English

DTIC ADA596939: The Risk of Optimism in the Conduct of War

In the several millennia of organized armed conflict, the surest way to affect the behavior of one's opponents has been to kill enough of them or so degrade their armaments that as a collectivity they are no longer able to resist. Now we are told that an ongoing Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is bidding fair to render that approach to the conduct of war obsolete. A loosely related family of visions of the future conduct of war has developed under the general rubric of the RMA. Although pitched as innovative, all of these visions owe their fundamental tenets to various strains of thought with long histories. Some of these visions have been given official sanction and have been exercised in various ways by joint commands and by the individual services. This article addresses one theory as emblematic of the larger universe of new ideas. Published in late 1996, the book Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance elaborates and proposes a comprehensive vision of America's conduct of war in the future. It evidently has found a receptive audience among current senior U.S. civilian and military leaders. Consistent with theories of air power dating to Hugh Trenchard, Giulio Douhet, and

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