April 17, 2009 -- How might China, Russia, Iran or North Korea wage a "high-end asymmetric" attack against the U.S. military? That question is the focus of a high-stakes Pentagon war game next week whose results are expected to help inform another round of major weapon-system investment decisions that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will hand down this summer, according to defense officials.
The scenarios will examine what sort of threats the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines can expect to face in a major conventional war, focusing on vulnerabilities that could blunt the U.S. military's high-tech advantage -- such as disabling satellites or a strategic cyberattack against critical infrastructure.
The classified questions the tabletop exercise will examine are being briefed today to Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright and other members of the Deputy's Advisory Working Group, according to Pentagon officials.
The scheduled two-day war game is being run by one of six teams formed to conduct the Quadrennial Defense Review; the team is headed by Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy in the policy shop; Matthew Shaffer, deputy director for conventional forces in the office of program analysis and evaluation; and Brig. Gen. Lori Robinson, deputy director for force application on the Joint Staff's J-8 directorate.
This team, along with another examining irregular warfare, are expected to produce recommendations for further shaking up the military's investment plans in the fiscal year 2011 budget that will be prepared this summer, with the aim of increasing the flexibility of U.S. forces to deal with a wider array of challenges than the current plans.
Gates, speaking today on the second leg of a two-day trip to the Army War College in Pennsylvania and the Naval War College in Rhode Island, said that part of the rationale for changes to the FY-10 budget he is recommending to the president are based on “the need to think about future conflicts in a different way to recognize that the black and white distinction between irregular war and conventional war is an outdated model.
“We must understand that we face a more complex future than that, a future where all conflict will range across a broad spectrum of operations and lethality,” Gates said this morning at the Naval War College. “Where near-peers will use irregular or asymmetric tactics that target our traditional strengths -- such as our ability to project power via carrier strike groups. And where non-state actors may have weapons of mass destruction or sophisticated missiles. This kind of warfare will require capabilities with the maximum possible flexibility to deal with the widest possible range of conflict.”
Gates later added that he has “directed the QDR team to be realistic about the scenarios where direct U.S. military action would be needed -- so we can better gauge our requirements.”
To the degree real-world examples inform “realistic scenarios,” the Defense Department may be considering China's ability to impair -- or destroy -- U.S. communications or navigation satellites, in light of Beijing's 2007 shoot-down of an aging weather satellite which is widely viewed as a demonstration of the communist nation's anti-satellite weapon capability.
Russia's invasion last summer of Georgia combined armor and artillery operations with what Pentagon officials say was accompanied by sophisticated cyberattacks that began weeks before kinetic operations kicked off (DefenseAlert, Nov. 10).
The issue of “high-end asymmetric threats” picks up issues examined during the 2006 QDR under the heading of “disruptive” technologies. It is a subject of continuing DOD interest.
The Pentagon's acquisition executive last summer commissioned the Defense Science Board to examine how to avoid being caught flatfooted by an adversary wielding an unexpected capability that could cancel out the advantages of the world's most advanced armed forces.
On April 7, the Defense Intelligence Agency -- through the National Academy of Sciences -- announced plans to convene a one-day, classified symposium on “Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow’s Warfighter.” -- Jason Sherman
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