• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

The Evolution in Military Affairs: Shaping the Future U.S. Armed Forces

Authored by Professor Douglas C. Lovelace Jr..

June 16, 1997

255 Pages

Brief Synopsis

Professor Douglas Lovelace articulates the exigent need to begin preparing the U.S. armed forces for the international security environment which will succeed the post-Cold War era. He defines national security interests, describes the future international security environment, identifies derivative future national security objectives and strategic concepts, and discerns the military capabilities that will be required in the early 21st century.

Professor Lovelace neither proposes nor allows for a "revolution in military affairs," but contends that the U.S. military necessarily must evolve into a 21st century force. He considers the force capabilities suggested by Joint Vision 2010 as a necessary step in this evolutionary process but carries the evolution further into the 21st century. While the process he foresees is evolutionary, the nature of the armed forces, if they come to fruition, would be distinctly different in roles, structure, doctrine, and operational employment concepts than those we know today. To be sure, his conclusions and recommendations ironically will seem revolutionary to many, despite their derivation from identifiable trends in the international security environment.

SUMMARY

In determining the armed forces the United States will require in the future, the challenge for the military strategist is to identify the near-term actions which must be taken to ensure the right military capabilities are available when needed. To do so, the strategist must determine the nation's future interests, identify and rank the most significant and likely future threats and opportunities associated with those interests, and discern the future military capabilities the nation will require to accommodate the future security environment. Such planning is fraught with difficulty. The specifics of U.S. future interests are nearly as uncertain as future threats and opportunities. This compounded ambiguity coupled with political pressures to defer resolution of long-term issues poses substantial challenges to strategic planners.

Nonetheless, this monograph provides a military capability analysis that features a simplified approach to defining and weighing future national security interests and objectives. The study employs a three-tier model of the future international security environment to help identify future threats and opportunities and suggest future national security strategic concepts and their military components. In doing so, it describes the military capabilities necessary to effect the concepts.

The study then reviews the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Joint Vision 2010 to identify the fundamental military capabilities it denotes. By comparing Joint Vision 2010 capabilities to those identified by the three-tier assessment, the study illuminates the different or additional U.S military capabilities that will be required as the international security environment emerges from the post-Cold War era.

Although the analysis necessarily requires some speculation about future national security interests, threats, and opportunities, it seeks to avoid the infirmities in credibility and relevancy that frequently befall futuristic strategic assessments. The analysis demonstrates that for the most part the contours of the early 21st century international security environment are fairly discernible today, as is the domestic context within which the United States will frame its national security interests and strategy. Additionally, the technological opportunities and limitations regarding force design and the potential capabilities of the early 21st century U.S. military are equally visible. Clearly, extraordinary technological and geopolitical surprises could obviate the analysis presented. That eventuality, however, need not inhibit timely force planning based on what is currently foreseeable.

A comparison of the three-tier assessment to the tenets of Joint Vision 2010 clearly shows that the force capabilities suggested by the Chairman's vision are appropriate and necessary for the post-Cold War period, and many will apply well into the 21st century. It is equally clear, however, that as the international security environment emerges from the post-Cold War period, the U.S. armed forces must continue to evolve to serve better the needs of the nation. The assessment, therefore, both confirms the continued relevance of many Joint Vision 2010 force capabilities and suggests several needed force modifications beyond those indicated by the Chairman's vision. Key actions suggested by the report include the following:

Recommendations.

• DoD should continue to modernize, refine, and reduce the Joint Vision 2010 force to that necessary to provide a timely asymmetrical response hedge against military threats up to and including large-scale regional aggression.

• The United States must develop a global intelligence system different from but more comprehensive than its Cold War predecessor. The new system must be able to give relevance and meaning to the abundant information that will be available in the 21st century, effectively support security environment shaping activities, expose potential adversary intentions, and increase strategic warning.

• A force of small, strategically agile, and easily aggregated multi-mission capable units equipped with multi-role systems should be developed and added to the Active Component to provide a balanced force capable of efficiently promoting as well as defending U.S interests in a variety of situations within all three tiers.

• Except in areas where major threats to fundamental U.S. interests are actual and imminent, residual Cold War forward stationed forces should be replaced by smaller but more numerous forward deployments of forces engaged in a carefully orchestrated pattern of preventive defense activities.

• DoD should be assigned responsibility for protecting key U.S. information systems from foreign attack and should develop comprehensive strategies and capabilities for defensive and offensive information warfare.

• The United States should supplement strategic nuclear deterrence with common strategic and theater defenses against weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

• The United States, in concert with other nations, should develop a multidimensional strategy and commensurate capabilities to defeat terrorists armed with WMD. The President should provide clear lines of authority and responsibility for combatting WMD terrorism among DoD and other government agencies.

• The President should view international organized crime as a form of terrorism which threatens U.S. interests and bring to bear all of the instruments of national power to defeat it.

• As information capabilities, defense industry agility, and training innovations permit, much of DoD's symmetrical heavy combat forces should be transferred from the Active Component to the Reserve Components.

• DoD should involve the defense industrial base in planning for future military capabilities to the extent necessary to ensure DoD can take full advantage of the industry's increasing agility.

• Technology must be exploited not only to increase force lethality in combat but also to improve the armed forces' abilities to conduct operations other than war, prevent conflicts from emerging, and otherwise shape the international security environment at lower risks and costs.

• U.S. technology must be shared with allies and potential coalition partners to the extent necessary to ensure adequate military force interoperability.

• DoD should improve its technical capabilities to detect, locate, and neutralize WMD.

• DoD should begin now to develop leaders to become strategic artists skilled in the synergistic application of all the instruments of national power in an information-rich, highly complex, international security environment.

• The United states should not act as the surety of First Tier states for unfettered international commerce but should be a proportional participant in collective efforts to that end.

Access Full Report [PDF]: The Evolution in Military Affairs: Shaping the Future U.S. Armed Forces