In responding to Commander Jeff Huber's October 2003 article ("Invasion of the Transformers"), Captain Thomas Davis agrees with other critics that defense "transformation" is "a parlor trick that will produce no useful change but will cost the taxpayers billions in the process of getting nowhere new." This sincere criticism deserves an answer.
The goal of transformation within the Department of Defense is change across the board—from the nature of the forces fielded by the United States, to their tactics and doctrine, and even to the management processes used within the Department by its leaders. This is a tall order, but it can be done. Indeed, it has been done several times already by previous generations. One such case—the Navy's development of effective carrier aviation before World War II—illustrates the process.
The case begins in 1919. Naval aviation had grown spectacularly during World War I, and U.S. naval aviators had returned from that war committed to building up a powerful naval air arm. They believed that aviation was in the process of transforming war at sea. To plot a clear way ahead, the Navy's General Board—a panel of senior admirals who advised the Secretary of the Navy-held a series of confidential hearings in the spring of 1919. In the course of those hearings and the discussions that followed, the members of the Board tried to define the alternative future paths for naval aviation.
With the help of their younger colleagues in aviation, the board first defined the general military functions of naval aviation and then broke down those general functions to arrive at what we would call a list of requirements.
"Navigation" and "communication," for example, were essential elements of almost all the most general military capabilities, suggesting it was essential to invest in both if naval aircraft were to develop or refine their capabilities to scout, strike, and attack submarines. Moreover, this process was extended even further, to dig deeper into the new technology of aviation. For example, range and endurance depended on having reliable, lightweight engines, and survivability required sturdy airframes.
This sort of analysis—done mostly by naval officers themselves—led the Secretary of the Navy to ask Congress to establish a technical bureau for aviation. Congress agreed, and the Bureau of Aeronautics was created in 1921. In 1922, however, President Warren G. Harding negotiated a multilateral treaty dramatically reducing the sizes of navies, with the result that the Navy's plans to greatly expand its aviation program had to be recast.
Put another way, transformation had to be accomplished economically, a task some aviators thought was impossible. Navy leaders disagreed, but they knew they had to make some hard choices, especially when it came to investing in new or immature technologies. So they went back to the capabilities chart and engaged in the analysis illustrated by the entries in the chart on the left. That table matches the general capabilities already listed against the candidate systems that had already been developed or forecast during World War I. For those candidates to fulfill the expectations their advocates had for them, the Navy would have to invest in the science and technology requirements given in the right-hand column.
Some hard choices had to be made. For example, airships held the promise of accurate and timely strategic reconnaissance, yet the technology of the large, rigid airship was not mature. So how much investment in airships was justified? Another example was the comparison of seaplanes as strike weapons with carrier aircraft. For seaplanes to be effective bombers, they needed, at a minimum, an accurate bombsight. For carrier aircraft to take a strike role, they had to be able to carry enough ordnance and then be able to strike their targets. Which areas of science and technology investment should get the limited funds?
To answer that question, Navy officers needed some means of ranking the capabilities that investment would conceivably make available in the near and distant future. To find some answers, they turned to the operational and tactical simulations then being developed and refined at the Naval War College. Those simulations suggested (to take just one case) that the best way to use the limited number of carriers allowed the Navy under the existing treaty limits was to employ them in attacking enemy carriers.
The ideas developed at the Naval War College had to be tested at sea, under conditions that resembled those that would apply in war. Navy officers developed a program of annual "fleet problems" that brought together training and a test of concepts drawn from the Naval War College simulations. The results were then sent back to the Bureau of Aeronautics, and the officers and civilians there did their best to draw on science, technology, and engineering innovations to improve both aircraft and aircraft carrier performance.
Ideally, the development charts for carriers and carrier aircraft would show all the separate developments in aviation technology, carrier design, and flight deck procedures blending over time to create a very real carrier strike capability. But we know progress was neither smooth nor certain. There were dead ends in aviation, such as the two-seat fighter-scout. There were also less-than-suitable carriers.
Today, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Forces Command (JFCom) are developing lists of capabilities based on simulations and exercises. Then they are breaking down those general capabilities into specific ones for careful study and possible investment. Simultaneously, JFCom and the services are testing concepts in simulations and then "prototyping" the more promising ones for further tests in the field. The services and JFCom have also developed "transformation road maps." The Office of Force Transformation is turning the versions into a set of charts that, laid side by side, will show how the whole Department of Defense is developing key joint capabilities.
This is not a foolproof method, but it is a method, and versions of it have been used successfully before. Those of us engaged in the process can only promise that we will employ it honestly and openly. We owe that to Captain Davis and our other critics.