For U.S. defense planners, these are the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, with the collapse of our erstwhile Cold War adversary, basic questions of national security strategy are once again in play. In light of this change, there has never been greater scope for reviewing U.S. national objectives and threats to them, creatively weighing these against resources available, and crafting a strategy suitable to new and emerging conditions. At the same time, extraordinary developments emerging from the technology base are opening up possibilities for radically new ways of conducting military operations. Taken together, these trends should spark a wide-ranging set of debates about the best way for this nation to go about protecting and advancing its interests in the future, the roles that military power should play in U.S. national security strategy, and the appropriate size and mix of U.S. military forces. Yet, to date, these debates have seemed constricted, if not stillborn. Perhaps one reason for this is that Americans have not yet embraced a broad set of guiding objectives for U.S. foreign policy and security strategy. Too, the shrinking of the defense budget poses a seemingly endless set of management challenges as we try to downsize the defense establishment without severely disrupting the activities of commanders and forces in the field. Resource constraints have also heightened sensitivities, so that at the level of military force structure and program analysis, it is difficult to escape the feeling that every position is evaluated first through the lens of Service parochialism.

For U.S. defense planners, these are the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, with the collapse of our erstwhile Cold War adversary, basic questions of national security strategy are once again in play. In light of this change, there has never been greater scope for reviewing U.S. national objectives and threats to them, creatively weighing these against resources available, and crafting a strategy suitable to new and emerging conditions. At the same time, extraordinary developments emerging from the technology base are opening up possibilities for radically new ways of conducting military operations. Taken together, these trends should spark a wide-ranging set of debates about the best way for this nation to go about protecting and advancing its interests in the future, the roles that military power should play in U.S. national security strategy, and the appropriate size and mix of U.S. military forces. Yet, to date, these debates have seemed constricted, if not stillborn. Perhaps one reason for this is that Americans have not yet embraced a broad set of guiding objectives for U.S. foreign policy and security strategy. Too, the shrinking of the defense budget poses a seemingly endless set of management challenges as we try to downsize the defense establishment without severely disrupting the activities of commanders and forces in the field. Resource constraints have also heightened sensitivities, so that at the level of military force structure and program analysis, it is difficult to escape the feeling that every position is evaluated first through the lens of Service parochialism.

Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty explores and examines why and how security communities prepare purposefully for their future defence. The author explains that defence planning is the product of interplay among political process, historical experience, and the logic of strategy. The theory of strategy best reveals both the nature and the working of defence planning. Political 'ends', strategic 'ways', and military 'means' all fed by reigning, if not always recognized, assumptions, organize the subject well with a template that can serve any time, place, and circumstance. The book is designed to help understanding of what can appear to be a forbiddingly complex as well as technical subject. A good part of the problem for officials charged with defence planning duties is expressed in the second part of the book's title. The real difficulty, which rarely is admitted by those tasked with defence planning duty, is that defence planning can only be guesswork. But, because defence preparation is always expensive, not untypically is politically unpopular, yet obviously can be supremely important, claims to knowledge about the truly unknowable persist. In truth, we cannot do defence planning competently, because our ignorance of the future precludes understanding of what our society will be shown by future events to need. The challenge faced by the author was to identify ways in which our problems with the inability to know the future in any detail in advance-the laws of nature, in other words-may best be met and mitigated. Professor Gray argues that our understanding of human nature, of politics, and of strategic history, does allow us to make prudent choices in defence planning that hopefully will prove 'good enough'.

Change--in international relations, in technology, and in society as a whole--has become the idiom of our age. One example of these changes has been an increasing recognition of the value of air and space assets for handling nearly every contingency from disaster relief to war and, onsequently, increasing demand for such assets. These developments have created both challenges and opportunities for the U.S. Air Force. This, the fourth volume in the Strategic Appraisal series, draws on the expertise of researchers from across RAND to explore both the challenges and opportunities that the U.S. Air Force faces as it strives to support the nation's interests in a challenging technological and security environment.Contributors examine the changing roles of air and space forces in U.S.national security strategy, the implications of new systems and technologiesfor military operations, and the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. securitystrategy. Contributors also discuss the status of major modernizationefforts within the Air Force, and the bill of health of the Air Force, asmeasured by its readiness to undertake its missions both today and in thefuture.

For U.S. defense planners, these are the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, with the collapse of our erstwhile Cold War adversary, basic questions of national security strategy are once again in play. In light of this change, there has never been greater scope for reviewing U.S. national objectives and threats to them, creatively weighing these against resources available, and crafting a strategy suitable to new and emerging conditions. At the same time, extraordinary developments emerging from the technology base are opening up possibilities for radically new ways of conducting military operations. Taken together, these trends should spark a wide-ranging set of debates about the best way for this nation to go about protecting and advancing its interests in the future, the roles that military power should play in U.S. national security strategy, and the appropriate size and mix of U.S. military forces. Yet, to date, these debates have seemed constricted, if not stillborn. Perhaps one reason for this is that Americans have not yet embraced a broad set of guiding objectives for U.S. foreign policy and security strategy. Too, the shrinking of the defense budget poses a seemingly endless set of management challenges as we try to downsize the defense establishment without severely disrupting the activities of commanders and forces in the field. Resource constraints have also heightened sensitivities, so that at the level of military force structure and program analysis, it is difficult to escape the feeling that every position is evaluated first through the lens of Service parochialism.