Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

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

December 2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Address by Admiral James O. Ellis Jr., USN, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command

Introduction by Dr. Stephen M. Younger, Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Dr. Younger: The first speaker is Admiral James Ellis, Commander, US Strategic Command. His previous assignments include Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, Southern Europe, Commander in Chief, US Naval Forces, Europe, and numerous other positions. Relevant to today's discussion, Commander Ellis has taken a leading role in reshaping thinking in our strategic forces as Commander in Chief of Strategic Command. I ask you to welcome Admiral James Ellis.

Admiral Ellis: Thank you, Steve. And my thanks to Jackie Davis and Bob Pfaltzgraff, and so many others who have allowed me to join my distinguished colleagues on this panel this afternoon. And I also want to thank all of you, who have invested your valuable time in attending this extremely timely and very important conference. I am extremely gratified to have been invited to participate in this important panel, admittedly more as a practitioner than a theorist. Because in a real sense, all of us who have or do serve in uniform contribute to our nation's deterrence capabilities. I'm particularly honored to be a part of this distinguished panel and this exceptional conference.

I will admit, though, that in searching for background on this week's event, I plugged the letters IFPA into my Internet search engine. It produced some interesting results, including the International Fresh-Cut Produce Association, the Irish Family Planning Association, and my favorite, the International Federation of Professional Aromatherapists. It proves the truth of the old axiom that if you apply computing power to a flawed process, you just get the wrong answer faster.

But in all seriousness, today we turn our attention to important matters as we wrestle with the creation, or at least articulation of, deterrent concepts for a dramatically changed strategic environment. While we are fully mindful of our past deterrence successes, even when the scrutiny of the past, with the knowledge of the present, casts a slight shadow over the clarity we thought was ours in classic deterrent theology. I think I know from whence I speak. As my command and its antecedents have been in the deterrence business for nearly 60 years. Our legacy nuclear deterrence mission dates from the days of the old strategic air command. And indeed, as I have often remarked, I now sit behind the same desk used by Curtis LeMay during his nine years as CINCSAC. One can only speculate about his reaction were he to find a Navy fighter pilot occupying his office.

I also live in the same house he occupied on Offutt Air Force Base, or as Dick Myers calls it, Offutt Naval Air Station. I can go into the basement, and still today, far in the back corner, is LeMay's bomb shelter. On the wall of that shelter, in addition to a hand-cranked ventilator for filtered air, there is an old, wooden, hand-cranked telephone. Anecdotally, it was installed because in those days, there was no other counter for the effects of electromagnetic pulses from nuclear detonations. The placard on the phone reads, "Crank three times and the SAC command post will answer." I have, and they don't. But these are real reminders of a time, thankfully past, where the threat to this nation and our allies was real and pervasive, and so were our deterrent capabilities. One could argue that today's threats deserve the same attention to deterrent concepts and real capabilities as those of decades past. And indeed, that is what we are all about here today.

All legs of the traditional triad remain vital elements within the United States Strategic Command. But our missions, and our deterrent duties as well, have expanded dramatically over the past 14 months. If you define strategic deterrence as the prevention of adversary aggression or coercion threatening the vital interests of the United States or our allies and friends, then strategic deterrence convinces adversaries not to take radical courses of action by maintaining a decisive influence over their decision-making. In basic English, some say it's not much different from the deterrent definition you could find on a school playground. "If you touch my kid brother again, I'll," dot dot dot dot dot. Recently, some students at the National War College have even put it into an equation.

They say deterrence equals capabilities plus intent, plus perception. While both of these embody some elements of deterrent concepts, it really isn't, and perhaps never has been that simple. It is evident to me and to a small number of those who still think and write about deterrence that a new, broader range of efforts and capabilities are needed if we are to even provide the nation's civilian leaders with basic deterrence resources, such as worldwide situational awareness and the ability to quickly strike any adversary, anywhere on the planet. And it is increasingly obvious that capabilities well beyond that basic concept are essential for this tumultuous world. In his State of the Union address in 1982, President Abraham Lincoln noted, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, so must we think anew and act anew." And that is the dialogue we must have, and the decisions we must make, supporting the actions we must take as a nation.

I do not subscribe to the theory that new threats cannot be deterred. They can be, and general concepts of deterrence still apply. It is our ability to fully define what new adversaries value, or more importantly, what outcome they wish to avoid at all costs, that needs attention. We must also arm ourselves with a complete set of tools more suited to the task of deterrence in the challenging world of this new millennium. It is fair to note that all traditional tools of deterrence may not work against a terrorist seeking martyrdom, whose avowed tactics are hatred, mass destruction of property, and the targeting of innocents. We are required to think of deterrence in new ways, to provide the president with a wider range of military deterrent options that bring to bear every element of national power, and transcend departmental or even governmental boundaries.

The old SAC motto still hangs over the door of my headquarters: Peace is our profession. As our command has evolved, we've certainly retained that as our goal. No conference of this significance can be allowed to pass without someone paraphrasing Sun Tzu, as he opined that the most successful general is one who achieves his aims without fighting a battle. However, our focus today is meeting new global challenges, and aggressively incorporating deterrent factors now resident in our broadened command to protect the security of the United States, our forces around the world, and our friends and allies.

Two years ago, as I toured one of our nation's nuclear laboratories, I carelessly dropped the phrase "nuclear weapons business" into a conversation with a senior scientist. She quickly and properly corrected me by saying, "No, Admiral, we're in the national security business." She was right then, and would be even more correct today. United States Strategic Command's combined missions extend America's deterrent strength from the bottom of the ocean to the vast realm of space, and they are continuing to grow and evolve. As you may know, the former United States Strategic Command and the United States Space Command were combined on the first of October in 2002. And on January 10 of this year, the President added four more mission areas previously unassigned to anyone. These missions include global strike, integrating Department of Defense information operations, global missile defense, and global command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, that horrific acronym.

Each of our missions has deterrent dimensions, and places the United States Strategic Command side by side, supporting our regional Combatant Commanders. Together, we are beginning to reshape the heart of our nation's deterrent paradigm. We are studying ways to deny terrorists and rogue states the benefits they seek, to see the issues in their terms, be they societal, religious, cultural or personal. If they are convinced we can deny those benefits to them, we may be effective in deterring future threatening acts. We can also deter state sponsors of terrorism, especially those who retain some rational beliefs. While our nuclear capability continues to serve as a valuable deterrent, we are also studying existing and evolving conventional weapons, as well as kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities for our global strike mission. We have recently been working closely with Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to provide regional Combatant Commanders with a combined resource to strike any adversary, anywhere on the earth.

Integrating Department of Defense information operations is another mission with an array of deterrent capabilities. It is my belief that there is not a definition of IO that is broad enough to cover its full potential. It includes everything from electronic warfare and military deception to psychological operations and operations security, even as it is commonly perceived as only incorporating computer network attack and computer network defense. When you consider how important information systems are to every segment of society, you begin to understand the importance and scope of this mission. We can theoretically deter an adversary who is not able to trust the security or accuracy of his own information systems. Our deterrent strategy must also integrate efforts to induce adversary restraint, and credibly deny them benefits of pursuing actions harmful to the United States. While our nuclear and global strike capabilities maintain the threat of overwhelming and decisive retaliation, we can use IO to influence an adversary who doesn't really understand what he's up against. Since an adversary's perception is reality from their point of view, we can use information operations to improve an adversary's situational awareness so they will better comprehend the deterrent capabilities arrayed against them.

When I speak to War College classes, as I often do, I note that in today's conflict, the theater commander is a theater commander in the literal sense of the term. It is theater. You can't just win. You must be seen as winning. You can't just have more than enough capability and resolve. That must be the perception the adversary has of you. In today's networked world, the synchronization of that effort on a global scale is essential, just as the potential of information operations in this deterrence role is boundless.

Likewise, deterrence is at the heart of our mission concerning global missile defense. This system is designed to convince an adversary it would be futile to launch a limited missile attic at the United States, our allies, or our forces stationed around the world. We will have our initial operational system online about this time next year. It will continue to evolve over the months and years to come. The Missile Defense Agency has a specific assignment to develop missile defenses. However, it is the job of the United States Strategic Command and Northern Command to most immediately bring war fighter focus to missile defense, and actually make the system operational. Initially, we'll function like a football team's defensive coordinator, tying all DOD's disparate elements of missile defense systems into one smart, integrated system, and linking it to our growing offensive capabilities. The President has directed that missile defense be designed and organized with a global perspective in mind. However, there is no single system capable of stopping every possible threat, and the solution is therefore termed multidimensional defense. Our initial ground-based missile defense interceptors will come on line in Fort Greeley, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. We, MDA, and the regional Combatant Commanders are focused on the IDO, initial deployed operational capability.

But at STRATCOM, in a bit of dyslexia, we are also concerned about ODI, or offense/defense integration. Mindful of the fact that in the old westerns, if given a choice, the cowboys preferred not to shoot at the arrows, an integrated global counter-battery fire, or, as General Larry Welch (?) terms it, pre-boost phase intercept, will be an important STRATCOM contribution to deterrence and the effectiveness of missile defense in the years ahead. Our prompt ability to strike will initially rely on bombers, TLAM, and evolving weapons systems such as SSGNs equipped with conventional cruise missiles. As new advanced conventional and IO tools develop, we will incorporate them into the mix.

As Combatant Commanders rely on more sophisticated and integrated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support in the future, we must supply unprecedented situational awareness to give our fighting forces battlefield dominance. As USSTRATCOM assumes ISR duties, we will consider ISR as a weapons system that not only informs and enables operations, but also has a deterrent value all its own. When a potential adversary knows you're watching, and knows we have the capability to respond to any threat, it can be a great incentive to change behavior, if their actions are to be tried in the court of world opinion, or in a more kinetic environment. This is not only true of rogue states, but also of terrorist groups. Future systems such as space-based radar have the potential to provide persistent ISR like we have never seen before. It is up to us to create mechanisms to share, analyze, and assimilate the product, and slide down the continuum from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. When we cannot target terrorists themselves, we can certainly work to deter their actions through the states and organizations supporting them.

Returning to our nuclear arsenal, as Dr. Younger noted, we are on plan to reduce our operational stockpile as directed by the President and the Nuclear Posture Review, a seminal effort that perhaps should have been entitled the Strategic Posture Review, given its broad focus. As we are now two years into the NPR, a strategic capabilities assessment has been initiated by OSD to assess progress and provide midcourse guidance. In order to continue providing an effective deterrent, Congress recently provided funding to study elements of our nation's stockpile. These studies will help us determine the size and character of the future stockpile required to continue protecting our nation, our forces, and our allies in the years ahead. A weapon is only a deterrent if it retains credibility. That's why we're also examining the deterrent value of nuclear and conventional niche weapons, such as the robust nuclear earth penetrator and Big BLU.

Deterrence only has credibility to the extent we back it up with capability and determination. Today's United States Strategic Command continues to be uniquely positioned to support deterrence through its cohesive package of both new and legacy missions. I thank you for your patience, and for your attendance at this most worthwhile gathering, and look forward to your questions. Thank you.

Questions and Answers

Dr. Younger: We have time for questions, if the people with questions would identify themselves, and please wait for the microphones.

Audience: Thank you. It seems that the idea of deterrence by--

Dr. Younger: Could you identify yourself, please?

Audience: I'm Carey Mullis (?). And I don't really belong here, but I got invited, and I've been really enjoying it. But I'm involved in trying to solve the bioterrorist kind of problems from the biological side. But the thing that occurs to me, the idea of deterrence by blowing up the whole country, or setting up a really large bomb in a country, that worked fine when we were talking about a country that we were going to perhaps go to war with. But it seems like a lot of times in the present, we're really just mad at the guy who's running the place, right? And we've sort of gotten over this notion that it's illegal to assassinate somebody, right? But if we had a way to irritate him worse and worse every day until he did what we wanted him to do, it would be better, in my opinion, than saying, "If you don't do this, we're finally going to have to run out of patience with you and blow you up."

For instance, if we could have heated up Baghdad by one degree centigrade every day, by having mirrors like the kind that Gerard O'Neill (?) proposed that we build years ago in space that would focus light on little generators and make-- I mean, this might sound crazy, but we have the capacity to do that. We could focus light from space on some palace, and say, "It's never going to get dark there until you do this, until you let us do our inspections. Every night, you're going to have a sun, what's going to look like a sun, and your place is going to get hotter and hotter. Your place, not the whole city, but your place, or some other place. We've decided we don't like this building. We want to see what's inside of it. We're eventually going to burn it up." I mean, I think we should think in terms of, some of the time, we're not really against the whole country.

Dr. Younger: I'm wondering if you can get to a question, please.

Audience: Oh, the question? The question I had, I guess, was, why, instead of just concentrating on what sort of nuclear deterrence we could have, is, how can we exert powerful influence on people, decision makers, in various countries that we're having problems with? I guess that would be the question. I'm just suggesting a few.

Dr. Younger: Who would like to address that. Keith?

Dr. Payne: Without commenting on the specific proposal about heating up Baghdad, let me just suggest that your basic question was, why, instead of concentrating on nuclear weapons, should we not be concentrating on a broader array of approaches to deterrence, to influence behavior? What you have just described, in this latter part of your question, is exactly what one of the points that the NPR recommends, and is widely recognized as a new approach to thinking about deterrence in this post-Cold War period. As I said earlier, as Dr. Crouch pointed out earlier, one of the recommendation of the NPR was to put together and integrate a much broader array of threat options, conventional and nuclear, so that whatever the local conditions require with regard to deterrence, we're more likely to have the type of threat option that's most effective for deterrence on that occasion. So, the heart of your point is, why don't you look at broader approaches than just nuclear? All I can say is, in fact, we are, and that's at the heart of the NPR.

Audience: John Kayes (?), National Defense University. Al-Qaeda with a nuclear weapon is viewed by many people as a nightmare scenario, mainly because, as many believe, it's not deterrable. If they get it, they'll attempt to use it. You can try to prevent them from using it, but to persuade them not to attempt to do it, many consider not doable. Admiral Ellis, you expressed a lot of confidence that deterrence works, as a general statement, including against non-state actors. Do you think in fact there are ways to deter this type of scenario? And if you have any specific ideas in that regard, I'd be very interested in them.

Admiral Ellis: Well, with apologies to my fellow panelists, the point to be made here is that, as I talked in general terms about IO and the real opportunity we have to bring together all elements of national influence, the idea that the act that you described could occur in complete and total isolation I think probably is not one that most of us would believe possible. In other words, there's got to be some element of support. There's got to be monies transferred. There's got to be at least a sanctuary of some type identified and supported, either openly or tacitly, by leadership and the like.

My point is not to make a blanket pronouncement that deterrence will always work. I just think it's inappropriate to write it off. I kind of follow the Keith Payne school here, that it may work, and it may not, and we need to have an understanding of that. I think there are broader elements to it, and that's the point I would raise. And so, the idea that we would influence and shape those who support this on a nation-state basis, those who offer sanctuary, those who fund and resource-- But it's even broader than that. I mean, when you think about it, there are societal and cultural issues that are in play as well, that people who subscribe to suicidal efforts and the like have some image of rewards that await them, if not in this world, certainly the next. And how do you disabuse them of that through mechanisms that address on a more reasoned scale what the world's religions are really all about?

Those types of things that build a part of a more complete and comprehensive campaign are the elements that I was alluding to when I said, "Let's not be too quick to write off deterrence." It is broader than just the narrow focus that I would argue we have pursued, as Dr. Payne described, during the Cold War. And while the tools are not all in place to do that, nor are the mechanisms to coordinate it, I think it has tremendous potential. And it's that effort that needs to be aggressively pursued.

Audience: Alex Ellerman (?) from Systems Planning and Analysis over in Alexandria. This is the second time this week I've heard somebody talk about putting a conventional warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. And I have a question about that, which is, how do you fire a conventional intercontinental ballistic missile at Pyongyang without having the Russians thinking that it's a nuclear weapon headed for Vladivostok, or the Chinese thinking that it's a nuclear weapon headed for, say, Dayang (?)?

__: There's a number of ways that you can do that. The most obviously, of course, is to communicate with the Russians so that they know what they are doing. I mean, you can imagine using, say, a D-5 missile with, say, a 25,000-pound front end of high explosive. It won't have a long range, but it may turn out to be an excellent bunker buster that would be useful against hard and deeply buried targets, and it would have a much different trajectory than an ICBM that was flying at ICBM distances. So, there's a number of ways in which that problem can be managed. But the nature of the relationship with Russia is now drastically different, and that I think makes it more practical to have a force that will more seamlessly mix advanced conventional and nuclear capabilities, so that they can be used depending on the requirements of the circumstances.

Audience: Thanks. David Roof (?) with Global Security News Wire. This is for the panel, but in particularly Admiral Ellis. Do you believe, as J.D. Crouch has suggested, that in the future the US is going to increasingly be the initiator of conflicts, and that our strategic forces that we're developing now, including missile defense and whatever, will better enable us to do that?

__: I'm no better at predicting the future than anyone else, and so I certainly wouldn't go down that path. As we talk about capabilities, as we talk about the options, and the flexibility, and the broader spectrum of tools that we can provide the nation's leadership, I think that's the direction we're going. Given that we can't predict the future, just as we cannot predict accurately the success or lack thereof with regard to deterrent concepts in and of themselves, I think it would behoove us to hedge our bets against an alternative future which may not be the one that we anticipate.

The other thing I tell the War College is, we will plan for 100 contingencies, and fate will deal you the 101st. And it is how you reassemble the elements and the preparation that you've gone through in satisfying the needs of that first 100 that allow you to respond appropriately, adequately, proportionally, and in a timely manner to that 101st contingency. And so that's what we're talking about here. A broader range of options, more non-nuclear and even non-kinetic options, a more pervasive ability to know what's going on, and to act appropriately and precisely, those are the types of capabilities that we're looking for for future systems across the full range. And the future in which we see them serving is as much your guess as it is mine.

Audience: Bill Jones from Executive Intelligence Review. A related question. There was much discussion about a year ago with regard to the introduction to the so-called mini-nukes as bunker busters. This is an idea that has been around for at least a decade, but has gained some momentum with the Nuclear Policy Review, and raised a lot of questions with people. Particularly, I'd like-- Dr. Younger had mentioned the fact that battlefield nuclear weapons do not exist. We don't have them today. It's a good thing we don't. But by introducing the mini-nukes into the active armory, does this not set a bad precedent in terms of the many other nuclear powers that now exist today, not all of which are rogue states? They also have to make decisions: At what point do we use our nuclear weaponry if the United States sets kind of a precedent, saying "We can do this with these smaller nuclear weapons--"

END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 3

TAPE 4

Audience: -- form of a nuclear weapon in a conflict situation. Does that represent a problem or not?

Dr. Younger: No, I don't think so. What I said was, I don't believe in the concept of usable battlefield nuclear weapons. I think any nuclear weapon is strategic by its very nature. I don't believe that the introduction of lower yield systems would reduce the nuclear threshold. Indeed, as I said at the beginning, I think if anything the nuclear threshold for the United States and all countries should be going up for the simple, practical reason that the United States will prevail in any conventional conflict. So it's in our best interest to keep nuclear weapons off the table. So I don't see the introduction of lower yield systems making nuclear weapons more usable. And I find it curious that people will object to the introduction of less destructive systems, and insist that we maintain high yield systems that were developed for quite a different time. I'm missing that logic. We should apply the appropriate force in terms of achieve the objective, always recognizing that crossing the nuclear threshold is an enormous step.

Audience: Eric McVaden (?) with IFPA. Dr. Payne, you painted a very complex picture of deterrence. It dawned on me that the picture may even be more complicated than you suggested, because what I'm thinking of are-- We have now certainly put deterrence into the minds of, maybe in a more serious way, of many, many other countries who are now looking to deter us. And I wonder if that complexity-- I'm thinking all the way from China to North Korea to Iran and so forth. Is that truly, as it has just struck me, an added dimension to this, or am I making something of nothing?

Dr. Payne: No, it's a good point. And what it means is that that deterrence function that you just described may be more of a challenge than the deterrence functions we hope to fulfill during the Cold War. In fact, Dr. Crouch touched on this earlier. In fact, one of the questioners said that Dr. Crouch was proposing that we will be the initiators of conflict, and that wasn't the point at all. It fits right in with this particular question. The notion is that, in the past, the United States was in the guardian role of deterring attacks on allies and deterring attacks on ourselves. In the future, it may well be that the United States is compelled to deter escalation by a regional aggressor as the United States is confronting that aggressor in its own territory. That's not initiating conflict. That's trying to deter an aggressor from escalating while we are in that area possibly defending our allies and defending our interests.

Does that make deterrence more of a challenge? You bet it does. Because what it means is that, instead of in the past our threatening escalation as we did to the Soviet Union under flexible response, we may be in a regional contingency where our goal is to protect an ally or protect our interests. And that may cause us to have to be in a confrontation or a war with a regional aggressor, and actually deter that regional aggressor's escalation simultaneously while we are combating them conventionally. That's a very tough deterrence challenge, and it's a new challenge for this post-Cold War period.

Audience: Admiral Ellis, in the not-too-distant past, there was some discussion on deconfliction of authorities between the Combatant Commanders with regard to theater, regional, as well as global missile attack. Does your new mission as the global missile defense czar, so to speak, resolve that problem?

Admiral Ellis: I think to a large degree, it has. The role that we fulfill is one of creation of the architecture, the integration, the assessment, and the provision of those capabilities to the regional Combatant Commanders, so that they in turn can execute their statutory responsibilities for the defense of their area of responsibility. It's that simple. We are charged with operationalizing this. MDA is doing a magnificent job, but it's called Missile Defense Agency, but it might as well stand for Missile Development and Acquisition Agency, because that's what they're doing. How we operationalize that, I think, is going to be critically important. And somebody needs to do that so that it's consistent from one AOR to another, that there aren't operational concepts and plans and communication architectures and procedures that differ from one AOR to another.

There's a logical global element to this, and indeed, the Secretary of Defense has noted that there is no such thing as theater missile defense anymore. There's only missile defense on a global scale, and with various elements and layers of that. So our role is relieving Ron Kadish (?) of that burden of operationalization, and providing those capabilities in a timely manner to the regional Combatant Commanders, and they welcome that level of support. But I certainly would defer to other panelists who have had considerable experience in that discussion as well.

__: One quick thing I'd add to that. I agree that I think it has resolved a lot of those problems. But we are about, let's say, a year from now to have the first missile defense capability to defend the United States since, I think, what, 1975. So I would expect that while it has resolved problems, we're going to learn a lot between now and then, and indeed, that capability is going to evolve. And when it evolves, as we add to it and change it, we're going to have to change the relationships. For example, how does space-based ISR fit into that architecture, and who controls it, things like that. So I think a lot of those things are being worked out, but this will be a work in progress for many years.

Audience: Thank you. Sharon Weinberger (?) from Defense Daily. My question would be mostly for Dr. Younger. Returning to the question of low yield nuclear weapons, could you address for a minute how low yield nuclear weapons would fit into deterrent value? How would it provide more of a deterrent, for instance, in the current nuclear arsenal, and what would be the basket of targets that a low yield nuclear weapon would be aimed at, for example.

Dr. Younger: First let me say that I believe that nuclear weapons are weapons of to be used only in extremis. That is, if you have no other solution to a problem, and the problem is imminent, and the consequences of that problem are unacceptable, that's when a nuclear weapon can be considered. If you were in that situation, you would still like to use the least amount of force possible. And that is the driver for looking at lower yield systems. There is a concept that's been bandied of self-deterrence. That is, our weapons are of sufficiently high yield that he adversary believes that we would never use them. It is an implicit part of deterrence that the adversary believes that we might use them if we are pushed too far. So, does that make them more usable in a battlefield sense? No. Because you want to keep that threshold high. But at the same time-- and unfortunately in human affairs, contradictions often reign, and this is a case where that happens-- it is also true, where you want the adversary to believe that if he did drive you into a corner, that you would have a weapon suitable to remove the threat.

Audience: Kurt Canelli (?), National Defense Fellow at Harvard. In light of where our world's headed, much more global, does the concept of combatant command divided by regions make sense, in light of global strike and ISR, for Admiral Ellis?

Admiral Ellis: I think it does. There are clearly some tremendous benefits from a regional perspective that can't be replicated any other way. I mean, the presence there, the relationships, the exercises, the regional planning, even for contingencies and the like, the long-term efforts such as recently were undertaken in Iraq and elsewhere, all of those are appropriate for regional addressal (?). So in no way is it an either/or proposition. And we talk very candidly at STRATCOM that it's not about ownership. It's about providing a capability to the nation's leadership that it needs for scenarios that are likely to confront us in the future. And whether we are supported or supporting is immaterial, as long as we've got mechanisms that clearly enable us to do both. So, that's the important thing. What kind of capabilities do we need to address for this new world?

Because quite frankly, there are things that are global in character. We have capabilities as a nation that are global in character, and they lend themselves to oversight in a global manner, even as they are provided and applied with a regional focus when that's appropriate.

Audience: My name's Bryce Harris (?). I'm with OSD Seed Sue Policy (?). My question is for Admiral Ellis. You mentioned earlier that as we approach success in warfare that it's important that we certainly not only achieve success, but that we be perceived as winning in war. How do you reconcile that in an age where we are increasingly employing precision munitions, short of doing a demonstration with a larger munition such as a daisy cutter, MOAB, or certainly a nuclear weapon.

Admiral Ellis: Well, I don't think we ever would want to get into a situation, much as Dr. Younger was addressing on the nuclear side, and certainly applicable on the conventional side, where we fail to understand and appreciate the need for proportionality in the efforts that ultimately we might be called upon to undertake in the nation's defense. So, again, you don't want to colloquially blow a bigger hole just so it's more visible to everyone. My remarks were more linked to the realities of today's environment. I mean, the proof is in recent conflicts, whether it's in my experience in Kosovo, or the recent experience in Iraq. Very little goes on that is not known very quickly on a global scale. Very little, if it's of sufficient interest, remains tactical for very long. It quickly becomes operational, and sometimes strategic and political. My point is, in this networked environment in which we operate, it's not just us that are operating, our forces that are operating in a network-centric environment. Indeed, the world is. It's one of the consequences of globalization, and the omnipresence of the communication nodes and the like. So, I don't think that it would be necessary to shape the weapons on a general scale for visibility rather than effectiveness and proportionality.

Audience: My name's Eric Kerr (?). I'm a Brookings as a National Defense Fellow. Admiral Ellis, General Everhart (?) defends the air, and he pretty much works with FAA, has his own radars, pretty clear lines. Information operations with FCC, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, where does that stand? Are you the guy who has the button to defend our communications infrastructure?

Admiral Ellis: Well, my lane in the road is pretty broad, but it's not that broad. Remember, I characterized it fairly carefully as Department of Defense information operations, is the portfolio that we were handed by the president on the 10th of January this year. For those of you that are not aware, that's very precisely defined in Department of Defense documents. It includes computer network attack and defense. It includes psychological operations. It includes electronic warfare. It includes operational security. And it includes military deception. Those are the pillars, if you will, of Department of Defense IO. I believe personally, as I think I said in my remarks, that IO is obviously much broader than that. In fact, I joke with, again, the War College classes, no matter how you define it, it's not broad enough. It ought to involve everything that we can bring to bear as a nation.

Someday, I believe, as IO tools mature, and those capabilities and coordination mechanisms mature, we will reverse the way we do business today. Today, we write IO annexes to military war plans. I believe that someday we may write military annexes to IO plans, which may put things in perspective.

Dr. Younger: Other questions? Okay. If there are no other questions, then we will declare victory. I thank the panelists, and I thank the audience for your attention.