Military Update
Military transformation gains new sense of urgency
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 49, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
By Tom Philpotts
The Bush administration's goal to "transform'' the U.S. military into a more efficient, effective fighting force isn't aimed at some future generation of warriors, says the Pentagon's new director of force transformation. It's aimed at Americans now fighting in Afghanistan, and those preparing for the broader war on terrorism.
"It's about the present as much at it is the future,'' said retired Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski, at a news conference Nov. 27. "If (it's) a good way to think in 2015, well, then why shouldn't we be thinking that way today?''
Taking the fight to the terrorists — starting with al-Qaida cells and the Taliban — has given the transformation push new urgency and greater clarity, Cebrowski said. While the world sees outgunned terrorists getting pounded, Cebrowski sees U.S. forces that need to be even more agile, and to have broader capabilities "to limit the way a potential enemy can maneuver into a space we created by our (resource) allocation decisions.''
That is, the military must spend more wisely against 21st century threats. A higher proportion of defense dollars, Cebrowski says, should go to sophisticated information systems that, in the Information Age, translate into power.
The importance of information is clear in Afghani-stan, he said. Although it might appear U.S. forces are relying on conventional tactics and weapons — aircraft, bombs and missiles — it's different from the war fought against Iraq a decade ago.
"Who is that naval aviator talking to, to deliver that ordnance? What kind of team is doing that? What's the communication medium for that? Is the doctrine exactly as it says in a glossy pub, or is it somehow different?''
Cebrowski expects many valuable lessons to emerge from Afghanistan.
"I don't think very many people would have predicted exactly those kinds of forces would come together in this way for that kind of battle,'' he said.
Cebrowski, 59, spent the final tour of his 37-year naval career as president of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He retired Oct. 1 and became the first director of Force Transformation Oct. 29. Previous assignments as a naval aviator included combat tours in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, and command of an air wing, an assault ship and two aircraft carriers. As a flag officer, he became a policy expert on the Joint Staff and the Navy staff in the areas of command, control, communications and computers.
Cebrowski's job description is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "advocate, focal point and catalyst for transformation.''
Military transformation means evolving and deploying combat capabilities that provide revolutionary advantages over adversaries. Proponents say it shouldn't be confused with modernization, which usually means upgrading existing inventories of aircraft, ships, armor, guns and communications.
Real transformation, Cebrowski said, "creates news sources of power and yields profound increases in competitive advantage.''
It can happen relatively quickly, he said, citing the decision in 1956 to install nuclear missiles on submarines. Four years later, the George Washington went to sea with nuclear missiles and changed the strategic equation with the Soviets. Other transformations, which changed not just the military "but the world,'' said Cebrowski, were decisions to communicate from space, to navigate from space and, for U.S. ground forces, to "own the night'' by committing to night-vision technology.
"The trouble with many of these things is we see them retrospectively,'' said Cebrowski. "And part of the great challenge is to adopt a more forward-looking view.''
In the past, the services have tended to over-commit resources to a single type of conflict. When "you develop depth against that,'' Cebrowski said, "you create large spaces or gaps into which an enemy can maneuver strategically.''
Terrorist nations, for example, won't challenge a numerically superior military. Therefore, to manage the terrorist risk, the United States needs to broaden its capabilities and technologies in non-traditional ways, to create new competitive advantages rather than deepen existing ones, Cebrowski said.
He favors information-based gains, concepts such as network-centric warfare, which allows operational commanders to use networks of sensors and weapons and to fight from multiple platforms simultaneously.
"Over time, as we move (deeper) into the Information age, you should expect to see the allocation of resources shifting in favor of information systems'' and away from more traditional military hardware, he says.
He expects resistance from the services, and from constituencies in industry and the Congress.
One way to overcome that resistance is to work "in the sunlight,'' he said, so that new capabilities and their potential are understood and attract their own constituencies.
Cebrowski will leave it to personnel experts to press for specific personnel management reforms, such as changes to 20-year retirement, or lengthening tours of officers who work on experimental systems.
But transformation is about leadership, he said.
"A good leader crafts the future for his people,'' he said, "and then shows them their place in it. To the extent leadership continues to focus on past practices, methods and systems, they fail to perform that most vital leadership function.''
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