Achieving the objectives of the defense strategy requires the transformation of the U.S. Armed Forces. Transformation results from the exploitation of new approaches to operational concepts and capabilities, the use of old and new technologies, and new forms of organization that more effectively anticipate new or still emerging strategic and operational challenges and opportunities and that render previous methods of conducting war obsolete or subordinate. Transformation can involve fundamental change in the form of military operations, as well as a potential change in their scale. It can encompass the displacement of one form of war with another, such as fundamental change in the ways war is waged in the air, on land and at sea. It can also involve the emergence of new kinds of war, such as armed conflict in new dimensions of the battlespace.
Transformation has intellectual, social and technological dimensions. Fundamental changes in the conceptualization of war as well as in organizational culture and behavior are usually required to bring it about. During the early phase of transformation, only a small portion of the force is typically transformed. However, small transformed forces with a critical mass of spearhead capabilities can produce disproportionate strategic effects. Because transformation is highly path-dependent, choices made today may constrain or enhance options tomorrow.
To support the transformation effort, and to foster innovation and experimentation, the Department will establish a new office reporting directly to the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. The Director, Force Transformation will evaluate the transformation efforts of the Military Departments and promote synergy by recommending steps to integrate ongoing transformation activities.
To further facilitate transformation, the Military Departments and Defense Agencies will develop transformation roadmaps that specify timelines to develop Service-unique capabilities necessary to meet the six critical operational goals described below.
Operational Goals
Not all change in military capabilities, however desirable for other reasons, is transformational. The purpose of transformation is to maintain or improve U.S. military preeminence in the face of potential disproportionate discontinuous changes in the strategic environment. Transformation must therefore be focused on emerging strategic and operational challenges and the opportunities created by these challenges. Six critical operational goals provide the focus for DoD's transformation efforts:
- Protecting critical bases of operations (U.S. homeland, forces abroad, allies, and friends) and defeating CBRNE weapons and their means of delivery;
- Assuring information systems in the face of attack and conducting effective information operations;
- Projecting and sustaining U.S. forces in distant anti-access or area-denial environments and defeating anti-access and area-denial threats;
- Denying enemies sanctuary by providing persistent surveillance, tracking, and rapid engagement with high-volume precision strike, through a combination of complementary air and ground capabilities, against critical mobile and fixed targets at various ranges and in all weather and terrains;
- Enhancing the capability and survivability of space systems and supporting infrastructure; and
- Leveraging information technology and innovative concepts to develop an interoperable, joint C4ISR architecture and capability that includes a tailorable joint operational picture.
Protecting the American homeland from attack is the foremost responsibility of the U.S. Armed Forces and a primary mission for the Reserve Components. Future adversaries will most certainly have a range of new means with which to threaten the United States. It is possible to identify confidently some of these means, including new techniques of terror; ballistic and cruise missiles; weapons of mass destruction, including advanced biological weapons; and weapons of mass disruption, such as information warfare attacks on critical information infrastructure. Others, like those used to attack the United States on September 11, 2001, may be a surprise. Defenses against known and emerging threats must be developed. New approaches to achieving early warning of new threats are a high priority.
The increasing dependence of societies and military forces on advanced information networks creates new vulnerabilities and opportunities. Potential adversaries could exploit these vulnerabilities through means such as computer network attack and directed energy weapons. The emergence of these new tools of warfare also provides opportunities for non-kinetic attack by U.S. forces.
Future adversaries could have the means to render ineffective much of our current ability to project military power overseas. Saturation attacks with ballistic and cruise missiles could deny or delay U.S. military access to overseas bases, airfields, and ports. Advanced air defense systems could deny access to hostile airspace to all but low-observable aircraft. Military and commercial space capabilities, over-the-horizon radars, and low- observable unmanned aerial vehicles could give potential adversaries the means to conduct wide-area surveillance and track and target American forces and assets. Anti-ship cruise missiles, advanced diesel submarines, and advanced mines could threaten the ability of U.S. naval and amphibious forces to operate in littoral waters. New approaches for projecting power must be developed to meet these threats.
Adversaries will also likely seek to exploit strategic depth to their advantage. Mobile ballistic missile systems can be launched from extended range, exacerbating the anti-access and area-denial challenges. Space denial capabilities, such as ground-based lasers, can be located deep within an adversary's territory. Accordingly, a key objective of transformation is to develop the means to deny sanctuary to potential adversaries. This will likely require the development and acquisition of robust capabilities to conduct persistent surveillance, precision strike, and maneuver at varying depths within denied areas.
In addition to exploiting space for their own purposes, future adversaries will also likely seek to deny U.S. forces unimpeded access to space. Space surveillance, ground-based lasers and space jamming capabilities, and proximity micro satellites are becoming increasingly available. A key objective for transformation, therefore, is not only to ensure the U.S. ability to exploit space for military purposes, but also as required to deny an adversary's ability to do so.
Finally, new information and communications technologies hold promise for networking highly distributed joint and combined forces and for ensuring that such forces have better situational awareness - both about friendly forces as well as those of adversaries - than in the past. Information technology holds vast potential for maximizing the effectiveness of American men and women in uniform.
Transformation Pillars
Transformation is not an end point. DoD's approach to transformation rests on four pillars:
- Strengthening joint operations through standing joint task force headquarters, improved joint command and control, joint training, and an expanded joint forces presence policy;
- Experimenting with new approaches to warfare, operational concepts and capabilities, and organizational constructs such as standing joint forces through wargaming, simulations and field exercises focused on emerging challenges and opportunities;
- Exploiting U.S. intelligence advantages through multiple intelligence collection assets, global surveillance and reconnaissance, and enhanced exploitation and dissemination; and
- Developing transformational capabilities through increased and wide-ranging science and technology, selective increases in procurement, and innovations in DoD processes.
Strengthening Joint Operations
To better meet future warfare challenges, DoD must develop the ability to integrate combat organizations with forces capable of responding rapidly to events that occur with little or no warning. These joint forces must be scalable and task-organized into modular units to allow the combatant commanders to draw on the appropriate forces to deter or defeat an adversary. The forces must be highly networked with joint command and control, and they must be better able to integrate into combined operations than the forces of today.
These joint forces will be used to manage crises, forestall conflict, and conduct combat operations. They must be lighter, more lethal and maneuverable, survivable, and more readily deployed and employed in an integrated fashion. They must be not only capable of conducting distributed and dispersed operations, but also able to force entry in anti- access or area-denial environments.
Joint and Combined Command and Control
Future military responses will require the rapid movement and integration of joint and combined forces. To be successful, operations will demand a flexible, reliable, and effective joint command and control architecture that provides the flexibility to maneuver, sustain, and protect U.S. forces across the battlefield in a timely manner.
Such a joint command and control structure must reside not only at the joint command, but also extend down to the operational service components. The structure must be networked to ensure shared battlespace awareness. It must be supported by the appropriate doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as a highly trained operational force. Most important, it must develop and foster a joint professional culture, a requirement that presents a significant challenge to service and joint training and professional education programs. The joint command and control system - both the information that flows through the network and the equipment upon which it resides - must be secure and protected from an adversary's information operations or other attacks.
U.S. forces require the ability to communicate not only with one another, but also with other government agencies and allies and friends. Such joint and combined interoperability requires forces that can immediately "plug" into the joint battlefield operating systems (command and control, intelligence, fire support, logistics, etc.) and perform effectively. These forces need compatible systems with interoperable standards, doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures.
To support joint and combined command and control and to enable a common relevant operational picture of the battlespace, the Department will enhance end-to-end interoperable communications for secure planning and operations. These communications will provide shared situational awareness and integration of joint fires, maneuver, and intelligence. They must be interoperable across all components and tailorable for coalition operations with other countries. The capability provided by this network and its applications will enable rapid response forces to plan and execute faster than the enemy and to seize tactical opportunities.
Standing Joint Task Force Headquarters
To strengthen joint operations, the Department will develop over the next several months proposals to establish a prototype for Standing Joint Task Force (SJTF) Headquarters. The goal is to establish a SJTF headquarters in each of the regional combatant commands. The headquarters will provide uniform, standard operating procedures, tactics, techniques, and technical system requirements, with the ability to move expertise among commands.
SJTF headquarters will have a standardized joint C4ISR architecture that provides a common relevant operational picture of the battlespace for joint and combined forces. And it will have mechanisms for a responsive integrated logistics system that provide warfighters easy access to necessary support without burdensome lift and infrastructure requirements. SJTF headquarters will also utilize adaptive mission planning tools that allow U.S. forces to operate within the adversary's decision cycle and respond to changing battlespace conditions.
Standing Joint Task Forces
In addition, the Department will examine options for establishing Standing Joint Task Forces (SJTFs). SJTF organizations will focus in particular on the critical operational goals described previously. They will seek to develop new concepts to exploit U.S. asymmetric military advantages and joint force synergies. These concepts will be designed to take into account the potential to achieve significantly greater military capability at lower total personnel levels.
One option will include a plan for a SJTF for unwarned, extended-range conventional attack against fixed and mobile targets at varying depths. Such an SJTF would address one of the critical operational challenges of the future - developing the capability to continuously locate and track mobile targets at any range and rapidly attack them with precision. Overcoming this challenge will require enhanced intelligence capabilities, including space-based systems, additional human intelligence, and airborne systems that can locate and track moving targets and transmit that information to strike assets. It will require the ability to strike without warning from the air, from the sea, on the ground, and through space and cyber space. It will also require that these forces be networked to maximize their combined effects.
Establishing a Standing Joint Task Force for extended-range, unwarned conventional strike would provide the organizational means to achieve a networked capability. This Standing Joint Task Force could serve as the vanguard for the transformed military of the future. It could undertake experimental exercises as new technologies become available. It would also offer immediate operational benefits.
Joint Presence Policy
To strengthen the Secretary of Defense's management of the allocation of joint deterrent and warfighting assets from all Military Departments, the QDR calls for the establishment of a joint presence policy. This new policy would build on the existing Global Naval Forces Presence Policy, but it would also subsume the rotational overseas presence force of all military Services.
Establishing a joint presence policy will increase the capability and flexibility of U.S. forward-stationed forces and aid in managing force management risks. This policy will establish steady-state levels of air, land, and naval presence in critical regions around the world. It will synchronize deployments of U.S. forces and facilitate cross-Service trades for presence and deterrence. It will also allow for better coordination in the readiness and tempo of operations of all U.S. forces.
Sustaining the Force
To ensure the Department transforms its logistics capabilities, DoD will pursue actions to sustain the force more effectively and efficiently. Specific areas will include a dramatically improved deployment process and accelerated implementation of logistics decision support tools. DoD must also accelerate logistics enterprise integration, reduce logistics demand, and reduce the cost of logistics. In addition, conducting industrial vulnerability assessments and developing sustainment plans for the most critical weapons systems and preferred munitions will help ensure effective sustainment.
Experimenting in Support of Transformational Change
To identify the best available solutions to emerging operational challenges, the defense strategy will employ military field exercises and experiments. Over the last century, military field exercises and experiments oriented toward addressing emerging challenges and opportunities at the operational level of war have been important enablers of military innovation and transformation. These operations reduce uncertainty about the future conflict environment and future capabilities. Exercises and experiments are a critical phase in developing new types of forces and operational concepts that can respond to emerging operational challenges and dominate opponents who effectively exploit aspects of the changing security environment.
Field exercises that incorporate experimentation - at both the joint and the service levels - provide an indispensable means for solving emerging challenges. For instance, with respect to the challenge of projecting power in an anti-access environment, field exercises and experiments will enable the military to identify promising operational concepts for deploying forces into theater and conducting extended-range precision strikes against mobile targets. Further, these exercises and experiments will help to determine if secure access to forward bases is possible and to identify ways to sustain operations for a period sufficient to achieve U.S. objectives. They will also assist the United States in determining which new systems and capabilities will be required, which existing systems and capabilities should be sustained, and what combination of transformational and legacy systems should be created.
Moreover, field exercises and experiments that enable the U.S. military to create and maintain options for a variety of emerging capabilities greatly complicate the planning of would-be adversaries. By enabling the creation of a range of capabilities and warfighting options, field exercises and experimentation can compel future competitors into an unenviable choice. They can seek to develop responses to most or all of the U.S. capabilities and options and consequently stretch their limited resources thin, or they can choose the high-risk option of focusing their efforts on offsetting only one or a few of the new warfighting options, leaving themselves vulnerable to the others. When confronted with this dilemma, potential adversaries may find themselves dissuaded from entering into a military competition in the first place.
U.S. forces will rely heavily on wargames and simulations to support this program of field exercises and experiments. These important analytic tools can greatly enhance the effectiveness of field exercises by identifying promising capabilities that merit prototyping, new force elements that should be established, and operational concepts that merit the detailed evaluation that only field exercises can provide. Thus wargames and simulations serve as a filter to enhance the focus and value of field exercises. However, simulations and war games have inherent limits in terms of how far they can go in identifying new forms of operation and new military system requirements.
During the latter stages of the Cold War, the Services invested in a number of high-fidelity training facilities that greatly enhanced the value of their field training. Yet comparable facilities do not exist to support joint high- fidelity field exercises and experiments. DoD will explore the need to establish a joint and interoperability training capability, including a Joint National Training Center as well as opportunities to build on existing capabilities at Service training centers and ranges to enable joint transformation field exercises and experiments and to inform the Services' exercises and experiments.
DoD must also undertake high-fidelity transformation exercises and experiments that address the growing challenge of maintaining space control or defending against attacks on the U.S. national information infrastructure. DoD will establish a space test range for this purpose Enabling these kinds of exercises will be a major challenge for the Department's transformation effort.
Joint and Service field exercises oriented to military transformation have suffered from chronic resource shortages. Joint Forces Command must conduct at least one major joint transformation exercise every other year. These should build on Service experimentation exercises in the intervening years. Moreover, the regional CINCs should develop a plan to rotate assigned forces through a joint training event for regular exercises and evaluations. To support this effort, DoD will consider the establishment of a Joint Opposing Force and increasing the Joint Forces Command exercise budget. To ensure that sufficient forces are available for experimentation, Joint Forces Command will be authorized to draw up to 5 percent of U.S.-based forces each year for experimentation activities within tempo guidelines and acceptable operational risk.
The findings of this program of field exercises and experiments will feed back directly into the process for determining systems, doctrine, and force structure requirements. Monitoring this program and providing the Secretary with policy recommendations based on its findings will be an important responsibility of the work of the Director, Force Transformation.
Exploiting Intelligence Advantages
U.S. defense strategy and doctrine are increasingly dependent upon information and decision superiority. Information superiority, in turn, depends heavily upon timely, relevant, and comprehensive intelligence. Today, the United States not only possesses unique intelligence capabilities, unmatched by any potential adversary, but has numerous efforts underway to improve and expand current intelligence capabilities. At the same time, U.S. military dependence on information is unprecedented and growing. This is particularly true in light of the Department's transition to network-centric warfare.
Demands on intelligence capabilities are certain to grow. Because potential adversaries recognize the importance of information superiority to U.S. strategy and operations, they are seeking to acquire similar capabilities. To offset U.S. conventional military capabilities, they are also pursuing asymmetric strategies including information operations, space warfare, and CBRNE weapons. These asymmetric threats pose daunting new intelligence challenges. To respond effectively, DoD will vigorously pursue new processes and procedures to better exploit existing assets while aggressively developing new technologies that offer great potential for responding to new threats and requirements. In particular, the Department will treat information operations, intelligence, and space assets not simply as enablers of current U.S. forces but rather as core capabilities of future forces.
Global Intelligence
Throughout the Cold War, the singular nature of the strategic threat from the Soviet Union provided U.S. intelligence with a remarkably stable target. Today, intelligence is required to provide political and military leaders with strategic and operational information on an increasingly diverse range of political, military, leadership, and scientific and technological developments worldwide.
Human Intelligence. Performance of HUMINT must be optimized to gain access and insights into some of the most difficult "targets," e.g., terrorist cells, hard and deeply buried targets, closed regimes, and CBRNE weapons development and deployment plans. The United States needs to enhance human intelligence capabilities and tools not only to gather better HUMINT but also to enable better positioning of technical collection systems. Finally, human intelligence reporting must be integrated into the situational awareness display that provides joint forces with battlespace visualization through the Global Command and Control System Common Operational Picture.
Emerging Technologies. The Department will vigorously pursue the development and exploitation of technologies that can significantly increase U.S. advantage in intelligence collection, analysis, and security. Some of the most promising include:
- Low-observable technologies that may be applied to collection platforms;
- Nanotechnology that may result in miniature, mobile, autonomous sensors that could penetrate the secure and remote facilities of an adversary;
- Advanced parallel processing and quantum computing to provide real-time processes, decryption, translation, and transcription of communications;
- Biometrics for tracking adversaries and providing secure authentication of individuals seeking network or facility access; and
- Commercial imagery for remote sensing of the earth.
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)
DoD is pursuing investment strategies and migration plans for an integrated, cost-effective mix of unmanned aerial vehicles, manned platforms, spaceborne, maritime, and terrestrial systems responsive to future collection needs and challenges. Efforts are underway to accelerate the procurement of additional Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms and sensors. Enhanced Space-based Radar (SBR) systems are also required to provide global, long-range ground moving target indicator capability to augment existing airborne capabilities. Commercial systems, especially satellite imagery, are being integrated into U.S. ISR capabilities.
Sensors. A wide range of imagery intelligence (IMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) sensors are needed to respond to current and future requirements. Satellite IMINT sensors need to provide long-dwell capabilities. SIGINT payloads are needed for UAVs as well as for specialized shipboard collection sensors to capture modernized radio frequency signals from state and non-state threats. Extensive airborne SIGINT modernization efforts are needed to provide low- and high-band collection capabilities that elude currently deployed systems. MASINT's multi-disciplinary scope offers great potential. MASINT sensor development and deployment - particularly for such purposes as sampling for agents and collection against hard and deeply buried targets - is critical to maintaining U.S. military advantages.
Collaborative ISR Operations. The ISR community must move toward a collaborative enterprise to achieve more responsive support for civilian decision-makers and commanders engaged in planning and executing operations. Collaborative capabilities are needed to permit agile and adaptive strategies, plans, and operations, as well as rapid sharing of analysis and time-sensitive information. A fused information picture must provide decision-makers and commanders with a near real-time capability to support operations and visualize the operational space. Decision aids and other tools are needed to develop a coherent strategy and plan and then to enable decision makers to adjust rapidly to emerging situations. Such systems are essential to establishing an effective, efficient, and responsive ISR posture in joint and combined operations.
Tasking, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TPED)
Future military operations will require TPED approaches that integrate all collection disciplines, including IMINT, SIGINT, MASINT, HUMINT, and open sources. Integrated TPED must accommodate new types of multi- media, multi-spectral, and multi-source information, including commercial imagery. A capability to incorporate real-time video, integrate information acquired from non-intelligence sources - such as advanced aircraft radar or commercial satellite imagery - and efficiently exploit long- dwell and stare systems is essential to meet future military requirements. Future TPED will be expected to support multiple echelons, including tactical and national systems and to operate across diverse security domains. Migrating to a more integrated architecture that takes advantage of multiple intelligence disciplines and robust networking will improve the timeliness and quality of intelligence information needed by defense- related consumers of intelligence.
As target sets become more diverse and collection sources more varied, tying this scarce and disparate information together requires trained and analytical judgment. Investments need to focus on building a workforce with the required skills, and with the analytical tools and databases needed to improve support to planning.
Developing Transformational Capabilities
A fundamental challenge confronting DoD is ensuring that U.S. forces have the capabilities they need to carry out the new defense strategy and meet the demands of the 21st century. Toward that end, it is imperative that the United States invests and transforms its forces and capabilities. The Department's commitment to modernization has three main parts:
- Exploiting research and development to ensure that U.S. forces maintain a decisive lead in technologies critical to transformation;
- Advancing key transformation initiatives; and
- Selectively recapitalizing legacy forces to meet near-term challenges and to provide near-term readiness.
Research and Development
A robust research and development effort is imperative to achieving the Department's transformation objectives. DoD must maintain a strong science and technology (S&T) program that supports evolving military needs and ensures technological superiority over potential adversaries. Meeting transformation objectives also will require new information systems. These must be married with technological advances in other key areas, including stealth platforms, unmanned vehicles, and smart submunitions. To provide the basic research for these capabilities, the QDR calls for a significant increase in funding for S&T programs to a level of three percent of DoD spending per year.
During the Cold War, U.S. government programs were a primary impetus for research into new technologies, particularly in areas such as computers and materials. Today and well into the foreseeable future, however, DoD will rely on the private sector to provide much of the leadership in developing new technologies. Thus, the Department has embarked on an effort (a) to turn to private enterprise for new ways to move ideas from the laboratory to the operating forces, (b) to tap the results of innovations developed in the private sector, and (c) to blend government and private research where appropriate. This "quiet revolution" will take advantage of science and technology and continue to provide U.S. forces with technological superiority.
In parallel with a new emphasis on research and development, DoD must give increased priority to maintaining a robust test and evaluation program, which will require test centers and ranges. While transformation offers U.S. forces the promise of revolutionary capabilities, the products of this transformation must be tested thoroughly before they are deployed. This need for testing - and particularly for testing capabilities conducted over very long distances - requires the Department to maintain and modernize highly instrumented ranges and to manage the challenges of range encroachment. A robust test and evaluation program will maximize the return on future procurement expenditures, while strengthening the public's confidence in defense acquisitions.
Transformation Initiatives
In order to advance U.S. transformation efforts, the new defense strategy identifies key operational goals for deterring conflict and conducting military operations. To improve the linkage between strategy and investments, DoD's investment resources will be focused on achieving six operational goals in the following ways:
- Protect bases of operation at home and abroad and defeat the threat of CBRNE weapons.
DoD maintains many unique capabilities for mitigating and managing the consequences of terrorist attacks on American soil. The Department must be prepared to provide support to state and local authorities, if requested by the lead federal agency. DoD is enhancing its anti-terrorism and force protection programs. It is also increasing investment in chemical and biological countermeasures, including personal protection for DoD personnel. Moreover, DoD has established Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, composed of National Guard personnel and the Marine Corps' Chemical- Biological Incident Response Force. These teams stand ready to provide support, if directed. To improve DoD's ability to provide such support, the QDR calls for selected readiness enhancements to the Army's Reserve Component.
The continued proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles poses a threat to U.S. territory, to U.S. forces abroad, at sea, and in space, and to U.S. allies and friends. To counter this threat, the United States is developing missile defenses as a matter of priority. Integrating missile defenses with other defensive as well as offensive means will safeguard the Nation's freedom of action, enhance deterrence by denial, and mitigate the effects of attack if deterrence fails. The ability to provide missile defenses in anti-access and area-denial environments will be essential to assure friends and allies, protect critical areas of access, and defeat adversaries. DoD must be prepared to provide near-term capabilities to defend against rapidly emerging threats and more robust capabilities that evolve over time.
DoD has refocused and revitalized the missile defense program, shifting from a single-site "national" missile defense approach to a broad-based research, development, and testing effort aimed at deployment of layered missile defenses. These changes in the missile defense program will permit the exploration of many previously untested technologies and approaches that will produce defenses able to intercept missiles of various ranges and in various phases of flight. These defenses will help protect U.S. forward-deployed forces. Moreover, they will provide limited defense against missile threats not only for the American people, but also for U.S. friends and allies. - Assure information systems in the face of attack and conduct effective information operations.
Information operations provide the means to rapidly collect, process, disseminate, and protect information while denying these capabilities to adversaries. Such operations provide the capability to influence perceptions, perform computer network defense and attack missions, conduct electronic warfare, and carry out other protective actions. Information operations represent a critical capability enhancement for transformed U.S. forces.
The QDR highlights both the imperative for the United States to maintain an unsurpassed capability to conduct information operations, as well as the need to strengthen U.S. capabilities in these areas. DoD must also develop an integrated approach to developing information system requirements, acquiring systems, and programming for the force of tomorrow. The ability to conduct information operations has become a core competency for the Department. - Project and sustain U.S. forces in distant anti-access and area-denial environments.
The defense strategy rests on the assumption that U.S. forces have the ability to project power worldwide. The United States must retain the capability to send well-armed and logistically supported forces to critical points around the globe, even in the face of enemy opposition, or to locations where the support infrastructure is lacking or has collapsed. For U.S. forces to gain the advantage in such situations, they must have the ability to arrive quickly at non-traditional points of debarkation to mass fire against an alerted enemy and to mask their own movements to deceive the enemy and bypass its defenses. Consequently, DoD must carefully monitor attempts by adversaries to develop capabilities that could detect and attack U.S. forces as they approach conflict areas or hold at risk critical ports and airbases with missiles and CBRNE attacks.
The QDR emphasizes the need for new investments that would enable U.S. forces to defeat anti-access and area-denial threats and to operate effectively in critical areas. Such investments will include: addressing the growing threat posed by submarines, air defense systems, cruise missiles, and mines; accelerating development of the Army Objective Force; enhancing power projection and forcible entry capabilities; defeating long-range means of detection; enabling long-range attack capabilities; enhancing protection measures for strategic transport aircraft; and ensuring U.S. forces can sustain operations under chemical or biological attack. - Deny enemies sanctuary by providing persistent surveillance, tracking, and rapid engagement.
Likely enemies of the United States and its allies will rely on sanctuaries-such as remote terrain, hidden bunkers, or civilian "shields" - for protection. The capability to find and strike protected enemy forces while limiting collateral damage will improve the deterrent power of the United States and give the President increased options for response if deterrence fails. Such a capability would not only reduce the likelihood of aggression, but would offer the National Command Authorities the ability to respond immediately in the event of hostilities.
Achieving this objective will require investments in a wide range of cross-Service programs. Investments in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) initiatives must be bolstered. Also emphasis must be placed on manned and unmanned long-range precision strike assets, related initiatives for new small munitions, and the ability to defeat hard and deeply buried targets.
DoD will accelerate the conversion of Trident submarines to guided missile submarines. DoD will procure unmanned combat aerial vehicles and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles such as Global Hawk. The Department will also increase procurement of precision weapons.
Special Operations Forces will need the ability to conduct covert deep insertions over great distances and will need enhanced C4ISR capabilities to remain in contact with their commanders and to ensure access to real-time intelligence in a number of forms. These capabilities will enable Special Operations Forces to access additional communication, intelligence, and firepower assets in support of their missions deep in hostile environments and to aid in the reduction of friendly losses and casualties. These capabilities will also enhance the strategic and operational agility of Special Operations Forces. - Enhance the capability and survivability of space systems.
Because many activities conducted in space are critical to America's national security and economic well being, the ability of the United States to access and utilize space is a vital national security interest. During crisis or conflict, potential adversaries may target U.S., allied, and commercial space assets as an asymmetric means of countering or reducing U.S. military operational effectiveness, intelligence capabilities, economic and societal stability, and national will. Ensuring the freedom of access to space and protecting U.S. national security interests in space are priorities for the Department.
The mission of space control is to ensure the freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and, when directed, to deny such freedom of action to adversaries. As the foundation for space control, space surveillance will receive increased emphasis. DoD will pursue modernization of the aging space surveillance infrastructure, enhance the command and control structure, and evolve the system from a cataloging and tracking capability to a system providing space situational awareness.
In recognition of the high-technology force multipliers provided by space systems, the QDR places increased emphasis on developing the capabilities to conduct space operations. Ensuring freedom of access to space and protecting U.S. national security interests are key priorities that must be reflected in future investment decisions. - Leverage information technology and innovative concepts to develop interoperable Joint C4ISR.
Information technology will provide a key foundation for the effort to transform U.S. armed forces for the 21st century. The recent U.S. experience in Kosovo underscored the need for high-capacity, interoperable communications systems that can rapidly transmit information over secure, jam-resistant datalinks to support joint forces. In the near future, the United States must also develop alternatives capable of overcoming current and projected bandwidth constraints. The Department must stay abreast of the new communications landscape and leverage it to maximize U.S. advantages in this area.
Future operations will not only be joint, but also include Reserve Components, civilian specialists, and other federal agencies and state organizations. Most likely they will involve a coalition effort with other countries. The effectiveness of these operations will depend upon the ability of DoD to share information and collaborate externally as well as internally. Interoperability, which enables joint and combined operations, is a key element in all DoD operational and systems architectures. It must include the ability to overcome language and cultural barriers. Experience shows that fixing systems after the fact to achieve interoperability is typically costly and often fails to satisfy mission requirements and creates security problems. The better approach is to incorporate interoperability at the outset in designing new systems. However, the Department will continue its efforts, where cost effective, to bring its legacy systems up to interoperability standards.
Based on QDR deliberations, funding will be focused on achieving end-to-end Command, Control, Communication, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities. An integrated joint and combined C4ISR capability is necessary to ensure that accurate and relevant information can be gathered swiftly from various sources and then securely transmitted to forces and their commanders. Improving communications must be a priority for U.S. conventional, special operations, and strategic forces. Information technology offers U.S. forces the potential of conducting joint operations more effectively, with smaller forces and fewer weapon systems.
To achieve these operational goals, the Defense Department must transform military training. Three basic tenets describe the changes the Department will implement to transform training in parallel with the transformation of its missions and forces:
- Reverse the erosion of DoD's training range infrastructure and ensure that ranges are sustainable, capable, and available;
- Revise acquisition and logistics policies and procedures to emphasize training and the timeliness of fielding modern, fully capable training systems; and
- Use distributed learning technologies to reengineer individual training and job performance.
Recapitalization of the Department's Legacy Forces
The Department of Defense is committed to transforming its forces to meet future challenges. This transformation will be conducted in a timely but prudent manner. In particular, prudence dictates that those legacy forces critical to DoD's ability to defeat current threats must be sustained as transformation occurs. Consequently, while emphasizing transformation, DoD will also selectively recapitalize legacy forces. This effort will be a challenge because recapitalization of all elements of U.S. forces since the end of the Cold War has been delayed for so long. As the force aged throughout the 1990s, few replacements were procured. Without a significant effort to increase resources devoted to recapitalization of weapons systems, the force structure will not only continue to age but, perhaps more significantly, become operationally and technologically obsolete.
The need to recapitalize is evident from the rising age of the current force structure, particularly tactical aircraft. On average, the age of Air Force air superiority aircraft now stands at almost 20 years, an unprecedented level. The multi-role fleet will continue to age as well, with its average age projected to reach 20 years in the coming decade. The situation with other platforms, while not as dramatic as that of tactical aircraft, is also problematic. Overall, there is an imperative need for recapitalization of legacy systems by replacement, selected upgrade, and life extension.
Recognizing this imperative, the Department plans to pursue selective upgrades to systems such as Abrams tanks, B-1 bombers, Navy ship self- defense, and amphibious assault vehicles to sustain capabilities critical to ensuring success in any near-term conflict.
DoD must overcome trends of the past to sustain a balanced defense program that maintains near-term readiness without mortgaging the long- term capabilities of the force. To support this goal, DoD is committed to identifying efficiencies and reductions in less relevant capabilities that can free resources to be reinvested to accelerate the Department's transformation efforts. The Military Departments and Defense Agencies will identify significant, auditable savings to be reinvested in high-priority transformation initiatives.
In light of the markedly increased requirements associated with the unfolding U.S. war against terrorism, prior estimates of available resources for defense are no longer accurate. Before the September 2001 attacks, DoD had planned for gradual increases in defense spending accompanied by roughly corresponding increases in available resources realized through internal efficiencies. At this juncture, the Defense Department is developing new estimates of needed funding, in line with emerging, new military requirements. At the same time, it is critical that DoD's efforts to realize internal efficiencies not be relaxed, as any increased funding will be urgently needed to meet the Nation's new defense demands.
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