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Joint Force Quarterly 44 (1st Quarter, January 2007), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

Joint Force Quarterly 43 (4th Quarter, October 2006), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

Overcoming The S&T Assessment Uncertainty Principle: An Approach To Enterprise-Wide Assessment Of The Dod S&T Program, Timothy Coffey, Elihu Zimet, Fred E. Saalfeld, Timothy Lo

Defense and Technology Papers

This study examines why the sum of all the reviews of the relevance, viability, and productivity of the S&T program of the DoD does not constitute an assessment of the entire DoD S&T enterprise and examines the prospects for rectifying this situation.

Lee’S Mistake: Learning From The Decision To Order Pickett’S Charge, David C. Gompert, Richard L. Kugler

Defense Horizons

At the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee made a mistake that doomed the hopes of the Confederate States of America to compel the United States to sue for peace. Why one of the great generals of his time made such a blunder continues to be a topic of research and intense debate. Lee said little at the time or afterward to justify his decision to launch what has become known as Pickett’s Charge, so analysis must be inferential and inconclusive. Our aim is to explain Lee’s fateful decision not with new facts but with new analytical methods to illuminate …

Joint Force Quarterly 42 (3rd Quarter, July 2006), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

Reforming Pentagon Strategic Decisionmaking, Christopher J. Lamb, Irving Lachow

Strategic Forums

This Strategic Forum analyzes the institutional challenges facing strategic decisionmaking within the U.S. Department of Defense and proposes reforms to improve how senior leaders make and support decisions. It highlights how existing processes — designed to be rational and methodical — are often undermined by bureaucratic stovepipes, consensus-oriented products, and limited integration of analytic support. The paper argues for the creation of a dedicated Decision Support Cell reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense to provide integrated rational analyses and to enhance intuitive decisionmaking through exercises and shared experience. By clarifying baseline assumptions, improving cross-bureaucratic collaboration, and balancing rational and …

Battle Wise: Seeking Time-Information Superiority In Networked Warfare, David C. Gompert, Irving Lachow, Justin Perkins

Books

This book is an inquiry into the possibility of improving the operational thinking and decisionmaking of U.S. military individuals, teams, and forces who fight for their nation. The unstoppable spread of information networking and know-how gives rise to the need for a new edge—one that utilizes but transcends networks—by developing people, teams, and decisionmaking methods that convert information into better choices and outcomes. We call this new edge battle-wisdom and form a view of the need for and nature of battle-wise people, forces, and decisionmaking.

Joint Force Quarterly 41 (2nd Quarter, April 2006), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

Creating A Nato Special Operations Force, David C. Gompert, Raymond C. Smith

Defense Horizons

In the post-9/11 security environment, special operations forces (SOF) have proven indispensable. SOF units are light, lethal, mobile, and easily networked with other forces. While the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have extensive SOF capabilities, these forces are not formally organized to collaborate with one another. There would be much to gain if U.S. and allied SOF trained to work together: national SOF assets would be improved, obstacles to effective combined operations would be removed, and a coherent Alliance capability would be readily available for NATO.

The Alliance can focus and grow its SOF capabilities …

Bringing Defense Into The Information Economy, David C. Gompert, Paul Bracken

Defense and Technology Papers

This is an exploratory essay aimed at injecting new perspective and questions into the study of the fundamentals of defense economics. It is meant to start a “productive conversation” about the affordability of defense and the alignment of technology, economics, and grand strategy.

Implementing Dod’S International Science And Technology Strategy, Donald C. Daniel, Cheryl Loeb

Defense and Technology Papers

As can be seen from the recently released “International Science and Technology Strategy for the United States Department of Defense,” the network for worldwide sharing of defense S&T information is vast, and the new strategy provides an excellent framework to maximize this potential. This paper provides some specific thoughts on implementation and how certain steps might benefit all involved.

Custer In Cyberspace, David C. Gompert, Richard L. Kugler

Defense Horizons

The combination of abundant networked information and fluid, unfamiliar situations in the current era makes it at once possible and imperative to improve decisionmaking in combat. The key to improvement is to integrate faster reasoning and more reliable intuition into a cognitive whole to achieve battle-wisdom. Although the technologies that both demand and facilitate battle- wisdom are new, military history holds lessons on combining reasoning and intuition in conditions of urgency, danger, and uncertainty.

Today’s fast and distributed style of war has antecedents in the reconnaissance and strike operations of 19th-century American cavalry, which depended on similar qualities—speed, flexibility, and …

Extending The User’S Reach: Responsive Networking For Integrated Military Operations, David C. Gompert, Charles L. Barry, Alf A. Andreassen

Defense and Technology Papers

The aim of this study is to identify a path for the U.S. DoD to improve the responsiveness of military information networks for joint warfighters. This is not a technical treatise about bits and bandwidth; it proposes no architecture or standards. Rather, it looks at how military-operational information requirements relate to national strategy and at how those requirements are set and met.

Joint Force Quarterly 40 (1st Quarter, January 2006), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

The New Reality Of International Telecommunications Strategy, Robert C. Fonow

Defense and Technology Papers

This paper considers the relative decline of American Telecommunications leadership from geopolitical and technical perspectives. This decline is important to recognize and understand because it is masked by the achievements of the American economy and U.S. military successes since the end of the Cold War.

Restructuring Special Operations Forces For Emerging Threats, David Tucker, Christopher J. Lamb

Strategic Forums

Special Operations Forces (SOF) are vital for combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. SOF prominence in these missions has only grown since September 11, 2001, when the Nation realized its unprecedented power did not shield it from devastating unconventional attacks. While SOF are consumed by their operations in the war on terror, national leaders need to acknowledge neither Washington nor U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is organized for optimal use of SOF.

Critical Technology Events In The Development Of The Abrams Tank: Project Hindsight Revisited, Richard Chait, John W. Lyons, Duncan Long

Defense and Technology Papers

This paper consists of a series of studies focusing on Army weapons systems, beginning with the mainstay of the Army’s armor force, the Abrams tank. Analysis of other Army systems, such as the Apache helicopter and the Javelin and Stinger missiles will follow. The results of all studies are complied in a wrap-up report that will focus on the implications of the findings for today’s S&T environment.

The Bug Stops Here: Force Protection And Emerging Infectious Diseases, Donald F. Thompson, Joel L. Swerdlow, Cheryl Loeb

Defense and Technology Papers

The purpose of this paper is to review important lessons that have been learned in the past, and to revisit the older but proven principles of force protection that are in danger of being forgotten in today’s technology-focused military environment. It provides a series of case studies that analyze health threats to each regional combatant command and presents both tactical and strategic recommendations that will better prepare the entire DoD for future outbreaks.

Constabulary Forces And Postconflict Transition: The Euro-Atlantic Dimension, David T. Armitage Jr., Anne M. Moisan

Strategic Forums

Since the early 1990s, multinational stabilization efforts in the wake of conflicts or major natural disasters have repeatedly encountered problems in filling the so-called security gap. In places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, outside interveners have faced a compelling need to use specialized capabilities that can fill the gap between the point where military operations—whether for combat, peacekeeping, or counterinsurgency—leave off and community-based policing activities pick up. In particular, ensuring a capacity to manage and defuse civil disturbances and other threats to public order has become a sine qua non for overall mission success.¹

Sweden’S Use Of Commercial Information Technology For Military Applications, Franklin D. Kramer, John C. Cittadino

Defense Horizons

Sweden, a nation of only 9 million people with a political climate that has fostered a posture of nonalignment for over half a century, has nevertheless maintained highly credible, modern, and high-technology military forces. Sweden has expanded the mission of forces originally designed for the Cold War to include international peacekeeping. The focus of this study is the Swedish formula for achieving the high-technology military capabilities that successfully compensate for a small standing force. What policies and processes enabled the Swedish military to take advantage of leading-edge producers of commercial information technology (CIT)? What lessons does the Swedish model hold …

The Nato Response Force: Facilitating Coalition Warfare Through Technology Transfer And Information Sharing, Jeffrey P. Bialos, Stuart L. Koehl

Defense and Technology Papers

This study is an examination of the issues associated with transferring U.S. technology and information needed for standing up such an advanced force for early entry into high-intensity conflicts. It also makes a number of additional observations about the nature of 21st century coalition warfighting, the centrality of network-centric warfare to coalition operations, and the importance and complexity of improving force interoperability in an increasingly network-centric environment.

Making It Happen: Transforming Military Information Technology, Joseph N. Mait

Defense and Technology Papers

This report is a primer for commercial providers to gain some understanding of the military’s thinking about military information technology and some of the programs it foresees for the future. The intent is to introduce those not presently involved in the development of military information technology to some of the things and programs being developed by the DoD for deployment in the next five to ten years.

The Science And Technology Innovation Conundrum, Timothy Coffey, Jill P. Dahlburg, Elihu Zimet

Defense and Technology Papers

This study is motivated by the observation that the state of health of the United States S&T enterprise seems to be simultaneously characterized by opposite assessments. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how this conundrum has come about, and from this perspective to evaluate potential impacts of the underlying drivers of the conundrum on the technological positioning and ultimate national security of the U.S.

Alternative Fleet Architecture Design, Stuart E. Johnson, Arthur K. Cebrowski

Defense and Technology Papers

This report calls into question the viability of the longstanding logic of naval force building. It provides a description of the opportunities that rapid advances in technology and organizational effectiveness offer the U.S. Navy as it looks to the demanding future. Most important, it provides an alternative fleet architecture design that incorporates the three broad elements of the DoD’s transformation strategy.

U.S.-Australia Alliance Relations: An Australian View, Paul Dibb

Strategic Forums

Australia is America’s oldest friend and ally in the Asia-Pacific region. The two countries fought alongside each other in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the 1991 Gulf War, and most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The closeness of the two nations today is without precedent in the history of the relationship. Australia is now America’s second closest ally in the world, after the United Kingdom.

Joint Force Quarterly 38 (3rd Quarter, July 2005), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

The Changing Landscape Of Defense Innovation, Paul Bracken, Linda Brandt, Stuart E. Johnson

Defense Horizons

In a rapidly evolving business environment, many successful companies have transformed themselves by reexamining their core missions and competencies and exploiting innovation in nontraditional ways. General Electric still manufactures products but now identifies itself as a services company. Wal-Mart has become the premier retailer by capitalizing on its logistics and support systems. These two giants and other companies have realized that they can become more profitable by exploiting new regions of the business landscape.

Applying this business model to national defense, the innovation landscape can be said to have three regions: products (airplanes, tanks, ships), processes (integrated systems), and retrofits …

Learning From Darfur: Building A Net-Capable African Force To Stop Mass Killing, David C. Gompert, Courtney Richardson, Clifford H. Bernath, Richard L. Kugler

Defense and Technology Papers

The purpose of this report is to explore one particularly promising model of combat force to intervene in Africa to stop mass killings and other atrocities. Its conclusion is that networking concepts and technologies that were effective in Afghanistan and Iraq can be used by Africans with intensive external help to field a capability for forcible humanitarian intervention.

Iraq And After: Taking The Right Lessons For Combating Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Michael Eisenstadt

WMD Occasional Papers

Recent proliferation surprises in the Middle East—the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, Libya’s decision to eliminate its WMD, and evidence of significant progress by Iran toward a nuclear weapons capability—underscore the need for the nonproliferation community to reassess some of its key assumptions about WMD proliferation and the nature of the evolving international landscape.

Such a reassessment must be highly speculative. Much about Iraq’s WMD programs is likely to remain a mystery due to the destruction of records and the looting of facilities following the fall of Baghdad, as well as the continuing silence of …

A New Military Framework For Nato, Hans Binnendijk, David C. Gompert, Richard L. Kugler

Defense Horizons

Although Americans and Europeans do not always agree on political strategies in the Middle East, they have a compelling reason to reach an accord on the need to strengthen North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military forces for future operations in that region and elsewhere. If adequate military capabilities are lacking, the Alliance will not be able to act even when its political leaders agree on the need to do so. But if it creates such capabilities, it will be able to act either ad hoc or across the board if a common political strategy eventually were to emerge.

This article …