Policy Briefs

Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.

Switch View to Grid View Slideshow

High-Energy Lasers: Technical, Operational, and Policy Issues

Elihu Zimet

After more than 30 years of technology development and many billions of dollars in investment, the Department of Defense is poised to operationally deploy its first high-energy laser (HEL) weapon system, the airborne laser. The unique attributes of an HEL—speed-of-light delivery of energy, surgical precision, variable lethality, and multiple target engagement—could significantly alter the balance between offensive and defensive weapons or provide options for nonlethal weapons. On the other hand, the long development period and large outlay of funding to date suggest the significant technical, operational, and policy challenges of fielding such systems.

This paper considers the unique and promising attributes of HEL weapon systems and examines the technical challenges, at both the system and component level, that need to be overcome for an HEL to be competitive against alternative weapon systems. Related operational and policy issues are also discussed. The paper concludes that advances in HEL technology emphasizing speed, precision, and flexibility together with the ongoing transformation of the military services have both indicated the need and provided the opportunity for further HEL development and testing.
Computer Simulation and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Peter D. Zimmerman and David W. Dorn

All nuclear weapons now in the American stockpile were developed with the aid of computer models validated by comparison with nuclear tests. However, those models required the use of parameters that were not well understood and often needed adjustment to make computation and test agree. Facing the possibility of a test ban, the Department of Energy initiated a Stockpile Stewardship Project to develop a predictive capability with validated, physics-based simulation tools at its core. This program is charged with maintaining the performance, reliability, and safety of U.S. nuclear weapons without nuclear testing. To meet the requirement for maintaining the enduring stockpile, the Department of Energy engaged the three national weapons laboratories in creating the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). ASCI advanced computational capabilities and three dimensional models, combined with major experimental and testing facilities, should make it possible for the United States to maintain its present nuclear stockpile indefinitely. The authors believe that the ASCI computational capabilities also will enable nuclear weapon designers to draw on archived data from more than 1,000 nuclear tests to adapt proven designs to future mission requirements. Through extensive computer modeling and nonnuclear testing, new nuclear weapons could be designed and introduced into the stockpile, so long as the new weapons used design concepts similar to those proven in nuclear tests.
Maritime Access: Do Defenders Hold All the Cards?

Arthur H. Barber III and Delwyn L. Gilmore

National security strategy depends on sustaining access to world markets for American commerce in peacetime and for the Armed Forces to various parts of the globe in times of crisis or war. Potential nation-state adversaries understand the importance of this access and are devising strategies and investing in systems to delay, discredit, or deny U.S. entry to those regions of vital interest where they wish to become the dominant power. Most of these regions are adjacent to international waters where American naval forces freely operate today.

Naval forces provide a valuable degree of sovereign and secure access in a strategic environment in which overseas land bases are becoming increasingly restricted politically and vulnerable militarily. The mobility and layered defensive capabilities of American warships, particularly those operating in carrier battle groups, make them the hardest of all tactical forces for an adversary to find, target, and effectively strike with antiaccess systems, such as cruise or ballistic missiles.

State-of-the-art long-range surveillance systems, such as satellites, are ineffective against moving targets at sea. Mobility also keeps ships from being vulnerable to ballistic missiles and makes accurate, long-range targeting of antiship cruise missiles a great operational challenge. Moreover, the latest generation of weapon systems for defense against submarines and cruise missiles is extremely effective against the current and projected systems of potential adversaries. These defensive systems are fielded on many, but not all, U.S. ships because of budget constraints and past estimates that likely adversaries had minimal naval capabilities. As national strategy changes to one that accounts for more demanding antiaccess threats, the technology and operational skill will become available to sustain assured access for American naval forces.
UCAVs—Technological, Policy, and Operational Challenges

Charles L. Barry and Elihu Zimet

The Bush administration and Congress are in concert on the goal of developing a fleet of unmanned aircraft that can reduce both defense costs and aircrew losses in combat by taking on at least the most dangerous combat missions. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be neither inexpensive enough to be readily expendable nor—at least in early development—capable of performing every combat mission alongside or in lieu of manned sorties. Yet the tremendous potential of such systems is widely recognized, and allies as well as potential adversaries are moving quickly to mount their own research and development programs. The United States is committed to fielding UCAV capabilities by 2010, principally for the missions of suppression of enemy air defense and deep strike, which are among the highest risk tasks for the Air Force and naval aviation.

Currently, UCAVs are unproven, infant technologies just being designed, simulated, and demonstrated. Enthusiasts must be aware that significant technological, policy, and operational challenges must be met. An operational UCAV capability is not expected to be available to U.S. field and fleet commanders for 10 years. Yet a nexus of mature technologies, policy support, and operational needs has been reached, and it is both possible and necessary to accelerate development of UCAVs. Their potential is apparent, and there is sustained momentum behind programs for all the services.
Adapting Forces to a New Era: Ten Transforming Concepts

Hans Binnendijk and Richard L. Kugler

A key Department of Defense goal is to build highly capable forces whose mastery of high-tech warfighting will allow decisive victories against new threats and well-armed opponents in future operations. A set of new operational concepts, many of which have surfaced in the ongoing defense strategy review, may facilitate this goal. They focus on rapid and decisive operations in distant theaters rather than on homeland defense. As generic concepts for future warfighting, they offer valuable insights on combat capabilities that should be acquired. Before these principles can be adopted, they must be scrutinized on their individual merits and integrated to provide balanced guidance to force development.

New operational concepts must be embedded in a sensible transformation strategy that should be carried out in measured, purposeful ways. The strategy should focus on the mid term, during which new threats may appear but entirely new forces will not be able to be built. The standard of preparing for two regional wars should be replaced with one that focuses on capabilities for the widening spectrum of conflict and operations in new geographic locations. A three-theater standard should be adopted that readies forces to wage one big war in any single theater while also having sufficient assets for medium-sized strike missions and traditional operations elsewhere. Transformation should strive to create adaptable forces that can handle shifting challenges, unfamiliar missions, and periodic strategic surprises. It should produce a future posture dominated by improved legacy forces but including some ultra-high-tech forces for special missions. If new operational concepts are capable of producing such forces and capabilities, they may deserve serious consideration.

Ten new operational concepts have emerged as candidates for inclusion in transformation and Joint Vision 2020. These concepts focus on building better forces for multiple purposes and employing these forces in specific ways. If the concepts are adopted, creating combat and support forces for them will require programmatic measures. Many of the concepts can be pursued by reorganizing existing forces, continuing normal modernization, or acquiring new information systems and smart munitions. Nonetheless, they will require some budget increases plus a resource strategy that responds to fiscal constraints. Investing wisely in a full set of new concepts will produce stronger forces than focusing on a few concepts in ways that deprive others of funds. The combination of new concepts, not any of them individually, offers promise for the future. Moreover, these concepts, which focus on creating high-tech strike forces, must be accompanied by capabilities for low-intensity conflict and by investments in such often-overlooked areas as logistic support, bases and infrastructure, maintenance, and war reserves.
Managing Change: Capability, Adaptability, and Transformation

Hans Binnendijk and Richard L. Kugler

The Bush administration defense review is pointing to an era of far-reaching change in military strategy, forces, and technology. To succeed, this effort must be guided by a new set of strategic precepts. Since 1997, the precepts of shape, respond, prepare have helped guide how national security policy has approached change. In the coming years, capability, adaptability, and transformation can perform a similar function. The first and third precepts are well documented. The second, however, needs greater attention—not only because adaptability is important although easily overlooked, but also because it is a bridge between the other two precepts. These three precepts incorporate the main characteristics needed by the Armed Forces:
- A core military capability to win wars today and support peacetime goals—a near-term concern.
- The adaptability to modify that existing core capability to meet new strategic conditions—a mid-term concern.
- A wise transformation that reorients the military to take advantage of new technologies for the long term.
These precepts are compatible but must be pursued in a balanced and integrated manner that reflects their interconnection. The pursuit of near-term capabilities should be accompanied by enhanced efforts to create broader options for the mid term, in ways that establish a sound strategic foundation for longer-term visions. The near-term capability of the military can be preserved by keeping them sufficiently large and ready and by improving them in selected areas. In the mid term, their flexibility can be strengthened by adopting broader employment plans, reengineering current organizational structures, and fielding emerging technologies. In the long term, they can be transformed not only by modernizing existing weapons, but also by acquiring new types of platforms and technologies. Even in an era of tight fiscal constraints, this threefold challenge can be met if a balanced approach is followed—thereby preserving the hard-won strategic effectiveness of the military not only in the coming years but the distant future as well.
Revising the Two-Major Theater War Standard

Hans Binnendijk and Richard L. Kugler

Preparing to fight two nearly simultaneous major theater wars (MTWs) has been the standard used to design U.S. defense policy and force structure since 1993. But with a broader spectrum of challenges looming, the threat of concurrent wars in the Persian Gulf and on the Korean Peninsula appearing less likely, and the emergence of China as a potential rival, a new approach is needed. Without a new standard, the Armed Forces will transform themselves using a rigid and outdated strategic model.

The standard put forth herein combines attention to peacetime needs with a fresh interpretation of wartime requirements. For peacetime, it would create force packages for regional commanders to perform deterrent, theater engagement, routine operational, and minor crisis management missions. In wartime, it would create a powerful joint force for handling one conflict which may be larger than a MTW, plus forces for two medium-sized operations elsewhere. This amounts to a new strategic calculus of one plus one-half plus one-half contingencies to determine U.S. force requirements.

This new standard aims to make defense plans not only responsive to real-world events, but also flexible and adaptable. It judges that preparing U.S. forces to handle a wide spectrum of events—big and small, in peace and war—may be more important than optimizing them for one canonical wartime scenario. It calls for a force structure that is large and adaptable enough to maintain core military capabilities in order to perform diverse strategic missions.
Regional Conflicts with Strategic Consequences

M. Elaine Bunn, David E. Mosher, and Richard D. Sokolsky

During the Cold War, strategic capabilities were synonymous with nuclear capabilities, and U.S. strategic planning focused on nuclear deterrence and response against a single adversary. Today, more potential enemies are developing asymmetric capabilities to inhibit or prevent U.S. military intervention in regional conflicts— in short, to wage strategic warfare by implicitly or explicitly threatening highvalue political, military, or economic targets with weapons of mass destruction and disruption. U.S. security over the next several decades will depend increasingly on the ability to deter and respond effectively to strategic regional conflicts with significant escalation potential.
The U.S. Strategic Posture Review: Issues for the New Administration

M. Elaine Bunn and Richard D. Sokolsky

In the past, U.S. decisionmakers have addressed strategic nuclear force and national missile defense issues in an incremental and uncoordinated manner. Too often, force structure decisions have been driven by near-term programmatic, budgetary, arms control, and political pressures rather than by long-term strategy and objectives. The forthcoming Strategic Posture Review (SPR) needs to fundamentally reassess the purposes of nuclear weapons, missile defenses, and the requirements of deterrence and stability in the new security environment.

The Bush administration should develop a comprehensive conceptual framework to decide on the size, composition, and posture of strategic offensive and defensive forces. Such a framework should integrate new assessments of deterrence and stability over the next 10–20 years, in light of the much more diverse threats facing the United States.

It will not be easy to come up with solutions that balance competing and often contradictory objectives. Improving U.S. capabilities to deal with one set of strategic concerns may complicate efforts to address others. SPR should include a reassessment of U.S. strategic force levels and targeting requirements; consideration of different hedges and reconstitution options against greater-than-expected threats, such as maintaining production capabilities or making unilateral strategic force reductions outside a formal treaty framework; and development of a broad calculus to assess the impact of national missile defense and other strategic developments on deterrence and stability.
A Golden Opportunity: The Next Steps in U.S.-Indian Relations

John C. Holzman

President Bush has made closer relations with India a priority, thereby intensifying a process begun by the previous administration. Strengthening U.S.- India ties and cooperation on Asia-Pacific security issues can advance national interests in regional stability by reducing the risk of nuclear war on the subcontinent.

The first step in the process is to peel away remaining punitive sanctions against India. Although symbolic of the commitment to nonproliferation, sanctions are manifestly ineffective and counterproductive in South Asia. This applies to Pakistan as well as India.

Only India can initiate changes in the regional security atmosphere. The administration should focus on encouraging New Delhi to follow policies of restraint. Improved security relations will create equities that enable Washington to further encourage restraint.

Restraint would mean resuming a dialogue with Pakistan on nuclear issues; not deploying nuclear weapons; no further testing; and defining a minimum deterrent that engenders greater stability, that is, does not create incentives for either a first strike or for Pakistan to enhance its deterrent.

U.S. policy should link expanded bilateral ties to regular and more substantive military-to-military contacts. China and Pakistan may feel threatened by improved U.S.-India relations, and Pakistan may seek help from China or North Korea. Washington should counter this possibility by reassuring Beijing and also rebuilding badly damaged relations with Islamabad.
Resurrecting Transformation for the Post-Industrial Era

Douglas A. Macgregor

We must hold our minds alert and receptive to the application of unglimpsed methods and weapons. The next war will be won in the future, not in the past. We must go on, or we will go under.

—General of the Army Douglas A. MacArthur, while serving as Chief of Staff, 1931

The Bush administration took office amid high hopes for the fundamental transformation of the Armed Forces. Yet within months, the problem that transformation was designed to solve—changing a large, expensive Industrial Age structure, especially the Army, into a leaner, more strategically agile Information Age force—receded as more pressing issues arose. Instead of being transformed, Cold War military structures will remain unchanged for the time being, while morale and quality of life are shored up. Into this policy vacuum, military leaders have tossed an expensive collection of wish lists that tend to one of two extremes: a bigger, faster, better version of some platform already in use, or something out of science fiction with delivery timelines that stretch all the way to 2032.¹ Although these modernization programs are billed as promoting transformation, they are business as usual.

Fortunately, this is not the whole story. Help may be on the way. The terms of reference for the current Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) anticipate the emergence of new ground, naval, and air forces reorganized for “more rapidly responsive, scalable, modular task-organized units, capable of independent combat action as well as integration into larger joint and combined operations”² sometime after 2006. How the bureaucratic politics of service-centric operational thinking and single-service modernization will produce this outcome is unclear.

This statement also begs the question, why wait until 2006 to build joint warfighting capabilities with today’s forces and technologies when the United States needs—and can achieve—these capabilities now to protect its global interests? Experience in the private sector demonstrates that successful corporations do not plan to transform in the distant future; they transform constantly, just as the world around them transforms. Military transformation is a process, not an end-state that depends on exotic technologies that may not be available for decades. America can lose its position of military dominance only by standing still and investing in the past.
China: Making the Case for Realistic Engagement

Michael E. Marti

China seeks to become the major power in Asia by 2050. Under its so-called New Security Concept, it will attempt to displace the United States as the preeminent military presence in the region while avoiding arms races with its Asian neighbors. Beijing will also try to retake “lost territories” at the expense of other Asian countries. China also seeks to achieve economic supremacy in Asia, drawing other nations into a regional market dominated by the Chinese yuan. American military power has been insufficient to overcome cultural divisions and divergent interests in Asia, so attempts to multilateralize regional security on the model of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization failed. These efforts bolstered the impression that Washington was looking for a way out of regional commitments.
U.S.-Saudi Relations: Rebuilding the Strategic Consensus

Joseph McMillan

The United States inevitably will look to Saudi Arabia to play a critical role in any effective campaign against global terrorism. For Saudi Arabia to fulfill expectations, the United States must revitalize a strategic relationship that was under serious strain before the attacks on September 11.
Current Export Policies: Trick or Treat?

David R. Oliver Jr.

Any discussion of export controls needs some context. How did the current system evolve? What is it intended to protect? More than two decades ago, during the height of the Cold War, a well-placed spy told us that more than 5,000 Soviet war systems depended on U.S.-made parts. To throw sand in the communist machine, Richard Perle, then in the Reagan administration, conceived of a system of export control licenses, with accompanying stiff financial and jail penalties, to stop American companies from exporting anything that might conceivably be of technological value to the Soviets. A bureaucracy of hundreds of people at Defense, State, Commerce, Justice, and Treasury was put into place to enforce this policy. Most people, and I am one of them, believe Perle's system worked and was precisely the right system for that time.

But times change, and bureaucracies, once in place, do not atrophy for lack of relevance. Outside stimulus is required. The people put in place during the Cold War have since worked diligently to perfect their system. Not only were they determined to prevent gun running and the export of items to construct nuclear weapons but also, with the passage of time, they began to ensure nothing of possible military value crossed our borders. This bureaucracy has become increasingly more complex and stifling. Three years ago, when a U.S. company imported a key component for a satellite control station from France (a traveling wave tube), and, when the tube was found to be broken, the U.S. company was denied permission to send it back to France to get a refund! The bureaucracy knows not what it does. The Berlin Wall has fallen, the Soviet Union has collapsed, Kosovo has come and gone, but nothing has changed in the bureaucracy's warren of regulations, reviews, and delays. Working on a Cold War course, the bureaucrats have succeeded in digging a regulatory pit so deep as to cripple the most powerful arm of U.S. foreign policy--trade--as well as the international relationships and friendships that come from commerce.

As soon as they hear the word trade, most Americans lose interest. We have mixed feelings about industry. We worry whether there is sufficient (if any) patriotism in the boardroom of a multinational corporation. In addition, we do not like to think of America as an arms merchant. We are not interested in making some fat-cat American industrialist rich at the expense of a shopkeeper in Brazil. But the real issues for America are much, much larger. With our current export control policy, we limit and hurt friends and weaken the U.S. military and our allies.
Adversary Use of NBC Weapons: A Neglected Challenge

John F. Reichart

Understanding has evolved in the last decade about how an adversary might use nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical weapons against the United States. Increasingly, America is concluding that potential adversaries view these not as “weapons of last resort” but rather as tactically and strategically useful. The United States can expect their use early in a conflict as well as throughout the extended battlefield, including on U.S. territory itself.
Normalizing U.S.-Russian Relations

Eugene B. Rumer and Richard D. Sokolsky

Ten years after the Cold War, the United States is still looking for an organizing principle to guide policy toward Russia. Because of its systemic weakness, neither partnership nor competition is an appropriate concept. Washington should put aside its search for a comprehensive concept in dealing with Moscow and pursue a case-by-case approach rooted in specific U.S. interests.

Priority interests involve a redefined strategic relationship, including Russian acquiescence to national missile defense; collaboration by Moscow in combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies; and inducing Russia to base its behavior on respect for the international norms to which it is committed. The United States should be prepared to deemphasize other issues, such as conventional arms sales, that do not threaten core national interests.

The Bush administration needs to communicate its intent to respect Russian interests, while making it clear that a productive relationship will depend primarily on Russian willingness to adhere to the values shared by the United States and other democratic nations. The choice of what kind of relationship Russia wants is largely in its own hands.

However, Russia’s chaotic policymaking and the mismatch between its ambitions and capabilities preclude resolving key bilateral issues. Therefore, prospects for engaging Russia constructively appear dim and the United States will have to go it alone in areas where Russian acquiescence is lacking.
Do European Union Defense Initiatives Threaten NATO?

Kori N. Schake

European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) is now the main item on Europe’s security agenda because of a focus on establishing a crisis management force capable of acting independently of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Although transatlantic policies will be colored by issues such as the Kyoto treaty, missile defenses, and relations with Russia, ESDP is likely to dominate defense debates as the European Union (EU) tries to meet the Helsinki Headline Goal of developing a corpssized expeditionary force that can deploy military forces capable of ensuring diverse tasks and establish new political and military structures that will enable the EU to guide and direct such operations.

To meet the Helsinki Goal, the European Union must surmount three problems: ensuring sufficient forces, building confidence in the quality of their performance, and finding substitutes for critical NATO assets. The approaches that EU members take to these tasks may indicate how serious they are about meeting the goal in fact as well as in name.
Renovating U.S. Strategic Arms Control Policy

Richard D. Sokolsky

Decisions on the next phase of strategic force reductions and how to achieve them will have to await the resolution of larger issues related to the future of the U.S. strategic force posture and national missile defense. Once the Bush administration completes its Nuclear Posture Review, however, it will need to decide whether to continue the Cold War-style strategic arms reduction process or explore alternatives for reducing nuclear threats to national security and transforming the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship.

The traditional arms control process of negotiating legally binding treaties that both codify numerical parity and contain extensive verification measures has reached an impasse and outlived its utility. Moreover, new U.S. strategic priorities will require changes in the ends and means of arms control policy.

The United States and Russia should embrace a radically new framework to achieve deeper reductions in strategic nuclear forces. The centerpiece of such a reform agenda should be arms control through unilateral and parallel unilateral measures. To jump-start this process, the administration should give top priority to repealing legislation that prohibits the Nation from unilaterally reducing strategic forces until START II enters into force.

Unless the United States embraces a more flexible and innovative approach to strategic arms control, progress will be stymied in developing a nuclear weapons posture for the new security environment.
A Military for the 21st Century: Lessons from the Recent Past

Anthony C. Zinni

The post-Cold War world environment has complicated rather than simplified the missions, strategy, and organization of the Armed Forces. Rapid downsizing after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Allied victory in the Persian Gulf War left a military lacking strategic direction, a thoughtful force structure, and a logical threat upon which to base future force structure.

This environment will not permit the luxury of a strategic pause. Allowing the new world order to arrange itself could present the Nation with an unforeseen threat that it cannot handle. To prevent such an eventuality, the military must address several challenges: the number of nontraditional threats, financing a military capable of meeting all the potential challenges it may face, the need to reform itself to handle rapid developments in technology, and interagency reform in coordination with military reform so that the full weight of national power can be brought to bear against adversaries.

A deliberate process of military transformation must account for the need for public support, which is essential for such a process to succeed. Transformation would encompass several areas: developing a realistic strategic direction; reviewing personnel recruitment and retention; understanding the implications of joint and combined warfare for organization, structure, core competencies, and operational concepts; revamping national security advisory and decisionmaking processes; and assessing the effects of technological and social changes on the military.
China Rising: New Challenges to the U.S. Security Posture

Jason D. Ellis and Todd M. Koca

The future strategic capabilities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will substantially differ from the past; both numerical increases and significant qualitative improvements are likely.

Key information gaps, aggravated by a lack of transparency, hamper our understanding of China’s expanding nuclear and missile capabilities, doctrinal innovations, and evolving strategic intentions.

While U.S. and PRC interests intersect in a number of areas, there are also important differences. The status and future disposition of Taiwan is perhaps the single greatest flashpoint for conflict, a case in which U.S. deterrence of a range of PRC military steps may fail and escalation ensue.

A rising power, China is striving to become a heavyweight in Asia. The longterm complementarity of U.S. and PRC interests is predicated in large part on Beijing’s strategic choices.
Transforming the Armed Forces of Central and East Europe

Jeffrey Simon

The transformation of Central and East European (CEE) armed forces into modern contributors to Euro-Atlantic security during the next decade will be more difficult than in the last, because euphoria over joining the West is dissipating, and attention is turning to problems of reform.

CEE governments have been unable to provide long-term plans and to guarantee resources to build military capabilities. Plans still must be developed, especially in Slovakia and Slovenia, and reliable projections of resources are sorely needed in Romania.

Downsizing and restructuring militaries and integrating general staffs within ministries of defense can create friction in civilmilitary relations; the United States could help mitigate such problems through retraining aimed at alternate careers and meritbased career development programs.

In moving to all-volunteer forces, CEE partners will lose an instrument for shaping the citizens of young democracies (such as Lithuania) and manpower pools from which to recruit extended-service volunteers (like Germany). NATO allies could provide partner programs focused on conscription to foster civic virtues and help define training for specific military roles and missions.

Confusion prevails over the appropriate length of conscription for each CEE country. However, terms of 6 or 7 months can only prepare reserve forces and are not adequate to meet operational requirements.
Military Lessons from Desert One to the Balkans

Ike Skelton

The performance of the Armed Forces has shown a marked improvement since its low point in the post-Vietnam era. Military leaders have deliberately sought out and internalized lessons from each succeeding conflict. The challenge for the next generation is learning the lessons of these past operations and building an even more effective, flexible force.

The military cannot pick and choose its missions. Their political masters may well decide that national interests require the use of force for more nontraditional missions or in situations that may be less than ideally suited to military solutions.

Force protection is critical; high rates of casualties can erode popular support and undermine the mission. On the other hand, excessive fear of casualties can erode the morale of the Armed Forces. The key is forging American leadership that understands the military risks involved.

Commitments to our allies may draw us into conflicts where U.S. national interests are limited, but where American leadership is essential to the vitality of the alliance.

Even a small operation conducted abroad requires an extraordinary range of well-trained forces, either highly deployable or already in theater.

Despite successes, the Armed Forces must address a number of challenges: urban warfare, weapons of mass destruction, tracking and destroying mobile targets, the need for lighter, more deployable forces, and the burden of ongoing operations.