Keeping Pace with the Military-Technological Revolution

President Clinton took office in the midst of a revolutionary shift in the international security environment. Reacting to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the administration’s new civilian leaders at the Pentagon undertook a “Bottom-Up Review” of U.S. military requirements to set the guidelines for the administration’s $1.3trillion, five-year defense program. Despite its protestations that we must look to the future, the Bottom-Up Review is mired in the thinking of the past. It focuses most of its efforts on preparing to refight what retired General Colin Powell has called “the Cold War battle that didn’t come” instead of analyzing how U.S. defense posture could be reoriented to address future security challenges. Engaging in old thinking would be risky enough if the Department of Defense (DOD) had to concern itself with only the security challenges brought about by the geopolitical revolution. But there is another revolution that U.S. defense planners will ignore at their peril. DOD needs to consider the potential effects of an emerging militarytechnological revolution that will have profound effects on the way wars are fought. Growing evidence exists that over the next several decades, the military systems and operations, and, in some respects, the organizations and force structures that dominated the major military establishments during the Cold War will be superseded by new, far more capable means and methods of warfare and by new or greatly modified military organizations. Exploiting this military-technical revolution should be an integral part of the Pentagon’s long-term strategic planning process. Stimulated by the accelerating rate of global technological change, military-technological revolutions are taking place with increasing frequency. Because they radically change the nature of the military competition in peace and war, they have profound consequences for global and regional military balances. And because military-technological revolutions can occur in relatively short periods of time, they often lead to the unexpected and seemingly rapid decline of