Table of Contents

The new administration's top defense priority should be the completion of the Pentagon's great unfinished business of the 1990s: transforming the U.S. military into a leaner, faster, higher-tech fighting machine. This transformation, known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), is imperative if we are to meet the dramatically changing threats of the 21st century. Begun nearly three decades ago, the RMA has hit a wall, and the new president needs to revive it. Unless we streamline, modernize, and restructure our forces, we risk becoming locked into a military structure that is unsuited to the demands that are now being placed on it. Today hostile powers can find increasingly affordable ways to counter American dominance, either through low-tech terrorism or high-tech cyberwarfare, thus weakening our massive advantage in conventional forces.

The defense debate during the last presidential campaign was modest and focused narrowly on readiness, the military budget, recruitment, and retention. The new president, and his secretary of defense, need to broaden and elevate the issue, making fundamental reform the centerpiece of defense policy. As commander in chief, the president can overcome service rivalries to force restructuring and mandate reform of a culture long wedded to parochial interests. Presidential leadership is the sine qua non of any serious military reform.

Today's military is still enmeshed in Cold War-era relationships, hierarchies, and planning based on the expectation of massive land warfare. Even with an overlay of smart weaponry and lightning-fast communications systems, our military is still built around a Napoleonic force structure -- platoons, companies, regiments, brigades, divisions, and corps -- more suited to a vast army of foot soldiers sweeping across Europe than a fully wired, fast-moving battle force that can respond to such varied crises as Kosovo, Kuwait, and East Timor.

But money and technology alone are not the key to the RMA; the president needs to go beyond new weapons and information systems. Military transformation requires far greater integration of the four services, a revised force structure, and changed relationships, from the commander in chief to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the thousands of military personnel -- in effect, a shift in military culture.

As desirable as this sounds, there is in fact both institutional and political resistance to reform. Institutionally, officers up and down the military command structure have a vested interest, both careerist and budgetary, in the status quo. Rocking the procurement boat or shutting down a weapons design program, for example, has rarely advanced a military career. Politically, members of Congress focus on everything from spare parts to troop pay rather than the military's true difficulties: inefficiencies rooted in strategies suited for yesterday's war. Both the military and the politicians, by habit, seek to enhance what is already there rather than start over with something new. Pork barrel politics and concern with existing defense jobs play their usual role.

The result is not only a stubborn clinging to the wrong hardware and doctrine for coming confrontations, but a defense spending spiral that could soon be out of control. If we stick to our current force structure and procurement schedule, we will commit the nation to the mushrooming costs predicted by the military chiefs before Congress in October 2000 -- $1.7 trillion over the next five years. This is about $200 billion more than the current budgets include; it is twice as much as Vice President Gore called for in the campaign and four times as much as Governor Bush advocated.

Countries that aspire to counter American military superiority -- such as China, Iraq, and Iran -- know they cannot succeed with forces built on Industrial Age terms: conventional force against conventional force. Recognizing that Information Age technology is a global commodity, they are studying how to apply it to their own military. Less constrained by entrenched structures and the culture of military superiority, they can find creative ways to exploit the seams in our current military structure and to develop new capabilities. Putting into practice what Americans mainly talk about, they may move quickly toward more comprehensive military intelligence, better communications, and precision use of force. Within a decade, some could achieve their own RMA, even before we complete ours.

China, for example, is already devoting major resources to developing a reserve force of computer experts and specialists in information warfare, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. It is trying to leapfrog its current outdated information systems to a sophisticated network of digital and satellite communications which would allow it, for the first time, to project power and achieve information dominance over a competitor like the United States.

Hence the pressing necessity of consummating the American revolution in military affairs as quickly as possible and while we have a lead. We can update our hardware, alter the way the military is managed, and change the way we are organized to take advantage of America's comparative technological advantage. Because we can rely more on computer technology that drives the Information Age -- technology that is marked by prodigious increases in capability and falling costs -- we can build a better military at less cost than by staying on our current path. We could, if we decided to do so, complete the transformation of our military by 2010.

The Department of Defense (DOD) recognizes the benefit of transformation; the current plans of the military services and of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all point to a more capable future U.S. military. Yet DOD's schedule for achieving the RMA is two decades. This is well beyond the time frame that requires decisions on resource allocations over the next five years. In short, to DOD -- and military services in particular -- the notion of true transformation remains a remote, conjectural possibility, not an urgent agenda item.

This resistance is rooted in fear of fundamental change in the basic structure and operational concepts of the military. Technology is transforming American society because the structures, organizations, and behavioral styles are also changing; the military must also be prepared to revamp its systems and fundamental concepts to take full advantage of America's technological edge. After all, we lead in the technology that drives the revolution in military affairs -- advanced computer processing power, global networks, space-based navigation and observation, a wide range of integrated surveillance sensors, and a growing inventory of relatively inexpensive precision munitions. But to implement these technologies, we must restructure our forces to make them more agile, remove the organizational stovepipes that keep the services separate, and promote joint operations as much as the new technology allows.

To do this, we must fundamentally challenge the military cultures in which service competition is rooted. This is discomforting to many in the Pentagon. But we do not need a military force dedicated to the comfort and contentment of the defense establishment. We need a force that is better able to cope with the demands of rapid international change and proliferating military technology -- a force that will be cost-effective today and in the years ahead.

In 1997, the Progressive Policy Institute outlined an RMA force structure that could be achieved by 2007 at roughly 15 percent less cost than Defense Department projections for its force structure plan ($2.2 trillion for the RMA force compared to a projection of about $2.6 trillion for the Defense Department plan). Since then, our estimates of the 10-year costs of moving to a true RMA force have increased somewhat, driven largely by expanding an interservice experimentation program to identify and reduce any unforeseen risks in making the changes we proposed. But the Defense Department's cost estimates for maintaining its current march into the future have also risen in large part because of the hurry-up recapitalization effort the department envisions to make up for low procurement funding between 1986 and 1997. The bottom line is that we now believe that putting in place a RMA force by 2010 would cost as much as 20 percent less than what the military chiefs estimate for maintaining the current commitment to slow, incremental transformation over the same period.

To consummate the American Revolution in Military Affairs, the new president and his administration should:

1) Ensure that the new secretary of defense is committed to transforming the U.S. military within this decade. The new secretary must understand and believe in the promises of the American revolution in military affairs. He must be willing and able to assert control over the military services and to make significant changes in the way the Pentagon works. These changes should include: