The Best Defense

Out of nowhere, undetected by radar until too late, a U.S. missile flying at 10 times the speed of sound plunges into an underground bunker and explodes with shattering force. Overhead, unmanned fighter jets swarm in to spoof and pillory--pilotspeak for deceive and punish--enemy air defenses so that other unmanned aircraft can deliver lancet-like small bombs on individual targets.

Such an attack, and the advanced weapons needed to carry it off, lies at the heart of a classified document signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on May 3--the Bush administration’s latest “Defense Planning Guidance.” Distributed to senior leaders in the armed forces to shape their planning and budgeting in the coming decade and beyond, the document shows just how drastically Rumsfeld and other senior civilian leaders have changed their thinking since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Pushed aside is the earlier preoccupation with antimissile defenses, space-based weaponry and other programs designed primarily to protect the United States against foreign aggressors. Instead, the new emphasis is on a far more interventionist, proactive strategy in which the United States would stand ready to strike militarily around the world wherever and whenever it thought its security might be threatened.

The new strategic watchword is called “forward deterrence,” and the tactical instrument of choice would be what the Defense Planning Guidance calls “unwarned attacks.” What those catch phrases mean in practical terms is a new and expanded commitment to the creed of distant warfare--an Afghanistan fighting force on steroids.

“Our challenge in the 21st century is to defend our cities, friends, allies, and deployed forces--as well as our space assets and computer networks--from new forms of attack, while projecting force over long distances to fight new adversaries,” Rumsfeld wrote in Foreign Affairs recently.

What that means to the administration in concrete terms is spelled out in the new document: Rumsfeld envisions the U.S. military as a global strike force capable of unilateral action anywhere, any time, with minimal risk to American lives.

To be sure, the plan continues to support development of antimissile defense and means of countering so-called “asymmetric threats” posed by foreign powers that cannot challenge the United States in conventional military terms but may be able to inflict serious casualties through terrorism, say, or weapons of mass destruction. It also gives rhetorical support to homeland defense.

But these priorities have been overshadowed by more dramatic departures from past American policies--departures that deserve more attention from the public than they have gotten.

In his own words, what Rumsfeld wants the military to focus on is developing weapons and forces capable of undertaking “unwarned strikes ... [to] swiftly defeat from a position of forward deterrence.”

From the air, that means development of a “high-volume precision strike,” using large quantities of smaller, more precise munitions, many of them delivered by unmanned aircraft. For other services, the new doctrine means greater emphasis on collecting intelligence about possible enemies and the threats they could pose, new techniques for waging cyber-warfare against communications and information technology systems, and greater emphasis on the Special Forces.

During its less than two years in office, the Bush administration has traveled several paths in its thinking about the military and national security. First the emphasis was on missile defenses, space, intelligence and information technology. Then came “homeland defense” and the war in Afghanistan, followed by President Bush’s State of the Union address that focused on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Now, in his more recent declaration, Bush announced that the United States would adopt a strategy for preempting, rather than deterring, potential adversaries. It is this doctrine of preemption that Rumsfeld’s Defense Planning Guidance reflects.

The military is directed to make cyber-warfare a “core competency” and resolve outstanding legal and interagency issues relating to offensive computer network attack. In space, the document directs the military to develop cyber, laser and electronic warfare capabilities to deny any adversary use of space. Special operations, particularly covert capabilities, are stressed. Better intelligence is called for to provide “sufficient warning of an impending crisis” and to “identify critical targets for an effects-based campaign.”

The war in Afghanistan demonstrated the usefulness of unmanned drones, and so the document calls for a squadron of 12 unmanned combat air vehicles to be deployed by 2012. These unmanned armed fighters would have the ability to fly into enemy airspace and deliver a variety of weapons without risking American crews.

A Mach-10 hypersonic missile is called for by 2009. Hypersonics would truly be the next leap for airpower after the age of supersonics. Air Force briefings have described a laser-propelled or hydrocarbon-fueled weapon able to traverse 600 nautical miles in 15 minutes or less.

Such a weapon could be cued from space platforms to strike at mobile missiles, such as the Iraqi Scud missiles used during the Gulf War, within minutes of launch--before the missile launchers had a chance to move.

The new document calls for better American capability to strike “hardened and deeply buried targets” in three rogue nations simultaneously. This includes building up special operations capabilities and cyber-warfare, as well as accelerating the development of a “survivable” earth penetrator fitted with an existing nuclear warhead. Laser and other “directed energy” weapons such as high-powered microwave weapons are also called for to attack underground targets impervious to explosive attack, troops and computer and communications networks.

In describing the new planning document, a senior defense official stressed that it is consistent with the transition from traditional “attrition” warfare to an “effects-based” approach that seeks quick paralysis instead of step-by-step destruction. “You realize your adversary is himself a networked operation,” the senior official says. “You look for ways to break down that network and to ensure [it] can’t function. If you do it properly and if you do it well, you develop ... battle space superiority over your adversary that is unrivaled.”

It all sounds very impressive. And technologically it is. No target on the planet or in space would be immune to American attack. The United States could strike without warning whenever and wherever a threat was perceived, and it would be protected by missile defenses, a new Department of Homeland Security and a transparency in the world that Rumsfeld and others expect to come as a result of greater investments in space, intelligence and information technology.

And the new approach is said to carry the priceless advantage of the old Cold War deterrence strategy: If pursued vigorously, it would never have to be used. “We must develop new assets, the mere possession of which discourages adversaries from competing,” Rumsfeld says.

So what’s the problem?

The answer has two parts.

The first is that the American military is already deep into the process of transforming itself for the post-Cold War era. It is a slow, difficult process that tries to balance the varied and conflicting requirements that the future may bring. Covert Special Forces and the quick-strike capabilities of light infantry and precision air power working in conjunction brought quick success in Afghanistan. Heavier, more powerfully armed and armored conventional forces might be needed against an enemy such as North Korea or Iraq.

Though Rumsfeld’s new plan nominally embraces “transformation,” it may actually complicate and impede the process. Perhaps surprisingly, after the cool relationship that existed between President Bill Clinton and the military, Rumsfeld’s relationship with the services is not good. He and his close advisors are seen as willfully isolated, enamored of secret operations and decision-making, beguiled by a “painless dentistry” approach to war and almost ideological in their attitude toward intervention. The imbalances in the new Defense Planning Guidance, coupled with the growing gulf between senior officers and senior civilians--not over who should be in charge but over what the policies should be--will make both transformation and the war on terrorism more difficult.

The second part of the problem is that the document seems to ignore an axiom even older than Clauswitz or Sun Tzu: It is easier to get in than to get out. Rumsfeld’s emphasis on preemptive intervention--and acceptance of the unilateralism that tends to come with it--suggests a belief that Afghanistan was a success and a model for wars well into the future. This ignores the difficulties that have followed the rapid toppling of the Taliban. An administration that came to office scorning “nation-building” is now knee-deep in the internal quarrels and ancestral politics of a region even imperial Britain learned to avoid.

Before rushing to embrace a new strategy, we need to think more clearly about the problem. Even without “transformation,” the U.S. military is already so strong that no one is going to compete with it any time soon. But then no one competed with our military on Sept. 11, either. And it is not competition with our military that stands between us and success in Afghanistan or Pakistan, the Philippines or Sudan.

What is needed, before we get to questions of what kinds of new super-weapons to build, is a strategy for living in a world in which we may be able to win every battle, yet still not win the war--much less the peace.