Published Airpower Journal - Fall 1998
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. |
--Confucius |
One of our key challenges as we approach the new century will be to transform America’s armed forces into a future joint force tailored to a new security environment and capable of employing revolutionary new systems and operational concepts to achieve decisive success. The foundation of this effort is Joint Vision 2010, or JV2010, our conceptual template for future joint war fighting. In the past few years, we have made dramatic progress in charting a course to the future. Now we must begin to translate that vision into concrete reality.
In thinking about the future, my thoughts often wander back to my predecessors of a century ago. How did they see the future as the Victorian age drew to a close and the twentieth century came into view? Did they foresee that in less than a single generation the greatest war in history would break out? Did they anticipate that in less than a single short career, they would see the emergence of the airplane, the tank, the submarine, and the wireless radio systems that would transform forever the field of human conflict? Or did they extol the virtues of horse cavalry, observation balloons, and the bayonet?
Much of the tragedy of the First World War stemmed from the inability of the military leaders of the day to grasp the implications of change. Their failure doomed an entire generation and led directly to a second, even more destructive global war. How high was the price of that failure? The true numbers of dead may never be known; certainly they numbered in the tens of millions. But one example of the enormous cost of misjudging the future is described in Barbara Tuchman’s classic work The Guns of August. After the war, a memorial was erected at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, bearing a simple but tragic inscription that read, “To the Class of 1914.” Every member of that class was killed in the Great War. And to compound the tragedy, even the memorial itself was destroyed in World War II. The American people would never forgive that today, nor should they. It is our responsibility that each and every one of us do all in our power to see that we are ready for tomorrow and that we never allow complacency to take hold.
What will the future look like for you, the military leaders who will lead us in the next century? Almost certainly we will not face a hostile superpower in the near term, but let me be very clear: the world will remain a dangerous place. There will be many who do not share our values, many who will challenge our interests, and many who will threaten our friends and allies.
Some of these threats will look familiar. The nation-state, after all, will still be with us for a long time to come, and so will armies, navies, and air forces much as we know them today. But the twenty-first century will also see the nonstate actor come of age.
Fanned by the ancient flames of ethnic, religious, cultural, and economic rivalry, many groups will challenge us at home and abroad. However, unlike past eras, terrorist groups and other nonstate actors will have access to state-of-the-art technology. They will have secure communications and access to global positioning satellites; highly advanced computer technology; and, perhaps most frightening of all, weapons of mass destruction.
The proliferation of advanced technology with military applications has been so rapid and so pervasive that our enemies in the next century will have capabilities they could only dream about in this one. And whether those enemies come in the form of nation-states or rogue organizations pursuing their own agendas, they will have learned to challenge us asymmetrically, not where we are strong but where they think we are vulnerable. Thus, preparing to respond to the full range of asymmetric threats should increasingly occupy our attention now when we have a window of opportunity in which we are unchallenged by a strategic rival that could threaten our existence as a nation.
Our best thinking about how we should fight in the twenty-first century is found in Joint Vision 2010, our conceptual template for future joint operations. Most of you are probably familiar with Joint Vision 2010, at least in its broad outlines. The four pillars of JV2010 are its key operational concepts: Dominant Maneuver, Precision Engagement, Focused Logistics, and Full-Dimensional Protection; and two “enablers”—Technological Innovation and Information Superiority. Each of these are very powerful individually, but they are not ends in themselves. The ultimate goal for joint war fighting in the future is decisive operations: the ability to win quickly and overwhelmingly across the entire range of operations, or, in other words, Full-Spectrum Dominance.
More than ever before, achieving a rapid decision on the battlefield and in operations other than war will be the hallmark of joint operations in the next century. But in thinking about the future, there is a key error we must avoid. We must never fall into the trap of thinking that simply by fielding new and better systems we will maintain our lead. History has taught us over and over again that technology alone is not the answer. The quality of our people, the caliber of our leaders, and the operational concepts and doctrine we use to employ technology on the battlefield—they are the decisive factors.
World War II provides us a sobering example of this point. In the 1930s, the Allied powers were hard at work developing new airplanes, tanks, aircraft carriers, radar, and other advanced systems. As war broke out, the Allies had, across the board, better technology than the Germans, and more of it. When the Germans invaded France in May of 1940, they had fewer men, fewer artillery tubes, and fewer tanks than the Allies—and the tanks they did have were inferior.
But they had revolutionary operational concepts for employing their systems to achieve battlefield effects far greater than the sum of the parts. The next year they stood before the gates of Moscow, having conquered all of Europe from the arctic circle to the shores of Greece, from the coast of France to within sight of the Kremlin. In time, the Allies learned the hard lesson that how you employ technology is even more important than the technology itself. But these lessons came at a fearful cost.
If we are to avoid the military tragedies of this century, and if we are serious about bringing joint war fighting into the next one, then we must go beyond conceptualizing. We must operationalize our vision. That means translating ideas into steel on target, in a way that captures the best of what each service brings to the fight, while eliminating the inefficiencies that can sometimes accompany interservice operations.
We have already come a long way since we published Joint Vision 2010 in July 1996 and its companion piece, The Concept for Future Joint Operations, a year later. The next milestone is the JV2010 Implementation Master Plan, scheduled for release in the summer of 1998. This plan is our road map for assessing and evaluating joint concepts for future war fighting.
Our starting point is joint doctrine. Because doctrine undergirds everything we do, it is the logical beginning for our efforts to translate our vision of joint war fighting into reality. Joint doctrine is indispensable because it provides the overarching framework for the conduct of joint operations. We have found time and again that when we stand up joint task forces on short notice and give them challenging missions, as we did in Operation Just Cause in Panama or Uphold Democracy in Haiti, joint doctrine provides the glue that holds everything together. As inherently complex and difficult as joint operations are, we have a sound body of joint doctrine out there—some 108 joint doctrinal publications so far—which gives our joint commanders a strong foundation to build on.
As new systems come on-line, as new operational concepts evolve, our joint doctrine will evolve as well. To turn joint doctrine into reality, we plan to conduct an extensive series of “joint war-fighting experiments.” Such experimentation will be a continuous, ongoing process that pulls together many different threads to help us test new systems and new concepts. More than ever before, great things are going on in each of the services to aggressively prepare for the future. The Marine Corps’s Sea Dragon experiments, the Army’s Force XXI initiatives, the Air Force Battle Labs, and the Navy’s Fleet Battle experiments are all plowing fertile ground for advanced experimentation.
We are working very hard to bring these service efforts together to help us learn how to meld service expertise, service systems, and service networks more efficiently into the world of joint war fighting. Joint war-fighting experiments will complement service experiments by focusing on major areas where forces and weapons from different services overlap. And that’s where we’re going to realize our most revolutionary breakthroughs.
What do I mean by a real breakthrough? If a joint commander and his staff from 1998 were somehow put into deep freeze and brought back in 2010, they would have a difficult time coping with the challenge of twenty-first-century warfare. The tempo of operations, the interplay of forces, and the operational concepts being used would be so advanced that today’s commanders could scarcely recognize them, much less control them.
For example, the 72-hour air-tasking cycle we now use is great for executing prolonged air operations in support of a theater campaign plan. But it can’t react quickly to battlefield changes measured in hours or minutes. The same is true on the ground, in the sense that there is a delay in bringing major ground systems to bear on high-value targets, even when they are within range. But if we can give battlefield commanders a real-time picture of threats and opportunities, we can mass weapons effects on the target literally in seconds. That means we could get much more punch out of our weapons and do it much faster than our opponent can react. That’s what we mean by exploiting information superiority to dominate the battlefield.
Can we do this in the chaos and confusion of future hi-tech battlefields? That’s what we intend to find out with joint war-fighting experiments. This concept calls for much more than just a few joint exercises. We’ll begin by defining the operational capabilities we think we’ll need, test and evaluate them, and then align and integrate the systems and doctrine that will give us those capabilities. Next we’ll hand this effort off to our war fighters, the commanders in chief (CINC) and joint commanders in the field for more hands-on evaluation and testing to make sure we’re getting it right.
We envision a series of war games and simulations, headquarters experiments, command post exercises, and field training exercises (FTX), each progressively more advanced. This will culminate in a “Super Bowl” event in 2004 called “Global Challenge,” a massive joint FTX where we plan to test all of our JV2010 concepts at every level. The year 2004 is important, because what we learn then will help guide the Quadrennial Defense Review the following year, and will show us what we need to fund, develop, and field to have the optimum joint force for 2010.
This year, US Atlantic Command (USACOM) will take over responsibility for monitoring CINC, service experiments, and battle labs. We’ll put both the Joint Battle Center and the Joint Warfighting Center under ACOM, which already operates the Joint Training Analysis Simulation Center, our joint activity for training joint operational headquarters. These different agencies already play leading roles in developing JV2010, and ACOM is therefore a natural choice to take on the day-to-day responsibilities of operationalizing our vision for future joint war fighting.
Our initial experiments will focus on building operational architectures to achieve the joint command and control capabilities required to realize our vision. Simultaneously, we’ll initiate information superiority experiments to gain better understanding of what is possible, and what isn’t, in the realm of information warfare. Then we’ll progress to joint war-fighting experiments testing JV2010‘s key operational concepts, leading up to Global Challenge.
In addition to refining joint doctrine, we’ll apply the lessons we learn to our joint organizations, training and education, leadership, and materiel—even the kind of people we recruit and where we place them in the force. That’s essential because, unless we make timely changes in these areas to keep pace with emerging technology, we’ll fail to realize its full potential.
What is exciting about all of this is that we’re going beyond traditional methods to reach out and grab the future. For example, instead of putting all our units in one place, we’re thinking about using distributed nets, linking all of the participating forces and headquarters electronically without colocating them. In fact, we’ll be doing a lot of “out-of-the-box” thinking, hooking up different systems, trying out seemingly incompatible hardware and software, and harmonizing different processes and procedures.
In the early stages this process has been centered in the Pentagon. Now it’s time to get it out into the field and work it, in the mud and snow and salt water, up at 30,000 feet, and in space too. We’ll put everything under the microscope, not just operational concepts and doctrine, but also operational architecture and emerging technologies and techniques borrowed from the private sector.
Clearly, we face many challenges on the road to operationalizing JV2010. Perhaps the biggest is finding the resources we’ll need to modernize the joint force based on what we learn from all our joint experimentation. Where will the funding, the people, the equipment, and the time come from to transform ourselves from where we are now to where we need to be?
That’s a tough question given our level of activity and how constrained our budgets are. The current level of funding won’t be enough to fully modernize the force in the next decade. The bottom line is we’ll need help from the Department of Defense (DOD), and continuing support from forward-thinking leaders in Congress, to close or realign facilities we no longer need. We must also save money by becoming more efficient in how we do business within DOD. And we’ll need to be sensitive to the heavy commitments borne by the services and CINCs. But we must not allow ourselves to be deterred by these obstacles, because the future won’t wait. In the year 2010, our forces will be much smaller than they were in the cold war, but if we do this right they’ll be much better. And smaller is not better—better is better!
How good will we be? In the joint force of 2010, we’ll be able to detect the launch of a ballistic missile; identify, target, and attack the launch platform; alert all units in the impact area; and attack and destroy the incoming missile all in a matter of a very few seconds. The ability to transfer information that fast across service and even national boundaries, in the fog and friction of war, using joint language that we all understand, will be nothing less than revolutionary. No military in history ever thought harder about its future than we are doing right now. And we will get there because that is our contract with the American people. They expect the best military on the planet. That’s what they have today—and that’s what we must give them tomorrow.
Our goal is to field a military of unmatched capability and versatility. But translating our vision into reality will take the talents, energies, inspiration, and hard work of the entire joint force. We cannot succeed without the active involvement of all our leaders, young and old, from every service and command. I challenge all of you to participate in this vitally important process. In our professional journals, in our joint and service schools, in the field, and in the fleet, we need and must have a strong and vigorous exchange of ideas to move forward. With your help, we’ll build a joint force that will ensure a safe and prosperous America for many, many years to come. And that will be a legacy we can all be proud of.
Quantico, Virginia
LT COL RICHARD EARL HANSEN, USAF, RETIRED
Themistocles, an Athenian politician and naval strategist of early Greece, was an astute observer who wrote that “he who commands the sea has command of everything.”1 Themistocles was the creator of Athenian sea power and the chief savior of Greece from being conquered by the Persians. The navy he designed defeated the Persian fleet in the Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., thus saving Athens from subjugation.2
In those ancient times, it must be noted, the fastest means of travel was on the seas, since ships outdistanced all other methods of travel. Over the centuries, we have seen an upward progression in the speed of travel from ships on the sea, to railroads and highways on the surface, up through airplanes in the atmosphere and, in this fin de siècle, to the flashing speed of rockets in space. Consequently, while giving due respect to Themistocles, it must be concluded that we have presently reached that era in which whoever commands in space has command of everything.
The United States and our Air Force would do well to accept that statement as a basic doctrinal verity in any conflict. Note that the Gulf War played out to be an excellent, though partial, proving ground for that axiom. Our dominance over Iraq in passive space tools provided the United States and its allies with a commanding position over Iraqi terrestrial forces. After a period of decisive air strikes and only one hundred hours of ground warfare, the stated goals of the United Nations were achieved. Due in great part to these superior United States advantages in space, victory in the conflict was celebrated.
The world has reached the situation in which many nations and businesses have extensive commercial capabilities in space for television and communications. One example is the Motorola Corporation’s 50-odd satellite-studded array of its iridium personal communications system. Other satellite-rich commercial systems are quickly filling near-earth space seemingly out-pacing governmental deployments. Aggressive acts by unprincipled nations or terrorists threatening such orbital assets must be dealt with as a possibility. Our US corporations will then reasonably expect Air Force aerospace forces to provide security for their peaceful space ventures. Such normal expectations would parallel our naval fighting ships providing protection for our merchantmen and fishing fleets, or as our cavalry in the early West escorted and defended the prairie schooners venturing into our unpopulated frontiers.
In order to establish national policy and Air Force strategic doctrine, the United States would do well to make these declarations:
As to United States National policy: It shall be the policy of the United States that freedom of passage on the high seas of space is considered an inalienable right of all nations.
As to United States Air Force doctrine: Air Force forces shall be prepared to achieve early dominance in any space conflict so as to guarantee freedom of passage for United States commercial ventures as well as all United States governmental and military assets in space.
We must initiate the struggle for the creation and operation by our Air Force of those aerospace forces capable in wartime of achieving a commanding presence on the high seas of space. When realized, that dominance would provide protection from electronic tampering, predators, pirates, and hostile nations for our valuable US space-traveling assets. And it is difficult to believe that any middle or compromise solution to protect our vital space assets could approach success against direct hostile interference.
Could it possibly occur that the United States, presently one of the world’s most powerful nations on the sea, on the land, in the air, and currently masterful in space, would ever fail to strive for wartime dominance in space? Were we not to create and exercise US Air Force commanding forces in space, would we not, in effect, be abandoning our commercial and military space assets to potential, or even certain, loss. By such a failure to act, would not the United States be engaging in surrender before the fact? Could we in this country afford to turn our heads and permit a form of military laissez-faire to be our guiding doctrine in space? No!
The medium of aerospace has long been the combat operating environment of our Air Force, just as surely as ground-based forces accrue to the Army and seaborne forces belong to the Navy. “Aerospace Environment” is succinctly defined in Air Force Manual 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, this way: “Aerospace consists of the entire expanse above the earth’s surface.”3 I believe that the US Air Force, therefore, should be charged promptly by the Congress and the Executive Branch with the mission of achieving and exercising, in wartime, dominance on the high seas of space. Further, Congress should be urged to provide sufficient statutes and funding for the Air Force to create and carry out that mission. Upon some future hostile challenge to US space assets, were our Air Force not so prepared, the unwelcome outcome would be seen to border on sheer capitulation.
Presently, the Air Force has published doctrine stressing that air supremacy must be achieved early in any conflict.4 These days, air supremacy is often referred to by some flag officers as “air dominance.” This dominance serves as the cornerstone of success in any campaign, be it air, ground, or sea. Because AFM 1-1 states that “the aerospace environment can be most fully exploited when considered as an indivisible whole,” the term Air Dominance leads across that continuum to the concept of Space Dominance.
The necessity for embracing such a wartime doctrine will undoubtedly not be fully grasped nor readily accepted by everyone. Few seminal concepts are. Gen Howell M. Estes stated recently that “space, to a large extent, is an unknown to many throughout our country and to many leaders in our government who are being asked to make critical decisions that will chart the course in space for the United States—both inside and outside the military.”5 General Estes is the commander of the US Air Force’s rapidly growing Space Command.
The US citizenry’s majority belief in these policy and doctrinal matters must be fostered through the educational efforts of responsible professionals, policy makers, and executives. To stimulate citizen thinking, this author has assayed the completion of a novel,6 the plot of which embraces the crucial decisions and difficulties involved in a fictional hostile space challenge to our US space shuttle in orbit. Other, more comprehensive, exploitation of electronic and print media are certainly in order. It can be expected that, with a fuller understanding of the issue, voters will demand that Congress fully fund the requisite forces and infrastructure within the Air Force to achieve “Dominance on the High Seas of Space.”7
Notes
1. Cicero, Ad Atticum, X, 8, as quoted in John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 14th ed. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1968).
2. Encyclopaedia Brittannica, 1966 ed., s.v. “Greco-Persian Wars.”
3. Air Force Manual 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, March 1992, vol. 1, 5.
4. Ibid.
5. Gen Howell Estes III, commander in chief, US Space Command, and commander, Air Force Space Command, as quoted in Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 December 1997, 69.
6. Richard Earl Hansen’s Check Six! (Murphys, Calif.: Novelnovels, n.d.) is space fiction envisioning a US Department of Defense satellite grappled by a hostile and hotly radio-fuzed space mine that is discovered by space shuttle astronauts sent to repair that “broken” reconnaissance bird in orbit; on-line, Internet, available from "http://www.novelnovels.com" .
7. Lt Col Richard Earl Hansen, USAF, Retired, “Dominance on the High Seas of Space,” Air Chronicles, n.p.; on-line, Internet, available from http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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