Transforming Defense

Abstract

Transforming the defense establishment and U.S. Armed Forces remains a major strategic challenge for the rest of the decade and beyond. As a Presidential candidate in 2000, Governor George W. Bush campaigned on a promise to transform America's defense establishment and warfighting capabilities. In the Bush administration, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made transformation his signature issue for his tenure at the Pentagon. Despite the resources and attention consumed by the war on terror, and recent decisions by the White House to curtail the growth of defense spending, the senior leadership of the Department of Defense (DoD) remains committed to the transformation agenda. Secretary Rumsfeld insists that transformation is necessary for success in the war on terror, and it remains an integral part of his defense strategy. How much progress has been made on transformation, and what challenges lie ahead? This paper evaluates progress and remaining challenges with a broad, top-down view of transformation. It looks in detail at three core elements of transformation that may well determine over time whether the Pentagon can field and manage transformational military forces. "Joint operating concepts" (JOCs) capture the most important changes in the way U.S. forces fight. A "capabilities-based approach" to defense planning and resource allocation is the most significant internal change in the DoD process. "Global force planning" is a broad term coined here that involves new command and control relationships, global posture, and global force characteristics. The new command and control relationships include interagency and foreign partners and should allow the Pentagon leadership to manage better a new global force posture and forces with global capabilities. Evaluating progress on these three important initiatives demonstrates how challenging and far-reaching the transformation reforms initiated by the Bush administration are.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA441179

Entities

People

  • Charles Lutes
  • Christopher Cavoli
  • Christopher Jon Lamb
  • M. E. Bunn

Organizations

  • National Defense University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Counter WMD
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Asymmetric Warfare
  • Combatant Commanders
  • Command And Control
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Employment
  • Geography
  • Homeland Defense
  • Homeland Security
  • Information Operations
  • Information Systems
  • Interagency Coordination
  • Military Organizations
  • National Security
  • Terrorism
  • Unified Combatant Commands
  • Warfare
  • Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Strategic Security Studies

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control