Joint Transformation and the Decision to Use Force

Abstract

As the United States military transforms to fulfill its goal of Full Spectrum Dominance, it is expected to have greater speed, precision, lethality, endurance, and a reduction in collateral damage. These are all characteristics that would conceivably make the use of force more acceptable to the public. Potentially a military campaign could produce fewer casualties and less destruction while still bringing about the defeat of the enemy. This paper couples potential future force capabilities with potential future global scenarios to determine if the decision point to use force is likely to shift to an earlier point in the grand strategy as a result of transformation. It concludes that although the conduct of war will change as a result of transformation, the decision to wage war will not be significantly affected. At the grand strategy level in the United States, considerations of how to achieve enduring security within acceptable political and ethical constraints will prevail over the expedient use of military power.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 09, 2007
Accession Number
ADA467233

Entities

People

  • Jay S. Mallery

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Counter WMD
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Economic Systems
  • Education
  • Globalization
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • Materials
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Network Centric Warfare
  • Nuclear Materials
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Security
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • United States
  • War Colleges
  • Weapons

Readers

  • Economics
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.