On 21–22 October 2003, the Institute for Defense Analyses hosted a workshop on the implications of transforming the culture of the Department of Defense (DoD) from the today’s Industrial Age to one more prepared for and accepting of the Information Age. New concept-technology pairings have been the principal focus of forcetransformation efforts, but the broader issue of culture has not received the same level of attention. The workshop, sponsored by the Office of Force Transformation, was ...Read more >

Colonel Macgregor was commissioned in the US Army in 1976 after one year at the Virginia Military Institute and four years at West Point. On completion of airborne and ranger training, Colonel Macgregor served in a variety of command and staff assignments including tank company command in a mechanized infantry brigade of the 4th Infantry Division (Mech) and command of a division cavalry squadron in the 1st Infantry Division (Mech). During Desert Storm, Colonel Macgregor was awarded the bronze ...Read more >

The Army is currently conducting an extensive set of diverse and demanding operations and it is likely that such operational challenges will continue. As part of its response to these challenges, the Army is undertaking a process it calls Transformation, which involves reforming its organizations and operational concepts to improve responsiveness and lethality. Army Transformation will involve, among other things, increased use of joint and combined arms capabilities and the leveraging of ...Read more >

New combinations of threat are emerging in a world of increasing global imbalance of wealth, health, powe and resource. The traditional causes of war,God,Gold and Glory, remain extant but the ways of waging war have been transformed by social, economic and political revolutions wrought by and in reaciton to the phenomenon of globalisation. Consequently,the twentieth century witnessed the growth in forms of war that were simultaneously old and new. Whilst the incidence of conventional interstate ...Read more >

For the better part of the last decade, the Army has stared at its navel, stroked its collective chin and grappled with how to fix itself. Three successive Army Chiefs of Staff (Generals Gordon R. Sullivan, Dennis J. Reimer and Eric K. Shinseki) have each endeavored to move the Army forward under the rubric of FORCE XXI EXFOR and now ...Read more >

Military transformation is the act of creating and harnessing a revolution in military affairs. It requires developing new technologies, operational concepts and organizational structures to conduct war in dramatically new ...Read more >

Our inability to predict the future does not mean that we know nothing about it, at least within reasonable bounds. Just as there are constants, so are there trends growing ethnic and religious strife, the reshaping of nation states, shifting and emerging economic centers, the escalating value of information and learning, the proliferation of information technologies in relatively undeveloped societies and nations and the emergence of global, transnational ...Read more >

The Marines have made extensive use of heavy forces in Iraq, starting during the major combat phase in March–April 2003. It is noteworthy that during the major combat phase the 1st Marine Division essentially fought as a mechanized division, with some 150 M 1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) and over 400 Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV 7s) serving as armored personnel ...Read more >

Military transformations are only sometimes successful; they can even be distinctly counterproductive because militaries often embrace concepts too strongly and uncritically.3 Since mistakes are to be expected, hedging and course correction are basic ingredients in successful ...Read more >

Army modularity restructuring the force to produce a supply of directly interchangeable units is the product of a number of experiences and concerns.1 Modularity may be best characterized as the Army institutional response to a host of factors, some stretching back to the early 1990s, that caused the Army to move away from its traditional division based force to a brigade centric ...Read more >

Rarely have an army fortunes shifted so much in such a short period. At the end of 1917, the Imperial Russian Army, bled dry and exhausted from the twin blows of tsarist incompetence and prolonged modern warfare, essentially ceased to ...Read more >

Following India independence in 1947, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru embarked on a foreign policy that was based on principles of socialism and remaining noncommittal to the emerging struggle between the Soviet Union and the countries forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the post world War II ...Read more >

Chinese strategists have avidly consumed U.S. Department of Defense writings over the past 10 years and have keenly observed the changing nature of U.S. national strategy and military transformation. Commentary by People Liberation Army (PLA) experts on Operation Iraqi Freedom suggests that Beijing believes the Pentagon efforts at achieving a Revolution in Military Affairs are not just succeeding, but ...Read more >

In a three ring circus, sometimes the most interesting act is the sideshow. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tries to tame the lions in the center ring that is his strategic review, Congress and the press have devoted most of their attention to highpriced, high profile, high technology weapons and to the sheer size of the military ...Read more >