The RMA points to a second principle of defense planning, one which, like information, serves as a force multiplier by magnifying the fighting ability of existing military units. This second principle is synergy--or, to use a more common term, jointness. It is the ability of different services, branches, and weapons to fight effectively together, to marshal their unique capabilities into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Most revolutions in military affairs are indeed only revolutionary when their various aspects work together, and the present RMA is no different. Advances in military technology have made synergy more important than ever. The faster and more precise war becomes, the more need there is for tight and continuous cooperation among various kinds of forces. [37] Precision-guided weapons are useless without adequate targeting data. Stealthy bombers will hardly be worth the price if they arrive over the target only to drop dumb bombs. The ability of units to move, on the ground or in the air, with lightning speed will be wasted if the command and control system cannot keep up. [38] Synergy is intimately related to the revolution in information mentioned above. Communication is the lifeline of synergy, the means by which various parts of the force are able to cooperate. Interoperable command and control systems thus take on critical importance because they stand at the junction between two principles of the RMA. [39] Over time, the evolution of synergy within the military may have one especially notable effect: it might overwhelm the current roles and missions debate. To begin with, one should recognize that redundancy is sometimes good [40] and that, partly as a result, the fiscal savings to be found in eliminating "wasteful redundancies" are bound to be disappointingly small. Synergy should not be perceived as rooting out all aspects of redundancy, but rather making the various forces work better together. [41] In the current, tender moment in defense planning, moreover, a divisive debate over roles and missions could do grievous harm to the ultimate goal of synergy. Interservice relations are already on eggshells, as the services scramble for their piece of a shrinking defense budget and try, in the process, to continue the trend of jointness. If a roles and missions review were to launch a full-scale attack on established means of doing business, save $10 billion and leave, amid the rubble, new loathing between the Army and the Air Force, the exercise would have been a failure, not a success. Finally, the supposed either-or choices offered by advocates of a roles and missions review will seldom be so easy. As a major military power, the United States will continue to maintain certain classes of weapons--fighters, strategic bombers (probably), aircraft carriers, tanks, and so on--indefinitely. [42] Only relatively marginal systems or capabilities will be capable of elimination based on a readjustment of roles and missions. The lesson is clear enough. To portray the roles and missions review as a budgetary exercise is a serious mistake. In the long run, the goal is synergy, which will produce its own efficiencies. Military planners must not allow an angry debate over roles and missions to slow progress toward that goal. In fact, the RMA and its principle of synergy can help solve this problem by eventually taking the roles and missions debate off the table. Questions of which service will perform which role, mission, or function are likely to give way to a broader and more fundamental question: How can the capabilities of the various services be marshalled to accomplish specific jobs? Military planners will simply discard the notion that missions belong, in any meaningful sense, to one or another service. When all the services are viewed as a single, cooperating, organic whole, the scope of the roles and missions debate changes completely. This argument replicates the distinction, made by Admiral William Owens, between "specialization" and "synergism" as models of jointness. [43] An even tougher challenge than promoting synergy among U.S. military services is doing the same thing within multinational coalitions. Coalition warfare is a growth industry, and U.S. military planners must find ways to maximize the proficiency of those coalitions and to make sure that the United States is playing the most efficient role possible in them. This means, at a minimum, a reliable means of command and control within a coalition enterprise. It means peacetime exercises, military-to-military contacts, and full-time liaison officers. Again, coalition operations are becoming more challenging even as they become more necessary. Finally, the concept of synergy also stands at the core of irregular warfare. In unconventional war, it is the combination of political, economic, and military elements of strategy that is decisive. As was so often said during the Vietnam War, military means alone could not win a guerrilla war; only a broader approach will work. That is as true in Somalia or the Sudan now as it was in Vietnam then, and it displays, once again, the importance of the principle of synergy. A renewed emphasis on synergy therefore carries a number of implications. Most important to such progress will be a growing emphasis on jointness. The U.S. military needs even more joint assignments, joint schools, joint exercises, and joint thinking. [44] A Joint Warfighting Center is already in the process of being created. [45] The continued evolution of a much more detailed joint doctrine is especially important. [46] Flexible, all-arms combat teams incorporating land, sea, and air forces will become even more ubiquitous in the future, and the military should assemble and train such units together more frequently in peacetime, a trend already underway with adaptive joint force packaging in the Atlantic Command [47] and with the imminent formation of Joint Task Force-95. The next logical step, as proposed by Admiral Owens, is the creation of joint commands at the level of corps, fleet, and air force to operate "jointly on a continual basis." [48] Second, when contemplating peacekeeping or counterinsurgency operations, U.S. defense planners must keep in mind the necessary synergy between political, economic, and social as well as military factors. This calls for closer military coordination among U.S. and allied military forces, international relief organizations, U.S. and allied foreign aid offices, and political analysts and experts. It suggests the need for U.S. forces permanently trained in the unique synergy of irregular war, or, at a minimum, permanent liaison officers between U.S. military forces and these other actors. And third, military planners must extend the principle of synergy into the realm of procurement. Complete standardization would be a mistake. But in at least a few instances, services can work together on joint projects under the direction of joint program offices. One major example, on which some cooperation is already underway, is a new generation of tactical fighter. But by far the most important target for joint procurement is an integrated command, control, and communications system. [49] Back to Table of Contents Revolution in Military Affairs Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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