Table Of ContentMilitary Transformation
and Modern Warfare: A
Reference Handbook
Elinor Sloan
PRAEGER SECURITY
INTERNATIONAL
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Military Transformation and
Modern Warfare
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Praeger Security International Advisory Board
Board Cochairs
Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs, School of
Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (U.S.A.)
Paul Wilkinson, Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the
Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence,
University of St. Andrews (U.K.)
Members
Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic
and International Studies (U.S.A.)
The´re`se Delpech, Director of Strategic Affairs, Atomic Energy Commission, and
Senior Research Fellow, CERI (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques),
Paris (France)
Sir Michael Howard, former Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regis
Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, and Robert A. Lovett Professor
of Military and Naval History, Yale University (U.K.)
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Staff
for Intelligence, Department of the Army (U.S.A.)
Paul M. Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director,
International Security Studies, Yale University (U.S.A.)
Robert J. O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls
College, Oxford University (Australia)
Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, Department of
Government and Politics, University of Maryland (U.S.A.)
Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International (U.S.A.)
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Military Transformation and
Modern Warfare
A Reference Handbook
Elinor Sloan
Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues
PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL
Westport, Connecticut r London
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sloan, Elinor C. (Elinor Camille), 1965–
Military transformation and modern warfare : a reference handbook / Elinor Sloan.
p. cm. — (Contemporary military, strategic, and security issues,
ISSN 1932–295X)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–275–99405–1 (alk. paper)
1. Armed Forces—Reorganization. 2. United States—Armed
Forces—Reorganization. 3. Military art and science—History—21st century.
4. Military doctrine. I. Title.
UA10.S62 2008
355.3—dc22 2007043638
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright ⃝C 2008 by Elinor Sloan
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007043638
ISBN-13: 978–0–275–99405–1
ISSN: 1932–295X
First published in 2008
Praeger Security International, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Preface vii
Chapter 1 What Is Military Transformation? 1
Chapter 2 U.S. Military Transformation in “How We Fight” 16
Chapter 3 Wider Aspects of U.S. Military Transformation 38
Chapter 4 Allied Approaches to Military Transformation 52
Chapter 5 NATO and Military Transformation 76
Chapter 6 Military Transformation in China 93
Chapter 7 Russia and Military Transformation 109
Conclusion How Relevant? Military Transformation and Modern
Conflict 123
Postscript 129
Appendix I: Biographies 131
Appendix II: Key Documents 143
Chronology of Events 157
Glossary 161
Annotated Bibliography 165
Index 171
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Preface
How national militaries have sought to adjust to the post–Cold War era, now
some two decades old, is a dramatic story that has played out against the back-
drop of an ever-changing security landscape. Security, an absence of threats to
values, is not something that military force alone can guarantee. Indeed, it often
has just a small role to play. But this role is in many cases an important, even
deciding, one and so it matters just exactly how militaries are sized, structured,
and equipped to address potential threats. Even before the end of the Cold War
theorists were hypothesizing as to what would be the impact of new military tech-
nologies on the character and conduct of war. Soviet writers began to talk about
a military technical revolution (MTR) in the late 1970s and 1980s, and analysts
in the Pentagon picked up on and elaborated these ideas in their 1990s discus-
sions of a revolution in military affairs (RMA), which added the doctrinal and
organizational dimensions. By the turn of the century the new terminology was
“transformation,” which started off similar in meaning to the RMA, but then grad-
ually accumulated a wider basket of issues to the point that, within a few years,
it had become what one analyst has called “a generic buzzword for ill-focused
change.”
The purpose of this book is to establish the parameters of “military transfor-
mation,” to assess the manner in which certain countries are transforming their
military forces, to determine the relevancy of transformation efforts to modern
conflict and, in drawing out the key areas of emphasis on the part of various
countries, to provide a window on the future global security environment. Chap-
ter 1 examines the meaning of military transformation, setting out a three-part
framework that forms a prism through which to analyze the transformation ef-
forts of several countries. Chapter 2 looks at measures the United States has taken
in the RMA and “transforming transformation” dimensions of military transforma-
tion, the latter of which has been driven by contemporary experiences in Iraq and
Afghanistan, while Chapter 3 centers on wider understandings such as homeland
defense, new thinking about deterrence, and unhindered access to space. Chap-
ter 4 is devoted to Western allies, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France,
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viii Preface
and Germany, while Chapter 5 considers the allies as a whole in the context of
NATO. Chapters 6 and 7 examine China and Russia respectively. The concluding
section discusses the relevancy of the various components military transformation
to modern conflict, and what the patterns of emphasis in transformation efforts
may portend for future conflict.
When thinking about the military technical revolution, the revolution in mil-
itary affairs, and military transformation, it is useful to conceive of a series of
concentric circles, each progressively more expansive but each continuing to en-
compass the earlier core or cores. When I first began to analyze the changing na-
ture of warfare as a defense analyst in Canada’s Department of National Defence
in the 1990s, the military technical revolution and its technological confines were
already considered the old way of understanding change. My focus turned to the
broader notion—in comparison to the MTR—of a revolution in military affairs.
The outcome was a book called The Revolution in Military Affairs, published in
2002 but completed largely before the 9/11 attacks. The rapid pace of interna-
tional events in subsequent years was such that I had often considered revisiting
the subject. And so it was that when Praeger Publishers approached me in 2006 to
write a volume on the revolution in military affairs I readily agreed. But by then it
was the RMA that seemingly constituted yesterday’s perspective. What follows is
my attempt to “think outside the circle” about the still more expansive concept of
military transformation, what it means, which elements various countries are fo-
cusing on, and what an examination of national military transformation activities
may suggest about the future course of world affairs.
Elinor Sloan
Ottawa
November 6, 2007
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CHAPTER 1
What Is Military Transformation?
Perspectives on what comprises military transformation are numerous and varied
among members of the defense community. Explicitly or implicitly they range
from narrow views on how technology has impacted warfare, to broader ideas on
the need to bring together technological, doctrinal, and organizational change, to
still more expansive outlooks on how military transformation can help militaries
adapt to the security challenges of the post-9/11 world. Each of these perspectives,
and especially the latter two, captures the essence of “transformation,” which can
be defined as “a marked change in character or form, usually for the better.”
Government documents, speeches by policymakers, and scholarly articles often
discuss military transformation in terms of how contemporary and future war
differ in character and form from that which the West prepared for, but never
fought, during the forty years of the Cold War. And for advocates of military
transformation, a transformed military is inevitably seen as being a better tool for
conducting politics by other means than was the Cold War military machine.
What follows is an attempt to delineate what we mean by military transfor-
mation. The chapter begins with a discussion of the intellectual origins of mili-
tary transformation, including the Military Technical Revolution (MTR) and the
Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). It then outlines the several understandings
among members of the defense community as to what comprises military transfor-
mation. Finally, it puts forward a specific view of the contemporary components
of military transformation, which forms the basis for the analysis in subsequent
chapters.
The Military Technical Revolution
Military transformation is only the latest in a list of interrelated terminologies
that have appeared over the past few decades to describe changes underway in
Western militaries. The progression began with the MTR of the 1980s and early
