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The Changing Nature of Warfare Transcript and Summary of a Conference, 25-26 May 2004 at The CNA Corporation
November 1, 2004
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) and specifically the National Intelligence Officer (NIO)for Military Issues asked CNAC to conduct a conference on the changing nature of warfare through 2020 as part of their project on Global Trends 2020. CNAC commissioned 21 papers on various aspects of the subject and convened a conference on 25-26 May 2004 at which the papers were presented and discussed. This document contains a brief summary of the conference, followed by a transcript (not verbatim) of the presentations and discussions, followed by a longer summary of the conference. See also CNAC document CIM D0010879.A1/Final of October 2004, which extends beyond the discussions of the conference to explore the wider range of evolutions of warfare toward the year 2020.
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Capabilities-Based Planning in the Coming Global Security Environment: A Paper for the Monterey Strategy Seminar of 21 September 2004
October 1, 2004
Capabilities-based planning is advertised as the new approach to planning in the Department of Defense. A simple definition of such planning would be that it should be threat-less and scenario-less. Unfortunately, the new defense planning system requires that the planning be tested in what are essentially "vertical" scenarios, i.e., spikes in time, and this leads to the invention of enemies and threats to fill the scenarios. The main drawback in this is that it is hard to apply such planning to the "horizontal" scenarios the United States now faces, especially the global war on terror, which is expected to last a long time.
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