Rapid Dominance

“ We envisage Rapid Dominance as the possible military expression, vanguard, and extension of this potential for revolutionary change. The strategic centers of gravity on which Rapid Dominance concentrates, modified by the uniquely American ability to integrate all this, are these junctures of strategy, technology, and innovation which are focused on the goal of affecting and shaping the will of the adversary. The goal of Rapid Dominance will be to destroy or so confound the will to resist that an adversary will have no alternative except to accept our strategic aims and military objectives. ”

“ We are in the classical "damned if we do and damned if we don't" syndrome. One of the serious side effects of Rapid Dominance could be that if you adapt a strategy of Rapid Dominance and succeed, you may now own the problem and be responsible for the solution. Do we know the funding tail to such a policy and are we as a nation ready to accept this cost when/if Rapid Dominance is applied in situations that are less than of vital interest? ”

“ Because we have entered a period of transition in which we enjoy a dominant military position and a greatly reduced window of vulnerability, this is the right time for experimentation and demonstration. Rapid Dominance is still a concept and a work in progress, not a final road map or blueprint. ”

“ In other grey or marginal situations Rapid Dominance could make the difference between a politically acceptable response or inadequate action with consequences similar to what happened in Bosnia.
In considering how Rapid Dominance might apply and might be used, it is first important to know what it is that we want to achieve with military force. We need to consider whether the application of force will allow us to influence and control an adversary's will or merely exacerbate a bad situation. ”

“ Because Rapid Dominance is aimed at influencing the will, perception, and understanding of an adversary rather than simply destroying military capability, this focus must cause us to consider the broadest spectrum of behavior, ours and theirs, and across all aspects of war including intelligence, training, education, doctrine, industrial capacity, and how we organize and manage defense. ”

“ The challenge is that should deterrence fail, the execution of a response based on Rapid Dominance must be proportional to the threat, yet decisive enough to convey the right degree of Shock and Awe. Rapid Dominance cannot solve all or even most of the world's problems. ”

“ This line of questions, concerns, and issues, as well as a host of others, needs to be raised up front during the concept development phase of the development of specific Mission Capability Package concepts. We must be careful that we do not overvisualize Rapid Dominance versus the reality of credible/affordable capabilities to execute the concept. Rapid Dominance does not eliminate the fog of war. ”

“ This level of simultaneity and Rapid Dominance must also demonstrate to the adversary our endurance and staying power, that is, the capability to dominate over as much time as is necessary less an enemy mistakenly try to wait it out and use time between attacks to recover sufficiently. If the enemy still resisted, then conventional forms of attack would follow resulting in the physical occupation of territory. Control is thus best gained by the demonstrated ability to sustain the stun effects of the initial rapid series of blows long enough to affect the enemy's will and his means to continue. ”

“ Certainly, Rapid Dominance seeks to achieve certain objectives that are similar to those of current doctrine. A major distinction is that Rapid Dominance envisages a wider application of force across a broader spectrum of leverage points to impose Shock and Awe. This breadth should lead to a more comprehensive and integrated interaction among all the specific components and units that produce aggregate military capability and must include training and education, as well as new ways to exploit our technical and industrial capacity. ”

“ Rapid Dominance combines a doctrine and operational concept that challenges the current process of how new technologies invented in the commercial sector are incorporated into defense, and provides an affirmative methodology for research, development, and system integration. ”

“ We should always use technology to minimize our casualties, give us every advantage, reduce collateral damage, and make us look more formidable. At the same time, there needs to be sufficient provocation to warrant destruction or denial. Our actions must always be consistent with our own system of values.
The "rapid" component of Rapid Dominance is one of the most appealing aspects of the concept, both politically and militarily. The ability to take action that is timely and decisive multiplies substantially the chances of ultimate success. ”

“ Can a Rapid Dominance force lead, for example, to a force structure that can win an MRC such as Desert Shield and Desert Storm far more quickly and cheaply with far fewer personnel than our planned force both in terms of stopping any invasion in its tracks and then ejecting the invader? Can Rapid Dominance produce a force structure with more effective capacity to deal with grey areas such as OOTW?
Second, if achievable, can Rapid Dominance lead to a form of political deterrence in which the capacity to make impotent or "shut down" an adversary can actually control behavior? ”

“ We believe that what will distinguish Rapid Dominance from other doctrines is first that it uses an intellectual construct to drive innovation and innovation to drive exploiting and integrating technology into new and perhaps somewhat differently constructed systems. Second, it is the comprehensive quality of Rapid Dominance in which strategies, doctrine, technology, systems, operations, training, organization, and education are dealt with together that may make the most significant difference. ”

“ Achieving Shock and Awe is central to Rapid Dominance, and therefore must serve as the key organizing principle for any rigorous examination and exploitation of system concepts and technologies for Rapid Dominance. Understanding the interplay between technology and doctrine is not only or simply a straightforward matter of establishing operational requirements and then seeking to attain them through invention and design. ”

“ Our forces must not only fight smarter; these forces, at all or most levels, must be educated and trained differently with far more emphasis on intelligence, broadly defined. This knowledge, when applied rapidly under conditions of brilliance and in a controlled environment, is a centerpiece of Rapid Dominance.
There must be full comprehension of the adversary across strategic, political, military, cultural, intellectual, and perceptual lines. This understanding must go beyond how an adversary might use military force. ”

“ Therefore, it is essential to know what is of value to that adversary. An objective, realistic, and in-depth situational grasp will be essential to such an understanding. For example, disarming or destroying may produce unintended consequences. For a conventional foe that values its military and depends on technology, Rapid Dominance should be particularly effective and persuasive. In the case of less developed nations, however, the opportunity for exercising influence in this way and against military formations may be considerably less and must be carefully assessed. ”

“ We still must maintain the capacity for the physical and forceful occupation of territory should there prove to be no alternative to deploying sufficient numbers of personnel and equipment on the ground to accomplish that objective. Should this goal of applying our resources to controlling, affecting, and breaking the will of an adversary to resist remain elusive, we believe that Rapid Dominance can still provide a variety of options and choices for dealing with the operational demands of war and conflict. ”

“ Rapid Dominance would alleviate many of these constraints as we would have the capacity to deploy effective forces far more quickly. Therefore, in this case, we can view time as an ally. The political issue rests in longstanding arguments to limit the President from having the capacity to deploy or use force quickly, thereby involving the nation without conferring with full consultation with Congress. While this is an obvious point, it should not eliminate alternative types of force packages derived from Rapid Dominance from full consideration and experimentation. ”

“ What is radically different in Rapid Dominance is the comprehensive system assemblage and integration of many evolving and even revolutionary technical advances in dominant battlefield awareness squared-materials application, sensor and signature control, computer and bioengineering applied to massive amounts of data, enable weapon application with simultaneity, precision, and lethality that to date have not been applied as a total system. ”