The defense strategy’s fundamental challenge is to ensure that the Department of Defense can effectively shape the international security environment and respond to the full range of military challenges throughout the next 20 years. Timely efforts to prepare now for an uncertain future are essential to fulfilling that challenge. Accordingly, the Department has embarked on a transformation strategy to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The process of transformation begins with the defense strategy itself, which is built on an appreciation of the highly dynamic nature of the projected security environment and the challenges this environment poses for the United States. The process continues with an evaluation of the military missions and tasks that are needed to carry out that strategy. Some of these missions are enduring—such as protecting U.S. forces at home and abroad, in peacetime, crisis, and war—while others will emerge as the security environment evolves. There are also missions that, while not new, are being continually reassessed and refined. One example is the attention that the Department is now devoting to the tasks needed to rapidly halt an enemy’s initial attack in a major theater war. DoD continues to identify enduring, refined, and emerging military missions as part of its overall transformation strategy.

Based on the essential missions and tasks it identifies, the Department may alter U.S. force structure to ensure its suitability. Building an optimal force sometimes requires adjustments to DoD’s use of manpower and resources. It may also require entirely new operational approaches to accomplish tasks, complemented at times by emerging technologies. The Department’s willingness to embrace the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)—to harness technology to ultimately bring about fundamental conceptual and organizational change—is critical at this stage of the transformation strategy.

Today, the world is in the midst of an RMA sparked by leap-ahead advances in information technologies. There is no definitive, linear process by which the Department can take advantage of the information revolution and its attendant RMA. Rather, it requires extensive experimentation both to understand the potential contributions of emerging technologies and to develop innovative operational concepts to harness these new technologies. The marriage of advanced technology and new operational concepts can occur in two distinct yet equally valuable ways. First, a new concept to accomplish a critical operational task may emerge that requires the development and exploitation of a new technology, creating a requirements pull. Second, a promising new technology may spur the development of an operational concept to employ it effectively for one or more tasks, creating a technology push. Mature combinations of advanced technologies and innovative operational concepts result in new military doctrine and organizational reconfigurations that have the potential to transform the military at its core, fundamentally altering the way U.S. forces conduct the full range of military operations.

While exploiting the Revolution in Military Affairs is only one aspect of the Department’s transformation strategy, it is a crucial one and thus constitutes Government Performance and Results Act Corporate-Level Goal 4. The advent of the current RMA provides the Department with a unique opportunity to transform the way in which it conducts the full range of military operations. Chapters 14 and 15 describe DoD’s efforts to vigorously pursue innovation and the RMA. This part of the annual report fulfills the Secretary of Defense’s requirement to provide the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the House of Representatives Committee on National Security a report on emerging operational concepts.

Improved intelligence collection and assessment, as well as modern information processing and command and control capabilities, are at the heart of the military revolution currently under way. With the support of an advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C⁴ISR) common backbone, the United States will be able to respond rapidly to any conflict; warfighters will be able to dominate any situation; and day-to-day operations will be optimized with accurate, timely, and secure information. Just as much of the nondefense world has become increasingly interconnected through the growth of internetted communications, the DoD is working to provide a complementary, secure, open C⁴ISR network architecture.

The six principal components of the evolving C⁴ISR architecture for 2010 and beyond are:

In an effort to channel the vitality and innovation of the Department’s people and leverage technological opportunities in order to achieve new levels of effectiveness in joint military operations, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff developed Joint Vision 2010. Joint Vision 2010 is a conceptual template that embraces information superiority and the technological advances that will transform traditional operational warfighting concepts into new concepts via changes in weapons systems, doctrine, culture, and organization. Through its focus on four new operational concepts that together aim at achieving full-spectrum dominance—dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full-dimension protection, and focused logistics—Joint Vision 2010 will lead to a more effective joint force.

Enabling control of battlespace through the multidimensional application of information, engagement, and mobility capabilities, dominant maneuver allows U.S. forces to position and ultimately employ widely dispersed joint air, land, sea, and space forces. Dominant maneuver will provide U.S. forces with overwhelming and asymmetric advantages to accomplish assigned operational tasks.

The dominant maneuver concept requires several enhanced capabilities. First, U.S. forces need to be lighter and more versatile. Flexible, responsive logistics and centralized combat service support at higher tactical levels will enable units to maneuver more quickly. Increasing jointness of operations at lower tactical levels will increase the forces’ versatility in achieving their objectives. Second, mobility and lethality must be increased through greater reliance on netted firepower. Third, dominant maneuver requires faster and more flexible strategic and tactical sealift and airlift.

Precision engagement enables joint forces to shape the battlespace through near real-time information on the objective or target, a common awareness of the battlespace for responsive command and control, a greater assurance of generating the desired effect against the objective or target due to more precise delivery and increased survivability for all forces, weapons, and platforms, and the flexibility to rapidly assess the results of the engagement and to reengage with precision when required.

Precision engagement requires more capable platforms and advanced weapons and munitions, in addition to the enabling support of an advanced C⁴ISR common backbone. It is based on intelligence about enemy forces and expert judgment regarding the correct force or weapon needed to generate the desired effects. Working together, the Services and DoD combat support agencies are striving to increase battlespace situational awareness and the effectiveness of precision munitions and to ensure that equipment provided to U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines is fully integrated into the advanced systems that support precision engagement. Precision engagement also extends to the full spectrum of operations in which U.S. forces are likely to participate. Precise, nonlethal weapons are currently under development for use in smaller-scale contingencies like noncombatant evacuations and peace operations.

Protection for U.S. forces and facilities must be provided across the spectrum, from peacetime through crisis and war and at all levels of conflict. To achieve this goal, full-dimensional protection requires a joint architecture that is built upon information superiority and employs a full array of active and passive measures at multiple echelons. Full-dimensional protection will enable U.S. forces to safely maintain freedom of action during deployment, maneuver, and engagement.

U.S. efforts to develop and deploy a multi-tiered theater air and missile defense architecture are a prime example of full-dimensional protection. U.S. forces also need improved protection against chemical and biological weapons. New chemical and biological weapons detectors, improved individual protective gear, and a greater emphasis on collective protection are all critical to the Department’s efforts to protect U.S. forces from chemical and biological weapons threats. Finally, full-dimensional protection includes defense against asymmetric attacks on information systems, infrastructure, and other critical areas vulnerable to nontraditional means of attack or disruption.

Focused logistics integrate information superiority and technological innovations to develop state-of-the-art logistics practices and doctrine. This will permit U.S. forces to accurately track and shift assets, even while en route, thus facilitating the delivery of tailored logistics packages and more timely force sustainment. Focused logistics will also reduce the size of logistics support while helping to provide more agile, leaner combat forces that can be rapidly deployed and sustained around the globe.

Initiatives such as Joint Total Asset Visibility and the Global Combat Support System will provide deployable, automated supply and maintenance information systems for leaner, more responsive logistics. These and other DoD-wide programs, as well as a host of Service initiatives, will be capable of supporting rapid unit deployment and employment and will better support the battlefield commander by eliminating redundant requisitions and reducing delays in the shipment of essential supplies.

Complementing Joint Vision 2010 are individual Service visions that seek to delineate the future of land, sea, air, and amphibious warfare.

Through Army Vision 2010, the Force XXI process, and the Army After Next process, the Army is identifying new concepts of land warfare that have radical implications for its organization, structure, operations, and support. Lighter, more durable equipment will enhance deployability and sustainability. Advanced information technologies will help the Army conduct rapid, decisive operations. The force will be protected by advanced but easy-to-use sensors, processors, and warfighting systems to ensure freedom of strategic and operational maneuver. A global, distribution-based logistics system will take maximum advantage of technological breakthroughs, substituting velocity of logistics for mass. The Army will require flexible, highly tailorable organizations—from small units to echelons above corps—to meet the diverse needs of future operations and to reduce the lift requirements for deployment.

The Department of the Navy’s future vision of warfare is delineated in Forward . . . From the Sea. From this is derived the new Navy Operational Concept, which identifies five fundamental and enduring roles: sea control and maritime supremacy, power projection from sea to land, strategic deterrence, strategic sealift, and forward naval presence. In the future, the Navy will fulfill these roles with vastly enhanced capabilities. The Navy has embraced an RMA concept called network-centric warfare. It involves the use of widely dispersed but robustly networked sensors, command centers, and forces to produce significantly enhanced massed effects. Combining forward presence with network-centric combat power, the Navy will reduce timelines, decisively alter initial conditions, and seek to head off undesired events before they start. In short, the Navy will have the ability to influence events ashore from the sea, quickly, directly, and decisively. The naval contribution to dominant maneuver will use the sea to gain advantage over the enemy, while naval precision engagements will use sensors, information systems, precisely targeted weapons, and agile, lethal forces to attack key targets. Naval full-dimensional protection will address the full spectrum of threats, providing information superiority, air and maritime superiority, antisubmarine and surface warfare, theater air and missile defense, and delivery of naval fires. Finally, naval forces will be increasingly called upon to provide sea-based focused logistics for joint operations in the littorals.

Air Force

Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century Air Force, the Air Force’s vision of air and space warfare through 2020, calls for maintaining and improving six core competencies built on a foundation of quality personnel and integrated by global battlespace awareness and advanced command and control. Air and space superiority will allow all U.S. forces freedom from attack and freedom to attack, while the Air Force’s ability to attack rapidly anywhere on the globe will continue to be critical. Rapid global mobility will help ensure the United States can respond quickly and decisively to unexpected challenges to its interests. The Air Force’s precision engagement core competency will enable it to reliably apply selective force against specific targets simultaneously to achieve desired effects with minimal risk and collateral damage. Information superiority will allow the Air Force to gain, exploit, defend, and attack information while denying the adversary the ability to do the same. Agile combat support will allow combat commanders to improve the responsiveness, deployability, and sustainability of their forces.

From the Navy’s vision of future warfare, contained in Forward . . . From the Sea, the Marine Corps derives its vision for future sea-based power projection operations. These are described in the operational concepts of Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) and Ship-to-Objective Maneuver (STOM). The underpinning for both of these concepts is maneuver warfare, which demands tactically adaptive, technologically agile, and opportunistic forces. As such, OMFTS and STOM-configured forces must be able to rapidly reorganize and reorient in response to changing tactical opportunities—while dispersed both at sea and ashore over much greater distances—along the full spectrum of future operational environments. An important assumption for the OMFTS Marine Corps is that it will increasingly need to operate in urban or suburban environments. To make this vision a reality, the Marine Corps will need to rapidly assimilate improvements in warfighting capabilities gained through the RMA. Leveraging the increasing lethality of long-range precision weapons, the greater range and speed of maneuver made possible by new mobility technologies, and opportunities afforded by information dominance forms the foundation for these concepts at both the individual and unit levels.

Pursuit of the ongoing Revolution in Military Affairs lies at the heart of the defense strategy’s edict to prepare now for an uncertain future. Rooted in an advanced common C⁴I backbone and guided by the joint and Service visions outlined above, a wide range of activities are under way throughout the Department to transform U.S. forces and the way they carry out the full range of military missions. Several of these RMA activities, including studies, wargames, advanced concept technology demonstrations, and advanced warfighting experiments—aimed at developing new operational concepts and, ultimately, organizational configurations—are described in detail in the next two chapters.