Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid DominanceUllman, Harlan
History
Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid Dominance
Ullman, Harlan
Rapid dominance (Military science)
Third, and most provocatively, is setting the standard of operations
and execution in terms of brilliance. The consequences and
implications of setting brilliance as the standard and achieving it
are profound. Reconfiguration of command authority and organization
possibly to decentrali-zation down to individual troops must follow.
Allowing and encouraging an operational doctrine of the "first to
respond" will set the tempo provided that effective de-confliction of
friendly on friendly engagements has been assured.
This, of course, means that complete revision of doctrine, training,
and organization will be required. The matter is not just "fighting
smarter." It is learning to fight at even higher standards of skill
and competence.
Fourth is control of the environment. Control is defined in the
broadest sense: physical control of the land, air, sea, and space and
control of the "ether" in which information is passed and received.
This requires signature management throughout the full conflict
spectrum-deception, disinformation, verification, information control,
and target management-all with rapidity in both physical and
psychological impact. By depriving an adversary of the physical use of
time, space, and the ether, we play on the adversary's will and offer
the prospect of certain destruction should resistance follow.
The next step in this process must be specifically defining this Rapid
Dominance force in terms of force structure, capabilities, doctrine,
organization, and order of battle. We have begun this effort and are
focusing on a joint task force sized somewhere between a reinforced
division and a full corps (i.e., a strength of 75,000 - 200,000). We
also have the aim of being able to deploy this force within 5 to 10
days of the order to move and, of course, will be able to send smaller
force packages on a nearly instantaneous basis. We appreciate the
mobility and logistical implications of this requirement.
Once we design this "paper" force and equip it with "paper" systems,
we must evaluate it against the five basic questions and tests we
noted in the Prologue.
The first test of this Rapid Dominance force will be against the MRC.
The comparison, in the broadest sense, must be with the programmed
force and whatever emerges from the Quadrennial Defense Review of
1997. We will need to examine closely how and where and why Rapid
Dominance and Shock and Awe work and where they do not. At the very
least, we expect that this will help strengthen the current force and
improve current capabilities. Of course, it is our hope that this test
will validate Rapid Dominance as a legitimate doctrine.
Second, the Rapid Dominance force must be tested across the entire
spectrum of OOTW. These are the most difficult tests because, in some
of them, no force may be suitable and no force may work.
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