance to the

Army’s mission, see Jamie F. Moore, “National Security in the American

Army’s Definition of Mission, 1865-1914,” Military Affairs, Vol. 46,

October 1982, pp. 127-131; Kenneth E. Hamburger, “The Technology,

Doctrine and Politics of U.S. Coast Defenses, 1880-1945: A Case Study

in U.S. Defense Planning,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1975;

Walter Millis, Arms and Men: A Study in American Military History,

New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1956, pp. 139-140, 151-152.

6. On the Root era, see James L. Abrahamson, America Arms for a

New Century: The Making of a Great Military Power, New York: Free

Press, 1981; Ganoe, pp. 416-439; Weigley, History of the U.S. Army, pp.

313-334; Kenneth R. Hagan and William R. Roberts, eds., Against All

Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial

Times to the Present, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 173-234;

Huntington, pp. 251-254; Barrie M. Zais, “The Struggle for a Twentieth

Century Army: Investigation and Reform of the United States Army

After the Spanish-American War, 1898-1903,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke

University, 1981, pp. 15-24.

7. RWD, 1899, chap. 1, p. 45; William H. Carter, “Elihu Root—His

Services as Secretary of War,” North American Review, Vol. 178,

January 1904, pp. 110-121.

25
8. David A. Armstrong, Bullets and Bureaucrats: The Machine Gun

and the United States Army, 1861-1916, Westport: Greenwood Press,

1982.

9. Memorandum from Hugh A. Drum to Chief of Staff, Subject:

Missions of the Regular Army, dated February 15, 1924, WPD 1549, RG

165.

10. RWD 1905 1:9.

11. Johnson Hagood, Circular Relative to Pay of Officers and

Enlisted Men of the Army, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing

Office, 1907, p. 26.

12. Testimony of William H. Taft, House of Representatives,

Committee on Military Affairs, Hearings on the Army Appropriation

Bill for the Fiscal Year, 1906-07, Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Printing Office, 1906, p. 39.

13. RWD 1905 1:451-52; RWD 1906 1:394-99, 402-412; RWD 1907

1:230; Jesse M. Lee, “Personal Memorandum Submitted to the

Honorable William H. Taft, the Secretary of War,” March 21, 1907, AGO

1250150, RG 94, National Archives; William Conant Church,

“Increasing Desertions and the Army Canteen,” North American

Review, Vol. 177, December 1903, pp. 855-863; Bailey Millard, “The

Shame of our Army,” Cosmopolitan, Vol. 49, September 1910, pp.

411-420; Bailey Millard, “The Story of a Deserter,” Cosmopolitan, Vol.

50, January 1911, pp. 274-282; Edward N. Woodbury, “A Study of

Desertion,” (1920 staff report), U.S. Army Military History Institute

(MHI), Carlisle Barracks, PA.

14. David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation

in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1998; Ronald Spector, “The Military Effectiveness of the U.S. Armed

Forces, 1919-39,” in Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, eds.,

Military Effectiveness, Vol. 2, The Interwar Period, Boston: Allen and

Unwin, 1988, pp. 70-97; Weigley, History of the U.S. Army, pp. 395-420;

John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions

and Separate Brigades, Washington, DC: Center of Military History,

1998, pp. 109-137. For a comparative approach, see Williamson Murray

and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period,

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

15. Johnson Hagood, “The United States in the Next War,” Journal

of the United States Artillery (JUSA), Vol. 53, July 1920, pp. 1-8.

26
16. RWD, 1921, p. 32; Editorial, “Army Reorganization,” Infantry

Journal (IJ), Vol. 17, July 1920, pp. 71-76; William Bryden,

“Possibilities in the Act of June 4, 1920,” IJ, Vol. 17, September 1920, pp.

254-260; M. B. Stewart, “Lessons of the War,” IJ, Vol. 21, October 1922,

pp. 371-375; E. J. Williams, “Application of National Defense Act,” IJ,

Vol. 26, May 1925, pp. 513-518; C. B. Ross, “Military Policy of the United

States,” Coast Artillery Journal, Vol. 66, May 1927, pp. 418-425. A

number of sources state the 1920 NDA’s Regular Army authorization

was 280,000, but this overlooks the 17,717 officers, see RSW 1920, pp.

9-11.

17. “Positive System of Coast Defense,” and “Joint Army and Navy

Action in Coast Defense,” JUSA, Vol. 53, December 1920, pp. 558-577;

William O. Odom, After the Trenches: The Transformation of U.S. Army

Doctrine, 1918-1939, College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1999. On

Pacific defense, see Brian McAllister Linn, Guardians of Empire: The

U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940, Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 1997, pp. 165-246.

18. For an overview of army tactical thinking on the integration of

weaponry, see George A. Lynch, “Current Infantry Developments,” IJ,

Vol. 45, January-February 1938, pp. 3-9.

19. Matthew K. Deichelmann Oral History, 35, K239.0152-897, U.S.

Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, AL;

Frank W. Coe, “The Chief of Coast Artillery and the Corps,” JUSA, Vol.

52, March 1920, p. 200.

20. George S. Patton, “What the World War Did for Cavalry,”

Cavalry Journal, Vol. 31, April 1922, p. 172.

21. Edward L. Katzenbach, “The Horse Cavalry in the Twentieth

Century,” in Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, eds., The Use of Force:

Military Power and International Relations, 3rd Edition, Lanham, MD:

University Press of America, 1983, pp. 152-171. A more balanced and

better researched appraisal appears in Vincent J. Tedesco III, “‘Greasy

Automatons’ and the ‘Horsey Set’: The U.S. Cavalry and Mechanization,

1928-1940,” M.A. thesis: Pennsylvania State University, 1995.

22. George S. Patton, “Comments on ‘Cavalry Tanks’,” Cavalry

Journal, Vol. 30, July 1921, pp. 251-252. Patton continued to tout horse

cavalry over armor for the defense of the Western Hemisphere, see

George S. Patton to Dear Gene, October 8, 1940, Box 2, Folder 48,

Eugene A. Regenier Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Collection, Yale

University Library, New Haven, CT.

27
23. Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, Glenn R. Snyder,

Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets, New York: Columbia

University Press, 1962, p. 462. By 1955, the Army had spent

$2,500,000,000 on Nike I and $100,000,000 on research and

development for HAWK. See Maxwell D. Taylor, “Security Through

Deterrence,” Address AWC, August 20, 1956, Item 5, Folder D, Box 4,

Maxwell D. Taylor Papers, National Defense University Library, Fort

Leslie J. McNair, Washington, DC.

24. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Vol. 2, The President, New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 225.

25. Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B.

Ridgway, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956; Maxwell D. Taylor, The

Uncertain Trumpet, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959. On the 1950s

army, see Andrew J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army

Between Korea and Vietnam, Washington, DC: National Defense

University Press, 1986; David T. Fautua, “The ‘Long Pull’ Army: NSC

68, the Korean War, and the Creation of the Cold War U.S. Army,”

Journal of Military History, Vol. 61, January 1997, pp. 93-120; Weigley,

History of the U.S. Army, pp. 526-547; Don Alan Carter, “From G.I. to

Atomic Soldier: The Development of U.S. Tactical Doctrine, 1945-1956,”

Ph.D. dissertation: The Ohio State University, 1987.

26. General George L. Forsythe Oral History, p. 316, Senior Officers

Oral History Program (SOOHP), MHI.

27. “Beyond the Stars,” MS, James M. Gavin Papers, MHI. On U.S.

Army organization in the 1950s, see Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower,

pp. 263-286; Ernest F. Fisher, Jr., “Relationships of the ROAD Concept

to Moral Considerations in Strategic Planning,” 1962, Office of Chief of

Military History, CMH Library.

28. General Melvin Zais Oral History, p. 342, SOOHP. Barksdale

Hamlett Oral History, chap. 7, pp. 11, 35, 66-69, SOOHP; Andrew J.

Bacevich, “The Paradox of Professionalism: Eisenhower, Ridgway, and

the Challenge to Civilian Control, 1953-1955,” Journal of Military

History, Vol. 61, April 1997, pp. 303-334.

29. “Public Information Policy and Guidance,” February 15, 1955,

USAREUR Manual 360-10, E 33043, EUCOM, RG 338. Hamlett Oral

History, chap. 5, pp. 2-4; Robert Baldridge, “On May 25, 1953, ‘Atomic

Annie’ fired America’s first and only artillery-delivered nuclear blast,”

Military History, December 1996, pp. 24-28.

28
30. Forsythe Oral History, p. 317. Bacevich, p. 100. Throughout the

1950s, 40 percent of the research and development funding went to

missile and nuclear development, ten times the funding that was

devoted to artillery.

31. Combat Developments Office, U.S. Army Infantry School,

“Infantry Fighting Vehicle for the PENTANA Combat Group, U,” May

29, 1958, MHI. PENTANA was an acronym for Pentagonal AtomicNonatomic Army.

32. Forsythe Oral History, p. 333. The history of the pentomic

experiment is badly in need of scholarly treatment. For good overviews,

see Bacevich, Pentomic Era; Kalev I. Sepp, “The Pentomic Puzzle: The

Influence of Personality and Nuclear Weapons on U.S. Army

Organization, 1952-1958,” Army History, Winter 2001, pp. 1-13.

33. General William C. Westmoreland Oral History, p. 237, 1978,

SOOHP. Fisher, “Relationships of the ROAD Concept.”

34. General Clyde D. Eddleman Oral History, chap. 5, p. 25,

SOOHP.

29
CHAPTER 2

THE AMERICAN MILITARY TRADITION

AND POST-COLD WAR OPERATIONS1

Frank N. Schubert

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the

Cold War, the United States has been the world’s

preeminent military power. Despite the lack of a

substantial conventional threat to this status and no major

war to fight, U.S. armed forces were extremely busy in the

1990s, with diverse missions that frequently sent American

military personnel far from their homes and families. The

assignments included stability operations,2 humanitarian

missions, responses to disasters and political crises, and

enforcement of American law and policy concerning illegal

drugs and immigration. Some duties, such as operations

focused on the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and missions

in the Balkans, have been long and costly. Others, such as

the evacuation of Americans from troubled capitals of

sub-Saharan Africa, were quick and relatively cheap.

Overall, literally hundreds of operational names were

applied to a bewildering array of deployments.3

There have been other similar periods. In the 1920s and

1930s, U.S. armed forces also lacked a big war to fight. Still,

the period was very busy for the services, with a wide range

of operations in and increasingly outside of the country, in

the western hemisphere and in coastal zones of east Asia.

These ranged from long-term stability operations in the

Caribbean to managing water resource programs that

provided work for thousands during the Depression.

31
Earlier still, between the Civil War and the war with

Spain in 1898, the United States also faced no major

external threat. Despite the absence of a big war to fight,

U.S. armed forces were very busy, especially the Army in

the transMississippi West. Numerous campaigns against

Indians—small, grueling conflicts that punctuated long

periods of what might be called “interpositional

peacekeeping”—put the Army between growing numbers of

civilian settlements and the outraged natives whose lives

were being disrupted and irrevocably changed.

As these summaries suggest, in 2 centuries the United

States has experienced long periods with no major threat to

its security, periods in which the armed forces conducted

large numbers of small, diverse operations. Overall the

American military tradition has evolved as a duality that

reflected this experience. On one side has been defense

against foreign enemies and preparation for such

employment. This mission is widely considered to be the

raison d’etre of our armed forces. Procurement programs,

training, doctrine, and organization focus on this mission,

and in the year 2000, this view extended beyond the military

to senior officials of both major political parties.4 The other

side has involved law enforcement, disaster relief, and

nation-building. This category, sometimes called

gendarmerie or constabulary work, also includes what were

once called pacification and “small wars,” and later became

known as counterinsurgency or contingency operations.5

The U.S. Army, “the child of the frontier,” as historian

Robert M. Utley put it, had two parents. One was the

operational requirement that emerged from conflict

between westering settlers and the native peoples who

resisted their encroachment.6 The other was the inability of

short-term local volunteer organizations to cope with the

problem, shown in expeditions in Ohio during 1790 and

1791.7 The Army’s major pre-Civil War operations against

Indians extended from Florida to the Great Lakes.8 There

were conventional wars against Britain in 1812-15 and

Mexico in 1846-48, but the army—“overworked, under32
funded, and dispersed among many small posts”—“spent

the bulk of its time policing the nation’s ever-changing

western boundary.” Soldiers enforced laws and treaties,

explored and policed new territories, punished hostile

aggression, and regulated contact between settlers and

Indians.9

Meanwhile, the Navy protected Americans and their

commerce, with landings in Latin America and in the

Pacific.10 At least 24 times between the War of 1812 and the

Civil War, sailors and Marines landed to protect Americans

and their property far from American shores or to punish

those who had abused American citizens. Sometimes, they

also shielded third-country nationals and their property.11

Other Naval operations of this period enforced American

law as well as asserted the freedom of navigation. Between

the U.S. ban on the slave trade in 1808 and the 1861 onset of

the Civil War, American vessels operated against slavers

along West African coasts. As the secession crisis

approached, operational tempo increased. In 1859, the

Navy captured five carriers of human cargo, including one

at the mouth of the Congo River. In 1860, the last full year of

peace at home, 13 slave ships were seized. Meanwhile,

operations against pirates also included landings on Greek

islands in 1827 and actions near Hong Kong in the 1850s.12

Maritime and land operations shared certain traits. The

opposition usually amounted to irregular or semi-irregular

forces. Also, these operations tended to be diverse, diffuse,

and complex, and to lack decisive results. They came in

times of no apparent foreign threat and occurred in places

many Americans might have considered to be on the

margins, in Indian country, in the Caribbean, and along

Asian coasts across the Pacific: Siberia, China, Korea, the

Philippines, and islands in the south Pacific.13 The

statement of General Henry H. Shelton, the Chairman of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the summer of 2000, that “Today

the United States strives to keep its military forces

combat-ready while, at the same time, engaging in missions

33
that do not routinely involve combat,”14 could just as well

have applied to the 19th century as to the onset of the 21st.

As historian John M. Gates noted, “Much of the Army’s

work on the frontier was that of a frontier constabulary.”

The Army “served eviction notices on Indians and then

forcibly removed them when required.” If tribes left their

reservations, the Army “found them and coerced them

back,” or fought them until they again surrendered. There

were seldom large battles that looked like war. “Most of the

time,” according to Gates, “it was routine though difficult

police work.”15

Soldiers then, like soldiers now, disliked such work and

thought it kept them from their proper business, preparing

for and fighting real wars against foreign enemies.16

Brigadier General John Pope, who commanded the

Department of the Missouri, complained in 1881 that

fighting Indians was not “conducive to the proper discharge

of military duty or the acquirement, either in theory or

practice, by officers or soldiers, of professional knowledge or

even of the ordinary tactics of a battalion.”17 Talking about

the 1990s, Richard Shultz noted the persistence of such

views: “The military defines itself, almost exclusively, as

either deterring wars or fighting and winning them.

Civil-military operations and those elements of the force

structure that engage in them are not judged as being very

important—and this has been an enduring aspect of U.S.

military culture.”18

John Pope’s generation found ample ground for

complaint. New operational requirements that resembled

gendarme work surfaced as the federal role in society

expanded. There were major responsibilities to be fulfilled

for millions of Civil War veterans. The Freedmen’s Bureau,

designed to ease the transition to freedom for ex-slaves,

moved into relief work in a big way, and military units

garrisoned southern communities during Reconstruction.19

All the while, Indian wars represented the main form of

combat, and humanitarian operations that rarely required

34
a shot to be fired in anger became more prevalent. The

frontier Army responded to calls for relief from communities

beset by floods, blizzards, drought, and even grasshoppers,

and quelled the labor disputes that grew in number, size,

and scope as industrialization progressed.

Soldiers hated strikebreaking. Accustomed to seeing

themselves as spearheads of a civilization sweeping across

North America, they found it hard to confront working-class

Americans striving for better wages and working

conditions. Such duty also tarnished popular respect for the

Army. Nevertheless, the job got done. As Michael Tate

wrote, the “century ended not with images of universally

respected cavalrymen dashing across the West in search of

renegade Indians and outlaws, but with a growing public

dissatisfaction with the Army’s continued service as a

domestic constabulary.”20

When not responding to calls for help, the Army

surveyed and built roads, protected telegraph lines, laid out

river crossings, and protected commerce—essential

nation-building activities. Meanwhile, military leaders

tried to look past Indian conflicts, plan for conventional

warfare, and create an Army “designed for the next

conventional war rather than the present unconventional

war.”21

The operational pendulum swung between gendarme

assignments and an occasional foreign war. Big

conventional conflicts were rare. After the war against

Spain in 1898, which saw American forces in action in the

Caribbean and the Pacific, the United States entered

another period with no apparent conventional threat but

with ample points of instability and conflict on the margins

of American interests. In the first half of the 20th century,

these edges again tended to be in the Caribbean, along the

Mexican border, and along Asian coasts, with China

increasingly the focus of maritime operations. Compared to

the years between the Civil War and 1898, naval operations

35
in Latin America almost tripled to 37 between 1899 and

1933.

Naval operations of this period, especially in the

Caribbean, tended to be much longer in duration than

previously. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. They

also were in the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. And

for 5 years, 1926-30, Marines actively supported the

government of Nicaragua against the Sandinista

revolution. General Smedley Butler, a double Medal of

Honor recipient, served in China, Honduras, Panama,

Nicaragua, Mexico, and Haiti. Brigadier General Lewis

“Chesty” Puller was in Haiti from 1919 to 1924 and twice in

Nicaragua.22

Like the Army, the Navy moved into humanitarian and

rescue work. In 1904 the Navy evacuated Americans

endangered by the Russo-Japanese War from Korea, a very

early noncombatant evacuation. Sailors rescued a

kidnapped American from Morocco in 1904, fought fires and

helped victims of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and

assisted Greek nationals forced out of Asia Minor by Turkey

in 1921-1922. The aircraft carrier USS Lexington even

generated almost 4.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity

for Tacoma, Washington, during a month-long emergency

in 1930.23

Also like the Army, the Navy and the Marines moved

into nation-building. Going beyond building infrastructure,

such as the Army did in the West,24 this involved creation

and nurture of sound public institutions, which became

important during the occupations of Haiti and the

Dominican Republic. There the Navy and the Marines

managed government offices and sought to create police

forces that were free of corruption. Involvement in this type

of nation-building peaked in post-World War II Japan and

Germany, where efforts aimed at reform of entire governing

structures and underlying attitudes. They constituted

state-building in the fullest sense—concerted externallyled efforts to build stable democratic governments. This side

36
of gendarme operations did not involve deployment for

combat, even against irregular opponents. Instead, this use

took advantage of other key military attributes—logistical

sophistication, responsiveness to direction, and a commitment to serving the nation.

As the Cold War came to dominate international

relations, the armed forces entered a 50-year period in

which a large, heavily armed force became a fixture of

American foreign and defense policy. The Cold War, with its

singleness of purpose, provided a prism through which all

operations were viewed and dominated the experiences and

perceptions of two generations of professional officers.

Although the U.S. military traditionally had carried out all

of the kinds of operations discussed here, including

preparing for and fighting major wars, World War II and the

Cold War brought this latter responsibility to extraordinary

prominence and emphasized it over all others. The military

came to define itself, “almost exclusively, as either deterring

wars or fighting and winning them.” Civil-military

operations and the elements of our forces that engaged in

them came to be seen as less important than combat

elements, and this two-tiered view hardened into what

Richard Shultz called “an enduring aspect of U.S. military

culture.”25 As a result, the classic gendarme functions—

stability operations, law enforcement, disaster relief, and

infrastructure development, for which the Army was

initially established and in which the Navy and Marines

often played major parts—all were ignored or relegated to

secondary status.

In carrying out their historically wide array of missions,

U.S. forces operated in the tradition established nearly

2,000 years earlier by the Army of imperial Rome. On the

frontiers of the empire, in Britain, along the Rhine and the

Danube, then through the Levant and across North Africa,

the Roman army conducted gendarme missions—keeping

barbarians out; battling outlaws within; mapping; building

forts, roads, bridges, and aqueducts; supervising laborers in

mines and quarries; and digging canals and dams. Like

37
soldiers everywhere and always, the legionnaires hated

such work.26 Nevertheless, they carried out their orders,

and in times of peak construction, thousands became

masons, brickmakers, and the like, while hundreds of

sailors poled barges and steered lighters. Overall, they

became “the gendarmerie of the empire’s edges and keepers

of its gates,” policing the frontier, managing checkpoints

and crossings, and responding to trouble.”27 Like our Army

on the frontier, which Michael Tate characterized as “the

‘right arm’ of the federal government in its 19th-century

expansionist policies,” the Roman army was “the dominant

institutional factor in the development of the frontier.”28 In

either case, an army devoted only to fighting foreign wars

could never have had such a dramatic impact on overall

development.

In Europe, the tradition of armed forces carrying out

multiple gendarme functions changed at the beginning of

the 19th century. During the Napoleonic era, the national

police or gendarmerie was created to carry out functions

other than waging war against foreign enemies.29 Most

European nations followed the French model, and the new

organizations sometimes actually contained more

professional military forces than the regular armies they

supplemented. As Clive Emsley wrote, “the gendarmes

were professional soldiers/policemen at a time when the

armies of continental Europe were increasingly shifting

from a professional mercenary to a conscript base.”30

In some ways the gendarme forces that emerged from

the Napoleonic period conducted the same kinds of

operations carried out by American regulars. They patrolled

remote areas, chased bandits, and responded to floods,

earthquakes, and train wrecks. They also spied on political

radicals, collected taxes, and enforced conscription. In

Europe they helped consolidate central state power, while

in the United States, soldiers enforcing the law were

transitional figures until territories became states with

their own legal systems. As if to illustrate the intimate

connection with the regular armed forces, in France and

38
Bavaria individual officers and noncommissioned officers

frequently moved from one organization to the other.31

Overall, gendarme functions tended to be various and

complicated and to lack clear, immediate results.

Campaigns against bandits or Indians could seem endless

and sometimes very nearly were. They lacked the focus of a

big conflict against a single enemy with a clear desired

result. Natural disasters and other catastrophes were

unpredictable and disrupted routines. Operations tended to

alternate between wars and gendarme tasks, but inevitably

what we now call “operations other than war” occupied the

armed forces for longer periods of time.32

Plainly there is a gap between the reality of who

American soldiers have been, on one hand, and who they

think they are and what they think they should legitimately

do, on the other.33 Perhaps this is due to poor performance in

unconventional situations, notably Vietnam and Somalia.

On the other hand, it may be because the Army did so well in

the central conventional arena, the face-off against the

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Maybe the massive

financial stake in procurement programs that support

preparation for major conventional warfare accounts for the

focus on such a mission. Intellectual investments in

doctrine that concentrates on large conventional conflict

and justifies large conventional forces may also turn

attention in that direction. Or maybe soldiers are ignorant

of their operational past, particularly the 150 years before

World War II and the Cold War. Whatever the reasons, the

result is a failure to appreciate the long-standing legitimacy

of gendarme or constabulary operations, to understand

their importance and their demands on resources, and to

devote enough thought to their proper execution. As Eliot

Cohen observed,

International police work is the wayward child that the

Pentagon cannot decide whether to embrace (because it is the

only job immediately available and because it justifies the

current force structure) or reject (because it conflicts with Cold

39
War concepts of what the military exists to do). Posturing by

both parties has made the problem worse, as Republicans insist

that they would walk away from all peacekeeping or

peace-enforcement missions, whereas Democrats are too eager

to accept such involvements without conceding the long-term

problems they pose for the defense establishment.34

If operations in the 1990s share so many attributes with

earlier operations, what sets recent work apart? I would

suggest three major differences. One is the complexity of

modern operations short of war, which tend to involve other

nations’ forces as well as international organizations, many

U.S. government agencies, contractors, and private

charities. Second, they are more immediately visible

because of the electronic media. Finally, there are all those

names. Their large number—at least 375 from the end of

1989 to the beginning of 2001—obscures continuities and

creates an impression of a diffuse, even hyperactive

condition. Forty or so names have been applied to one

decade-long effort to bring peace and order to the Balkans

and another 40 or so to the 10-year effort to influence the

behavior of the Iraqi government. Clarity would surely be

served by going beyond the many names of phases and

aspects and adjuncts and calling these operations what they

are.35 The war in Vietnam annually spawned about 20

English-language names for operations, but the overall

awareness of the existence of a single conflict was never lost

in the sea of names. It was always the Vietnam War. The

point has still not been reached where we view the

decade-long conflicts in Southwest Asia and the Balkans as

single long-term campaigns or view clearly the other

operational clusters of the 1990s.

The bottom line is two-fold. Were the 1990s different

from the Cold War and other earlier periods? You bet. Were

the 1990s outside the framework of the nation’s military

experience and tradition? Not at all.

40
CHAPTER 2 - ENDNOTES

1. David A. Armstrong, John M. Gates, Perry D. Jamieson, Hans S.

Pawlisch, Stephen L. Rearden, Irene L. Schubert, Michael L. Tate, and

Gregory G. Wilmoth, all read and criticized various versions of this

paper and offered helpful suggestions. They should be held blameless

for the contents and interpretations herein.

2. “Stability operations are typically characterized by intra state

conflict between two or more factions divided over issues such as

ethnicity, nationality, and religion. A stability operation is an umbrella

term encompassing peace building, peacekeeping, peace making, and

peace enforcement.” Catherine Abbott, “Utilization of New Zealand

Defence Force Capabilities on International Stability and Military

Operations 1946-1998,” Unpublished manuscript, p. 4.

3. At the end of January 2001, the “Military Operations Database,”

designed by this historian to track operations since December 1989,

listed 375 operational names. Some were used only for planning

purposes and others were cross-references to other names.

Nevertheless, the number of names is staggeringly large.

4. Remarks of George W. Bush, transcript of presidential debate of

October 11, 2000, New York Times, October 12, 2000, pp. A20-21; Dr.

James A. Schear, “The Interagency Planning Process,” Interagency

Coordination and Planning Seminar, National Foreign Affairs Training

Center, October 11, 2000.

5. Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency

Operations Doctrine, 1860-1941, Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of

Military History, 1998, p. 4.

6. Edward M. Coffman, “The Duality of the American Military

Tradition,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 64, No. 4, October 2000, pp.

971-972.

7. Robert M. Utley, “The Contribution of the Frontier to the

American Military Tradition,” in The Harmon Memorial Lectures in

Military History, 1959-1987, Harry R. Borowski, ed., Washington, DC:

Office of Air Force History, 1988, p. 533.

8. John B. Wilson, Campaign Streamers of the United States Army,

Washington, DC: The Institute of Land Warfare, 1995, p. 16.

9. Birtle, p. 7; Utley, p. 527. For a detailed discussion of the missions

summarized by Utley, see Michael L. Tate, The Frontier Army and the

41
Settlement of the West, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press,

1999.

10. Jack Sweetman, American Naval History: An Illustrated

Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present,

Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989, pp. 91-102; Ellen C. Collier,

Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1989,

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service report No. 89-651 F,

1989, pp. 6-8.

11. See Sweetman for the Navy’s operational history in this period.

12. Sweetman, pp. 39-49, 61; Collier, p. 4. An 1820 American law

defined the slave trade as piracy.

13. Birtle, p. 4.

14. Henry H. Shelton, “Peace Operations: The Forces Required,”

National Security Studies Quarterly, Vol. 6, Summer 2000, p. 105.

15. John M. Gates, “Indians and Insurrectos,” p. 4, in Gates, The

U.S. Army in Irregular Warfare, http://www.wooster.edu/history/

jgates/book-ch2.html, January 2001.

16. Utley, p. 530.

17. Quoted in Perry D. Jamieson, Crossing the Deadly Ground:

United States Army Tactics, 1865-1899, Tuscaloosa: University of

Alabama Press, 1994, pp. 120-121.

18. Richard H. Shultz, Jr., In the Aftermath of War: US Support for

Reconstruction and Nation-Building in Panama Following Just Cause,

Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1993, p. 19.

19. Michael L. Tate, The Frontier Army and the Settlement of the

West, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. p. 215.

20. Ibid., pp. 108-110.

21. Utley, p. 530.

22. Sweetman, pp. 116-154; Collier, pp. 9-14; John Whiteclay Clay

Chamber II, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History,

New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 98, 580.

42
23. Sweetman, pp. 119, 120, 127, 146, 147, 156; Norman Polmar,

Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on

World Events, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969, p. 52.

24. For an overview of early projects of this type, see Frank N.

Schubert, ed., The Nation Builders: A Sesquicentennial History of the

Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1838-1863, Fort Belvoir, Virginia:

Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1988.

25. Shultz, p. 19.

26. Roy W. Davies, Service in the Roman Army, David Breeze and

Valerie A. Maxfield, eds., New York: Columbia University Press, 1989,

p. 34. On the Roman army’s role in protecting and nurturing society on

various frontiers, also see the following: Stephen K. Drummond, “The

Roman Army as a Frontier Institution in the First and Second Centuries

A.D.,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 1981;

Yann Le Bohec, The Imperial Roman Army, Raphael Bate, trans.,

London: Routledge, 1994; Derek Williams, Romans and Barbarians:

Four Views from the Empire’s Edge, 1st Century AD, New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1998; Derek Williams, The Reach of Rome: A History of

the Roman Imperial Frontier 1st-5th Centuries AD, New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1996.

27. Williams, p. 38.

28. Tate, p. x; Stephen K. Drummond, “The Roman Army as a

Frontier Institution in the First and Second Centuries A.D.,”

unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 1981, p. 157.

29. Outside of metropolitan France, even the French recombined

these functions in one portion of their armed force, the French Foreign

Legion, though with a wary sensitivity to “the outlaw image of the

Legion, its racism, anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism, its

aggressive, hard-drinking and brothel-crawling culture,” so that even

when they were following their civilizing mission of building roads and

other structures in some colonial outback, their masters knew that “any

contact between the Legion and the local population was liable to result

in a public relations disaster.” Douglas Porch, The French Foreign

Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force, New York:

Harper Collins Publishers 1991, pp. 621, 624.

30. Clive Emsley, Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth Century

Europe, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 7-8.

31. Ibid., pp. 154-155, 172, 204-205.

43
32. The names of two of the chapters in Birtle reflect the importance

of this type of operation. Chapter 3, “The Constabulary Years,

1865-1898,” covered operations during Reconstruction in the South and

against Indians in the West. Chapter 5, “The Imperial Constabulary

Years, 1900-1913,” covered missions in China, Cuba, and the

Philippines.

33. Utley, p. 528.

34. Eliot A. Cohen, “Defending America in the Twenty-first

Century,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, November-December 2000, p. 46.

35. For an example of an official document that does not depict the

way in which operations of the 1990s cluster into campaigns, see Office

of the Secretary of Defense, Report to Congress on U.S. Military

Involvement in Major Smaller-Scale Contingencies Since the Persian

Gulf War, March 1999. Operations focused on Iraq are listed under

“Crisis Response,” “Limited Strike,” “No-Fly Zone Enforcement,” and

“Humanitarian Operations,” but never together as parts of a single

campaign. Similarly, operations in the Balkans appear under “Limited

Strike,” “No-Fly Zone Enforcement,” “Peace Operations,” and

“Humanitarian Assistance Operations.” There is never an indication of

an awareness that these operations fit together somehow.

44
CHAPTER 3

ARMY TRANSFORMATION:

A TALE OF TWO DOCTRINES

David Jablonsky

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more

difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more

uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the

introduction of a new order of things.

Niccolo Machiavelli1

Not since General Hans von Seeckt’s efforts with the

German Reichswehr in the early 1920s, has a military

organization so self-consciously set about transforming

itself as the U.S. Army today. It is part of an overall process

that has been met with enthusiastic endorsements ranging

from the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff to congressionally-mandated blue ribbon

panels. Still, specifics concerning the process have been

hard to come by with one defense analyst noting the

similarity of “transformation” as a military concept to the

Christian idea of transubstantiation: “no one is exactly sure

what it means, but most believers have an opinion about

it.”2 Generally, however, the concept is linked with the idea

of a revolution in military affairs (RMA). The interest in this

revolution in the early 1990s led by the end of the decade to a

growing acceptance of the need for military transformation

if the RMA were to be achieved. Thus, the Quadrennial

Defense Review (QDR) 2001 Working Group defined

military transformation as “the set of activities by which

DoD [Department of Defense] attempts to harness the

revolution in military affairs to make fundamental changes

45
in technology, operational concepts and doctrine, and

organizational structure.”3 The process, then, combines the

acquisition of new military systems with appropriate

divestiture and modifications dealing with doctrine and

organization—all focused on maximizing the capabilities of

future armed forces.

To “jump start” this process, Chief of Staff of the Army

General Eric K. Shinseki began in the fall of 1999 to invest

in current “off-the-shelf” equipment to stimulate the

development of doctrine and organizational design even as

the Army began a search for the new technologies that

would deliver the material for a future force. That force

would be strategically responsive and dominant across a

full spectrum of operations ranging from peacetime military

engagement to smaller-scale contingencies to major theater

war. The swiftness of the process, General Shinseki

acknowledged, would be “unnerving to some.”4 Nevertheless, there was an urgency to the process for the Army,

concerned with becoming more relevant in a rapidly

changing geostrategic environment in which strategic

speed and lethality could no longer successfully exist as

separate variables. “All our combat power is useless if we

cannot get it to the theater in time or maneuver it

tactically,” Major General James Dubik, the head of the

experimental force at Fort Lewis, pointed out. “Right now

our heavy forces have limited strategic deployability and

our light forces have limited tactical utility. Transformation

will take care of that disconnect.”5

How well Army transformation is able to deal with that

disconnect, however, will depend a great deal on future U.S.

policy concerning the use of military force. At one extreme is

the so-called Powell Doctrine, a relatively restrictive

approach to the subject. At the other extreme is what has

popularly come to be called the Clinton Doctrine, a more

liberal prescription for the use of force. The purpose of this

chapter is to demonstrate how those two doctrines will

influence the transformation of the U.S. Army as it

struggles to move forward toward a genuine revolution in

46
military affairs, and how that transformation process can,

in turn, mitigate the worst excesses of both doctrines. In the

end, it is the ability of the U.S. Army to use the new

technology for the use of military force that will determine

the success of the RMA. In this regard, it is well to remember

why Thomas Huxley remained unimpressed at the end of

the 19th century by all the knowledge, machinery, and

power that had extended human competence over the

physical environment. “The great issue,” he pointed out,

“about which hangs a true sublimity and the terror of

overhanging fate is, what are you going to do with all these

things?”6

Army Transformation.

Military organizations are societies built around and upon the

prevailing weapons systems. Intuitively and quite correctly

the military man feels that a change in weapon portends a

change in the arrangements of his society.

Elting Morison7

To assert that the seeds of Army transformation were

planted in the unused AH-64 Apache helicopters on the

Albanian-Kosovo border in 1999 is to do a disservice to the

decades-long efforts by the U.S. Army to solve the problem

of how to field a force light enough to be projected quickly on

a global basis and lethal enough to dominate upon arrival.

In the 1980s, the Army attempted to deal with this problem

by transforming itself with the concept of the HighTechnology Light Division (HTLD). That effort succumbed

to bureaucratic infighting by 1988, leaving a window of

vulnerability clearly demonstrated two years later when

the U.S. line in the Saudi Arabian sand was held for several

weeks only by the lightly armed and relatively immobile

forces of the 82nd Airborne Division and a Marine

Expeditionary Force.8 From the Gulf War to 1997, the pace

of U.S. military operations increased by at least 300

percent, even as the armed forces were buffeted by cuts in

structure, weapons programs and personnel strength.

47
During that period, the Army conducted a series of futures

efforts beginning with the 1992 series of simulations and

exercises known as the Louisiana Maneuvers. That

program gave way to the Force XXI process, a series of

experiments in war fighting designed to generate and test

new ideas. Next came the Army After Next project, the use

of studies, conferences, and war games to postulate those

elements of the RMA on which the Army should focus in

future geostrategic environments. These programs involved

separate but complementary processes coordinated through

distinct light and heavy modernization plans along similar,

not common, system and organizational designs. The result

was a continued bifurcation of the force between heavy and

light units.9

From this extended perspective, the Army’s problems

with Task Force Hawk simply highlighted the need to

accelerate experimental efforts to solve a long-simmering

problem. Landpower enthusiasts might point out that much

analysis of the Serbian campaign failed to take into account

the actions of the Kosovo Liberation Army that

complemented the NATO attack.10 But there was no

disguising the fact that the 11-week campaign had been

decided by the 730 Air Force, Navy, and Marine aircraft that

had flown more than 36,000 sorties in aircraft that ranged

from Cold War F-16s to the newest B-2s. In the wake of that

campaign, there was considerable conjecture about the

Army’s strategic relevancy in newspaper and magazine

articles.11 The Deputy Secretary of Defense was even more

direct. “If the Army holds onto nostalgic versions of its grand

past,” he warned in August 1999, “it is going to atrophy and

die.”12 It was a message concerning deployability, lethality,

and sustainability that was well understood in the Army.

“We are committed to remain relevant,” General Dubik

pointed out, “able to respond quickly, and provide the

appropriate forces for... contingencies.”13

The key to Army relevancy is an Army transformation

process that rests on four foundations: the conduct of future

war, the future operating environment, the increasing

48
significance of full spectrum operations, and the diminished

utility of the current force. Together, these elements compel

the current Army process toward a combination of

evolutionary and revolutionary change. It is, in short, a

self-stylized “balanced” approach designed to fully

capitalize on leap-ahead technology while retaining current

warfighting capabilities.14 But the Army process also

recognizes that emerging technologies cannot alone produce

an RMA—that they serve as enablers for much more

far-reaching changes in doctrine, concepts, and organization, which together cause fundamentally new ways of

conducting military operations. At some critical point, the

cumulative effects of technical advances and military

innovation in all these areas invalidate former conceptual

structures and cause a basic alteration in accepted

definitions and measurements of military effectiveness.

Such experimentation, however, is not easy; and in fact the

Defense Science Board Task Force has called it “an

unnatural act” for any large established organization.15

Moreover, as General Dubik has cautioned,

There is no guarantee to any of this. There is no playbook.

There is no answer book....

We must. . . make sure we get it close to right. We know we will

not get it precisely right. But our job is not to get it so wrong

that we hamstring the next generation of leaders. We have to

get it right enough, so that in 2015, when the nation asks the

Army to do something, it is flexible enough to accomplish any

potential mission.16

The Interim Force is the centerpiece in the balanced

process of “getting it right.” The force consists of medium

weight Interim Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) designed

“to meet a near-term strategic requirement that now is

absent, as well as to prepare the Army for the long-term. . .”17

To achieve these goals, the IBCTs will operate within the

current division structures and provide a complementary

capability to the current light and heavy units that comprise

the Legacy Force. At the same time, the IBCTs will act as a

49
bridging force until science and technology allow the

realization of the Objective Force, the ultimate Army

product of the RMA. The key to the bridging process is the

development of the Future Combat System (FCS), which is

to combine the capabilities of the current howitzers, main

battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles while weighing

in at a weight not to exceed 20 tons—a figure in dramatic

contrast, for example, to the 70 tons of the M1A1 Abrams

Tank. Once the FCS emerges, it will be adopted by the

Legacy and Interim Forces which will then merge into the

Objective Force.18

The Interim Force concept is a revolutionary bridge to

the future Objective Force. To begin with, the IBCT is not a

theoretical construct, but a test-bed force with goals of

deploying a brigade to a forward base within 4 days, a

division within 5 days, and five divisions within 30 days.

And yet the units are being created without waiting for the

development of new technology. Instead, the Army is

focused on evaluating and refining the operations and

organizational concept for these forces derived from the

future environment envisaged as the type in which the units

would operate, from the kind of characteristics desired in

the force, and from the capabilities that would then be

required. This type of parallel effort is designed to produce a

complete RMA when the emerging technology comes on

line, unlike those incomplete revolutions in the past when

doctrine and organization lagged the new technology as

they did with the so-called “dead hand” of Napoleon in the

American Civil War and with the French pursuit of offensive

a outrance at the beginning of World War I. “As we develop

the IBCTs at Fort Lewis, train them and get the doctrine

right,” General Dubik notes in this regard, “we will be

producing the doctrine and training that we need for the

objective force.”19 As technology produces the revolutionary

breakthroughs necessary to complement this doctrine,

distinctions between the bifurcated force will blur, with the

Objective Force taking on the lethality associated with

heavy units and the agility that is the mark of light units.

50
At the other end of the Army’s balanced linkage, the

relationship of the Interim and Legacy forces is more

conservative—founded on a determination by the Army “not

to permit” transformation to compromise near-term

warfighting capabilities.20 From this perspective, the IBCT

is designed to bolster the current Legacy Force by

enhancing the ability of the regional CINCs and Joint Task

Force commanders to respond. For the legacy light division,

the interim unit will become the most mobile, lethal and

survivable element, extending the division’s tactical

mobility while increasing the organic firepower in support

of dismounted operations, and thus is likely to be employed

in the main divisional effort. On the other hand, the IBCT

will probably be the first brigade to deploy as part of a heavy

division in order to consolidate and extend the security of air

and sea ports of debarkation, thus facilitating the reception,

staging and onward integration of the remainder of the

division. The new formations will also provide a dramatic

improvement in national and theater conventional deterrence by presenting the National Command Authorities

(NCA) with the capability to position a credible and flexible

combat force on the ground anywhere in the world within 96

hours. At the same time, the accelerated development of the

initial interim brigades will provide impetus to the

transformation process by allowing the training and

development of soldiers and leaders in the doctrine and

organization of these new formations without

compromising the Army’s basic raison d’ etre of winning

wars.21

In all this, a major issue for the Legacy Force is

divestiture of old technology, organization and doctrine—a

key element if the Army’s revolution in military affairs is

ultimately to be complete. The Army has already

restructured five major programs and cancelled seven

others in order to free $16 billion for the transformation

effort. How well the right systems and doctrine are

available for that process depends on the Army’s ability to

maintain a viable Legacy Force. But 75 percent of that force

51
already exceeds its service half-life. Moreover, as the Legacy

Force comes to the end of that cycle, there will be increasing

costs for operation and maintenance—producing further

pressure for recapitalization, the replacement, as opposed

to modernization, of aging systems.22 One solution is to

identify and prioritize modernization and/or recapitalization for those legacy systems that have applicability for

the Objective Force. Some systems, however, need to be

continued even if they don’t fall in this category since their

elimination would pose too great a risk to the legacy

guarantee of near-term warfighting capabilities. The Heavy

Equipment Transporter System (HET), for example, is

required to replace an aging fleet of trucks that will carry

the tanks, Bradleys, and howitzers until transformation is

effected.

Ultimately, there is no pat solution to the tension

between divestiture concerned with a Legacy Force and the

need to hedge against an uncertain future. It is a tension

that is particularly sharp for the military profession, which

has little room for any illusions about the stakes in national

security affairs. “If you have lost a battle,” G. K. Chesterton

once noted, “you cannot believe that you have won it.”23

There is no guarantee, for example, that the technology for

the Objective Force will materialize, potentially leaving a

“Worst-of-Both-Worlds” force that could still consume

substantial amounts of strategic lift, while lacking combat

punch and sustainability. Nor is it ever a certainty that

some new technological variant will be correctly

understood. Thus, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig—a year

into World War I—could inform the War Office that “the

machine-gun is a much overrated weapon, two per battalion

is more than sufficient.”24 There is also no assurance that

emerging doctrine and concepts will survive a future test as

was demonstrated by the Maginot Line, an efficient and

effective use of military resources in terms of the static

trench warfare of World War I, but useless against the

mobile German Army doctrine of 1940. Most importantly,

there is the overriding need to retain a near-term strategic

52
hedge of readiness for major theater war. Thus, it is not

surprising that the Army has adopted a conservative

resourcing strategy during transformation designed to

keep:

a balance of old and new systems to maintain readiness for

today while preparing for the future. This strategy will

selectively retain or extend the life of legacy systems,

synchronize divestiture with acquisition, and bring new

systems as rapidly as possible in accordance with new

operational concepts.25

The tension between the legacy and objective forces was

reflected in a draft U.S. Government Accounting Office

(USGAO) Report provided to the Army in January 2001 that

identified risk in the transformation efforts. The

development of the Objective Force, the report asserted,

represented the Army’s “foremost challenge” because of

uncertainty as to whether the required technology would

mature enough to enable the development of the Future

Combat Systems as envisioned or in time to meet the

transformation schedule. The Army, the report added,

should consider achieving Objective Force capabilities in

stages—a strategy that could provide worthwhile increases

in capability but might also require a continuation of legacy

and interim forces “longer than anticipated.” The Army

response was that the report overly focused on equipment,

ignoring the Army’s “holistic” approach which also involved

the considerable progress being made in organizational,

doctrinal and institutional change. Focusing on acquisition

alone, one source concluded, was like “looking through a

coke bottle . . . at the stars.”26

In any event, the Army leadership was bent on further

expediting the transformation effort. On March 1, 2001, the

Chief of Staff announced that the Army would lose

relevancy if an Objective Force capability was not fielded by

2010. There would be no waiting for the development of

better systems if it meant slowing down the transformation

process. “This is about speed,” General Shinseki added.27 As

53
a consequence, the Army would increase funding of the

integrated Future Combat System for FYs 03-08. In April

2003, there would be a readiness review of the FCS in order

to select the best technologies and concepts for the next

phase of the process. “We will make the tough calls, we will

shift resources to the most promising technical solutions.”28

The second milestone would be the development and

demonstration of a prototype FCS model beginning in FY

06. “Our intent,” the Chief concluded, “is to accelerate the

transition to research and development by collapsing

traditional lines.”29

This was hardly good news for those within the Army

who already perceived transformation as challenging the

most cherished service assumptions. Not surprisingly, some

heavy armor and artillery advocates had indicated

resistance as had some in the aviation community

concerned about the lack of reference to Army aviation

attack units.30 And the fact that the Interim Force would

rely on fire support from Air Force, Navy and coalition

assets was perceived by some as abandonment of the Army’s

organic role in deep attack.31 Outside the Army, one official

of the Air Force Association summarized that service’s

position in the post-Kosovo conflict era by asserting that

“transformation cannot take place without a shift in service

roles from the current emphasis on surface warfare to

aero-space warfare.”32 And the Commandant of the Marine

Corps warned against attempts by each service to claim that

it was the “expeditionary force” of choice for the nation.

“There is no way,” he pointed out, “that the entire armed

forces of the United States can fit into the tip of the spear.”33

54
The Powell and Clinton Doctrines.

What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re

always talking about if we can’t use it?

Madeleine Albright to Colin Powell34

Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s exasperated question

to General Colin Powell reflected a difference in outlook that

was set in train in October 1984 when Secretary of State

George Shultz delivered a speech warning against

“self-doubt” and “paralysis” in the conduct of foreign policy.

There must be more flexibility in the use of American

military power, Shultz concluded a year after 241 American

deaths in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut,

emphasizing that the United States should not become “the

Hamlet of nations, worrying endlessly over whether and

how to respond. . . .”35 The next month, Secretary of Defense

Caspar Weinberger replied with six criteria to determine

the conditions under which the use of military force

overseas was warranted: Involvement of vital national

interests; clear intention of winning; clearly defined

political and military objectives; a constant reassessment of

objectives and forces; a reasonable assurance of public and

congressional support prior to commitment; and the use of

U.S. forces as a last resort.36 For Shultz, these criteria set

such high hurdles for the use of force that they served as a

“counsel of inaction bordering on paralysis,” “the Vietnam

syndrome in spades carried to an absurd level and a

complete abdication of the duties of [world] leadership.”37

Nevertheless, the Weinberger Doctrine was applied in the

Gulf War, with vital interests at stake, overwhelming force

applied quickly, and all other options such as economic

sanctions tried first. The final proof that the war affirmed

the Vietnam syndrome rather than “kicking” it occurred

when Powell pressed for formal Congressional authorization to use force in order not to leave U.S. troops “dangling

out there” without domestic support.38

55
By the time of the Gulf War, however, there had already

begun to emerge a more complicated geostrategic landscape

of failed states, civil wars and ethnic conflicts. Difficult

decisions for the use of military force in this more complex

environment seemed increasingly further removed from a

doctrine that was virtually immune to ambiguity. As a

consequence, as he neared the end of his term in office in

1992, President George Bush discounted the need for “rigid

criteria” concerning the use of military force that “would

give would-be troublemakers a blueprint for determining

their own actions.” In this new context, the relative

intensity of an interest would not be a guide, and force, the

President concluded, could be “a useful backdrop to

diplomacy, a complement to it, or, if need be, a temporary

alternative.”39 This move away from “last resort” answered

an important criticism of the Weinberger Doctrine, since

threatened or actual use of force had always been a basic

ingredient of deterrence and coercive diplomacy. Moreover,

as the rise of Nazi Germany repeatedly demonstrated, there

could also be a need for early and politically decisive use of

force against an aggressor. “[T]he capability and will to use

force as a first resort,” Richard Nixon noted a year after the

appearance of the Weinberger Doctrine, “. . . reduces the

possibility of having to use force as a last resort when the

risk of casualties would be far greater.”40

In a similar manner, President Bush’s rejection of the

vital interest criterion reflected a growing lack of consensus

on what constituted such a degree of intensity. To begin

with, many of Bush’s predecessors shared the penchant of

indiscriminately declaring interests to be vital, whether it

was Dwight Eisenhower over Quemoy and Matsu, Lyndon

Johnson over Vietnam, or Ronald Reagan over Lebanon.

Moreover, it was argued, even when it was impossible to

distinguish between intensities of interests, great powers

might still use military force on behalf of nonvital interests

ranging from credibility to maintaining order. Most

importantly, some critics also pointed to a false dichotomy

between interest-based and value-based military

56
intervention given America’s long history of combining

these variables. President Woodrow Wilson intervened in

1917, for example, with the geopolitical goal of restoring the

European balance of power couched as a strategic crusade

for democracy. And Harry Truman’s Cold War doctrine of

1947 was a geopolitical call to contain Communism in a

world, he pointed out, half-slave, half-free. In all this, there

is a tendency, as Senator John McCain has noted, “to

underestimate the importance of American values . . . for

orienting our relations with the rest of the world.”41 And

even Henry Kissinger, the ultimate modern proponent of

Realpolitik, has conceded that the

alleged dichotomy of pragmatism and morality seems to me a

misleading choice. Pragmatism without a moral element leads

to random activism, brutality, or stagnation. We must always

be pragmatic about our national security. We cannot abandon

national security in pursuit of virtue. But beyond this bedrock

of all policy, our challenge is to advance our principles in a way

that does not isolate us in the long run.42

Many of these considerations were reflected in General

Powell’s evolving thoughts on the military use of force

during his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Instead of “last resort,” there was the limited use of the

military for political reasons: “When force is used deftly—in

smooth coordination with diplomatic and economic

policy—bullets may never have to fly.” This, in turn, meant

a wider range of military missions across a spectrum of

operations that could be far removed from a rigid focus on

vital interests: “I believe peacekeeping and humanitarian

operations are a given.”43 And in his final public address

before retiring as Chairman, Powell acknowledged that

clear objectives were not always possible in the use of

military force, that situations often were ambiguous and

“murky.”44 By that time Powell could warn that there was

“no fixed set of rules for the use of military force” and that to

establish such criteria was dangerous, first because it

destroyed the ambiguity of U.S. intentions.

57
Second, having a fixed set of rules for how you will go to war is

like saying you are always going to use the elevator in the event

of fire in your apartment building. Surely enough, when the fire

comes the elevator will be engulfed in flames or, worse, it will

look good when you get in it only to fill with smoke and flames

and crash a few minutes later. But do you stay in your

apartment and burn to death because your plan calls for using

the elevator to escape and the elevator is untenable? No, you run

to the stairs, an outside fire escape or a window. In short, your

plans to escape should be governed by the circumstances of the

fire when it starts.45

All this notwithstanding, Powell still found that

Weinberger’s criteria were a “practical guide” when it came

to the relevant questions concerned with matching force

and objectives. Most importantly, the guideline of national

interest intensity was still critical for him in terms of

prioritization and sustainment in the use of any military

force—a Clausewitzian linkage that he always appreciated.

“Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled

by its political object,” the Prussian philosopher had long

ago warned, “the value of this object must determine the

sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in

duration.”46 Thus, as the former Yugoslavia began to come

apart in 1991, Powell urged a caution based on a variant of

the Weinberger Doctrine that, while adjusting the last

resort criterion and acknowledging the role of early force

intervention, still called for a policy of selective global

engagement primarily based on U.S. national interests. The

Chairman’s rationale also included such Weinberger

derivatives as the use of overwhelming force for clear

political and military objectives and a need for constant

reassessment of the relationship of force utilization to these

objectives as well as to the American people and their

representatives. To this was added a clear distrust of

technology as a panacea for the military in the use of force

and, despite a nod to the utility of pre-conflict force

utilization, of the use of the military for the purpose of

signaling. Soon, what quickly came to be known as the

Powell Doctrine was being interpreted by its critics as a

58
reluctance to intervene anywhere with military force,

unless the intervention was so massively disproportionate

as to become virtually free of risk. But Powell was having

none of it. “Decisive means and results are always to be

preferred,” he wrote at the time, “even if they are not always

possible.”

We should always be skeptical when so-called experts suggest

that all a particular crisis calls for is a little surgical bombing

or a limited attack. When the “surgery” is over and the desired

result is not obtained, a new set of experts then comes forward

with talk of just a little escalation.... History has not been

kind to this approach....47

At the beginning of the William Clinton Administration,

Powell had considerable influence on the President with

this type of thinking concerning the use of force. All this was

reflected in a new National Security Strategy in 1995, which

in a section entitled “Deciding When and How to Employ

U.S. Forces,” almost outdid The Weinberger cum Powell

Doctrine.48 But by that time, appearances were deceiving.

In the last 2 years of the first Clinton administration, with

General Powell out of office, the President increasingly

resorted to the use of military force across a full spectrum of

operations—to the extent that in the 1996 Presidential

campaign, Senator Robert Dole noted that the administration had initiated more military deployments than any of its

predecessors. Nevertheless, there was little protest from the

Pentagon or the public since operations such as those in

Haiti and Bosnia were virtually free of casualties.

Moreover, many military leaders realized that executing

such operations could contribute to force relevancy and help

justify a sizeable budget and force structure. And in fact the

President added $100 billion to his own defense program

between 1994 and early 1996. Finally, despite its

Powell-like rhetoric, the administration simply substituted

exit dates for clear goals or real strategy.49

The new doctrine emerged more clearly in the second

Clinton administration. To begin with, the President

59
continued a low-risk, high-tech approach to the use of force

across a full spectrum of operations, begun after the 1993

Somalia debacle, in order to avoid American casualties and

keep collateral damage to an absolute minimum. By 1999,

this was almost a doctrinal shibboleth. The “paramount

lesson learned from Operation ALLIED FORCE,” the

Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

declared after the Serbian campaign, “is that the well-being

of our people must remain our first priority.”50 Added to this

approach was the use of military force to signal disapproval

and dictate behavior. Operation DESERT FOX against Iraq

in 1998, for example, was less a tribute to Erwin Rommel

than Robert McNamara as the Clinton administration

employed strictly controlled force to deliver precisionguided messages. “We are talking about using military

force,” Secretary of State Albright pointed out at the time,

“but we are not talking about war.”51 That same year, the

United States fired 79 sea-launched cruise missiles at

suspected terrorist sources in Afghanistan and the Sudan.

“Let our actions today send this message loud and clear,” the

President declared, “there will be no sanctuary for

terrorists.”52 Finally, there was Operation ALLIED

FORCE, a finely-calibrated “air only” war of incrementalism and gradualism, studded with pauses for negotiation

and strategy—all reminiscent of the Vietnam conflict.53

Kosovo resulted in further fin de siecle twists to the

emerging Clinton Doctrine. For the President, morals and

values as much as geopolitics played a key role, with every

cruise missile and bomb in that conflict aimed not only at

destroying the Serbian national will, but also at

demolishing the idea that leaders could commit criminal

acts so long as they acted within their own country. For the

first time, one administration official explained, Clinton

was stating that “genocide is in and of itself a national

interest where we should attack.”54 The President

elaborated on this theme in an exuberant speech to NATO

troops in Macedonia following the successful conclusion of

the Kosovo campaign. In this brave new world, he

60
emphasized, national sovereignty would be subordinated to

human rights. In terms of “ethnic or religious conflict” in the

world, universality would be “an important principle” that

he hoped would be applied in the future “whether within or

beyond” the borders of a country. “Whether you live in Africa

or Central Europe or any other place,” Clinton concluded, “if

somebody comes after civilians and tries to kill them en

masse because of their race, their ethnic background, or

their religion, and it is within our power to stop it, we will

stop it.”55 Administration officials were quick to back away

from the soaring, apparently open-ended rhetoric. “I don’t

think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said that

we ought to intervene whenever there’s a humanitarian

problem,” the National Security Advisor pointed out.

“That’s not a doctrine, that’s just a kind of prescription for

America to be all over the world and ineffective.”56 And the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs cautioned that “the military

makes a great hammer in America’s foreign policy tool box,

but not every problem we face is a nail.”57

Nevertheless, in the wake of Kosovo, the President

continued to give pride of place to values in the basic

components of his emerging doctrine for the use of force.

First, there was the increasingly pessimistic appraisal of

the international security environment—“a viper’s nest of

perils,” in Secretary Albright’s description, ranging from

terrorism and international crime to computer hackers and

genocidal violence.58 The second ingredient of the Clinton

Doctrine was the assumption that, as the dominant world

power with global economic interests in an increasingly

interdependent environment, the United States had a

vested interest in the maintenance of international

stability, of world order.59 The third component was the

conviction that in order to achieve international stability,

the United States must maintain sufficient forces to

conduct simultaneous military action against multiple

adversaries—a primary constabulary mission for American

military power to ensure the system didn’t break down,

causing globalization to fail. Implicit in this linkage to world

61
order was the idea that the best way to maintain stability in

areas that truly mattered to the United States was to

diminish instability in other areas, however unimportant

that instability might appear, before it could build in

intensity and spread to areas of significant interest. It was,

as Secretary Albright demonstrated, the harnessing of the

“domino theory” to the concept of shaping. “Common sense

tells us,” she commented, “that it is sometimes better to deal

with instability when it is still at arm’s length than to wait

until it is at our doorstep.”60 President Clinton was even

more explicit in terms of the shaping function in a February

1999 speech that foreshadowed the bombing decision in

Serbia.

It’s easy . . . to say that we really have no interests in who lives in

this or that valley in Bosnia, or who owns a strip of brush land in

the Horn of Africa, or some piece of parched earth by the Jordan

River. But the time measure of our interests lies in not how

small or distant these places are, or in whether we have trouble

pronouncing their names. The question we must ask is, what

are the consequences to our security of letting conflicts fester

and spread.61

In the end, the criteria that are popularly ascribed to

both doctrines are only factors to be considered, not absolute

requirements like those of Just War doctrine. Moreover,

because the Powell Doctrine has moved somewhat from the

strict constructionist Weinberger position, and because the

Clinton Doctrine began its early evolution when Powell was

Chairman of the JCS, there are many similarities. Both

believe in using force in conjunction with the other elements

of national power; both recognize that force may be used in a

wide spectrum of situations to include those involving peace

and humanitarian operations; and both believe in the use of

quick, overwhelming and decisive force for clear military

and political objectives. In terms of applying that decisive

force, the Clinton approach is generally to rely on standoff

high-tech weapons, while the Powell Doctrine includes a

basic distrust of technology as a panacea in the use of force

combined with a recognition that conflict resolution always

62
and conflict termination nearly always require the use of

landpower.

The Powell Doctrine is often described as a strategy of

reluctance focused on a narrowly defined concept of national

security which, if taken too literally, can amount “to virtual

isolationism again, via the great circle route.”62 But with its

emphasis on national interests and a finite amount of

resources, the Powell Doctrine ensures a selectivity in nearand mid-term shaping and responding activities in order to

prepare for future regional and near peer threats. On the

other hand, the Clinton Doctrine has been accused of a

willingness to use military force only when the political cost

of standing aloof exceeded the cost of a carefully staged and

limited intervention. Moreover, there is the general charge

of doctrinal inconsistency in an administration that never

made clear why the United States pulled out of Somalia,

why it elected to stay out of Rwanda, or why it stayed out of

Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor for as long as it did and then

elected to intervene in the way that it did.63 But by

emphasizing shaping and responding activities across a full

spectrum of operations in the near- and mid-term, the

Clinton Doctrine offers the potential of preparing for the

future by using military force to resolve crises, prevent

conflicts and instability, and deter aggression—all of which

could lead to the outbreak of major wars. Ultimately, there

will be some mix of the two doctrines in the new Bush

administration, which will, in turn, determine the mix of the

Shape-Respond-Prepare strategic variables. That

combination will directly affect the Army transformation

process and determine if the United States in the future can

avoid both Munich-like appeasements and Vietnam-like

quagmires.

Revolution or Evolution.

Unlike other organizations, military forces in peacetime must

innovate and prepare for a war 1) that will occur at some

indeterminate point in the future, 2) against an opponent who

may not yet be identified, 3) in political conditions which one

63
cannot accurately predict, and 4) in an arena of brutality and

violence which one cannot replicate.

Williamson Murray64

At first blush, the Clinton Doctrine appears made to

order for Army transformation. To begin with, there is the

balanced Shape-Respond-Prepare approach to the full

spectrum of operations, a rich source of experimentation for

the Interim Force as it moves toward the versatile Objective

Force. That very versatility can ensure that the Army

remains the most relevant and effective force for shaping

the international environment. Added to this are the

transformation products of increased deployability,

lethality, and sustainability which can provide the Army a

rapid response capability across the full spectrum of

operations as a warfighting force and a strategic deterrent.

Prior to conflict, this force capability can also buy U.S.

authorities critical time for analysis and assessment as well

as impart a synergism to other diplomatic, economic, and

political crisis resolution tools. The problem is that this

balanced Shape-Respond-Prepare approach is a good

defense strategy only if it is adequately resourced. If not, it

can be disastrous, particularly in the absence of clearly

articulated priorities on where to place emphasis and where

to accept or manage risk. In that kind of environment,

trying to square the means-end circle of full spectrum

dominance has left the services in a position in their

transformation efforts, as Andrew Krepenivich has

described it, “of trying to create bricks without straw.”65

This has been particularly hard on the Army which, in its

pursuit of post-Cold War relevancy, has been hoisted with

its own petard of accepting the concept of full spectrum

dominance—a dilemma nicely summarized by General

Dubik:

Crises arise and we cannot say “no” to the National Command

Authority. If the President says, “Go to Kosovo,” we do not say,

“Gee, we are kind of busy.” And when he says, “Remember,

besides Bosnia you have to train for major theater war,” we do

64
not say “Hey, we could sure use a break.” If things heat up in

East or Southwest Asia, the call is not, “Are you ready?” It is

simply “Go.”66

The result of all this is an environment in which it is

difficult to effect fundamental transformation. Certainly

the current operational tempo (OPTEMPO) of the force is a

far cry from the 1920s—a period often cited as a model for

military innovation. “It is not about money,” one DoD

official commented in this regard. “They were as poor as

church mice, but their best minds had time on their hands,

figuring out where to go. A lot of talent was geared toward

developing new doctrine. Today our personnel don’t think

about these kinds of issues.”67 For the Army, this lack of

organizational slack is particularly significant. In a recent

war game played in preparation for QDR 2001, for example,

an interim division was used in the later years of the game

period. The conclusion was that the Army is and will be the

most highly used of the services across the entire spectrum

of operations.68

A key ingredient of the Army’s problem is the emphasis

in the Clinton Doctrine on maintaining world order and

stability—“policing democracy’s empire” in a chaotic

post-Cold War world while preparing for the larger and

longer term regional and near-peer threats.69 By doing both,

as Harold Winton has illustrated with the interwar British

experience, it makes it extremely difficult at the political

and military leadership levels to transform an army.70

Although the British had established the Royal Tank

Corps as early as 1923, the continuing demands on the

Army as a constabulary force to maintain the empire slowly

drained funds from new equipment and training, thus

diminishing incentives for new doctrinal thinking. Added to

this was a regimental system that further inhibited

innovation with a requirement for a 1-to-1 ratio of home

units to those policing the imperial domains. The result was

the uninterrupted decline of the British armored forces

until the beginning of World War II.71

65
At the political level, the resultant diminution of the

army’s capability to conduct high-tech major theater war on

the continent led to the so-called Ten Year Rule, which

assumed “that the British Empire will not be engaged in any

war during the next 10 years, and that no Expeditionary

Force is required to this purpose. . . .”72 The automatic

annual renewal through 1932 of this assumption left the

British ripe for appeasement of the emerging peer threat in

Nazi Germany and set the stage for the strategy of limited

liability on the continent.73 Under that strategy, the

government’s priorities for an army viewed primarily as a

colonial police force were protection of the British Isles and

the trade routes, garrisoning the empire, and, finally,

cooperating to defend Britain’s allies—but only after

meeting the other commitments. “Our contributions by

land,” Neville Chamberlain announced to his colleagues

upon assuming office in spring 1937, “should be on a limited

scale.”74

Not surprisingly, the Powell Doctrine pervades the

philosophy for the use of force in the new administration.

For the new National Security Adviser, U.S. national

interests must be the primary basis for such use. “It takes

courage to set priorities.” As for the Clinton Doctrine: “If

priorities and intent are not clear, they cannot be

criticized.”75 President Bush was equally adamant, pointing

out that he would avoid “missions without end” and not send

troops “to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide” outside U.S.

national interests. “Nor do I think we ought to try to be the

peacekeepers all around the world,” he concluded. “When

America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the

goal must be clear, and the victory must be

overwhelming.”76

The adoption of this more selective global engagement

was accompanied by a well-publicized campaign for DoD

transformation with the goal of obtaining dramatic

improvements of military effectiveness at reduced cost. To

this end, the President announced that he had given

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld “a broad mandate to

66
challenge the status quo as we design a new architecture for

the defense of America. . . . Our goal is to move beyond

marginal improvements to harness new technologies that

will support a new strategy.”77 Implicit in this type of

accelerated approach to transformation is the existence of

greater short-term risk for a long-term payoff which only

intensifies the paradox of the investment-divestment

tensions between the Legacy Force and Objective Force. On

the one hand, there is the question of whether the new

technology will mature quickly enough to meet the Army’s

ambitious transformation schedule. On the other, there is

the approaching obsolescence of many of the Army’s

systems—one of the reasons for the acceleration to 2010 of

the Federal Communication Service (FCS) fielding

objective, which in turn brings the question full circle back

to the speed of technology maturation.78

In all this, the Army’s position remains that there is a

need to maintain a substantive Legacy Force in order to

hedge against such uncertainties. It is a position that is not

helped by the well-publicized recapitalization effort for that

force with the 155 mm Crusader howitzer, a weapons

system so heavy, in a time of increased deployability

emphasis, that an Air Force C-5 will not be able to carry both

the gun and its supply vehicle. For some, this smacks of a

“Colonel Blimp”-like reaction to change, typical of military

inertia and epitomized by the British officer in the interwar

years who insisted on maintaining the horse in the artillery

and cavalry “because thereby you will keep up the high

standard of intelligence in the man from his association

with the horse.”79 From this perspective, as Eliot Cohen

points out, only a “ruthless retirement” of obsolete

hardware will demonstrate “that Washington is finally

serious about the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs.’”80 But the

services are also aware of the dangers in switching

modernization funds. In 1994, for example, the Navy offered

to drop below the authorized size of the fleet to free funds for

developing future capabilities. Instead, the projected

savings were used to reduce budget shortfalls—a lesson

67
that was not lost on service chiefs when QDR discussions

began.81

Such pressures are to be expected in the absence of major

threats, after years of deferred modernization and

readiness problems, and given such administration

priorities as national missile defense. In that environment,

there is a natural temptation to focus on “revolutionary”

concepts and technology at the expense of the Legacy Force.

Certainly, there is always the danger that a legacy force can

mitigate the transforming potential of new technology. The

French cavalry in the interwar years, for instance, simply

absorbed the new machines of war into the old doctrine.

Rather than allowing the characteristics of the new

technology to serve as a basis for creating new doctrine and

organizations, the French leaders created missions that

remained within the old framework. As a consequence,

tanks became subordinate and supporting weapons to the

infantry and the cavalry—“a strange hodgepodge of oats,

history and oil. . . .”82

The Interim Force can do much to mitigate such

developments by demonstrating that RMAs can come about

not just by transforming all elements of the force, but by

identifying and exploiting synergies between the old and

the new. The German Army between the World Wars offers

a striking example of this—using experimentation to

determine what new systems and capabilities would be

needed, what legacy systems and capabilities should be

sustained, and what kind of mix of the two should be

created. For example, legacy systems such as artillery were

motorized to support the tanks. And great care was taken to

include the right mix of new capabilities such as airborne,

close air support and radio communication with such legacy

capabilities as engineer and logistics in order to produce

optimum capabilities for mechanized air-land operations.

In this regard, even the considerable resistance by the

German Army leaders to the Armor idea proved fortuitous.

“All nonsense, my dear Guderian, all nonsense,” von

Rundstedt commented to the father of German armor at the

68
end of a tank field exercise in the late 1930s.83 As a result,

the German Army followed a conservative program that

focused on traditional formations and the placement of

armored force development within the structure of regular

army doctrine and conventional military forces. By staying

within this combined arms structure, traditional German

doctrine provided the broad framework for the development

of panzer divisions and for the infantry and artillery to

extend the tank’s potential.

The Doctrinal Combination.

Using the American armed forces as the world’s “911” will

degrade capabilities, bog soldiers down in peacekeeping roles,

and fuel concern among the great powers that the United

States has decided to enforce notions of “limited sovereignty”

worldwide in the name of humanitarianism.

Condoleezza Rice84

The ascendancy of the more selective engagement of the

Powell Doctrine in the new administration should not be

overemphasized in terms of Army transformation.

Americans associate themselves with Thomas Jefferson

and Woodrow Wilson, not Niccolo Machiavelli and Klemens

von Metternich. In the click of a TV switch or a “mouse,” the

American public can be face-to-face with the realities of the

post-Cold War world. The new President may choose his use

of force at the lower end of the operations spectrum more

consistently and effectively than his predecessor. What he

cannot do is choose not to choose. The new environment is

much more than just a balance of power world. In one way or

another, as General Powell acknowledges, the United

States cannot avoid the full spectrum of the Clinton

Doctrine.

For the Army, the most critical area on that spectrum

that is not addressed by transformation is peace operations.

As the recent experiences in both Bosnia and Kosovo

demonstrate, conflict termination in smaller-scale

69
contingencies in the new environment normally requires

long-term peace enforcement, usually provided by ground

troops, for conflict resolution. Given the charter of Army

transformation, there is little to be gained in terms of

technology, doctrine and organization experimentation by

using the Interim Force in peace operations. Army

transformation documents make much of physical and

mental agility and versatility that support “seamless

transitions between benign and hostile environments,” but

admit that how that is to be accomplished “is not

self-evident.”85 The fact remains that the transformed Army

as currently envisioned will not solve the dichotomy

between peace operations and warfighting in terms of

readiness and training; nor will it ease the problem of

OPTEMPO even under the most selective implementation

of the Powell doctrine. Only by expanding the

transformation effort to consider such experimental

concepts as a two-force army will the process face the full

force implications of the crossover between the Powell and

Clinton Doctrines.86

Peace operations are symptomatic of the problems of

trying to incorporate the two use of force doctrines into a

coherent strategy. There is general agreement that some

form of transformation must occur if the United States is to

maintain its military superiority into the future. Joint

Vision 2020 provides a broad picture of that future, but little

guidance concerning the objectives, pace and requirements.

In particular, the new administration will have to address

the specific objectives that should guide transformation and

the degree of urgency for pursuing the process in order to

articulate a defense strategy. Decisions on what will be

required in terms of investment and divestiture will be

required for programming guidance. Finally, there must be

risk accountability associated with the objectives, pace and

requirements established in pursuit of transformation. A

policy of accelerated transformation will have to account for

any additional risks concerning the ability of the U.S.

military to meet near- and mid-term requirements such as

70
warfighting. On the other hand, in the event of a more

modest transformation effort, there will be a need to account

for any risks in the ability of the U.S. armed forces to deal

with future challenges. In any event, “ad hocism” will not do;

there must be an overarching framework to reconcile the

two doctrines. “Case-by-caseism, even if done competently,

is simply inadequate,” Richard Haass points out in this

regard. “ . . . . You pay a real price for not having a grand

strategy.”87

Another aspect of Joint Vision 2020 that has an impact

on Army transformation is that the document discourages

jointness by preserving each service’s distinct interests with

its discrete separations of the concepts of Dominant

Maneuver and Precision Engagement. The result is a

bifurcated intellectual revolution with competitive, not

complementary, traditions in the form of maneuver theory

developed from Blitzkrieg doctrine and precision strike

theory derived from interwar strategic bombing theory. All

this only encourages each service to pursue its separate

path across the spectrum of operations, even to the point of

perfecting concepts beyond the point of meaningful joint

contribution and at the expense of other services. In the end,

there is a critical requirement to bring together the separate

paths of the intellectual revolution. Joint experimentation

needs to go beyond interoperability and the current service

“seams” to exploit integration, synergies, and interdependence in order to create and explore joint capabilities that do

not currently exist. In a time of limited resources, without

new joint operational concepts and architecture, the way

the United States fights will not be fully transformed.88

For the Army, a Defense-wide approach to transformation is axiomatic. More than any other member of the armed

forces, the Army is dependent in fundamental ways on

change within the other services. A transformed Army, for

example, will have far greater reliance in the future on

remote forces and strategic mobility provided outside its

organization. As a result, the Army continues to emphasize

that in the transformation process, “the Services must

71
become more interdependent” and that this

interdependence “is achieved through the deliberate,

mutual reliance on the capabilities of other Services to

maximize the synergy of the joint force while minimizing its

vulnerabilities. . . .”89 At the same time, there is a

recognition that Joint Forces Command has not yet become

the authoritative voice on transformation in the context of

both force development and joint experimentation.

Moreover, the commanders in chief of the unified commands

deal primarily with current threats and thus have a

relatively short-term focus compared to the services, which

have the responsibility for the long-term equipping and

training of the force. In this context, continued Army

experimentation can provide key input to what will have to

become a joint venture in order, as the Army recognizes, for

a complete transformation process to occur.90

There has been a sense of urgency to that experimentation since the outset of the Army transformation

effort—the idea, in General Shinseki’s words, that there is

only “a narrow window,” that “these conditions will not last

for very long.”91 Part of that urgency, of course, has to do

with the growing obsolescence of the Legacy Force. But

much of it also has to do with the sense of ubiquitous and

rapid technological change leavened by the understanding

that technology can only provide the promise of innovation,

that it does not determine the process of change. That can

only come from the top—a process hindered by the

maximum 4-year tenure of an Army Chief of Staff.92 In those

circumstances, it is difficult to find time to create a

transformation vision and attract a hard core of innovators

in the spirit of General Sir John Burnett-Stuart, who wrote

to the British War Office in the 1920s that his experimental

armored forces should be connected with “many

enthusiastic experts and visionaries . . . ; it doesn’t matter

how wild their views are if only they have a touch of divine

fire. I will supply the common sense of advanced middle

age.”93 All this the Chief of Staff has set in train. The more

difficult task is to institutionalize a process that can achieve

72
his vision. “Much of what we are up against,” General Dubik

points out, “is not technology but mindsets, institutional

obstacles. . . . Part of what we are doing involves breaking

the bureaucracy and rebuilding it for the new force.”94

Conclusion.

“Continuity” must reign over those principles, practices and

organizations that remain useful; “change” over those

variables that have lost their utility.

James M. Dubik95

The combination of the Powell and Clinton Doctrines

will facilitate the interaction referred to by General Dubik

as the Army moves forward in the transformation process.

Taken singly, each doctrine could have adverse effects on

that process. With just the Clinton approach, there would be

little chance for the Interim Force to influence the Objective

Force, because it would be consumed in helping a legacy

constabulary force to spread indiscriminately across the

operations spectrum in the endless service of world order.

Under these circumstances, it would be difficult to make

any substantial divestiture or to find time or incentive to

change organization, concepts and doctrine. On the other

hand, the Powell Doctrine when taken alone could cause the

RMA to become too narrowly focused on the Holy Grail of

future peer threats, ignoring more immediate asymmetrical

challenges throughout the entire spectrum of operations. In

that type of situation, there would be fewer opportunities to

try out full Interim Force improvements in organization and

doctrine and more chance for premature divestiture of the

Legacy Force.

In combination, the two doctrines have had a positive

effect on Army transformation. There is the reminder from

the Clinton Doctrine of the worth of shaping and responding

in terms of deterrence and compellance, all of which can be

achieved in a safer and more capable manner with the

initial combination of Interim and Legacy forces and,

73
eventually, with the Objective Force. Added to this is the

fact that the full operational spectrum is a permanent

fixture of the new environment, and that by orienting

against threats across this spectrum, the Army will develop

a more versatile and agile Objective Force that can provide

the NCA more options and will thereby improve the chances

of “getting it right” in the transformation process. From the

Powell Doctrine, there is the reminder that absent

prioritization, the characteristics of the Objective Force

may only ensure the equivalent of a more speedy dispatch of

Custer and his troops to Little Big Horn. Moreover, there is

also the emphasis on restraint with the fascination

concerning the technological revolution—that, in fact,

technology is not a panacea for the use of military force and

needs to be disciplined by the concomitant development of

doctrine and organization and the realities of committing

landpower in force intervention. In the end, the net result

has been to reinforce the three-force Army initiative for

achieving acceptable transformation risk in the near-, mid-,

and long-term.

This is an essentially conservative approach to a

revolutionary process. But it has the merit of using the

synergism of change and continuity to maximum effect.96

Moreover, in a time of resource constraints, by initially

transforming a small part of the force and linking it to the

past and present, the process has avoided creating two

armies, an important aspect of congressional relations as

transformation proceeds. Most importantly, Army

transformation has stirred important debates—in sharp

contrast to the French experience in the interwar years

when the High Command would not allow dissenting

opinion on doctrine. “Everybody got the message,” André

Beaufre noted in his memoirs, “and a profound silence

reigned until the awakening of 1940.”97 Equally important,

there has been little of the strident advocacy in either camp

like that of J. F. C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart in interwar

Britain, which exacerbated the split between the innovators

and the large mass of professional soldiers, thus assuring

74
that the ideas of the innovators played a decreasing role in

the preparation of British ground forces for the next

conflict.98 In any event, the current debates on Army

transformation reflect a positive interest in the process of

change which is always a good thing. In the interwar United

States, where there was no interest for the most part in the

military, there was no pressure to change. In the case of the

American horse cavalry, this resulted in tacit permission for

the cavalry professional to romanticize an increasingly

untenable situation in the most mechanized nation in the

world.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3

1. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, W. K. Marriott, trans., Vol. 23,

The Great Books of the Western World, Chicago: Encyclopedia

Britannica, Inc., 1952, p. 9.

2. Douglas A. Macgregor, “Transformation and the Illusion of

Change, ” National Security Studies Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 4, Autumn

2000, p. 111. See also Steven Kosiak, Andrew Krepinevich, and Michael

Vickers, A Strategy for a Long Peace, Washington, DC: Center for

Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, January 2001, p. 9; and James S.

Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg. Hans von Seeckt and German Military

Reform, Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1992.

3. Michele Flournoy, Project Director, Report of the National

Defense University Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 Working Group,

Washington, DC: National Defense University Institute for National

Strategic Studies, November 2000, p. 14. “Like the idea that a

revolution in military affairs is taking place,” Steve Metz has pointed

out, “the contention that the U.S. military must undertake

transformation sped from introduction to canon with little debate.”

Steven Metz, American Strategy: Issues and Alternatives for the

Quadrennial Defense Review, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies

Institute, U.S. Army War College, September 2000, p. 32. The Defense

Science Board defines transformation as a change that is focused on

military operations, managed by the organization itself and aimed

toward the “very big change” implicit in an RMA, the pursuit of which

involves “fundamental changes in military capabilities including new

doctrines, operational concepts and organizational structure.” Report of

the Defense Science Board Task Force on DoD Warfighting

Transformation, Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of

Defense for Acquisition and Technology, August 1999, pp. 5-6. On the

75
characteristics of RMAs, see Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Cavalry to

Computer. The Pattern of Military Revolutions,” The National Interest,

Fall 1994, p. 30. On skepticism concerning the RMA hypothesis, see

Michael O’Hanlon, Technological Change and the Future of Warfare,

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000, Chapter 2.

4. Nevertheless, the CSA urged, it was necessary for everyone to get

on board the transformation project: “You can’t wring your hands and

roll your sleeves up at the same time.” General Eric K. Shinseki, address

to the Eisenhower Luncheon, 45th Annual Meeting of the Association of

the U.S. Army, October 12, 1999. See also Final Draft, January 17, 2001,

unclassified TRADOC study, The Foundation of Army Transformation

and the Objective Force Concept, p. 1.

5. James Dubik, “IBCT at Fort Lewis,” Military Review, Vol. LXXX,

No. 5, September-October 2000, p. 18.

6. Elting Morison, Men, Machines, and Modern Times, Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press, 1966, p. 208.

7. Ibid., p. 36.

8. Richard J. Dunn, III, “Transformation: Let’s Get it Right This

Time, ” Parameters, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 22-23.

9. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force, p. 13. See also

Foundation of Army Transformation, p. 12. For other Service

transformation activities, see Ibid., pp. 14-16. See also Metz, pp. 19-20;

and Stephen P. Aubin, “Stumbling Toward Transformation: How the

Services Stack Up,”Strategic Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring 2000, p. 39.

10. “People who control the purse strings might get a misperception

of the Army’s contribution to this effort,” one Army official commented.

“We were ready to go on the ground. That option was taken off the table

for political reasons. It had nothing to do with readiness.” James N.

Thurman, “After Kosovo, U.S. Air Force and Army in a Tug of War,” The

Christian Science Monitor, p. 2.

11. See, for example, Daniel Verton, “Army Battles Irrelevancy,”

Federal Computer Week, November 15, 1999; and John Barry and Evan

Thomas, “Not Your Father’s Army," Newsweek, November 22, 1999, pp.

49-52. For more recent linkage of Kosovo to the Army’s strategic

relevancy, see A Strategy for a Long Peace, p. 29. On the probable

impetus of Kosovo to transformation efforts by General Shinseki, the

former top Army leader in Europe and commander of NATO forces in

Bosnia, see Frederick Barnes, “Washington Looks at Kosovo’s Lessons,”

76
Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, Vol. 27, No. 7, July 1999,

pp. 13-14.

12. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre’s August 4, 1999,

speech to the University of Chicago Law School’s symposium on “The

Future of the U.S. Military Presence in Europe.” Colin Clark and George

Seffers, “Hamre to U.S. Army: Rethink Future War Strategy,” Defense

News, Vol. 14, No. 35, September 6, 1999, p. 6. Retired Lieutenant

General Thomas Rhame, the commander of the 1st Infantry Division in

Operation DESERT STORM, was not receptive to the message: “The

current trend seems to be to say the Army is not relevant, but I’m not

willing to respond too warmly to all this relevancy crap until someone is

prepared to guarantee me what the threat will be in the future.” Ibid.

13. Dubik, p. 23.

14. Foundation of Army Transformation, pp. 15, 45.

15. Defense Science Board Task Force, p. 27. See also Ibid., p. 20; and

Krepinevich, p. 31.

16. Dubik, p. 18. All those involved in the Army transformation

process are, as Michael Howard long ago pointed out in words similar to

Dubik’s,

like a sailor navigating by dead reckoning....

Occasionally there is a break in the clouds: a small-scale

conflict occurs somewhere and gives you a “fix” by

showing whether certain weapons and techniques are

effective or not: but it is always a doubtful mix. . . . For the

most part you have to sail on in a fog of peace until at the

last moment. Then, probably when it is too late, the

clouds lift and there is land immediately ahead; breakers,

probably, and rocks. Then you find out rather late in the

day whether your calculations have been right or not.

Michael Howard, “Military Science in An Age of Peace,” Journal of the

Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI), No. 119,

March 1974, p. 4.

17. Dubik, p. 17.

18. Michael Mehaffey, “Vanguard of the Objective Force,” Military

Review, Vol. 80, No. 5, September/October 2000, pp. 6-7; Strategy for a

Long Peace, p. 30; and Sean D. Naylor, “Stealthy, Fast, Lethal. Objective

Force Will Require Changes in Training and Doctrine,” Army Times,

March 19, 2001, p. 10.

77
19. Dubik, p. 19.

20. Foundation of Army Transformation, p. 43. Even the often

critical A Strategy for a Long Peace, p. 9, acknowledges that “any

strategy must also preserve the U.S. military’s ability to defend

America’s global interests throughout the entire transformation period,

which could run a decade or longer.”

21. Mehaffey, pp. 7-8, 16.

22. Flournoy, p. 14; and Louis Caldera and Antulio J. Echevarria,

“The Strategy—Resource Mismatch,” Armed Forces International,

March 2001, p. 32. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office

estimates that just to keep the armed services at their current status

will require a $51 billion annual increase in DoD funding—a figure that

did not include an estimate of approximately $60 to 100 billion for

National Missile Defense. Gordon R. Sullivan, “No Easy Fixes,” Ibid., p.

36.

23. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses

of History for Decision-Makers, New York: The Free Press, 1986, pp.

255-256. But see Edward L. Katzenbach, Jr., “The Horse Cavalry in the

Twentieth Century,” Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, eds., The Use

of Force, Military Power and International Politics, 4th ed., Lanham,

MD: University Press of America, 1993, p. 180, who believes that it is

precisely because the military profession deals with life and death

matters that it should be utterly ruthless in discarding the old for the

new.

24. A. J. Bacevich, “Preserving the Well-Bred Horse,” The National

Interest, Fall 1994, p. 44. See also A Strategy for a Long Peace, p. 30.

25. Foundation of Army Transformation, p. 14. See also Andrew F.

Krepinevich, “Why No Transformation?” Joint Force Quarterly, No. 23,

Autumn/Winter 1999-2000, p. 100; and Dubik, p. 18, who also notes the

need to retain some of the current Legacy Force as a “hedge against

potential trouble” even as the Army transforms:

North Korea has not gone away; Southwest Asia has not

gone away; the requirements for those forces around the

world have not gone away. And so we cannot erode this

capability; we need to keep that warfighting capability,

the forced entry capability. We have to keep upgrading,

recapitalizing, investing in these forces to maintain our

superiority over any potential enemy while we are

78
developing the organizations, doctrine and equipment

that will replace them.

26. The Army asked that the report be put on hold until there could

be discussions with the USGAO. Kim Burger, “Army Officials Object to

Aspect of GAO’s Transformation Report,” Inside the Army, March 5,

2001, p. 1.

27. Robert Nolin, “New Army To Be Faster, More Mobile Chief of

Staff Tells Broward Convention,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, March

2, 2001, p. 1.

28. Chris Strohm, “Shinseki Says More Money Will Be Added For

Transformation,” Inside the Army, March 5, 2001, p. 13.

29. Ibid.

30. Matthew Cox, “Off Track? Plan for Medium-Weight Force Has

Skeptics Among Tankers,” Army Times, November 8, 1999; “Helo

Supporters Concerned About Aviation’s Role in the ‘New Army,’” Inside

the Army, October 25, 1999; and Barry and Thomas, p. 52.

31. One retired general, referring to the traditional Army belief in

the need for organic deep strike capabilities, termed the on-going

evolution of the interim and objective forces as “violating the paradigm.”

Daniel Dupont, “Observers Surprised by Army’s Decision to Kill

ATACMS Block IIA,” Inside the Army, January 6, 2000, p. 7.

32. Aubin, p. 47. Aubin, the Director of Policy and Communications

for the Air Force Association, goes on to accuse the Army of being

intellectually mired in the past, “focused on the idea of closing with the

enemy—be it with heavy or lighter forces—even if the enemy might be

destroyed from the air or sea before the Army arrives.” Ibid., p. 40.

33. Hunter Keeter, “Commandant Seeks Inter-Service Discussion

Over Expeditionary Roles, Missions,” Defense Daily, October 31, 2000,

Vol. 208, Issue 21, p. 1.

34. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey, New

York: Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 561.

35. George Shultz, “Terrorism and the Modern World,” October 25,

1984, Speech, Department of State Bulletin, No. 84, 2093, December

1984, pp. 14-17; and Turmoil and Triumph. My Years as Secretary of

State, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993, p. 649. Powell, from his

“perch in the Pentagon," believed that with the Marine deployment to

Beirut, the United States was “sticking its hand into a

79
thousand-year-old hornet’s nest with the expectations that our mere

presence might pacify the hornets.” Powell, p. 281. Shultz, in Powell’s

estimate, was “often ready to commit America’s military might even in a

no-man’s land like Lebanon.” With Shultz, it was always the same

question: “What was the point of maintaining a military force if you did

not whack somebody occasionally to demonstrate your power?” Ibid., p.

92.

36. Caspar W. Weinberger, “The Uses of Military Power,” Defense

’85, January 1985, p. 10. For Powell’s involvement as Weinberger’s

Military Assistant in the draft doctrine, see Powell, p. 92.

37. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 650, 646.

38. Bob Woodward, The Commanders, New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1991, p. 356. “The military is finished in this society,"

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney warned, “if we screw this up.” Ibid., p.

324.

39. George Bush, “The Use of Military Force: The President’s

Difficult Choice,” Defense Issues, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1993, pp. 2-3. See also

Kenneth J. Campbell, “Once Burned, Twice Cautious: Explaining the

Weinberger—Powell Doctrine,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 24, No.

3, Spring 1998, pp. 366-367; Richard N. Haass, Intervention: The Use of

American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World, Washington, DC:

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1994, pp. 69, 76; and

Charles A. Stevenson, “The Evolving Clinton Doctrine on the Use of

Force,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 22, No. 4, Summer 1996, p. 516.

40. Richard Nixon, No More Vietnams, New York: Avon Books, 1985,

p. 224. But see Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical

Years in the Pentagon, New York: Warner Books, 1990, p. 159, who still

believed 16 years later that the combination of diplomacy and the

military was dangerous because it implied that “we should not hesitate

to put a battalion or so of American forces in various places in the world

where we desired... stability, or changes in government or support of

governments or whatever else.” See also Jeffrey Record, “WeinbergerPowell Doctrine Doesn’t Cut It,” The U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings,

Vol. 126, No. 172, October 2000, p. 36.

41. John McCain, “Renewing American Foreign Policy: Values and

Strategy,” Brown Journal of World Affairs, Summer/Fall 1998, p. 54.

See also Jeffrey Record, “A Note on Interests, Values, and the Use of

Force,” Parameters, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 17, 20.

80
42. Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal, New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1999, p. 1072. See also Record, “Weinberger-Powell Doctrine

Doesn’t Cut It,” p. 36.

43. All quotes from Colin Powell, “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead,”

Foreign Affairs, Winter 1992/93, pp. 36, 39. For more on this evolving

aspect of Powell’s thoughts, see DoD, Joint Pub. 3-0: Doctrine for Joint

Operations, Washington, DC: JCS, 1993, pp. I-3, I-4, published 3 weeks

before his retirement as Chairman.

44. Powell’s remarks at the National Press Club, September 28,

1993, Stevenson, p. 513.

45. Powell, “U.S. Forces,” pp. 37-38.

46. Original emphasis. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael

Howard and Peter Paret, eds., Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1976, p. 92. For Powell’s admiration of Clausewitz based on studies at

the National War College, see Powell, My American Journey, p. 200.

47. Powell, “U.S. Forces,” p. 40. In 1992, General Barry McCaffrey,

then working for the JCS, testified before Congress that the Joint Chiefs

chaired by Powell had concluded that a military intervention in Bosnia

would be more difficult than the Vietnam conflict, and that 400,000

ground troops, coupled with a year-long bombing campaign, would be

required to defeat the Bosnian Serbs. Lawrence J. Korb, “The Use of

Force,” The Brookings Review, Spring 1997, Vol. 15, No. 2, p. 24. One

Admiral labeled the Powell Doctrine as “the Never-Again Club,"

referring to the Army’s fear of repeating the Vietnam experience.

Thomas E. Ricks, “Colin Powell’s Doctrine on Use of Military Force is

Now Being Questioned by Senior U.S. Officers,” Wall Street Journal,

August 30, 1998, p. A12. In early 1994, former President Bush stated

that when he was in office, Cheney and Powell had both warned that an

intervention in Bosnia might require 250,000 U.S. troops and still not

succeed in its mission. Stevenson, p. 516.

48. William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement

and Enlargement, Washington, DC: The White House, February 1995,

p. 13:

Have we considered nonmilitary means that offer a

reasonable chance of success? Is there a clearly defined,

achievable mission? What is the environment of risk we

are entering? What is needed to achieve our goals? What

are the potential costs—both human and financial—of

the engagement? Do we have reasonable assurance of

81
support from the American people and their elected

representatives? Do we have timelines and milestones

that will reveal the extent of success or failure, and, in

either case, do we have an exit strategy?

49. Korb, p. 24. See, for example, the President’s November 27,

1995, address after the Dayton Accords, in which he stated that the

mission would be “precisely defined, with clear realistic goals that can

be achieved in a definite period of time.” “Presidential Address to the

Nation," The Washington Post, November 28, 1995, p. A8.

50. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and General Henry

Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Statement on

Kosovo After-Action Review,” Senate Armed Services Committee,

October 14, 1999, p. 27. The SACEUR later commented on the pressure

not to lose aircraft over Serbia: “The headlines began to shout, ‘NATO

loses a second aircraft,’ and the people ask, ‘How long can this go on?’”

Wesley K. Clark, “The United States and NATO: The Way Ahead,”

Parameters, Vol. XXIX, No. 4, Winter 1999-2000, pp. 8-9. See also

Jeffrey Record, “Force-Protection Fetishism. Sources, Consequences,

and (?) Solutions,” Aerospace Power Journal, Vol. XIV, No. 2, Summer

2000, p. 5; Andrew J. Bacevich, “Policing Utopia,” The National Interest,

No. 56, Summer 1999, p. 6; and Andrew P. N. Erdmann, “The U.S.

Presumption of Quick, Costless Wars,” Orbis, Summer 1999, p. 380.

51. John Correll, “The Threshold of War,” Air Force Magazine,

February 2001, p. 2; and Bacevich, “Policing Utopia,” p. 7.

52. Lawrence F. Kaplan, “How to Send a ‘Message’: Use AT&T, Not

USAF,” Wall Street Journal, December 23, 1998, p. A14.

53. Blaine Harden and John M. Broder, “Clinton’s Aims: Win the

War, Keep the U.S. Voters Content,” New York Times, May 22, 1999, p.

A1; and John T. Correll, “About the Powell Doctrine . . .,” Air Force

Magazine, August 1999, p. 10.

54. Hunter Kiefer, “Hans Mark: Complementary Technologies

Critical to Military Transformation,” Defense Daily, Vol. 207, Issue 2,

July 5, 2000, p. 2. It was a conflict as Senator Joseph Biden pointed out,

designed to demonstrate that dictators “cannot hide behind a border.”

Douglas Waller, “The Three Ifs of a Clinton Doctrine,” Time, Vol. 153,

No. 25, June 28, 1999, p. 35.

55. Bob Davis, “Pledging a ‘Clinton Doctrine’ for Foreign Policy

Creates Consensus for Adversaries and Allies Alike,” Wall Street

Journal, August 6, 1999, p. A12; Doyle McManus, “U.S. Casts About for

82
Anchor in Waters of Post-Cold War World,” The Los Angeles Times,

March 27, 2000, p. A6; and Robert Manning, “The Clinton Doctrine:

More Spin Than Reality,” The Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1999, p.

2.

56. Jonathan Rauch, “Two Cheers for the Clinton Doctrine,”

National Journal, Vol. 32, Issue 22, May 27, 2000, p. 1665.

57. Barnes, pp. 13-14.

58. Bacevich, “Policing Utopia,” p. 10. “In this last annual threat

assessment of the twentieth century,” the Director of Central

Intelligence testified on February 2, 1999, “I must tell you that U.S.

citizens and interests are threatened in many arenas and across a wide

spectrum of issues.” Michael T. Klare, ”The Clinton Doctrine,” The

Nation, Vol. 268, No. 14, April 19, 1999, p. 5.

59. “Prosperity is a parent to peace,” Secretary Albright announced

at her confirmation on January 8, 1997. Moreover, she added, “we know

that democracy is a parent to peace.” Bacevich, “Policing Utopia,” p. 11.

60. Klare, p. 5.

61. Ibid.

62. Michael Kinsley, “Is There a Doctrine in the House?” The

Washington Post, August 9, 2000, p. A25.

63. Richard N. Haass, “The Squandered Presidency. Demanding

More from the Commander-in-Chief,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 3,

May/June 2000, p. 139; and Charles Krauthammer, “The Clinton

Doctrine,” Time, Vol. 153, No. 13, April 5, 1999, p. 88.

64. Williamson Murray, “Innovation Past and Future,” Williamson

Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar

Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1966, p. 301.

65. Andrew Krepenivich, Address to the U.S. Army War College,

January 31, 2001. See also Flournoy, p. 19; Caldera and Echevarria, p.

32; and Donald Latham, “Defense Science Board Views on Army

Transformation for 21st Century Warfare,” Army AL&T, pp. 8-9.

66. Dubik, p. 23.

67. Gail Kaufman, “Futurists Say Pentagon Still Lagging On Its

Future Weapons Development,” Stars and Stripes Omnimedia,

January 22, 2001, p. 2. See also Defense Science Board Task Force, p. 17.

83
68. “Dynamic Commitment III” was the third in a series of four

games designed to help craft the QDR. “War Games Show Army Used

Extensively in Meeting Security Strategy," Inside the Army, February 5,

2001, p. 1. See also A Strategy for a Long Peace, p. 21.

69. A Strategy for a Long Peace, p. 10.

70. Harold Winton, To Change an Army. General Sir John

Burnett-Stuart and British Armored Doctrine, Lawrence, KS:

University of Kansas Press, 1988.

71. The Cardwell regimental system had been introduced in 1868

specifically to balance imperial policy demands with those of the

continental commitment. Ibid., pp. 174, 189-190, 228-231; and Thomas

Donnelly, “No End of a Lesson,”The National Interest, Fall 1994, p. 111.

72. Brian Bond, British Military Policy Between the Two World

Wars, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, p. 24.

73. In their annual review for 1926 and repeated in 1927, the British

Chiefs of Staff reported: “We wish to place on record our view that forces

available for Imperial Defense are now reduced to a minimum and are

hardly capable of dealing with the problems that are liable to arise

either singly or simultaneously.” Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of

British Power, New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1972, p.

277. In their annual review for 1932, which caused the government to

end the Ten Year Rule, the Chiefs stated that the Rule had caused a

“terrible deficiency in essential requirements for all three Defense

Services and a consequential inability to fulfill our major

commitments.” Ibid., p. 343. The Ten Year Rule and the

recommendations of the Geddes Report, or Geddes Axe as it was known,

were entirely in keeping with the strong public faith in the League

Covenant’s substitution of collective security for national “swords.”

Bond, p. 27.

74. Williamson Murray, “Armored Warfare: The British, French,

and German Experiences,” Military Innovation in the Interwar Years, p.

10.

75. Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign

Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 1, January/February 2000, p. 46.

76. McManus, p. A6; Rauch, p. 1666; and William Safire, “Exegesis

of Acceptance,” New York Times, August 7, 2000, p. A19.

77. David Bond, “Bush Team Rethinking Military Strategy,”

Aviation Week and Space Technology, March 12, 2001. “Well, the word

84
‘transformation’ is one we hear a lot about,” Secretary Rumsfeld

commented. “. . . . and it is important.” “Interview on U.S. Defense

Policies,” Fox TV, February 11, 2001. The new Secretary of Defense has

a transformation study underway and is also awaiting a study on the

subject from Andrew Marshall, the perennial head of Defense Net

Assessment. One aerospace industry representative only half-jokingly

speculated that the 79-year old Marshall “has had his report written for

10 years. . . .” David Bond,"Change is a Hard Sell to General, Admirals,"

Aviation Week and Space Technology, March 12, 2001, p. 66.

78. Neil Baumgardner, “Army Official Warns of Approaching Block

Obsolescence,” Defense Daily, March 7, 2001, p. 4; and Richard Hart

Sinnreich, “Hedging Army Transformation Need Not Impede It,” The

Lawton Constitution, March 11, 2001, p. 4.

79. Donnelly, p. 110. See also Barry and Thomas, p. 49; Katzenbach,

p. 173; and Bacevich, “Preserving the Well-Bred Horse,” p. 43, who

asserts that if the RMA is left in the hands of the military, “the chief

product of this revolution will be to perpetuate elements of the status

quo most cherished by the military profession, ignoring altogether

change with which the military is uncomfortable.”

80. Cohen, p. 48.

81. Krepinevich, “Why No Transformation,” p. 100.

82. Katzenbach, p. 179. See also Richard Hart Sinnreich, “Military

Revolutions and Other Popular Concerts,” The Lawton Constitution,

February 4, 2001, p. 4; and Macgregor, p. 111.

83. Murray, “Armored Warfare: The British, French, and German

Experiences,” p. 40. See also Ibid., pp. 17, 42; Williamson Murray and

Allan R. Millett, “Introduction,” Military Innovation in the Interwar

Years, p. 4; Mathew Cooper, The German Army, 1922-1945, New York:

Stein and Day, 1978, pp. 130-158; and Defense Science Board Task

Force, p. 24.

84. Rice, p. 54.

85. Foundation of Army Transformation, pp. 38, 41. See also

Flournoy, pp. 13-14.

86. For examples of such force proposals, see Steven Metz, The

American Army in the Balkans, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies

Institute, U.S. Army War College, January 2001, pp. 36-37; Conrad C.

Crane, Landpower and Crises: Army Roles and Missions in Smaller

Scale Contingencies During the 1990s, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic

85
Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, January 2001, pp. 30-35;

Thomas McNaugher, David Johnson and Jerry Sollinger, “Agility by a

Different Measure. Creating a More Flexible U.S. Army,” Issue Paper,

Santa Monica, CA: Rand Arroyo Center, June 15, 2000, p. 5; James M.

Dubik, “Building a Strategy-based Force Structure,” Landpower Essay

Series, No. 99-10, December 1999, p. 6, who proposes a “prevention and

deterrent force” focused on conventional warfighting in SSCs and

MTWs and an “engagement force” organized by regional theaters. The

reality of an engagement policy, he points out, is that it is “long-term....

The operational ‘model’ of a quick, decisive defeat of an enemy followed

by a withdrawal of military forces does not fit the circumstances

associated with engagement.” Ibid., p. 7; and John C. Hamilton, “U.S.

Army Peace Operations in Kosovo: Time for a Change,” Student

Research Project, USAWC, April 10, 2001, pp. 15-16.

87. McManus, p. A6. See also Flournoy, p. 14. Strategic assessments

in the period between the World Wars influenced military

innovation—more perhaps than any other factor. In all countries, there

was a link between strategic planning and force development in terms of

what each nation considered its likely future military needs. Thus

Hitler emphasized land power and Roosevelt invested in Army and

Navy air. And even in the case of France and Italy where forces were not

created adequate to future needs, the estimates were generally made on

reasonable strategic assessments. Allan R. Millet, “Patterns of Military

Innovation in the Interwar Period,” Military Innovation in the Interwar

Period, p. 342.

88. Antulio Echevarria, “National Strategy and Military

Transformation,” Strategic Studies Institute Newsletter, March 2001,

pp. 3-4; Defense Science Board Task Force, p. 27; and Macgregor, p. 114.

89. Original emphasis. Foundation of Army Transformation, p. 17.

See also Ibid., p. 25; and A Strategy for a Long Peace, p. 15.

90. “‘Jointness’ notwithstanding,” Eliot Cohen concludes concerning

transformation, “the individual services will remain the foundations of

military organization as far as the eye can see.” Eliot A. Cohen,

“Defending America in the Twenty-first Century,” Foreign Affairs, Vol.

79, No. 6, November/December 2000, pp. 51-52. See also, in this regard,

Krepinevich, “Why No Transformation?” p. 101. But see Macgregor, pp.

115-116, who perceives the services as the biggest obstacle to

transformation—an impediment that can only be overcome by

legislation on the scale of the 1947 National Security Act: “So called

transformation programs that occur without significant joint influence

and careful congressional oversight will not change the single-service

warfighting establishments inside the U.S. armed forces.” The Defense

86
Science Board advised Joint Forces Command to hurry up the process

and not wait for perfect solutions. As for everybody else, the board

advised in terms of the new command: “Give it time! Don’t expect

definitive answers early—this is a process, not an event.” Defense

Science Board Task Force, p. 27.

91. Address by General Eric K. Shinseki, February 10, 2000. See

also Dubik, “IBCT at Fort Lewis,” p. 19: “The final product is going to be

in the future, once we get the answer from the science and technology

community. But when the science and technology community comes

forward and says, ‘yes, we can produce it’, we want the change as quickly

as we can.” The Defense Science Board, on the other hand, found no

sense of urgency in DoD transformation efforts. Defense Science Board

Task Force, pp. 10-11. And Andrew Krepinevich has accused DoD of

adopting the “Wells Fargo” approach to transformation: moving in slow

stages. Krepinevich, “Why No Transformation?” p. 97. Others argue

that there is no hurry because of a “strategic breathing space” with no

major threats in the near future. Ivans Eland, “Tilting At Windmills:

Post-Cold War Military Threats to U.S. Security,” Cato Institute Policy

Analysis, No. 32, February 8, 1999; and Metz, p. 42.

92. There are examples, of course, in which such leadership has had

a disastrous impact on the innovation process, such as the tight control

exercised by French generals in the interwar years on every aspect of

army doctrine. Within the context of the World War I experience, the

development of French doctrine made sense. The problem was in the

decision by French military leaders to exclude all differences from

discussions concerning the subject of mobility. Robert Doughty, The

Seeds of Disaster. The Development of French Army Doctrine, Hamden,

CT: Archon Books, 1986, pp. 86, 92; and Williamson Murray,

“Innovation: Past and Future,” Military Innovation in the Interwar

Period, p. 306.

93. Winton, p. 76. See also Millett, “Patterns of Military Innovation

in the Interwar Period,” p. 336. Von Seeckt was successful in his vision of

mobile warfare for the German Army, helped by the Versailles-induced

downsizing, a like-minded successor, and a continuity in military

principles first tested in the mid-19th century German Wars of

Unification. Corum, pp. 29-30, 176; and Echevarria, “National Strategy

and Military Transformations,” p. 3.

94. Dubik, “IBCT at Fort Lewis,” pp. 19-20. See also Dunn, p. 28,

who believes the HTLD failure—the last Army transformation

effort—was due to the failure to transform simultaneously the entire

Army, the institution that had to effect the transformation of the force.

87
95. Dubik, “Building a Strategy-based Force Structure,” p. 1.

96. The “revolutionists” do not see this as a positive attribute.

“Unless you’re willing to risk failure,” Andrew Krepenivich asserts,

“then you’re not likely to get anything but small incremental changes.”

Kaufman, p. 1. His former boss, Andrew Marshall, the long-time head of

DoD Net Assessment, believes that a useful way to deal with the future

is to transform a small part of the armed forces to see if the results work

well instead of a full blown transformation effort. “I think what that

would mean, probably,” he concluded in a virtual description of the

Army process, “is taking some part of the force and beginning to

experiment with new concepts of operation, new kind of weapons

systems.” Ibid. See also Robert Holzer, “Top U.S. Military Strategist

Faults Navy Innovation,” Defense News, February 12, 2001, p. 1, in

which Marshall praised Army efforts. “I like what Shinseki is doing. He

is trying to push the creation of new units. I like the idea of taking a part

of the force and co-evolving it. I wish the other services were doing

something similar.”

97. André Beaufre, 1940: The Fall of France, New York: Knopf,

1968, p. 43. “These are important debates about not just the Army, but

also the security of the nation.” Dubik, “IBCT at Fort Lewis,” p. 18.

98. The split was so severe that the innovators continued to lack

influence even after the 1939-40 German victories demonstrated the

need for immediate reconsideration of ground tactics. Murray,

“Armored Warfare: The British, French, and German Experiences," p.

24. See also Brian Bond and Martin Alexander, “Liddell Hart and

DeGaulle: The Doctrines of Limited Liability and Mobile Defense,”

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Peter

Paret, ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 598-623.

88
PART II: TRANSFORMATION PLANS

AND BARRIERS

The conference opened with an address by Admiral

(retired) William Owens, former Vice Chairman of the JCS,

entitled “Roadblocks to Transformation: Institutional and

Attitudinal Impediments to Change.” He discounted the

utility of history as a guide to the future, and advocated a

number of radical changes to achieve real and lasting

military reform. He is a firm believer in the potential of a

perceived “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) resulting

from advances in Command, Control, Communication,

Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

(C4ISR). He argued that true transformation is being held

back by service parochialism, leadership without vision,

stovepipe organizations, a lack of jointness, and too much

attachment to old platforms and technologies.

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense James Locher

reinforced Admiral Owens’ emphasis on the need to alter

organizational cultures and the difficulties involved. To

overcome the conservative inertia, low adaptability, and

lack of focus that have stymied previous attempts to reform

the Department of Defense (DoD), Locher outlined a

number of key requirements. These included high-quality

leadership with realistic future visions, a sense of urgency

to overcome complacency, the establishment of a powerful

supporting coalition for reform, and a program to sustain

and protect innovators within DoD. Brigadier General

(retired) Huba Wass de Czege agreed on the importance of

having a clear vision of the pace and direction for change

based on a new strategic orientation. The cost of getting it

wrong can be catastrophic, as demonstrated by France in

1940.

A number of commentators had suggestions for ways to

determine that new strategic orientation. Carl Conetta of

the Project on Defense Alternatives stressed the importance

89
of national economic over military power, and argued for a

true information age organization with a smaller force

structure that deemphasizes global military presence and

shaping. At the other extreme, Professor Andrew Bacevich

of Boston University asserted that America’s global purpose

is to maintain hegemony, and to do so it will need to exploit

new technology to strengthen powerful neo-imperial

military forces. Ralph Peters does not believe Americans

have any such long-term vision, and instead sees the

country as reacting to the widespread turmoil of a

post-colonial era plagued by legacies of bad borders and

Western models inappropriate for emerging nations.

Accordingly, military forces must be flexible and adaptable

enough to perform many missions they would prefer not to

do, including “small, dirty wars."

One panel of the conference consisted of representatives

from the Quadrennial Defense Review offices of each of the

American armed services: Brigadier General Lynn Hartsell

of the Army, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Ehrhard of the Air

Force, Captain Arthur Barber of the Navy, and Colonel

John Priddy of the Marines. They presented briefings on

their own particular approach to transformation. While

there were some similarities in the service positions, such as

in the exploitation of new technology, it was also obvious

that there is no joint vision or unifying approach to

American military reform.

While each service has its own unique perspective on

transformation, the Army has the most comprehensive and

total program for reform. Change is essential to meet a

strategic environment that has replaced the global

confrontation of the Cold War with regional chaos featuring

a full spectrum of threats ranging from terrorists to ballistic

missiles. It is too risky to postpone the process. As George

Marshall said about building up the American Army for

World War II, “Before the war I had time but no money;

when the war started I had money but no time.”

90
Though threats have propagated and become more

varied, certain enduring requirements remain. Joint forces

will still have to be able to deter conflict, dominate

adversaries in violent wars, restore stability after

hostilities, and reassure friends and allies. The transformed

Army will still be able to perform these missions while

providing new and enhanced options for National

Command Authorities (NCAs). This will be accomplished by

sustaining and recapitalizing the current Legacy Force,

fielding a lighter but still lethal Interim Force by 2003, and

developing the Objective Force that will be the culmination

of the transformation effort. The new Army will be of

increased value to decisionmakers by maintaining the

decisive qualities of land power while adding new

capabilities for power projection and strategic speed.

The service understands that more than just equipment

will have to be modernized. Soldiers will need new training

and leaders will have to be educated differently to handle

the increased demands and capabilities of the Objective

Force. Organizations and doctrine will also need revision.

The Transformed Army will combine lethality and

survivability with agility and versatility. Units will arrive

quickly and fully supplied: a brigade within 96 hours, a

division within 120 hours, and five divisions in 30 days.

Because of the new speed of deployability, Army forces will

start the fight earlier and decisively resolve the situation in

about half the time currently projected. Quicker finishes

mean lower casualties, less collateral damage to towns and

infrastructure, and fewer refugees.

As a number of previous commentators had remarked,

these advances cannot occur without significant changes in

military culture. The Army is aware of this, and plans to

change the way the organization thinks and operates. New

command, control, communications, computers,

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR)

technology will make information a new weapon. Forces will

be able to avoid enemy strengths and focus combat power on

vulnerabilities, acting first and finishing decisively with

91
massed effects. Soldiers will need to think in terms of

simultaneous and continuous operations instead of the

sequential planning now utilized. Leaders will have to

nurture an atmosphere encouraging experimentation,

innovation, and calculated risks.

The Objective Force will enhance joint capabilities and

provide theater commanders-in-chief and NCAs with more

options. It will generate power rapidly, and apply it

decisively. It will use precision fires and dominant

maneuver to control ground on a continuous basis, ensure

access for joint and combined forces, and transition rapidly

between operations. With integrated joint systems, it will

“see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.”

The current Army has begun transformation while

maintaining readiness and the ability to be “persuasive in

peace and invincible in war.” New equipment like the

Comanche helicopter is being developed, and the Interim

Brigade Combat Team is undergoing testing. The whole

process can be put at risk, however, if leaders invest poorly,

do not think boldly, delay efforts too long, or allow

fragmentation to occur. The most essential enabler,

therefore, to achieve successful full spectrum transformation, is skillful and visionary leadership.

In contrast to the Army’s emphasis on the new aspects of

its transformation process, the Air Force takes the position

that it has always been an innovative service, and its

continuing efforts in that direction will be a primary driver

for joint force and national security transformation. There

are three key elements leading to major changes in defense:

advanced and innovative stealth and precision technologies, new concepts of operations such as “effects-based”

planning that make use of those technologies, and new joint

organizational structures such as the Joint Force Air

Component Commander.

More than any of the other armed services, the Air Force

has always been focused on technology. It foresees great

advantages to be obtained by the deployment of new

92
surveillance and weapons systems into space, which will

provide the nation impressive global vigilance,

communication, navigation, and precision strike

capabilities. Advances in atmospheric delivery vehicles,

precision munitions, and command and control

mechanisms will yield “order-of magnitude” improvements

in third-dimensional precision engagement and dominant

maneuver that will be applied rapidly and simultaneously

across an entire theater. Even more dramatic changes will

come when directed energy systems will provide “speed of

light” lethal effects. For now, the leap-ahead technologies

necessary to propel and sustain these advances in aerospace

power are embodied in the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter.

However, they must be purchased in enough quantities to

replace today’s aircraft which are becoming increasingly

obsolescent, and fill ten equally capable Aerospace

Expeditionary Forces.

Based upon a glowing assessment of the Air Force’s role

in Operation DESERT STORM and the Balkans, as well as

great optimism about the capabilities of future technology,

the service advocates a number of new concepts for joint

operations. Of all the services, the Air Force has the clearest

vision of how it wants to fight. “Global Reconnaissance

Strike/Global Strike Task Forces” will defeat antiaccess

threats, as F-22s supported by aerial refueling can operate

from bases thousands of miles away from targets. Vaguely

defined “Effects-Based Operations” will better integrate

elements of national power to compel desired political

outcomes in “Coercive Campaigns.” Aggression will be

stopped in “Rapid Halt Operations” that will isolate and

incapacitate enemy forces. “Global Network Centric

Warfare” will enable near real time global force application

to assure access to space and information capabilities while

denying them to adversaries.

While couched in joint terms, these concepts all rely

primarily on exploiting the nation’s overwhelming

superiority in aerospace power, which will be further

enhanced by taking advantage of the ongoing RMA. Stealth

93
and stand-off technology facilitating the joint power projection 

of Global Reconnaissance Strike Forces is the answer to antiaccess threats. All-weather precision engagement can halt

aggression rapidly and ease the deployment and operation of 

follow-on forces. Integration of air, space, and information assets 

enables effects-based operations. The speed, power, and

flexibility of aerospace forces give the United States the 

capability to respond quickly to any emergency and conduct 

multiple wars. 

 To make the full transition from a Cold War garrison force to 

a true Aerospace Force, the Air Force plans to reorganize with a 

focus on the complex demands of expeditionary contin-gency 

operations. The core of deployable combat power and forward 

presence will be in ten Aerospace Expeditionary Forces, with a 

base of support in the remainder of the service. This future force 

will be able to achieve the effects of mass without having to mass 

itself. Though all services are investing in the advantages of 

aerospace power, the Air Force is best positioned to exploit the 

resulting edges in speed, reach, per-spective, agility, mobility, 

stealth, and survivability. The service's maintenance of 

information and aerospace superiority will ensure the precision 

engagement, agile combat support, global attack capability, and 

rapid global mobility so essential for joint operations. 

 The Navy sees itself as having four primary missions for the 

nation: maintaining command of the seas, projecting U.S. power 

with forward presence to shape and respond to crises, assuring 

sustained access for American forces around the world, and 

enabling the transformation of the joint force to fight and win 

future wars. The first two put an especially heavy burden on the 

service for current operations. It guarantees the free flow of the 

99 percent of intercontinental trade volume that goes by sea. The 

Navy typically deploys about a third of its ships at any one time 

and responded to 144 crises in the 1990s. All eleven carrier battle 

groups deployed since December 1998 have conducted combat 

operations. 

94 
However, the Navy also realizes it needs to transform to

perform its own missions better as well as to facilitate

expeditionary operations by the other services. It plans to

accomplish this through a new focus on Network Centric

Operations and improvements in its abilities to deliver

precision strikes and “artillery from the sea.” With

American maritime dominance unchallenged in the post

Cold War period, the service can now concern itself more

with directly and promptly influencing land battles. As in

the past, the new Navy will still be expeditionary, forward

deployed, self-sustaining, and mobile so it is difficult to

target. However, it sees that it needs to shift from an

organization focused on single missions and sea control to

multi-mission, networked units that can project power and

better conduct littoral joint operations.

As with the Air Force, the Navy has identified some key

technologies necessary for a transformation from a

platform-centered sea control force to an expeditionary

network-centric organization that can assure littoral access

for joint forces. Required ships include a fleet of

AEGIS-class ships capable of theater ballistic missile

defense and Virginia-class nuclear submarines. F/A-18s

and Joint Strike Fighters will provide a multi-mission air

capability. Procurement strategies already indicate trends

toward the new force, with acquisition of more precision

guided munitions (PGM) and fewer anti-ship missiles or

anti-submarine torpedoes.

The 21st century Navy will display a number of new

features. Networks will link all elements to process

information better and increase knowledge as well as

lethality. New Land Attack Ships and an increased number

of PGM-capable aircraft will magnify the power and

flexibility of firepower support. All-electric ships will

improve fleet efficiency, while other new designs will reduce

manpower requirements. All these changes will improve

relevance and responsiveness. During Operation DESERT

STORM it took 3 days to plan a Tomahawk cruise missile

mission. By 1998 for Operation ALLIED FORCE, it took

95
only an average of 101 minutes from tasking to engaging the

target. By 2004 missiles that can be retargeted in flight will

respond in near real-time. The netted, dispersed, agile Navy

of the future will have increased lethality, flexibility, and

efficiency.

The Navy’s transformation efforts will be coordinated

closely with the Marine Corps’ strides to improve their own

brand of expeditionary warfare, which they expect to be in

great demand in the complex world of the future. However,

the Marines see their own reform as an evolutionary process

building on their current strengths and being of more

limited scope than that of the other services.

The Marines’ stimulus for transformation is future

uncertainty, as adversaries evolve and technology diffuses.

However, they also emphasize their contemporary

importance as the nation’s premier expeditionary “Total

Force in Readiness.” The Marines portray the combined

arms team of their Air Ground Task Force as the “Joint

Force Commander’s Leatherman Tool” that provides

strategic agility, operational reach, and tactical flexibility.

Tailored for the mission, Marine forces provide continuous

forward presence and power projection capability to

promote national interests, influence vital regions, and win

the nation’s battles. They perceive a robust forcible entry

capability as one of their most important capabilities, now

and in the future.

To further refine and improve the service for its future

missions, its leaders plan to train better Marines, optimize

the performance of their forces, and capitalize on

innovation, experimentation, and new technology. Like the

Air Force, the Marines believe they have an innovative

tradition. This will contribute to new warfighting concepts

as well as a reform in service business practices. They plan

to field new camouflage uniforms, modular individual

weapon systems, advanced all-terrain vehicles, and

improved artillery, while incorporating the Joint Strike

Fighter and MV-22 Osprey into their force structure. The

96
end result will be a force with increased speed, precision,

and stealth that will remain “the right force for the next

fight.”

The contrast in service presentations is revealing. The

Army sees the most need for change and has developed the

broadest program for transformation, but details on its final

Objective Force remain sketchy at best. The Air Force has

the clearest vision of the structure of its future units and

how they will fight, but is narrowly focused primarily on

winning major theater wars and of all the services most

heavily depends on the promise of new technology. The

Navy and Marines emphasize how well they are performing

their current missions and see transformation more as

reinforcing their present strengths while also adding some

new capabilities.

While all the presentations displayed the word “joint” on

many slides, there was little evidence of any unified

interservice approach to transformation except, as should

be expected, in the Navy and Marine plans. With conflicting

visions and constrained budgets, many hard choices will

have to be made, and certainly no service will get everything

it wants. That will make the proper selections of new

technology and directions even more critical, to make sure

the right programs survive to meet the demands of a violent

future. And choosing any one service approach

predominantly over the others takes the risk of creating an

unbalanced force incapable of handling a full spectrum of

threats and missions.

Another factor that will influence the final course of

service transformation will be the positions of the new Bush

administration and Congress. There are many indications

that the President and his advisers are aware of the need for

defense reform, but their concepts may differ greatly from

those of the service chiefs, who have not been major players

in the conduct of Secretary of Defense Dennis Rumsfeld’s

initial reviews. Congress has also displayed much

independence on defense issues, and if their initial reactions

97
to proposals to close bases and reduce force structure are an

indication of the future, then making significant changes in

the services may be even more problematic.

The two chapters that follow in this section present

additional perspectives on the paths of defense

transformation and the obstacles along the way. Dr. Chris

Demchak of the University of Arizona and Dr. Patrick Allen

of General Dynamics, both members of the Cyberspace

Policy Research Group, provide a complex analysis of how

the current military system discourages and stifles

innovation. They also argue that the evolving plans for

reform will create a structure that is very susceptible to

surprise because of a lack of flexibility and redundancy, and

propose an alternative model to facilitate transformation.

Then Dr. Leslie Lewis and Dr. Roger Allen Brown from

RAND Corporation describe how fiscal constraints will

affect efforts for defense reform, and suggest some trade-offs

and divestitures to further the process. While the initial

impact of the September terrorist attacks has bolstered the

DoD budget, the limitations covered in the chapter will still

have an impact on future transformation efforts.

98
CHAPTER 4

TECHNOLOGY AND COMPLEXITY:

THE MODERN MILITARY’S CAPACITY

FOR CHANGE

Chris C. Demchak

Patrick D. Allen

All organizations change over time. The essential

question for managers is how to determine what

evolutionary path the organization is on, how to identify a

preferred path if the current one is not desirable, and then

how to achieve the desired path. We presume the Army as

any institution has the capacity to change in some direction

and will do so as driven by constraints and contingencies.

Building on that presumption, however, we argue that the

effectiveness of the transition process significantly depends

on the clear articulation of the desired end states. If the

attributes of the path are either a) unlikely to be achieved,

or b) not clearly understood and reinforced by use of change

agents, then the transition will produce a path not explicitly

chosen by anyone. This path is quite likely to be

undesirable.

In particular, we suggest the Army’s debate over

achieving a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) has

produced two features. The first is a very rough consensus

on an RMA model that needs an extraordinary amount of

slack and redundancy to succeed and that lacks clear

articulation of this requirement. As a result, the system

emerging in the Objective Force and ancillary changes is

unlikely to achieve this RMA. Secondly, Army senior

managers are not using change agents effectively.

99
Innovative individuals are not being nurtured by

sympathetic senior officers and innovative organizations

are routinely permitted to die for lack of institutional and

financial support. Both reduce the chances that the

endeavor will succeed. Our analysis includes the use of

complexity theory to evaluate the likelihood of the

envisioned RMA, and describes the effects of incentives and

disincentives for individuals and organizations in support of

institutional change. In conclusion, we suggest the

“Atrium” model, adapted from the hyperlinked organizational model by Nonaka and Tageuchi (1997), as a longterm organizing and guiding option for future military

organization and the institutionalizing of change. In the

near term, we recommend policy changes to encourage trial

and error and the growth of change agents and institutions.

CHANGE TO WHAT? THE RMA MILITARY

AS A PREFERRED ORGANIZATIONAL PATH

The U.S. Army has led the debate in defining new

military structures and operations. It has expressed a new

ranking of military needs for a novel, information-enabled

organization loosely falling under the rubric of the RMA.

This organization promises new levels of speed, accuracy,

low friendly and civilian risk, and reach that are extremely

attractive.1

Notionally Capturing the New Technological Age.

The RMA has, at its core, a technology-driven

transformation of military organizations into large-scale,

highly-synchronized deployable combat systems using

networked computer technologies.2 In the United States,

this has become captured by the term “system of systems”

indicating a massively integrated overarching network of

computer networks that are equally facile in acquiring,

providing, and processing real-time information for nearly

instantaneous actions.3

100
With a smaller force lacking the redundancy of large

standing forces, an RMA requires a profound and

unprecedented alteration in military organization if it is to

be accomplished successfully.4 The complexity of the

networked technologies forces new organizational designs

that emphasize “synchrony,” i.e., the elements moving in

tightly coupled, extremely rapid operations. While this

vision of an invincible machine has been dreamt of and even

attempted by countless military commanders, only now

with massive computerization and the “death of distance”

through networks can it seem to be possible to know enough

to make the vision real.5

Achieving an all-purpose, highly scalable, fully

informed, tightly networked human machine of

unprecedented range, accuracy, speed, and lethality

requires extraordinary geographical reach, rapid

absorptive capacity, and surprise-mitigation in a social

system. To get information reliably across distances

requires electronic (or future equivalent) networks. To

present the information for rapid and accurate “find, access

and absorb” operations across a multitude of different

terminal and human filtering characteristics requires

quickly interpreted iconography and client-server

independent graphical mechanisms. Finally, to make this

exchange timely requires a continuously available

many-to-many format with the organizational emphasis on

real-time updating, refreshing, and refining of material.

The Many-to-Many Challenge

The new model clearly involves widely shared

knowledge and, by implication, a new approach to

knowledge management based on web-like technologies. In

complex systems, effective “systems fit” depends on

knowledge that is reliably accurate, rapidly and widely

disseminated, and, most importantly, requires that the

people at the nodes are able to acquire the knowledge

pumped through these networks and know how, when and

101
where to use it. In the American image, this volume of

information is constant, seamless, and intensely active. The

nets link sources from overhead unmanned aerial and

satellite sensors to the infrared night vision device of the

individual solder. The massive data maps in the Pentagon

directly download to the full color near real-time battle map

display of the rugged laptop of the tank commander and to

streamlined information warfare (IW) forces, which will

operate quickly, accurately, lethally, and effectively. These

forces will need to be protected against enemy jamming,

logic bombs, sniffer programs, herf guns (variation of

jamming), or computer worms while able to impose the

same and much, much more in direct explosive material on

opposing forces.6

In particular, these networks need to be established,

effectively used and maintained for real-time accessibility

even before hostilities begin, not retained and energized

just when hostilities are imminent as traditional militaries

operate.7 In the U.S. RMA and its emergent notions of IW,

there are three general issues particularly concerning

information-technology (IT)-enabled militaries which touch

directly on issues studied in complexity research.8 These are

a) the physically and cognitively complex organizational

interactions in a dynamic large-scale system, b) the varying

time requirements of pattern discernment and

reconstruction in the use of these systems, and c) the

differences between data, information, knowledge, and

wisdom in accommodating surprise.9 Not understanding

the organizational requirements of such complexity while

modernizing into this model risks dangerous mismatches

between operational orders and actual organizational

capabilities.10

HOW LIKELY IN THIS OR ANY LARGE-SCALE

COMPLEX SYSTEM?

Obtaining critical knowledge can be a savior; however,

ensuring its availability can be a burden. The artifacts and

102
technique of advanced information systems cannot

effectively perform without the right organization.11 The

difficulties for the global military community in this sea

change search for modern capabilities lie in what is clear

from the promotional literature—that the new model of a

military is built on an incredibly rapid, accurate, lethal, and

small set of networked battle systems. What is implicit or

omitted from the discussion is that these systems are

complex and depend on web-based technologies in which the

more integrated the system, the greater the surprise

potential simply from the intricacies of the systems

themselves.

The RMA’s level of complexity, especially in the efforts to

ensure precision and synchronization, ensures surprise. In

essence, a full implementation of the RMA “system of

systems” imposes an extensive knowledge burden for the

using organization that must explicitly be taken into

account in a redesigned organization if it is to operate

successfully.

Complex Systems Mean Surprise.

It is extremely difficult to discern in advance the actual

dynamic capabilities of large organizations inextricably

intertwined with complex electronic equipment. Yet,

modern society is increasingly marked by the growth of

these highly integrated systems. This observation has led to

the development of a field of study devoted to understanding

the implications of “Large Technical Systems” (LTS),

especially the organizational control mechanisms and social

risks associated with them.12 Recognizing that such large

systems can manifest “artifactual success combined with

system failure,”13 scholars in this new field focus on the

conditions under which these systems impose risks on

themselves and on unwitting societies. In particular, LTS

studies are focused on identifying the constellations of

circumstances most likely to produce costly or catastrophic

surprises.

103
The central attributes of an LTS are as follows. First, an

identifiable social system with boundaries and internal

coherence emerges when heterogeneous small-to-mid- scale

organizational activities (linked at their core by

interdependencies among machine elements) expand,

possibly compete, and then consolidate into a highly

interdependent and spatially wide-ranging network of

essential relations.14

Second, the scale of these phenomena is such that they

are extraordinarily complex and hence difficult to

comprehend by average nonexpert individuals, a situation

affording the system considerable insulation from normal

mechanisms of social control other than costly concerted

efforts in times of crisis.15

Third, the system’s inherent complexity and spatial

reach increase the likely opportunity costs of predicting,

mitigating, protecting against, or surviving the surprising

outcomes of complex systems. LTSs have a particular

potential for deleterious surprises.16 In any system, some

outcomes will always remain unknown (‘unknowable

unknowns’) while others are knowable with sufficient

research but not currently known (‘knowable unknowns’). A

set of undesirable unknowns, called here the ‘rogue’ set,

produce the unpleasant surprises. These unexpected

negative events are more likely to be disruptive because any

complex system is more tightly coupled and prone to

experience ripple effects from shortcomings in key nodes

along lengthy contingent chains.

Both machines and organizations can be such complex

systems with rogue sets. ‘Accommodating the knowledge

burden’ can reduce the “rogueness” of the set of unknown

and unknowable unknowns.17 In any case, accommodation

involves having the right knowledge available when and

where surprises could occur. This can mean literally

knowing enough in advance to avert the surprise, or making

the system operate so that the effect of the surprises is

negligible and does not ripple far. Unaccommodated

104
systemic surprises, if large, frequent, and persistent, tend to

channel human individual and group behaviors in

directions often not anticipated by the designers.18

The fix is redundancy or slack designed into the

organization from the outset. Organizational designs robust

for surprises usually incorporate slack in terms of time to

perform or precision in processes, or redundancy of

elements that provide critical knowledge in operations.19

Traditionally, militaries choose redundancy as the easiest

way to accommodate surprise. That means a duplication of

equivalent knowledge modalities at the time and place of

need. For example, for decades after World War II, the U.S.

Army considered 100 percent staffing of a unit to actually be

125 percent because 25 percent casualties were expected in

any conflict.20 If redundancy is not chosen, then slack can

serve to force discontinuities in the organization’s tight

coupling. This deliberate decoupling or additional friction in

the coupling can avert, reroute, mitigate, or ameliorate the

deviant surprise event, dampening or stopping its ripple

effects.

Although people are often the source of surprise events,

they function equally as dampeners in highly integrated

systems. Human variations interrupt the automaticity of

networked processes, both slowing it down but also possibly

saving the system by localizing deleterious ripple effects. In

wide-ranging, highly automatic networks, such dampening

has to be planned into the system. Otherwise, full-scale

redundancy of elements is necessary to assure a system’s

reliability.

Key to knowing the amount of either redundancy or

slack (which amounts to reduced automaticity) that will

accommodate surprises is trial and error under fully

stressed conditions. For all their differences in approach,21

the overlapping lessons of complexity theory and chaos

theory are that both indirectly argue for trial and error

learning in large systems, however expensive.22 In short,

105
time occupied with trial and error learning is essential for

mitigating surprise, especially from rogue outcomes.

In military terms, then, if peacetime preparations do not

enable high fidelity trial and error of intended operations,

then the organization is unlikely to be able to mitigate rogue

outcomes when they emerge. If the organization is not doing

the activity in peacetime—and the more complex the

activity, the more routinely performed it must be—then the

organization is unlikely to be able to do it effectively under

any other circumstances.

RMA Design in “Objective Force” and Transition

Plan Short on Complexity Accommodation.

Complexity matters critically in this U.S. RMA model

because its initial approach to knowledge management is to

limit slack and redundancy to speed up processes and

reduce costs.23 The appropriate mesh of organizational

knowledge, precision requirements, and accommodation of

surprise then measure effectiveness in these systems.24

Since militaries cannot carry everywhere an extra set of

everything, fully integrated and ready to be turned on,

having mirrored all files, then slack must be built into the

RMA design. Put baldly, a fully implemented RMA will

demand high levels of preciseness in system network flows,

minimal slack or dampening in transaction times, and

extraordinary accuracy in filtering overwhelming real time

data for the right knowledge at the right place.

All complex systems depend extremely on initial

conditions and should understand the inevitability of the

knowledge burden. However, accommodating surprise does

not appear to guide the initial design of this RMA model.25

Rather, the dominant theme is that somehow the Army,

heavily focused on deploying to fight enemies in a

conventional manner, will transform itself into the highly

synchronized and accurately targeted RMA force. For

example, the Army’s 2001 Posture Statement says, “the

Army is trained and equipped for the overwhelming and

106
synchronized application of land combat power.” It goes on

to say the “presence of landpower [physically] also

guarantees compliance with the terms of peace.”26 The

dominant organizational view, therefore, is that this

organization applies explosive power, not knowledge-based

disruptive pressures more in keeping with the information

age. Another page states “while engagement activities

foster conditions that prevent and deter wars, the Army’s

core function is to remain ready to respond anywhere in the

world to fight and win the Nation’s wars.”27 The promise is

that this current force will be transformed into new

organizational structures that will provide “a more

responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable,

and sustainable force: a force designed to meet the

challenges of frequent operations in an uncertain

international security environment and achieve dominance

at every point on the spectrum of operations.”28

The October 1999 Army Vision Statement has much the

same language that suggests a profound misunderstanding

of what is required to produce an RMA or, indeed, any

knowledge-based complex organization. The following

assertion is worth quoting in full.

Our commitment to meeting these challenges compels

comprehensive transformation of The Army. To this end,

we will begin immediately to transition the entire Army

into a force that is strategically responsive and dominant

at every point on the spectrum of operations. We will

jumpstart the process by investing in today’s off-the-shelf

technology to stimulate the development of doctrine,

organizational design, and leader training even as we

begin a search for new technologies for the objective force.

Doing so will extend our technological overmatch.29

In implementing that vision, the Army Transformation

Plan to the new “Objective Force” states the following, also

worth quoting in full:

We are increasing our investment in science and

technology to accelerate Army Transformation—Future

Combat Systems (FCS) specifically.... When the

107
technology is mature, and production lines are ready, we

will field the Objective Force in unit sets—at least

brigade size. Organizations will be complete suites of new

integrated combat systems achieving the capabilities

outlined in The Army Vision—responsive, deployable,

agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, sustainable.30

For the transition force, the “Interim Force,” the plan is

to have at least six interim brigade combat teams which are

explicitly “not an experimental force to be tested for

development [because w]e know the requirement. We need

operational and warfighting capability now.”31

The language suggests a profound misunderstanding of

what full spectrum of operations using information

technologies implies for organizations in terms of slack,

redundancy, and knowledge. The statements about the

“Objective Force” do not clearly articulate a model that

accommodates complex system surprises. Trial and error

under high fidelity conditions is not likely when the

“interim” force is not used for development. Rather, this

approach is like ordering a car design that no one has ever

driven, cannot be returned, will take a long time to produce,

and will cost everything if one is wrong about its

functioning. Furthermore, the new RMA organization is

planned on a shoestring budget where, for the sake of

efficiency and a promotional banner of streamlining the

organization, redundancy and slack are deliberately

reduced in the human-machine mesh of the highly

synchronized organizational design.

Surprise is therefore encouraged in this model; the

orchestration of elements has a knowledge burden that the

organization is unlikely to be able to accommodate.32

Whatever the system that emerges on the ground, if it

approaches the synchrony, speed, and interdependence

goals of the RMA, it will be highly brittle. With so little clear

articulation about how these new brigades actually make

this synchrony more likely, the slow process of change

without adequate trial and error learning in the interim

force further encourages deviations not congruent with the

108
original design goals. It is, therefore, our assessment that

the RMA model is not likely to be achieved on the current

and planned organizational path. What emerges on this

path is likely to be less successful in a complex long-range,

highly meshed human-electronic and physically demanding

operational environment.

CHANGE HOW?

No matter how difficult it is to achieve an RMA force, the

current transformation process would not do it. In their

policy and organizational actions, the senior Army leaders

do not demonstrate a good understanding of how to change

the culture of their organization and thereby get the best

outcome possible even under a poor articulation of the RMA

model. If this situation continues, the RMA vision is

unlikely to be implemented properly, if at all.

It is never easy to change military organizations. They

are often perceived to be more resistant, or less capable of

change, than other organizations because of their strong

tendency to path dependence on initial conditions.

Successful change means the new organization will

satisfactorily change the path to meet the emerging

constraints and contingencies of its emerging environment.

Wars are so infrequent that a military focused on war as its

defining operational environment has few opportunities to

test ideas about new paths. Furthermore, the external

conditions pushing for change come equally infrequently.

Large conflicts leave behind leftover stocks of materiel,

disrupted economies, populations uninterested in investing

in more war materiel, and a generation of military leaders

who, either as winners or losers, need to move out before

new ideas can be implemented. Thus, organizational

change is heavily incremental, internally buried, and often

creeping in unexpected directions.

For the U.S. Army, the good news is that current

domestic and global circumstances actively promote change

involving new technologies. The circumstances identified by

109
Trevor Dupuy are emerging.33 The leadership of the

organization and the wider political system are recognizing

the new technologies. There is a growing cross-pollination

and goal conformity across the nation’s technical, financial,

and military resources. Finally, there are emerging

contemporaneous occasions for experimenting in

battle34—albeit not in battle as it is traditionally

recognized.35

These circumstances have taken 20 years to develop, a

period consistent with the historically normal time taken

for militaries to incorporate new technologies. Indeed, as I

argue elsewhere, the last 20 years has seen an

unprecedented change in the implicit rankings of military

technological choices from the old triad of guns, bombs and

nukes to include “information” as a destructive, or at least

disruptive, weapon.36 Simultaneously, a reweighting of six

basic military needs has emerged among leaders of the

global military community, from a primary emphasis on

lethality, reach, and resupply to one in which a more equal

weight is given to accuracy, legitimacy, and speed/

timeliness.37

The difficulty, however, is in the demonstrated

understanding of the Army leadership about how to direct

change under such fortuitous circumstances. The broader

social and business literature on organizational change has

emphasized the need for direct chief executive officer (CEO)

involvement in any transition. This involvement begins

with a clear identification of explicit elements of the desired

end state and then, importantly, personal support for

change agents. The senior leaders must know what they

want structurally and say so clearly enough for others to

accept it. But these leaders must also select, publicly honor,

and personally reinforce change agents.38 Furthermore, the

change agents must be knowledgeable about the new

technologies and able to innovate to move their part of the

organization in the direction desired by the senior

leadership. Without these mechanisms being continuously

110
sustained, change does not occur in the form, frequency, or

cumulative direction desired.

Currently in the “no-fail” culture of the U.S. Army,

would-be innovators are being wasted or driven out. This is

not the rather hackneyed critique that there is no room in

today’s Army for a Patton. Change agents are directed

innovators. To succeed, they will need to have the latitude to

innovate and then to have that innovation guided and

publicly nurtured. In commercial terms, this vision of a

military is something akin to a business process

reengineering (BPR) effort, a dramatic changeover when

continuous improvements are not working or not

preferred.39 Without these innovators performing trial and

error experiments that the rest of the organization then

absorbs, the BPR fails. To have effective change agents, the

Army needs to foster a culture welcoming to innovators—

both innovative individuals and innovative organizations—

and it does not currently succeed here. Rather, the current

system discourages innovative individuals and stifles

innovative organizations.

Innovative Change Agents Discouraged.

Admiral William Owens asked before he retired, “Where

is the revolutionary who will lead the Revolution in Military

Affairs (RMA)?”40 There was no one he could point to. No

Billy Mitchells, no Alfred Mahans, no George Pattons, no

George Marshalls. What is different about the Army now

versus other times in the past is that there are currently no

rewards for risk taking, and many punishments for even the

smallest mistakes. As one officer in the U.S. Army

Command and General Staff College Survey stated, “Risk

aversion has become a military cultural thing; commanders

are not willing to take risks (and subordinates know it).”41

Individuals respond to the rewards and punishments

imposed by the institution in which he or she belongs, or

they opt out of that institution entirely.42 In the current U.S.

111
military, the perceived pattern is that if an officer makes

one mistake, he or she is out of the best career paths.43

A “no-fail” Army is unlikely to rescue its innovators or

grow sufficient change agents. George Washington would

never have become the General of the Army in today’s Army

since his first major action at Fort Necessity was a major

defeat. He was also with General John Burgoyne at his

debacle. Washington lost most of his Revolutionary War

battles as well, especially early in the conflict. Washington

learned from his mistakes, but it is not clear the current

Army leadership allows middle-ranking officers the time

and opportunity to learn from trial and inevitable error.

When General Jack Kidd was retiring, he was asked,

“What’s the one thing a commander should do?” He

answered, “Protect your mavericks. Otherwise, everyone

around you thinks like you, and you will all be surprised.”

Few incentives exist for commanders to protect their

mavericks in today’s Army. Since one bad or merely neutral

officer evaluation report (OER) can ruin a career, a highly

risk averse senior rater can derail an innovative change

agent easily.44 The system provides no effective recourse for

an officer who is unfairly rated. When a subordinate makes

a mistake, the system has not taught the superior officer to

respond with a learning perspective. Rather, the system

encourages the senior officer to be concerned that he or she

will also suffer in evaluations if a subordinate makes an

error, irrespective of the actual portion of blame due the

senior member. Supporting evidence comes from the

survey: “Top-down loyalty DOES NOT EXIST. Senior

leaders will throw subordinates under the bus in a

heartbeat to protect or advance their career.”45

This trend is not only found in the Army. In 1996,

terrorists blew up a U.S. apartment building in Saudi

Arabia after the commander had argued for increased

security consistently for months. He was blamed for the

attack despite his efforts to avoid this outcome. The Chief of

Staff of the Air Force attempted to save this officer’s career

112
by preemptively resigning as the responsible commander,

but the local commander was forced to retire anyway, losing

his once almost certain bid to be a major general.46 This

pattern strongly suggests high levels of risk aversion are

being institutionally reinforced in U.S. military organizations.

There is also a tendency of the current system to ignore

knowledge-focused work in its rewards. The officer

promotion system leans more positively towards combat

officers whose skills are with the more destructive and

physical aspect of the overall mission. Today’s battlefields

and future battlefields will increasingly involve spaces not

associated with any physical terrain. The system currently

does not encourage people who understand this nonphysical

knowledge environment, those who can visualize and

operate comfortably in spaces they cannot visit personally

and see directly with their own eyes.

The role model for the fighter in the Information Age is

less likely to be the snake-eating physically macho man.

While the organization will still need folks with close

combat skills, the information age also requires individuals

with unique abilities to think in abstract spaces—

cyberspaces, virtual spaces, and abstracted representations

of reality that provide information superiority and

battlefield dominance. To paraphrase Colonel (retired) Bob

Killebrew, officers need to be professional soldiers,

practitioners and scholars in the art of war in the

information-enabled age, not warriors who pull the triggers.

Nor should senior officers be themselves focused on trying to

be physical warriors.47 The information warrior or

“I-fighter” will need to be free to innovate and to have a

self-construction as someone who is mentally macho—bold,

risk taking, decisive in defining and experimenting with

new ways of fighting in both the physical and the virtual

battlefields. This type of military force will not emerge

without trained, encouraged, rewarded, and protected

change agents. Without those institutional and public

rewards, the officers and enlisted soldiers best qualified to

113
succeed on tomorrow’s battlefield will continue to opt out of

the Army.

Innovative Organizations Stifled.

Just as the Army leadership is not demonstrating the

will or understanding to encourage change agents, they

show less understanding of the technologies they intend to

acquire. This is quite consistent with the generalist ethos of

the organization but is undesirable in an era of change to

complex information systems. This pattern is not, however,

surprising. The Army’s history with innovative

organizations is not encouraging. The leadership has

consistently shown a tendency to attempt to shove new

technologies into older organizational structures. When

they have not done so, they have also shown a gross

misunderstanding of the technology-human mesh, and

innovative organizations have not fared well as a result.

A good example of this lack of understanding in the

modern age is the Army’s attempt to adapt to the nuclear

age using an innovative structure called the Pentomic

division. During the fifties, the organization experimented

with preparations for tactical atomic warfare. The

emergence of the atomic weapon, its inherent complexity

and the political aggrandizement of the Strategic Air

Command (SAC) seemed to place conventional forces close

to obsolescence, portraying the development of large, noisy,

lumbering tanks as foolish expenditures. The Korean War,

with its rough terrain and difficult supply lines, added to the

general perception of the tank as a weapon that had seen its

day. Army research explored the use of small nuclear

weapons. Atomic projectiles were developed for 280 mm, 8

inch, and 155 mm artillery pieces. Army missile

development throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s

included in the larger systems a capability to fire nuclear

rounds. With the Pentomic division, the organization

devised an innovative structure for the new technology and

the nuclear battle.

114
Based on a conventional war and equipment, especially

the tank, the previous structure, called the “square

division,” with its massed forces provided excellent targets

for enemy nuclear weapons. Survival on the nuclear

battlefield required organizational flexibility and avoidance

of massed forces. Army research introduced the “Pentomic”

division in 1956; by 1958, all divisions had been reorganized

into pentomic structures. The new division was a collection

of five brigades, each with three tactical command posts and

few fixed boundaries. Each division was cut in strength from

the standard 17,000 soldiers: airborne to 11,486; infantry to

13,748; and armor to 14,617. Designed to be expansible by

the addition of other brigades, the new division structure in

principle increased firepower, mobility to disperse or

concentrate quickly, and communications for very rapid

changes in position or activities.48

The Pentomic division had serious organizational

drawbacks. Given the relative weakness of any individual

brigade, lengthy offensive activities could not be supported;

the division as a whole was more suitable for defense than

offense. Communication problems were horrific; much

equipment simply did not work as planned. There were

other serious operational problems.49 By the early 1960s, it

was clear that the atomic weapon would have limited

applicability in the most likely type of war, the guerilla war.

The Army’s research focus turned to helicopters and

missiles, attempting to put a missile on a tank and to drop a

tank from a helicopter or plane.

In 1962, only 4 years after the first Pentomic division

was unveiled, a new more conventional division emerged.

By 1964, all the divisions had been reorganized into this

structure called, appropriately enough, the Reorganized

Army Division, or “ROAD” division. This division was

noteworthy only in its ordinariness after the Pentomic

structure and its return to about 15,000 people. The key

feature of the ROAD division was its traditional basis in the

assumptions of a nontechnical army. Its internal

organization had more to do with the number of people

115
subordinate to each commander and their redundancy than

did the pentomic with its clear connection to assumptions

about technical advances. The ROAD division signaled that

the portion of the managerial level responsible for

structuring the forces intended to continue the Army

structure as one built upon people despite the enthusiasm

elsewhere in the service for technical advances. Equipment

advancements and opportunities would continue to be

forced into the basic organizational mold. The only

exceptions were the helicopter units and air defense missile

units such as IHAWK. Tactical nuclear war did not

disappear; only the Pentomic division did. The ROAD

division remained in effect with minor variations until the

Division 86 reorganizations of the 1980s.50

In the early 1980s, Chief of Staff of the Army General

Edward Meyer attempted to be innovative in designing a

new organization. He authorized an experiment with the

High Technology Test Bed (HTTB), which later evolved into

the High Technology Light Division (HTLD). “He directed

the HTTB to design a division to fight primarily in the

Middle East and secondarily as part of NATO. Reinforcing

NATO was an addition to the original mission statement

because the Army didn’t believe it could justify developing

an entirely new division that could not support its primary

strategic mission.”51

However, this new and innovative organization had to

exist with insufficient funding and attempt to thrive in an

institutional environment suspicious of technology-based

innovations.

The division found a number of obstacles in the path of

conducting an effective evaluation. There was constant

tension with Training and Doctrine Command

(TRADOC), which had the traditional mission of

developing and testing designs, and Forces Command

(FORSCOM), which was responsible for maintaining

trained and ready forces for deployment. The division

drew from and competed for resources with both these

major headquarters.52

116
Without sufficient funding to equip the new division as

planned, the HTLD (located in Washington state) could not

demonstrate capabilities that developed sufficient internal

institutional supporters in Headquarters, Department of

the Army in Washington. In 1984, Army Chief of Staff

General William Wickham switched it to the High

Technology Motorized Division (HTMD), presumably in

order to save it.53

Nonetheless, although the HTMD continued to exist for

the next 4 years, it was always considered a competitor and

a target. Its ideas could not diffuse because, without

high-level internal support, traditional organizations

considered adopting anything from the innovative

organization as a win for the innovative organization.

Finally, in 1988, ”the Army was finding it difficult to justify

maintaining multiple types of infantry divisions . . . the

motorized capability was determined to be least

essential.”54

The HTLD died because the leadership did not ensure its

adequate resources and its clear integration in their notions

of the future Army. Therefore, the “zero sum game”

bureaucratic politics calculus of the traditional Army

elements worked against any innovative Army

organizations. It is significant that the RMA Objective

Force BCT is many years away, not going to be tested in

developments with the interim force, and vague in its

expression. Unless the Army chooses to protect, support and

publicly reward its innovative organizations, such

organizations will continue to be stifled by the traditional

elements of the Army through constraints on funding and

on the transfer of innovative ideas and results.

A final example of innovative knowledge-focused

organizations is the current battle laboratories. Originally

designed to help circumvent the cumbersome acquisition

system, the Battle Labs were designed to be centers of rapid

innovation. Unfortunately, many battle labs were co-opted

early on by the traditional TRADOC School System (at one

117
point, there was one per branch school). But the real threat

to the Labs was the inflexible POM cycle and the funding

streams controlled by the traditional acquisition

community. There was no transition plan to get innovative

ideas into the acquisition cycle, partly because the

traditional acquisition community would consider such a

transfer a win for the labs. Whenever a battle lab had a

success (such as Warrior becoming the All Source Analysis

System and Phoenix becoming the Maneuver Control

System), it was done quietly, and credit for the successes

were subsumed in the “acquisition fold.”

There was no public reward for the innovative

organization, for fear of insulting the traditional acquisition

community. Moreover, the funding stream for the labs

continued to diminish, until each of the battle labs became

primarily dependent on the traditional acquisition center it

was supposed to be prodding. Its primary source of

independent funding was the Advanced Concepts and

Technology II Program (ACT II), usually announced

annually through a broad agency announcement (BAA).

This year, it was announced that the ACT II BAA would be

terminated. The battle labs now have no substantive

independent funding source, and therefore cannot speak of

alternatives outside what is approved by the traditional

acquisition community. Any innovation being produced by

the battle labs is quickly being stifled, and will soon be no

more. The traditional acquisition community will then

breathe a sigh of relief and continue to perform “business as

usual,” which does not include innovation, nor innovative

organizations competing for resources or limelight.

Overall, innovative organizations and individuals have

not fared well within the Army in recent years. Senior

leaders have failed to protect, nurture, and publicly reward

them and then it becomes easier for existing units to either

ignore them or to argue that they are not effective.

Moreover, the innovations developed by these change agent

organizations must be injected into the rest of the

traditional Army organizations, with public rewards given

118
to the traditional Army organizations that accept and build

upon these innovations.

A PREFERRED AND ACHIEVABLE ALTERNATIVE

An alternative that is both preferred and achievable

accomplishes the following goals. First, it meets the

complex constraints and contingencies of the new national

security environment. Second, its structure accommodates

complex systemic surprises, trend prediction, recovery from

unknowable unknowns, continuous improvement,

reliability/maintenance, and member training and job

content/context satisfaction.55

An alternative model of a future military organization is

doable under the following tests. Its elements are clearly

stated and comprehensible to all members. Its

requirements are compatible with resources available in

the environment at least, in the organization as well at best.

Its senior leaders embrace the new format continuously and

publicly. The organizational conditions permit change

agents to be selected, trained, positioned, nurtured, and

rewarded.

The Atrium Model—The Long-Term Ideal.

To meet these aims in today’s national security

environment, the model must be information-based, as well

as compatible broadly with some existing structures, most

contingencies, and a basic understanding of operations. We

propose a variant of the “hypertext” organization described

by Nonaka and Takeuchi.56 Labeled the ”Atrium" model of

an information-based organization, this refinement is a

design that treats knowledge as the new element in the

modern military organization. Knowledge is the whole

process of sophisticated and rapid collection and massive

archiving of data, then data mining it into information, and,

finally, integrating and displaying knowledge for local

decisions, long- term thinking, or reorienting future paths.57

119
In their original work on successful corporations

innovating in this direction, Nonaka and Takeuchi describe

the knowledge base (KB) as a third and equal partner in the

organization. The other two are a central business operation

that functions much like the previous firm, and a set of task

forces answering to the CEO for innovative and

problem-solving missions. People cycle between the task

forces and the central operation, each time data dumping

their experiences in the knowledge base. The result is the

computerized gathering of the implicit knowledge of the

organization and an incredible wealth of information about

that firm’s inner workings and responses to contingencies

and constraints, and opportunities.58

Nonaka and Takeuchi’s work is relevant for any

organization in a complex environment because it attempts

to reconcile the competing demands and benefits of both

matrix and hierarchical organizational forms. Matrix

organizations are more innovative, flexible, and able to

perform double loop learning,59 but they are slow.

Hierarchical organizations are more inflexible and need

explicit plans and trained responses but they are fast in

operation under predictable circumstances. In the original

model and in my refinement, the knowledge base of the

organization is actively nurtured both in the humans and in

the digitized integrated institutional structure to get both

the speed and the innovation to increase the accuracy of

responses to demands by the environment.

The major contribution here is that the knowledge base

is integral to the success of processes and the survival of the

institution. Nonaka and Tageuchi have identified several

Japanese corporations that seem to operate along these

lines productively and one is struck by an interesting

distinction—implicit knowledge developed by human

interactions related to the job is not only viewed as a source

of value by the corporation but also as key to long-term

survival. It is this view of knowledge that distinguishes

these corporations and makes them more prepared for

surprise in the marketplace.

120
In adapting the hyperlinked design and social

construction to a military setting, I have given this concept

of a knowledge base a name, the “Atrium.”60 The term

captures the sense of being a place to which a member of the

organization can go, virtually or otherwise, to contribute

and acquire essential knowledge, and that it is a place of

refuge to think out solutions. The mental image is that it is

overarching, something that protects as well as demands

inputs. It is a player in the structure of the organization, but

one that supports, suggests, and helps channel the actions

of the others in the organization.

The model has three main organizational elements.

There is the main stem of operations functionally divided as

it is today but with fewer subdivisions. Here are the finance,

personnel, transportation, operations, logistics, and

recruitment elements that keep main systems functioning.

Then there is the Atrium—an underlying computerized

database that is graphically accessible much like a 3D

website. Military members interact with the Atrium in

three ways: as consumers of knowledge from queries they

inputted, as contributors providing explicit and implicit

data to the underlying matrix, and as knowledge producers

massaging the information into knowledge that is then

available through various recall and query techniques to

the consumers.

Finally, there are the task forces. These are specialized

units that have existed for years in preparation for

particular missions that may or may not ever emerge. In the

Atrium model, a cadre of permanent support staff is left in

specialized task forces. But the mission with the task force

is time limited, and the bulk of the members rotate in and

out on 6- to 12-month assignments, developing skills but

also staying connected with the needs and problems of the

main stem of operations.

There is a final aspect to the Atrium model that

specifically recognizes the role of the Atrium knowledge

base itself. That is the periodic rotation of every member

121
into the Atrium to be both a contributor of implicit

knowledge and to learn or refresh his or her producer

experiences. Over time, career soldiers will then be able

both to use the Atrium and also to adapt its products to

emerging needs. The goal is that the Atrium processes and

data base will not only gather implicit knowledge, but that

every organizational member will be skilled enough to

innovate in some way with or through this knowledge.

Preferred.

Due to the knowledge focus of this organization, the

model proposed here is more likely to meet the surprises

imposed by the more complex national security

environment, including new web-borne national security

threats. Complex systems will impose destructive surprises

unless knowledge about their form and/or frequency is

obtained and accurately and rapidly acted upon in advance.

That is the essential knowledge burden of living in and

surviving with complex systems.

First, the Atrium provides knowledge leading to wider

choices. The military organization survives best when it is

first knowledge-focused and surprise resistant, and then is

able to disrupt or destroy other systems as the analysis of

the situation dictates. An Atrium-based military does not

lose its destruction mission but that is not its key capability.

Also, the knowledge base is not merely an elevated rapid

pipeline system connecting actors and thrusting avalanches

of nearly unprocessed data to low and high level

decisionmakers. The Atrium’s defining characteristic is

that it is more like an extremely knowledgeable partner. Its

central function is to accumulate the organization’s explicit

and implicit information into knowledge that enables high

and low decisionmakers to make wiser decisions. It is not

the third player below humans and weapon systems and not

primarily focused on supporting rapid deployment of

potentially destructive operations. The Atrium makes the

difference in recovery from the unknowable surprises, in

122
supporting continuous improvement, in facilitating

reliability and maintenance, and in member training and

job content satisfaction, as well as in accurate and rapid

trend predictions. If the Atrium experience can also be made

aesthetically attractive, then even job context can be helped

in this model.

Second, the Atrium directly contributes to stability and

dampening rogue outcomes in a complex system under

stress. A fully organizationally-transparent, interactive,

maintained, and easily accessed web community with data

warehousing and mining on call can become a “trusted

source” that is consulted when surprising rumors, shortfalls

in knowledge, or routine information needs are

encountered. It also allows the controller of the content of

that site enormous advantage, albeit not face-to-face, over

what is widely believed to be true.

Third, it has a face that is exportable. “I-fighters” are on

call 24/7 and known to be so, and could be the key to

maintaining American military dominance. If the future

produces a hostile China, the United States will be much the

smaller nation in population. An exchange of one for two

casualties in a deployment of our small, lighter forces is less

likely to deter determined leadership of such a large

country. However, as China digitizes vigorously as it

currently seeks to do, its vulnerability to information war

techniques will begin to level the playing field.61 A threat by

an Atrium-based force to disrupt or disable a quarter of the

Chinese economy at will may be credible, especially after it

is done once to demonstrate capability. By the same token,

the RMA does little to reduce a growing U.S. vulnerability to

foreign electronic attacks during peacetime. A 24/7 Atrium

military would collect, refine, profile, and suggest responses

to avert such disruptions whether in peacetime or during

active hostilities.

123
Doable.

This model is doable because it has conceptual handles

enabling senior leaders to implement it, check on the

implementation, focus change agents on it, and then

publicly reward progress. It can be and should be socially

constructed as a key player in the organization.

The Atrium is more than a library or a database on a

server; it is a structure in and of itself integrating

applications and data. It reaches into the task forces who

use it for data mining while also sustaining general

operations, sharing information broadly. But it is also a

place where task force members can conceptually “go there”

to consume, contribute, or produce some of its knowledge.

Its tools are increasingly available. Recently a major

database corporation has announced a new application

specifically designed to capture the implicit knowledge of an

organization, as well as the usual data now collected.62

Secondly, it has an explicit focus on participation by all

members of the organization. Task force members, for

example, are required to download their experiences in a

task force into the knowledge base before they are permitted

to return to their positions in the hierarchical portion of the

organization. Similarly, operations in the general hierarchy

are required to interact through the knowledge base

systems so that patterns in operations and actions are

automatically captured for analysis.63

This participation obligation makes the field fertile for

change agents who are there to help other members learn by

doing and profit from the experience. They will also be able

to innovate procedures and report ideas for improvements

in processes and use. Because of the knowledge focus of this

partner, the knowledge of the change agents also becomes

entered into the system and available for integration into

decisions.

Third, the “atrium” form is an explicit embrace of what

has been called the “new knowledge management” and, as

124
such, can build on experiences in the private sector more

clearly than vaguely stated “synchrony.”64 In particular, the

new knowledge management means using network/web

technologies to move from controlling information

inventories as human relationship-based “controlled

hoards” to web-based “trusted source” structures.65 This

approach faces considerable resistance because socially

reconstructing knowledge from something to be hoarded for

power within an organization to something to be shared to

obtain and sustain capabilities is a significant

transformation of expectations.66 But when the Atrium

experience is socially constructed by the combination of

constant leadership support and effective change agents,

entering into and interacting with the Atrium will be

essentially going to work with a major player in the

institution. Such a conception rationalizes the efforts to

ensure implicit knowledge is integrated into the long-term

analyses of the organization, such as the time spent in

downloads of experiences and information from the task

force members before they return to more hierarchical

stem.67

Fourth, the characteristics of members from the

surrounding community will make the Atrium increasingly

feasible. Recruiting soldiers for this kind of a military will

get easier and easier. The surrounding community is more

familiar with, interested in, and able to use computers.

Today’s young people are more likely to be interested in an

appropriately marketed “I-fighter” who is capable of a

“hack-back” in defense of their nation. The current

Israeli-Arab hacker war was started by just this kind of

young people.68

Using Reserves as producers or contributors will

immediately become simpler. A Reservist plugs in

anywhere in the country and logs hours putting together

data displays or mining topics as needed. Reservists are

then more able to integrate into the force when needed

because they have been studying real data really used and

actually needed.

125
FINAL COMMENTS

To make this transformation, a first step is to view

organizations as large-scale systems prone to rippling

effects when relevant knowledge is not present.

Focus on Knowledge-based Structures and

Operations.

Channeling the future military evolutionary path needs

to have a goal in sight that explicitly accommodates this

central characteristic. An Atrium-based military provides

that clarity and reorientation appropriate for an

information age. It is an ideal type, an image that provides

direction for a myriad of smaller decisions. As such, it is an

improvement over the RMA and the oddly named “objective

force” currently dominating U.S. Army thinking.

Channel Change with Eyes on the Long-Term

Atrium-like Outcome.

In the longer run, complex systems are predictable only

broadly in trends and a full-scale effort to implement the

Atrium model will not exactly produce this vision. What it

does produce, however, will be more knowledge-based and

more adaptable to emerging circumstances than what is

planned now.

Short-Term Change to Allow Innovators to Survive.

Organizational culture is built on shared daily practices.

Changing that requires daily nudges by change agents, both

innovative individuals and innovative organizations.

Nurturing innovative individuals requires immediate

short-term changes to policy in two areas. First, incentives

need to be initiated to protect, nurture, and publicly reward

innovators and risk takers within the Army. One example

would be to institutionalize a way to delete learning

mistakes from an officer’s record, such as allowing officers to

126
exclude one OER. Second, the Army needs to create

incentives to protect, nurture, and publicly reward those

who support the Army’s innovators; for example,

institutionalizing a way for senior officers to allow

subordinate mistakes without themselves suffering career

costs, and rewarding them for innovative subordinates—

even if they are not always right. The path to successful

innovation, and its rewards, needs to be more clearly

articulated by the senior leadership who are themselves

rated on how they selected, nurtured, publicly rewarded,

and channeled change agents.

Nurturing innovative institutions requires a similar

pair of incentives. First, the innovative institutions require

sufficient charter and resources to accomplish their

mission. A programmed set-aside of serious funds for

innovative knowledge-based organizations and their tools

needs to be created, with the intent that they will grow the

Atrium military along the proper path in the future. They

must also be allowed to experiment with rotating task

forces, collecting data for mining, etc. Second, the Army

needs to define incentives to traditional Army organizations

that support the innovative organizations, and accept and

employ their innovations. Unless the traditional

organizations are motivated to help the innovative

organizations, they will compete with them and eventually

force them out or incapacitate them. The Army must

incentivize the environment around the innovative

organization.

A final note: the Atrium model is an ideal type. No

complex system will produce exactly what we envision.

However, as a clearly articulated ideal type, it serves as a

guide, keeping the evolution on the proper path. Even an 80

percent solution in 20 years along this path is more likely to

accommodate the surprises of a complex world than the

path currently being pursued.

127
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4

1. Chris C. Demchak, “Watersheds in Perception and Knowledge,”

Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 20, December 1999, p. 3.

2. See James Adams, The Next World War: Computers are the

Weapons and the Front Line is Everywhere, New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1998; as well as George Friedman and Meredith Friedman,

The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance

in the Twenty-First Century, New York: St Martin’s Griffin Press, 1996.

3. See Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision

2010, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997.

(Hereafter JV2010.)

4. More precisely, this system of systems links four large networks

for complete battlefield overview by the commander. The first is a sensor

grid providing long range (up 300 km) realtime and detailed information streams. The second is an engagement grid with graphical

realtime depiction of all elements of the battle, and refined trend

analyses on the spot, presumably. The third is an enormous database

grid providing query, drill down, summary, and push information in all

directions of the command structure. The fourth is an offensive

information operations network that enables the overt or covert

destruction, disruption, diversion, intrusion, insertion, and inspection

of the targeted organization’s use of information technologies. For

elaboration of these concepts, see JV2010; David C. Gompert, et al.,

“Right Makes Right: Freedom and Power in the Information Age,”

McNair Paper 59, Washington, DC: National Defense University,

Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1999, p. 34; Patrick D. Allen

and Chris C. Demchak, “An IO Conceptual Model and Application

Framework,” Military Operations Research Journal, Special Issue on

Information Operations/Information Warfare, Vol. 6, number 2, 2001.

5. See Frances Cairncross, The Death of Distance: How the

Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives, Cambridge, MA:

Harvard Business School Press, 1996.

6. See Adams.

7. Likely effectiveness (F) of an organization is defined as the level of

“systems fit” between the precision requirements built into the system

and the surprise potential inherent in the level of unknowable or

knowable unknowns, extant coordination of activities through

knowledge exchange, and the validity of the information exchanged for

the situation at hand. For a discussion of “systems fit” and effectiveness,

128
see Michael Harrison, Diagnosing Organization: Methods, Models, and

Processes, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1987, p. 8. For a discussion

by a panel of organization scholars which placed effectiveness as one of

the key components of productivity, see Organizational Linkages:

Understanding the Productivity Paradox, Douglas H. Harris, ed.,

Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1994, p. 8. The definition of

effectiveness is always under debate among both practitioners and

scholars, especially in security studies and defense policy debates, due

to the material and human costs of mistakes.

8. Elsewhere I have defined effectiveness (F) in web-related

organizational terms as the least constrained systems fit between the

coordination of activities through knowledge exchange and the validity

of the information exchange. See Demchak, 1998; and CyPRG web site,

www.cyprg.arizona.edu.

9. Published statements of expected outcomes by senior leaders,

given sufficient emphasis through a large organization, are powerful

influences on the social constructions of reality emerging in the rest of

the organization. Anne L. Schneider and Helen Ingram, “How the Social

Construction of Target Populations Contributes to Problems in Policy

Design,” Policy Currents, Vol. 3, February 1993, p. 1. For the emergent

model, I draw primarily upon the expected characteristics of the new

information technology military as stated by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of

Staff (JCS) and by the subordinate services.

10. For example, the human-machine interface under rapid fire

conditions is exceptionally tricky. For example, humans with linguistic

and psychological filters different from programmed applications and

digital machines interpret and absorb graphical information more

rapidly and accurately than they do text data. Machines are comfortable

with both but cannot do the out of the box interpretations needed to

make the output adapted to emerging circumstances. The organization

design literally needs to time shift human interpretations in some way

so that competing complex decisions are presented in ways that humans

can most readily understand; usually this means in advance.

11. See James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies

Do and Why They Do It, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1989; Drucker,

1959; Peter F. Drucker, Technology Management and Society, San

Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1959; and The Development of Large

Technical Systems, Renate Mayntz and Thomas P. Hughes, eds.,

Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988.

12. Locus of control and the effects of machine requirements for

formal rationality are central concerns of this field as well. For an

129
introduction to the field and to further references, see Sheila Jasanoff,

Gerald E. Markle, James C. Peterson, and Trevor Pinch, Handbook of

Science and Technology Studies, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publications, 1995; Carl Mitcham, Thinking Through Technology: The

Path Between Engineering and Philosophy, Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press, 1994; and J. Summerton, ed., Changing Large Technical

Systems, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. See also Urs Gattiker,

Technology Management in Organizations, Newbury Park, CA: Sage

Publications, 1990; Luis R. Gomez-Mejia and Michael W. Lawless, eds,

Organizational Issues in High Technology Management Monographs in

Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, Vol. 11, Greenwich,

CT, and London, England: JAI Press, Inc., 1990; and Jon Clark, Ian

McLoughlin, Howard Rose, and Robert King, The Process of

Technological Change: New Technology and Social Choice in the

Workplace, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press,

1990, for a discussion of technology in organizations.

13. See Gene I. Rochlin, “Broken Plowshare: System Failure and the

Nuclear Power Industry,” in J. Summerton, ed., Changing Large

Technical Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 231-261, for

a discussion of this kind of outcome in the nuclear power industries of

Europe.

14. See Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch,

eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions

in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge, MA: The MIT

Press; Mayntz and Hughes; and Jasanoff, et al.

15. See Todd R. LaPorte, ed., Organized Social Complexity,

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975; Charles Perrow,

Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies, New York:

Basic Books, 1984; Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear

Forces, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; Chris C. Demchak,

Military Organizations, Complex Machines: Modernization in the U.S.

Armed Services, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991; and Scott

D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear

Weapons, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

16. These are, for example, air traffic control organizations, U.S.

Navy nuclear carrier air operations, and nuclear power generating

plants. See Todd R. LaPorte and Paula Consolini, “Working in Practice

but Not in Theory: Theoretical Challenges of ‘High Reliability’

Organizations,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory,

Vol. 1, January 1991, pp. 19-48.

130
17. One form of accommodation is extensive preparatory testing

that reveals the form and frequency of previously unknown outcomes.

Unfortunately, this testing is normally extraordinarily expensive and,

as a result, rarely done. See Demchak, 1991.

18. See Demchak, 1991, for a more extensive discussion with

application to the U.S. Army and for better discussion of organizations

and various aspects of responses to technology, especially knowledge

and information processing, as well as the validity of this method. See

Wohl, 1980, for a discussion of how, in a complex system, the proportion

of these unknowable outcomes will be high compared to a more simple

system. See Heimann, 1993, for a discussion of how component

reliability contributes to the system’s overall ability to avoid errors. See

also LaPorte, 1975; Dan S. Felsenthal, “Applying the Redundancy

Concept to Administrative Organizations,” Public Administration

Review, Vol. 40, May-June, 1980, pp. 247-252; Harrison; and Gareth

Jones, Organizational Theory, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley

Publishing, 1995, for discussions of the organization literature and

concepts key to this discussion.

19. While fully aware of the oversimplification of the measure and

that a healthy statistical literature on sensitivity analysis exists, I have

nonetheless proposed a simple measure of possible changes in

robustness as the multiplication of redundancy by slack. Intuitively

appealing, the term rises or falls as the combination of redundancy and

slack rises and falls. If system A has high slack and low redundancy, and

system B has low slack and high redundancy, then it is intuitively clear

that both could have the same level of robustness. The processes

resulting in robustness vary considerably, and more needs to be known

about both systems and the slack or redundancy at their critical nodes.

This measure is extremely rough but heuristically useful for focusing on

the relationships between complexity and robustness via redundancy

and slack. See Demchak, 1991. Editor’s Note: In this case “slack” means

having a system with excess capacity available to deal with unexpected

demands.

20. See Demchak, 1991.

21. Chaos theorists start with an equation and watch the outcomes

to discern the rule changes over time. Complexity theorists set up the

rules for change and then watch the outcomes to see if any general

unifying relation or equation is at work. See James Gleick, Chaos:

Making a New Science, New York: Viking, 1987; and Ralph Gomory,

“The Known, the Unknown and the Unknowable,” Scientific American,

Vol. 272, No. 6, June 1995, p. 120.

131
22. See Gleick; Gomory; and John Horgan, “From Complexity to

Perplexity,” Scientific American, Vol. 272, No. 6, June 1995, pp.

104-109.

23. See Emery Roe, Taking Complexity Seriously: Policy Analysis,

Triangulation and Sustainable Development, Boston: Kluwer Academic

Publishers, 1998, for a discussion of how taking complexity seriously

has profound implications for social interactions.

24. See Efraim Turban, Ephraim McLean, and James Wetherbe,

Information Technology for Management: Making Strategic

Connections for Strategic Advantage, 2nd ed., New York: John Wiley &

Sons, Inc., 1999, p. 530.

25. See John Casti, Complexification: Explaining a Paradoxical

World through the Science of Surprise, New York: Harper Perennial,

1995; M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the

Edge of Order and Chaos, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; and

Demchak, 1991.

26. Department of the Army, “The Army Posture Statement,”

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001, p. 1,

http://www.army.mil/aps/aps toc.htm. (Hereafter APS.)

27. Ibid., p. 4.

28. Ibid., p. 6.

29. Department of the Army, Army Vision, Washington DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1999, p. 1, http://www.army.mil/

armyvision/armyvis.htm. (Hereafter AV.)

30. Department of the Army, Army Transformation Statement,

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001, p. 4,

http://www.army.mil/usa/Cover. (Hereafter AT.)

31. The transition is expected to take 30 years with the first

Objective BCT fully “procured” by 2010 and the whole force in place by

2032. See AT, pp. 8-13.

32. For complementary discussions of this problem, see Karl E.

Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2d ed., Reading, MA:

Addison-Wesley, 1979 <1969>; Demchak, 1991; and Jay R. Galbraith,

Organizational Design, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977.

33. Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy (retired), The Evolution of Weapons

and Warfare, New York: DaCapo Press, 1984, pp. 305+, has offered the

132
following necessary circumstances for military change driven by

technology. For final incorporation into the military operations, the new

technology has to be seen, a) to fit successfully with the accepted

doctrine and extant other weapons, b) to demonstrate in some manner a

flexible and effective use in the offense, c) to be operationally effective

against known countermeasures, and d) to offer a persuasively large

decline in casualties for the using force and/or comparable or greater

increases in likely enemy losses.

34. Ibid., pp. 305+.

35. The Gulf War is heralded as the first “electronic war,” but there

is serious critique of this public claim. We might argue instead that the

first really electronic war is happening as we write in the widening

hacker war between the Israelis, Palestinians, and ideologically

motivated groups who are pitching in. See Carmen Gentile, “Hacker

War Rages in Holy Land,” Wired, November 8, 2000, p. a; Carmen

Gentile, “Israeli Hackers Vow to Defend,” November 15, 2000, p. b;

Carmen Gentile, “Palestinian Crackers Share Bugs,” December 2, 2000,

p. c.

36. See Adams; James F. Dunnigan, Digital Soldiers, New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1996; and Friedmann and Friedmann.

37. Demchak, 1999.

38. See David A. Nadler, Champions of Change: How CEOs and

Their Companies are Mastering the Skills of Radical Change, San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997, for a recent nonacademic discussion of

these tenets of organizational change. See also Stephen Peter Rosen,

Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1991, for a restatement of these tenets, as well

as my own work on the Army undirected changes due to technology in

Demchak, 1991. Elsewhere, see John Scott, Social Network Analysis,

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1991, for a review of the

organization theory literature including this aspect of change.

39. Turban and Wetherbe, chap 4.

40. Admiral William A. Owens, Keynote Speech at the 63rd Military

Operations Research Society Symposium, Annapolis, MD, June 1995.

41. Chief of Staff of the Army, Army Leadership Survey: Command

and General Staff College Survey of 760 mid-career Students (Majors

with a Few LTCs), 1999, http://d-n-i.net/FCS_Folder/

leadership_comments.htm.

133
42. See Michael Vasu, Debra W. Stewart, and G. David Garson,

Organizational Behavior and Public Management, 2nd ed., New York:

Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1990; Margaret Kilduff and Doug Blewett, The

Technology Gauntlet: Meeting the Challenges of Workplace Computing,

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994.

43. Chief of Staff, Army Leadership Survey.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Billy E. Deams, “A Noble Act Gone Unnoticed,” Styles Magazine,

Building Industry Association, September 1997, http://www.biaow.

org/styles/sept97/sec_opin_billy.html, 1997; Jamie McIntyre, “Air

Force Chief May Quit Over Saudi Bomb Probe,” CNN Interactive, June

26, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/ 26/fogleman/.

47. Bob Killebrew, e-mail exchanges reported on http://www.

infowar.com/iwftp/cspinney/c282.txt, 1999.

48. Vernon Pizer, The United States Army, New York: Praeger

Press, 1967, pp. 38-39.

49. Ibid.; Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 2nd

ed., Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 537-540.

50. Chris C. Demchak, War, Technological Complexity and the U.S.

Army, Berkeley, CA: University of California Berkeley Political Science

Dissertation, 1987, Appendix B.

51. Hawkins, 1997.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Another RMA-based alternative has been proposed by Colonel

Douglas MacGregor. The book’s concepts of a future force have since

been iterated by the author to focus on a light reconnaissance strike

group (LRSG) as a central pillar of the new organization. See The

MacGregor Briefings, Project on Defense Alternatives, Commonwealth

Institute, Cambridge, MA, 2001, http://www.comw.org/

pda/macgregor/ (hereafter PDA). The difficulty with this concept of a

future military is that it is addressing deployment, not data mining, and

134
combat, not knowledge consumption or production. It may, however,

function as an interesting subordinate model for the combat forces of the

Atrium military.

56. Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, “A New Organizational

Structure” (HyperText Organization), in Laurence Prusak, ed.,

Knowledge in Organizations, Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997,

pp. 99-133. Originally it was called “A Dynamic Theory of

Organizational Knowledge Creation,” Organization Science, Vol. 5,

February 1994, p. 1.

57. To carry this further, wisdom might be said to be the decisions

based on this knowledge. In any event, I am grateful for Dennis A.

Lowrey, a former senior MI officer and chief “wirehead” who played a

role in the sophistication advances of the U.S. Army’s military

intelligence community in the 1990s.

58. Nonaka and Takeuchi.

59. Single loop learning is where one seeks feedback from a monitor

and then learns how to do better according to that monitor. Double loop

learning occurs when shortcomings and the value of the monitoring

tests are all questioned.

60. In a manuscript under construction now “The Atrium—Refining

the HyperText Organizational Form,” I more fully explain the

mechanisms of integrating an Atrium into an organization.

61. “Japanese Government on Alert for Chinese Computer

Hackers,” Kyodo News Online (KN), February 26, 2001.

62. Bender Corporation, “Know Thyself” (Lotus innovates implicit

data mining tool), Technology Review Online, April 6, 2001.

63. See Nonaka and Tageuchi, pp. 99-133.

64. See Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, San

Francisco: Boerrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992, as well as Gleick for a

more modern use of this term.

65. The evolution of the internet or the worldwide web is in essence a

social history of information sharing among individuals embedded in

organizations. There are a number of versions of the history of the

internet. See Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps, Boston,

MA: MIT Press, 1991, for one discussion. See also the Internet Society

web site.

135
66. In organizational terms, especially for public organization, a

webbed approach to information directly challenges the

long-established notions of the fundamentals of bureaucratic power.

Weber’s sociological argument about such power, translated in the

1940s, was further symbolically captured by the 1970s concept of an

“iron triangle” in which public agencies, Congressional committees and

interested corporate entities controlled outcomes nearly absolutely by

controlling the information anyone outside the organization could

acquire.

67. See Thomas H. Davenport, Information Ecology, New York:

Oxford University Press, 1997; and Charles Savage, The 5th Generation

Management, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996, for interesting

variations on these notions of integrating the web into the

organization’s and society’s critical operational information flows.

68. IDefense, Special Report Data on Isl-Pal Cyber War, iDefense

Intelligence Services Online, January 4, 2001.

136
CHAPTER 5

WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW

ABOUT AN UNCERTAIN DOD BUDGET?

Leslie K. Lewis1

Roger Allen Brown

Introduction and Background.

When we began to write this chapter in January 2001,

we hypothesized that by the end of February the

Department of Defense (DoD) would have a general

understanding of the U.S. defense agenda of the next 4

years—“increase combat readiness." The services concluded

that, although the exact details of the Bush agenda would

still have to be laid out, President George W. Bush would

hold to his campaign promise to increase the defense budget

by about $45 billion dollars over the next 10 years from the

current budget of $30l billion in 2002. In anticipation of the

increases in the 2002 defense budget, each service began to

compile its individual wish lists. The lists included new and

upgraded equipment, increases in end strength, and

improvements to the quality of life—housing, health care,

and pay. To underpin these goals, the services then

appealed directly to the Congress and further pressed their

cases for increases in defense expenditure with little or no

deviation from current investment plans. They hoped to

build on the “general bipartisan consensus that the military

is underfunded.” To further solidify their respective

positions (while standing “shoulder-to-shoulder”), the

services and Joint Staff developed a Quadrennial Defense

Review (QDR) strategy supporting increases in defense

expenditure for their various initiatives.2 The services’ and

137
Joint Staff’s QDR strategies argued that DoD’s

transformation is occurring at about the right pace, but

additional funding will be needed to meet current

operational requirements while continuing individual

service transformations with minimum risk.

To bolster the beliefs that national defense is severely

underfunded, the services and Joint Staff identified dollar

shortfalls in a number of areas. For example, the Navy

asserts that, for current ship and aircraft repair and spare

parts, it is underfunded by approximately $2 billion. The Air

Force argues that it might have to decrease its flying hours

without a substantial budget increase. The Air Force’s spare

parts and fuel bills total about $1.4 billion over budget in the

current year. Its F-22 procurement program continues

slipping to the out-years of the defense program.3 The Army

is focused on its transformation and says that it needs about

$2.6 billion in 2001 to continue to meet its goals of moving

from a heavy Cold War force to a lighter, more deployable,

interim medium force.

In late 2000, DoD expected to request a $5 billion

supplemental to the 2001 Budget to meet rising costs for

fuel and to pay for ongoing contingency operations. The

supplemental request included $1.3 billion for the flying

hour accounts, $1.4 billion to address increases in health

care costs, and $500 million for fuel price adjustments.

Another $200 million was tagged for ship construction costs,

while $500 million is for congressionally-approved benefits

for which no funding was provided. An additional $100

million was allocated for repairs to the USS Cole, and $400

million for Army base operations costs.4

However, by early February it became clear that the new

Secretary of Defense (SecDef) Donald H. Rumsfeld was not

necessarily going to adhere to the services’ and Joint Staff

plans. First, he reprimanded the service chiefs for “end

running him and going to Congress.” Then he and Bush

indicated that there would be no request for additional

funding to the 2001 defense budget until a broad

138
assessment of the military had been completed. In

mid-February 2001 he tasked Andrew Marshall, Director of

the Net Assessment Office, to do a strategy review and to

complete it by the end of March 2001. In early March the

SecDef stood-up multiple task forces or panels to assess

such areas as (1) transformation, (2) quality of life and

morale, (3) strategy, (4) acquisition, (5) conventional forces,

(6) processes and organization, (7) strategic nuclear forces,

and (8) others—not all of the subject areas are publicly

known but some sources quote a total of 18 task forces or

panels working within the review.

This chapter has undergone several revisions to track

the developing reengineering of the DoD. In late March,

Marshall revealed that U.S. defense policy needed to be

refocused on the Pacific Rim, away from Russia and Eastern

Europe, on the belief the decline of Russia has provided an

opportunity for China to play an increasing independent

role in Asia. There was also some hint that the two Major

Theater War (MTW) strategy would be reviewed and at

least partially modified. Rumsfeld has hinted that an

increase in defense expenditures will probably be

necessary.

There is no clear consensus concerning how to fix defense

resources in order to meet operational demands while

achieving a mostly undefined transformation. Some defense

analysts argue that, regardless of what funding Rumsfeld

requests, defense expenditures will increase because

Congress voted to raise the budget by approximately 5

percent, or about $14 billion, in 2002. Critics of the

legislation argue that passing budget increases without

strong guidance from the administration on the role of and

vision for the military will only enable the Services to

continue funding Cold War weapons and practices.5 Others

argue that, even with some divestiture of Cold War legacy

systems, the DoD will have to have substantial increases in

the defense budget in order to meet its personnel and

operations requirements.6 Michael O’Hanlon contends that

with significant divestiture of Cold War systems and taking

139
advantage of the strategic pause to develop leap ahead

technologies, the DoD could save at least $10 billion. The

budgetary requirements and budgetary resource gap could

be overcome, but it will require a well-defined strategy.7

Integral to any new strategy is the development of new

concepts of operations. For example, another round of base

closures and rethinking the U.S. forward posture would be

essential. Others argue that any DoD transformation

funded within the current $314 billion top line must address

some highly political and emotional issues. Some

controversial topics, such as the Marine Corps giving up

bases on Okinawa along with one or two Marine

Expeditionary Units (MEUs), and considering forward

stationing for the Navy, wherein crews would rotate while

the ships stay in a relatively limited geographic area, in

order to gain substantial savings from limiting ship

investment, will need to be addressed.8 Other issues might

be the divestiture of at least one fighter aircraft program

and stopping the purchase of additional Navy large carriers,

which are viewed by some as too vulnerable.

Others argue that regardless of directed changes in DoD

investment, the DoD is heading for a train wreck. Daniel

Goure and Jeffrey Ranney argue that the annual defense

budget needs to be increased by approximately $100 billion

in order to modernize, maintain, and sustain the 1997 QDR

force.9 Without substantial increases in the defense budget,

the DoD will continually trade away procurement to meet

near-term readiness. This is occurring during a period in

which DoD equipment is at or soon to reach the end of its

service life, and replacements have been slowed due to the

services raiding procurement accounts to meet operational

demands.

Little is known about what the strategic review

encompasses except that it is thorough and will provide the

foundation for the direction DoD will go over the next 4

years. More immediately, it probably will provide the basis

of the SecDef’s guidance to the services and the Joint Staff

140
for a pared down 2001 QDR. As this chapter is being

written, a lot of uncertainty exists as to what the new

administration will define as the new defense strategy and

DoD’s budgetary requirements. Whatever is decided, an

assessment of the defense budget from the perspective of

what is fixed—those expenses the DoD must meet in every

budget—reveals that the interdependence of several key

areas drives almost the entire defense budget. In early

March Bush presented his budget to the Congress. He did

lay out a roadmap for expenditure, but did not provide a lot

of details. The underlying assumption of the budget plan is

that the economy will continue to grow. Bush outlined

several key areas on which he will focus on next year. The

first priority is the tax cut with the underlying premise

being that the budget surplus should be redistributed to the

American people. The tax cut proposal is predicated on the

belief that government spending increases can be held

below 6 percent over the next 10 years.10 The second priority

that the President identified is education. He also wants

increased attention and resources provided to science and

math training, the establishment of rigorous national

education standards, and a voucher plan for alternatives to

failed schools.

The rest of this chapter explores various areas of the

DoD budget in an attempt to assess what elements of the

budget provide the most latitude for change/transformation

within the DoD, and those that will constrain change.

The Defense Strategy.

Few defense analysts acknowledge that the defense

strategy is fiscally constrained. Many assert that a

nonfiscally constrained strategy should be used to define

the roles and missions of the military. Nothing could be

further from the truth. For example, in 1993 the Bottom-Up

Review’s (BURs) initial findings supported the need of the

United States to perform two simultaneous MTWs. This

objective proved to be too expensive given the Clinton

141
administration’s desire to reap the peace dividend. The

BURs findings were adjusted to state that the sizing

mechanism for the U.S. military would be its ability to

conduct two nearly simultaneous MTWs. This strategy has

driven the defense budget for the last 8 years. The BUR also

asserted that, as long as the U.S. military was prepared for a

strategy based on the two nearly simultaneous MTWs, it

would have sufficient resources to conduct any type of lesser

operation that it might be asked to do. The problem is that

the strategy is underpinned by the erroneous belief such a

robust force could also handle a wide array of contingency

operations. In other words, if the U.S. military planned for

the large-scale war—such as the Gulf War—then its

capabilities would be more than sufficient to handle any

other type of contingency.

The BUR strategy did not consider that peacekeeping,

humanitarian, and coalition operations in the post-Soviet

Union environment might require different types of

capabilities and a lot of tailoring of the existing ones.11 In

1993, the U.S. military was involved in few such operations.

The BUR strategy does not provide a “forcing function” to

move some of the services to develop new concepts of

operations and all services to divest themselves of legacy

systems. Although there have been some changes in the

services’ practices brought on by the defense budget

dropping approximately $100 billion dollars (in 2000

dollars) from $382.5 billion to $279 billion, basically the

DoD of today looks like a smaller Cold War force. Although

the BUR strategy does not provide the DoD with sufficient

flexibility to meet its highest probability missions, it is the

foundational piece that the Army (and until recently the Air

Force) uses to argue both its force size and structure.12

The two-MTW strategy has been deemed affordable at

about $230-$260 billion—the defense budget between 1992

and 2000. The problem with this approach is that many

contingency operations do not adhere to the rigid

assumptions that are derived from the BUR.13 For example,

increasingly, contingency operations require different

142
tooth-to-tail ratios, a great deal of tailoring, and a wide

variety of capabilities. Frequently, U.S. forces are being

asked to operate in regions with little or no developed

infrastructure and very weak governments. These

assumptions are driven by the existing strategy.

Recent work at the National Defense University (NDU)

explicitly attempts to fiscally inform the defense strategy.

The QDR 2001 Working Group was chartered by the

Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), to develop different

defense strategy options, the criteria for sizing the

conventional forces, and the identification of the required

capabilities to support each proposed option.14 The

assessment sought to identify the types of missions that the

U.S. military might be asked to perform in the next 10 to 20

years. The QDR Working Group developed four defense

strategy alternatives. The four strategies span the

spectrum from:

1. Maintain the current defense strategy,

2. Engage more selectively and accelerate transformation,

3. Engage more selectively and strengthen warfighting

capability, and finally,

4. Engage today to prevent conflict tomorrow.

Each of these defense strategies suggests a different

defense budget and investment strategy. For example,

Strategy 2, Engage More Selectively and Accelerate

Transformation, suggests that U.S. military investment

should be focused on leap-ahead capabilities while only

becoming enmeshed in contingency operations that are

judged to be critical to our national well-being. The strategy

also suggests that the DoD should divest itself of most Cold

War legacy systems. The services fought hard against any

potential findings that they felt challenged their current

force structures and investment plans.

143
If the SecDef should choose one of these defense

strategies or develop a hybrid, the defense strategy will

provide the guidelines for sizing of the defense budget. This

is in spite of the National Defense Panel (NDP), the group

appointed by Congress to review the 1997 QDR report,

noting that the defense strategy should not be a force-sizing

mechanism. The Defense Science Board (DSB) on DoD

Transformation made similar findings.15 Nonetheless, few

attempts have been made by the services, especially the

Army and Air Force, to move away from the defense

strategy as being the sizing mechanism for their forces. The

force sizing assessments are usually based on minimizing

the risk to the United States and its allies, but risk is never

defined nor is it quantified. Whatever the new defense

strategy, the SecDef and his advisors must accept that some

of the services will attempt to use it as a sizing mechanism.

The strategy will provide the first indicator as to what the

Bush defense agenda could cost. The new strategy must

provide some clear guidance on the DoD’s investment

priorities and how these priorities will be met. If the priority

is to increase U.S. investment in Homeland Defense and

National Missile Defense, then the SecDef must provide

some strategic guidance on the resource options and the

trade spaces.

Indications are that the Bush administration will at

least modify the defense strategy to accommodate missile

defense. The new strategy might call for a single MTW

requirement combined with multiple contingencies. But

whatever the new strategy, it must be sufficiently defined so

that it establishes the parameters on how the priorities will

be set for the defense budget.

Resource Drivers in the Defense Budget.

Many people believe that the defense budget’s major

resource allocation is for operating costs or what is also

termed the numbers, types, and readiness levels of DoD’s

forces. Others believe that modernization and procurement

144
are the major resource drivers, while still others contend

that support and infrastructure that include such areas as

civilian pay, military medical care, and family housing are

the largest cost drivers. Importantly, these elements are all

interrelated, and an assessment is needed to better

understand how these areas interact. The assessment

reveals some of the constraints and hard choices faced when

trying to develop savings within the DoD budget.

Assessing the FY 2002 Defense Budget by the six major

appropriations (i.e., Military Personnel [(MILPERS],

Operations and Maintenance [O&M], Procurement

[PROC], Research and Development [R&D], Military

Construction [MILCON], and Family Housing Accounts

[FHA]), it is not a surprise to find that the O&M account is

the largest at 37 percent. The O&M account includes the

bulk of civilian pay and the consumables that support

operations and training. Also, it should be noted that

Military Personnel, at about 26 percent of the total, is the

second largest account and primarily covers pay for Active

and Reserve military personnel. Figure 1 shows the

breakdown by these six principal appropriations and their

respective percentages of the total FY 2002 Defense

145

Figure 1. Appropriation Analysis.
Department budget.16 While this gives some direct insights

as to the general uses of the defense resources, further

analysis is necessary to relate these appropriations to the

resources that support major defense functional categories.17

We have chosen three sets of major functional categories

often used as the targets for defense resource reductions for

examination. These are Force Structure and Readiness,

Modernization, and Infrastructure and Sustainment. Those

familiar with defense activities will recognize the

difficulties in further separating these categories into their

constituent elements. Force structure provides little utility

unless it is ready for use, and the services promote the

highest readiness objectives for their mission forces; the

result being that readiness is inexplicably linked to force

structure. Similarly, service infrastructure is the

foundation for their respective abilities to sustain

capabilities, forces, and institutions. In the following figures

we examine the magnitude and makeup of resources

associated with each of these functional categories.

146

Figure 2. Force Structure and Readiness Overlay.
Figure 2 shows how force structure and readiness are

funded principally in two of the major appropriations:

Military Personnel and O&M.18 This is due to the major

components of those functions being tied to pay of military

members assigned to units in the force structure (this

component of resources is often referred to as military end

strength but is more aptly represented by person-years) and

the consumables, such as fuel and spare parts, that support

unit operations and training. Savings from force structure

reductions with their consequent cuts in military personnel

are generally estimated to be on the order of $40,000-45,000

per person-year including pay, entitlements, and an

apportionment of O&M for reduced training expenditures.

Cuts in military personnel are useful in that they affect both

the year of execution and all succeeding program years

where the person-years are reduced. Since reductions in

military personnel are usually effected by speeding up

attrition through “early-out” programs and reductions in

accessions, the initial year of any planned end strength

reduction usually yields only about one half of the

person-year savings that are achieved in the succeeding

years. Large reductions in military personnel require

several years to effect due to the need to assure appropriate

skill mixes and experience levels are retained. Direct cuts in

readiness resources, such as suggested by Senator John

McCain in 1996 by implementing “tiered readiness” for

major force elements, are difficult to achieve in practice

since they would suggest that some of the active forces

would not be ready for employment on short notice.19 The

Air Force with its Expeditionary Aerospace Force concept is

moving in this direction; the Navy and Marine Corps have

adopted this concept. Such readiness reductions

traditionally have been strongly resisted by the Chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service Chiefs, and the

Commanders-in-Chief of the combatant commands.

Historically, other efforts at direct reductions to readiness

resources, which reduce training time and degrade unit

effectiveness, have not been easily applied, especially by the

Army. Hence, the only way to effectively gain large savings

147
from readiness is to eliminate the demand for readiness

resources. This can be accomplished by eliminating major

force elements, such as Army divisions, Air Force air wings,

Navy ships, and Marine brigades, since units taken out of

the force structure will not need to expend their training

and operations resources. Reducing major force elements

also provides an opportunity to take person-year

reductions, which are generally of higher values than

readiness reductions alone.

Figure 3 shows those appropriations associated with

defense modernization activities. Modernization requires

resources primarily from five of the appropriations.

Procurement and R&D are the largest appropriations for

this activity as they cover the development and production

costs of new weapons systems. Few people realize that the

148

Figure 3. Modernization Overlay.
Military Personnel, Operations and Maintenance, and

Military Construction appropriations also support service

modernization. The MILPERS covers those individuals

involved in acquisition; MILCON funds those facilities

required to support the fielding of new modern weapons

systems such as aircraft shelters, runways, and

maintenance buildings; and the O&M resources support

operational testing requirements, provision of spare parts,

new equipment training teams that accompany fielding

activities, and pay for civilians assigned to these activities.

The cancellation, delay, or reductions in quantities

produced or capabilities of major service weapons systems

that are in development or just beginning production and

fielding usually effect the largest long-term reductions in

the defense program. In the 1997 QDR, the SecDef decided

to reduce the total number of aircraft in the F-22 fighter

program. This decision was a reduction taken at the end of

the production program; hence the savings achieved were

only in the out-years. To achieve savings in the near-term

years in modernization, entire programs must be

terminated. This can be achieved either by stopping a

system during development or ending production of a fully

developed system.

Modernization provides a direct contribution to the

fielding of new and enhanced capabilities. Killing systems

in development, delaying their development, slowing or

ending production may result in the lack of needed

capabilities that risk the loss of future advantages for our

military forces. Hence, decisions to foreclose future

capabilities are often difficult to effect with any finality;

several systems have received new life in subsequent years

after they were cancelled when new administrations or

defense leaders become responsible for reconsidering these

decisions. Program termination decisions have generally

resulted in the requirement to pay termination costs that

significantly reduce savings and eliminate all or a portion of

a desired capability. Decisions to delay developments or

reduce rates of production of weapons systems generally

149
increase the unit cost of each remaining system in the

program. Hence, the savings from these types of decisions

are usually of less overall value and not realized until later

in the program out-years. Most decisions affecting

modernization programs very often incur some level of

resistance or wrath from the affected industries and their

congressional sponsors and these reactions usually increase

in intensity with a system cancellation. Another

consideration in taking reductions from modernization is

their effects on the defense industrial base. With the many

consolidations of defense companies over the past decade,

there are fewer companies to compete for defense contracts.

The loss of on-going business through program kills, delays,

or reductions may adversely affect future defense industrial

capabilities. The lesson learned from reviewing recent

history appears to be that new administrations should

cancel modernization programs early in development and

early within their terms of office to have some assurance

that these decisions would have some lasting effect and

yield the desired resource savings.

There is an intertemporal interplay between

modernization and readiness spending. Modernization is

long-term investment and its outputs—equipments and

capabilities—have long lives (with usefulness often

debated). Postponing investment does not reduce the

existing stock of capital except through the depreciation

associated with wear and tear, and ultimately,

obsolescence. Readiness is annual consumption of a

commodity; the consequences of buying or not buying

readiness have different consequences on the DoD.

Our third examination is of infrastructure and

sustainment. Figure 4 shows the appropriations that are

affected by infrastructure and sustainment. It reveals that

that, due to their inherent crosscutting nature,

infrastructure and sustainment affect all six of the

appropriations. This functional category has been one of the

most difficult in which to take timely reductions and achieve

defense savings. In the 1990s, the congressionally approved

150
Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) act was used to close

excess or inefficient military bases and eliminate,

consolidate, or transfer their related functions and military

and civilian jobs. The BRAC process provided useful

long-term reductions in military infrastructure while

assuring needed sustainment capabilities and eliminated

the potential for revisiting decisions in Congress once they

were approved. Assuming congressional approval for

additional rounds of BRAC authority, the primary

difficulties of using this approach to achieve defense

resource reductions are that there are high initial costs to

close bases and assure necessary environmental clean-up,

and the elimination of civilian jobs usually takes several

years due to extensive protections for the civilian workforce.

Thus BRAC savings are not generally achieved until 5 or

more years after the closure is effected, and they are

generally preceded by high up-front near-term costs.

Another resource reduction area within infrastructure and

sustainment is to reduce civilian jobs without the benefit of

a BRAC to save the related costs from reduced civilian

person-years. As mentioned earlier, reducing the civilian

defense workforce seldom yields any saving until the second

151

Figure 4. Infrastructure and Sustainment.
or third year after a reduction decision is reached due to job

protection laws and rules. The lengthy period to achieve

such civilian reductions is another reason that such

reductions need to be decided early in a new administration

to assure they are fully effected.

Another area for potential savings in the infrastructure

and sustainment category is to change the stock levels of

sustainment items kept in the inventory, thus reducing the

costs over time to care for items in supply and directly

reducing costs for the replacement of supplies no longer

stocked. This area of savings also takes several years to

effect as the supplies already on hand must be lowered

through consumption, and the costs of the supply inventory

care and maintenance can be reduced only as efficiencies in

storage can be achieved. The problem with using

sustainment as a billpayer, at least for the Army and the Air

Force, is that spares and depot reparables are already in low

stock. These shortages are due to retention of legacy

systems, increased use of equipment in operations, and the

traditional use of these accounts by the services to pay other

bills.20

Outsourcing or privatization of various logistics and

installation functions, such as military family housing, has

seen recent initiatives to reduce the infrastructure costs,

but these have yielded only marginal benefits. Two other

areas of infrastructure that may provide savings are

reductions in recruiting and individual training that are

strongly related to the size of the overall defense force

structure, but reductions in force structure seldom produce

commensurate reductions of the same proportion in

training and recruiting infrastructure. Nearly the same

institutional staffs and operating costs for these functions

will be needed to handle reductions of throughput that are

reduced by only 10-15 percent. Since the training base and

recruiting structures must accommodate an interrelated

seasonal personnel flow, direct cuts to either of these

infrastructure areas will over time directly impact

readiness of the forces. One area within recruiting that

152
some might suggest for reduction is the high cost of

advertising, but few with any experience in accession

management would consider such reductions effective since

recruiting is and will remain a very competitive activity.

Hence, one can expect to achieve significant savings from

reductions in training base and recruiting infrastructures

only with commensurate force structure reductions.

New Strategies and Additional Costs.

Although the defense strategic review is nearing

completion, the new DoD roadmap remains to be fully

defined. The Bush administration has already identified

two objectives requiring increased expenditures: (1)

increasing military pay, and (2) the development of a missile

defense capability. The increase in military pay is also tied

to improving housing and medical care for the active

military. The President indicated that the military pay

would increase about 5.3 percent (or 4.1 adjusted for

inflation). The Congressisonal Budget Office (CBO)

estimates of pay increases at a 1.5 percent increase per year

over a 10-year period (adjusted from an actual percentage

raise of 3.3 percent per year) would cost the DoD

approximately $85 billion per year. The calculation is based

on sustaining the force structure and end strength at

approximately the same size.21

The administration has not been bashful about

identifying a robust missile defense capability. As of this

writing a missile defense architecture has yet to be

identified; therefore, it is difficult to gage the exact costs.

Many critics of missile defense argue that the technology

necessary to support a full-scale missile defense does not

exist yet. Currently there are three elements associated

with missile defense:

1. The development and fielding of interoperable

Theater Missile Defense (TMD) to protect U.S. forces and

interests in theaters of operations;

153
2. The development of active defenses to protect the U.S.

homeland against long-range missile threats—National

Missile Defense (NMD); and,

3. The development of an advanced technology

program.22

The TMD portion of the architecture consists of the

higher and lower tiers and several interrelated systems. For

example, the PATRIOT system (PAC-3) remains the

foundational piece of the lower-tier theater missile defense.

The system is currently being improved in the areas of

interceptor performance and increased lethality. The

PAC-3 improvements include the new PAC-3 hit-to-kill

missile, enhanced remote launch, communications and

computer/software improvements, and radar upgrades to

improve tracking and targeting.23 The upper-tier program

is in competition between two systems: the Theater High

Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Navy Theater

Wide (NTW). The goal is to achieve a quicker and more

efficient capability. The architecture for the Upper Tier and

an acquisition strategy have not been completely defined.

Both the programs are being restructured to meet a 2007

date First Unit Equipped (FUE) and a phased capability

approach. Another objective of the overall program is to

reduce risk through phased funding.

The NMD portion of the program contains space and

ground-based elements: sensors, interceptors, and

associated Battle Management Command, Control and

Communications capabilities. There has been no decision

on when the system will be deployed, but much of it hinges

on the technology and its reliability. Nonetheless, the NMD

program is on a fast track because it is believed that there

are sufficient threats from rogue nations to necessitate the

development and deployment of the system. The goal is to

deploy an initial NMD capability in fiscal year 2005. The

DoD wants to include in this package approximately 20

interceptors. In 2007 the program plan calls for moving to

an expanded-capability-one-architecture that consists of

154
approximately 100 interceptors. Estimated additional costs

for these two phases (05 and 07) are approximately $6

billion dollars above the existing resources in the Future

Year Defense Program.24 Some defense analysts place the

total costs of fielding a complete missile defense around

$100 billion over the next 10 years; these estimates do not

include sustainment costs.25

The issue facing the DoD is not only that the defense

budget is not going to get substantially larger; it must also

be able to pay for these new initiatives. Some analysts

contend that another round of draconian cuts could provide

sufficient monies to support the QOL and missile defense

programs. Certainly another round of BRAC could provide

about another $5.5 billion. However, the BRAC process

takes about 2 years to complete, and savings would be

garnered 3-4 years after the selected bases were closed, and

all the up-front costs of closure were paid.26

Another way to assess where resources might be found to

pay for new initiatives is to link investment to possible new

strategies that might be adopted by the Bush

administration. Four possible strategies have been

identified that are worthy of examination: Transformation,

Concurrent MTWs, SSC Focus, and Engagement. These

strategies include ones that have been discussed at length

within the national security community. For example, the

NDU study looked at several of these strategies in their

preparatory work for the QDR. Our examination of these

strategies linked them to resources and forces, mission

focus objectives, and transformation paths and their timing.

Table 1 displays a short summary of each strategy.

155
If the Transformation Strategy were adopted, several

areas of divestiture could be readily identified. The first is

that there would be a deemphasis on the major force

elements with the savings redistributed to transformation.

The transformation would include improving the quality of

life of the current force, development of a missile defense

capability and improvement of the U.S. ability to globally

project power. If the United States decided to maintain its

current course, force structure and modernization would

continue at about the same rates as now. This strategy is

called the Concurrent MTWs Strategy. In this strategy,

there would be greater emphasis on ensuring that current

forces are capable of supporting identified MTWs, while

Smaller-Scale Contingencies (SSCs) would be

deemphasized. Investment dollars could be spent on legacy

force sustainment and modernization, TMD, and a very

slow transformation that is only loosely defined. Table 1

summarizes the other strategies and their associated

assumptions.

Few assessments of different strategies have examined

resource impacts. Therefore, within the context of the

defense appropriations we assessed what the implications

156

Table 1. Major Assumptions for Strategies.
would be for on each of these four strategies. For example, if

the Transformation Strategy were adopted, the force

structure and readiness accounts would decrease. The DoD

would divest itself of force structure in order to pay for

modernization to support global power projection and the

homeland defense mission. The reductions in force

structure would also impact infrastructure and

sustainment because less recruitment, individual training,

housing, base support, and sustainment would be required

of a smaller force. The Concurrent MTWs Strategy presents

some anomalies. For example, if the Bush administration

were truly interested in sustaining a two MTW capability,

then there would have to be new concepts of operation that

would improve the effectiveness of current force with

near-term capability enhancements or some increases in

force structure, the assumption being that the United

States would need a larger force structure to fight two

simultaneous wars. Investment would have to be reoriented

towards ensuring that there is sufficient strategic lift for

these missions and lethality for such a force. This implies

that the United States would divest itself of many of the

capabilities required for peacekeeping and humanitarian

operations and eliminate those legacy capabilities not

essential for the conduct of MTWs. The consolidation of the

force around the MTW missions could also lead to the

requirement for some unidentified decreases in

infrastructure and sustainment resources.

Summary and Conclusions.

This brief examination suggests that early in a new

administration’s term, it must make fundamental decisions

on the level of resources it will provide for national defense.

The SecDef must also decide early in his term where

reductions and efficiencies are to be taken from the existing

forces, capabilities, and programs if there is to be any

assurance that these savings can be realized. Lastly, with

the interrelationship of many of the major functional

categories discussed above, expectations for savings in the

157
initial years after decisions for reductions are likely to be

only marginal. The fragmentation over time of the direct

relationship between such things as force structure and

infrastructure makes taking reductions and the realization

of their immediate financial benefits extremely difficult.

This assessment begins to provide a basis for trade-offs

and divestiture. The goals of investment and divestment

must be structured within the strategy. The question that

remains to be answered is affordability of any of the possible

courses that the Bush administration might choose. It

appears that regardless of what strategy is chosen, one

needs a set of common resource “topline” assumptions for all

alternative strategies. And it appears that regardless of the

strategy there will have to be increases in overall defense

expenditure to support new initiatives such as missile

defense. Importantly, as one moves through the different

strategies there is a need to relate characteristics and

objectives of each alternative strategy to the resource

drivers—force structure and readiness, modernization, and

infrastructure and sustainment. Some examples of these

characteristics and their interrelated nature are

modernized legacy forces, advanced technology capabilities,

and slow transformation. One common element integral to

any strategy will be additional rounds of BRAC to reduce

infrastructure and reductions in sustainment through new

concepts that will assure very lean logistics. Another

common area that will need to be explored for reductions is

the role and size of the strategic nuclear forces and heavy

conventional land forces. Depending on the strategy, these

force elements provide some potential areas for

reorientation and potential divestiture, but one must be

clear on what is needed to assure a feasible strategy. For

example, will lighter or medium forces replace heavy

conventional land force? Will the costs associated with that

force transformation be affordable in concert with other

demands of the strategy?

The costs associated with defense will be further

clarified through the priorities set for the missions in any

158
strategy that is adopted. The strategy must explicitly

identify the required capabilities to support the missions

and their relative priorities. Also there needs to be a clear

identification of the resource priorities associated with a

particular strategy. Once these decisions are made,

transformation should be addressed within two contexts:

relative priority of the required future capabilities and the

schedule for their availability. This information will

facilitate the identification of the resources necessary to

achieve operational readiness and ultimately decide the

feasibility of the strategy.

The strong link that we are suggesting between strategy

and resources argues that alternative strategies can only be

explored through a very systematic assessment of strategy,

resource drivers, and identification of capability

alternatives. The constant iteration of these elements

provides defense strategists and resource planners a

realistic way to evaluate current and future requirements.

Some might argue that such an approach would hinder the

ability to develop a pure strategy; we argue that the

feasibility of the strategy depends upon its affordability and

maintainability that can only be assured through such an

approach. Some of the fundamental building blocks that

might be used to develop a fiscally informed strategy are

Major Joint Military Capabilities, Key Service Capabilities,

and Enabling Capabilities. Some examples of the subareas

under these building blocks would include:

• Major Joint Military Capabilities

− Conventional Precision Strike

− Forced Regional Access or Entry

− Focused Regional Reconnaissance, Intelligence,

Surveillance, and Target Acquisition

• Key Service Capabilities

159
− Air Supremacy or Superiority

− Sea Supremacy or Superiority

− Territory and population control and occupation

• Enabling Capabilities

− Network Centric Distributed Command, Control,

Communications, Computers and Intelligence

− On-call Assured Logistics Support

Once these capability sets have been identified, the

inter-relationships among the resource drivers and their

subelements can be identified and assessed.

The Bush administration has a major challenge to

develop a strategy that will provide the necessary

capabilities for the near-term and assure the

transformation of capabilities into the future that will

protect our national interests in an environment of evolving

globalization and the possibility of a future multipolar

international structure. To accommodate the President’s

announced initiatives and assure his principal objective of a

premier defense establishment, the selection of the defense

strategy will definitely be driven by equally important

decisions affecting resource elements that will define and

shape its content. As we discussed earlier, these decisions

will not be easily reached or sustained without the full

support of the new administration, the military services,

and Congress. Once these decisions are made, the

transformation could be slower than desired because of the

complexities associated with capturing the

inter-relationships and dependencies of the defense budget.

This further suggests that rather than a sweeping

restructuring of defense, the administration should focus on

a few critical areas that will generate forcing functions to

have the services develop options for their realignment and

divestiture that will support DoD’s transformation plan.

160
The Office of the Secretary of Defense could then evaluate

the options for responsiveness, relevance, affordability, and

feasibility. This allows an interactive and iterative process

that recognizes the external forces that will impact the

defense program throughout the tenure of this

administration and could accommodate mid-course

corrections.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 5

1. This chapter reflects only the views of the authors and not those of

RAND or its clients.

2. U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Staff Quadrennial Defense

Review working papers, Washington, DC: December 2000. If the current

FY 2001 budget is sustained, the respective service budget shares are:

Army, 24.3 percent; Navy, 31.5 percent; Air Force, 29.3 percent. The

OSD retains the rest for department-wide spending. Congressional

Budget Office, Budgeting for Defense: Maintaining Today’s Forces, The

Congress of the United States, September 2000.

3. To give some scope to the dollars associated with some of these

programs, we looked at the fighter programs. A revamped fighter

program that includes the F-22, F/A-18E and F, and the Joint Strike

Fighter (JSF) will cost approximately $300 billion dollars over the next

20 years. To further illustrate these potential future aircraft costs, note

that the unit cost of an F-22 high capability stealthy fighter is currently

projected to be approximately $185 million per aircraft. See Department

of Defense, Department of Defense Budget Overview: Fiscal Year 2002,

Washington, DC: 2001.

4. Joint Staff Internal Working Papers, January 2001; Interviews

with Service programmers, February 2001.

5. John Isaacs, “Military Budget Continues Increasing to About

$324 Billion,” Washington, DC: Council for a Livable World, February 9,

2001.

6. Michael O’Hanlon, The Defense Budget, Issue Paper No. 8,

Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, July 17, 2000, p. 2.

7. Ibid., p. 4.

8. Michael O’Hanlon, How to be a Cheap Hawk: The 1999 and 2000

Defense Budgets, Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 1998.

161
9. Daniel Goure and Jeffrey Ranney, “Averting the Defense Train

Wreck in the New Millennium," Significant Issue Series, Washington,

DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 1999.

10. American Institute of Physics, “The FY 2002 Bush

Administration Budget Blueprint: In Context,” FYI: The American

Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News, No. 25, March 6,

2001.

11. U.S. General Accounting Office, Bottom-Up Review: Analysis of

DoD War Game to Test Key Assumptions, GAO/NSAID-96-170,

Washington, DC, June 1996.

12. Another recent article that summarizes these problems is Eliot

A. Cohen, “Defending America in the Twenty-first Century,” Foreign

Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 6, November/December 2000.

13. The defense strategy drives many sizing and allocation rules

within DoD operational planning. For example, although we now know

that contingency operations do not adhere to the rigid assumptions

identified in the Joint Strategic Planning Guidance (JSPG), the Joint

Capabilities Plan (JCP), and the Contingency Planning

Guidance (CPG), the strategy still shapes most of what resources are

used and the allocation rules. The assumptions also indicate that most

operations can be handled unilaterally, but in reality few U.S.

contingencies are done without the assistance of coalition partners,

allies and international organizations.

14. Michele A. Flournoy, Report of the National Defense University

Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 Working Group, Washington, DC,

November 2000.

15. National Defense Panel, Transforming Defense: National

Security in the 21st Century and Report of the Defense Science Board

Taskforce on DoD Warfighting Transformation, Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Defense, December 1, 1997.

16. William S. Cohen, 2001 Secretary of Defense Annual Report to

the President and Congress, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Defense, 2001.

17. Ibid.

18. One other resource aspect of readiness, intentionally not

captured here for simplicity, is the ammunition consumed in training

that is a procurement expenditure. While this component of readiness is

162
worth some two billion dollars per annum, historically it has been only a

very marginal source of budget savings during past reductions.

19. John McCain (U.S. Senator, R-AZ), Ready Tomorrow: Defending

American Interests in the 21st Century, White Paper, Washington, DC:

March 19, 1996.

20. Fixing this problem is more complex than adding funds to these

accounts. In the Air Force sustainment accounts are complex systems

that include the management of the Working Capital Fund, Major

Commands’ individual management styles, and trade-offs against

modernization and other accounts. Funding the current Air Force

sustainment bills causes major turbulence in the year of execution and

impacts readiness. See Air Force Sustainment Campaign Plan Working

Group, Working Papers, April 2-12, 2001.

21. Congressional Budget Office, pp. 15-16.

22. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization: FY 2001 President’s

Budget Submission, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense,

2000, p. 1.

23. Ibid., p. 3.

24. Summary of DoD Budget FY2001.

25. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Budget, p. B01.

26. It has been estimated that approximately 23 percent of the bases

are excess capacity. These include 60 functioning bases: 10 Army, 3

National Guard, 29 Navy, 6 Marine, and 12 Air Force. About 50 percent

of the 500 bases nationwide are considered major. The first two rounds

of base closure saved about $20 billion after the closure costs were paid.

163
PART III: EXTERNAL VIEWS

OF TRANSFORMATION

There are many interested, and some disinterested,

outside observers of the transformation of the American

defense establishment. Unfortunately most of the American

public falls into the latter category, according to Richard

Friedman of the National Strategy Forum, another speaker.

They have little interest in foreign affairs except to make

sure that no instability affects their domestic tranquility.

Though civilian elites tend to hold the military in high

regard, most civilians have little understanding of military

culture, and their apparently high level of support for the

armed forces is shaky and shallow, according to Friedman.

He asserted that the term “transformation” has no

resonance with the public, and that a more accurate and

understandable title for the conference would be

“Adaptation of the Department of Stability in a Period of

Relative Peace (and We’re Really Not Sure About the

Prosperity).” He argued that it is essential for the military

to maintain its credibility in order to make its case for

transformation with the public, and predicted a resurgence

of interest in foreign affairs when there is a significant

terrorist incident at home or Americans realize that the

process of globalization will affect their jobs. Recent events

will certainly test this hypothesis.

Agencies and allies who must work with the Department

of Defense (DoD) are much more focused on the progress and

results of transformation programs. Dr. John Finney of the

Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Department of State,

assured the attendees of his organization’s support for

DoD’s efforts, and asserted they needed to be part of a wider

undertaking to reform the whole U.S. Government to

conduct a strategy of global engagement better. Colonel

Richard Wilson of the Australian Army described his own

country’s plans for continuous force modernization as it

prepares for a future of increasing Operations Other Than

165
War. The Australians share American concerns about

casualties, collateral damage, and leveraging new

technology, and will monitor the course of American defense

transformation with great interest.

The two chapters in this section are also from allies or

potential coalition partners, and they reflect some other

concerns brought up by Colonel Wilson. Colonel W. H.

Moore is responsible for the conceptual and force

development work for the future army of the United

Kingdom. He emphasizes possible problems in

interoperability, fearing that the pace or direction of

American military reform will produce a force that will have

great difficulty working with armed services from other

nations. Colonel (retired) Leonid Polyakov, Director of

Military Programs at the Ukrainian Razumkov Centre for

Economic and Political Studies, is more concerned that the

transformed American force will be too dependent on

technology and underestimate the importance of human

factors in warfare. He also wants to publicize current

Ukrainian contributions to combined operations with U.S.

forces. Their observations merit serious consideration as

the U.S. DoD embarks on its ambitious transformation

program.

166
CHAPTER 6

THE UNITED KINGDOM’S VIEW OF U.S. ARMY

TRANSFORMATION

W. H. Moore

From the United Kingdom’s (UK) perspective, the U.S.

Army Transformation process is one of the more

adventurous and exciting military programs in the world

today. Emanating from General Eric Shinseki’s vision as he

took office as Chief of Staff of the Army, it has moved ahead

with breathtaking pace. Indeed, it is very hard to keep up

with this rate in America, let alone 4,000 miles away in the

UK. I have therefore had to draw a line in the sand on which

to base my lecture, and have taken the situation as

presented at the Association of the United States Army

(AUSA) in March 2001 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as my

benchmark. My chapter will focus on what the UK Army is

doing to meet the new challenges of the future operating

environment, and then draw out the similarities and

differences with the U.S. Army. Let me say at the start,

though, that I find the transformation process an entirely

logical program, that, if successful, will focus America’s

Army on the key aspects of rapid effect and deployability,

thus making it an appropriate force for the 21st century.

The process would appear to have minimal risk in that it

does improve the Legacy Forces—thus maintaining a strong

warfighting capability—at the same time as it is developing

both its Interim and Objective Forces. I have no doubt that

transformation will be successful, provided that the money

is available for all three strands.

167
The UK Ministry of Defence differs from its U.S.

counterpart in that it is more closely integrated; it has to

be—the UK has smaller Armed Forces and therefore has to

make the most economical use of all its scarce assets. The

UK Army, for example, does not have its own budget, and

procurement of equipment is a truly Joint affair, and this

brings me to my first observation about transformation.

Despite the rhetoric from AUSA, I am not yet convinced that

U.S. Army transformation has the full support of the other

services, and despite the ongoing Rumsfeld review, I am not

sure how much Defense support it has (in terms of dollars).

While I realize that I may be on sticky ground in this

respect, this is just a perception. I hope that I am wrong. But

this does lead me to the next point, that of perception itself.

U.S. Army transformation, to the outside world, seems very

focused on equipment and a Revolution in Military Affairs

(RMA). And yet this is not the case, as any discussion with

somebody from your Training and Doctrine Command or a

U.S. Army senior leader will tell me. In fact, the U.S. Army

is taking a holistic view of what they are currently doing,

but this is not the picture that is often portrayed outside of

the United States. You may not consider that such an

observation is valid, but if your allies do not have a real

grasp of what you are up to, they will find it difficult to work

out how we might best work together. I will return to this

point.

The UK took a close look at its future in the Strategic

Defence Review of 1998, a year after the Labour

Government came to power. It was clear that the UK faced

no clearly identifiable strategic threat, and while its first

priority was to ensure the defense of the UK, the Armed

Forces were to pursue a more expeditionary role. But how

were they to be configured for such a mission?

A look at how they might operate in the future would see

a battlespace that has many more players than it had

during the Cold War. In the UK Army, we would see

ourselves operating more closely with the maritime and air

components to project power to where it was truly most

168
needed. More, and very different, allies would be involved in

coalitions of the willing. In addition, there would be many

more interested parties in theatre than hitherto.

Contractors, other governmental departments,

nongovernmental organizations like the Red Cross and

charities, the United Nations, bodies like the Organization

for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and

multinational cartels—all of whom would be in theatre

before us, and would remain behind long after the Armed

Forces had left. People—possibly the neutrals—who would

either be dependent upon armed forces, supportive of their

actions, or downright hostile to their mere presence, would

also complicate the issue. This is a very convoluted picture

indeed.

To conduct a successful campaign, a totally integrated

approach by all those parties would be required in order to

bring the crisis to a satisfactory conclusion. This is the

environment in which the UK sees itself operating in the

future. Allies are key to us—we cannot go it alone, and

therefore we have defined our developmental priorities

accordingly: first and most importantly, the ability to

conduct alliance and coalition warfighting; second, using

those same capabilities, to conduct national-only

warfighting (a re-run of the Falklands, for example); and

third, using the same set of capabilities again, other

operations. Therefore we heavily depend on our allies, and

this brings me to the one major concern that I have about the

U.S. transformation process.

The UK and other allies need to operate alongside the

United States if we are to create that effect to which I

alluded previously. Equipment interfaces will be key, and

our way of doing business together should be broadly

recognizable, as should our way of thinking—

interoperability of the mind is probably the key factor. You

are running ahead so fast, that we may not be able to keep

pace, or even to catch up when you have attained your goals.

This may be our problem, and why should you wait for us?

But the bottom line is that we will need to fight together,

169
and this may require some accommodation now. Thus the

most important criteria for the UK is to stay engaged, to

understand what you are doing, and for both our nations to

have a dialogue to ensure that we can continue to conduct

operations effectively and together. We need to understand

your concepts of operations and your capabilities before we

get to the line of departure if we are to achieve that

integrated effect I mentioned earlier.

Any developmental process has to take cognizance of the

trends and challenges that are likely to be faced by its armed

forces. While any prediction of the future is fraught with

danger—as many of our compatriots have discovered to

their cost—there are, nonetheless, some enduring trends

and challenges that we will all face. One such challenge is to

get into theatre more quickly and with more effect in order

to deter, coerce or ultimately defeat an enemy before he has

got himself set—an attempt to nip a crisis in the bud. We are

therefore extremely supportive of the concept behind the

U.S. transformation process. Indeed, we have defined a

similar idea and have termed it Rapid and Early Effect—the

rapid part being the military contribution to early effect,

where the emphasis is not on the speed of deployment, but

rather the operational and tactical impact once deployed.

The UK Army is currently only capable of conducting rapid

effect in low-risk or small other operations—in fact, we are

rather good at it. Witness the highly successful operation by

the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment to rescue the

hostages from the West Side Boys in Sierra Leone late last

year. But we need to do better—we need to develop our

forces to conduct rapid effect in more intense other

operations. The only difference that the UK has with the

United States is that we do not believe that we will be able to

develop a rapid effect force capable of warfighting against a

matched enemy until about 2025. We do not believe that the

step change in technology will occur in the timeframe that

the United States is planning for the objective force. We

hope it does because it would allow the more rapid

170
transformation of some of our forces as well, but the

revolution has yet to occur.

The UK is therefore looking at improving the capability

of its light forces, developing what we term “Medium

Forces,” and the necessary rebalancing of our heavier

forces. Medium forces will be configured under present

tentative plans to fit the C130 envelope, and we are

currently deciding the effect that this concept might have on

our equipment programme. The Future Rapid Effect

System (FRES) is in a very early stage, embryonic when

compared to what the United States is doing with its

interim brigade combat teams (IBCTs). Nonetheless,

because we do not believe in a short-term technology fix, our

approach is more incremental in nature. The UK is aiming

to identify the technologies it would wish to insert

downstream, and then introduce them incrementally as the

various constituents become proven. By taking such a

modular approach, there is less technical risk, and a more

level funding profile is maintained throughout. This latter

point is most important owing to the joint nature of our

procurement process to which I alluded earlier. A very

expensive project with high technical risk is vulnerable in

times when defense budgets are being squeezed. Our

process is therefore one of evolution, not revolution—

incremental rather than Big Bang.

Our Medium Forces are also unlikely to be hard-wired,

and their peacetime structure is therefore different from

your IBCTs. The UK envisages force packaging from our

heavy, medium, and light forces to achieve the necessary

effect. In a simple warfighting scenario, the light forces

would effect entry, the medium forces might stabilize the

situation, and the heavy forces would produce the decisive

action. Medium forces, for the UK, must, however, have

utility around the spectrum of conflict—we are too small to

develop niche capabilities. Until this step change in

technology occurs they will have utility:

171
• In support of Heavy Forces in warfighting (rear area

operations, flank operations, complex terrain)

• For the more intense Other Operations (short of

warfighting)

• For achieving Rapid Effect (in operations short of

warfighting).

We have yet to decide on how these might evolve in

structural terms, but one solution might be to develop

medium forces from our current mechanized and light

forces to provide an intervention and utility force. This

recognizes that full spectrum ground maneuver using

medium forces can only take place in around 2025. In

summary then, our medium forces, when developed, must

have the widest possible utility in the future operating

environment. In this concept, we are completely on board

with the U.S. Army—the ends are the same, it is just the

ways and the means that differ.

Before closing, there are one or two other minor

observations to be made about the U.S. Army transformation. I hesitate to raise them because they are not just

pertinent to the United States and are prevalent among the

corridor conversations in our own ministry. I am

increasingly worried by the over-reliance on technology to

produce solutions for warfare. In the final act, the resolution

of a conflict invariably centers on issues of people and

territory, tasks which demand the deployment of land

forces: uniquely and inescapably so. The concept of killing at

a distance, using high tech sensors linked to long-range

weapon systems from all the services against a matched

enemy in a warfighting operation, is an entirely logical

solution. But many enemies, even sophisticated ones, will

not wish to present themselves for such high technology

destruction and defeat, and technology may not have the

effect that we might hope on other less sophisticated

adversaries, as the Russians discovered on the streets of

Grozny. I may be a skeptic, but I hope I do not have my head

172
buried in the sand, when I say that I am wary of analysts

who say that we can always win at a distance. History does

not bear out their contentions, and there must be an

injection of reality into this debate, and the inevitable

balance must be found.

Perhaps I can leave you with some thoughts about how

the UK—a strong ally and supporter of the United

States—views your exciting and fast-paced transformation

process. I will use the analogy of a set of stop (traffic) lights.

The red represents major concerns, the amber depicts

current worries that I would expect to be resolved over time,

and the green is the light top left of the exit door on a

C130—i.e., that you are heading in the right direction.

Table 1 shows my assessment of Army transformation using

this traffic light metaphor.

The way in which the U.S. Army is transforming itself to

meet the challenges of this century is logical and, provided

the money holds out, will result in a highly effective

intervention force that can also win its nation’s wars. We in

the UK would wish to remain closely engaged in what you

are doing.

173

Concerns (Red) Short Term Worries (Amber) Strong Support (Green)

Interoperability with Allies

could be a problem in terms

of equipment and the way

in which the U.S. will fight

The perceived lack of a

Joint/Defense approach could

undermine what the Army is trying

to achieve

A logical process that is required to

adapt forces to the new operating

environment

The perceived lack of marketing,

especially to allies, will not aid

interoperability

The Objective Force will improve

operoperational effectiveness

A potential over-reliance on

technology and stand-off attack

could lead to problems among less

sophisticated enemies

The Objective Force will stand a

better chance of preventing crisis

escalation

There is potential for competing

interests among the Legacy,

Objective and Interim Forces,

especially for money

The maintenance of the Legacy

Force ensures minimal operational

risk while the Interim and

Objective Forces are developed

The timeframe for a step change in

technology required to deliver the

Objective Force is unrealistic

The holistic process pursued will

result in the realization of true

capability

The proactive validation and

experimentation program will

allow incremental and iterative

development

Table 1.
CHAPTER 7

AMERICAN DEFENSE TRANSFORMATION:

A VIEW FROM UKRAINE1

Leonid I. Polyakov

I want to present a Ukrainian perspective on U.S.

defense transformation. I can suggest two reasons why such

a perspective might be of interest. The first reason is that

the past decade of experience in U.S./Ukrainian military

cooperation within the framework of American “peacetime

engagement” programs has shown that our nations share a

converging interest in both parties having a robust defense.

The United States has consistently been the most active

foreign advocate and supporter of Ukraine’s independence.

So, we think that you care about us, and we care about

your strength. We consider your defense capabilities as one

of the cornerstones of continued American support to

Ukraine. In other words, we care about your future as a kind

of guarantee of our own future.

The second reason is that experience in recent years

(NATO implementation forces [IFOR], stabilization forces

[SFOR], and Kosovo forces [KFOR]) also demonstrates that

Ukrainian troops have been and continue to be a potential

coalition partner with the U.S. Army in future contingencies. Therefore, it is not unthinkable that the success of our

future combined operations to some extent could depend on

how we shape our interoperability now.

My chapter is divided into two parts. First, I will cover

some considerations concerning the general operational

dimensions of American defense transformation in an era of

175
peace and prosperity. Then I will discuss some aspects of

interoperability between the United States Army, a

“high-tech info age force,” and the Ukrainian Army, a

“low-tech industrial age force.”

An Example from History.

To illustrate the possible effects of transformation on

U.S. military forces and to highlight potential dangers, I

offer this example from 2,000 years ago.

In the year 9 AD, the Roman General Varus led three

Roman Legions (a force equivalent to a U.S. Army Corps

today) on an expedition to punish rebelling native tribes in

Germany. The Romans had the best military technology,

the best doctrine, and the best training available in the

whole world at that time. Their army had not been defeated

in battle in 100 years. The Romans were led on their march

by friendly German troops who knew the region, allies who

had sworn allegiance to Rome forever and were

interoperable within the framework of the Roman military

system. The allied scouting party was led by Arminius, a

German prince who had been made a Roman officer and

citizen because of his demonstrated intense loyalty to Rome.

Arminius led the three Roman legions into the dense forests

and swamps of the Teutoberger Wald. When the Roman

legions were deep into the woods, their German allies

suddenly disappeared. Then other German warriors

attacked the Romans on three sides. The Romans were not

able to deploy into their normally deadly combat formations

because of the thick forest and swampy ground. They were

faced with an asymmetric battle that they had not been

trained for, and they could not adequately adapt to the

unfamiliar conditions. All three legions were destroyed.

On a larger scale, the German victory in this battle

changed all of European history. Afterwards, the Romans

withdrew behind the Rhine and never again colonized much

of Germany except below the Danube. Initially they did

launch a punishing strike against the German tribes in

176
revenge for the loss of their legions, but the Romans soon

had to withdraw because they now had too few troops to

occupy the area. Their response resembled a modern

Tomahawk cruise missile attack against Iraq, or terrorists,

today. Such actions hurt your enemy for a few days or

months, but if you do not occupy the ground, you get only

some momentary satisfaction and never solve the problem.

Because Rome failed to occupy Germany, the modern world

was faced with one of the great rivalries of our day—France

versus Germany. Had Rome occupied both areas, perhaps

they could have developed in ways that would have

prevented World War I and World War II.

So what is my point? We need to examine if this Roman

defeat after an era of continuous victories and expansion

was a matter of accidental coincidence, or the result of

systemic factors. I think that it was certainly the latter.

In this illustration, there are both operational and

interoperability issues. First, among the former is the fact

that the Romans were too devoted to old, proven doctrine

that had worked for hundreds of years. Once denied the use

of familiar battle techniques, Roman soldiers could not

adapt. They had no contingency plans to deviate from their

accepted practices. Long reliance on victorious doctrine led

to inflexibility and a neglect of alternative approaches.

There were other operational reasons the legions failed

in the Teutoberger Wald. Continuous victorious wars with

vague aims and mediocre enemies, where national survival

was not at stake, led to a “dulling” of the aggressiveness of

the Roman soldiers. They were not enthusiastic about

tackling another peacekeeping mission.

Their leadership also failed them. Varus did not make a

proper reconnaissance of the unfamiliar route of advance,

neglected to organize security on the march, was

overconfident, and had no plan for counterintelligence. His

ignorance of basic security procedures suggests that Roman

generals had begun to believe too much in their own

177
invincibility, and too little in the ability of an enemy ever to

challenge them seriously.

Despite having materiel interoperability with their

German guides, Roman ignorance of human factors negated

that advantage. Due to overconfidence, the Romans never

questioned the loyalty of their allies. The Romans had faith

in their technology and doctrine, assuming that no one could

beat them. They also assumed that their allies had no other

motive but to support Rome. Instead of shaping relations

with an ally to create an effective force multiplier, the

Romans ended up being guided by traitors.

The Dominance Trap.

We can draw many useful insights from the Roman

disaster in the Teutoberger Wald. The name of this Strategy

Conference—Transforming Defense in an Era of Peace and

Prosperity—itself suggests parallels between 9 AD and the

possible future of the U.S. Army in 2030-50. In my

judgment, this current “Era of Peace and Prosperity”

presents the same dangers for America as 100 years of

victory did for the Romans. Let’s call this similarity the

“dominance trap.”

History teaches that every military superpower at the

peak of its strength appears to be forever unbeatable to its

citizens and many outsiders. Yet sooner or later, its power

declines. This usually occurs not principally because of

technological backwardness, but mainly because of a

decline in the morale and determination of the army and the

people, as well as a deterioration in the quality of national

and military leadership. There is evidence, I believe, which

suggests that the consequences of U.S. Army

transformation might in the worst case make technological

superiority irrelevant. I don’t think that your future

adversaries will try to match U.S. arms. They will work to

undermine American combat potential in asymmetric ways.

Operationally and tactically, for example, the U.S. plan in

the Gulf War was brilliant. But the Iraqis fought

178
symmetrically. What if you are fighting an infantry-based,

highly motivated Army of a very large and populous nation

instead? What if that enemy simply issues each man a rock

and tells him to hit the nearest American on the head? Even

if your intelligence and information superiority is so good

that you know where each man and each rock is located, can

you kill enough of them fast enough to avoid heavy

casualties? I wonder whether the transformation

envisioned increases the vulnerabilities of U.S. military

forces to asymmetric enemies and if it risks ignoring human

(or other than “materiel”) factors.

The Army is a product of its nation-state, but the

fundamental strengths of nation-states are under attack

from many sources. Drugs and corruption can undermine

morality and leadership. Casualty sensitivity might lower

soldiers’ morale and reduce the support of the population,

which can be influenced more quickly in the Information

Age. I would suggest that peace and prosperity are in

themselves a kind of threat to American and Ukrainian

defense. From a defense perspective, there are

disadvantages to living in such a quiet period, since there is

a risk of losing the support of the people for defense

transformation if they see no immediate threat.

In the next 20-30 years, the United States will probably

enjoy unchallenged dominance in military affairs. However,

this could lead to a situation where, despite unparalleled

high-tech capabilities, the absence of a real peer competitor

could make the human dimensions of U.S. military strength

vulnerable.

Issues of Interoperability.

The Roman story suggests that American military

contact programs and peacetime engagement may be a very

good way for the United States to understand its friends and

allies and determine whether they are “really on your side,”

as well as to shape interoperability in terms of human and

materiel factors.

179
U.S. doctrine recognizes that there are

other-than-materiel aspects to warfighting. Joint Vision

2020 includes such factors as doctrine, organization,

training, and personnel, for example. There may be some

materiel solutions to interoperability (such as the United

States giving or selling radios to an ally so they can

communicate, for example). However, it may make better

sense to provide the ally with American liaison officers who

have the proper radios to talk to the U.S. force. But if you

must rely on liaison officers, other factors grow in

importance. Those selected for this important duty must be

properly trained to work with foreign forces, and educated

in their language and culture.

Trying to “put the shoe on the other foot” raises a host of

questions. Could the allied nation provide liaison officers

with the right qualities to the U.S. force? Should nations

considering operating with American forces be training

these kinds of liaison officers now, rather than waiting for

the United States to provide them when there is a crisis? If

such a capability existed with a potential partner, would it

make the United States more willing or more able to help?

Would this be a “force multiplier” and perhaps a deterrent

for the partner country versus an adversary nation? Could

this idea be linked to the use of current American military

contact/engagement programs and language training

offered to other countries, to build such a capability starting

today? Should this be a higher priority for U.S. military

cooperation and engagement with potential partners?

U.S.-Ukrainian Relations.

Now let’s look at how current U.S./Ukrainian military

cooperation falls into the framework described above.

Ukrainians always were regarded as good soldiers and

good fighters on the tactical level, but they were not always

properly led and motivated. This was evident in the last

days of the Soviet Army, when Ukrainians comprised the

largest proportion of field grade and senior officers as well

180
as noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The troops of an

independent Ukraine inherited the reputation for being a

capable force, and they have maintained it. For example,

the Ukrainian engineer battalion performing peacekeeping

in Lebanon disarmed several thousand explosive devices in

less than 1 year, while during the 22 previous years of the

U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) mission in that

country, only 56 devices had been destroyed.

In the area of international military cooperation,

Ukraine interacts especially actively and fruitfully with the

United States. We highly appreciate the American financial

contribution to this relationship. Since 1994, Ukraine’s

military has obtained over $30 million from the United

States under international military cooperation programs

to fund bilateral events, Ukraine’s participation in the

NATO Partnership for Peace Program, and the

maintenance of Ukrainian peacekeepers in Kosovo. With

U.S. assistance, Ukraine has commissioned several

military English language training facilities. The United

States has worked with us to create a program to train

professional NCOs for Ukraine’s armed forces. More than

$8 million has been allocated for the training of some 300

Ukrainian officers, NCOs, and civilians in the United States

under the International Military Education and Training

Program. In terms of the amount of financing and the

number of events, Ukraine’s cooperation program with the

United States matches its participation with all other

partners combined.

As a result of this cooperation, U.S.-Ukraine

interoperability for exercises or contingency operations

improved. Ukrainian troops are working directly with U.S.

forces in Kosovo today. Ukraine’s military is now more

familiar with U.S. and Western doctrine because of

exercises, exchanges, and cooperation in the Balkans.

I will tell you another story which happened on February

13, 2001, in Kosovo. Ukrainian peacekeepers escorted a

convoy of Serbian civilians through the mountains to the

181
municipal center of Strpce. A sniper (allegedly Albanian)

opened fire, apparently aiming at one of the bus drivers, but

shot an elderly Serb instead. Ukrainian peacekeepers

immediately deployed and searched the nearby slopes,

where they found several Albanian males and detained

them. Later in the evening a Serbian crowd of up to 1000

gathered around the local U.N. police station as a

“spontaneous protest against the killing of the elderly Serb.”

The situation became tense as Ukrainian peacekeepers

formed a circle around the station, with the U.N. police

contingent (including U.S. military police) inside, while the

crowd tried to break in. At some point the U.N. police station

chief started firing in the air and aiming his gun at the

crowd. This move ignited the mob—molotov cocktails were

thrown at the station, stones were hurled at Ukrainian

peacekeepers, and five police cars were burned or destroyed.

The crowd was growing when the Ukrainian company

commander, Captain Brezgounov, entered the station with

four soldiers and suggested the policemen evacuate. They

hesitated when they learned that the Ukrainians were in

small numbers. When the policemen were finally in

Ukrainian vehicles, the crowd blocked their movement.

Then suddenly support came from outside—American

vehicles rammed through hastily erected Serbian

barricades on the outskirts of Strpce and raced to the aid of

the Ukrainians. The senior American officer present

decided to address the crowd. As he approached, the crowd

seized him. God knows what could have happened to him if

the Ukrainian peacekeepers led by the same Captain

Brezgounov had not pulled the U.S. officer out and saved his

life. Within 24 hours, the KFOR Brigade East commander, a

U.S. brigadier general, awarded Captain Brezgounov with a

medal for “outstanding performance.”

This is how the Ukrainian media reported the incident. I

hoped to find some more details from NATO and the

Americans, but have failed so far. The Stars and Stripes of

February 21 touched on the incident, but said nothing about

the role of Ukrainian peacekeepers that day, except

182
mentioning someone’s proposal to assign U.S. troops as

convoy escorts instead of “unnamed KFOR troops.” I could

find no other references to the event in American

newspapers.

This absence of coverage in the West might have to do

with American political leadership not wishing to publicize

a danger to their troops, even though the U.S. forces on the

scene recognized the action for what it was. This could be an

example of trying to avoid the “CNN factor”—the story of

U.S. soldiers being surrounded and having to be rescued by

anybody could produce public or political backlash. I must

say, however, that this lack of publicity is perceived by some

Ukrainians as a reluctance to note their important role.

Additionally, there was evidently a reluctance on the

part of the U.N. police to cooperate with the Ukrainian

KFOR troops, and some evidence of the lack of coordination

between the U.S. and Ukrainian troops once the action

began.

Was this due to the American troops failing to appreciate

the possible contribution of their Ukrainian ally, or a lack of

trust in their capability? Or was it simply a lack of advanced

planning? I will leave the first possibility open to

speculation. But if there was a failure to plan ahead of time

as a multinational unit for possible courses of action, that

raises a new set of questions. We might ask whether the

troops (and the U.N. police) involved simply lacked a

common doctrine? This could contribute to the failure to

plan properly. A lack of leadership appreciation for each

other’s doctrine and culture could also lead to misunderstandings of intent.

Again, I think that doctrine (and training in that

doctrine) is a more important “glue” to hold different types

of forces together than “bringing them both to the same

level” in material-technical terms. In this regard, NATO

efforts to build a “hierarchy” of Allied Joint Doctrine are

important. I am told, however, that one major gap in the

NATO doctrine so far approved is in Peace Support

183
Operations. If it had been available before the incident I just

described, it might have improved the KFOR response.

Conclusion.

To conclude, I want to emphasize that America should

not become complacent about or too dependent upon either

superior technology or “victorious doctrine” as it faces the

challenge of transformation. The ability of the United

States to maintain a technological edge over potential

adversaries appears assured at the moment, but whether it

can continue to do so will depend upon how future leaders,

allies, doctrine, and training will evolve. These factors

should be constantly harmonized with materiel factors,

which is a much more difficult process than merely

constructing a continual series of new and better weapons

systems.

We in Ukraine hope that the United States does not lose

its perspective on other-than-materiel factors as it

transforms its military. Otherwise, there are risks for your

future forces and for our potential interoperability. We

should work together now to identify interoperability

problems, in the human as well as the technical dimension,

in order to maximize both our capabilities in the future.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 7

1. The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of my

former instructors at the U.S. Army War College during my study there

during 1994-95: Professors Douglas Lovelace, David Jablonsky,

Douglas Johnson, Stephen Blank, and Earl Tilford, along with Colonel

Jeffrey McCausland. Special thanks for providing valuable insights to

my classmates goes to Colonel (retired) Harry Simmeth.

184
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PATRICK D. ALLEN is a Senior Technical Manager at

General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in

Suffolk, VA. He is the Senior Technologist for the GD-AIS

Mission Solutions Division responsible for the integration of

collaboration, decision support, and information fusion

tools applied to Joint and Service C4ISR testing, training,

and planning applications. Dr. Allen is also a colonel in the

Army Reserves, and a graduate of both the U.S. Army War

College and the U.S. Air War College.

ROGER ALLEN BROWN is a Senior Analyst at RAND

having joined that institution in May 1992. He graduated

from the U.S. Military Academy in 1962 with a B.S. in

engineering and received a M.S. degree in mathematics

from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1969. He served in

the U.S. Army for almost 30 years, retiring as a colonel in

the spring of 1992. Since joining RAND, Mr. Brown has been

the principal investigator and project leader on several

projects including three congressionally mandated national

security studies. He supported the U.S. Army and Joint

Staff in the identification, analysis, and assessment of

issues for the 1997 and 2001 Quadrennial Defense Reviews.

Mr. Brown is a co-author of over a dozen RAND publications.

CHRIS C. DEMCHAK is an Associate Professor at the

University of Arizona. Her research focuses on implications

of new organizational structures and capabilities provided

by new IW and network complex systems. She has

published a book and numerous articles on comparative

militaries, defense technology, and their policy

implications. Dr. Demchak is a U.S. Army Reserve officer

185
with regional expertise in Europe, Africa and the Middle

East. She is fluent in five languages.

DAVID JABLONSKY retired from the Army as an Infantry

Colonel. He is the Professor of National Security Affairs in

the Department of National Security and Strategy at the

U.S. Army War College. Dr. Jablonsky earned his BA in

European history at Dartmouth College and a first MA in

international relations from Boston University. He then

earned a second MA and a Ph.D. in European history from

Kansas University. Dr. Jablonsky is the author of five

books, eight monographs, and numerous book chapters and

articles. He has held the Elihu Root Chair of Strategy and

the George C. Marshall Chair of Military History at the

Army War College.

LESLIE K. LEWIS is a Senior Scientist with RAND

working on projects for the U.S. Army, the Air Force and the

Joint Staff. She earned her B.A. from California State

University, Northridge and her Ph.D. from the University of

California, Los Angeles. Her areas of expertise include

national security policy, strategic planning, resource

allocation and management, organizational and process

redesign, and acquisition reform. She is a past member of

the Defense Science Board and served as President of the

Washington Forum in 1992 and 1993.

BRIAN MCALLISTER LINN is a Professor of history at

Texas A&M University and a specialist in U.S. Army

history. He is the author of Guardians of Empire: The U.S.

Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940 and, most recently, The

Philippine War, 1899-1902. Last year, Dr. Linn served at

the U.S. Army War College as the Harold K. Johnson

Visiting Professor of Military History. He is currently at

work on history of the Army between 1953 and 1965.

186
W. H. MOORE served as a member of the Directing Staff at

the British Army Staff College in Camberley before

commanding the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse

Artillery in support of 5 Airborne Brigade. He was

promoted into the position of Colonel Force Development

and is now responsible for the conceptual and force

development work to identify and realize the future

capabilities required by the United Kingdom’s Future

Army, 2010-2020 and Beyond. He attended the Higher

Command and Staff course and his operational experience

includes service in the Falkland Islands campaign, in

Northern Ireland and with the United Nations.

LEONID I. POLYAKOV (Army of Ukraine, Ret.) is Director

of Military Programs at Ukrainian Centre for Economic and

Political Studies, named after Olexander Razumkov

(UCEPS), in Kyiv, Ukraine. A graduate of the Frunze

Military Academy in Moscow, Colonel Polyakov’s military

service included a combat tour in Afghanistan, assignments

as Group Chief for U.S./Ukraine military contacts, Senior

Research Fellow on the General Staff of the Ukraine’s

Armed Forces and an advisor on the National Security and

Defense Council Staff, Ukraine. He is a graduate of the U.S.

Army War College.

FRANK N. SCHUBERT is Chief of Joint Operational

History in the Joint History Office of the Chairman, JCS.

His books include, On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier:

Biographies of African Americans in the U.S. Army,

1866-1916 and Black Valor: Buffalo Soldiers and the Medal

of Honor, 1870-1898.

DOUGLAS STUART holds the Robert Blaine Weaver Chair

of Political Science at Dickinson College. He is also Director

of the Clarke Center and an Adjunct Professor at the Army

War College. Dr. Stuart edited Organizing for National

187
Security, the proceedings for the Tenth Annual Strategy

Conference in 1999.

188
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert R. Ivany

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven Metz

Editor

Dr. Conrad C. Crane

Director of Publications

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Ms. Kimberly A. Rockwell