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Another View of the Revolution in Military Affairs

Authored by Mr. Jeffrey R. Cooper.

July 15, 1994

38 Pages

Brief Synopsis

In April 1994, the Army War College and the Strategic Studies Institute hosted the Fifth Annual Strategy Conference. The theme of this year's conference was "The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA): Defining an Army for the 21st Century." Jeffrey R. Cooper presented the following paper as part of an opening panel which sought to define the RMA.

He urges defense planners to determine what strategic--as opposed to operational-- benefits might be derived from the RMA. He contends that making the internal reforms that will be required will be as challenging as coming to terms with the operational and strategic implications of the new technologies.

The first requirement is to understand the parameters and dynamics of this particular revolution in military affairs. Mr. Cooper puts the RMA in historical perspective by discussing the relationships among technology, socioeconomic, and political change, and their implications for warfare during the Napoleonic era, the mid-19th century, and World Wars I and II. He argues that, in the past, dramatic technological change affected warfare in different ways.

Mr. Cooper warns that by using the RMA to define a "technical legacy" we make three errors. First, such an approach could lead to a fruitless search for a "silver bullet" technology on which to build the RMA. Second, the focus on technology could shift attention away from the critical issues of purpose, strategy, doctrine, operational innovation, and organizational adaptation. Finally, committing the first two errors will compound the problem by wasting very scarce defense resources on new programs and projects which may have little or nothing to do with the strategic situation.

Military professionals and defense planners alike need to remind themselves that while technology can provide new capabilities, the strategic equation is not necessarily driven by technological innovation.

SUMMARY

Along with increased interest in the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) have come pressures to move out quickly with a Department of Defense (DoD) initiative despite different, if not divergent, views concerning the character and implications of an RMA on the part of many decision makers and analysts. In this observer's view, too much attention has been paid to identifying the key technologies for the RMA and too much time is still wasted on RMAs as technologically-driven phenomena, perhaps because of the original MTR terminology. 1 Furthermore, far more emphasis than warranted has been placed on using the RMA to defeat another heavily mechanized regional hegemon like Iraq (and doing it better), rather than on preparing to address new challenges, including potential emerging major competitors.

These polestars for attention seem to represent a misunderstanding of the nature and phenomenology of RMAs as well as a fundamental misreading of the lessons from earlier RMAs on implementation and exploitation. RMAs are not merely more clever or even more elegant technological breakthroughs than are evolutionary military innovations; these revolutions are more profound in both their sources and implications. Moreover, while all revolutions are marked by discontinuous change, this RMA, fueled by the "Information Revolution," may have potential for more sweeping and fundamental changes than most of its historical cousins. The truly revolutionary implications of these deep changes must be recognized by decision makers in determining the content and course of an initiative to exploit the RMA.

Therefore, using an RMA initiative, intentionally or unintentionally, primarily to define a "technical legacy" makes three crucial errors:

• It misdirects effort toward a probably fruitless search for "silver bullet" technology on which to build the RMA;

• It misdirects attention away from the critical issues of, and relationships among purpose, strategy, doctrine, operational innovation, and organizational adaptation that are the essential issues for an RMA;

• In committing the first two errors, it compounds the problem by being astrategic since it risks wasting very scarce defense resources on new programs that may be irrelevant to future security challenges.

This course would be particularly unfortunate since it would squander the rare opportunity presented by the changes in technological conditions to enable an RMA that could appropriately forge America's military for the evolving geostrategic environment, one that is also being reshaped by fundamental changes in the underlying political, economic, and socio-cultural conditions.

For DoD to successfully pursue an initiative to exploit the RMA, fundamental questions concerning the process of an RMA, the strategic objectives for this initiative, the specific technical and operational content to be pursued, its potential military utility on the battlefield, and the means for its implementation will all need to be answered. Moreover, before decision makers can properly proceed, they will also need to know:

• What strategic benefits can be expected from the RMA;

• How they can use this initiative to reform DoD internally in order to address future challenges;

• What are the potential organizational and structural implications and consequences (not the least of which are the bureaucratic and budgetary impacts).

This monograph proposes some hypotheses for a number of these key issues concerning the RMA. It tries to illuminate key issues from the decision maker's perspective, focusing first on the potential role of an RMA in U.S. national security planning. By addressing these issues explicitly, we can clarify this critical set of questions: the strategic purpose and utility of an RMA and what is expected from the RMA initiative. Having addressed teleology, we can then turn to the second set of issues, defining the appropriate character of our implementation of the RMA and the content of its component elements to meet the spectrum of relevant military objectives at the operational and tactical levels. With the purpose and content of the RMA characterized, the third set of issues concerning the means of effective implementation and exploitation can be addressed. Finally, some of the more significant implications of these potential changes will be highlighted.

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