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- The Pentagon's long-range thinker, Andrew Marshall, made
a rare public appearance Thursday to discuss the future of warfare. Mr.
Marshall, director of the nondescript but powerful Office of Net
Assessment,
said the nation's ability to project power over long
distances will remain
"the fundamental task." The drawback of
America's long military
reach is that it is driving more nations to
seek nuclear weapons and long-range
missiles capable of reaching U.S.
soil. And Mr. Marshall believes they
will succeed.
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- "The long-term trend is
that nations are seeking
new forms of strategic attack," Mr.
Marshall told a small group of
defense experts at the Brookings
Institution. "More and more countries
will have longer-range
missiles that they can use to attack a capital or
a society. We are
going to live in a world where many more countries have
the ability to
attack from a distance."
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- Information warfare - the capability of attacking
computer
networks from afar - will be part of it, he said. So will
space warfare.
Attacks against communications satellites and other
space assets are "inevitable,"
Mr. Marshall said.
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- Mr. Marshall, an
iconoclast with a reputation for challenging
conventional wisdom, said
it has been very hard to get military and political
leaders to talk
about the changing nature of warfare. Most seem willing
to look at
future combat but are reluctant to talk about what future wars
will be
like, he said.
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- One prediction: exotic biological weapons that will be
used to
change the behavior of troops on the battlefield are "five
years
away, not 30," Mr. Marshall said.
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- Instead of secretly learning
about the capabilities of
arms held by foreign troops, military
intelligence will be after other
data. "What people will want to
know is what kind of drugs they are
on," Mr. Marshall
said.
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- Mr.
Marshall also noted the work of Michael Pillsbury,
a China military
specialist, in revealing the "three schools of thought"
among
Chinese military thinkers. Some Chinese view the United States as
"a major threat" and are developing weapons to confront it.
Others
see the United States as a declining power and look toward Japan
as a future
threat to China. Another part of the Chinese officer corps
believes the
People's Liberation Army has enough time to engage in
high-technology weapons
development over the long term and is engaged
extensively in the using
advanced technology to radically change future
warfare.
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