Transforming How We Fight—A Conceptual Approach

Abstract : This essay questions the wisdom of the current, almost exclusive focus on technology in discussions of transformation, arguing that it risks dooming US Armed Forces to expensive irrelevance and inconsequential lethality. We must explore intellectual and cultural components in determining how we will fight in the future, rather than merely concentrating on the tools we will use to fight. This essay will approach some cultural and intellectual components by proposing at set of warfighting tenets (decentralization, complexity, resilience, and tempo) that synthesize the enduring nature of war with contemporary technological realities. The key aspects of the enduring nature of war the essay addresses are: information is "essentially dispersed, war is Chaotic, combatants in war are complex adaptive systems, war is a nonlinear phenomenon, and war is uncertain True transformation, the essay concludes, will be measured not by the speed of our microchips, but by the effectiveness of our soldiers, leaders, and organizations in the next war.