The Dallas Morning News December 5, 2001
War speeds up pace of change for military
By Richard Whittle
WASHINGTON - The war on terrorism is bringing focus to President Bush's pledge to transform the military for the 21st century, and Afghanistan is serving as a proving ground for new tactics and technology.
Before Sept. 11, some in the armed services were resisting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to implement Mr. Bush's vow, defense analysts say.
Now those threats are all too real - and the transformation of the military is under way. Just last week, the Pentagon opened an Office of Force Transformation to capitalize on the momentum.
"Much of the resistance to transformation was based on the fact that new threats were nebulous," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense policy think tank. "Now they're not, so it's going to be harder to resist changes in strategy and programs." "This war is kind of a wake-up call for transformation," agreed Andrew Krepinevich, a West Point-trained former Army officer who has advised Mr. Rumsfeld on how to retool the military. "This war is Exhibit A in the list of evidence that warfare is changing."
Showing the need
The suicide hijackings of airliners supported the contentions of those who had been warning that the greatest threats to national security in the future would be "asymmetric" - carried out with unorthodox weapons and designed to avoid, not confront, existing defenses.
"What September 11th and its aftermath has done is really put a face to 'asymmetric threat,'" said an aide to Mr. Rumsfeld who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The resulting campaign in Afghanistan, meanwhile, is supporting those who had argued that to fight the wars of the future, the armed forces must be less heavy, more agile, and innovative in their tactics.
"The need for transformation, I think, has been well-established as compelling, and certainly after 9-11 it should be self-evident," said the man chosen to direct the transformation office, retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski.
Creative approach
Top officers say that in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander, is allowing the armed services to make creative use of new "transformational" technologies such as the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. The small, "spy in the sky" drone provides video surveillance of the ground.
The Air Force has linked the Predator to its Vietnam-era AC-130 "Spooky" gunship. That allows gunship crews to use the Predator's streaming video to find targets for their rapid-fire 40mm and 105mm cannon, said Gen. John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff.
"You'll notice that we put Global Hawk into the fight," Gen. Jumper added, referring to a new, largely experimental high-altitude UAV as big as a medium-size passenger plane.
The Air Force also is using new "targeting pods" on F-16 fighters to guide bombs to targets as they are "painted" with laser designators by ground troops, he said.
"General Tommy Franks has let us go put these things together in the course of battle - many of these techniques not proven before this time," Gen. Jumper said.
The CIA, meanwhile, has armed Predators it flies with Hellfire anti-tank missiles and used them to attack Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorist group targets, said a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another "transformational" development in the campaign has been the basing of U.S. special operations troops and their helicopters on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, said a senior Navy officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
And new data links that connect ships, ground troops and aircraft of the Air Force, Navy ,and Marines are transforming the separate services' ability to share intelligence and coordinate plans.
In the 1991 Gulf War, Gen. Jumper noted, there were no such links between Air Force commanders and ships at sea. Each day, the Navy had to fly an aircraft roundtrip to Saudi Arabia from each aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to pick up the long and complicated Air Tasking Orders - mission assignments for carrier aircraft - that couldn't be sent by radio.
"That affected target assignments," the senior Navy officer recalled. But in the Afghanistan campaign, the aircraft carriers taking part have been receiving their Air Tasking Orders by electronic data links, the officer said.
"That's transformation," the officer said. "Transformation is occurring."
Seen in strategy
The military strategy Gen. Franks has employed to attack the Taliban and go after Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network also is transformational, some experts say.
The Army's heavy Abrams tanks, artillery, and large divisions of troops - forces created to oppose a Soviet invasion of Europe - have played no role. And no one expects Gen. Franks to request a force of troops and equipment akin to the mass used in the Gulf War.
But Army Rangers parachuted into Afghanistan and staged a nighttime raid on an airfield near Kandahar on Oct. 19. And lightly armed Army and Air Force special operations troops have performed missions, such as spotting targets for Navy and Air Force planes.
The equipment and forces that have proved useful in Afghanistan might not be enough in some future military operations in the war on terrorism.
But for most scenarios, the force mix and tactics used in Afghanistan could be the model, officers and other experts said, and that will require continued transformation.
"The war on terrorism will cause us to transform more expeditiously than we would have," predicted a Marine Corps general who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's going to require us to look toward a lighter, more mobile, more well-informed force."
One task for the new Office of Force Transformation will be to help the services figure out what "transformation" means, for despite the innovations and trends visible in the Afghanistan campaign, a debate among Pentagon officials and defense experts continues.
"Nobody knows," said John Pike, director of the defense policy group GlobalSecurity.org.
Defining 'transformation'
Top Air Force and Navy officers generally describe transformation as improving computer and communication links to network their forces. The goal is to give them a shared, comprehensive view of the battlefield so they can pinpoint enemy forces or targets better and strike them on sight.
The Army also has been striving to "digitize the battlefield." But for many in the service, "transformation" refers to the quest to create lighter, more mobile forces yet keep them heavy enough to fight and win once they get to the battlefield.
"Transformation, for the Army, is about being able to get to the fight," Mr. Thompson said. "The Air Force and the Navy don't have a problem getting to the fight because they're intrinsically mobile."
The Marine Corps also prides itself on being an expeditionary force, ready to go anywhere in the world on a moment's notice. But when Marine Corps officers discuss "transformation," they tend to bring up equipment they'd like to have that would get them places faster, such as the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Evidence of evolution
To a certain extent, as the campaign in Afghanistan shows, each of the services has been transforming itself for years.
Still, before Sept. 11, said defense analyst Mr. Thompson, "all the military services were resisting" Mr. Rumsfeld's push to come up with new, transformational programs because each was hard-pressed to find the money it wanted for existing ones.
And while the idea of transformation is getting more attention since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the first chance for that to be reflected in Pentagon spending will come only early next year, when the department submits its 2003 budget.
Congress is finishing work on a fiscal 2002 defense budget that reflects little change in the structure and arms of the military. But with polls showing deep political support for the war on terrorism, getting more money for defense from Congress may be easier in coming years - if the White House asks for more.
"Rumsfeld wanted to take money out of existing programs," Mr. Thompson noted. "All the services' attitude was, 'Look, I'm already overextended. Why do you need this money for something that hasn't materialized?'
"Now it has."
Copyright 2001 The Dallas Morning News
