and space, such attacks can be contained, given an adequate navy, air force, and ballistic missile defenses. Since naval, air, and space forces are highly mobile, they can be sized and operated both for domestic defense and warfare throughout the world. U.S. land forces, on the other hand, must expect to engage in faraway parts of the world and not in homeland defense, but their mobility is limited, and it takes time.
Thus, in conflicts far from our shores, the maritime, air, and space forces will either already be on scene or will quickly arrive on scene; the limiting factor will be the arrival of ground forces. Space is on scene at any given time, based on the orbital characteristics of the system. Airpower can arrive in minutes or hours, depending on basing. Sea power may be on scene, or can arrive in days, depending on the location of the ships. But the ever- increasing CONUS basing of land forces means that they will take weeks or months to arrive in strength in a conflict region far from the United States.
It follows that if we are to use military force to deter or resolve conflict in its earliest stages, then we must exploit the rapid strategic mobility of space, air, and naval forces. And if we are to advance the capability of our military forces to deter or resolve conflict, we must increase the rapidity of the land forces’ strategic mobility.
Since we are seldom able to predict the outbreak of hostilities, it is vital that the United States have forces that can reach the scene of conflict as quickly as possible, and then move quickly within a battle space.
? Any future enemy will surely have precision attack weapons that exploit standoff. This means that our military forces must be able to hide or disguise themselves (control the environment) and to rapidly relocate (to areas where enemy weapons are not aimed). This also means that air weapons systems must have longer range, to allow them to be based under our own defensive umbrellas or at airfields or on ships beyond the reach of enemy missiles. This also means that land forces must be able to mass and disperse rapidly in order to accumulate the decisive power needed to win a battle, while denying enemy standoff weapons large, lucrative targets. Tactical mobility is achieved in the air by high-performance aircraft, at sea by long-endurance powerful turbine engines, and on land by high-speed vehicles and by forces that are not tied to large logistic support lines.
While military forces throughout the world are seeking these capabilities — long range, high speed, and freedom from encumbering supply trains — they are not always training and organizing to exploit the advantages of rapid thinking and acting.
BRILLIANCE
This brings me to the last of the elements needed to attain victory in the future — the “brilliance” with which we employ advanced technology. Brilliance is a code word for initiative, and is therefore nothing more than the decisions produced by humans in a decentralized environment.
This is a revolution, not because it is new but because we live in an age when all the natural tendencies drive us toward centralization.
So, for example, the revolution in computers and communications means that information can be transferred on an unprecedented scale from the battle back to some headquarters. From this, some conclude an increased value in centralized analysis and decision making. Why not, they claim, watch over the battle in the calm, cool environment of some headquarters that is close to the President and far from the agony of war?
Wrong!
This is the false trail that (at least in part) led to our failures in Vietnam, where targets were picked in the White House by leaders with immense knowledge of the politics of the war and little comprehension of battle. We must accept the reality that the closer we come to the battle, the more we are likely to know what it takes to fight effectively.
Though each succeeding higher headquarters will — rightly — have a role in determining goals and objectives, we must keep in mind that those who are closest to the action are the most important participants in the action. They are the ones the so-called higher echelons are there to support.
SPACE
Any discussion of Desert Storm cannot ignore the immense contribution made by our space forces. Even less will we be able to ignore their contributions in the future. In Desert Storm, the primary role of space was to provide knowledge. Space, of course, has many other military uses.
Space operations fall into one of two areas — information or combat. Information operations provide data, either as a medium (such as communications satellites) or as a source (such as ballistic missile launch warning, imagery, GPS navigation, and time data). Combat operations include weapons that pass through space (Scuds and ICBMs arrive through space), weapons that defend against such weapons (either lasers, target trackers,[71] or kinetic impact devices), and weapons that shoot down satellites (in the 1980s, the USAF shot down a satellite using a missile launched from an F-15).
The Air Force has been an able steward of space. The ballistic missile programs of the fifties, sixties, and seventies have matured into the space lift of today, and now upward of 95 percent of our military space assets and operations are acquired and operated by USAF programs and organizations. Blue suits dominate the military cooperative programs with NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office, and Patrick, Vandenberg, and Falcon Air Force Bases have become the core of our military space launch and on-orbit operations.
This situation is not without problems. For starters, our reliance and ability to exploit space grew from support of Cold War deterrence operations. Some of these mind-sets still remain. Second, space is often seen as a subset of air operations.
In fact, as Desert Storm has shown, space has become a pervasive influence in almost every aspect of military operations.
Take GPS.
The GPS system not only tells everyone where they are, it provides everyone the same time (which is vital to such things as the synchronization of encrypting devices on radios), and it is everywhere accessible to all.
Take reconnaissance.
We can watch the enemy nation and adjacent seas anytime in any condition.
Take global broadcast.
We can beam two hundred channels to our forces deployed in any country. The Army can watch updates of battle maps; the Air Force can get target information; the Navy can get weather reports; the chaplain can air his message for the day; and the commander can brief the troops on the upcoming offensive. Anything that is classified will require a decoder box for that channel; no problem.
In other words, space has become too big, too important, to be treated as a subset of air operations or of the Cold War.
Airmen now face a difficult choice: either to define space as air operations at a higher altitude, or to develop doctrine that describes space operations in terms as different from air as air is from land or sea. For the time being, the Air Force has crafted a course of action that defines itself as an “air and space” force that could become the “space and air” force. But that may not be enough.
Our space force is the servant to all our military services. The Army and Marine Corps rely more heavily on global positioning satellite information than do their comrades in the air or on the sea. The Navy requires satellite communications to coordinate the activities of their far-flung fleets. As a result, the land and sea forces are deeply concerned that they rely almost exclusively on the USAF to satisfy their space needs. The problem here is that the Air Force has its own needs (many of which have little to do with space), and these needs have to be funded. As long as each service is funded at an artificial rate almost equal to one-third of the defense budget, the Air Force will be hard-pressed to fill its core air responsibilities while growing its role in space.
All of this means that our space force may need to become a military entity in its own right, equal and apart from our air, land, and maritime forces. At some point the nation must ask itself if we should artificially limit our space and air capabilities with the present budgeting methodology, when both are growing in importance to our
