Report: U.S. needs to balance military force, 'soft' power

The Defense Department needs to improve the way it organizes, trains and equips military forces for rapidly evolving missions and capabilities in irregular warfare, cyberspace operations, unmanned aircraft systems and intra-theater airlift, a new report concludes.

The 48-page report was required by the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. While the department has conducted previous reviews of the military services' roles and missions, this is the first of what will be a recurring requirement to be completed before future quadrennial defense reviews, the next of which is to be released in 2010.

Perhaps what's most striking about the study is its conclusion that the United States needs to find a better balance between military capability and soft power -- the nation's ability to promote things like economic development, the rule of law, good governance, and the training and equipping of indigenous military and police forces.

"One of the most important lessons from recent operations is that military success does not equate to victory," Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a foreward to the report. Improving soft power capabilities "requires exploring whole-of-government approaches for meeting complex security challenges," he wrote.

Gates has been a strong advocate for boosting resources at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agencies most responsible for promoting stability and economic development overseas.

Among the report's conclusions:

• While conventional military threats remain and the services must be prepared to defeat them, "current and future adversaries are more likely to pose irregular and asymmetric threats." As such, the services must develop a mastery of irregular warfare comparable to that which the services have achieved for conventional battle -- something they have not yet done despite several years of irregular warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Each of the services must develop capabilities to conduct cyberspace operations. The department will create a professional cyberspace force that draws from the capabilities and experiences of other U.S. government agencies, the private sector and international organizations. The department also will change its joint military education curricula to improve knowledge among military and civilian employees and double the capacity for training computer network operations specialists to 1,000 students annually. It also will seek to improve its acquisition processes for cyberspace capabilities.
• The Army and the Air Force will continue to share responsibility for intra-theater airlift operations, but to improve effectiveness and reduce overlap the department will update internal policies and doctrine.
• The demand in Iraq and Afghanistan for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability provided by unmanned aerial systems has far outstripped the department's established processes for providing that capability. The department is refining those processes and working to provide more ISR assets to combat troops, as well as improve the process for determining and funding future needs.

But Skelton said, "The report makes only a small contribution to the difficult task of challenging the allocation of treasured turf and changing deeply held cultures within the department, which will be required to actually fulfill such a far-reaching mission set."