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NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

III. DESIRED CAPABILITIES AND ATTRIBUTES

Our strategy requires a high quality, joint force. We remain committed to increasing levels of joint competency and capability.

Our goal is not dominance in all areas of military capability, but the means to reduce vulnerabilities while fortifying warfighting advantages. We will:

• Develop and sustain key operational capabilities;

• Shape and size forces to meet near and mid term needs;

• Divest and invest for the longer term; and,

• Strengthen our global defense posture to increase our ability to work with other countries on matters of common interest.

A. KEY OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES

Eight operational capabilities are the focus for defense transformation:

1. STRENGTHEN INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence directly supports strategy, planning, and decision making; it facilitates improvements in operational capabilities; and it informs programming and risk management. Three areas, in particular, are priorities:

• Early Warning. The first priority is to improve our capacity for early warning. Decision makers require early warning of imminent crises-e.g., instability, terrorist threat, or missile attack.

• Deliver Exacting Intelligence. We will improve support to intelligence consumers through transformation in both organization and process. Specifically, we aim to increase our capabilities for collection; shift to a more consumer friendly approach; and better anticipate adversary behavior through competitive analysis.

• Horizontal Integration. The intelligence community can play a central role in developing joint solutions. To the extent possible, we seek to fuse operations and intelligence and break down the institutional, technological, and cultural barriers that separate them. This will enable us better to acquire, assess, and deliver critical intelligence both to senior decision makers and to warfighters.

In addition, counterintelligence also directly supports our strategy, planning, and decision-making. Counterintelligence is critical to defending our information advantage in a number of areas (e.g., technology, operations, etc.)

2. PROTECTING CRITICAL BASES OF OPERATION

Our premier base of operation is the United States itself. Secure bases of operation make possible our political and military freedom of action, reassure the nation and its partners, and enable the timely generation and deployment of military forces worldwide. Securing critical bases requires actionable intelligence, strategic warning, and the ability to defeat threats-if possible before they.are able to mature.

The entire range of strategic threats can put at risk our bases of operation at home and abroad. While we can identify some-e.g., missiles and WMD-others, like those employed against the United States and its partners since 9/11, may be harder to identify. We need to improve defenses against such challenges and increase our capacity to defeat them at a distance.

3. OPERATING FROM THE GLOBAL COMMONS

Our ability to operate in and from the global commons-space, international waters and airspace, and cyberspace-is important. It enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation. Our capacity to operate in and from the strategic commons is critical to the direct defense of the United States and its partners and provides a stabilizing influence in key regions.

Such capacity provides our forces operational freedom of action. Ceding our historic maritime advantage would unacceptably limit our global reach. Our capacity to operate from international airspace and outer space will remain important for joint operations. In particular, as the nation's reliance on spacebased systems continues to grow, we will guard against new vulnerabilities. Key goals, therefore, are to ensure our access to and use of space, and to deny hostile exploitation of space to adversaries.

Cyberspace is a new theater of operations. Consequently, information operations (IO) is becoming a core military competency. Successful military operations depend on the ability to protect information infrastructure and data. Increased dependence on information networks creates new vulnerabilities that adversaries may seek to exploit. At the same time, an adversary's use of information networks and technologies creates opportunities for us to conduct discriminate offensive IO as well. Developing IO as a core military competency requires fundamental shifts in processes, policies, and culture

4. PROJECTING AND SUSTAINING FORCES IN DISTANT ANTI ACCESS ENVIRONMENTS

Our role in, the world depends on effectively projecting and sustaining our forces in distant environments where adversaries may seek to deny us access. Our capacity to project power depends on our defense posture and deployment flexibility at home and overseas, on the security of our bases, and on our access to the strategic commons.

Adversaries could employ advanced and legacy military capabilities and methods to deny us access. Ultimately, they may combine their most advanced military capabilities with future technologies to threaten our capacity to project power.

Other opponents may employ less sophisticated but effective means either to deny access to us or intimidate others to do so. Their options are numerous, including the innovative employment of legacy capabilities and indirect threats intended to impose unacceptable costs on friendly governments.

5. DENYING ENEMIES SANCTUARY

Adversaries who threaten the United States and its interests require secure bases. They will use great distance or the sanctuary created by ungoverned territory to their advantage. The more we hold adversaries' critical bases of operation at risk, the more likely we are to limit their strategic options.

A key goal is developing the capability to surge military forces rapidly from strategic distances to deny adversaries sanctuary. In some cases, this will involve discrete Special Operations Forces (SOF) or precision attacks on targets deep inside enemy territory. In others, sustained joint or combined combat operations will be necessary, requiring the comprehensive defeat of significant state and non state opponents operating in and from enemy territory or an ungoverned area.

To deny sanctuary requires a number of capabilities, including: persistent surveillance and precision strike; operational maneuver from strategic distances; sustained joint combat operations in and from austere locations, at significant operational depths; and stability operations to assist in the establishment of effective and responsible control over ungoverned territory.

6. CONDUCTING NETWORK CENTRIC OPERATIONS

The foundation of our operations proceeds from a simple proposition: the whole of an integrated and networked force is far more capable than the sum of its parts. Continuing advances in information and communications technologies hold promise for networking highly distributed joint and combined forces. Network centric operational capability is achieved by linking compatible information systems with usable data. The functions of sensing, decision making, and acting which often in the past were built into a single platform now can work closely even if they are geographically distributed across the battlespace.

Bringing decisive capabilities to bear increasingly will rely on our capacity to harness and protect advantages in the realm of information. Networking our forces will provide the foundation. for doing so. Operations in the war on terrorism have demonstrated the advantages of timely and accurate information, while at the same time reinforcing the need for even greater joint, interoperable command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR).

Beyond battlefield applications, a networkcentric force can increase efficiency and effectiveness across defense operations, intelligence functions, and business processes by giving all users access to the latest, most relevant, most accurate information. It also enables "reach back" by more effectively employing people and capabilities without deploying them forward.

Transforming to a network centric force requires fundamental changes in processes, policy, and culture. Change in these areas will provide the necessary speed, accuracy, and quality of decision making critical to future success.

7. IMPROVING PROFICIENCY AGAINST IRREGULAR CHALLENGES

Irregular conflict will be a key challenge for the foreseeable future. Challenges from terrorist extremist organizations and their state and non state supporters will involve our forces in complex security problems for some time to come, redefining past conceptions of "general purpose forces."

Comprehensive defeat of terrorist extremists and other irregular forces may require operations over long periods, and using many elements of national power; such operations may require changes to the way we train, equip, and employ our forces, particularly for fighting terrorists and insurgents and conducting stability operations.

Working together with other elements of the U.S. Government, allies, and partners (including indigenous actors), we require the capabilities to identify, locate, track, and engage individual enemies and their networks. Doing so will require greater capabilities across a range of areas, particularly intelligence, surveillance, and communications.

In addition, we will need to train units for sustained stability operations. This will include developing ways to strengthen their language and civil military affairs capabilities as required for specific deployments.

8. INCREASING CAPABILITIES OF PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC

Our strategic objectives are not attainable without the support and assistance of capable partners at home and abroad.

Abroad, the United States is transforming its security relationships and developing new partnerships. We are strengthening our own capabilities to support changing relationships, and we are seeking to improve those of our partners, through efforts like the Global Peace Operations Initiative. We want to increase our partners' capabilities and their ability to operate together with U.S. forces.

One of the principal vehicles for strengthening alliances and partnerships is our security cooperation program. It works by:

• Identifying areas where our common interests would be served better by partners playing leading roles;

• Encouraging partners to increase their capability and willingness to operate in coalition with our forces;

• Seeking authorities to facilitate cooperation with partner militaries and ministries of defense; and,

• Spurring the military transformation of key allies through development of a common security assessment and joint, combined training and education; combined concept development and experimentation; information sharing; and combined command and control.

Security cooperation is important for expanding international capacity to meet common security challenges. One of our military's most effective tools in prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism is to help train indigenous forces.

At home, we are increasing the capabilities of our domestic partners local, state, and federal-to improve homeland defense. This Department seeks effective partnerships with domestic agencies that are charged with security and consequence management in the event of significant attacks against the homeland. In doing so; we seek to improve their ability to respond effectively, while focusing the unique capabilities of this Department on the early defeat of these challenges abroad.

The U.S. Government created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department to bolster the capabilities of U.S. civilian agencies and improve coordination with international partners to contribute to the resolution of complex crises overseas. The Department is cooperating with this new office to increase the capacity of interagency and international partners to perform nonmilitary stabilization and reconstruction tasks that might otherwise often become military responsibilities by default. Our intent is to focus our efforts on those tasks most directly associated with establishing favorable longterm security conditions.

To that end, the Department will work with interagency and international partners to improve our ability to transition from military to civilian led stability operations. We will capitalize on our security cooperation efforts by working with allies and partners to promote a secure environment in support of stabilization and reconstruction activities.