The 34th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning and Military Transformation

Introduction by Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., President, IFPA

Dr. Pfaltzgraff:—includes a very heavy focus on military transformation. As I thought about planning this meeting, it seemed to me that to fail to have the speaker we have before us, would be somewhat like Hamlet without the Danish price. So, I am very happy that Admiral Cebrowski has agreed to speak as the opening speaker in this second day of the meeting.

Admiral Cebrowski became Director of the Office of Force Transformation, in the Department of Defense, following his retirement from the United States Navy in 2001. During his long and distinguished navy career, among many other assignments, Admiral Cebrowski served as President of the Naval War College in Newport. He commanded the America Battle Group, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway, and the assault ship U.S.S. Guam. He had combat deployments in various places, but especially here, in this context, in Vietnam and in the Persian Gulf, as well as tours of duty with the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Joint Staff as Director of Command, Control, Communications, and Computers. And, I might add, also—because it is especially relevant to the present work that Admiral Cebrowski is engaged in—he holds a Master of Science in Computer Systems Management from the Naval Postgraduate School. So, he is one of the nation’s, the Navy’s, the Department of Defense’s, leading expert on Information Age Warfare, and it is with great pleasure that I welcome out Admiral Cebrowski to this conference, as our opening speaker for the second day.

Art? Welcome again.

Vice Admiral Cebrowski: Thank you, Dr. Pfaltzgraff, and it’s a pleasure to be here, of course, for this wonderful event—a very important event which is highly regarded.

When dealing with the issue of security planning and transformation, there are, of course, many avenues down which one can go. I have selected three of those, and they’re on the graphic before you. And, that really reflects my three main points.

First set(?) there, indeed, are issues of regret. It is important to achieve balance in pursuing those issues. And thirdly, but of course, this will have implications for the force. Now, an issue of regret, of course, is one of those things—one of those issues, capabilities, opportunities—which, if not pursued, will result in a regret at some future date. That future date, of course, is undeterminant, but when one looks at the rate of change, which we have of the world today, you can’t but assume that if these are indeed our capabilities with which one should pursue, that you’d want to do this with some alacrity.

So, normally what we would do is we’d start off with a great deal of theory, and then come down to the bottom line. What I’d like to do is just one graphic of theory and then jump to the answers, so let’s take a look at the general format for transforming defense. I use the model proposed by Eric(?) Bonhoeffer(?), writing in Sloan(?) Magazine several years ago, that corporate strategy has three main elements.

The first part is one of continuous change, but in very small steps, along a fitness landscape in which one tries to get better, essentially, at what one is currently doing. This is a matter of management efficiency, good stewardship. This is the realm of recapitalization, modernization, and indeed, where any institution is going to spend the lion-share(?) of its effort. This is of no concern to me, because it is not transformation. I am more interested in the other two areas, the second one being a multitude of exploratory jumps, if you will, on the fitness landscape, trying to push up the boundaries of confidences. The third part is big bets, not necessarily that one bets the family farm—of course, we don’t do that in national security — but rather, that the consequences of having placed these bets can be so massive, so profound, that changes the character of war. It changes societies, and we can done this.

One is tempted to say that this is very, very hard to do; it is not likely to happen. But if you look back in our history, you find that we have done this—and we have done this repeatedly—our nuclear-tip ballistic missiles, the Polaris Missile Program, stealth, GPS, Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. There are several such items which changed the character of war and, indeed, had a profound effect on society itself. Sensing and communicating from space is another good example.

But the trouble with these examples is they’re retrospective, and what you really want to know is, “So, what do you want me to do now? What might some future changes, what would some future exploratory jumps, look like? Some future big bets? And how might they change things?” And that was what brought me to issues of regret. And what I’ve done is, I’ve created a subset of those, that are oriented around combat, and we look at the various elements of combat. I have used the list of six; other sources combine them in five. But there are my six, and the issues of regret which emerge from that.

I’d like to quickly talk through some of these issues, and then we’ll go back—we’ll highlight some of those later on. Under the heading of fires, there’re non-lethal capabilities. The Department of Defense —which, as you know, has a budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars —only spends about $50 million dollars a year on non-lethals. This is inadequate. What this means is that soldiers at checkpoints have to act on—in a binary mode, if you will, of applying lethal force or accepting intolerable risk. We should be able to do better by our soldiers and provide another broader choice in such situations. Non-lethals are an area of growth force.

Another area which is also closely connected with that is that of directive(?) energy—directive energy of various types. I’m not talking about just laser energy. But there are other forms of directive energy that can be used for both lethal and non-lethal means—used for communications, used for sensing.

And then there’s the item of re-directed energy. Energy is, well, has some marvelous energy weapons, has some marvelous characteristics. For example, they’re not affected by gravity. But that is also a problem; because they are not affect by gravity, it’s difficult to take them over the horizon, because there’s no ballistic fall of shot to help you with that problem, and you can’t put wings on it to make it fly around. So, you reach for some extraordinary tools to help you with this. And they are indeed available to us, and there are programs for this—I can’t say programs; they are indeed research efforts for this. But they are not funded(?) at the kind of level that is likely to produce a result which is consistent with the actual available technology.

Maneuver—several elements of maneuver fall into areas of potential regret. We need to have operational maneuver from the sea and from strategic distances as part of our great national capabilities list. And this then raises to an element of primacy, of concern, of the notion of sea basin.

Also, the vertical battle space—we’re moving to the non-continuous battle space, which is profoundly enabled by advances in information technology. However, those advances will come to naught if there are not corresponding advances in battlefield mobility, particularly vertical mobility. And then, of course, there is the lift, which would be required to support operational maneuver.

In the area of protection, work has to be done—of course, in urban operations, and much has been written about this. And the point here to be made is we’re not talking about taking a city—certainly not talking about destroying a city—rather, what we’re talking about is moving into an urban environment and keeping the social structure, the economic structure, the political institutions, up and running—which is a somewhat different approach to urban warfare.

Also, there’s the issue of battlefield medicine. Until about 1930, deaths on the battlefield were largely attributed to disease. In the period of about 1930 to 1940, we took control of the biomedical “battle space,” if you will, through hygiene and antibiotics. However—and we’ve been very successful at that, to the point where deaths in the battlefield due to disease been reduced to nearly zero—however, we run the risk of losing control of that battle space, with the aspect, or with the advent, of such things as bioengineered or genetically-engineered biotoxins and the like, which will have to be, somehow, that will have to be addressed.

In the realm of command and(?) control, we’ve always been concerned about interoperability, but now we see that perhaps the more violable path to that is through developing interdependencies, something which is fully consistent with the emerging concepts of jointness.

In intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, an area of growing concern, there is the need to shift focus to—well, one might call—demand-centered intelligence. If one looks around at the various firms and you want to make some judgments about where to invest, or deal(?) in regard to your own personal portfolio, one of the rules you could use is to make a judgment about whether or not that firm is demand-centered or whether it’s supplier-centered. Supplier-centered firms tend to go out of business. However, the Department of Defense is not going to go out of business. Intelligence is not going to go out of business; it can’t be allowed to. But it has to have the facility or that comes from the demand-center, and a little bit more on that later.

Also in this realm, we need to address the falling barriers to competition in space. And so, we want to pursue operationally and tactically responsive space systems—and I’ll go into that at some depth as well.

And lastly, we need joint demand-centered logistics, and we’ll discuss that a little bit as well.

So, this is my list in the realm of combat. And one can go back to Eric Bonhoeffer’s model and you can place those on(?), and you find that those are what you might call “part two” and “part three” items. Depending on how these items are pursued, they may move from part two to part three, or vice versa. But, certainly, several of those have the potential for changing the character of war, changing how power is developed, and, indeed, changing societies.

Now, one of the questions, of course, that comes up, is, “How do you balance the pursuit of these issues and efforts with the larger national security landscape?” And so, we’ve reached for another model, for this. Back during the Cold War, one might’ve labeled this model this way—on the leftmost axis, one dealt with strategic comparatives. And that had to do principally with those grand strategy relationships which allowed us to leverage the external domain. If you recall, during the Cold War, the operated domain of the free world constituted about 75% of the world’s surface—at the very least—three times the wealth, three and a half times the population of our potential enemies. And it was, of course, strategic comparative that we maintain that relationship.

On the other hand, we also had to deal with the close-in fight, which was focused largely on halting the invading armies. Battles were won by being highly punitive, persistent, and overwhelming. On the other hand, maintaining the peace was a function of containment. And the national capabilities were spread across and balanced on this axis. This was an axis where we largely associated security with defense.

But we’ve moved into a somewhat different world now. Have they(?) much the same axis, but the labeling has changed for us a little bit. First of all, it’s an environment in which we realize that security is really all else, plus defense, on here. Focusing on the horizontal axis, I draw from work done by Barry Postan(?) and written in National Security Journal just a few months ago. On the left hand side, we have the comments, a new way of looking at the strategic comparative of being able to dominate within the commons—that is, the high seas, space, and cyberspace. This is the maneuver space, the great exterior position, which can provide great strategic advantage for us.

However, nothing is decided, in this realm. Ultimately, issues are decided where people live, and that’s the right hand side of the axis. The in-close fight—and that’s on land, in the literals close to the land, in the air, immediately above the land—and these are where decisions are made and political issues are tend to be resolved. And so, there’s a need to balance global stability with local stability.

On the vertical axes, of course, at the bottom, we’re concerned about winning the battle, the combat. The focus here is developing combat power supported by military intelligence. But we realize that war is more than combat, combat is more than shooting, and that if one indeed wants to achieve political objectives and maintain the peace, you have to be talking about all of the elements of power and the supporting of intelligence becomes principally social intelligence.

Now, one can start from a position of primacy—if you will, in the lower left hand quadrant—and then, what you actually have here only, on the left hand side, are two great grand strategy choices, between the approach of primacy and the approach of cooperative engagement. On the right hand side, on the other hand—the lower right hand quadrant—is domain of military victory. But it is the upper right, which is the domain of political victory. The domain of political victory is the most complex domain, and an enemy under attack will always retreat to more complex terrain. And so, you see the movement from the commons, if you will, to the urban areas, and from the military toward the political.

People who will challenge us in a hegemonic fashion will, of course, produce some capabilities and strategies in the commons. People who are unable to do that will pursue denial strategies. And hence, if you look, we are not challenged greatly right now in the commons, and so, you see there is a great deal of concern in the department about denial strategies.

Now, ultimately, you have to get to the upper right hand quadrant; there are two logical paths to do that, and it, in fact, is a two-prong strategy which the nation must pursue over time. The bottom of the graphic is, of course, dominated by the Department of Defense. The top part of the graphic are those other national capabilities which are underwritten by the Department of Defense. And you can populate these squares in various ways. Shown here, for example, are how one might distribute policy decisions concerning technology or economics. And, indeed, it gives one a sense of how various policies concerning those two areas might have to be balanced.

One can also look at various military capabilities, military perspectives, military strategies, and place them on the graphic as well. The lower left, of course, being your realm of strategic power, where as the upper left is more the realm of strategic influence. The lower right is more the realm of combat access; the upper right is more the realm of political access. And a well balanced national capability would have appropriate skills, competencies, spread out across these areas.

So, this is my model essentially, for making a strategic assessment, driven by a sense of balance and a new sense of risk management. You’ll notice that there are many elements here that have to do with alliance partnerships or coalition partners and the like. So, who might these partners be, and where might this effort be focused?

For this, I draw from work done by Tom Barnett, who was with me at the Naval War College and also on my staff in Washington, and is now returned as a professor to the Naval War College. I invite your attention to the graphic, on the left. Those nations which are colored blue, or iron(?) societies that are within them, are largely in what are called the functioning core globalization, that portion of the world’s societies which are capable of participating in, benefiting from, and accepting the rules of globalization. We have the ability, therefore, to make common cores with all of these people, even if those relationships are not formal. They can still be pursued, because we do have a common basis to do that. This is no longer the world of haves and have-nots; this is no longer a necessarily north-south world. But it is a world which, you might say, is bifurcated by the realities of globalization.

We try to look at, establish, what the other areas of the world might be. And so, we look at where we’ve sent the military for the last twelve years—and that’s shown on the graphic there. We drew a line around ninety-five percent of those places, and that yielded the Red Zone. And when we looked inside the Red Zone, we found that that was characterized by the dysfunctional, non-participating gap of globalization. These are nations which are either unwilling or unable to participate in the globalization phenomenon. And it’s where the department has spent the lion-share of its effort and will likely do so in the future. It’s not a perfect map by any means. For example, the most disconnected and dysfunctional society is not included inside that area. And of course, when referring to those(?), there’s North Korea. And indeed, that’s my assessment; you can make your own.

On the other hand, there are other nations which are benefiting from globalization, which happen to be located in very unsavory(?) neighborhoods. And that’s just a reality with which one must deal.

So, how have we responded to this? If we were a business and we billed by billable days, and then we looked how we’ve done over the last several decades, it would yield the graphic that’s on the right. It shows how there’s been considerable growth, and, indeed, the projection of growth in this decade is indeed considerable. And in this growth, we find that all of it, all of the growth, is inside the disconnected gap of globalization. Our business is indeed exploiting security now—exploiting security from the core, into the gap; exploiting security from those nations within the core, to assure those other nations in the core which are less capable of exploiting. It is indeed a growth business. The objective is to keep the world system up and running, to enforce the rules. And it, indeed, then casts us in a role(?) more systems-administrator, than it would be as a punitive warrior. So, these changes indicate—or, this kind of observation indicates that we have to change how we see ourselves.

Ever since Lexington and Concord, those of us in the military have referred to ourselves and the civil society has largely proudly pointed to their citizen soldiers. In 1973, we pursued the Old Volunteer Force, essentially the all-recruited force, which had become a reality in just the last few years with the retirement of the last conscript. And this force has indeed become far more professional. But at the same that’s happened, are people in uniform, for the first time in history, passing through about 1980s, started to refer to themselves as warriors—a term which was normally reserved to the enemy, because it carries certain unsavory connotations. On the other hand, there are also some very laudable connotations to it, and we gleaned those off, applied that to ourselves. And it was very appropriate, because it helped the military come out of the post-Vietnam malaise, to do so. So I certainly support taking on that label, but we have to, indeed, be very much more than that. We have to consider ourselves also enforcers, exporters of security, people who can keep the world system up and running.

And it’s important that we deal with this at an even-handed, balanced way, because, for example, if you review this(?) exclusively that of the warrior, you will talk about projecting power, where as—while that’s good—we also need for you to export security. The warrior would be rather event-focused, and we saw much of that in the news, with the interview of soldiers at the end of the major combat ops in Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, if you’re going to keep the world system up and running, it is twenty-four by seven. The warrior of course prides himself on being very responsive, and indeed, that’s an appropriate trait, but responsiveness tends towards being punitive, whereas the national strategy has called us to not only be responsive, but to also be preventative. And we must do that.

So, if you’re on the left side of this bracket, you’re concerned about access to the battle space, whereas if you’re on the right, you’re concerned about access to the domains of political victory. And the reason one must do this, is because policy outcomes are a function of power and moral principle. The Department, of course, is the power function; we’re meant to do that. And, done well, we will underwrite moral principle to achieve policy outcomes that are desired. Done poorly, instead of underwriting it, we will undermine it. And so, this is a very important equation to keep in mind. And you can see some of this playing out now in Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the realm of conflict moves from issues of power, to issues of moral principle.

So, as one goes on with this, you can see that this is a matter more than just for soldiers. It’s a matter of how the nation sees itself and its larger world security obligations. One of the rules that one might keep in mind in this, is that, as armies get smaller, the number of people involved in war actually becomes larger—indeed, very much larger. As armies represent a smaller fraction of society, enemies, for example, will target the civilian populace. We have seen that already in the ugly attacks in New York and Washington. So, that’s the case, and this gives us a clue, therefore, of how our exporting a business can cause us some consternation and policy shifts in a force that stays roughly level and, indeed, very much smaller, when measured against the force of the 1980s.

The graphic here, of course, revisits this growth, and when activity or demand increases exponentially, as the resources stay flat, policy changes are therefore indicated. In general, you cannot have a curve of this kind of shape going on for very long, and not make some considerable changes. And so, there are at least three policy choices that emerge here. The engagement policy will change, or the civilian component of national security will change —that is, it will increase dramatically—or the allied component of national security will increase dramatically. And there may of course be some other choices, but these are the ones that spring to mind for me as the most obvious. In fact, what generally happens is depending on the situation. One reaches for a mix of all three of these things. There is a certain degree of inevitability in this. The world situation tends to be drive it, and my opinion is that it will strongly favor the last two.

This is not the only such curve of concern, and this brings me, of course, to another one of our issues of regret. The graphic before you here is the relationship between the number of electronic transmissions collected per day by our intelligence surveillance people, over time, with years on the bottom. The steeply-sloped curve is the number of collections; the flat curve at the bottom is the number of analysts. Note that this is on semi-log scale, which means this is indeed a very powerful exponential curve, and if one were to just draw the curve on linear scale, the line would probably extend to the moon.

Now, anytime you have that kind of exponential curve with a resource relationship which is relatively flat, there are going to be some very traumatic changes. And, once again, there are certain policy choices which are indicated here. For example, one can ignore some of the intelligence collection. And you can even triage in an automated fashion. You may reach for some automated analysis, and of course, people do research in this area, but we all know that there are profound limits in the machinery to doing that. Or, we can all become intelligence analysts, and I think that’s what happens. In fact, I think, to a certain extent, all three of these things happen, but we are going to become increasingly sensitive to the power of intelligence and surveillance, and we’re going to position ourselves to leverage these things.

Anytime you have a steeply rising curve like this, the rules are going to change. One is inclined to say, “Well, that’s impossible. That’ll never happen.” Consider that in the early 1920s, when people at AT&T said, “You know, telephones are becoming very, very popular; people are making more calls. All calls are operator-assisted, and at the rate of growth of telephone calls, by the time you reach 1950 or 1960, everyone in America will become a telephone operator.” And that’s exactly what happened. And then, with the advent of the little plastic clip that is at the end of the wire, we all became telephone installers, because the rate of growth of telephones in households was an exponential curve.

Anytime this kind of curve appears in society, the rules change. You can count on it. Futurists call this “perfectly predictable surprises.” The problem for all of us is to identify such things while the curves still seem flat. Institutionally, there are problems with that, because if there is growth—growth in terms of transactions or activity concerning a relatively fixed resource space—immediately, the firm reaches for management efficiencies, says, “We can reorganize, and we can cope with this growth. We can manage it; we can be, indeed, far more efficient, and therefore, this growth is not a problem. We can turn this into an asset.” And this mentality is one of the great breaks on transformation, and it is a pitfall.

Now, what we have to do is, we have to step back and look at those things that are going on around us, and say, “Will this continue to be the case? And for how much longer, will it be?” Look at the growth rate, for example, in medical care costs. We’re already up to somewhere on the order of 15% of GDP is being spent on medicine—say, “How much longer do you feel that we’re going to continue to grow at these rates, before the rules change, on this business?” Do you really think we’re going to send the Governor of Illinois to jail for advocating that people go to Canada to buy localized drugs? No! The rules are going to change in this business.

And so, you can predict that; you can look at it now. You can look at the age rate in Africa, and you can see, for example, that on the one hand, you can have moral and behavioral changes in Africa, or within about the next forty years—within a generation—life expectancy will fall from about 65 years down to about 35 years. Whole nations will depopulate 25% or more. And this will have security implications for all of us. The rules will change, because of the shape of those curves. May(?) the job of all of us is to step back, be our own intelligence analyst in these regards, and to enter the debate and make some difficult judgments, and not say, “Well, we can manage our way out of this.” What you have to do is lead your way out of it. And it’s not an easy task, in this.

So, let’s take a look at another curve that addresses another of our issues of regret, and that has to do with joint demand-centered logistics. This graphic shows the rate of advance toward Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Note the steep part of the curve. When military forces develop that speed of advance, that intensity of operation, what happened was the advances essentially outran logistics communications and the supporting transportation system which is meant to go with that. This is a reality of warfare for us. As you move into this new age, the pace of combat increases dramatically.

And that’s without even getting to the concept of the non-continuous battle space, which is indeed very nonlinear and calls for certain degree of adaptiveness and speed, certainly network communications structure, and a very, very responsive transportation network to go with that. That’s what’s demanded. And simply taking the current rules and trying to become more efficient with them is not appropriate, because, after all, what we’re dealing with here is the battlefield. The battlefield is not dominated by efficiency; that’s business. The principle battlefield metric is effectiveness. Efficiency is for the business side of logistics; effectiveness is for the transaction side of combat. These are different rules; consequently, they call for somewhat different systems.

If we fail to respond with an alternative approach, in the realm of logistics, we will have frustration and vastly increased risk. As we try to apply old doctrine and processes to a new reality, we will find that you have a logistics system which is largely forced to run on automatic, disconnected from the reality which it’s trying to support. And the result is that there will be deaths.

Consequently, senior leaders inside of the Department of Defense are taking up this issue, and we’re starting to call to question the metrics. On the graphic before you, on the right, you see the orientation towards mass-based logistics, generally abandoned now—largely discredited because the metric is wrong. Days of supply are, indeed, inappropriate. Just in time is very good—helps us a great deal with matters of efficiency—but it’s inadequate. It does not take into account the very dynamic, unpredictable reality of battlefield. And so, we’re looking for something else, and we’ve been increasingly reaching for a new concept called “sense and respond” logistics, which is different at its core, because it is not supply-centered. It is demand-centered, and it meant to focus first and foremost on the effect on the enemy that a military wants to achieve.

Let’s take a quick look at the differences in communications structure that support both of these things. On the left hand side, you have the business side of logistics, rather traditional command and control structure; it is appropriate that that be efficiency-oriented. But when you move over to the other side, you find out it’s completely different environment, and the brittleness of an efficiency-oriented communications system is no longer acceptable. And so, different forms of communications networks have to spring up, and, consequently, you need a different transportation network to go along with that.

So, an understanding of the networks are key here. And it runs across all of the areas, not just logistics, and I suppose it is most strongly felt in the area of intelligence. Since our frontiers of national security are really no longer at the boundaries of states—or political boundaries — but rather are at the faultlines of societies, then we need capabilities to look and operate deeply within those societies. And so, an understanding then, of the networks, are profoundly important to us—can cause, for example, a change in doctrine. How one views the force or an enemy is entirely different. For example, if you were to look at all of the militant Islamic groups in Pakistan, you would develop a mapping that looks something like this. This tends to defy our doctrine of center-of-gravity, and I understand that yesterday, one of the speakers talked about the need to be able to morph ourselves into this kind of structure, so that we can do combat against this kind of structure.

Now, how important is this? Am I the only person, plus the speaker yesterday, who feels this way? Two years ago, and again, last year, two professors at the Naval War College surveyed forty-five hundred military officers from the rank of Army Captain or Navy Lieutenant up through General and Flag Officer ranks—this includes all of the services. And the question put before them had to do with whether or not computer network attacks will become a central feature of military operations in the future. And you can see that the vast majority of them agreed with the statement, that it would be.

Now, one of the next great indicators of change is shown on this graphic, when the question was asked, “Will such attacks be as important as the delivery of munitions in military operations?” And in general, they agreed, and many strongly agreed with that. Now that’s the reality that these people will create, because that is their belief, those are their attitudes, and they will act on that. So this is an indication of the direction of the officer core. This survey, I might point out, was dominated by people at the rank of Major and Lieutenant Commander, so it’s a powerful indication of our future.

Let’s deal with another of our issues of regret, which has to do with operationally and tactically responsive space. We’ve been concerned for some time about the falling barriers to competition in space. No one can compete with us in space the way we do it. Who would want to, in a changing world? And the world is indeed changing. Capability per pound on orbit is going up dramatically, because of advances in information technology.

Cost per pound on orbit is terrible, and is not improving. This indicates a need for a different approach. Is a different approach possible? Yes. Thirty-eight micro satellites were launched over the last two years. None of them by the United States. This is an indication that other people are aware that there are alternative ways to exploit this domain. We've decided to pursue this in our office to see if it indeed is possible for us to do this in an operationally and tactically responsive way. And that experience is underway right now. We call it Tax at One. A quick look at the web showed that this was not the first time somebody labeled something Tax at One. And you can see there back in the 1960's someone did that in another experiment, rather massive undertaking; whereas, what we're pursuing is shown in the cartoon diagram on the right. A decidedly different kind of capability.

What kind of attributes are we talking about in our experiment? Well, first of all, we wanted it to be strategically responsive and operationally responsive. And that meant we had to be able to produce a capability from scratch to orbit within the planning timelines for a major contingency for the nation. Which meant that it had to be less than a year. And that's probably about what it will be, is about a year, maybe a little bit less. But, this is the first time. Ultimately we should be able to come down to weeks.

We want to have our capability, and it's a real capability. We want to have this capability on orbit for only about $15 million dollars. And that's the whole thing, including our launch costs. One of the ways we do this is to certify components that had been used in unmanned aerial vehicles, but certified those for space. We want to experiment with horizontal integration, so we want our satellite pay load to be able to talk to aircraft to unmanned vehicles in the air and on the ground. We want to be able to talk to ground stations, including moving stations. And consequently we reached to internet protocol for that, so that this capability can be tasked and respond by a SiperNet, the secret internet protocol that we have. And we wanted to reach for a commercial launch vehicle. And so we found such a source to do that.

It had to be operational, so it had to be capable of being integrated into the needs of a combatant commander, and be something that he could experiment with and fold into his experiences. And, you know, we didn't care how long it lasted, because this is really designer space. What we want to be able to do is craft the capability that we need at a particular time, put it on orbit when we need it at a price that's appropriate to the need. And then when the need goes away, so does the satellite. Why pay for longevity we're simply not going to use?

Now, I'm not proposing this as a model in opposition to our current business model for space. I'm proposing that it be additive. Because one of the great objectives in the—

END OF SIDE A
SIDE B

C-basing and operational maneuver. Let's take a look at those same officers that I talked about earlier. The survey was broken into two parts. The first part was done in the year 2000. And the question here was within the next ten years some adversaries will likely have the ability to use long range, precision strike weapons, such as ballistic and cruise missiles to deny our use of fixed military installation, such as ports, air fields and logistics. In other words, change our whole operational approach to war for us. And the vast majority of the respondents disagreed with that statement. Many of them strongly disagreed with it.

Asked the same question two years later and look at the shift. That's cataclysmic. Now, if you have a sclerotic requirements and acquisitions system, and you took the temperature of things, in 2000 you would design certain capabilities and systems to do that. And that indicates, of course, part of our problem; you have to have a cycle time which is capable of responding to changes in our understanding of the strategic reality. Again, these officers are going to respond to this reality.

Now, how will we respond to it? We'll respond at least in the three ways shown on the graphic here. But, I'm only going to really discuss the one in the yellow box. The first one, Changing is an Order of Strategic Balance, was discussed yesterday by Andy Hoehn. The one at the bottom concerning stabilization and stabilization forces was discussed by Hans Binnendijk. That leaves the middle box for me. A nation really only has three approaches to operational maneuver. And you operation maneuver from Garrison forward, or you'll do operational maneuver from the sea, or you'll do operational maneuver from strategic distances.

We, in this nation, have a strong preference compelled by some physics, I might add, to operational maneuver from Garrison forward. It's what we did in Operation Iraqi Freedom. We had a Garrison in Kuwait, and we fell in on that Garrison and then we stepped off from that Garrison position. Such positions are an approach; such an approach of operational maneuver are increasingly incompatible with the growing threats, both military and political, to forward Garrisons. This means what we need is a new three-pronged approach to this, and create a new one-two punch for the nation of Operation Maneuver from the sea, and from strategic distances.

There's a profound change, profound change. It's a capability that we do not have as well as we need. Certainly we can do some things from strategic distances. For example, in Operational Iraqi Freedom, we had the 173rd come and maneuver against objective from its base in Italy; certainly in a movement from strategic distances.

We saw some evidence of Operation Maneuver from the sea, 26 Marine Expeditionary Unit maneuvered against objectives directly from its amphibious shipping in the Mediterranean. Very, very powerful. But, there are also exceptions. There are exceptions which right now indicate no more than the possibility and the need for expanded work in these areas.

Okay, so in summary then, why are these things so hard? And indeed, I didn't even address all of the details of the issues of regret, and I certainly can't. But, one of the reasons why these things are so hard is that we have some fundamental changes which are going on simultaneously. There is a competition between old rules of globalization, that is those rules which grew up out of the period immediately following the Second World War. Competition between those rules and emerging rules, rules that we perhaps have a very difficult time articulating right now.

The first globalization period, world globalization period probably started sometime in the late 1800's and ended with the rise of national military nationalism and economic disruptions in the late 1920's and early 1930's. In 1947 we decided to firewall ourselves off from these things and create a new world. And these were very, very wise people who did that. And they created institutions which have been very useful and very powerful. And they have achieved their ends of containing Soviet expansionism, for example.

And those institutions, you can rattle them off on your fingers: The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the U.S. Department of Defense, NATO, and there are, of course, others. All of those institutions are now under stress, because the strategic reality and the purposes for which they were created no longer exist. And so all of those institutions are making adjustments, which is why the whole notion of transformation is not a small Department of Defense management slogan. Indeed, it is a worldwide global reality for us in this thing.

Now, at the same time that change is going on, and we've had the much discussed movement from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Another competition between two ideas, if you will. And consequently with different rules, different processes in this. Because of the stability of the period of globalization too, for example, we could tolerate very, very long cycle times, and we could have deliberate planning. Both of those things are now not only irrelevant, but are highly inappropriate to us now as we reach for shorter cycle times and adaptive planning. Our concept of jointness has to change within our military forces, but it has to move beyond this to what people have started to call capital "J" Jointness, which is jointness with all of the other agencies of government; jointness with other militaries around the world. Jointness with other agencies of government from around the world. It is indeed a far larger team than we ever had before.

So, are we at a point where we can say, "Well, we have done this. We have created the future. We can now step back from transformation and all the implied changes. Of course, the answer is a resounding no. Transformation is, after all, a continuing process and it has many elements. And key among those things is the fact that we're dedicated to the notion of creating our future. We can either be the victim of a future, which someone else will create for us, or we can play a powerful role in doing this ourselves, and creating our own future.

Many people think in terms of technology when they think of co-evolution. And there are people on the other side who rail against that and say, "No, no, it's not technology at all; it's all about human behavior, and it's about decision making and the kind of thing"—And both sides are wrong. And the reason that they are wrong is because you cannot separate the two. Even if you go to Thermopolis and look at the forces there, people brought technology to war. Technology and tactics are at opposite sides of the same coin; frequently minted in different places, but without both of them you don't have the coin. It is not a matter of either/or; it's a matter of how you put those things together that counts. And that's what we try to do in the realm of transformation; focus on the co-evolution of concepts, processes and technologies to achieve the end at hand.

We look for new competitive spaces. Indeed, we do look for the new bets, those things, the big bets, those things which will change the character of war and society. And that will mean new competences. And it will also involve development of new sources of power. Who would have thought that one can compete and win on the basis of how well you can navigate and tell time. But, we did that, and it's called GPS. And it changed the face of the world.

And then, of course, ultimately we're talking about changing behavior, which is what transformation is all about. The expression of transformation is not an equipment; it is in behavior. It is in the choices that people make amongst equipment, processes and organizational structures. And so with that, why don't I stop and we'll take questions.

Questions and Answers

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We have about five minutes left. So what I would like to propose is that the questions be asked and then we give Admiral Cebrowski the final word to answer the questions that are asked. So, let's take two or three questions. And we'll begin right down here.

Audience: Bob Axelrod, University of Michigan. You had the formula on the bottom of one of your slides that outcomes is a function of power and moral principle. Could you elaborate on what you mean by moral principle, and how one gets an advantage in that dimension.

Audience: Good morning, sir. Major John Dagle from Headquarters Air Force Strategy. Last year at this conference somebody asked General Jones, then Commodore of the Marine Corps, how transformation might affect the distinctive nature of the services, and whether the services should be rolled up. He responded essentially that 18 year old Americans don't join up to be part of Joint Force Land Component Command, they join to be marines or sailors, or whatever. How do we take advantage of the value that we can obtain, the efficiency of transformation, while we hold on to the distinctiveness of the military services.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Is there one more question before Admiral Cebrowski has the last word.

Audience: I'm John Zornecky(?), Navy War College. Just as a matter of information, can you roughly estimate what percentage of your staff are, if you will, social scientists, specifically cognitive psychologists, sociologists or cultural anthropologists?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Okay, there are three questions for you.

Admiral Cebrowski: The notion of the equation between relating policy and moral principle comes from the writings of John ...[inaudible] Murray, a Jesuit theologian and political scientist writing about 1950, I think, in which he said that policy occurs at the intersection of power and moral principle. Not guided by moral principle, power turns to corruption, wanting violence, and really not the kind of world that we want to have." On the other hand, moral principle not underwritten by fortitude, courage and the ability to enforce it, on the other hand, is weakness. And so you put both of those things together to create policy outcomes.

With regard to service distinctions, the great objective, of course, is to achieve diversity without divergence. This is true not only amongst the services, but it is also amongst our allies and coalition partners as well. The temptation to go to centralization to achieve efficiencies is an absolutely marvelous Industrial Age approach wholly irrelevant to this time.

And thirdly, with regard to the diversity of the staff, my own personal staff, of course, in my office is a mix of military officers and civilians. We did do the Meyers Briggs Test, for example. We're all over the map. And we have the ability to reach outside for what we need. The orientation of our office is towards interdisciplinary problem solving which I, of course, highly recommend to the complex issues of our time.

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to spend time with you. And good luck with the rest of the conference.