The Army after Next: Knowledge, Speed and Power (1999)

SINCE ITS genesis over three years ago, the Army After Next (AAN) project has provided valuable information concerning land power's future requirements. Most important, it has helped us develop an AAN vision, the Army of 2025. Our future Army will be a fully integrated, multicomponent force capable of rapidly deploying and fighting as a vital joint-team member. It will also be a hybrid Army, like its predecessors, with a mixture of special operations, light mechanized and strike and battle forces. Our vision has since been conveyed to the concept development community so that it can begin the difficult task of turning AAN into reality. In the meantime, a key challenge we must face is how to describe the AAN. The journey toward the Army of 2025 is still too new to discuss specific systems or organizational size and structure. These will undoubtedly change as we move forward. Instead, the best way to describe AAN is in terms of the principles that underpin it-knowledge, and power. Knowledge We are now moving at warp speed in that everaccelerating transition from the Industrial Age to the information age. That means leveraging the tremendous capabilities available through information-age technology. These capabilities will enable us to revolutionize the way we control our forces on the battlefield-the warfighter's oldest and most difficult problem. At this revolution's heart are three questions: * Where am I? * Where are my buddies? * Where is the enemy? We want to be able to answer these questions successfully anywhere, anytime. That has been the goal of our advanced warfighting experiments (AWEs) since 1994. Increasing our battlefield knowledge has also served as the basis for our initial work on the division redesign and will continue to provide the key to further advances. Knowledge means embracing information-age technology in peacetime. It is simply training the way we fight. We want an Army of soldiers and leaders for whom information technology is second nature. That is why we have begun to focus the Army on the advantages of using the Internet for career field designation and for many of our day-to-day operations. That is also the reason we have invested in Total Asset Visibility. Knowing where our parts are at all times enables us to improve our operations during peace and war. Knowledge is also one of the reasons we implemented Officer Personnel Management System XXI (OPMS XXI). A core of leaders trained and experienced in operations, operational support, information operations and institutional support will allow us to expand our knowledge base and most 21 stcentury challenges. Speed Speed refers to tactical agility as well as strategic responsiveness. It is the old principle of getting there firstest with the mostest. We know that one soldier on the ground early on is worth five later. Speed implies mental and physical agility. It means deciding and acting faster than our opponentgetting inside his decision cycle. Speed also means greater strategic responsiveness-putting decisive combat power in-theater in a matter of hours. This is a major break from the way we have done business in the past. Historically, the Army's strategic challenge has been how to get to the fight. Limited air- and sea-lift capacities meant that we had to arrive in stages, which in turn put tremendous constraints on how and where we fought. In the future, some AAN forces will have self-deployment capabilities which will allow them to get to the fight early. This kind of capability will enable us to checkmate the enemy by putting superior combat power in positions that curtail his options and force him either to concede to our terms or to fight at a severe disadvantage. It also means we should be able to end conflict on terms that are most conducive to a lasting peace. Logistically, means velocity management. It means reducing our cycle time during peace while getting the parts to the right place at the proper time during combat. …