<HTML>Hier ist der sehr lesenswerte und realistische Artikel aus der AirForce Times, in dem Rumsfeld & das Pentagon auf neuartige Bedrohungen hinweisen, denen mehr Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden soll.
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www.airforcetimes.com]
Issue Date: September 27, 2004
Bracing for modern brands of warfare
Rumsfeld wants DoD to focus on combating nontraditional threats
[DoD ist die Abkürzung für Department of Defense, das US-Verteidigungsministerium]
By Jason Sherman
Times staff writer
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants new policy and planning goals to better prepare U.S. forces for a wider range of challenges, including “irregular, catastrophic and disruptive” threats.
The results are expected to shake up the portfolio of weapons and technology the military needs, spur new doctrine and concepts for using military force and yield concrete operational targets for military planners.
Rumsfeld has directed Christopher “Ryan” Henry, principal undersecretary of defense for policy, to draft the new objectives that will likely help set the stage for next year’s Quadrennial Defense Review.
The Pentagon in general and the Office of the Secretary of Defense in particular “now believe we need to focus more on those nontraditional threats,” said Clark Murdock, a defense strategy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This is part of an effort to provide greater focus and greater specificity on how you respond to these new challenges.”
Looking at war in a new way
This spring, Henry’s office issued a 2006 Strategic Planning Guidance that unveiled new ways to categorize threats: irregular, catastrophic, disruptive and conventional.
Of these, the United States is well positioned to deal with only one: an enemy that attacks with conventional air, sea and land forces. Because conventional U.S. military power is widely recognized, the Pentagon doesn’t expect to face this type of challenge.
What are likely, according to sources familiar with the classified planning guidance, are attacks that aim to erode U.S. power in unconventional ways — similar to the insurgency U.S. forces are facing in Iraq.
This “irregular” warfare challenge is characterized by insurgency and civil war and has been dubbed by Pentagon officials as a “strategy of the weak.”
Less likely, but of growing concern, are “catastrophic” threats that aim to paralyze U.S. leadership and power with surprise attacks on symbolic and high-value targets. Pentagon officials believe a ballistic missile tipped with a chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological weapon could deliver such an attack, with devastating results.
The challenge that presents the least likely threat — but that, if realized, could render the United States most vulnerable — is “disruptive” technologies. These include new breakthroughs in sensors, information technology, biotechnology, miniaturization on the molecular level, cyber operations and directed-energy weapons — capabilities so spectacular they would quickly give an adversary an edge.
“Rumsfeld thinks that overall, the capabilities are too focused on the traditional,” a former Pentagon official said. “What we need to do is take some of those resources to make sure we have enough to address some of these other potential threats.”
New guidelines for military leaders
For each threat category, Henry’s policy staff is working to hone a strategic objective and link it to a planning goal. A framework for this project, said a defense official involved in the effort, is the “stretch goals” for speed in confronting conventional threats that Rumsfeld, along with the Joint Staff and services, worked out earlier this year.
To maintain the initiative in dealing with conventional military adversaries, new speed milestones were set to deploy to a distant theater in 10 days, defeat an enemy within 30 days and recover quickly enough to handle a second fight 30 days later.
The new sorting of threats in the strategic planning guidance “sends a clear signal to the [service] chiefs, which is, ‘You are no longer going to be graded on your ability to go out and win a major combat operation. You’ve got to show us that you can do these other things as well,’” the former Pentagon official said.
Rumsfeld wants Henry’s office to quantify different kinds of major missions and strategy objectives that the military will need to respond to.
Henry’s office declined requests for an interview. But a defense official directly involved in this effort said the project stems from a desire to develop “really usable” guidance for military leaders.</HTML>
