Shock and Awe impact on psychological, perceptual, and physical levels. At one level, destroying an adversary's military force leaving the enemy impotent and vulnerable may provide the necessary Shock and Awe. At another level, the certainty of this outcome may cause an adversary to accept our terms well short of conflict. In the great middle ground, the appropriate balance of Shock and Awe must cause the perception and anticipation of certain defeat and the threat and fear of action that may shut down all or part of the adversary's society or render his ability to fight useless short of complete physical destruction.
Finally, in order to impose enough Shock and Awe to affect an adversary's will, four core characteristics of a Rapid Dominance-configured force were defined. First, complete knowledge and understanding of self, of the adversary, and of the environment are essential. This knowledge and understanding exceed the expectations of dominant battlefield awareness and DBA becomes a subset of Rapid Dominance.
Rather like the wise investor and not the speculator who is only familiar with a particular company and not the stock market in general, the Rapid Dominance force must have complete knowledge and understanding of many likely adversaries and regions. This requirement for knowledge and understanding will place a huge, new burden on the military forces and necessitate fundamental changes in policy, organization, training, education, structure, and equipage.
Second is rapidity. Rapidity combines speed, timeliness, and agility and the ability to sustain control after the initial shock. Rapidity enables us to act as quickly as needed and always more quickly than the adversary can react or take counter-actions. Rapidity is also an antidote to surprise. If we cannot anticipate surprise, or are surprised, rapidity provides a correcting capacity to neutralize the effects of that surprise.
Third, and most provocatively, is setting the standard of operations and execution in terms of brilliance. The consequences and implications of setting brilliance as the standard and achieving it are profound. Reconfiguration of command authority and organization possibly to decentrali-zation down to individual troops must follow. Allowing and encouraging an operational doctrine of the "first to respond" will set the tempo provided that effective de-confliction of friendly on friendly engagements has been assured.
This, of course, means that complete revision of doctrine, training, and organization will be required. The matter is not just "fighting smarter." It is learning to fight at even higher standards of skill and competence.
Fourth is control of the environment. Control is defined in the broadest sense: physical control of the land, air, sea, and space and control of the "ether" in which information is passed and received. This requires signature management throughout the full conflict spectrum-deception, disinformation, verification, information control, and target management-all with rapidity in both physical and psychological impact. By depriving an adversary of the physical use of time, space, and the ether, we play on the adversary's will and offer the prospect of certain destruction should resistance follow.
The next step in this process must be specifically defining this Rapid Dominance force in terms of force structure, capabilities, doctrine, organization, and order of battle. We have begun this effort and are focusing on a joint task force sized somewhere between a reinforced division and a full corps (i.e., a strength of 75,000 - 200,000). We also have the aim of being able to deploy this force within 5 to 10 days of the order to move and, of course, will be able to send smaller force packages on a nearly instantaneous basis. We appreciate the mobility and logistical implications of this requirement.
Once we design this "paper" force and equip it with "paper" systems, we must evaluate it against the five basic questions and tests we noted in the Prologue.
The first test of this Rapid Dominance force will be against the MRC. The comparison, in the broadest sense, must be with the programmed force and whatever emerges from the Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997. We will need to examine closely how and where and why Rapid Dominance and Shock and Awe work and where they do not. At the very least, we expect that this will help strengthen the current force and improve current capabilities. Of course, it is our hope that this test will validate Rapid Dominance as a legitimate doctrine.