America's Army in Transition: Preparing for War in the Precision Age.

Abstract

The following two articles were written during and immediately after the war in Kosovo. The first is an adaptation of an earlier work written after a trip to Asia in 1998. In that essay, I suggested that foreign militaries were beginning to perceive our fixation on a firepower-centered way of war as an exploitable weakness. In fact, some states, armed with experience gained against us in real war, had already begun to evolve a doctrine to counter our superiority in precision. These potential adversaries concluded that dispersion, deception, patience and a willingness to absorb punishment offered them the means to endure precision strike long enough to outlast a technologically superior foe. Subsequent practical experience in Kosovo caused me to modify this thesis somewhat, but not much.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1999
Accession Number
ADA372105

Entities

People

  • Robert H. Scales Jr.

Organizations

  • Air War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Counter WMD
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Defense
  • Air Power
  • Aircrafts
  • Civil War
  • Guided Bombs
  • Information Systems
  • Military History
  • Military Organizations
  • Munitions
  • National Security
  • Second World War
  • United States
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Urban Areas
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare
  • Weapons Effects

Fields of Study

  • History

Readers

  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Strategic Security Studies