Financing the RMA

As the broad outlines of the new security environment take shape, the RMA is emerging as a useful conceptual structure for organizing the interwoven strategic, force structure, technical and industrial themes - the defining elements of any security regime — which are sure to run through defence planning well into the next century. It seemingly, and temptingly, offers a unifying response to the complex of changes that have challenged defence ministries and military organizations since the end of the Cold War. Declining defence budgets, rising weapons costs, downsizing and consolidation in defence industries, and perhaps most importantly, the shifting of military focus away from direct national interests — with the resulting need to be able to apply and sustain military force at great distances and to do so with a minimum of casualties — all seem to have found a tidy resolution in the computer-driven developments in sensors, information processing, communications, control and precision weapons which are the technological heart of the RMA. Because it has this potential to affect every dimension of a nation’s security arrangements, the RMA also offers huge challenges, particularly in the management of its implementation. Ultimately, however, managing the RMA means finding the resources to make it a reality. The essential issue is affordability . This paper addresses that issue in examining the potential of a selected group of NATO countries to manage the budgetary and force restructuring implications of implementing the RMA, or at least some version of it, over the medium-term future. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.