The Next Twist of the RMA

Abstract

Ten years ago, few Americans had heard of or thought about military revolutions. Soviet defense experts, who were intrinsically more comfortable with the notion that history's linear evolution is occasionally interrupted by rapid discontinuities known as had begun exploration of the idea. But even though the Soviets had an inkling of the changes in warfare that the late 20th century would bring, they did not have the technological base or the capability for creative organizational reform to actually undertake a revolution. They were the intellectual founding fathers of the current in military affairs, but not its architects, playing the role of Marx rather than Lenin. But Americans were different. For a variety of reasons, they were both open to ideas about warfare and able to capitalize on them. Throughout history, militaries that have lost a war or have perceived themselves to be in a position of weakness have been most open to creativity. Often, though, the new ideas actually have been attempts to return to methods that brought success in the past. The creation of blitzkrieg in the 1930s, for instance, used technology to return to the rapid operational tempo and quick decision that the German army attained in 1870-71. The American Army underwent a similar process of reform in the 1970s and 1980s. Failure in Vietnam had created an environment amenable to creativity. The result, however, was not a radically perspective on warfare, but the marriage of technology with operational concepts that Patton or Guderian would have been comfortable with--a rapid operational tempo, Auftragstaktik, seamless combined arms operations, and so forth. AirLand Battle was the first progeny of this period of innovation. [1] Still, history may show that the true significance of this period for the US Army was not the crafting of AirLand Battle, but the inculcation of a tradition of creativity and introspection. Revolutions begin not when the first barricades are erected or even when people lose faith in the old ways of doing things, but rather when they realize that fundamental change is possible. This is what the process of designing AirLand Battle did: by institutionalizing creativity and conceptual thinking within the Army, it set the stage for even more extensive reform to come. Like many revolutions, the current in military affairs (RMA) began inadvertently. The Americans who first opted for armed resistance against the Crown in 1775 sought to restore lost rights but ended up driving a dagger into the heart of the old political order. Similarly, William DePuy, Donn Starry, Don Morelli, Huba Wass de Czege, William R. Richardson, Paul F. Gorman, Carl E. Vuono, and the other founding fathers of AirLand Battle sought to restore the morale and effectiveness the Army had lost in Vietnam, but instead set a in motion. Today, the US military is in the midst of the first phase of the current in military affairs. Led by people like Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's Director of Net Assessment, writers like Andrew Krepinevich and Eliot Cohen, and retired Admiral William Owens, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the concept of military revolutions has gone from a fringe idea to the foundation concept of futures-oriented thinking within the US military. Yet the vision of the RMA that drives the Pentagon and the services is a moderate one in which change is controlled or modulated. Key documents like Joint Vision 2020 and service and joint programs designed to explore the long-term future all evince an essentially view of the in military affairs (to the extent that the concept of a conservative revolution makes any sense). The Department of Defense's vision of the in military affairs, in other words, seeks the application of technology, particularly digital information technology, to operational and strategic concepts that are less than radical. …