In building an alternative intellectual concept, it is useful to rely on successful lessons of the past. For five decades, we have been successful in applying containment and deterrence in the Cold War. When deterrence or diplomacy failed as in Kuwait, then the use of force was inevitable. A first-order issue is how can we augment or improve the use of existing military capability should it be required.
Should force be needed, our proposal calls for establishing a regime of Rapid Dominance throughout the area of strategic as well as operational concern. By Rapid Dominance, we are seeking the capability to dominate, control, and isolate the entire environment in, around, over, and under the objective area as quickly as possible, and with fewer forces than currently envisaged, although direct insertion of forces is an important component depending upon the tactical situation. In many cases, this capacity need not be the traditional firepower solution of only physically destroying an adversary's military capabilities. Our focus is on the Clausewitzian principle of affecting the adversary's will to resist as the first order of business, quickly if not nearly instantaneously. A second goal would be to stop an attack during the first stages. A third goal, should it be achievable, would be to promote a regime of political deterrence that might restrain aggression in the first place.
To accomplish the rendering an adversary incapable of action means neutralizing the ability to command; to provide logistics; to organize society; and to function; as well as to control, regulate and deny the adversary of information, intelligence, and understanding of what is and what is not happening. This means we must control all necessary intelligence and information on our forces-the ultimate form of stealth-and on an adversary's forces as well and then exploit total situational awareness for rapid action.
Regarding the emergence of current military thought and doctrine, as implied earlier, warfare today may be in the early and far less mature stages of a major revolution than is generally assumed. It is understandable that despite major strategic reassessments, current doctrine is still highly influenced by Cold War tactics and strategy and perhaps by the iron grip of the history of conflict since the early 19th century.
Since Napoleon, the conduct of war between major states has been largely dominated by combining industrial might with vast amounts of manpower over time and space. The United States advanced Napoleon's use of industry and mass armies in the Civil War and our planning up to the Cold War tended to follow this same pattern. World War II, of course, exemplified the triumph of this industrial, mobilization, and massive use of force approach.
In the evolution of U.S. military theory, it can be argued that this model combining massive industrial might and manpower finally ended in 1989. Although, by then, technological advances to conventional military capabilities seemed to be approaching the destructive power, or more precisely, the system lethality of nuclear weapons. In other words, modern non-nuclear precision weapons perhaps could produce effects against enemy targets roughly comparable to the military lethality of theater-level nuclear weapons. If this condition proves true, could this new lethality fundamentally change the construct for designing American doctrine and strategy? This question is at the heart of the "precision and battlefield awareness" school of decisive force thinking that believes that this fundamental change is in place.
Since the end of the Cold War and, with it, the end of the need to prepare our forces to fight a more or less equally powerful adversary, the United States military has conducted two post-Cold War crises against lesser adversaries quite differently than it fought the Cold War. In the Panama intervention in 1990 and in Kuwait shortly thereafter, the suggestion of newer and different methods of warfare was present. Perhaps both will turn out to be transition campaigns, where there is much of the old, but also signs of the new. But there are specific pieces of evidence that should command our attention.
Underlying the planning for Operation Just Cause in Panama and Desert Shield/Storm in Kuwait was the premeditated incorporation of a series of rapid, simultaneous attacks designed to apply decisive force. The aim was to stun, and then rapidly defeat the enemy through a series of carefully orchestrated land, sea, air, and special operating forces strikes that took place nearly simultaneously across a wide battle space and against many military targets. The purpose of these rapid, simultaneous attacks was to produce immediate paralysis of both the national state and its armed forces that would lead to prompt neutralization and capitulation.
In both Just Cause and Desert Storm, the United States (plus coalition forces in Desert Storm) had such overwhelming military capabilities that, in retrospect, the outcome was largely a matter of drafting a cogent and coordinated operation plan based on using the entire system of capabilities, and then executing that plan to produce a decisive victory. The Haitian incursion in 1995 used similar principles of intimidation to eliminate any real fighting. However, in Desert Storm unlike Haiti, it took the U.S. and its allies nearly 6 months to deploy over a half million troops before the fighting began.
The recently published JCS Pub 3.0 and the U.S. Army's 525-5 Pamphlet reflect and exploit operational rapidity and simultaneity. Yet, progress in these operational directions may be in danger of faltering if only old Cold War yardsticks are used to make future force investments and to direct studies about future force structure and associated infrastructure. As in any transition period, innovation must be joined by a willingness to experiment. This means the establishment and cultivation of an experimental apparatus to test and evaluate new concepts are matters of importance both to foster innovation and assess its application.