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Hard Charger
 
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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 16:25:01 -0400
From: "Press Service" <afisnews_sender@DTIC.MIL> | This is spam | Add to Address Book
Subject: Wolfowitz Explains Pentagon Strategy Changes
To: DEFENSE-PRESS-SERVICE-L@DTIC.MIL
By Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 23, 2003 — The 9-11 terrorist attacks
confirmed for DoD leaders the need for significant changes
in U.S defense strategy to one that would focus on
"uncertainty and surprise," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee June 18.
Those changes he said are needed to respond to future
threats to the United States for which he said looked "more
and more asymmetrical," where adversaries seek to win using
nontraditional methods.
He noted that the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade
Center were evidence that adversaries would seek to "avoid
U.S. strengths by targeting its weaknesses."
"That attack largely confirmed the strategic direction and
planning principles that we had already developed,
particularly the emphasis on uncertainty and surprise," he
said. "And it confirmed our focus on preparing for
asymmetric threats and on the consequent need to respond
with agility in unfamiliar places around the world."
Dating to the summer of 2001, as the Pentagon was preparing
input for the 2002 Quadrennial Defense Review, Wolfowitz
said that both DoD military and civilian leaders had
already formulated a "new strategic direction" for the
department.
"We agreed, both military and civilians, that there was
need for some significant changes in U.S. defense strategy
to take account of both the changing threat and the
changing nature of our capabilities."
However, he said, "our own asymmetric advantages were
enormous and growing, and the increased importance of
knowledge, precision, speed, lethality and surprise in the
conduct of 21st century military operations gave us
potential for large asymmetric advantages over our
enemies."
Wolfowitz told the House committee that in developing the
"new direction" for the department, the Pentagon leaders
looked at certain risks, as outlined in the Defense
Department's Annual Report to the President and the
Congress.
"We needed to look at risks in more than just the
conventional way of the risk of a war if one takes place.
That was one dimension of risk," he said. "But after a lot
of discussion, we concluded that we needed to be judging
the defense program based on how it addressed four
categories of risk," he explained.
Those risk categories include:
--Force management risks — investing in people and
readiness, which he said deals with "how we sustain our
people and our infrastructure."
--Operational risks — sizing and selectively modernizing
forces for an era of uncertainty, the "classical
warfighting risk," he said.
-- Future-challenges risk or transforming the force-- those
risks associated with investments or underinvestment in
providing the capabilities that our military will need in
the future, he said.
--Institutional risks, which call for better effectiveness
through accountability and efficiency, "the risks that come
from having inefficient processes and inefficient use of
resources," he added.
"What we concluded was that it is very important as we
develop our defense program to carefully balance among
those four risks, and not simply 'sub-optimize' against a
single one at the expense of serious risks in another
area," he said.
Wolfowitz said to confront this world where we had to
expect even greater surprise than historically, and more
uncertainty, the Pentagon shifted its planning from the
"threat-driven model" which guided its planning throughout
most of the Cold War to a "capabilities-based approach."
"In effect, what we said was that while it is very
difficult to predict who might attack us or when and where
they might do so, we could hope much better to identify the
asymmetric capabilities that they might bring against us,
and the asymmetric advantages that we could have in
defeating them," he aid.
In addition, he said the Pentagon shifted from a "force-
planning construct" that had been focused for the 10 years
after the Cold War in dealing with two major regional
contingencies in two specific regions -- the Persian Gulf
and Korea.
Wolfowitz said that the new force-planning construct, that
was detailed in the 2002 QDR report, guides the shaping and
sizing of U.S. forces: "first to defend the United States;
second, to deter aggression and coercion from a forward
posture in critical regions; third, to be able to swiftly
defeat aggression in two overlapping major conflicts," he
said.
He added the planning also allows for the president to
conduct a limited number of small-scale contingency
operations.
"In changing from the two-major-theater-war approach, we do
not go to a one-war, or a one-and-a-half war, or a strategy
of win-hold-win. What we proposed is something entirely
different," he told the committee.
Wolfowitz said the department's new approach" shifts the
focus of planning from conflicts in Korea and the Persian
Gulf, to building a portfolio of capabilities that can deal
with the "full spectrum of possible force requirements."
He said the new approach would still enable the United
States to prevail in two overlapping conflicts, but the
emphasis is on "speed and delivering early combat power" to
over-match the enemy.
"We do not want our forces in warfighting theaters to have
to wait until reinforcements arrive to blunt an enemy's
attack," Wolfowitz noted. He added, "We want our forces to
have the capability to defeat attacks early and
immediately."
In applying the defense strategy, Wolfowitz told the
committee, "We're trying to align all of our activities and
programs with that new strategy. And in an operation as
large as ours, doing that alignment is not something that
happens easily or quickly," he said.
He said the Pentagon plans to "stick with the force
structure" that it initially planned in the summer of 2001,
but "only after careful examination of proposals both to
increase it and to reduce it."
"Indeed, after much analysis in the summer of 2001, we
concluded that it would be a mistake to reduce our force
structure," he said. "We were initially criticized in that
decision for being too conservative, but we felt very
strongly on Sept. 12th that the events of the day before
had already vindicated our conclusion. I think everything
we've seen in the year-and-a-half since then reinforces
that conclusion," he added.
But the military's end-strength was only one challenge in
the new defense strategy that Wolfowitz brought before the
committee. Another challenge before the Pentagon is how
best to reshape the force, realign its posture, and manage
the force, he said.
"The forces that we have need to be modernized and
transformed," he said, adding that the military has made
"great strides" during recent military operations. However
he said, "there is much more to do."
What the military must do to transform its force is
capitalize on force attributes such as knowledge, speed,
precision and lethality, Wolfowitz said. He said those
attributes were used during military operations in Iraq and
are "key to 21st century combat success."
During operations in Iraq, he said use of small special
operations units and of intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance improved these forces' "knowledge of the
location and disposition of enemy forces."
He said speed in battle was demonstrated when U.S. forces
arrived in the Iraq theater in less than half the time they
did during 1991's Operation Desert Storm.
Also, he noted the "increases in precision-dropped
munitions" and the importance of precision that "comes from
precise targeting."
"We saw in Afghanistan, we saw in Iraq, something that's
been made possible by the networking that we have
introduced into our forces, with new information technology
that allows brave soldiers on the ground to call in precise
targets that airplanes can't see, but that they can hit
with incredible lethality," he told the committee.
Wolfowitz said the precise targeting of munitions, coupled
close-air support for ground forces produced a lethal
effect that "defeated the Iraqi forces across the depth of
the battle space," he said.
"In combination, those advances enabled a force about one-
half the size to achieve in about one-half the time, using
about one-seventh the munitions, a far more ambitious
objective even than what we achieved in Desert Storm," he
said.
Wolfowitz told the committee that the Defense Department is
currently aligning all "our activities and programs with
that new strategy." He added, however, that in an operation
as large as Defense Department, that alignment is not
something that happens "easily or quickly."
_______________________________________________________
NOTE: This is a plain text version of a web page. If your e-mail
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http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2003/n06232003_200306235.html
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The envisioned stratgey changes are hardly surprising and is the result of our evolving capabilities. The key missing ingredient is getting high quality intel that is reliable and timely. This remains the achilles heel of our future war fighting capabilities. We had problems in Afghanistan and glaring intel failures in Iraq. Without
intelligence is the key ingredient to making war plans. Bad intel or no intel can doom or severely limit the effectiveness of an operation.
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Seasoned Vet
Group: Past PNET Supporter
Last Login: 9/7/2005 7:22 PM
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quote:
"Indeed, after much analysis in the summer of 2001, we
concluded that it would be a mistake to reduce our force
structure," he said. "We were initially criticized in that
decision for being too conservative, but we felt very
strongly on Sept. 12th that the events of the day before
had already vindicated our conclusion. I think everything
we've seen in the year-and-a-half since then reinforces
that conclusion," he added.
Ok folks, there it is in black and white. Rummy is NOT going to reduce the size of the US Army. So all you chicken little's can stop worrying now. Rummy is going to transform the Army and it will come out of this a better Army. The Army has had 10+ years of stagnation and aimlessly wandering for direction since the end of GW1. The Cold War is over folks, it's past time to break the paradigm. This stuff should have been going on during the Klintoon years, but he, and the people he appointed, had their heads stuck up their 4th POC when it came to defense.
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