Transforming Defense

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

The National Defense Panel presented yesterday to the 
Secretary of Defense its 95-page report on the future of 
US defense: 

   "Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century."

It's available in PDF format at:

   http://www.dtic.mil/ndp/FullDoc.pdf  (386K)

The report proposes an impressive 30-year overhaul for the 
military, with a recommendation that the two-major-wars strategy 
be replaced with that of preparing for one major war and a host of 
more limited defenses overseas and at home to combat enemies 
who will not challenge superior conventional armaments but will 
utilize "asymmetrical" NBC weapons, terrorism, information 
warfare.

We've converted the Executive Summary to HTML:

   http://jya.com/ndp-pr.htm

And a section on "Homeland Defense" which proposes a role for 
military forces to "protect against all enemies foreign and domestic" 
by providing intelligence, training, equipment and other aid to 
justice and law enforcement.

   http://jya.com/home-def.htm

As noted in the NYT today, the report asks for a shakeup in
intelligence, with renewed emphasis on training human spies
to compensate for what technology cannot do.

Along that line, the NYT also reports today on a huge Libyan
deeply-buried pipeline system under construction which is 
suspected of being a distribution system for troops and equipment 
as well as CB weapons, placed underground to escape satellite
spies. The report is based on descriptions of engineers and
corporations working on the project.

One feature of the NDP report, as well as other closed defense
panel meetings, is the need for weapons to attack underground
structures -- like those vast catcombs in Lybia and North Korea,
and the US for that matter -- Cheyenne Mountain is still being
re-hardened regularly, and its electronics re-Tempested, not that 
the local skinheads will not find a way to hack the bunker as 
trusted EEs and sys admins.