Science and Technology Special Report: How Technology Can Win the War on Terror

20060511

     In past posts, I have been sometimes extremely critical of the pace of transformation within the US Military, and have, in several cases, suggested the possibility that part of the current situation in places like Iraq can be traced and attributed to a failure on the part of the military to effectively train, organize, and equip itself to fight the war it is currently fighting. This post seeks to continue that conversation and lay out further evidence for the effective transformation of the US Military.

     The ultimate goal of the ‘future military’- this is the term that will be used in this post for what the military should ultimately look like- is to become a highly mobile, specialized, and technologically centered fighting force. This force must be prepared to do more, with less, and in a shorter time than any other military that has ever existed.

     The best current model for comparison for this future military is to suggest that it should look something like a combination of the current US Special Forces and US Marine Corps, combined together and further supported by a structure of air, ground, and naval assets that transport, integrate, and resupply that force.

     At the center of this force should be and organization of highly skilled, highly trained, and very well equipped warfighters organized into the smallest possible combat organizations that can still remain militarily coherent. Within such a force, there should no longer be the distinction of a warfighter being ‘simply a grunt’. Instead, every member of such a force should be a highly trained professional whose job is war.

     These warfighters should be equipped with the most sophisticated, yet reliable, technology the US has to offer, and most importantly, this technology must be integrated in such a way that information gathered by the individual warfighter can be shared with the entire force, and so that relevant information is always available to the warfighter.

     Part of this equipping must be the automation of the battlefield, so that tasks that are unnecessary for the warfighter to do can be handed off to technology, especially reconnaissance, surveillance, and area control- essentially passive information gathering functions should be technological freeing the warfighter to fight.

     This technological requirement will create a requirement for integration and management that must become an integral part of the warfighting organization. Information technologists, analysts, and other technical specialists must be part of the combat organization and be directly involved in supporting the warfighter by ensuring integration and the availability of information when and where it is needed.

     Granted, this vision of the future military cannot be achieved overnight, but it is a vision that must have its implementation begun as soon as possible if the US Military is to retain is significant superiority advantage while simultaneously allowing the military to face the enemies it must currently deal with.

     There are immediate changes that can be made to accommodate such transformation. The first change is to begin the process to streamline and normalize the current basic military trainings of all of the service components, with the goal to eventually make all of the services meet the same training requirements. It may be necessary to divide basic training into stages or levels befitting the ultimate specialty of individual warfighters, but the core training should be the same.

     Second, the military must drastically increase its funding of the research and development of unmanned and autonomous systems and information integration technologies. The chief method for rapidly developing such technologies is to seek out companies that already develop and employ such technologies and to offer more open competitions to encourage independent innovation of such technologies. Initiatives like the DARPA Grand Challenge should be expanded and multiplied, and the DoD should engage in a much more wide spread application of competitive grants to companies, organizations, and individuals doing this type of research and development.

     Third, the military must drastically increase the funding for the deployment of existing unmanned and autonomous systems and information integration technologies. There are a host of such systems that are already available, and sufficient funding would ensure that those systems are effectively fielded. Additionally, fielded systems will likely lead to military generated improvements and innovations that will further increase the usefulness of such systems. Programs like Predator, Global Hawk, TALON, Shadow, and others should be expanded and fully funded. Such systems should be immediately fielded in numbers sufficient to realize the full potential of those systems on the battlefield.

     Forth, the military must engage in a comprehensive and honest review of current programs and reduce or eliminate systems that do not meet the requirements of the future military goal. This review must include the reality that there are systems currently under development, even under production, that do not meet the needs of the future and should be curtailed or cut in order to make room for more advanced and useful systems.

     While this post is lacking in detailed specifics, it sets the framework onto which specifics can be hung. Future posts will engage this topic with more in-depth and specific analysis of how both the near-term and long range goals of true military transformation can be achieved.

DLH