Clearly, the Information Highway is crossing all sovereign borders and penetrating even the most closed societies. The inequities and benefits in all societies are becoming known to the masses as well as the power brokers. The requirement for Rapid Dominance to develop sophisticated capabilities to penetrate the Information Highway and create road blocks as well as control inputs/outputs to the highway both overtly and covertly is fundamental to the concept.
These same techniques also apply to law enforcement agencies targeting international crime and drug cartels using the highway. Closer interagency cooperations and coordination between military and law enforcement activities and capabilities must be established. Experience with the military involvement in the drug war revealed considerable cultural differences between these organizations. Overcoming these cultural differences among organizations is not easy. The required trust and confidence for sharing sensitive information and support between these agencies and the military needs to be developed further. Interagency coordination and cooperation must be raised to a new level of sophistication. Some laws may need to be changed. War in Cyberspace does not recognize domestic or foreign boundaries. In this environment the subjects of Information Warfare and Information In Warfare take on new meaning and require focused development. We must become proficient within this environment.
Operational Assumptions
- The enemy picks the time and place to initiate the conflict (i.e., we are surprised).
- We then attain control of the initiative through superior speed, knowledge, and capacity to act and react.
- Our forces are perceived to be invincible; engagements must convince the enemy there is no hope.
- Combat must be unrelenting and omnipresent at times, places, and tempo of choosing.
- Allied operations must be thoroughly integrated, from political objectives through combat to include psychological warfare.
- The enemy must be hit in those areas of greatest importance to him and devastated by the ferocity and swiftness of our attack.
From these assumptions, certain operational criteria follow that help to define a Rapid Dominance Force with more specificity in improving:
- Intelligence, indications, and warning on an aggressor's actions
- The length of time required for a decision to react
- Decisive responses at various levels and times after the
crises or conflict begins to develop:
- Respond in 1 to 3 days with air and missile strikes and special forces
- Respond in 5 to 10 days with more massive power up to and including a joint task force of corps size
- Respond in 10 to 30 days with a second corps
The Rapid Dominance MCP
As a next step, we need to sketch out what a Rapid Dominance Force might look like for a corps-sized air, ground, sea, and space joint task force supported by necessary intelligence assets that can impose sufficient Shock and Awe to break the will of the adversary. First, this force will emphasize capabilities to maximize the core characteristics of knowledge of self, adversary, and environment; rapidity; brilliance in execution; and control of the environment.
Knowledge means more than dominant battlefield awareness. It means understanding the adversary's mind and anticipating his reactions. It means targeting those things that will produce the intended Shock and Awe. And, it means having feedback and good, timely battle assessment to enable knowledge to be used dynamically as well as to know how our forces will react.
Rapidity means moving and acting as quickly as necessary and always on a timely basis. Rapidity can be instant or as required.