An Introduction to the RMA

8/3/2019 An Introduction to the RMA

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An I ntroduction to theRevolution in M ilitary Affairs

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Gary Chapman

LBJ School of Public AffairsUniversity of Texas at Austin

Austin, Texas, USA

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XV Amaldi Conference onProblems in Global Security

Helsinki, FinlandSeptember 2003


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Introduction

The concept of a "revolution in military affairs" has become such a pervasive topic of discussion among securi ty experts that i t has now acquired the shorthand of i ts

initialsRMAas the representation of a wide range of loosely connected ideas andapproaches in security policy. There is controversy over whether there has been, is now, orwill be a revolution in m ilitary affairs, or w hat constitutes a change in secur ity that m ightdeserve such a n ame. There is little doubt th at up heavals such as gu np owd er, air pow er, andnu clear weap ons hav e marked true revolutions in m ilitary affairs, but there is no consensuson w hether the recent changes in m ilitary w eaponry an d strategy mad e possible by advancesin information techn ology should be called a revolution.

The genesis of the current thinking about a revolution in military affairs began in Russia inthe ea rly 1980s, when Soviet Marsh al N ikolai Ogarkov, the Soviet chief of staff at th at time,wrote about a "military technical revolution" that would dramatically improve the lethalityand capabilities of conventional weap ons (Cohen). Ogarkov and his colleagues w ere fam iliarwith the technical progress in Am erican w eaponry that ap peared d uring the w ar in SoutheastAsia. In 1970, two years before the invention of the microprocessor, U.S. Army GeneralWilliam Westmoreland testified before Congress an d said:

On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked andtargeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computerassisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire control. . . .I am confidentthe American people expect this country to take full advantage of i tstechnologyto welcome and applaud the developments that will replacewh erever p ossible the m an with the m achine (Congressional Record 1970).

The Soviet military w as profou nd ly threatened by such Am erican d esigns, because the chief ad vanta ge of the Warsaw Pact forces in Europ e in the 1970s and 1980s was sh eer nu mbers of military assets, and the Soviet military leaders w ere well awar e of their coun try's inability tocompete with th e West in comp uter technology. Marshal Ogarkov's mu sings about a militarytechnology revolution w ere mean t as a wak e-up call to his own coun try's political leaders, itnow ap pears.

The ideas discussed in th e Soviet military literature even tua lly m igrated to th e United StatesDepartment of Defense and to a rather obscure Pentagon agency, the Office of NetAssessment, which has been run for decades by Andrew W. Marshall. Marshall hasdeveloped a small but influential thinktank within the Pentagon since 1973 and he is known

for his skepticism and criticism of trad itional service-bou nd military pr iorities, su ch as largeships, elaborate aircraft and heavy tanks. Marshall became the leading proponent of arevolution in military affairs and has nurtured a long list of intellectual disciples who havedistributed themselves through out the intellectual comm un ity of security p olicy experts inthe U.S. To his d isciples and insiders at th e Pentagon , the 82 year-old Mar shall is know n as"Yoda," the name of the wise but diminutive "Jedi master" in the "Star Wars" movie series(McGray).

Marshall has enjoyed a particularly close relationship to the current Secretary of Defense,Donald Rumsfeld, who held the same office during the Ford administration and who,


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between these two p eriods, served on nu merou s Pentagon stud y p anels. In fact, Rum sfeld,Vice President Dick Cheney (also a former Secretary of Defense) and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are all Marshall protgs, in th e opinion of some Pentag on w atchers(McGray). James G. Roche, Rumsfeld's selection in 2003 for Secretary of the Army, was

Marsh all's chief military aide from 1975 to 1979 (Kaplan). Thu s, in the Bush ad min istrationMarshall's influence has rath er d rama tically risen, and the revolution in m ilitary affairsnowmarketed as "defense transformation" to the Congress and the news mediais at the core of the ad ministration's defense policy.

Both Iraq wars, in 1991 and 2003, can be considered stages or phases of the RMA. Eachconflict displayed particular features of the RMA and U.S. weapons development and eachserved as a demonstration, a "demo," to other nations, of the "state of the art" of militaryweaponry, command and control and strategy. Because of the transformation of the U.S.military by the thinking behind the RMA and the new technologies associated with it, othercountries through out the w orld are confronted w ith the question of wh ether to pur sue similarapproaches in their defense policies, in order to remain credible as military powers, orwh ether to aban don military comp etition an d search for alternatives. China, for examp le, hasrecently announced its intention to modernize its military by abandoning its long-heldcommitmen t to an immen se stand ing army, becau se Chinese military leaders have ap par entlyconclud ed th at the RMA is real and that to rem ain a m ilitary pow er, China m ust become amodern force. Small European countries, on the other hand, are assessing specialized nicheroles in military alliances instead of trying to field a full range of military forces. In short, thefeatures of the RMAwhether defense transformation deserves to be labeled a "revolution"or notare having a profoun d im pact on the character and size of military forces throug hou tthe world.

Elements of the RMA

The RMA is a somewhat nebulous and mutable concept that has had many differentinterpretations, even among its most ardent proponents. But there are some relatively stableelemen ts that are iden tified w ith both th e ph rase and its policy imp lications.

Great advances in computational power, decreases in the physical size of computer components, and lower costs lead to dramatic progress in military technologies Several military historians havepointed out the fairly obvious observation that p rogress in military technologies is usuallytied to pr ogress in th e technological and econom ic base of countries fielding a military. Largestanding armies d epended on agricultural surpluses, and Nap oleon's hu ge army d ependedon the kinds of logistical complexities that had allowed cities to feed off of remote farms. The

American Civil War, World War I and World War II were obviou sly wars of heavy ind ustry .So the information technology revolution, as Westmoreland presciently predicted in 1970,eleven years before the personal computer revolution took off, would be expected to have atransformative impact on military technology, and so it has. One example frequentlymentioned in the literature as a landmark was when U.S. bombers flew 800 bombing sortiesover the Thanh Hoa bridge in North Vietnam, losing ten aircraft without damaging thebridge, but then th e bridge w as destroyed in one p ass by four Phantom F-4 fighter-bombersu sing laser-guided Pavew ay 1 bombs (U.S. New s and World Report 1987). The "pr ecision-gu ided m un ition," or PGM, d ebuted in Vietnam.


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Comp u ter experts and military technologists are typically enth ralled by Moore's Law, a 1965pred iction by Intel Corporation co-foun der Gordon Moore, wh o said th en that the d ensity of transistors on a comp uter chip w ould dou ble every eighteen m onths. Moore's Law has beenrema rkably accu rate even u ntil today, although the fact that Moore's compa ny, Intel, has led

the semicondu ctor ind ustry throughou t this period h as und oubtedly had something to d owith the fulfillment of Moore's prediction. Moore's Law has become almost as revered asNew tonian law, and it has presided over a spectacular and epochal transformation of nearlyevery corner of industrialized societies, including military technology. Everyone is by nowfamiliar with th e dimen sions of the information technology revolution, whose m ain elemen tshave been th e personal comp uter, lightn ing-fast global telecommu nications and the Internet.

The U.S. military sponsored the earliest research into electronic digital computers and thePentagon was the largest customer of computer companies until about the 1970s. Ascomputers got smaller and cheaper they proliferated in businesses and then eventuallybecame consum er good s. This explosion in the m arket for comp uter technology shifted thefocus of innovation from military technology to bu siness and consu mer technology, to thepoint that in most cases, gad gets on the m arket for consum ers are more soph isticated th anmany military assets. This has created a new environment for military planners andresearchersnow, it is not uncommon for military technologies to absorb advancedtechnologies from the commercial sector instead of the other way around, a switch from theold m od el of "spin off" to the new one th at som e p eople call "spin in." This has ha d the effectof expanding the range of technologies relevant to military affairs, as well as allowing themilitary to take advantage of privately-funded research and development and the lowerpr ices that come from larger mark ets.

Many of these factors combine synergistically in the military context; as prices fall forinformation techn ology comp onents th at are increasingly capable, weapons like m un itionsthat u se these comp onents can become both m ore dead ly and more n um erous. Likewise, ascomm un ications networks become both m ore ubiquitous and more soph isticated, spanningboth terrestrial and space elements, military command and control can d o more and in moreplaces. Even military intelligence has become dependent on sources of information that areotherw ise "civilian," such as th e new s med ia and the Internet.

Expand ing m ilitary capabilities have m ore or less map ped to the expan d ing capabilities of businesses and people in civilian life: enhanced discrimination, information, dissemination,and analysis. In the military context these have all been combined with firepow er in ord er totran sform the lethality, speed an d effectiveness of military force.

Joint service commands and "data fusion" The tr ad itional form of national m ilitaries has beento divide th em into service branches such as the arm y, navy, air force and mar ines. In the pa steach bran ch has pu rsued its own internal goals and developed its own trad itions, doctrinesand strategies, cooperating with other branches as needed. Inter-service r ivalr ies,redu nd ancies and conflicts have been common .

In the d igital information age, artificial obstacles to sharing informa tion m ust be overcome sothat comp uter-based information systems can "talk" to each other. Moreover, the ap pear anceof highly accurate "stand-off" weapons that can be deployed from a variety of militaryplatformssuch as ships, aircraft or land-based vehiclesmake inter-service cooperation


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vital. Finally, the information pr ocessing an d da ta collection capabilities of new techn ologiesmakes possible a level of coordination among service assets inconceivable in earlier eras of combat.

Because of these kinds of new capabilities and requirements, an important feature of theRMA are joint-service comm and s and "d ata fusion" from all service elemen ts so tha t a singlecommand can get important information from all parts of the battlespace. Joint-servicecommands have evolved in the U.S. military since the war in Southeast Asia and in the lastwar in Iraq the joint-service command of the coalition was perhaps the most successful andeffective ever demonstrated. The wide distribution of common information and datapr ocessing cap abilities, new comm and and control systems, and sup por tive elements such asspace surveillance, command and control aircraft (JSTARS and AWACS), and unmannedd rones hav e all contributed to da ta fusion. A goal of joint-service comm and s and d ata fusionis to deliver the right weap on at the right time an d th e right place no m atter wh ich service iscalled u pon to d eliver it. This is an extremely comp lex task, and one of the tragic byprod uctsof this approach, which is "friendly fire" or attacks on one's own forces, is still a majorproblem for the U.S. military a nd its allies.

Eliminating the "fog of war" The p hrase "fog of war " is attributed to the famou s 19th centu rymilitary thinker Carl von Clau sewitz, who, in his book Vom Krieg (On War), laid ou t man y of the foundations of modern military strategy. Clausewitz never actually used this phrase, butit has stuck to his name anyway, enough that people who believe that elimination of theunpredictability and chaos of war is impossible are today often called "Clausewitzians," apoint I will retur n to later (Kiesling).

The argu men t of some p rop onents of the RMA is that n ew techn ologies will help "lift the fogof war"this is a title of a book by retired U.S. Admiral William A. Owensand allow amilitary pow er like the Un ited States to comm and a battlefield like a chess game in w hich allthe enemy's pieces are visible and vulnerable, and all the friendly pieces are visible andcomma nd able. Ow ens is an ad vocate of the "system of systems" ap pr oach, a term m ore fullyexplained later, in wh ich an all-encomp assing and all-knowing technological system m ann edby commanders can both deploy subsystems of force and "see" all the assets andvulnerabilities of the enemy. Such a transparent battlefield has been a goal of militaryplann ers since hum an conflict first app eared, but its imp ortance has risen in tand em w ith theincreasing comp lexity and speed of mod ern combat. These days, part of the RMA is the goalof "battlespace dominance," which means not only superior force but superior information.Enormous sums of money are spent on technologies and training to accomplish this goal(Owens).

Agile, lower-cost weapons platforms deploying zero-CEP precision munitions One of the morecontroversial elements of the RMA argu men t is that expensive weap ons p latforms like ships,man ned aircraft and big land-based vehicles shou ld be p hased out in favor of smaller, lessexpensive, and possibly unmanned vehicles such as flying drones and simpler stand-off weap ons p latforms th at can deliver accurate pr ecision-guid ed m un itions from a d istance. Themost expen sive and vu lnerable item in the m ilitary arsenal, for examp le, aircraft carriers, mayeventually be replaced by cheaper ships that simply launch "swarms" of targetting dronesand pow erful and accur ate cruise missiles. Big artillery p ieces are likely to fad e into h istory,


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according to some RMA advocates, replaced by systems like Predator drones armed withHellfire missiles, or su rveillance dron es that rep ort to a distan t battery of cruise missiles.

PGMs, the technological key to su ch reforms, are increasingly a ccur ate, app roaching th e "zero

circular error p robable" goalmean ing accur ate enou gh to m atch the target w ith the lethalityof the warheadtheir cost is dropping, and their accuracy means that fewer of them areneed ed to d estroy enem y targets. In the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq, for examp le, abou t 20 percentof bomb m un itions w ere "smart" weap ons, out of a total of about 265,000 bomb s d rop ped . InIraq in 2003, how ever, nearly all the bom bs u sed were precision-guided , and only 27,000 wereused, or a little more than ten percent of the figure of 12 years earlier (Childs). The newtechno logy used in the U.S. military called JDAM, for Joint Direct Attack Mun ition, is an ad d -on to conventional, "dumb" munitions which makes them "smart" by including inertialgu idan ce and commu nication with the satellite-based Global Positioning System or GPS. Thisis an inexpensive modification to munitions already in the U.S. arsenal, and 6,542 of themwere used in Iraq in 2003, out of 18,467 precision-gu ided bom bs (Dunnigan ).

The lethality and accur acy of PGMs mean s that n ot only d oes it matter less who fires them , orwhere they're fired from, but there are fewer platforms required. Evidence suggests thatd ur ing the air wa r in Kosovo, for examp le, U.S. forces ran ou t of key targets rath er qu ickly inthe conflict becau se of the accuracy of PGMs either d rop ped or fired on Yug oslavia. The U.S.lost only a single aircraft in th at conflictits crew w as recoveredand suffered no casualtiesfrom enemy fire. The implications of defeating an entire country with this level of militaryimbalance, becau se of stand-off PGMs, were felt aroun d the w orld.

Fast, deadly, smaller-unit force structures The combined capabilities of battlespa ce dom inance,elimination of the fog of war, and PGMs suggests to some ad vocates of the RMA concept tha tlarge military forces, with their demanding logistical requirements and sluggish movement,can be rep laced by sm aller, faster-moving, mor e agile and lethal force un its. The most vocalRMA pr oponen ts argue tha t with good information and lethal PGMs, small units can be asdeadly or even more so than the large military armies of the past, or those that still exist insome p arts of the wor ld. Consequently, RMA evang elists have p ressed for reforms in m ilitarycomman d stru ctures and reallocations of weap ons and training in order to build a smaller butmore effective m ilitary force.

One imp lication of this app roach is the idea that th e individ ual soldier becomes less a fighterthan a sensor. The "soldier as sensor" is not entirely new; it has been the mission of anartillery unit's "forward observer," a soldier typically assigned to a infantry unit in order toord er artillery fire when an d wh ere it's needed . RMA philosoph y makes every combat soldier

a forward observer, at least in theory, with an ability to call on a w ide ran ge of distant forcesthat can deliver munitions where the soldier needs them. The U.S. Army sometimes talksabout "pop-up" forces, which means small, stealthy units that can "pop up" to identify anenemy target, then tuck into safety to call in lethal and accurate PGMs. Once that target isd estroyed, the un it moves on to other targets. Such u nits actua lly try to avoid h ead -on, smallarm s firefights w ith an en emy, in contrast to conventional battles in th e past.

The United States' recent engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq have also boosted thesignificance and use of Special Operations forces, which are by design organized into smalland highly trained units. Special Operations forces are usually assigned close combat


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The "dominant battlespace knowledge" school of thought, O'Hanlon says, "is much morebu llish and ambitious th an th e system of systems school" (O'Hanlon 13). The d evelopmen t of a comp lete global sur veillance system u sing combinations of sp ace-based reconn aissance,aircraft, ground sensors and unmanned drones will allow future military commanders

complete know ledge of "anyth ing of consequ ence that moves u pon or is located on the face of the Earth ," accord ing to form er U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Rona ld R. Fogleman in h is 1997testimony to Congress (O'Hanlon 13, Fogleman). This contention that future battles will bemade transparent by technology is controversial, however. Critics of this school of thoughtargue that battles will remain confusing and sometimes chaotic, and enemy forces willundoubtedly develop either technological countermeasures or other techniques to avoidbeing d etected. Radar and commu nications jamm ers, digital encryption codes, decoys, andthe simple use of human-to-human communication have all been used to defeat high-techsurveillance systems.

In N asiriyah, Iraq, in March of 2003, U.S. Marines enga ged in on e of the d ead liest battles of the w ar in Iraq. The interm ingling of Iraqi forces and Marines pr evented the u se of pr ecision-guided munitions against the enemy and the Marines resorted to small-arms fire in a viciousclose-combat firefight. Reinforcements that were supposed to back up a Marine companypinned down in Nasiriyah never arrived. And the Marines trapped on a bridge in the cityclaim that six of their fellow Marines were killed by a strafing run of a U.S. AH-10 aircraft(Connell and Lopez). Incidents like this demonstrate the difficulties of battlefieldtransparency, even when, in this case, the U.S. had a complete monopoly on technologicalsystems of surveillance and d etection.

The "global reach, global pow er" school of thou ght id entified b y O'H anlon is one m ore stepup in ambition from the "dominant battlespace knowledge" paradigm. Assuming that theUnited States military can identify any target any wh ere on earth in close to real-time, thelogical next step would be to deploy weapons systems that can destroy that target, or anycombination of targets, no m atter wh ere they are on the p lanet. This wou ld requ ire the use of space-based w eapon s, and the United States has several pr ogram s designed to investigate thefeasibility of weapons in space that can deliver force to targets on the ground. Bob Prestonand Dana Johnson, et. al., of the Rand Corporation, have thoroughly described space-basedweapons, both directed energy and "mass-to-target" or kinetic energy weapons, in the RandCorporation's 2002 report Space Weapons Earth War (Preston an d John son, et. al.).

Another program of research and development within the U.S. Air Force is thetransatmospheric vehicle, a space plane derived from the U.S. experience with the SpaceShu ttle, but, u nd er Air Force comm and , cap able of d elivering m un itions to earth targets. The

Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle program at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency is aimed at a space bomber that can carry a payload of about 12,000 pounds and hitany target on earth, from a continental U.S. takeoff, in under two hours (BBC News). Theaircraft wou ld d eploy a bomb m aneu verable in sp ace in a long glide to earth.

Such developments are likely to encounter resistance from other countries and permanentspace-based weapons like directed energy or kinetic energy weapons on satellites arecurrently bann ed by the Space Treaty. How ever, a stead y stream of official reports on thePentagon's commitment to control space and its assumption that space will be a future


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battlegroun d su ggest that sp ace weapon s will become part of the U.S. arsenal u nless there issome un expected interru ption of this trend .

As O'H anlon also notes, the "global reach, global pow er" school of thou ght is not limited to

the Air Force or to space-deployed weaponry. Both the Marines and the Army in the UnitedStates are taking steps to increase their rapid-response capabilities and to decrease theirheavy-lift requiremen ts by lightening vehicles, redu cing the size of forces, and d eployingforward logistical support bases around the world. For combat operations, the goal of theArmy and Marines is not on ly to get to a theater of combat rap idly, but to very qu ickly anddecisively overwhelm the enemy and prevent a sustained w ar. Success would free up theseforces for use elsewhere. How ever, in b oth th e Afghanistan a nd Iraq conflicts of recent years,troop requirements for postwar security have proven far more deman ding than anticipated,and the Army feels stretched thin and at increased risk. Secretary Rumsfeld has warnedantag onists like Nor th Korea that th e U.S. military is cap able of secur ing Iraq an d d efend ingSouth Korea against a North Korean attack, but there is widespread doubt about thecredibility of this threat u nless the U.S. were to resort to nu clear w eapon s. In sh ort, advocatesof defeating an enemy anyw here and a nytime using high-tech weap ons are very far from th atgoal.

O'Ha nlon's last school of thou ght ab out the RMA, the "vu lnerability" pa rad igm, stresses thepoten tial vulnerab ility of U.S. and allied assets like ship s, planes, tanks an d , after Septem ber11th, even civilian targets, to weapons developed to support the RMA concept. The mostpr essing and illustrative exam ple is the av ailability of Stinger gr ou nd -to-air m issiles, w hichwere introduced into Afghanistan by the United States in order to assist the mujhadeenfighter s in th eir wa r aga inst the Soviet Union 's military in th e 1970s an d 1980s. Stingers ar eshou lder-fired an d easy to conceal. They have a h igh rate of success against airborne targ etsbecause th eir missiles are precision-gu ided . There are reported ly thou sand s of Stingers incirculation via clandestine arms d eals throu ghou t the w orldthis weapon is readily availableto terrorists, in other w ord s. Terrorists have already u sed an old er but similar shou lder-firedmissile system , a Soviet SA-7, aga inst an Israeli commercial airliner d epa rting Kenya in 2002.The threat of p recision-guid ed, shou lder-fired missiles against comm ercial airliner flights isserious enough that officials throu ghou t the w orld are contemp lating m issile defense systemson comm ercial aircraft (Squ itieri).

The prop onents of the "vu lnerability" school of thou ght p oint to a particular prob lem with th eRMA thesis: as information technology costs drop and weapons based on such technologiesget cheaper, they fall within the reach of a greater number of agents, governments, terroristgroups or other potentially threatening forces. And as the lethality of these weapons

increases, the vulnerability of large expensive assets that can only be deployed by wealthycountries increases as well. Thus, while we can assume that because of the Westernpr edom inance in m ilitary spend ing and information techn ologies, w e should also expect thatthe "lower end" of RMA weaponry will leak to adversaries, and these weapons will threatenthe higher v alue assets of the larger pow ers.

Anoth er argu men t of the "vu lnerability" school of though t is that the acceptan ce of a greaterand greater degree of complexity and dependence on technological systems will makemodern militaries peculiarly vulnerable to systemic attacks against assets that can beun reliable or u ntru stworthy, like comp uter or comm un ication n etworks. In other word s, by


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d ram atically increasing the im por tance of the "system of systems" netw ork infrastructur eitscentral nerv ous system, so to sp eakthe RMA ph ilosophy increases the risk of the wh olemilitary force. If comm un ication lines are d isrup ted or if military com pu ters are su ccessfullyattacked, the highly complex mix of forces in a joint command could be at risk or even

throw n into chaos.The Warsaw Pact command planned for just su ch a strategy du ring the Cold War, and U.S.doctrine respond ed by incorporating the German concept of Auftragstaktik , sometimes know nin English as "mission-oriented command." Auftragstaktik was used by the GermanWermacht as a principle of combat leadership in circumstances where orders from highercommand authorities were either unavailable or inappropriate to the situation at hand.Auftragstaktik counsels initiative and inn ovation by front-line comm and ers, wh o might evendisobey their formal orders in order to accomplish a specific military mission. Militaryleaders trained under the principle of Auftragstaktik can function effectively even if cut off from central comm and auth orities.

Dur ing the Cold War there w as a great deal of discussion in American Army circles abou t therole of Auftragstaktik in th e Western European theater, as a hed ge against a Warsaw Pactdecapitation strike using tactical nuclear weapons. However, the U.S. Army's adoption of Auftragstaktik generated some friction with oth er trend s, such as those that p ointed tow ard

joint commands, data fusion, battle management systems and eventually the "system of systems" concept, which all tend to assum e d egrees of transp arency and centralization thatmake Auftragstaktik unnecessary and even dysfunctional (Chapman, Dunivan). Thisbalancing act between the mission-oriented comm and of au tonom ous u nits versus the controlof centralized comm and has b een one of the m ost d ifficult issues facing the U.S. military, andat any given time it seems that n o p articipant is comp letely satisfied.

The "vu lnerability" school of thou ghtwh ich is not clearly an a rgu men t against th e RMA asmu ch as a warn ing abou t overconfidence and d istorted p rioritiesserves as a coun terbalanceto some of the m ore hu bristic prop onents of the RMA. Defense transformation is never a one-sided activity, as September 11th so dramatically demonstrated. Even if we assume thatfutur e war s will be "asymm etric," in the jargon of the day , meaning th at there w ill be a severeimbalance in force capabilities and sophistication, asymmetric opponents will not be utterlypr imitive; they w ill have access to at least some high techn ology weap onry that is likely to bethe by-product of the RMA philosophy. When you combine this likelihood with thediscouraging probability that opponents will fight in ways designed to create fear and terrorwithin civilian populations, the character of some marvel weapons takes on an addeddimension that RMA proponents are n ot apt to acknowledge.

Components of the RMA "System of Systems"

The following table (table 1) describes the basic components of a comprehensive, modernarray of compon ents representing th e RMA concept.


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Intelligence, Surveillance andReconna issance (ITR)

Command , Compu ters,Control, Comm un ications,Intelligence Processing

(C4I)

Precision Force(PGMs)

Stealth technologiesLightweight,lower -cost, ag ileweapons platforms

Information w arfare

Space weapons Missile d efense "Operations Other than War"

Table 1: Components of the RMA "System of Systems" Int elligence, Su rveillance and Reconn aissance (ITR) The elem ents o f ITR includ e sophisticatedradar monitoring, satellite surveillance and reconnaissance, unmanned aircraft like thePredator with ad vanced rad ars and video cameras, airborne and land-based sensors, and theexpensive aircraft jointly deployed by the Army and Air Force called the Joint Surveillanceand Target Attack Radar System or JSTARS. The JSTARS aircraft is an airborne commandcenter for grou nd combat, a comp lement to th e Air Force's AWACS aircraft for comm and andcontrol of air op erations.

Computers, Control, Communications, Intelligence Processing(C4I) C4I elements include both forward and rear command and control technologies,secure commu nications and comp uter p rocessing that ranges from laptops and hand heldcomputers in the field to immense supercomputers in the continental United States, andeverything in between. An increasingly important element of C4I is the Global PositioningSatellite system, or GPS, which helps p inpoint the location of everyth ing u nd er observation,both enemy and friendly forces and assets. The U.S. has also invested heavily incomputerized "battle management systems" designed to aggregate data about a combatoperation and present it to comm and ers in a form that is helpful to plann ing and execution.

Precision force (PGM s) PGMs include the by-now familiar Tomahawk cruise missileslaunched from ships and aircraft; "smart" bombs such as the GBU-12 laser-guided bomb orbomb s guid ed by GPS; a w ide ran ge of guided missiles such as the H ellfire laser-gu ided , air-to-ground antitank missile; older munitions retrofitted with the JDAM package describedabove; and ground-fired, man-portable missile systems such as the Javelin, a 28-kilogramweapons package that fires a "fire and forget" antitank missile guided by a heat-seekingwarh ead that locks onto an infrared signature acquired by the op erator. There are m ore than80 missile typ es in the U.S. military's inventory , and in general th ey are a ll moving to "smart"capabilities using one or more techn ologies such as laser-gu idan ce, GPS, anti-radiation, heat-seeking, and terrain-mapping, among others. A new capability demonstrated in Afghanistanand Iraq is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as a Predator, armed withHellfire missiles that can be targeted using radar or video cameras onboard the drone. In


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addition to the actual guided munitions, PGMs are sometimes guided to their targets byhu man observers u sing laser target acquisition systems, in w hich a laser beam aimed at thetarget by soldiers creates a "target signature" that can be used to guide a munition to thetarget.

While PGMs have displayed tragic and controversial errors, missing targets and hittingcivilians or buildings that should not have been targets, the use of PGMs in recent conflictssuch as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq has showed how remarkably accurateanddevastatingthey have become. A phenomenon reported by most journalists in Baghdadduring the March 2003 bombing of the city was that Baghdad residents became so confidentof the accuracy of coalition strikes that th ey wou ld w atch the nightly bom bings from rooftopsand windows. Many journalists also remarked how most of Baghdad escaped any seriousdamage from bombs even while targeted buildings in the city were utterly destroyed. Thesignificance of the changes th at highly accur ate PGMs have brou ght to w arfare can h ard ly beoverstated.

Stealth technologies The United States Air Force is the only military force in the worldd eploying so-called stealth aircraft, both th e B-2 Bomb er an d the F117-A Nigh thaw k StealthFighter, wh ich both hav e dra ma tically redu ced rad ar signatu res. The F117 has a rad ar cross-section of between 10 and 100 square centimetersat the most, the area of a 4-inchsquarefor an aircraft 66 feet long and 43 feet wide (airforce-technology.com). These twoaircraft are currently used for night operations only, although the Air Force is investigatingthe use of the F117 for daylight operations. Stealth technologies for low-observable aircraftare expected to be includ ed in m ost fu tur e combat a ircraft, in pa rticular th e Lockheed MartinX-35, which was selected by the Pentagon in 2001 as the next F-35 Joint Strike Fighterplatform. However, some military experts have noted that stealth aircraft are less importantthan once thou ght because of the effectiveness of antiradar PGMs against air d efenses. PGMsare vastly cheaper than stealth aircraft, and their suppression of air defenses in Yugoslaviaand Iraq seemed to raise questions abou t the need for expen sive stealth aircraft.

Lightweight, lower-cost, agile weapons platforms The ability of smaller platforms to deployincreasingly lethal PGMs an d ITR techn ologies is combining w ith technological advan ces inarm or an d logistics to lower the w eight, size and cost of ma ny w eapon s platforms. The U.S.Army's new Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle, for example, can be transported in the AirForce's ubiqu itous C-130 air cargo p lanes, instead of requiring the larger and heavier C-141.The use of the lightweight and unmanned Predator UAV as a surveillance and weaponsplatform has already been mentioned. The Predator can fly for up to 20 hour s, much longerthan larger, manned aircraft with similar missions. The U.S. Navy is reevaluating its

commitment to a large number of ships because of its experience in using standoff PGMssuch as the Tomahawk. Most militaries in the Western alliances are aiming new platformdevelopment at cheaper, multi-use vehicles that can be configured with specific equipmentfor different missions, a contrast to the proliferation of specialized vehicles that characterizedthe Cold War era.

Information warfare A topic that has spawned its own voluminous literature, the phrase"information warfare" can cover many different activities, including computer attacks,computer defense, misinformation campaigns, propaganda, psychological operations andboth attacks on and defense of communications networks. The proliferation of inexpensive


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comp uters an d mobile telephones has given information w arfare new significance and newtargets, and of course an RMA-type military is increasingly dependent on informationtechn ologies and systems, which become new points of vu lnerability. The 1991 Gulf War w assaid to be th e "first w ar of information," in that the coalition's inform ation d omina nce led to

several instances of coalition forces interdicting the Iraqi Army before it could acquire astrategic hold on terr itory. Obviou sly the use of PGMs on enem y forces requ ires critical andreliable information about the enemy's location, and poor information can become a seriousliability, such as w hen the U.S. mistakenly bom bed the Ch inese embassy in Belgrade, creatingan intern ational incid ent tha t had mu ltiple rep ercussions. Finally, several of the m ost recentconflicts between asymm etric forces have b een less a matter of annihilating the enem y tha n of "man aging expectations," or sap ping the en emy's w ill to continue fighting. This was certainlythe case in the Kosovo conflict with Yugoslavia. In su ch contexts, information w arfare takeson th e central function of chan ging the enem y's mind , rather than serving as a tactical ad jun ctto m ore conventional military op erations.

Space weapons and missile defense Some trends in space weapons have been discussed above,such as the transatmospheric vehicle and possible orbiting weapons designed to engagetargets on earth. Other space weap ons includ e anti-satellite weap ons or weap ons designed todefend space assets such as the GPS system or communications satel l i tes. The"weap onization" of space is presently proh ibited by international treaties, but this has nothalted man y d ifferent U.S. weap ons p lans; indeed , the U.S. has an entire Space Comm andwithin the Air Force, which is specifically charged with planning for space as a field of military conflict. The current U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force GeneralRichard B. Myers, is the form er head of U.S. Space Comm and .

Missile defense includes both ballistic missile defense against attacks by intercontinentalballistic missiles, and tactical missile defense against theater-based missiles. The UnitedStates' ballistic missile defense system is well-know n, stretching ba ck to Presiden t Reagan'sfamou s laun ch of the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, a p rogram that continues tod ay an dwh ich h as recently been accomp anied by th e U.S. withd raw al from the An ti-ballistic MissileTreaty. Tactical theater m issile defense is also an a rea of intense research and d evelopm ent,largely to improve the U.S. Patriot missile program, which was used in both wars againstIraq. The Patriot system has been th e su bject of ongoing controversy, first because of d isputesabou t its effectiveness against Iraqi Scud missiles fired into Israel in 1991, and in 2003 becau seof at least two "friend ly fire" inciden ts, one of wh ich invo lved a Patr iot missile shooting d owna British fighter aircraft, killing the two airm en (Kilian).

"Operations Other Than War" The p hra se "op erations other th an w ar" is a catch-all term for

military activities not covered by the other elements of the RMA, but in recent years thiscategory has constituted a grow ing share of military comm itments. It includ es peacekeeping ,civil affairs, humanitarian aid, special operations, hostage rescue, anti-terrorist actions,policing, and a range of activities associated with the controversial mission of "nation-building." Increasingly, military planners assume that military conflicts will take place in"failed states" in w hich m any or m ost of the basic hum an services of successful states n eed tobe replaced. The rising threat of terrorism within formally friendly states that may haverestive and hostile populations, such as in Iraq today, is an additional complication tomilitary planning. The military may even become involved in information campaignsd esigned to shape p ub lic opinion in its area of operation.


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Post 9-11: Network War and the RMA

The technological developments that contributed to the idea of an emerging RMA began

during the Cold War and started to change the U.S. military as it contemplated the immenseWarsaw Pact force in Europe. The earliest signs of the RMA were found in PGMs and newbattle mana gement techn ologies that w ere d eployed as "force mu ltipliers" in Western Europ e.NATO attemp ted to m atch the nu merical sup eriority of Warsaw Pact forces, especially itsbattle tanks, with sop histicated "one sh ot, one kill" mu nitions. In oth er w ord s, the h istoricalroots of RMA thinking are tied to conventional warfare between massed armies, the kind of confrontation once found in Europe and still extent in Korea, for example. The first fulld emon stration of these techn ological developm ents occur red in the Gu lf War of 1991, whichwas also a war resembling the kind of classic armored battle that the U.S. military hadprepared for in Europe, although the Iraqi Army was vastly overmatched by the coalitionforces.

The conflict over Kosovo an d the U.S. bom bing of Yugoslavia began to change th is picture. InKosovo, American technological sup eriority had little effect on the v iolence in th e area. TheU.S. had to resort to bombing targets in Belgrade and other parts of the Serbian territory of Yug oslavia, and even th en Am erican comm and ers un derestimated the resilience of Yug oslavforces. The Serbs were n ever capable of field ing an arm y that migh t challenge a conven tionalNATO or U.S. force, but they nevertheless deployed a mix of regular army troops,paramilitary gangs, tanks and artillery that unleashed hellish violence on Kosovo but yetstymied the ov erw helming military force of the U.S. Because of this, and also becau se of theAmerican experience in Mogadishu , Somalia, some experts began to question w hether th eRMA, with its orientation to classic conventional warfare, was appropriate to new forms of conflict.

September 11, 2001 changed everything, as we all know now. The al-Qaeda threat was notentirely new, of coursethe U.S. had seen attacks by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in SaudiArabia, east Africa, and Yemen before September 11th. But the spectacular terrorist attacksinside the United States, with their devastating psychological consequences for the U.S.governm ent an d the Am erican peop le, "revolutionized " war fare for the U.S. far m ore thanany mix of military technologies had done to that time. Indeed, this particular revolutionhapp ened nearly overnight.

Al-Qaed a rep resents an en tirely d ifferent sort of ad versary for the Un ited States than the U.S.has faced in the past. The battle against the terrorist organization is a good example of what

some theorists have come to call a war against a "network," as opposed to war against aneasily circumscribed, identifiable enemy military. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, of theU.S. Naval Postgraduate School and the RAND Corporation, are the two thinkers mostidentified with the id ea of "netw ar," as they call it, and they w rite:

The rise of netw orks m eans that p ower is migrating to n onstate actors, becausethey are able to organ ize into spra wling mu ltiorganizational networks(especially "all-channel" networks, in which every node is connected to everyother node) more readily than can traditional, hierarchical, state actors. Thismeans that conflicts may increasingly be w aged by "networks," perhaps more


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than by "hierarchies." It also means that whoever masters the network formstand to gain the ad vantag e (Arquilla and Ronfeld t, 3).

"Netw ork w ar," and the systematic destruction of "nod es" in a n etwork so th at the n etwork

collapses, is now the predominant mode of U.S. military activity throughout the world,especially in Afghan istan, Iraq, the Philippines, Indon esia and elsewh ere, and this is also themain activity of the Israeli military against Palestinian terrorist organizations.

It is not yet clear how the concept of the RMA "maps" to "netwar" or "network war." TheUnited States military is still adap ting to terror ism and combat w ith non -state actors. Clearlythe u se of RMA-like techn ologies in Afghan istan and Iraq were instru men tal in defeating th eTaliban an d the Iraqi Arm y, but th e d ifficulties the U.S. military h as faced in the afterm ath of those defeats have raised qu estions abou t the ap pr opr iateness of expensive high-tech systemsin an ti-terrorist or cou nterinsu rgency conflicts. In genera l, how ever, the U.S. defense bu d gethas simply expanded to cover both high-tech weapons systems designed for conventionalcombat and n ew systems and r esearch aimed at countering terrorism and insurgen cies.

One n ew d evelopm ent that is directly a result of September 11th is a d rama tic blurring of boundaries between military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies and missions. TheU.S. Patriot Act, passed within the first month after September 11, 2001, explicitly eliminatesearlier restraints on cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency and the FederalBureau of Investigation, two agencies that have previously been isolated within theirrespective domains of foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. Today the FBIoperates w orldw ide, assisting the military and foreign govern men ts in fighting terrorism, andthe CIA has increased its paramilitary operations, which are now often indistinguishablefrom th e military's special operations activities. A bypr od uct of this new collaboration is thatthere is increased sh aring of technologies and systemssuch as intelligence analysis systemsor su rveillance techn ologiesthat w ere once reserved for sp ecific agencies and gua rd ed withsome proprietary zeal. This has become a new feature of this unexpected twist to the RMA,wh ich began w ith a focus on high-tech PGMs and wh ich now covers techn ologies developed ,for example, for monitoring civilian mobile telephones or personal computers. Some peopleconcerned about the blurring of boundaries between the military, law enforcement andintelligence agencies warn about the potential development of shadowy, clandestine forceswith pow erful techn ical capabilities, decoup led from the formal ru les of conventional militarycomm and s and international law.

The RMA and Al liances

A growing controversy about the United States ' heavy investment in new defensetechno logies is wh ether th e U.S. is "pu lling a wa y" from oth er coun tries, includ ing its allies, sod ecisively that there is little military contribu tion allies can m ake to a coalition effort. As U.S."jointness" inten sifies and becomes m ore comp lex, there is the qu estion of wh ether th e U.S.pays as much attention to the inclusion of allied forces and commands. As the militarytechn ology dep loyed by the U.S. becomes m ore soph isticated an d in some cases spectacularlyexpensive, some U.S. allies are won d ering w hether th ere is any p oint in trying to "keep u p."The very sophistication of defense technology makes the United States hesitant to share itwith other n ations, which creates fur ther ten sions with allies. The U.S. governm ent h as beenurging Western European governments to boost their defense spending to levels matching


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the proportional share of gross domestic product that the U.S. spends, to around 3-4 percentof GDP, but Europ eans are averse to spend ing this mu ch on d efense when the United Statesmilitary is so far ahead of all others that any role for allies appears to be largely one of political endorsem ent r ather than a m ilitarily significant contribution. Some countries are

beginning to concentrate on p eacekeeping as a sp ecialty, for exam ple, rather than attemp t tofield a com bat force that can match the capabilities of the U.S. military.

This picture d oes not ap p ly to all coun tries, of cou rse. Britain an d the Un ited States still enjoytheir "special relationship," and Britain's participa tion in the Iraq w ar on ly helped to cementthis. The positions of Germany and France will certainly have repercussions with respect tocollaboration with the United States. A problem for European companies in the defensebusiness is that they have been concentrated among the heirs of heavy industrial landarmam ent m anu facturers, with fewer d efense contractors in the information technology orspace-oriented fields. With static or shrinking defense budgets in Europe and fewer firmsprovid ing "synergy" between h igh technology an d armam ents, continental Europ e is p oisedto fall fur ther beh ind the United States in military technologies and d eployed systems. This islikely to be tru e even if the Europ ean Un ion is successful in creating a Europ ean m ilitaryforce separate from NATO, a plan pushed by Germany, France, Belgium and Luxemburg.The European direct action force, whose future is uncertain, has created additional frictionwith Washington, which is concerned about the development of an independent Europeanforeign policy.

The decision of the Bush ad ministration to freeze oppon ents of the war in Iraq from bid d ingon contracts in the reconstruction of that country will likely ad d to the tensions d eveloping inthe Western alliance. The Bush administration and its conservative supporters in the U.S.frequently u se the ph rase "new Europ e" to d escribe the states they regard as friend ly to U.S.foreign and military po licy, pr imarily the states of the form er Soviet bloc in Eastern Europ e,and this suggests a new tendency toward favoritism on the part of U.S. policymakers, acontext in w hich some Europ ean states are includ ed in RMA-like military reforms an d som eare not. Connections between profitable high-technology defense contracts and this newfavoritism remain to be seen, but th e message is not lost on th e participan ts.

The Western alliance is not threatened by the RMAthere are many more profounddifferences within the alliance than the disparities in military technology that now existbetween the U.S. and everyone else, with the possible exception of Britain. France andGermany's opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003 will certainly have the greatest impact onU.S.-Europ ean relations.

However, the RMA is a contributory factor in the potential decoupling of the United Statesmilitary and its allies, and it contributes non-diplomatic reasons, even purely technicalreasons, for such a decoupling. The greater the disparity between the U.S. military'scapabilities and that of all other n ations, the greater d istortion th ere w ill be in foreign p olicy,as the U.S. is capable of "going it alone" and other nations are capable merely of tokenend orsement or niche roles such as p eacekeeping or p olicing. U.S. hegemony is based in pa rton the country's immense defense budget and the spectacularly effective weaponry suchspending has purchased. But it is not yet clear whether U.S. hegemony also meansun ipolarity in th e w orld system, or wh ether there w ill be indep end ent sources of legitimatepolicymak ing even w hen th ose sources cann ot match U.S. military pow er.


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Critiques of the RMA

The idea of a revolu tion in m ilitary affairs has its critics. There are th ose wh o challenge the

app rop riateness of the w ord "revolution" to d escribe what's hap pen ed in m ilitary techn ology.There are others who think that the claims of the RMA advocates are extravagant andperh ap s dan gerous because the claims m ight lead to overconfid ence, or, worse, to easy "pu sh-bu tton w ar." There are some critics who accept the fact that th ere is an ongoing r evolution inmilitary affairs but who think that the source of this revolution is not technology but theconfrontation w ith non -state actors such as global terrorist networks. And there are criticswh o argu e that th e RMA is simp ly fuel for extension of the arms race beyond the years of theCold War, and that cheaper bu t more lethal weap ons will come back to haun t us.

It sometimes surprises non-experts, but one of the chief sources of criticism of the RMAconcept h as been the officer corp s of the U.S. military . There is significant friction betw een th eofficer corps, especially line combat commanders in the Army, and the advocates of hightechnology systems in the civilian leadership of the Dep artm ent of Defense. This friction h asgrown since the plans for attacking Iraq began to acquire Bush adm inistration su pp ort, andconflict between Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and the senior leadership of the U.S.Army is now well-known. As one Army officer told The Washington Post, about Rumsfeld,"Does he really hate th e Arm y? I don't kn ow" (Loeb and Ricks).

One retired four-star Army general told me, "What is the RMA? Is it a roadmap? Aphilosophy? An ideology?" The Pentagon's current phrase for the RMA, "defensetransformation," has become, under Rumsfeld's leadership, a kind litmus test for seniorofficers. "Rumsfeld decides whether you're 'transformative' or not, and if you're not, you'renot on his team," said th e retired general. Senior Arm y generals felt they h ad their own visionof transformation, but that this was undercut by Rumsfeld's abrasive style and his dismissalof several top Arm y leaders, wh o he replaced with his own h and -picked su pp orters. Civilianaides to Rumsfeld also recommended cutting several of the programs the Army hadd eveloped in its own tran sformation p lan (Loeb and Ricks).

Many of the dispu tes between the civilian leadersh ip of the Pentagon and the career militaryofficers in the Army came to a h ead ov er the invasion of Iraq. Many senior comm and ers wereangered and disma yed by civilians in the Bush a d ministration wh o claimed that the invasionof Iraq w ould be easya pr ominen t mem ber of the Defense Policy Board , Kenneth Adelman ,pr onou nced that Iraq wou ld be a "cakewalk" (Adelman). Before the wa r, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki testified before Congress that h e believed th e Army w ou ld need up to

200,000 troops to secu re Iraq, a nu mb er that w as imm ediately cond emn ed a s far too large bycivilian Pentagon leaders. (At the end of 2003 there were 130,000 U.S. Army troops in Iraq.)Dur ing the w ar, both retired m ilitary officers comm enting on th e war on television (includ ingsubsequ ent p residential cand idate Wesley Clark) and , on one rare occasion a general in Iraqitself, observed that the troop comm itment in the w ar w as too small and was comp romisingsecurity. Some critics attributed the troop level to the civilian leadership's desire todemonstrate the principles of defense transformation in a real combat situation in Iraq, andwere thu s angered th at a theory had overru led experience and p ossibly risked lives.

These criticisms reinforced earlier objections to the RMA concept, such as that it emphasized


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techn ology too much an d at the expense of valued military experience built up over centuries.Some m ilitary officers hav e complained that th e RMA paints a picture of war by m achinesinstead of war by men, wh ich is not only offensive to the m en and wom en w ho sacrifice inwar but dangerous in its implications. In response to the claim that technology will "lift the

fog of war," for examp le, Jacob W. Kipp and Lieu tenant Colon el (ret.) Lester W. Grau w rote inthe jour nal Military Review :

The siren song of technology is tha t it w ill eliminate the fog an d friction of w ar.The reality is that the m ilitary's app lication of techn ology has u sually created itsown fog and friction. Adv ances in technology expan d th e battlefield , transformthe relationship between time and sp ace and create new d emand s on comm andand control. With th e p ace of scientific and technological innovation constantlyaccelerating, military institutions face a p erp etual challenge of chan ge, and thevery nature of that challenge becomes more problematic as weapon systemsbecome m ore comp lex. . . .

Technology w ill be used across the spectrum of combat bu t w ill seldom proveequally effective across that spectrum. A determined foe can work aroundtechnology to disrupt or destroy it by attacking its critical system nodes.Technology can be a stron g element of military might, but it is only an element,and the p rinciples of military art still app ly. A p rofessional military cultu re anda clear vision of future war are at the very heart of military foresight and canredu ce, but not eliminate, wa r's fog and friction (Kipp and Grau).

Other critiques of the RMA concept h ave challenged the claims of some RMA ad vocates thattechnological ad van cemen ts can red uce the size of the U.S. defense bud get. Professor CindyWilliams of MIT has an alyzed th e bud getary requ irements of several RMA-like program s andin 1999 concluded that the "extra annual acquisition costs incurred if just a few of thosetechnologies lead to procurement programs could exceed $25 billion" (Williams and Lind).Because of Septem ber 11th, of course, defense spen d ing h as climbed and is likely to r emainhigh, and the picture is complicated by the continued existence of several big-ticketprocurement items (like the next generation fighter plane) and the disappearance of, or cutsin, other p rogram s, such as the Cru sader ar tillery program or the Stryker vehicle. In any case,even for a Department of Defense committed to transformation, there is no foreseeablepr ospect for significantly lower d efense bud gets, althou gh th ere may be cost savings in somespecific programs.

Finally, the problem of a new arms race with inevitable "leakage" of high-tech weapons to

adversaries has been mentioned already as a critique of the RMA. A version of this critiquegoes something like this: because of the overwhelming superiority of U.S. military forcestod ay, adversaries are likely to avoid d irect military confrontation and instead resort to someform of "asymmetric" warfare, including terrorism and guerrilla combat. These forms of warfare will have disastrous consequences for civilians, as they already have. If "smart"mu nitions and information w arfare, for examp le, were to b ecome w idespread tools of conflictthe result could be rad ically d estabilized societies throu ghou t the w orld, as pu blic trust mightd ecline in the u se of comp uters, airlines, trains, etc.


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Another version of this argument is that overwhelming su periority in conventional w eaponspushes some "rogue" states and terrorist groups to seek weapons of mass destruction asdeterrents, threats or outright weapons of choice. Some military observers have pointed outthat th e lesson N orth Korea seems to hav e absorbed from the U.S. attack on Iraq is that N orth

Korea should have a nuclear deterrent at all costs or else suffer a similar fate. In the wronghands, the combination of a small nuclear warhead and a precision-guidance mechanismwou ld be the world's worst nightmare.

Conclusion

The question of whether there has been, is now, or will be a "revolution in military affairs"seems to be largely an issue of seman tics tod ay, especially after the lau nch of an all-out w aron terr orism, wh ich is likely to rem ain th e most salient tr ansforma tion of military a ffairs forsome years to come, if not decad es into th e futur e. Neverth eless, there is no qu estion th at thecentur ies-old configura tion of military forces of rough ly equa l cap abilities confrontin g eachother en m asse has ended , and that technological developm ents described by the p hrase"revolution in m ilitary affairs" have p rofound ly altered the balance of pow er and the cond uctof military operations. The original "military technical revolution" described by MarshalOgarkov and his Soviet colleagues has gone the way of the Soviet Union itself, but themodern, contemporary products of that revolution are still transforming war today. Thespectacular accuracy of PGMs, which d rastically red uces the n um ber of mu nitions u sed incombat, is perhaps the most impressive change. This single technological change hasrepercussions throu ghou t the array of systems dep loyed by a mod ern m ilitary, pa rticularly interms of information an alysis, commu nication and the speed of mod ern combat.

On th e other han d, as the recent conflict in Iraq has show n, technology d oes not and cannotsubstitute for soldiers coming face-to-face with an opp onent. The air w ar ag ainst Sadd amHu ssein's regime was aw esome and shocking, as intend ed, and probably led to the collapseof the Iraqi Army. But it was n ot d ecisive; there w as still a need for groun d troop s pr acticingfire and maneuver and there were still some battles in Iraq that were practically the sameexperience for the soldiers as som e battles of World War II.

It may u ltimately be imp ossible to identify a single bracket of time in the d evelopm ent of weap onry and call it a revolution, because hu man beings tragically and foolishly devote somu ch of their energies, intellect and money to this endeavor that improvement in the m eansof killing their fellow hu man beings is never-end ing and un interrup ted. We can on ly hopethat som eday this will cease.


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Documents

An Introduction to the RMA