The Limits of Transformation: Officer Attitudes Toward the Revolution in Military Affairs Newport papers no. 17

Over the past decade, a significant number of defense analysts, government officials, and military officers have argued that the growth and diffusion of stealth, precision, and information technology will drastically alter the character and conduct of future wars, yielding a revolution in military affairs (RMA). The idea that the emergence of new technology, combined with innovative operational concepts and organizations, would transform the conduct of war, first appeared in Soviet military writings in the late 1970s. It was, however, the seeming ease with which the U.S.-led coalition defeated Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War that led many observers in the United States and elsewhere to conclude that significant changes in the character of warfare were underway. Since the mid-1990s, exploiting the emerging RMA has been an explicit goal of the Defense Department. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff promulgated Joint Vision 2010 with great fanfare in 1996 as the "conceptual template" for how the armed forces would "leverage technological opportunities to achieve new levels of effectiveness in warfighting." Each of the services has devoted considerable attention to developing new technology as well as the concepts and organizations needed to employ it most effectively.