TABLE OF CONTENTS

Conclusion
The Horizon 21 study was conducted with a different methodology, with different
participants, with a different charter, and yet produced a set of conclusions remarkably
similar to those presented to the USAF by the Air Force 2025 study completed 11 years
earlier. Hence Horizon 21 validates the earlier study and the earlier study would seem to
suggest greater confidence in the most recent one. Furthermore, rapidly accelerating
technological change suggests that the conclusions of the prior study are even truer today
than they were in the mid-1990s. The conclusions of Air Force 2025 are reproduced here
and are without exception consistent with the findings of Horizon 21.
• All boats rise on a rising technological tide. Maintaining superiority will become
more difficult but is possible. We should make investments for the future in the
technologies which enhance vigilance, decision-making capabilities, and
communications architectures.
• The U.S. has an opportunity to achieve integrated dominance to oppose strength
with strength to impose strength on weakness. The key to achieving and
maintaining lasting superiority that cannot easily be duplicated by others lies in the
integration of information, air, and space.
• Information is no longer a staff function but an operational one. It is deadly as
well as useful.
• Superiority may derive as much from improved thinking about the employment
of current capabilities and the rapid integration of existing technologies as from the
development of technological breakthroughs.
• Courage and confidence in technology and our ability to deploy it quickly will
enable many of the current missions performed today by manned aircraft to be
performed in the future by uninhabited vehicles and space systems.
• The revolutionary information technologies of the future are so fast moving that
they suggest the need for dramatic changes in planning, budgeting, and acquisition
if we are to continue to compete successfully.