What will war be like in the future? Will we be ready for it?
"A revolutionary new technology, stealth, made its debut in the Gulf War," observed William Ballhaus at the Hudson Institute's 1996 National Policy Forum. "It helped render the enemy deaf, dumb, and blind in the initial phase of the air war, thus minimizing casualties among civilians and allied troops." Participating in a symposium on the future of U.S. national security, the Lockheed Martin Corporation vice president surveyed the new technologies -- speed-of-light weapons, unmanned air vehicles, precision missiles -- and analyzed their impact on the nature of war. To maintain its technological advantage, Ballhaus advised, the Department of Defense must "adapt technologies developed for the commercial marketplace to the needs of national security." It must also "maintain its investment in basic science and technology, because industry clearly is oriented toward the short term and will not."
Another participant in the symposium, Hudson Institute research analyst Mary FitzGerald, argued that the "principle of surprise" was even more crucial to success in the Gulf War than was the coalition's "absolute technological superiority." Iraq, she insisted, "was defeated before the Gulf War began, by information warfare. The elements in this defeat," FitzGerald explained, "included purely political and diplomatic measures; the media blitz; America's spaceborne assets, which revealed Saddam Hussein's deployments as if his cards were face up on the table; military deception; psychological operations; and, finally, the key: electronic suppression of Iraq's information assets."
Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center conceded that "Iraq's army may have been defeated in 1991 by information warfare." He reminded the symposium participants, however, that "Saddam Hussein is not out of power. The U.S. returns periodically to attack portions of Iraq's military infrastructure in retaliation for unacceptable behavior," Sokolski observed. "All this reminds us that smaller nations with little or no grasp of revolutionary technologies can compete with and sometimes win against major powers, because the military objectives of the smaller nations tend to be modest."
Sokolski called for "a competitive strategy for a new kind of war. And because we are dealing with countries that have weapons capable of mass destruction," he asserted, "we must figure out how to win that war -- like we won the cold war -- without fighting. That means doing something the U.S. is bad at: anticipating problems." Sokolski lamented in particular our government's failure to take advantage of "opportunities for leverage over Chinese behavior. We have some things the Chinese want," he noted, "which we could deny them without upsetting trade." Sokolski urged our nation's leaders to "set more ambitious goals, act sooner, and recognize that a competitive strategy against a well-armed world will have economic and political as well as military components."
Lt. General William Odom concluded the symposium by emphasizing that "the technological culture cannot replace the warrior culture." Technological innovation may or may not contribute to "military professionalism," he observed. "It may even hurt it." Odom emphasized that he supports research and development, but worries that U.S. leaders lack the will to maintain our military superiority.
