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The Military Technology Revolution (MTR) has really been a series of dramatic changes in the military induced by changes in technology. As described in the main document it has consisted of three main phases: an engineering revolution, a sensor revolution, and a communications revolution.
The overall changes in the US military - in hardware, operations, and organization - have been dramatic, but equivalent changes to the same degree were considered unlikely for the armed forces of a totalitarian regime. But this leaves several questions that need to be explored more deeply in restructruing the US military in the 1990s:
In this appendix I will address each of these questions in turn to concentrate on how the paradigms of warfare in the post Desert Storm world may have changed markedly. Several different ideas are presented to explore possible new directions in military and political thought. However, I will not attempt to integrate the results since all tread on very new ground, and individual extrapolation is shaky enough without trying to look at interactions among the trends.
What fundamental areas of warfare can become radically different in the 1990s due to the MTR?
Terrorism - Claiming responsibility means you become a target. Terrorism has been an enormous problem in the post-Vietnam era, but trends seen in the last few years indicate that the rules of terrorism have changed. The low point in US dealings with terrorism was probably the Iranian hostage crisis where President Carter was essentially held hostage in the White House. Yet in recent years virtually all hostages in the Mideast have been released, terrorists organizations such as the PLO have lost standing in their homelands, and "terrorist" regimes such as Libya, Iran, and Iraq have effectively renounced foreign terrorism. Why?
I believe that this is due to a combination of changes in US thinking (and policy) and technical changes (in the MTR) to target terrorists. Terrorism by its very nature depends on using small forces of a weak power to immobilize a larger opponent. Terrorist organizations, therefore, depend both on their ability to incapacitate a larger power trying to prevent "minor" losses and on their ability to evade counterattack. Both issues have changed in the last few years.
As long as the US could be immobilized by threats to a few US citizens, terrorism could make the US an easy mark. However, the mood of the US public has changed radically since the Iranian hostage crisis. When President Bush told Sadaam Hussein that his "human shields" would not change our tactics (even if we bombed some Americans ourselves), the American people gave Bush their full support. This was a major step in the control of terrorism. The Israelis have used this tactic for many years, and it has lessened the terrorist threat to Israel, but for the US to ignore a terrorist act was a major shift in public thinking. As all the terrorist organizations in Lebanon found out, if you're holding a hostage and nobody cares, you are immobilizing yourself not the enemy.
The second major change was brought about by the MTR - where to claim responsibility for a terrorist act now means that you are drawing crosshairs on yourself. The best example here was the raid on Khadafy in 1985. In the past this sort of state-supported terrorism could always work because if anyone died in reprisal, it would be followers not leaders. With the advent of smart weapons Khadafy found out that he could be targeted individually and would have to accept responsibility for terrorism individually.
I believe that this represents a fundamental change in the nature of terrorism where the power of terrorism is now self limiting - for a terrorist organization to accrue enough power to be a creditable threat it must now become a "state" fighting by more normal rules of war. The PLO has gone through this sort of transformation since Yasser Arafat became a public figure. Assume that an organization has political ends and decides to further those ends by terrorist actions. Today it will quickly run into a dilemma - it can use random terrorism to call attention to its ends, but as soon as it becomes overt enough in proclaiming those ends (i.e. as much as having a leader identify himself by name and face through the media) then its leadership becomes targetable by covert and overt counterattack with smart weapons. If more than a handful of people know of the leaders of a terrorist organization and their whereabouts, they become targets of a laser guided five hundred pound bomb through their front door.
One alternative is total randomness in the violence - but that limits the political ends to a small group that cannot then sway a large enough sector of the populace to be more than a nuisance. The IRA falls into this category as do the splinter organizations in Lebanon. Groups of this kind are ineffective against the tactic of living your life as usual and ignoring them.
Another alternative is to live your life in a bomb shelter. While this has worked for Sadaam Hussein, he has become more of a hostage than anyone outside Iraq. Few "leaders" could exist under that condition. The last alternative would be to ignore your own safety - as the Ayotalloh Khomeni did. However, in that case he was the representative of Iran and felt that his own death would be incidental to the cause. This type of "terrorism" is more difficult to target, but at that point the terrorist leader has enough power that the fight reverts to more normal rules of warfare.
I suggest we need to rethink the reality of the threat of terrorism in the 1990s. If the threat is small, the American people can now ignore it, and if the threat gets too large to ignore, the leadership of the terrorist organization or state becomes targetable by conventional forces and smart weapons.
Nuclear Weapons - Unusable by all but terrorists? The end of the Cold War has totally changed how we look at our nuclear arsenal since no power - except the US - has the ability to play MAD, so the need for anything but a much smaller arsenal is gone. I wonder if anything past a tiny US arsenal makes sense for anyone anywhere. Given that there will be wars in the 1990s, the current thoughts on nuclear war are so abhorrent worldwide that any nuclear use (except for totally random unclaimed terrorist acts) is likely to assure defeat for the user. I suggest that any nuclear exchange - India/Pakistan, Arab/Israeli, PRC/Taiwan, or fighting in the Former Soviet Union - would lead to the same scenario: a desperate losing side drops one or a few nukes, the other side does not retaliate but calls on the UN and an immediate hundred nation alliance (including the US) ends the war conventionally against the originator. Given the resurgence of the UN, current world opinion, and the UN handling of Iraq's nuclear research, I suggest that nuclear warfare is unlikely - any nation that uses a nuke insures that it will become a pariah state of a magnitude that willl make Iraq look like a good guy.
The total random terrorist use of nukes again falls under the argument above. To have the technical capability to collect the components and build a nuclear weapon also requires an organization too complex to remain anonymous, and where there's visible responsibility, there's a target.
Disarmament - Limited only by the US? On strategic issues the US has a virtual monopoly on the poker chips: we control the moral high ground; we have the UN with us (or at least a mute bistander); we have most of the nuclear forces. The limit on disarmament may now be us.
I suggest a new initiative - "Crazy Bill's Two for One Sale". For any country anywhere we will buy any strategic weapon for the market price, take one of our own of the same type, and scrap them both.
This simple mechanism does several things:
We are in the driver's seat on disarmament in the 1990s, and we should do something about it now.
Biological Warfare - A Weapon of Minute Destruction? Many projections have been made that the most important weapons in the NBC arsenal by 2001 will be biological weapons. A close examination at the characteristics of the most potent natural biological vectors and the failure to date to develop potent biological insecticides suggests that the concern over biological warfare may be exaggerated.
Natural bacterial and viral pathogens are self-limiting which gives the most toxic natural agents characteristics undesirable for a biological weapon. For example, anthrax or plague are often thought of as model biological weapons, but neither is a major natural health hazard. Pathogens that require a host for them to reproduce can only be efficient if they evolve to allow the host to live normally for some period of time. If the infection causes the host to die immediately, then that pathogen cannot continue to grow unless it is spread by unsanitary practices. The most obnoxious diseases in today's world either have a long incubation time or require an animal reservoir. AIDS is currently the most deadly natural biological vector, and the main reason for its spread is that it effects take years to manifest itself (even mere detection of the virus may take six months after infection) and the infection can be passed while the virus is in a nonpathogenic mode. Similarly, polio is still a third world problem, but its incubation time and effects are take too long to use as a biological weapon. Alternatively very deadly diseases like rabies are only passed because they are transmitted through an animal host (which is immune to their effects); these include many major world health problems such as malaria (mosquito host), sleeping sickness (tsetse fly), encephalitis (mosquito), and now Lyme disease (tick). Therefore, to design a really effective biological weapon instant killing or debilitating will preclude any spread of the vector beyond the initial shell or bomb burst. But effective agents such as the AIDS virus take too long to spread. It would appear to make more sense to release rabid animals as a biological weapon, but the problem of controlling an artificial animal pool would be just as difficult as eradicating the natural ones.
The second cause for skepticism about effective biological weapons is our woeful record in the biological battle against insects. There has been a huge effort for almost fifteen years by agricultural and drug companies to develop biological insecticides. One idea has been to grow and spray baculoviruses over fir forests to kill tussock moths. Since those viruses appear to be the natural vector that cause periodic population crashes at high densities of the moths, one would expect that the biological insecticide could work, but to date the tussock moths are still winning the biological warfare. Another current tactic used against screw worm flies is to release millions of sterile flies to reduce the population - an unlikely approach indeed to biological weapons. In short, if biological weapons are all they are touted to be, why are there still tussock moths in the Pacific Northwest ?
Chemical Weapons - Another Weapon of Minute Destruction?. Again chemical weapons may be another case of the hysteria of their possible use far outweighing the effects of their actual use. To date all chemical weapons have very ordinary delivery methods - such as bombs and shells. Therefore, a state using chemical weapons has little advantage over one using laser-guided bombs or shells. If chemical weapons were anything special, Iraq should have done better in the war against Iran.
On the other hand chemical weapons can be useful by merely requiring the opponent to suit up in protective clothing in the desert or by area denial through covering acres with chemical agents. However, these are tactics that are best used defensively so they unlikely to be of major value to an aggressor state.
Therefore, a policy of destroying all our own chemical weapons and relying on conventional retaliation may be the best one for the 1990s. Again as with nuclear (and likely with biological warfare) will any nation risk becoming a pariah state and fighting the entire UN - even if it's losing ?
In the Age of Information all the rules on using information change. The key to victory on the battlefield has always been information dominance. All the way back to Sun Tzu intelligence has been paramount to victory. However, in the past one always had little information, and denying the enemy even a tiny bit of information could insure dominance.
However, in the Age of Information one collects intelligence by drinking out of a fire hose. When one can buy satellite photos of 180x190 mile plots of real estate anywhere in the world at better than ten meter resolution from the French, Russians, and Landsat, the problem is not collecting information but collating, digesting, and distributing it. The Russians will even sell the US satellite photos of their own defense sites - for hard cash! Therefore in the new MTR the rules of intelligence may change. Where information denial was paramount since Sun Tzu, information coordination has now become paramount. Therefore, anything that helps force integration may outweigh any loss in giving information - especially if the opponent's information coordination systems can't even handle the data he already has. Some possibilities are:
Chess is a very different game than battleships; the tactics in a game of near total intelligence are very different from those of little intelligence.
Along with this change in information management comes the changes in using the media. While this has been investigated many ways starting with the role of CNN in the Persian Gulf a few thoughts are worth repeating.
Finally, in the Age of Information new economic and military weapons are available. What if:
Nationbuilding - restructuring the military. One likely mission for the US military in the next decade is "nationbuilding" - a nontraditional presence where US forces help restructure the infrastructure of second or third world countries. This role is already apparent in the current move into Somalia. However, should this become a prominent role of the US armed forces in the 1990s, we must think carefully about our force structure because the current structure was designed for Cold War troop presence at permanent bases in Europe or Asia not police and infrastructure presence in the desert or mountains. The "nationbuilding" role is a logical one for the military as Desert Storm showed because building bases and infrastructure for half a million troops in the middle of a desert is not very different from building and policing an infrastructure in Somalia.
However, while we could sustain that remote infrastructure for many months in the Persian Gulf under wartime priority, we cannot sustain the same magnitude of infrastructure during peacetime due to current force structure. This is due to the predominance of "nationbuilders" in what are normally support or reserve units - those personnel were glad to serve in the desert during wartime but will certainly not volunteer for continual deployment to remote regions in peacetime.
Some examples:
In short - if we are planning to be "nationbuilders" in the 1990s, must make sure that our forces are structured to do so over the long haul. This means a plan with sufficient remote/home rotation - or if from reserve augment with sufficient capacity for overlapping short term deployments.
What other changes in organization and operations in US military are possible that have not yet been started?
The enormous changes in the US military between Vietnam and Desert Storm were combination of technology, doctrine, and organization, so the questions remain - what next and have we missed anything?
The trend in warfare has gone back virtually to the caveman - the side that can coordinate the most personnel has a decided advantage. In the US military this has gotten to the point of speaking of the military as one organization - not four as it was even in Vietnam. While this trend is by no means complete, it is already high priority throughout the armed forces and needs no further comment. The next trend is one that reoccurred many times in Global 92 - we could be more effective if we coordinated one level higher - between Defense and State. This is the next logical and expected step in the trend toward being able to mobilize and coordinate the most forces and minds effectively.
As W. Edwards Deming has said, "Competition is not the answer, cooperation is the answer." While the players in forming military policy have not been so explicit, they have been using that philosphy de facto since Vietnam. The changes in the 1990s that we need to implement are already in motion - even if we knew where we needed to go only by instinct.
A corollary of the cooperation and communication that has been inherent in the MTR is that education is the key. Our military is so effective today because every person knows what his or her counterpart of two pay grades higher knows in the armed forces of any potential adversaries. The buildup of the US military education system and philosophy was hard and expensive to come by, and we must be extremely conscious in the build-down of the 1990s that education is our most precious asset and our most exploitable advantage.
Can the MTR be "exported", and if so how can that "export" be controlled?
In discussions during Global 92 the MTR was often alluded to as a collection of hardware and technology where it was suggested several times that we "control" the MTR by "inserting" into foreign countries but removing it if necessary. If one looks at an MTR as a combination of technology, operations, and organizations, this sort of "export" of this MTR is much more complicated but also much less controllable.
I suggest that the technology aspects of the MTR are well beyond any US control. As indicated in detail before, almost all the military hardware is twenty to fifty year old technology, and it is stupid to expect that technology to build Scud missiles, for example, is controllable when it is as old as the V-2. It is also unlikely that we can control the technology to make personal computers, GPS receivers, or satcom radios; these sorts of "new" technologies are available commercially for very reasonable prices because the world's transportation systems depend on them. For example, during Desert Storm EOD teams were able to assemble a navigation system to find mines diving from a rubber boat with an accuracy of less than ten meters; this system was assembled, tested, and deployed in less than two months using off-the-shelf commercial hardware for a cost or less than $25,000 in equipment. That sort of technology is for sale around the world - to shipping companies, fishermen, trucking companies - and converting a system to navigate a truck to a system to guide old dumb missiles is certainly possible by any country that has the expertise to navigate the trucks. Therefore, we shouldn't even think about controlling the export of the MTR - that's already history.
However, the operations and organizations aspects of the MTR are to our advantage to export - and once exported we cannot control but can use by cooperation. Our ability to employ the new technologies of the MTR has been based on education, and constant exercises and operations. For any new forces to employ the MTR fully, they must do the same. Then for us to "export" the MTR fully means we export education and practice integrated operations with those forces - and I contend that doing so is politically better than any other kind of foreign aid to encourage a world community.
The US has been the world's major educator for decades - so much so that there is a growing concern about the huge influx of foreign college and graduate students displacing US citizens in our colleges. However, the end result of US education has always been positive for US relations. Just as the best ambassadors in the Persian Gulf were US soldiers being themselves and impressing the Arab world with their professionalism, courage, and values, so have the US universities sent messages on democracy. In the past many foreign students were so impressed with the US they stayed here; now more are returning home, but are taking lessons of democracy with them. After associating with many foreign students at several universities, I have seen that it is virtually impossible to live at a US university for several years and not have it affect one's values and outlook toward the US - in a very positive manner. Now especially, we are seeing women graduate students who can never go back to arranged marriages and second class citizenship in their homelands - in a few years that message of equality will start filtering back to their homelands.
Therefore, if we "export" the MTR by educating foreign military officers at our war colleges and technical schools, I suggest that the long term result will be increased ties with those armed forces. The same can be said about constant combined exercises and US port calls in those nations. For any military force to learn the MTR from us means they must learn how to cooperate with us - and again "competition is not the answer, cooperation is the answer".
How can second and third world countries counter the advantage of the US due to the MTR?
Defeating the advantages of the MTR can be done by low tech methods - as long as those methods counter the strengths of the MTR - putting ordnance on target quickly and accurately anywhere in the world through coordinated strikes in an information-rich environment. The keys to defeating an "MTR trained" military are - slow them down, make any fighting a local issue, and don't give them any targets.
Guidelines for anyone who wishes to fight the US in the 1990's:
Don't give them any targets. No matter how accurate their weapons are, they can't shoot if they don't know WHO to shoot. Therefore, the least effective environment to employ the methods of the MTR is a guerilla war - Vietnam first and now Yugoslavia. As long as there is no way to discriminate between combatants and noncombatants then all the coordination and laser weapons are useless. In Yugoslavia there are even cases where both sides will shoot at UN forces so no one can tell anything about a person's identity just because he's shooting at someone. A coordinated military force employing MTR methods fights best when battle lines are clear and the foe can be clearly identified - if not by satellite photo then at least by identifying grid coordinates that "aren't ours". Therefore,
Make fighting a local issue. If you must identify who you are, do everything possible to destroy their coordination. The more piecemeal a fight is, the less their coordinated training will help.
Slow them down. Their coordination depends on communications and mobility. Anything you can do to disrupt that coordination buys you time and localizes the fighting.
The bottom line is that you can't beat the US by any conventional rules of engagement. You need to keep the scope of the fighting small because any massing of troops, planes, or ships means they're big targets. Aggression can't really work unless you've got a sympathetic populace to allow you to hide when you get there. BUT civil wars are great - as long as they're messy with no real battle lines the US will not get burned again.
CAPT John W. Bodnar
Chemistry Dept, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD 21402
December 1992