Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel
Washington, D.C.
December14-15, 200
Session 2 - Integrating Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapons into Planning Future Strategic Forces
Major General Richard Y. Newton, III Director, Plans and Policy, U.S. Strategic Command
Major General Richard Y. Newton's Address
Thank you, and good morning again.
I notice that Dr. Woolsey has yet to show. I believe Dr. Davis said he was going to be the cleanup hitter. I was recruited to attend the United States Air Force Academy not on my SAT scores, but on my ability to throw a baseball. I was a pitcher for the Air Force Academy team my freshman and sophomore year and I don’t recall them ever letting me hit cleanup. They let me hit number nine. [Laughter]. So if I look at the panel of experts we have, at least on this panel, I'm certainly the number nine hitter but I'll try to forge ahead.
I certainly appreciate Dr. Snyder's and Ambassador Cooper's comments on setting a historical context. Being a history major, I'd like to begin my remarks from a historical context.
For this context, I would like to review how the global environment has changed since Desert Storm, and perhaps more recently with Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in terms of how we think about employing forces, certainly from a warfighter's perspective.
In terms of planning for forces, if you think back to Desert Storm, force planning was pretty much threat based. As you look at OIF, it is more capability based. That said, from this point on I would say we're certainly marching towards more effects-based operations.
In the past, we strove to be interoperable as a United States military. Today, however, we're striving to be more interdependent.
Our requirement for basing overseas has also changed. During Desert Storm we required a large footprint of forces. Today we strive for a small footprint; it's a minimum footprint. I know speaking from an Airman's perspective we employ a more expeditionary construct of sending men and women downrange than we had back in the Desert Storm era.
We also relied on traditional relationships. Today we utilize new relationships and we're creating even more new relationships, particularly within the interagency as well as with coalition partners. So that's the context.
Today, STRATCOM is operationalizing a global deterrence framework necessary to create deterrence operations that are relevant across a broad range of actors and situations with a new triad of capabilities.
This framework was captured in the Strategic Deterrence Joint Operating Concept that Secretary Rumsfeld approved in February of 2004.
The new triad, as we've discussed this morning, formulated four years ago during the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, embraces a flexible mix of offensive and defensive capabilities sustained by a responsive defense infrastructure. But it is also important to keep in mind the key enablers: more agile planning, intelligence, and a robust command and control system, and so forth.
If we break down the new triad, offense capabilities include both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, we also have at our disposal non-kinetic capabilities. In addition, if you dive down a couple more thousand feet we need to think in terms of the interaction between kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities and how we employ those forces.
Defense capabilities, as Ambassador Cooper highlighted, include active defenses against ballistic missile and air attacks. Additionally, passive defenses are a very important part of this new triad and include measures that reduce the vulnerability through mobility, dispersal, redundancy, deception, concealment, hardening, and so forth.
A responsive infrastructure includes the manufacturing capability and the plant capacity and the intellectual skills necessary to sustain this new triad over time. A responsive defense infrastructure preserves our capacity to respond quickly to a strategic surprise, be it a technical failure or a technical breakthrough by an adversary.
The planning, intelligence, and command and control systems play a key enabling role in this new triad.
We have to expect surprise. I had a conversation just before our panel began with a colleague of mine in terms of whether we should be surprised by surprise or should we expect surprise? [Laughter].
Think about it, if we plan for surprise, we'll be better suited for whatever outcome, adversary, consequence, or situation that may come across our radarscope.
Was 9/11 a surprise? Should we have been preparing for the challenges that could have been brought about by a 9/11 attack or similar surprise?
I would tell you that if you look at the WMD Commission report and the 9/11 Commission report for that matter, a key to preparing in anticipation of surprise is sharing of information. A key question we have to ask ourselves is: How do you share information in a post-9/11 environment or a 21st century environment and so forth?
Operationalizing this framework for a new triad requires that we confront several problems. To maintain relevance, the deterrence solution must continually adapt to an ever-changing global environment.
While the Cold War was dominated by a near unitary deterrent situation, the United States vis-à-vis the former Soviet Union, the deterrence environment we live in today includes all forms of actors from near peers to rogue state to non-state actors who are actively creating an ever-changing deterrent situation for us. Thus to maintain relevancy and responsiveness, global deterrence requires a day-to-day process that continuously assesses actors' decision-making processes and the effectiveness of ongoing deterrent actions. We need to continuously create and update our global deterrence strategy in order to plan and implement effective global deterrence actions.
Deterrence plans should be adversary and scenario specific. One of the challenges we encountered at United States Strategic Command was no longer thinking in terms of traditional war planning and in terms of traditional deterrence concepts, but in terms of deterring specific adversaries within a variety of scenarios.
Additionally, globalization increasingly requires that we consider second and third order effects of our deterrent actions. Not only on a regional scale, but on a global scale as well. Actions that increase costs, deny benefits, and induce restraint of an adversary will create effects across a global set of actors that span the spectrum from allies to competitors to other adversaries that perhaps we've never thought about before.
In response, STRATCOM has transitioned from focusing solely on nuclear warfighting to a much more globally focused command. As I mentioned in my remarks this morning, it's no longer your father's Strategic Air Command. In fact, it is no longer even your most recent Strategic Command in that sense.
We have embarked now on new organizational change from a warfighter's perspective in terms of how we would organize in the Cold War days as a supported command to most recently, a supporting combatant command. We now think in terms of how we can support others. We think in terms of how we can provide capabilities to the other combatant commands in ways that we never thought about before.
We have transformed the command to meet the global challenges of the 21st century. We are going from what was perhaps the largest combatant command staff known to mankind in days gone by, to today, whereby we have a very small combatant command staff.
STRATCOM’s job jar is pretty full, from integrated missile defense to space to global strike to network warfare to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to our newest mission area, combating weapons of mass destruction, where we're focusing on the interdiction and elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
General Cartwright, who you'll hear from tomorrow, has taken his vision for USSTRATCOM and our mission areas and transformed the command, and quite frankly, in my view, has taken it to places we've never even thought about before. We are now functionally organized where we have Joint Functional Component Commands. The Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike, for instance, is currently the Commander of 8th Air Force, Lieutenant General Chilton. STRATCOM also has a Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, ISR, and Network Warfare. In addition, we have created joint task forces to accomplish specific operational tasks, such as the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations.
We are now implementing a STRATCOM Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction. We've given that job and responsibility to the Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
In sum, STRATCOM is operationalizing global deterrence with a new organizational construct, and moving to create a continuous global deterrence process that ensures U.S. deterrence actions today and for tomorrow are both relative and responsive.
We have a rigorous approach to developing and assessing global deterrent actions where we create measures of effectiveness which includes deep thinking analysis of how we evaluate our deterrent actions.
We're maintaining a global perspective while supporting other combatant commands. Your United States Strategic Command is in the fight every day, 24/7/365, providing the capabilities I have highlighted across the globe.
Thank you for your time and your attention. As I mentioned to you earlier, this is my first assignment to U.S. Strategic Command. I grew up in Air Combat Command as a bomber pilot. I recognize the fact that growing up a kid in the Cold War and with my dad serving in SAC, the pace of change is dramatic -- from a personal standpoint, but also from a historical perspective. And where we're heading in the future, I think, has great potential with great opportunities for our nation. We must ensure when we encounter those surprises that we are able to create the effects that our nation requires.
Thank you.
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