Threats to the United States have outstripped “our intelligence, diplomatic, and investment capability,” and the Pentagon must enact a broad series of institutional changes to cope with these new, often unexpected threats according to a major study by the Defense Science Board.
The nub of the problem is that “growing social, cultural, religious, economic and technical interdependencies have made things less predictable, more unstable and more prone to unintended consequences,” the study said. The DSB study calls for the Pentagon to educate Congress about the problem and to create a new office to advise senior military leaders of high risk potential red capabilities and how to handle them. The new office, to be known as the Capability Assessment, Warning and Response Office, would warn senior leaders of high risks, come up with options to counter them, and recommend technological approaches, the study says.
The DSB also recommends that the Pentagon embrace red teaming throughout it structure. It should become ubiquitous, should challenge all levels from policy and strategy to operations, and not just to manage surprise, says the 2008 Summer Study, titled Capability Surprise. The study was led by Miriam John, former vice president at Sandia National Labs and now a member of the board of SAIC, and Robert Stein, former Raytheon corporate vice president. In addition to red teaming, the military must place much more emphasis on rapid fielding of capabilities and create a Rapid Capability Fielding Office that would report directly to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
The report, which has not been publicly released, calls for this new office to consolidate all OSD fielding initiatives, except the office dealing with IEDs, into one place and to use money that is not tied to any service or to the joint staff.
In addition, intelligence capabilities must improve their ability to warn leaders about new critical threats and to focus on foreign denial and deception efforts. The study recommends the DNI warning office establish a cell within the new CWRO advising the SecDef and, more broadly, the intelligence community needs to focus on detecting adversary denials and deception.
One of the most revealing parts of the study is a top ten list of why the U.S. gets surprised at the strategic level.
- Thought we could respond without doing anything new
- Knew it was likely, understood the magnitude of the implications, but didnt pursue it appropriately
- Did it to ourselves
- Believed they were not up to it
- Believed they wouldnt dare
- Knew it might happen, but were trapped in own paradigms
- Didnt imagine or anticipate the strategic impact
- Lost in the signal to noise of other possibilities
- Imagined it, but thought it was years away
- Were willing to take the risk that it wouldnt happen.
Read the rest of this exclusive story on the still FOUO report at DoD Buzz.
– Colin Clark
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The conclusions make sense, although there is irony in the fact that the Defense Science Board is providing what amounts to management consulting.
This unstable multi-polar world with new challenges is a surprise only to the same people who believed in a ‘peace dividend’. They can always be recognized by their ‘tsk-tsking’ any consideration of potential threats that are not currently standing upon their chest.
Foresight: Its not just for psychics.
Dr. G, Islam isn’t even 1,500 years old, so you should learn to fact-check your assertions.
Muslims don’t have the nasty habit of inventing war reasons and invade distant, foreign countries for no reason.
Good Morning Folks,
Politics and warfare are both dynamic activities with the most unpredictable of outcomes. The U.S. Military by itself is capable of defeating any potential adversary in the world today and in the foreseeable future. The constriction is from the political process.
It is unfortunate, but true that the diplomatic/foreign policy arm of our Governments has been totally inept the past sixteen years and there is no indication that it will improve with the current administration. Sad to say but Rumsfeld and Cheney were right in removing the State Department from any meaningful involvement in Iraq although they didn’t do a very meritorious job on the diplomatic end either.
The first problem that the past two administration and the current one can’t seem to understand is that in the Islamic World women are not take seriously and the repeated condescension that has been dished out by Islamic countries to our past three female Sec.of State and our current Sec. of State has universally gone unnoticed in our “Elite Media” and the administration who have supported this unwise approach to dealing with the Islamic World.
Before everybody gets there ire up, yes this is sexist but thats the way it is in the big bad world out there. Before you can have serious talks with the Islamic world they have to respect you and Albright, Rice and now Clinton are NOT respected in the Islamic world and it’s time for a President to face up to this FACT and stop getting Americas killed for a domestic political agenda.
Then there is Mexico a country that our political has only vilified Mexico the past 16 years. More Mexicans were killed last year by criminal violence then the sum of Americans in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The narcos are on the verge of taking over Mexico and all we are doing is building s silly fence. It would be much of a streeech to see al Qaeda and the Mexican narcos find a common bond.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“the military must place much more emphasis on rapid fielding of capabilities and create a Rapid Capability Fielding Office that would report directly to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.”
Yep. Time for “WALRUS” redoux!
The footnote references below should read [1] and [2], not [2] and [3]. Original excerpt taken from Wikipedia entry on the the First Barbary War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
1. Muhammad received his first revelation in 610. That makes it 1399 years. Close enough rounding errors to 1500.
2. When the Islamofascist take back Andulesia, you will see that Islam cares not a wit for your high sounding principles about “foreign distant countries”. Besides does attacks on Jews in India and 911 have to do with this. You are living in fantasy land, the hatred is of any force in the world that opposes its growth. Israel just is near at hand, the rest comes in time.
3. I did not mean to imply that the TTP will not change. Never underestimate your opponent. They are clever, good chess players, and likely to have an islamic atomic weapon this year. TTP will vary. What I mean to imply is that the actors on the stage are pretty well in place. The reasons for the hatred are old and long. It seems bizarre to me to expect a new unknown threat to appear. This stuff germinates over a long time.
So on the one hand it is good to have an organization that can quickly respond to new TTP, but what I am pointing out is that the strategy has to start with clear honest and reality based assesment of who the opponent is and what the motivation is. Without that the counter-tactics will just be band-aids.
I think there’s a deeper level to this that the DSB glosses over, but Byron and TB hit on it: We’re creating more problems for ourselves with bad assumptions, oblivious self-centered politics, and broken bureaucracy.
4 years between Presidential elections is essentially nothing in a historical sense, makes our foreign policy practically schizophrenic without some greater plan or strategy to follow.
The problem with Mexico turning into a Narco-state? Fixable, maybe, if we’re honest and willing to change our internal policy. Or we can maintain the position that the problem is “them”, and “out there”, and travel a very difficult road. Individuals may know that there are internal issues, but does the system?
To the poster “Roy Smith”:
I have absolutely no idea WHO that is, I just know that “goy” / “goyim” means “cattle/-heads” in Hebrew, and “shiksa” (a Yiddish word for all non-Jewish women) means ~ “impure little woman”. But the “Israelis” are our staunch allies, aren’t they? They saved us after Katrina, in New Orleans, and they invented AOL Instant Messenger and the original Motorala cell phone too! And I love their bagels too!