Military Transformation and Modern Warfare P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30

P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 Military Transformation and Modern Warfare P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 Praeger Security International Advisory Board Board Cochairs Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.) Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews (U.K.) Members Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (U.S.A.) Ther´ ese` Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Paris (France) Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.) Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.) Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, Oxford University (Australia) Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.) Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.) P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 Military Transformation and Modern Warfare A Reference Handbook Elinor Sloan Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONALr Westport, Connecticut London P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sloan, Elinor C. (Elinor Camille), 1965– Military transformation and modern warfare : a reference handbook / Elinor Sloan. p. cm. — (Contemporary military, strategic, and security issues, ISSN 1932–295X) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–275–99405–1 (alk. paper) 1. Armed Forces—Reorganization. 2. United States—Armed Forces—Reorganization. 3. Military art and science—History—21st century. 4. Military doctrine. I. Title. UA10.S62 2008 355.3—dc22 2007043638 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright C 2008 by Elinor Sloan All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007043638 ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99405–1 ISSN: 1932–295X First published in 2008 Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 Contents Preface vii Chapter 1 What Is Military Transformation? 1 Chapter 2 U.S. Military Transformation in “How We Fight” 16 Chapter 3 Wider Aspects of U.S. Military Transformation 38 Chapter 4 Allied Approaches to Military Transformation 52 Chapter 5 NATO and Military Transformation 76 Chapter 6 Military Transformation in China 93 Chapter 7 Russia and Military Transformation 109 Conclusion How Relevant? Military Transformation and Modern Conflict 123 Postscript 129 Appendix I: Biographies 131 Appendix II: Key Documents 143 Chronology of Events 157 Glossary 161 Annotated Bibliography 165 Index 171 P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 Preface How national militaries have sought to adjust to the post–Cold War era, now some two decades old, is a dramatic story that has played out against the back- drop of an ever-changing security landscape. Security, an absence of threats to values, is not something that military force alone can guarantee. Indeed, it often has just a small role to play. But this role is in many cases an important, even deciding, one and so it matters just exactly how militaries are sized, structured, and equipped to address potential threats. Even before the end of the Cold War theorists were hypothesizing as to what would be the impact of new military tech- nologies on the character and conduct of war. Soviet writers began to talk about a military technical revolution (MTR) in the late 1970s and 1980s, and analysts in the Pentagon picked up on and elaborated these ideas in their 1990s discus- sions of a revolution in military affairs (RMA), which added the doctrinal and organizational dimensions. By the turn of the century the new terminology was “transformation,” which started off similar in meaning to the RMA, but then grad- ually accumulated a wider basket of issues to the point that, within a few years, it had become what one analyst has called “a generic buzzword for ill-focused change.” The purpose of this book is to establish the parameters of “military transformation,” to assess the manner in which certain countries are transforming their military forces, to determine the relevancy of transformation efforts to modern conflict and, in drawing out the key areas of emphasis on the part of various countries, to provide a window on the future global security environment. Chap- ter 1 examines the meaning of military transformation, setting out a three-part framework that forms a prism through which to analyze the transformation efforts of several countries. Chapter 2 looks at measures the United States has taken in the RMA and “transforming transformation” dimensions of military transformation, the latter of which has been driven by contemporary experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Chapter 3 centers on wider understandings such as homeland defense, new thinking about deterrence, and unhindered access to space. Chap- ter 4 is devoted to Western allies, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, P1: 000 GNWD003-FM C9405/Sloan January 16, 2008 12:30 viii Preface and Germany, while Chapter 5 considers the allies as a whole in the context of NATO. Chapters 6 and 7 examine China and Russia respectively. The concluding section discusses the relevancy of the various components military transformation to modern conflict, and what the patterns of emphasis in transformation efforts may portend for future conflict. When thinking about the military technical revolution, the revolution in military affairs, and military transformation, it is useful to conceive of a series of concentric circles, each progressively more expansive but each continuing to en- compass the earlier core or cores. When I first began to analyze the changing na- ture of warfare as a defense analyst in Canada’s Department of National Defence in the 1990s, the military technical revolution and its technological confines were already considered the old way of understanding change. My focus turned to the broader notion—in comparison to the MTR—of a revolution in military affairs. The outcome was a book called The Revolution in Military Affairs, published in 2002 but completed largely before the 9/11 attacks. The rapid pace of international events in subsequent years was such that I had often considered revisiting the subject. And so it was that when Praeger Publishers approached me in 2006 to write a volume on the revolution in military affairs I readily agreed. But by then it was the RMA that seemingly constituted yesterday’s perspective. What follows is my attempt to “think outside the circle” about the still more expansive concept of military transformation, what it means, which elements various countries are fo- cusing on, and what an examination of national military transformation activities may suggest about the future course of world affairs. Elinor Sloan Ottawa November 6, 2007 P1: 000 GNWD003-01 C9405/Sloan December 11, 2007 2:8 CHAPTER 1 What Is Military Transformation? Perspectives on what comprises military transformation are numerous and varied among members of the defense community. Explicitly or implicitly they range from narrow views on how technology has impacted warfare, to broader ideas on the need to bring together technological, doctrinal, and organizational change, to still more expansive outlooks on how military transformation can help militaries adapt to the security challenges of the post-9/11 world. Each of these perspectives, and especially the latter two, captures the essence of “transformation,” which can be defined as “a marked change in character or form, usually for the better.” Government documents, speeches by policymakers, and scholarly articles often discuss military transformation in terms of how contemporary and future war differ in character and form from that which the West prepared for, but never fought, during the forty years of the Cold War. And for advocates of military transformation, a transformed military is inevitably seen as being a better tool for conducting politics by other means than was the Cold War military machine. What follows is an attempt to delineate what we mean by military transformation. The chapter begins with a discussion of the intellectual origins of military transformation, including the Military Technical Revolution (MTR) and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).

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