Considers how the information revolution is creating a revolution in military affairs that will fundamentally change the way U.S. forces fight . . . supported by a system of systemsÓ that will give U.S. forces superior battlespace awareness. Chapters: precision-guided munitions; precision location; a world of sensors; the potential proliferation of the revolution in military affairs; standoff warfare; coalition structures; prospects for the grid; defining the grid; knowledge maintenance; access; security; difficulties of top-down integration; cutting to the core; planning, experimentation, & technology development; & opportunities for bottom-up integration.

In the weeks leading up to Desert Storm, anxious analysts tried to forecast the course of war by counting what the coalition and Iraq each brought to the battlefield: they have this many men, we have that many men; they have this much armor, we have that much armor; their air fleet is this big; ours is that big. Few doubted which side would prevail in battle, but many analysts were not so sure the war could be won swiftly and with acceptable casualties. Looking back, their worries seem baseless and their correlation of force calculations almost quaint. Indeed, the coalition may have carried the day almost as well with only half the forces. By the time the planes came back from Baghdad, Iraq was blind, but the coalition could see. That, plus precision weapons (and people trained to use them) determined the outcome. All else was detail.- The Gulf War suggested that the ability to see the battlespace is key to prevailing in conventional conflict when technology permits forces to hit and kill what they can see. This close relationship between seeing and striking may affect everything about conventional warfare: how it is fought, what forces and equipment it is fought with, and the role of the United States and others in fighting it.

Much of today's Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) literature subscribes to the idea that the information age will witness a transformation in the very nature of war. In this book, David Lonsdale puts that notion to the test.

As the War in Iraq continues to rage, many in the White House, State Department, Department of Defense, and outside government are left to wonder if it was possible to foresee the difficulty the United States is currently having with Sunni nationalists and Islamic extremists. Recent American military experience offers significant insight into this question. With the fog of the Cold War finally lifting and clarity returning to the nature of conflict, the dominance of asymmetry in the military experience of the United States is all too evident. Lebanon (1982-1984), Somalia (1992-1994), and Afghanistan (2001-2004) offer recent and relevant insight into successes and failures of American attempts to fight adversaries utilizing asymmetric conflict to combat the United States when it intervened in these three states. The results illustrate the difficulty of engaging adversaries unwilling to wage a conventional war and the need for improved strategic and tactical doctrine. It is easy, Lowther writes, for Americans to forget the lessons of past conflicts as the politics of the present dominate.... His purpose here is to highlight some of history's recent lessons so that we may move forward with an awareness of what experience offers.

During the early years of the Iraq War, the US Army was unable to translate initial combat success into strategic and political victory. Iraq plunged into a complex insurgency, and defeating this insurgency required beating highly adaptive foes. A competition between the hierarchical and vertically integrated army and networked and horizontally integrated insurgents ensued. The latter could quickly adapt and conduct networked operations in a decentralized fashion; the former was predisposed to fighting via prescriptive plans under a centralized command and control. To achieve success, the US Army went through a monumental process of organizational adaptation—a process driven by soldiers and leaders that spread throughout the institution and led to revolutionary changes in how the army supported and conducted its operations in Iraq. How the army adapted and the implications of this adaptation are the subject of this indispensable study. Intended for policymakers, defense and military professionals, military historians, and academics, this book offers a solid critique of the army’s current capacity to adapt to likely future adversary strategies and provides policy recommendations for retaining lessons learned in Iraq.