HOMELAND DEFENSE

An integrated set of active and passive measures for deterring and defending against the use of weapons of mass destruction is needed. These measures must involve a range of federal departments and agencies which, in turn, must incorporate the state and local levels of government in their planning.

Effective missile defense may also reduce the risk of a limited missile strike and deter blackmail attempts by those who would seek to thwart U. S. military and diplomatic actions. Even if our abilities to defend against large-scale nuclear attack remain inadequate, we must retain the option to deploy, if necessary, a missile defense capable of defeating limited attacks.

Although not seriously considered since the late 1950s, coastal and border defense of the homeland is a challenge that again deserves serious thought. We see no clear and present danger of an invasion by an armed force; however, the apparent ease of infiltration of our borders by drug smugglers, illegal immigrants, and contraband goods illustrates a potentially significant problem. It suggests that terrorist cells armed with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons could also infiltrate with little difficulty. Better coordination between those national agencies charged with gathering intelligence outside our borders and with those charged with protecting our citizens and territory will be an absolute requirement. Coordinated intelligence, when coupled with the close integration of efforts by the Navy, Coast Guard, other government agencies, and local authorities, should be able to stop the majority of those who would cross our borders for illicit purposes.

No defense will ever be so effective that determined adversaries, such as terrorists bent on making a political statement, will not be able to penetrate it in some fashion. This is perhaps even true in the case of a regional enemy who threatens to execute WMD attacks on the U. S. homeland employing organized infiltration forces. Even the threat of such attacks could seriously impair our power projection operations, especially if our political leadership felt compelled to accord the enemy's homeland sanctuary status from attacks by U. S. forces.

Managing the consequences of an attack by WMD or other mass casualty-producing devices will require action from all levels of government. Although "first responders" will take the lead (assuming they are still viable) in the vast majority of cases, the Department of Defense must be prepared to assist. Preparation will be the most effective form of assistance. The Panel recommends that the National Guard together with the Army Reserve be prepared to:

Information systems are rapidly becoming the key components of the nation's infrastructure. At the same time, our competitors will likely redouble their efforts to use our increasing dependence on information systems against us. The potential for an enemy to use attacks on information infrastructures as a means of undermining our economy and deterring or disrupting our operations abroad is of increasing concern. As the threats to commercial and defense information networks increase, the defense of our information infrastructure becomes crucial. The Department of Defense's reliance on the global commercial telecommunications infrastructure further complicates the equation. Our response to information warfare threats to the United States may present the greatest challenge in preparing for the security environment of 2010– 2020. The threat is diffuse and difficult to identify. Consensus on how to guard against it is difficult to establish. The recommendations of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP) should be the foundation of our future information security program. According to the Commission, the United States must begin to:

The terrorist threat to the United States is a complex issue which, as it encroaches upon U. S. territory, transitions from a Defense and State activity to one managed primarily by the Department of Justice or local law enforcement agencies. To date, the hand-off of responsibilities and sharing of intelligence on known and suspected terrorists has not been properly delineated and may, in some areas, be dysfunctional. It is not envisioned that Defense would ever take the lead in combating terrorism in the United States. The Defense Department must be prepared, however, to advise and assist law enforcement agencies in actions taken by the nation against terrorism. A key element in that assistance must be the sharing of information on both national and international terrorist organizations and their activities.

Homeland Defense

REGIONAL STABILITY

The challenges the United States faces in 2010– 2020 are likely to be even more complex and multi-dimensional than those of the second half of the twentieth century. While some of those challenges may threaten U. S. interests directly, a far greater number will test U. S. diplomatic, political, economic, and intellectual resourcefulness to avert and prevent crises that require the intervention of our armed forces. The efforts we and our allies invest in helping to defuse regional or local tensions, promoting sustainable economic development, nurturing the rule of law and human rights, or alleviating human suffering can produce substantial savings by eliminating the need to deploy military forces to the afflicted regions. U. S. efforts to promote democratic reform and market economies in the countries of East and Central Europe and Newly Independent States have made a contribution to the relatively peaceful evolution of those states and their reintegration into the international political and economic community. Thus, a proactive policy to foster regional stability, far from being a lesser mission, should be viewed as an essential component of U. S. national security. The evolution of a more secure and predictable environment will allow the United States to promote its interests globally without employing military forces as often as we do today, and should be central to our security strategy.

During the Cold War, regional issues were heavily influenced by our policy of containment of the Soviet Union. The United States and the Soviet Union vied with one another for their respective spheres of influence, but their competition also kept some regional instabilities (e. g., the former Yugoslavia) in check. Today, the problems are more complex and intertwined:

REGIONAL STABILITY Demands continued interaction with regional partners and alliances through diplomatic efforts

Requires the constant integration of U. S. diplomatic, economic, and military activities

The most effective tool should be diplomacy. Diplomacy can help shape the environment and establish the preconditions for successful use of other national security tools. The responsibility for stability in a region should fall first on nations in the region, or on regional organizations. Diplomatic efforts should encourage proactive measures that promote regional stability, focusing on those nations whose interests are compatible with ours. To do this in the fractured post-Cold War world requires more robust diplomatic capabilities than we budget for today.

Alliances also play a key role in solving regional stability problems. Our partners in these alliances are closer than we to the regional problems, and their historic ties to the specific issues can sometimes be used to advantage. We must preserve ties with our Cold War great-power allies (e. g., United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, and others), while encouraging great powers who are not allied with the United States (i. e., Russia, China, and India) to embrace emerging forms of cooperation while dissuading them from following paths that could lead to military competition.

The success of future military alliances or coalitions will depend on a degree of cooperation that goes beyond a "division of labor." It will require developing and implementing common doctrine, training, and the ability to operate smoothly as a combined, integrated force, much as the U. S. military services operate jointly today.

Cooperation in the area of armaments will also be a factor in alliance relations, starting with cooperation at the research and development level— with appropriate attention to sharing economic benefits and jobs— and including sharing the risks and costs of experimentation and procurement. Past cooperation has some successes as well as some failures. Cooperative development efforts based on ties (including cross-investments) between companies are more likely to succeed than government-to-government agreements. They should be encouraged. Such cooperation in joint development and sales can produce sizeable cost savings for the United States and its partners, as well as draw on the considerable intellectual and industrial capacities of allied countries.

Beyond diplomacy and alliances, economic tools are powerful means to influence the regional environment. In many instances, economic problems in a country or a region cause instability. The United States, in concert with its economic partners and international financial and development organizations, can address specific regional economic problems in ways that promote stability. For example, trade, economic aid packages, or other incentives not only open doors to economic cooperation on a bilateral or regional basis but also can offer a sound foundation for political dialogue and security cooperation.

While we may not prefer the U. S. military to be the first response to regional crises, the Department of Defense will continue to be committed to peacekeeping and humanitarian relief missions in support of U. S. national interests. These missions, which are best accomplished in coordination with other nations, will likely involve nongovernment and international organizations whose integration into operational environments must be carefully developed. Advance planning should identify clear interrelationships, responsibilities, and, when appropriate, lines of authority.

The challenge confronting U. S. military planners is that the forces, training, and equipment used to maintain ready power projection capabilities do not necessarily lend themselves to the requirements of stability operations. The unpredictable and unique challenges generated by regional crises often require forces tailored to fit specific requirements. This will likely entail restructuring of some forces now focused on regional conflicts to conduct these less demanding but more likely contingencies. Reserve forces, for example, can provide skills that stem from their civilian specialties. Greater use of the reserve components to substitute for active units may also alleviate the operational and personnel tempo pressures on the active components and enable them to maintain their readiness for other missions.

Clearly, the complexity of meeting the challenges of regional stability demands the use of all the elements of national power— diplomatic and economic as well as military. A key question is how to integrate them effectively, both within the U. S. government and with our allies. Done well, it will enable the United States and its allies to influence and shape future security environments to our mutual benefit.

In keeping with this approach, we should look to agencies that traditionally have had a domestic focus to play a larger role in international affairs. The Coast Guard, for example, could be a model for navies in other parts of the world. The Coast Guard participates in numerous international search and rescue cooperative programs and engages in other international activities that build trust and strengthen military-to-military ties with other countries. Outfitted with updated and adequate combat systems, the Coast Guard could make a stronger contribution to U. S. regional stability efforts in coordination with the Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs). We recommend that the Department of Defense and the Coast Guard move to establish appropriate Memoranda of Understanding with the regional CINCs to more closely couple Coast Guard international activities to Commander-in-Chiefs regional stability programs.

The current approach to addressing national security engages the Department of Defense and services too often and too quickly in situations that should have been resolved by non-military means. Failure to devote adequate attention and resources to promoting regional stability and security increasingly results in the use of military forces to restore social normalcy in areas not central to U. S. strategic interests, such as Somalia, Haiti, and Rwanda. Put in a more positive way, by strengthening our diplomatic, political, economic, and other assistance efforts, we may be able to prevent the breakdown of order, which requires the use of military force.

In this regard, we should also pay more attention to interagency representation overseas. Representatives from other than the Defense Department should be assigned to CINCs. Similarly, Defense representation at embassies in important countries must be carefully considered. The Defense representative should be a senior officer or civilian with interagency and joint experience and should represent the Department of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a whole.

Regional Security

PROJECTING MILITARY POWER

To meet future requirements to project military power and conduct combat operations, the United States must transform the present force, taking advantage of new technology, operational concepts, and force structures. Major combat operations in the future may well require forces and systems that are legacies (e. g., mechanized forces, naval surface combatant, short-range fixed and rotary-wing aircraft) of those currently in use. However, the cutting-edge ability to accomplish U. S. national security objectives will come from new approaches and new thinking about power projection and asymmetric warfare capabilities. The depth and breadth of the capabilities needed are only now becoming apparent, but we can foresee the broad requirements.

We must be able to project military power much more rapidly into areas where we may not have stationed forces. The ability to project lethal forces -- in the air, on the sea, or on the land -- will be essential. Toward that end, our ability to project combat power anywhere in the world will require new technologies, operational concepts, and capabilities to meet the new challenges. First among these new challenges is the need for a much smaller force "footprint" characterized by fewer but more capable attacking troops and platforms supported by an even smaller logistics element. Priority challenges will also include an enhanced military responsiveness distinguished by its increased range of employment and resulting in reduced exposure of our forces.

In short, we must radically alter the way in which we project power. Projecting military power on short notice into the backyard of a major regional power is an inherently demanding enterprise. This is particularly true when that enemy is willing to accept vastly more casualties than the United States. In this situation, there is a high premium on forces that can deploy rapidly, seize the initiative, and achieve our objectives with minimal risk of heavy casualties.

Maritime forces would rely more heavily on a "distributed" and networked battle fleet that would comprise, along with carriers, extended-range precision strike forces based on surface and submerged combatants, including submarines, arsenal ships, land-attack destroyers and integrated amphibious forces. The naval expeditionary power projection fleet would employ both short-range aircraft, maneuver forces, and reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicles. Maneuver forces would employ systems that would insert forces to strike or seize objectives while avoiding an enemy's defenses.

Air forces would place greater emphasis on operating at extended ranges, relying heavily on long-range aircraft and extended-range unmanned systems, employing advanced precision and brilliant munitions and based outside the theater of operations. Aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and unmanned combat aerial vehicles operating in theater could stage at peripheral bases outside enemy missile range, or on Mobile Offshore Bases or carriers. Great reliance would be placed on aerial refueling to extend aircraft range, and perhaps on multiple, austere bases in theaters where "touch-and-go" refueling and rearming could take place.

Such a force would be fully joint and increasingly combined, engaging in multidimensional (i. e., integrated ground, sea, and aerospace) and, where possible, multinational operations at close and extended ranges. It would be fully integrated through a global, distributed reconnaissance and intelligence architecture composed of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, sensors, and infiltration forces. Unmanned systems would likely provide a growing proportion of airborne reconnaissance and strike forces.

Power projection operations would focus on disabling the enemy's strategic center of gravity (including his warmaking potential and military forces), and occupying key terrain. In general, we must be able to rapidly target and access whatever an adversary values most, the loss of which would render him either unable or unwilling to continue his hostilities. This has always been an objective in war, though very difficult to achieve, given war's uncertainties and frictions. Toward that end, we should try, so far as possible, to stop aggression through our own strategic initiative and control of the battlespace. Accomplishing this will likely require the simultaneous execution of a range of operations -- conducting extended-range precision strikes, seizing control of space and information superiority, exercising ground and sea control, and providing missile defense.

Along with the asymmetric U. S. military advantages noted above, our forces will also have to operate and organize differently for power projection in order to achieve the following objectives:

Meeting the power projection challenge will require aggressive transformation. This process may present some risk in the mid-term as the force transitions from the combat capabilities of the post-Desert Storm era to those demanded in the 2010– 2020 security environment. The risk is moderate, however, and acceptable, given the capability of the current force and the improbability of a hostile competitor making a decisive technological leap ahead in the near term. Furthermore, risk is likely to decline as we develop and deploy new capabilities. The longer we delay action, however, the greater the risk. Key to managing the risk of a major conflict while we transform the force is that at any point in the process we retain the means to conduct major combat operations and, more important, that potential adversaries understand that we have this capability. Successful power projection requires more than robust lift and the ability to wage effective operations against major regional threats. It requires other capabilities, described below.

Handling Lesser Military Threats

Effective Urban Operations

LESSER THREATS

Increase priority; expand efforts

Although we might prefer to avoid urban situations, mission requirements in peace and war may not allow this preference. We need to develop intelligence systems and military capabilities that enable the effective control (or eviction) of regular enemy forces from urban terrain. Furthermore, we must do so without putting at risk friendly forces or noncombatants, while being careful not to destroy critical infrastructures that will be essential to post-hostility recovery. Finally, urban operations will require sophisticated operational concepts, civil– military and interagency coordination, new force structure elements, and integrated efforts by joint and allied forces. Emerging technologies will change the characteristics of the urban battlefield and thus our concepts for fighting there.

In recent years the Department of Defense has focused research and development effort on urban warfare issues, and the services, especially the Marines, are developing new and better ways of fighting in cities. These efforts should be encouraged and expanded now if we are to successfully meet the challenges of the future.

Projecting Military Power

SPACE OPERATIONS

Commercial use of space is expanding quickly, and on a global scale. In the next ten years, more than 1,000 satellites are projected to be launched. This represents a total investment (including all related services) of more than one-half trillion dollars. The majority of these satellites will be commercial. In 1996, for the first time in history, commercial launches exceeded government launches. Worldwide today more than 1,000 companies develop, manufacture, and operate space systems. Many of these companies are in the United States.

Our enemies, however, will seek to develop their own space capabilities or to gain access to space-derived products. The explosion in the commercial use of space will afford them the opportunity. As the costs of getting to space and operating there decline— and we expect that they will— not only will we see more satellites in space, but more military organizations will have the means to access them.

Military competitors will seek ways to reduce our current advantages. As competition increases, business will turn to government for protection. Some protective measures may take the form of regulations or treaties, but as the "flag follows trade," our military will be expected to protect U. S. commercial interests.

Space power is an integral part of the revolution in military affairs and a key asset in achieving military advantage in information operations. For the military, space is the information battle's high ground. The United States cannot afford to lose the edge it now holds in military-related space operations.

Despite our strong position, our space program has vulnerabilities. The small number of U. S. launch installations and present launch processes increase our vulnerabilities and costs of accessing space. Our assets in space are also vulnerable and they lack the ability to detect attack. Our protection and denial capabilities are rudimentary, limited to encryption of communication links, some degree of hardened electronics, and enough redundancy to guard against catastrophic loss of capabilities. Denial of enemy space capabilities is largely limited to neutralizing enemy ground installations employing conventional or special operations forces.

Greater accessibility to space by our competitors will strongly influence the struggle for advantage in military operations. For example, an adversary could use commercial or third-party national remote-sensing and communications satellites, along with space-based navigation data, to help identify or target forward-deployed U. S. forces and fixed facilities such as ports, airfields, and logistics centers. Therefore, we must take steps now to ensure we have the capability to deny our enemies the use of space.

In short, developments in space will both challenge our military and offer it opportunities. Our defensive efforts should extend to ground stations that enable and support operations as well as to the satellites themselves, which will require the hardening or shielding of electronics against interference. We should develop sensors to determine the source and type of interference we might see applied against us so that we can take steps to mitigate its effect and attack the source. We must substantially improve our ability to conduct surveillance of space objects in order to maintain our situational awareness and adjust operations accordingly. And we must be prepared to deny applications that support adversary military operations.

To capitalize on the opportunities that space lends to military operations, we must maintain our lead. We have a strong foundation on which to build. We should emphasize policies and strategies needed to coordinate the civil, commercial, and national security sectors of space. For example, we should be able to better integrate Defense Department and intelligence community operations. We must take advantage of increasingly innovative commercial practices and continually investigate the advantages and vulnerabilities that commercial investments in space will bring. We should accurately incorporate them into our long-range planning and integrate them into routine operations. We should also examine innovative applications such as paying for modifications that will make commercial systems more useful in crises. Furthermore, we should seek to secure the cooperation of private industry in addressing national security implications in space.

We need to develop a robust space science and technology program that incorporates more experimentation, giving priority to technologies for which there is no commercial market to support innovation and the fielding of the capabilities we will need to meet emerging challenges. We need better simulation models to use in our analyses, war games, exercises, and training. We must educate our various commands, services, and related national security actors on what capabilities space affords them. The outcome of all this should be better operational concepts and new space capabilities (including better situational awareness and improved precision strike). With the right focus, we can maintain our lead in space and protect against any vulnerability that might cost us an advantage in military operations.

SPACE OPERATIONS

Space Operations

MAINTAINING U. S. INFORMATION SUPERIORITY

First and foremost, we must be able to exploit advances in commercial technology. Given that commercial technology is ubiquitous, we will have to develop the means to exploit it (i. e., transform technology into military capability) more quickly than our military competitors. We must also recognize that our ability to exploit information technologies to create systems architectures -- the integration of forces and platforms -- is likely to be a future core capability. Second, we must have effective defensive and offensive information capabilities. Not only must we be able to defend our systems against cyber-attack, but we must also be able to discern the origin of cyber-attacks and provide a commensurate response.

Information Operations

---

As the new millennium approaches, we face the very real and increasing prospect that regional aggressors, third-rate armies, terrorist groups and even religious cults will seek to wield disproportionate power by acquiring and using these weapons that can produce mass casualties. These are neither far-fetched nor far-off threats.

–Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen

---

COUNTERING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

The days of the six-month build-up and secure, large, rear-area bases are almost certainly gone forever. WMD will require us to increase dramatically the means to project lethal power from extended ranges. We cannot assume, however, that such measures will, in and of themselves, protect our forces. We must also develop appropriate defensive measures integral to our deployed forces. Even more efficient and lighter protective gear will be required. Vaccinations will be the norm, and detection capabilities must be our highest priority.

Furthermore, we must provide a conventional, non-nuclear deterrent capability against the use of weapons of mass destruction. The above described measures will form the basis of a conventional deterrence as potential adversaries recognize that we are not only capable of striking them from outside their WMD range, but that we are also capable of operating within a contaminated environment. It must be absolutely clear that the United States will respond decisively if weapons of mass destruction are employed against our homeland or against our forward-deployed forces.

Weapons of Mass Destruction