SECURITY TRANSFORMATION

Report of the Belfer Center Conference

on Military Transformation

John P. White

John Deutch

March 2003
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ISBN 1-58487-119-9

ii
FOREWORD

The attacks of September 11, 2001, represented the

beginning of what President Bush has called “a new kind of

war.” While terrorism itself has long been on our spectrum

of real and immediate threats, the magnitude of the attacks

and the administration’s aggressive and expansive

response have changed the definition of national security.

Homeland security, the new first priority, needs to be

integrated with more traditional national security

concerns. The role of the Intelligence Community must

strike a new balance in terms of foreign intelligence and

domestic security. The military mission should be

redefined. Meeting all of these challenges demands a

fundamental transformation of American strategy, armed

forces, and national security organization.

On November 22-23, 2002, the Strategic Studies

Institute, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of

Government, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower National

Security Series cosponsored a workshop on security

transformation which brought together a number of the top

thinkers in the field. The conference, which identified key

issues and questions, was the inaugural event in a

long-term project to assess defense transformation This

report, by Dr. John Deutch and Dr. John White, former

high-level defense officials, summarizes the discussions

from that workshop. The Strategic Studies Institute is

pleased to offer it as part of the ongoing assessment of the

challenges and opportunities posed by defense transformation.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute

iii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHORS

JOHN DEUTCH is an Institute Professor at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also is a director

or trustee of The Council on Foreign Relations, Resources

for the Future, and the Urban Institute. From 1995 to 1996

he was Director of Central Intelligence. In this position, he

was head of the Intelligence Community (all foreign

intelligence agencies of the United States) and directed the

Central Intelligence Agency. He previously served as

Deputy Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of

Defense for Acquisitions and Technology. From 1977 to

1980, Dr. Deutch served in a number of positions for the

U.S. Department of Energy. He earned a B.A. in history and

economics from Amherst College, and both a B.S. in

chemical engineering and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from

M.I.T. He holds honorary degrees from Amherst College,

University of Lowell, and Northeastern University.

JOHN P. WHITE is Lecturer in Public Policy and Chair of

the Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. He served as

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1995 to 1997,

Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget

from 1978 to 1981, Assistant Secretary of Defense,

Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Logistics from 1977 to 1978,

and as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps from

1959 to 1961. Prior to his most recent government service,

Dr. White was the Director of the Center for Business and

Government at Harvard University and the Chair of the

Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces. He

holds a B.S. degree from Cornell University, and an M.A.

and Ph.D. in economics from the Maxwell Graduate School,

Syracuse University.

iv
SECURITY TRANSFORMATION

“Transformation is a journey, not a destination”

On November 22 and 23, 2002, the Belfer Center for

Science and International Affairs brought together present

and former defense officials and military commanders to

assess the Department of Defense’s (DoD) progress in

achieving a “transformation” of U.S. military capabilities.

The conference was held at the Belfer Center at Harvard

University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and it

was cosponsored with the U.S. Army War College and the

Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Series.

The fundamental idea of transformation is that the

United States must change its defense enterprise

dramatically in order to meet the range of security challenges of the next several decades. These challenges will be

global and substantially different from those of the recent

past. Consequently, this transformation should affect every

aspect of DoD activities, from determining new, joint

strategy, doctrine, and operational concepts, to exploiting

new technology in existing and new military systems,

especially information technology, to reconfiguring the force

structure, leveraging human skills, realigning intelligence,

and adopting new, more efficient management practices.

The goal for transformation is to assure that the United

States maintains its military advantage over any potential

adversary in the coming decades. The 2001 Quadrennial

Defense Review (QDR) identified six specific goals for

transformation:

To defend the U.S. homeland and other bases of

operation and defeat nuclear, biological, and chemical

weapons and their means of delivery;

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To deny enemies sanctuary, depriving them of the

ability to run or hide, any time, anywhere;

To project and sustain forces in distant theaters, in

the face of access denial threats;

To conduct effective operations in space;

To conduct effective information operations; and,

To leverage our information technology to give our

joint forces a common operational picture.

Achieving transformation is by no means certain. First,

the process is complex because it affects many different and

fundamental aspects of the joint warfighting system.

Second, change is always resisted in favor of the status quo.

Pride in the past successes of our defense enterprise

understandably leads to reluctance to accept the uncertainty of something new. For example, both the military

leadership and the aerospace industry are reluctant to

consider major trade-off opportunities between existing

weapons platforms, e.g., high performance aircraft, heavy

tanks, or aircraft carriers, and new aspects of network

centric warfare that rely on information operations. Third,

transformation competes for both attention and resources

with other important, immediate demands on the

department, notably counterterrorism, homeland defense,

and the conflict with Iraq. Fourth, over the past decade, the

department has deployed forces for a range of

peacemaking/peacekeeping missions—in Somalia, Haiti,

Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan—and to combat drug

trafficking and global terrorism, all of which increase

operational tempo and place an increasing demand on

resources for current operations vs. investments in the

future. Finally, transformation is a journey, not a

destination. Decisionmaking will need to be tailored to this

reality, i.e., more emphasis on the management of change

versus traditional management of major new programs.

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The following is a summary of the discussion on some of

the topics that were raised at the conference.

The Geopolitical Environment.

A future defense posture must assess future threats and

the circumstances under which U.S. forces will operate

relative to an anticipated global geopolitical environment

and take into account the capabilities that technology

makes available to us and our adversaries. Inevitably,

uncertainties about the geopolitical environment, future

threats, available capabilities and technology increase as

one goes further out in time. In our view, the distinction

between “threat based” and “capabilities based” planning is

therefore specious and should be avoided. These concepts

should be used complementarily to obtain the best

understanding of future needs.

Today a general consensus exists about the future

geopolitical environment. The threat of catastrophic

terrorism and the risk of the proliferation of weapons of

mass destruction (WMD)—chemical, biological, and

nuclear—are at the top of the list. Combating terrorism and

the spread of WMD (both with regard to state and nonstate

actors), while protecting the homeland, will command much

of DoD’s effort. In addition, it will require new uses of DoD

programs and forces, operating in concert with other

agencies of the U.S. Government, notably the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

U.S. conventional military capability is sufficiently

dominant to provide high confidence that the United States

would prevail over any state in a conventional military

conflict for the foreseeable future. A small set of states of

concern, notably North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Libya, will

command attention; over time, countries will be added or

removed from this list. The Arab-Israeli conflict and the

stability of the Indian subcontinent also demand our

attention.

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We will continue to deemphasize the role of U.S. nuclear

weapons in conflict but at the same time continue to assure

the credibility and effectiveness of our nuclear retaliatory

forces because of their deterrent value.

Russia and China are especially important. Russia has

an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons and stocks of

chemical agents that remain to be demilitarized. Assuring

proper stewardship of these weapons and security of the

industrial complex that produces them remains a critical

objective of American policy. Russia continues its progress

toward democracy and a market economy; accordingly,

although we must remain vigilant, we do not expect a return

to the hostile relations of the Cold War.

Future relations with China are more uncertain. China

and the United States can move over time to peaceful

relations or to a period of strategic competition. The

outcome will be formed by events and the actions of both

countries. So while China’s conventional military capability

does not now threaten the United States or permit power

projection in the region, the growth of China’s military

capabilities and intentions should be one of our principal

concerns.

In sum, the geopolitical outlook highlights a broad and

challenging agenda of security matters the U.S. military

must address over the next two decades. This agenda is

different from those of the past. The transformation

architecture must guide the allocation of available

resources within this geopolitical context.

Coalition Warfare.

U.S. counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and

peacekeeping efforts benefit greatly from participation by

our allies. The benefit is primarily political, in legitimizing

U.S. actions and marshalling world opinion. The gap

between the military capabilities of the United States and

even our closest allies, as exhibited in Kosovo and Afghan4
istan, makes the reality of interoperable military operations

progressively less credible. The transformation of U.S.

military forces is likely to make this disparity worse,

because even our allies in NATO, for example, will not have

the command, control, communications, computer systems,

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR)

capability required to operate in an integrated air/land/sea

military environment.

Several reasons exist for this gap in military

capabilities. Most importantly, NATO countries are

spending much less on defense than the United States, and

even more of their defense dollar goes to maintaining

current force structure and supporting industrial base

programs. Their national security strategies do not

naturally complement ours. NATO countries are also trying

simultaneously to build an independent European force and

to modernize and transform their NATO forces to better

operate with U.S. forces. There is little prospect that these

efforts will be fully successful, despite several sensible

initiatives designed to encourage transformation of the

military of NATO countries. These initiatives include:

exercises to show the value of C4ISR; creation of a

transformation command element in NATO headquarters;

and, creation of a 20,000 person combined arms NATO force

that will possess the capabilities of military transformation.

The military aspect of the Atlantic Alliance is based on

interoperable, equally capable military units. To the extent

this assumption is no longer true, we will have to seek other

principles for our military cooperation, such as splitting

military missions into those requiring high capability, e.g.,

air superiority, done by the United States; and those

missions requiring low capability, done by our allies. Such

specialization is not a formula for long-term political

cooperation and a strong trans-Atlantic alliance. In

developing transformation programs, we must consider

their implications for our allies. In some cases we may be

able to select approaches that enhance coalition warfare.

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We should not neglect our responsibility to make coalition

operations an important goal of military transformation.

Greater cooperation between the defense/aerospace

industries on both sides of the Atlantic could improve this

outlook. A policy to “transform” trans-Atlantic defense

industry relationships would encourage the integration and

merging of U.S. and European defense firms and the

transfer of U.S. technology to fewer, competitive, transAtlantic enterprises. Such a change is difficult to achieve

because of the local interest in preserving defense jobs, but

this problem is no different than the one that we and all

other nations face in determining the regional distribution

of defense effort.

Resources.

The United States shortchanged defense investment

accounts—research and procurement, development, test,

and evaluation (RDT&E)—during the early and mid 1990s

in order to meet the readiness and operations and

maintenance (O&M) needs in a time of declining budgets. In

the last years of the Clinton administration and during the

Bush administration, the defense budget has increased

substantially (over 48 percent from FY95 to FY03), and total

budget authority is projected to increase 76 percent from

FY95 to FY07. But, even with the renewed interest in

transformation, investment accounts have not fared as

well—increasing 30 percent from FY95 to FY03—although

they are projected to increase by 98 percent over the entire

period FY95 to FY07. O&M budget authority is projected to

increase by 64 percent from FY95 to FY03, but by only 5

percent from FY05 to FY07. (See Figure 1.)

Veteran observers of defense budgets doubt whether the

anticipated increase in procurement and RDT&E outlays

will materialize. In the past, outside of wartime, the defense

budget has never enjoyed the pace of increases currently

planned. As always, factors, both within and without the

defense budget, will place pressure on the investment

6
Budget

Authority $255 $291 $379 $409 $451

Procurement 44 55 61 79 99

RDT&E 35 39 42 60 58

O&M 94 109 150 147 155

Personnel 72 74 94 108 117

accounts. Outside pressures include an anticipated sharp

increase in the federal budget deficit, increases in health

care and other domestic spending, and the administration’s

desire for additional tax cuts. Inside, the pressure on the

investment account comes from increased O&M expenditures attributable to increased expenses for operations and

from personnel programs (notably health care and

retirement benefits).

The group noted that DoD’s operating costs (O&M) have

been growing inexorably at at least 3 percent per year, and

often higher, for many years. Savings achieved from past

base closure and realignment commissions (BRAC) and

outsourcing initiatives have been exceeded by the costs of

added medical and retirement benefits and infrastructure

expenses. As a result, the modernization account targets

are reduced year after year to pay O&M costs that regularly

exceed their budgets. Operating adjustments via the

transformation process must be found that can check O&M

cost growth or innovation will continue to be underfunded.

It is unlikely that future pressure on O&M will be less.

The President continues to ask DoD to take on additional

7
missions—such as homeland defense—that will incur new

costs. The strong emphasis on worldwide engagement

continues. There is little will on either side of the aisle in

Congress to deny benefits to military service personnel or

retirees. Meanwhile, the DoD financial plan assumes there

will be sufficient investment resources to fund upgrades to

legacy systems and to re-capitalize and modernize the

forces and the systems on which these forces depend in the

transformation process.

DoD’s ability to make internal decisions to buy its way

out of this dilemma are not likely. No evidence suggests that

DoD is willing to make other painful choices that might

alleviate this problem, e.g., give up force structure, abandon

some of the higher cost investment programs, or adopt a

high-low force capability mix. Past efforts at institutional

cost cutting to fund higher priority programs have proven

disappointing. No signs indicate that this pattern will

change.

Two implications of this pessimistic, but realistic, view

about the constraint on the availability of investment

resources for the transformation process are: first, lack of

funds will delay and interrupt planned modernization

programs. This means a less efficient acquisition process

that simply worsens the resource availability problem.

Second, inevitably there will be a call to measure the

benefits of transformation by future cost reductions made

possible by fewer, more capable systems and hence, a

smaller force structure. But the history of innovation tells

us that any efficiencies from these investments will be

realized only in the long term. When one asks, “What is the

pay-off of the transformation process?” the answer must be

that it permits the United States to have needed military

capability at lower cost in the future but, more importantly,

improves our capability to meet current and emerging

threats.

Changing PPBS could be beneficial in addressing these

problems. Its cumbersome nature makes the decision8
making process long, resource allocation too incremental,

and major tradeoffs difficult conceptually as well as

practically. The fact that transformation is a journey and

not a destination places a premium on management

visibility and flexibility to assure real progress over time.

For example, the consensus at the conference was that one

of the highest barriers to innovation is the overly restrictive

rules that stifle the reallocation of program funds in the

modernization accounts.

It would seem helpful in this regard to create a special

transformation program under PPBS. This would both

emphasize the strategic importance of the issue and put in

bold relief its well-being vis-à-vis traditional PPBS programs.

Technological Innovation.

A central part of transformation is the exploitation of

new technology. We generally agree that the United States

must continue to dominate in the vital activity of technology

creation. But, for the military, just as for private firms, the

key aspects of innovation are choosing what technology to

develop and deploy, and successfully completing an acquisition process that leads to deployment.

Perhaps the most important transforming technology is

near real time intelligence combined with precision

delivered weapons. This technology provides a joint force

military commander with the capability to have battlefield

awareness of the number, disposition, and movement of

enemy forces and to destroy fixed and moving targets in day

or night with a minimum application of force. The

experience in the Gulf War, in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and in

war games demonstrates the enormous leverage of this

technology in achieving military objectives more quickly,

and therefore with fewer casualties, than traditional forces.

Another transforming technology is information

operations—the clandestine penetration of the communi9
cation and computer systems that contain information or

direct the activities (both civil and military) of an opponent.

A former senior defense official remarked that “the electron

is the ultimate precision weapon,” suggesting that

information operations can deceive and disrupt an

opponent’s defense as well as an explosive munition can.

These two examples are sufficient to indicate that the

new transforming technologies are substantially different

from the traditional technology advances that have focused

on major platforms, e.g., airborne radar and stealth.

Accordingly, the developers and advocates for transforming

technologies will not be found within traditional service

acquisition organizations. These new technologies are

largely C4ISR in character and based on advances in

civilian information technology. Therefore, they require a

different acquisition approach.

Because these technologies are based on attacking

command and control targets, as well as the destruction of

hard targets, it is critical to pay attention to how an

adversary might take advantage of these same techniques

to attack our forces and systems. Transforming information

technologies will be in the reach of many adversaries

because they are based on available commercial technology

and are relatively inexpensive to deploy selectively. A

future enemy may be able to offset large quantity and

quality disadvantages on the battlefield with sophisticated

counter-technologies.

We identified three issues in our discussion of

transforming technologies that we believe would enhance

our progress. The first concerns the balance between

introducing advanced C4ISR technology on new systems

versus upgrading existing systems with existing

technology. Upgrades will typically be cheaper and quicker

and achieve greater incremental capability per dollar

expended. The upgrades typically will depend upon

improving tactical connectivity and interoperability at the

seams between traditional service responsibilities.

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Examples include use of B-52s in conjunction with Army

Special Forces units in Afghanistan, Navy EP-3s, and

JSTARS working with regular Army units, greater use of

RPVs such as PREDATOR and GLOBAL HAWK for tactical

reconnaissance, and installation of LINK 23 to assure

common air/ground communications.

The second issue concerns the process for deployment

and fielding of new technology. The conventional process

involves a service carrying the deployment to successful

completion and then transferring the capability to a CINC

for use in joint operations. We believe great improvement

would result from placement of projects in a joint field

context at an earlier phase of development and sharing the

responsibility for development between the sponsoring

service and CINC. This approach would permit much

greater learning from exercises and training in an

operational environment as to how new technology will best

work in the field as part of the commander’s current forces.

Today, the CINCs’ incentive for innovation to meet

operational needs is under utilized.

Thirdly, we point to the absence of an organization with

responsibility to develop, acquire, and field some of the most

important transforming technologies. Platform-related

technologies are the responsibility of the services. However,

the more critical technologies such as C4ISR, that

essentially involve joint operations and require harmonized

secure communications, do not have an advocate with

resources and responsibility for a disciplined acquisition

program. This deficiency is readily apparent when dealing

with unconventional threats such as biological attack. The

DoD must develop a new organizational capability that

includes nontraditional skills and approaches.

Several options for remedying this deficiency come to

mind: (1) The command, control, and intelligence (C3I)

function in the Office of the Secretary of Defense might be

strengthened by creating an Undersecretary for C3I; (2)

authority for C4ISR technology acquisition could be given to

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a CINC; for example Joint Forces Command. (There is some

precedent for this option. Special Operations Force has

some independent acquisition authority and CINC STRIKE

has been assigned responsibility for information

operations), and (3) a new organization modeled after the

Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO) might be established. Each option has advantages and disadvantages, but

some organizational change is required, if the most

important transforming technologies are to be adopted

relatively quickly. Adjustments in the Joint Staff and the

Joint Requirements Oversight Committee (JROC)

requirements process were viewed as an inadequate

approach to the problem.

Intelligence.

Support to military operations is one of the most

important missions of the Intelligence Community. Much of

this effort is concerned with providing joint military

commanders tactical intelligence on the deployment and

movement of enemy forces as well as targeting. This

information is provided by technical intelligence collection

using signal intelligence and imagery sensors that are often

space or airborne based. Technology has shifted the

emphasis in exploiting technical intelligence from collection

to tasking, processing, exploitation, and distribution of

sensor data. So intelligence support to military operations is

another example of an area where transformation is

occurring. Here, too, various organizational alternatives

need to be explored to identify the best approach to

supporting the field commander. The active participation of

the CINCs will be critical to success in this endeavor.

Split responsibility between the Secretary of Defense

and the Director of Central Intelligence is slowing the

process of achieving this intelligence transformation. Three

program budgets for the resources are devoted to military

intelligence—the National Foreign Intelligence Program

(NFIP), the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP),

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and the Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities

(TIARA). They are put together largely independently and

then reviewed multiple times without any significant

reshaping. The current system insures the status quo for

the various stakeholders and thus an inability to make

tradeoffs across the three program budgets. Consequently,

change will require a reordering of responsibilities,

incentives, and procedures. Only with real process change

will the outcomes change. Yes, that means bureaucratic

winners and losers.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 may be instructive in

this regard because the changes required outside

intervention (in that case the Congress) and were largely

procedural rather than organizational. Real choices were

made and power shifted, e.g., from the Service chiefs to the

CINCs. Now, as then, change is necessary. Transformation

cannot be fully realized without the Intelligence Community being an integral part of the process. Capacity for

change is essential because intelligence is so vital to the

transformation of military capabilities.

Other types of intelligence are also important. For

example, longer-term weapons intelligence will give us

warning of the plans and progress of potential adversaries.

However, the greatest new requirement is for intelligence to

help combat terrorism and proliferation of WMD. Intelligence for these purposes requires skills very different from

the technical intelligence that supports military operations.

First, collection depends much more on human sources, and

human source collection is most successful when it is the

product of a close cooperation with intelligence analysis and

communications intelligence. Second, since the threat has

both foreign and domestic aspects, the DoD and the

Intelligence Community will need to work much more

cooperatively with the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the

new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). How best to

do this is yet to be determined.

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Homeland Security.

Combating terrorism and countering the proliferation of

WMD do not fit into the historical principles on which our

national security organization is based. In meeting these

threats, the traditional distinctions between peacetime and

wartime, domestic and foreign, and law enforcement and

national security, are blurred. The consequence is that the

DoD needs to develop new policies and procedures for

working with many more agencies, especially DHS and DoJ,

in carrying out a range of new functions. Important

examples include: (1) rules for collection and dissemination

of intelligence from both domestic and foreign sources to

provide for warning; (2) defense of the United States from

terrorist penetration or attack by land, sea, or air; (3)

coordinated intelligence assessment and response planning; (4) the role of DoD and especially the National Guard

in catastrophic response; and (5) developing vaccines and

therapeutics to protect against biological agent attack.

Each of these areas calls for an integrated governmentwide multi-year plan to build the necessary capability to

defend the country. DoD has the greatest capacity to

develop such plans but appears to want to avoid taking the

initiative to do so. The reluctance is based on an understandable preference to keep clean lines of responsibility

and to avoid loss of budget and/or authority to DHS. But,

addressing the threat of catastrophic terrorism requires a

joint effort by DHS and DoD. For example, DoD’s

preeminent capability to acquire advanced technological

capabilities should be made available to address DHS’

urgent needs. Transformation must deal with the necessary

restructuring of roles and missions across the government.

Business Practices.

There is a tremendous pay-off from transforming (some

prefer the term re-engineering) the business practices and

“back office” of DoD; estimates of savings go as high as 25

percent of outlay. But the issue runs much deeper than cost

14
savings. Transformation requires DoD to focus on its core

missions and competencies. Consequently, support issues

that distract focus reduce transformation.

DoD should aggressively pursue base realignment and

closure programs to both save money and reshape the base

structure to meet new needs, especially joint activities.

Competitive sourcing programs of large, noncore

support functions, e.g., management information systems,

accounting and disbursement, civilian skills training,

administrative communications and data processing, etc.,

should be initiated at the enterprise level. Fortunately,

today’s commercial economy offers numerous outsourcing

services of this kind in competitive environments. DoD

needs to develop both the skills necessary to define the

competitively sourced functions properly and then oversee

them effectively after the sourcing decision.

Concluding Remarks.

The concept of military transformation is a powerful one.

Historically, a new threat resulting from geopolitical

changes has driven innovations in military doctrine, force

composition, and technology and systems. We surely have

the necessary conditions today: a turn from the Cold War to

counterterrorism, along with the increased possibility of the

use of WMD and the emergence of enabling information

technology. We do not lack for a vision of what transformation can accomplish. For example, the Joint Chiefs of Staff

publication, Joint Vision 2020, recognizes the importance of

information superiority and precision engagement, as does

the QDR and the National Security Strategy. A more

comprehensive vision of DoD’s overall transformation goals

would be valuable.

But because transformation is treated as a process

rather than an end, it is easy to have the impression that

transformation of our military is a slogan that is both

everything and nothing. Because it is a process, there is an

15
absence of a coherent framework for developing and

implementing it. No clear definition of what is and what is

not transformation exists. Accordingly, no metrics have

been adopted, and hence there is no way to establish a

schedule for accomplishing set milestones. Nor is there a

PPBS category devoted to transformation to track the

required resources over time. Furthermore, the JROC

process remains much more responsive to traditional

service needs, e.g., platforms, than to those of the CINCs

who are more likely to reflect joint military operations

needs.

Why has a sharper focus on transformation not been

forthcoming? An important reason is the resistance of

entrenched interests of many stakeholders—uniformed

services, congressional committees, the defense industry—

to change the status quo that is judged to have been

extremely successful, although expensive, in maintaining

our military superiority. Secretary of Defense Donald

Rumsfeld sees clearly the potential of transformation but

has his attention drawn to many immediate problems,

leaving only limited time and political capital to expend on

transformation. There is, however, an essential unanswered question: “Does successful transformation mean

inevitable reduction in force structure and end strength?”

The answer is undoubtedly yes, for two reasons: transformation can yield much greater military capability at a

given level of resource expenditure, and the current desired

military capability is unaffordable, in political not economic

terms. The bureaucracy may well believe these propositions

and accordingly choose to delay aggressively adopting

transformation, preferring rather to play musical chairs

with ever shrinking resources. If so, that would be a tragic

mistake.

16
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

Authors

Dr. John Deutch

Dr. John P. White

Director of Publications

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Ms. Kimberly A. Rockwell-Jacoby