NDU 6002: THE U.S. MILITARY IN TRANSFORMATION

Course Description
Transformation is one of the most important objectives of the Department of Defense and the U.S. military. It is a wide-ranging process of major changes in which the military is acquiring new capabilities, force structures, materiel acquisition policies, and doctrine in order to prepare for future missions, requirements, and operations. Transformation responds to several dynamics: new U.S. defense goals, new-era geopolitics and threats, new forms of warfare and combat, and rapidly advancing technology (especially information technology). Initiated in the late 1990s, it has accelerated in response to the strategic directions set by the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report of 2001, which calls for highly flexible, responsive, and technologically sophisticated forces for the future. Similar to transformations of the past, today’s effort is not a clear-cut endeavor guided by a single theory or fixed blueprint. While goal-oriented and disciplined, it is a highly fluid, multi-pronged process that responds to diverse imperatives, is animated by vigorous debate and dialogue, and follows the course of experiment and discovery as new technologies and doctrine appear on the scene.

Now that defense transformation has been underway for close to a decade, the time has come to take stock of progress that has been made and review the next phases of this ongoing process. What future forces and capabilities should it produce? What new technologies and weapons should it embrace? How can it be guided to achieve the greatest advantage? How should it be integrated in the new U.S. defense strategy? This course will address these questions, examine the associated issues, and explore the options ahead for DoD and the Armed Services. It begins with an appraisal of the transformation process as a whole, including the origins, dynamics, opportunities and challenges. It explores emerging technologies and then focuses on approaches to and strategies for transformation and the impact of transformation on the individual services, joint planning, and relationships with allies and partners. It concludes with an assessment of challenges that gained new prominence since the process of transformation began, such as stabilization and reconstruction operations and homeland security.

Course Objectives

• Understand the role of transformation in U.S. defense strategy; its origins, dynamics, and purposes; its exploitation of new technologies, organizational structures, and doctrine; and its opportunities and challenges.
• Develop a strategic and managerial framework for analyzing transformation, its goals and tradeoffs, its costs and benefits, and alternative approaches and strategies for pursuing it.
• Analyze transformation’s effect on the armed services individually and in their joint operations, as well as in multilateral defense relationships with allies and partners.
• Understand how transformation will be manifested in major functional areas of DoD force development, including innovations in such critical areas as new structures; adoption of information systems and networking; and future priorities for research, development, and procurement.
  

Course Requirements
In addition to participating in the classroom and reading the material, students will be expected to prepare a short analytical paper on a key aspect of military transformation to be handed in during Lesson 11. Each student will make a 10-minute presentation on the paper during Lesson 12.

Student Evaluation
Students will be evaluated by the instructors based on ICAF and NWC regulations. Class participation will compose 50 percent of the final grade, while the paper and presentation will compose 50 percent.

This is a critical time to be examining force transformation. Decisions are being made in the QDR 2005 process that will affect the direction our military will take for years to come. We look forward to an interesting and spirited exploration of these important questions.

Faculty
Dr. Stuart Johnson
Dr. Hans Binnendijk


Research Associate
Mr. Duncan Long