Defense Horizons

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  Dual-Track Transformation for NATO

  Hans Binnendijk and Richard L. Kugler

  Recent strains between the United States and some European allies have raised concerns that NATO is becoming irrelevant or even headed toward extinction. A breakup of NATO would severely damage the United States and Europe as well as prospects for global peace. As an urgent priority, NATO must restore its unity and strengthen its capacity for common action in the Greater Middle East. But how can this goal be achieved in today’s climate?

  The solution is for NATO to pursue a new dual-track strategy of military and political transformation that could be launched at the Istanbul Summit next spring. The military track should further strengthen efforts to field a NATO Response Force and otherwise prepare European forces for expeditionary missions. The political track should aim to create a common transatlantic vision for the Middle East, while enhancing NATO’s capacity to act flexibly and constructively there in peace, crisis, and war.

  Such a NATO strategic realignment is not mission impossible. NATO has survived previous trans-Atlantic stresses by adopting dual-track strategies that harmonized American and European interests. For example, almost forty years ago the Harmel Report reconciled detente with deterrence and defense. A new Harmel Report is needed to forge a similar reconciliation of U.S. and European policies toward NATO’s role in the Middle East. In addition, the Istanbul Summit can take other practical steps: e.g., a NATO resource commitment to increase defense investments as force structure is reduced, a NATO defense transformation roadmap to guide force improvements, and a new “Partnership for Cooperation” that would pursue ties with friendly Middle Eastern militaries. A bold Istanbul agenda of this sort offers NATO an opportunity to replace recent debates with a common approach for making the alliance more secure and effective in a troubled world.

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  Moore’s Law: A Department of Defense Perspective

  Gerald M. Borsuk and Timothy Coffey

  The past 50 years have seen enormous advances in electronics and the systems that depend upon or exploit them. The Department of Defense (DOD) has been an important driver in, and a profound beneficiary of, these advances, which have come so regularly that many observers expect them to continue indefinitely. However, as Jean de la Fontaine said, “In all matters one must consider the end.” A substantial literature debates the ultimate limits to progress in solid-state electronics as they apply to the current paradigm for silicon integrated circuit (IC) technology. The outcome of this debate will have a profound societal impact because of the key role that silicon ICs play in computing, information, and sensor technologies.

  The consequences for DOD are profound. For example, DOD planning assumptions regarding total situational awareness have been keyed to Moore's Law, which predicts the doubling of transistor density about every 18 months. While this prediction proved to be accurate for more than thirty years, we are entering a period when industry will have increasing difficulty in sustaining this pace. Under the current device and manufacturing paradigm, progress in areas such as total situational awareness will slow or stagnate. If DOD planning assumptions are to be met, the DOD science and technology program would be well advised to search aggressively for alternate paradigms beyond those on which Moore's Law is based to ensure new technology capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current prognosis for silicon IC technology from a DOD perspective.

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  Hydrogen as a Fuel for DOD

  Timothy Coffey, Dennis R. Hardy, Gottfried E. Besenbruch, Kenneth R. Schultz, Lloyd C. Brown, and Jill P. Dahlburg

  Energy issues have been at the center of the national security debate for some time, and the current situation in the Persian Gulf underscores the strategic importance of sound energy policy. Activities or developments—geopolitical, environmental, technological, or regulatory—that materially change the energy security equation are, naturally, of great interest to the Department of Defense (DOD). The announcement by President George Bush in his State of the Union address that he intends to accelerate research and development (R&D) for hydrogen-powered vehicles toward the objective of total U.S. energy independence has great potential impact on DOD. This paper examines a number of technical issues connected with energy independence through hydrogen and how they might affect DOD. We conclude that the move to a hydrogen economy will be a massive undertaking, requiring large investments and decades to accomplish. We will show that, with few exceptions, pure hydrogen is not a viable fuel for DOD missions, primarily because of the DOD requirement for compact, high-volumetric energy density power sources. As a result, to meet its unique needs, DOD likely will have to increase its dependence on nuclear power and support R&D that investigates ways to use hydrogen to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels in an environmentally compliant fashion. Several suggestions and recommendations will be made in this regard.

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  Alternative Governance: A Tool for Military Laboratory Reform

  Timothy Coffey, Kenneth W. Lackie, and Michael L. Marshall

  Throughout the Cold War, the United States maintained an edge over adversaries by fielding technologically superior warfighting systems. This strategy depended on a strong research and development (R&D) effort in both the public and private sectors, and the community of military laboratories in the Department of Defense played an essential role in the overall effort. Because of the importance of these labs during the Cold War, defense planners continually focused on ways to improve and strengthen them.

  The end of the Cold War, however, shifted the focus away from laboratory improvement toward consolidation, closure, realignment, and personnel downsizing, as many came to believe much of the R&D done by the military laboratories could, and even should, be done by the private sector. Scrutiny of the labs greatly increased as a constant stream of base realignment and closure and other cost-reduction efforts sought to decrease their roles and size. Because these actions focused almost exclusively on efficiency, little attention was paid to improving the effectiveness of the labs—their ability to carry out their assigned missions. Most activity directed at improving laboratory operation has dealt with incremental modifications of the current governance model. Currently, the military labs are Government-owned, Government-operated organizations. As many studies have noted, this governance model puts the laboratories at a great disadvantage and complicates their ability to accomplish their assigned missions. Alternative approaches have been suggested by lab reformers but have never been implemented. Since the current governance model is well known, and attempts to modify it are well documented, this paper discusses several alternative governance models for the labs, with emphasis on the Government-owned, contractor- operated and Government-owned corporation models. While there would be issues with regard to conversion of an existing military lab to a Government corporation or comparable entity, the long-term, mission-enabling benefits of such a conversion could far outweigh any near-term complexities.

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  The Air Force: Science, Technology, and Transformation

  Donald C. Daniel

  A unique connectivity exists in the Air Force between science, technology, and transformation. From the defining moment of powered flight in 1903 to the creation of the Air Force as a separate service in 1947 to the present, these three elements have been continuously linked and undoubtedly will remain so.

  This paper provides a brief historical perspective of the ties between science, technology, and transformation in the earliest days of the Air Force; gives an overview of current Air Force science and technology; offers a look at five future transformational capabilities—unmanned combat aerial vehicles, small munitions, directed energy weapons, microsatellites, and the joint battlespace infosphere—that demonstrate the strong nature of the link today; and lastly, presents some challenges and issues.

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  NATO Defense Science and Technology

  Donald C. Daniel and Leigh C. Caraher

  The accord establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 provided the framework for the greatest international mechanism ever in defense science and technology. From its earliest days, NATO involvement in science and technology has sought to build cooperation and promote security and stability. Today, the central element of the NATO defense science and technology program is the Research and Technology Organization (RTO), which provides the best basis for collaboration among the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Through this body, alliance nations plan and execute activities that cover the full spectrum of technologies vital to current and future security.

  RTO and its two predecessors, the Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development and the Defense Research Group, have a history of fostering long-term relationships among senior executives, scientists, and engineers; sharing information and research; and enhancing military capabilities. There is no international activity that rivals RTO in scope, magnitude, or potential. RTO can continue to build on these successes by emphasizing longevity of its highly qualified members, prioritizing areas of opportunity, integrating the seven newest NATO invitees, and building a closer relationship with Russia. This paper examines the origins of NATO defense science and technology, provides an overview of the Research and Technology Organization, and analyzes the elements that make RTO successful. The paper concludes with recommendations for enhancing RTO effectiveness in the 21st century.

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  The Silence of the Labs

  Don J. DeYoung

  Something important to the Nation’s defense has vanished, yet the top Pentagon brass never noticed. Not the stuff of headlines, this loss would not arouse public concern, especially during these times of terrorist massacres, anthrax attacks, corporate scandal, and war. Nevertheless, like the miner’s canary that is first to die with the rush of an ill wind, this loss is a warning.

  In the span of 18 months, the Department of Defense (DOD) lost a key part of its 25-year-old ability to perform fiber optics research at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the only site with this world-class defense capability. It was not time for DOD to exit this critical field. Urgent security needs not being met anywhere else were being addressed. Both the scale of the loss and the speed with which it occurred reveal a growing problem: the private sector’s increasingly successful recruitment of the best scientists working for the DOD Defense Laboratories. While personnel losses are to be expected in any enterprise, public or private, this particular loss exposes the diminished DOD ability to retain the technical talent necessary to accomplish its mission.

  The death of this “canary” sends warning that an ill wind is blowing for the Defense Laboratories.¹ Without reform, their loss of expertise will worsen, eventually to the point where it affects good government and poses significant risks to national security. Should this happen, the Nation will suffer what President Dwight Eisenhower called “a disastrous rise of misplaced power.”

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  Beyond the Mainland: Chinese Telecommunications Expansion

  Robert C. Fonow

  In most countries, expansion of the telecommunications network beyond national borders has followed diplomatic and business expansion. On this basis, an informed practitioner might be expecting the Chinese telecommunications system to spread beyond its borders sometime in the later part of this decade. However, Chinese authorities have been quick to act upon a series of unexpected opportunities for acquiring international telecom- munications assets. This article discusses the international secu- rity implications of Chinese telecommunications expansion.

  Since the telecommunications collapse of 2001, Chinese buy- ers have purchased several large telecommunications networks in Asia previously owned by U.S. investors. Among these are:

  ■ PSINet, which was one of the early developers of the Internet. Hong Kong assets were purchased by CITIC, a company reported to have close relations with the People’s Liberation Army.

  ■ Level 3, which was sold to a joint venture including Pacific Cen- tury CyberWorks, a company run by Richard Li, the son of Hong Kong bil- lionaire Li Ka Shing—both of whom maintain close contacts with central government authorities in Beijing.

  ■ Asia Global Crossing assets, which was purchased by China Net- com, the newly renamed northern division of the incumbent carrier China Telecom.

  ■ Global Crossing, Inc., which claims its own Asian assets in a highly publicized pending deal including a direct investment by Hutchin- son Whampoa and Singapore Telemedia. Hutchinson eventually backed out, leaving Singapore Telemedia as the sole potential owner. But, as this paper argues, the deal still facilitates China’s expanding network capa- bility and influence.

  These assets, previously paid for by American investors at a cost of up to $20 billion, were bought for an average cost of as lit- tle as 3 cents on the dollar, representing a huge loss of American capital value.1 Each company had extensive networks covering several Asian countries with large capacity circuits and direct ity into the United States.

  It is unlikely that such a broad-based move into international telecommunications was simply a fortuitous consequence of China’s transition to a free market economy. Several interesting questions arise. First, to what extent was the Beijing leadership behind this acquisition spree (even though most of the action took place in Hong Kong)? Second, and perhaps more importantly, how will this purchase of assets by national Chinese network services providers enable Chinese interests to control the telecommunications domain in Asia, and how this will impact U.S.-China relations in the areas of military competition and foreign policy? And, third, how will an expanding international telecommunications capability affect internal political and economic developments in China?

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  A New PPBS Process to Advance Transformation

  Stuart E. Johnson

  The Office of the Secretary of Defense has released its first Transformational Planning Guidance to steer the Armed Forces through a joint process of transformation. This is a strong step in the direction of making transformation and innovation visible parts of the defense planning process, but more is needed. The planning, programming, and budgeting system (PPBS) through which the Department of Defense (DOD) prioritizes its programs and resources has to be restructured to facilitate transformation and innovation, not to obstruct them. DOD has begun a trial resource allocation process that will reduce the burden of repetitive report generation that has drained time and energy away from innovative, strategic change. This process gives senior leadership an opportunity to shift its attention from wrestling with budget detail to developing initiatives to transform U.S. forces. However, this change will not happen of its own accord. A set of proposals that would enable senior leadership to move its focus from the back end (budgeting) of the resource allocation process to the front end (planning and idea generation) is presented below. A review of how the PPBS has evolved is presented to highlight the need to target specific parts for restructuring.

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  Decision Dominance: Exploiting Transformational Asymmetries

  Merrick E. Krause

  This paper introduces a new operational concept—decision dominance—to help guide the strategic employment of U.S. forces in wartime. This concept is not a replacement for existing paradigms. If added to the current list, however, it may better illuminate how American forces can operate effectively in ways that will achieve their political-military goals more decisively in future wars.

  Decision dominance builds upon current operational concepts, particularly effects-based operations and rapid decisive operations. Yet it goes further by giving warfighting options to shape the operational and strategic decisions of an adversary. Decision dominance is an attempt to exploit emerging transformational U.S. military capabilities to create a transformational strategy and Joint Capstone Concept. It reflects a strategy for the use of military force in concert with other instruments of power. This strategy involves evaluating adversary options and eliminating those deemed undesirable, effectively funneling the decisionmaking process of the enemy leadership to achieve a desired outcome.

  This paper first discusses the nature of conflict in the modern strategic environment and some popular contemporary military concepts of operations. Next, it examines the operational relevance of decision dominance and its application in conflict. Decision dominance argues that a strategy exploiting the realms of space, time, and knowledge may be invaluable by allowing decisionmakers to achieve political ends, using military means, to coerce methodically and effectively, with minimal cost and risk to both sides.

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  Transformation and the Defense Industrial Base: A New Model

  Robbin F. Laird

  American force transformation is about building a new expeditionary model with flexible, modular forces that can be managed on a global basis to protect U.S. interests. Breaking the tyranny of geography on military forces is a key aspect to change.

  Transformation represents a shift in the demand side of the defense industrial business to provide for these new capabilities. The Department of Defense (DOD) is seeking system-of-systems management to deliver capabilities to the services and for joint military operations. This represents a shift from the past emphasis upon platforms and a primary focus upon service-specific technologies and programs.

  As the demand side of the equation has shifted, so has the supply side. Defense consolidation in the 1990s dealt with scarcity; now the newly emerged mega-primes are asked to play the role of lead systems integrators (LSIs) or system-of-systems managers to deliver capability to DOD for transformed operations.

  DOD moved to a different way of doing business before the transformation effort emerged as a core priority. Now that the transformation agenda is dominating the shift in the relationship between industry and government, working through LSI roles in shaping capabilities-based procurement will be especially important.

  Additionally, the new LSI and system-of-systems management model is shaping a new approach to allies. The new model can allow industry to shape new capabilities on a transatlantic basis. Rather than the old export-after-production model, the new LSI model, coupled with a transformation emphasis, leads to the shaping of new opportunities for developing capabilities before core series production decisions would be taken.

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  Global Warming Could Have a Chilling Effect on the Military

  Richard F. Pittenger and Robert B. Gagosian

  Most debates and studies addressing potential climate change have focused on the buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But this “slow ramp”1 climate change scenario ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has become much colder, warmer, wetter, or drier—in time spans as short as three to 10 years.

  Earth’s climate system appears to have sensitive thresholds, the crossing of which shifts the system into different modes of operation and triggers rapid, non-linear, and not necessarily global changes. This new paradigm of abrupt climate change does not appear to be on the radar screens of military planners, who treat climate change as a long-term, low-level threat, with mostly sociological, not national security, implications. But intense and abrupt climate changes could escalate environmental issues into unanticipated security threats, and could compromise an unprepared military.

  The global ocean circulation system, often called the Ocean Conveyor, can change rapidly and shift the distribution patterns of heat and rainfall over large areas of the globe. The North Atlantic region is particularly vulnerable to abrupt regional coolings linked to ocean circulation changes. Global warming and ocean circulation changes also threaten the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover. Beyond the abrupt climatic impacts, fundamental changes in ocean circulation also have immediate naval implications.

  Recent evidence suggests that the oceans already may be experiencing large-scale changes that could affect Earth’s climate. Military planners should begin to consider potential abrupt climate change scenarios and their impacts on national defense.

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  Technology, Transformation, and New Operational Concepts

  Elihu Zimet, Robert E. Armstrong, Donald C. Daniel, and Joseph N. Mait

  Throughout history, technology has been central to warfare, often giving qualitative advantages to numerically inferior forces. Typically, the rate of technology development has been relatively slow and the introduction of new weapons systems even slower, which has allowed evolutionary development of operational concepts. Today’s accelerated pace of technology development no longer allows sequential development of operational concepts. In addition, the current global political environment has placed demands upon the military that range from engaging in major regional conflicts to stabilization, reconstruction and peacekeeping, all creating a continuous need for flexible, adaptive systems and new concepts of operation.

  The first purpose of this paper is to describe principal new developments in technology in the framework of how they can improve operational effectiveness in the uncertain world of the 21st century. The technologies are presented generically rather than by system, because a broader and more generic technology base is required to meet evolving opportunities. A second purpose is to examine the related issue of technology development and acquisition. Expectations for the rapid introduction of technologies that promote transformation must be tempered by the military requirement for continuous capability, even as new systems and operational concepts are introduced. Finally, although the United States leads the world in the development of military systems, the foundational military science and technology base shows signs of erosion. This erosion must be arrested if American military superiority is to be maintained.

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  From Petro to Agro: Seeds of a New Economy

  Robert E. Armstrong

  Winston Churchill is said to have stopped predicting future events because the future was just “one damned thing after another.” Nonetheless, we need to keep an eye on the future and speculate as to what the next damned thing might be. One candidate is the changing raw material base for the economy.

  Today, the hydrocarbon molecule is the basic unit of commerce. In a biobased economy, genes will replace petroleum. So, just as we currently demand assured access to sources of hydrocarbon molecules (oil), in the near future we will demand assured access to a broad-based, diverse supply of genes (plants and animals). This shift has security implications. Relations with oil-rich countries will be of less importance, and relations with gene-rich states—mostly the biodiverse regions along the equator— will assume greater significance. Conflicts may arise between gene-rich, technology-poor countries that control the basic raw materials of a biobased economy and gene-poor, technology- rich nations that control the production methods.

  American instruments of power will be challenged to meet the demands of a biobased economy. We already see diplomatic challenges with the United Nations Framework Convention on Biological Diversity and controversy with Europe over genetically modified crops. Informational and economic challenges and opportunities will likewise appear. It may be challenging for U.S. land forces, especially the Army, to meet the demands of securing access to large supplies of new genetic material.

  Agriculture will become increasingly important as a part of the Nation’s industrial base, as it offers the most economical way to produce large quantities of biological materials. Homeland defense will have to consider heartland defense, as agricultural fields will assume the same significance as oil fields.

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  Nonlethal Capabilities: Realizing the Opportunities

  E.R. Bedard

  The use of lethal force has not always been appropriate to handle situations that the U.S. military has faced in the post-Cold War world. Nonlethal weapons offer a precision, accuracy, and effective duration that can help save military and civilian lives, break the cycle of violence by offering a more graduated response, and even prevent violence from occurring if the opportunity for early or preclusionary engagement arises.

  Fully exploiting nonlethal capabilities will require the refinement of existing technologies and the creation of new technologies. The effectiveness of the capabilities must be sufficiently reliable and predictable to give commanders confidence in their employment. Because nonlethal capabilities are a fairly new concept to domestic and international publics, military and civilian decisionmakers must be educated about them.

  As we step forward into the 21st century, we must look for new opportunities to leverage developing and emerging technologies that enable warfighting commanders to capitalize on the full spectrum of nonlethal capabilities. The value added will best be realized when we ensure that technology, operations, and policy are in balance, and the education of the American leadership, warfighters, and public is complete. These capabilities must become part of our daily lexicon.

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  The Virtual Border: Countering Seaborne Container Terrorism

  Hans Binnendijk, Leigh C. Caraher, Timothy Coffey, and H. Scott Wynfield

  America’s potential vulnerability to terrorist attack through exploitation of the global trade and transportation system is now widely recognized. The sheer magnitude and diversity of this global system coupled with the permeability of U.S. borders afford numerous avenues to attack American targets. Maritime commerce, and container shipping in particular, provides a highly attractive means not only of delivering weapons but also of smuggling terrorists themselves into the American homeland. Thousands of ships from every part of the globe deliver millions of individual containers to American ports each year. Compounding the problem is an inspection process that has been slow to shift from more traditional practices, such as the search for illegal narcotics, to the search for terrorist weapons. This situation stems in part from a lack of information specifying cargo contents, complicating U.S. Customs Service efforts to identify high-risk containers for inspection upon arrival, and from the commercially driven need to move trade goods rapidly through the transportation system. The problem does not end at the American shoreline, however. The intermodal transportation network, encompassing sea, land, and rail linkages, represents a vast conduit that could be exploited for an attack on not only port facilities and marine terminals but also inland population centers and shore infrastructure. By using global positioning system technology, terrorists may achieve precision targeting capabilities and create a “poor man’s” intercontinental ballistic missile from a container.

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  Toward Missile Defenses from the Sea

  Hans Binnendijk and George Stewart

  Developments of the past 18 months have created new possibilities for the sea basing of national defenses against intercontinental ballistic missiles. Some conceivable designs would enhance U.S. prospects for defeating a rogue state missile attack on the United States and its allies, but other deployments could undermine the Nation’s strategic stability with Russia and China. The most efficacious architecture from both a technical and strategic perspective would include a U.S. Navy boost-phase intercept program and some sea-based radar. Given the complications of using existing Aegis ships for the missile defense mission, the Navy should consider constructing a separate ship designed solely for this purpose.

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  The Emergence of Mini UAVs for Military Applications

  Timothy Coffey and John A. Montgomery

  The successes of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in Afghanistan most likely will accelerate the introduction of UAVs into the military force structure. What emerged in Afghanistan was a tiered observation-detection-targeting system consisting of spacecraft, the Global Hawk UAV, the Predator UAV, and often a spotter on the ground. However, in complex terrain, as in Afghanistan, and in urban situations, airborne assets may be needed much closer to the ground. A low-altitude tier of UAVs—mini UAVs—could serve such a purpose.

  This paper provides a basic understanding of the aerodynamic scaling of mini UAVs and a sense of how their capabilities could be matched with specific missions. Mini UAVs have substantial limitations, but the low radar cross section, low infrared signature, low acoustic signature, and birdlike appearance of these vehicles, combined with the remarkable capabilities of miniaturized payloads, make them contenders for certain missions and potential valuable tactical assets.

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  Computer Games and the Military: Two Views

  J.C. Herz and Michael R. Macedonia

  Simulations are a critical aspect of U.S. military training. Commercial computer games are a growing part of our entertainment industry. The two fields have much in common, and the military can learn from the successful experience of the commercial sector. J.C. Herz provides an industry look at gaming technology and culture and suggests ways in which commercial experience can be applied to the military. Michael Macedonia responds to Herz’s analysis and provides a military gamer’s perspective on computer games and the military.

  Despite their common antecedents, the commercial gaming and defense simulation industries have developed differently since the 1970s. Once much smaller and weaker, commercial computer gaming has grown into a $7 billion industry and has outpaced military simulations in terms of technology and innovation. Herz attributes this growth to user-driven innovation in software design and the social ecology driving online multiplayer games. The commercial gaming industry encourages player innovation by soliciting feedback in the design and development phases of new products and by incorporating player modifications into the next iterations of established products. User-driven innovation is successful because it is inherent in the industry’s cultural infrastructure, which can leverage interpersonal dynamics of competition, collaboration, hunger for status and peer acknowledgement, and tendency to cluster. This social ecology that drives online multiplayer games invests players in games and compels them to play. As the military attempts to incorporate information technologies into simulation, Herz suggests that it will require not only hardware and software infrastructure but also the cultural infrastructure to leverage these resources.

  Macedonia recognizes the role that the commercial game industry has played in military simulations over the past 25 years. The military has readily adopted commercial simulations for use in strategy and tactics games in school curricula and for developing individual and collective skills in unit training. These efforts have resulted in stimulating collaborative activities, either with military modifications of commercial games or commercial simulations developed for the military. The military further recognized the importance of commercial entertainment technology with the creation of the Institute of Creative Technology, which brings together the defense and commercial industries to produce a revolution in how the military trains and rehearses for upcoming missions and to prepare for the challenges of the 21st century.

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  Global Trade: America’s Achilles’ Heel

  James M. Loy and Robert G. Ross

  Much has been written in the aftermath of September 11 on the porosity of America’s borders and the failure of various agencies to share, fuse, analyze, and exploit available information to stop foreign threats before they enter the country. The resources and methods available to U.S. border control agencies appear to be no match for the myriad threats that could arrive from outside the country. Nowhere is the gap between vulnerability and capability greater than along the Nation’s sea borders. Asymmetrical military and terrorist threats have a natural gateway into America via the marine transportation system.

  In the uncertainty following the September attacks, the immediate response of security services around the country—the Coast Guard included—was to shut down the systems under their control until measures were taken to ensure that additional attacks were not already in progress. These system stoppages were generally short-lived because the economic impacts were intolerable, not only in dollar costs but also in potential loss of access to the essentials of daily American life. The United States is a trading nation, both domestically and globally, and relatively unimpeded movement of goods and people is necessary for its economy to function. Transportation is our social and economic cardiovascular system, and ensuring its continuation is vital. The post-attack shutdowns were a tourniquet to control bleeding but had to be released quickly to preserve the patient.

  Given the importance of international goods and materials to the American economy, closing our borders for more than a short period is infeasible. Furthermore, with our growing reliance on just-in-time delivery of foreign goods, even slowing the flow long enough to inspect either all or a statistically significant random selection of imports would be economically intolerable. However, the transportation system, especially the maritime component, remains highly vulnerable to attack or other exploitation by terrorists. Thus, a major challenge facing the responsible agencies in the post-September 11 “new normalcy” is to develop border controls and transportation security measures that reduce the threat of the national transportation system’s being used either as a weapon or as an essential logistic link in some other kind of attack.1 Moreover, we must develop ways to better protect the Nation without sacrificing economic vitality or overwhelming the Federal, state, local, and corporate budgets.

  Information is the key. Our national ability to detect potential threats in or to transportation can be significantly improved through effective use of information that, to a great extent, is already available. With sufficient advance information on inbound ships, cargoes, crews, and passengers, the various border control agencies will be better able to separate the good from the bad and intercept the bad before it becomes a problem for the country. This notion—exploiting available information to discern threats and concentrate resources to stop them—is at the heart of the maritime domain awareness (MDA) concept.

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  Relevancy and Risk: The U.S. Army and FutureCombat Systems

  Joseph N. Mait and Jon G. Grossman

  In the post-Cold War geostrategic environment, the U.S. Army has been challenged to balance its ability to conduct a major theater war with its requirement to deploy to numerous smallscale conflicts. To realize the capabilities it needs, the Army has proposed a visionary transformation of light infantry and heavy armored forces into medium-weight forces capable of fighting the full spectrum of military conflicts. Key to this transformation is the development of the Future Combat Systems (FCS), which depends on substantial improvements in six critical technology areas: sensors, networks, robotics, survivability, lethality, and power sources.

  In assessing these critical technologies, we found a wide range of estimates concerning the technologies’ maturity and applicability to FCS. Using open literature sources, we found that technology demonstrations in the six areas needed to support a milestone B decision (scheduled for 2003) could not occur until 2004 at the earliest or as late as 2010. Estimates for when the technologies could be ready for FCS low rate production varied from 2006 to 2015.

  The uncertain maturity of these technologies does not mean that transformation is not technically feasible. Rather, innovative management of technical risk is required. We recommend developing initial versions of FCS for low-intensity conflicts and, as technologies mature, new versions for higher-intensity combat.

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  The Airborne Laser from Theory to Reality: An Insider’s Account

  Hans Mark

  Albert Einstein spent World War I in Berlin, where he developed a theory that described electromagnetic radiation in equilibrium with atoms that could emit and absorb radiation. The innovation in Einstein’s work, which was published in 1916 and 1917, was that he used the newly developed quantum theory to obtain his results. The most important result was not only that the atoms in the assembly could absorb and emit radiation spontaneously but also that atoms in certain excited states could be induced to emit radiation.¹ Einstein called this discovery the stimulated emission of radiation. Einstein’s discovery provided the basis for the development of lasers, though the phenomenon would not be observed in the laboratory for many years.

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  Small Security: Nanotechnology and Future Defense

  John L. Petersen and Dennis M. Egan

  Scientists believe that nanotechnology will soon give humans the ability to move and combine individual atoms and molecules into microscopically tiny mechanical, electrical, and biological “machines” that will replace many of today’s production processes and tools. Although current work is focused on materials, optics, and electronics, nanotechnology eventually will find applications throughout society. Advances in nanotechnology will feed back into conventional industry, which in turn will demand and promote further advances in nanotechnology in a cycle that is familiar from the silicon revolution of recent decades. This time, however, the cycle will operate more rapidly and produce even more far-reaching change. Computers based on nanotechnology will be smaller and more powerful and will accelerate advances in nanotechnology itself. Even without computers, nanotechnology will allow incorporation of a kind of intelligence into materials that will react to and influence their environment in complex and predictable ways, much as biological organisms do. Taken a step further, nanoscale robots, or nanobots, will be able to operate autonomously to inspect, mend, or destroy targeted substances. Biological nanobots will do the same operating on DNA instructions. Both types of nanobots will be able to replicate themselves.

  Such revolutionary capabilities will produce change that can be predicted only in its magnitude, not its details. The Internet already assures the nearly instantaneous and universal dispersion of information; nanotechnology will extend and ramify the Web until it becomes an encompassing fog of interconnection that will take globalization to its extreme. Today, information and pollution have no national boundaries. Before many years, the same will be true of another of humanity’s constructs, nanotechnology.

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  Biological Weapons: Toward a Threat Reduction Strategy

  Brad Roberts and Michael Moodie

  A decade ago, the U.S. military and its allies had a close call with biological weapons (BW) in the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi BW could have inflicted horrific casualties on coalition forces, but the war stopped short of the contingency for which Iraq had prepared, predeployed, and preauthorized the use of such weapons: a march on Baghdad to remove the regime. A decade later, the United States is again poised for war against Iraq—this time for the explicit purpose of regime removal. Moreover, it is engaged in a war on terrorism against adversaries who evidently are strongly interested in BW. But the close call of a decade ago, and the concern it generated among senior Gulf War military leaders, do not appear to have translated into substantial improvements to the operational capability of current U.S. military forces to project power and prevail against BW-armed adversaries. Despite the efforts of many committed individuals, large vulnerabilities in the U.S. BW defense posture remain. Technology remains in the pipeline and not on the battlefield. Operational concepts seem founded on the assumption that an adversary would not dare use these weapons or, if he did, that U.S. forces could simply operate around them, as if they were chemical weapons.

  The present scare seems to have generated even broader high-level concern than did the potential exposure to Iraqi BW 10 years ago. How can this concern be translated into an action agenda that will succeed at reducing present and future threats? How should we understand the risks of BW while the Al Qaeda leadership and anthrax mailer remain at large—and as the prospect of another war against Saddam Husayn looms on the horizon? Our focus here is on the threat of biological weapons to military forces and operations; where appropriate, we sketch out some connections to the BW homeland security challenge.

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  Effects-Based Operations: Building the Analytic Tools

  Desmond Saunders-Newton and Aaron B. Frank

  The U.S. military, under the guidance of the Secretary of Defense, is moving toward a new concept of military planning and operations that is agile and adaptable to the conflict at hand. The aim is to develop capabilities that can rapidly break an adversary’s will to fight and undermine the utility of asymmetric capabilities. The new concept called effects-based operations (EBO) encompasses processes, tools, and organizations that focus on planning, executing, and assessing military activities for the effects produced rather than merely tallying the number of targets destroyed. EBO practitioners draw on the full range of instruments of national power to anticipate, track, and understand the indirect as well as direct effects of U.S. actions throughout the enemy political, military, and economic systems.

  The EBO concept requires deep knowledge not only of enemy but also of friendly capabilities and structures. The current suite of analytic tools employed by the Department of Defense cannot support this approach to military operations. These tools were not designed to determine how the use of force affects adversary strategic will, to model adaptive behavior, to represent unintended consequences, or to evaluate alternative courses of action that include other instruments of national power beyond military force.