Publications

The three challenges confronting the U.S. military today—the war against Islamist terrorist elements, the prospect of nuclear-armed rogue states, and the potential rise of China as a military rival—differ greatly from those confronted during the Cold War era. Nor do they resemble the threats planned for in the immediate post-Cold War era, when minor powers like Iran, Iraq and North Korea which lacked weapons of mass destruction and were assumed to present challenges not all that different from Iraq during the First Gulf War.

SOF have figured prominently in U.S. military operations since 2001 and have become central to the implementation of U.S. national defense strategy with respect to the war against violent Islamist extremism, which is likely to be increasingly fought indirectly and in countries with which the United States is not at war. During the unconventional war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, SOF played a pivotal role by integrating U.S. precision air power with the operations of irregular Afghan opposition forces to achieve rapid regime change and eliminate al Qaeda’s primary sanctuary.

For more than a decade, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) has closely followed emerging technologies that, integrated with new operational concepts and organizational structures, offer the potential to  fundamentally change how advanced militaries fight. Such changes in the conduct of war constitute what has come to be called a “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA. The German military’s development of Blitzkrieg in the years between the two World Wars (1918-1939) constitutes one of the more familiar examples of an RMA. Visionary officers integrated tanks, radio communications, and tactical aircraft with opportunistic deep-penetration tactics and the flexible, combined arms structure of the Panzer division in ways that still influence how we conduct combined- arms warfare.

Special Operations Forces (SOF) are elite, highly trained military units that conduct operations that typically exceed the capabilities of conventional forces. They have figured prominently in US military operations since 2001 and have become central to the implementation of US national defense strategy with respect to the war against violent Islamic radicalism. During the unconventional war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, SOF played a pivotal role by integrating US precision air power with the operations of irregular Afghan opposition forces to achieve rapid regime change and eliminate al Qaeda’s primary sanctuary.

During the 1920s and 1930s, even as it was engaged in a series of “small wars,” the Marine Corps dedicated itself to solving the “Gallipoli problem”: how to conduct amphibious assaults against a heavily defended shore. To do so, the Corps had to develop new concepts of operation, tactics and techniques, equipment, and organizations that enabled it to apply combat power against the enemy more effectively. The most daunting tactical challenge for the Corps was gaining a foothold on an enemy shore and steadily building combat power while under constant attack. The Navy and Marines thus developed an operational concept that included extensive shore bombardment from Navy ships and naval aircraft, amphibious landing craft by which the Marines could get to the beach, and various techniques for methodically breaking through and reducing enemy defensive positions. The fruits of the Corps’ labor were seen in the many amphibious successes of the United States military in World War II, in both the Pacific and European theaters.

Ever since Thucydides recorded the dramatic fall of Athens’ vaunted navy at Syracuse in 413 BC, naval warfare has been marked by abrupt competitive shifts. Intense geopolitical and maritime rivalries between well-financed seafaring nations, the emergence of new operational challenges for established naval powers, and the novel incorporation of advanced technologies in naval weapons and ship designs have all repeatedly spurred transformations that have redefined naval warfare.