davidl@Bonnie.ICS.UCI.EDU (05/14/91)
From: davidl@Bonnie.ICS.UCI.EDU Hello out there !!! Do any of you guys out there have any particular concerns about the future of the US military ? (eg. the need of a replacement for the A-10 or A-6)... Or any predictions about the future shape of the military ? (eg. Though the DoD will shrink in the next 5 years, the service that will suffer the most is the US Army because ....) I am very interested in what YOU think....Let's see if our thinking reflects the thinking of our Government Representatives.... Send all replies to: davidl@bonnie.ics.uci.edu [Replies by e-mail or posted only to a.d-s.f; this is a little speculative for sci.military, fun as these things are. I may permit really substantive articles here. --CDR ]
budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg) (05/15/91)
From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg) [Please post ONLY Technical well-thought out followups within the charter. Everything else should go by email. :-) --CDR] Well, I think I want to post a return to this. I've been working on a hypothesis and need to see what some thoughtful types think. Appears to me that we've had three major stages of preparedness thinking since WWII: 1. Mobilization base and manufacturing surge capacity. Shortfalls here caused considerable trouble during WWII. An obvious example is the use of triple expansion reciprocating steam plants in the Liberty ships ... the US lacked the machining capability to crank out turbines in volume. If you read the Industrial College of the Armed Forces literature dating from the 1950s, there is a lot of emphasis on maintaining the industrial base necessary to mobilize. Like subsidies so that Detroit's manufacturing lines could shift from cars to tanks quickly. 2. Logistics. Korea and Vietnam and the Cold War were non-mobilization events, but a variety of contingencies required strategic mobility and considerable lift. Mike Schmitt's chronology of the REFORGER exercises is a very good example. This stuff doesn't stress the industrial base in a moblization aspect, but you have to have your POMCUS, sealift, airlift ducks lined up. Yom Kippur war is another good example. And Desert Shield/Storm is the most obviously stressing event to date. This logistics emphasis places a premium on hardware standardization. Look at 90% of the Mil-Stds -- this is precisely the focus. Hardware standardization tends to inhibit introduction of new technology ... particularly at the paces that computer technology is turning over today. 3. Technology and standards. The demands of modern maneuver warfare place heavy demands on C3I systems and force integration. This means that we have to insert technology at increasingly rapid rates to maintain technical superiority (I fully agree with the posters who talk about leadership and doctrine being vital components, but this is a technological hypothesis). Reconciling this requirement for rapid and sustained technology insertion with the logistics requirements noted above (they haven't gone away, we just have complicating factors now) is leading the military services, just like civil government and industry, to start standardizing <interfaces> between components rather than simply standardizing the components themselves for manufacturing and logistics reasons. This emphasis on interoperability (vice construction) standards allows black boxes to evolve as long as they observe standardized interfaces with the other components in a system. As evidence of this third stage, witness DoD's role in bringing te GOSIP and POSIX interface definitions into reality. And observe standards-making efforts such as the Navy's Next Generation Computer Resources Program. And the tri-service Common Operating Environment for software module standardization. Coincident with this shift in emphasis from hardware to interfaces is a shift toward adoption of industry, vice in-house military, standards. For example, Navy has adopted POSIX as its operating system definition for mission critical systems ... while recognizing that some augmentations will be required. Most of the emotional collisions that I've observed in C3I (including combat direction systems) can be described as apostles of schools #2 and #3 above fighting with each other. I've never seen anyone else articulate this generational shift -- it seems to explain some phenomena, but some reality checks from the newsgroup would be appreciated. Rex Buddenberg C3I Architect USCG Headquarters