REPORT ON INSS 1998 JOINT OPERATIONS SYMPOSIUM
"21ST CENTURY WARFIGHTING"
September 9-10, 1998
Rapporteur: Dr. John Hillen
Olin Fellow for National Security Studies
Council on Foreign Relations
Executive Summary
Summary of Main Observations from the Symposium
REPORT ON INSS 1998 JOINT OPERATIONS SYMPOSIUM
Objectives of the Symposium
Organization of the Report
The principal observations of the symposium, in pursuit of the objectives above, are treated in the following four categories.
I. The International Security Environment Beyond 2010
There was general agreement that the international security environment through 2010 and beyond would continue to be unpredictable and in flux. Several participants noted that the profligate use of the term "Post-Cold War World" still defined the international environment in the negative - as something it was not. More important for the purposes of this symposium, participants recognized that an ill-defined and unpredictable environment holding many dangers for the U.S. and its allies would require a flexible array of forces held in a fairly high degree of readiness for many different missions ranging from humanitarian operations to war.
Several panelists and speakers noted that even within this shifting arena, the U.S. military and diplomatic establishments remain best prepared for classic state-to-state conflict. This was considered justifiable due to the fact that states continue to be the principal actors in international political and security affairs, the trends discussed below notwithstanding. In that context, one panelist helpfully defined the international arena as being characterized by states in four different categories. Core Partners of the U.S. included NATO allies and other successful democracies in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Rogue States such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were noted as being hostile to U.S. and allied interests. Failing States such as Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia would undoubtedly continue to require the attention of U.S. contingency planners. Transition States teetering on the edge between being market democracies or closed and more autocratic states could be the key to the nature of the future international security environment. Which way Russia, India, China, and others will go in the near future will largely determine the setting in which U.S. forces will operate.
Non-state actors and transnational security threats were also discussed in great depth,
not least to determine the way in which they would affect the geopolitical scene. These
are discussed below.
The principle point of these presentations and discussion was to establish that the main issue is not where and how the U.S. obtains its energy resources, but where and how the rest of the industrialized world obtains theirs. Of all the developed countries, the U.S. is in the most favorable position for having easy access to the energy resources needed at home. Instead, the strategic impact of energy issues stems from the fact that America’s economic security is tied very closely to international energy needs. It was noted that previous attempts by the U.S. to attain some degree of independence from international energy systems had failed. Discussants addressing energy and other economic issues agreed that in a global economy, the smooth functioning of which is considered key to American prosperity, it is almost impossible for the U.S. to separate the vulnerability of energy resources going to any industrialized country from energy resources going to the U.S. itself. It was also noted that despite many headlines about new resources in Central Asia and elsewhere, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf will continue to be the key region for strategic focus in this regard. In general, the need to shield world energy resources from the volatility of the international environment was seen as a mission that would continue to tax many U.S. military resources.
The United States’ economic prosperity is directly related to the overall health of the global economy, and this dependency causes America’s national security strategy to take critical global economic relationships into consideration. Theoretically, the result will be a continued commitment to large forces stationed overseas. The recent economic crisis in Asia showed that a U.S. military presence can have a stabilizing effect on areas experiencing political crises caused by local and global economic woes. Some discussants warned that economic interdependence and borderless economies do not, in and of themselves, guarantee the demise of traditional security interests. They noted that economic interdependence among the "developed" countries of the world was also high in 1913, on the eve of the first world war. Nonetheless, the degree to which the U.S. depends on the world market and other key economic systems led many to believe that the U.S. could almost count economic allies and political/military allies in the same fast categories. Conversely, those states outside these global economic systems might also be more likely to threaten traditional security interests. Overall, it was appreciated that the U.S. must do more to coordinate economic and national security goals, as there could be more cases in the future where America’s economic and security agendas clash.
Another effect of globalism that animated discussion was the unimpeded spread of ideas, information, and technology. There was a sense that this phenomenon, along with the others listed in this section, would change the character of warfare. Globalization defined in this way could hold advantages and disadvantages for the U.S. One disadvantage was obvious - the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and technologies that could be used for military purposes. It was felt that this would give potential adversaries a strong hand in combating the U.S. with asymmetrical strategies aimed at capitalizing on U.S. weaknesses such as dependence on complex information systems, large logistical tails, and the need to project power far afield. Terrorists groups and tactics especially benefited from these trends and others, such as the globalization of media. Information warfare, anti-power projection capabilities, and ballistic missiles were all inexpensive and readily available technologies that could turn a weak opponent into a strong adversary. On the other hand, those same trends changing the character of warfighting could benefit the U.S. more than most. Maintaining an advantage in advanced technologies applied to creative warfighting concepts would allow the U.S. to dictate new terms of battle to potential adversaries, even in the context of non-traditional warfighting operations.
Several discussants and speakers noted that U.S. military capabilities and strategies, including future concepts such as Joint Vision 2010 (JV 2010), focus overwhelmingly on traditional state-to-state conflict. At the same time, military operations other than war such as peacekeeping, peace enforcement, humanitarian relief operations, and others increasingly preoccupy the U.S.’s day-to-day military agenda. Moreover, transnational threats such as ethnic and religious conflicts, terrorism, homeland defense, weapons proliferation, and international crime are on the rise and increasingly shape the international security environment. For these challenges, especially those coming from non-state actors, one speaker noted the U.S. was merely "pacing the threat." The incremental approach now taken towards these challenges is adequate, but will have to be faced more squarely in the future if the U.S. is to seek the military advantages in these areas that it seeks on more conventional battlefields. Several speakers gave gloomier assessments about the degree to which these sorts of "non-warfighting" challenges will dominate U.S. security planning in the future. It was strongly suggested by several discussants that the U.S. reorganize part or all of its national security apparatus to face these challenges and consider incorporating them more fully into future warfighting concepts such as JV2010 or the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).
Throughout the symposium, JV 2010 was accepted as the benchmark concept towards which U.S. military was moving in the immediate future. The four operational concepts within JV 2010: dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full dimensional protection, and focused logistics were accepted, but many participants noted that these concepts needed to be fully "fleshed out" in terms of systems, programs, doctrines, organizational structures, and budgets. The particular issues associated with realizing JV 2010 are explored in section III below. On a more general level, several speakers noted that while the pillars of JV 2010 were sound, they were not assured that U.S. programs planned over the next decade would entirely support JV 2010. One speaker noted that JV 2010 depends on information, air, and maritime dominance, not all of which could be guaranteed for the near future against a wide range of possible adversaries employing a variety of tactics. Other discussants felt that JV 2010 might require an entirely different set of forces than that currently planned for by the services. It was generally agreed that JV 2010 applied more to high end conflicts and major theater war contingencies than to lesser military operations, but overall, it was hard to fully evaluate JV 2010 without more operational details.
The RMA was a term used often in the symposium, but was perhaps even more ambiguous in its operational meaning than JV 2010 or other concepts discussed in this section. In the main, the RMA was taken to mean the revolution in military affairs that would occur due to the application of the advanced technologies of the digital age to warfighting. Several discussants noted that a true RMA would occur not because of technological advances in computerization, digitization, information management, satellite technology, and the like, but because those advances would be harnessed to new concepts, organizations, and doctrines. The coherent matching of these two sets of "advances" was not readily apparent to the symposium and skeptics registered their doubts that such a revolution will even take place. The balance of opinion in the symposium however was positive towards trying to achieve an RMA, although it was noted throughout that advanced warfighting concepts such as JV 2010 and Rapid Dominance, which depend in no small measure on profound technological advances, could be realized with evolutionary, rather than revolutionary changes in military concepts and capabilities. The challenges of actually achieving the RMA are discussed in section III below.
Several discussants broke new conceptual ground by putting forward an entirely new operational concept for consideration. While the Rapid Dominance concept would be supplemented and complemented by a RMA, it was implicitly presented as an alternative to JV 2010 or other U.S. warfighting concepts. Defined by its creators, "Rapid Dominance is based on achieving policy and strategic ends by affecting, influencing and controlling will and perception through threatening or imposing a regime of shock and awe sufficient to accomplish these objectives." The proponents of this concept emphasized that it would be more agile than concepts such as JV 2010, which like most traditional warfighting concepts, implied the need to achieve victory in the traditional American way - through weight and mass applied to destroy an enemy force. Conversely, Rapid Dominance attempts to strike not only at enemy forces, but directly at the will of an adversary, using strategic non-lethal means if possible to "convince, compel, or scare an adversary into accepting the imposed strategic, political or operational aims and objectives." The "regime of shock and awe" that underpins the Rapid Dominance concept has, like JV 2010, four guiding tenets: "(near) total knowledge of adversary, self and environment; rapidity; control of the environment; and brilliance in execution. Proponents of Rapid Dominance offered detailed explanations of each concept but emphasized that operational details remained to be fully explored. Some ideas for realizing the concept were presented and are discussed below.
The symposium culminated in a series of short workshops designed to analyze six scenarios in which U.S. military forces are likely to be involved in the future matched against a range of various capabilities. Workshop participants were asked to assess the utility of each capability to each scenario. The results are presented in the attached matrix. In general, workshop participants found that the forces programmed for JV 2010 would be useful across the spectrum of operations, but mostly in various warfighting scenarios. Current capabilities or those planned for JV 2010 are not particularly well suited for a variety of transnational threats, asymmetrical challenges, or operations in difficult terrain. This bias towards warfighting operations at the high end of the spectrum was in some ways even more pronounced for accelerated RMA forces, which were thought to have great utility in conflicts against near-peer adversaries, but less relevance in complex contingencies or coercion and deterrence operations. Like the accelerated RMA, Rapid Dominance probably benefited from being almost entirely conceptual, and scored high in its potential utility to a range of operations. Other notable conclusions from the workshops included the importance of information operations, the continued and growing utility of coalition operations, and the indeterminate nature of thinking about reserve forces and how the U.S. should best use them in 21st century warfighting.
Making JV 2010 "happen" was considered a big enough challenge that problems in implementation could actually derail JV 2010 as a concept. Just three weeks after this symposium, on 1 October 1998, the U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM) became DoD’s executive agent for joint warfighting experimentation. There was a sense that the principal challenge for USACOM will be to effectively balance service innovation and testing with an aggressive joint experimentation program. Compounding this challenge is the fact that USACOM has a paucity of bureaucratic muscle and resources in comparison to the well-established and funded service programs. Nonetheless, the CINC of USACOM is drafting a Joint Experimentation Implementation Plan designed to take advantage of service innovation while at the same time coordinating those efforts into truly joint capabilities. Making JV 2010 work from the combination of Force XXI and the Army After Next, Sea Dragon and Maneuver from the Sea, Global Engagement and Air Force Next, and Forward…From the Sea will be a great challenge. Moreover, DoD is also expected to release soon the Joint Vision Implementation Master Plan, which will detail the process for transforming the concepts of JV 2010 into fielded operational capabilities. Many in the symposium felt that these two steps would represent the beginning of the process by which the ideas in JV 2010 became reality. In the meantime, it was noted by several discussants that funding challenges and the constant tradeoffs made between current operations and procurement accounts could hamper further efforts to field JV 2010 forces that were not merely upgrades of current systems.
One of the principle points made about exploiting the RMA was that thus far the RMA has mainly been approached as a set of technological issues with a thin veneer of operational concepts. One speaker noted that in order for the RMA to truly become part of U.S. strategy, it would have to be evaluated and judged against the "pull" of U.S. goals and objectives, the future security environment, military missions and tasks, and budget requirements as well as in the context of the "push" of new technologies. Designs, experiments, and assessments would all then have to be weighed before developing new concepts and doctrine, training and education, organizations, or new systems. It was appreciated in the symposium that the greater challenge of realizing the RMA was not the technological one, but the strategic, operational, doctrinal, organizational, and even cultural challenges. It was also emphasized that the U.S. should exploit the RMA with a mind to combating new asymmetric threats rather than building a force to fight the next Desert Storm better. Much of the U.S. effort to exploit the RMA will be undertaken in the context of the Joint Experimentation processes discussed above. Other steps will be taken in service programs and the defense planning guidance studies.
Realizing Rapid Dominance as a conceptual template for warfighting would require not only the acceptance of the concept, but also the acquisition of systems somewhat unique to this set of concepts. With its emphasis on total knowledge, rapidity, brilliance, and control of the environment, Rapid Dominance proponents listed several capabilities and systems that would underpin their concept. Chief among these was a C4ISR network characterized by "virtually undetectable, unjammable, fully authenticated, encrypted and instant multi-media communications, relayed through low orbit satellites, UAV’s and other ground/air relay systems….[and] an expendable chip sized surveillance device capable of detecting things of interest out to several hundreds of meters." Other capabilities needed for Rapid Dominance include a RACV - revolutionary armored car vehicle, a B-53/Joint Stars aircraft - "a flying version of the Arsenal Ship," less expensive ballistic missiles, "global artillery," lightweight self-defense and protective suits, a robust information warfare capability, non-lethal payloads for missiles or global artillery in order to produce "a massive sound and light show," and other advanced capabilities. Rapid Dominance proponents noted that these technologies are feasible, affordable, realizable, and as or more likely to come from the civilian sector than the military-industrial complex. In light of this list of new systems, and the originality of the Rapid Dominance concept, many participants at the symposium felt that the concept was an "all or nothing" approach that might be better served by showing how some Rapid Dominance concepts fit in with current or planned programs and concepts.
Discussants and participants from the military communities of coalition or alliance partners urged caution about the RMA, Rapid Dominance, and other advanced "hi-tech" concepts for future warfighting. One allied participant beseeched the symposium not to forget "the human element - the most important element." It was noted that several allies have recently undergone profound changes in their military establishments and defense postures in order to switch from strategies and capabilities focused on territorial defense to those focused on power projection. This should improve the gross imbalance among the high-end components of many coalition operations (C4ISR, EW aircraft, combat ships, etc), as occurred in Desert Storm or Bosnia. Even so, these defense changes have generally taken place in the context of conventional forces and capabilities developed during the height of the Cold War. No allies have approached the RMA or other "advanced" warfighting concepts with the verve of the United States nor considered configuring their concepts or capabilities to take advantage of the RMA. Given the importance of coalitions outlined in the workshops, this left many in the symposium concerned with the coalition issues discussed below.
IV. Problems and Issues
Strategic coherence implies a clear connection between the security environment, likely political objectives, and the military forces structured to achieve the latter while operating in the former. The strategic coherence of planned U.S. forces, RMA forces, or even Rapid Dominance forces was not entirely clear. The forces the U.S. is designing for the future seemed to some participants a poor match for the challenges and threats of the future. The discussions over "Why We’ll Fight" and "What We’ll Fight For" seemed at times to talk past discussion of "How We’ll Fight." Rigorous strategic analysis undertaken by communities dealing with both issues should be undertaken to make this connection more clear.
There were technical, fiscal, conceptual, and strategic questions and doubts over the feasibility of the RMA and RMA forces. Some participants questioned the relevancy of RMA forces even if the revolution could be realized. Concepts about the RMA were considered fairly well advanced, but the bureaucratic, fiscal, programmatic, cultural, technical, and strategic questions continued to loom large. There was general agreement that RMA or Rapid Dominance forces needed to be analyzed in the context of U.S. national strategy, joint warfare, and the defense budget.
Several speakers alluded to the fact that marginal changes in organization and inter-agency cooperation were "good enough for now," but the entire U.S. national security establishment should be open to re-evaluation and change as the security environment shifts. This was accepted not only in the context of "new" transnational threats that capture much public attention, but as a necessary prerequisite to fully realizing the benefits of an RMA or Rapid Dominance-type force. The national security establishment looks much the same as it did after the National Security Act of 1947 while the world is much changed. Several discussants advised the symposium to study ways not only to combat compartmentalization through the inter-agency process, but also to bring NGOs and other private organizations into the fold to help with new security challenges.
Several discussants noted that much of the innovation for 21st century warfighting takes place in the context (some said vacuum) of service missions and visions. While participants could be found to readily defend both sides in a service agenda vs. joint vision debate, most thought that both entities should vigorously complement the other’s efforts. There was much discussion about integrated disparate service efforts while preserving the innovation of service experimentation. The role of USACOM and the joint experimentation process will need further study and continuous reassessment to determine if that is the appropriate structure or set of processes to successfully integrate service efforts.
There was a growing awareness that the U.S. pursuit of RMA or Rapid Dominance concepts is viewed with some alarm and even suspicion by many allies. Not only have long-time allies and coalition partners not accepted these ideas as fundamental warfighting concepts, they lack the infrastructure, funding, and strategic latitude to pursue them. These issues will need to be addressed at many levels. Politically, military coalitions cannot be sustained if partners do not agree on roles, concepts, and methods. Operationally, thousands of basic integration questions concerning strategies, operations, tactics, equipment, C4ISR, logistics, lift, basing, and other coalition issues remain to be solved.
It was agreed that the extraordinary advances in sensor technologies and information access could be America’s sustainable military advantage over time. However, training and processed to digest, filter, and absorb reams of new information and separate out what is truly useful have not kept up with the ability to gather and send information. "Information Dominance" or "Total Battlefield Awareness" must actually translate into something real and usable for U.S. warfighters. The concept of total knowledge of the environment in Rapid Dominance thinking emphasizes information as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Processes to translate the increasing overload of raw information into useful knowledge remain to be fully developed.