Defense transformation leader suggests improvements

The Defense Department needs to spend more money and attention on a handful of specific combat readiness areas to better prepare for future military conflicts, according to retired Navy Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, the Pentagon's resident military transformation guru and head of an internal think-tank charged with shaping the armed forces for the future.

Cebrowski, speaking Wednesday at a breakfast address at the IFPA-Fletcher conference on military transformation, said there are a number of combat capabilities that, if not pursued, "will result in regret at some future date."

For example, although the Defense Department spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually, "it only spends about $50 million a year on non-lethal [weapons]," said Cebrowski, who directs the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation. "What this means is that soldiers at checkpoints have to act in a binary mode, if you will, applying lethal force or accepting intolerable risk. We should be able to do better by our soldiers and provide another, broader choice."

Other areas include directed and re-directed energy weapons, which can be used for both lethal and non-lethal purposes -- including lasers, communications and sensing. Research efforts are under way, but are not funded at levels that will allow the department to keep pace with technological advances, he said.

Maneuver is another area that deserves more attention, Cebrowski said. "We need to have operational maneuver from the sea and strategic distances as part of our national capabilities," he said, adding that the concept of sea-basing is of growing interest to the department. He also raised the issue of mobility in combat and the need to advance new technologies to keep pace with the evolution of information technology on the battlefield.

Urban operations also need more attention, Cebrowski said. He said he believes there is more to operating in urban settings than mere combat. "We're not talking about taking a city, we're certainly not talking about destroying a city. What we're talking about is moving into an urban environment and keeping the social structure, the economic structure, the political institutions up and running, which is a somewhat different approach to urban warfare," he said.

Intelligence is also ripe for change, Cebrowski said. Today, electronic transmissions collected daily greatly overwhelm the individuals available to analyze them. It might be possible to ignore some intelligence collection, and possibly even triage it in an automated fashion, he said. Automating the analysis itself is also an option, although technological limitations could hinder that effort.

"We are going to become increasingly sensitive to the powers of intelligence and surveillance, and we're going to position ourselves to reference these things," he said.

Cebrowski also said improvements are needed in logistics, noting that during the rush to Baghdad, Iraq, the military's advance outpaced logistical communications and transportation. Logistics must be adaptable to the rapidly changing needs of battlefield commanders and must be jointly done so needed material can be drawn by any type of unit from a common pool, he said.