BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE

Chapter 1
Principles of War for the
Battlefield of the Future
Barry R.
Schneider
The United States would have fought its wars of the past
half century far differently had Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Kim Il
Sung, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, Manuel Noriega, and
Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons at the time .
A world of nuclear-armed states will require the United
States and its allies to revise force structures, strategy and
doctrine, intelligence capabilities, command and control
procedures, and logistics for major regional conflict
scenarios . A proliferated world of potential adversaries
equipped with weapons of mass destruction and the means
of delivering them will require the US military to implement
a "revolution in military affairs," one that may require
significant departures from current US strategy, operational
policies, and military capabilities .)
Clearly, US force planning and conflict preparation have
not yet taken into account a "Saddam Hussein with nukes"
to use Les Aspin's phrase when he announced the US
Defense Counterproliferation Initiative . The Bottom Up
Review, conducted by the Clinton Administration under
then-Secretary of Defense Aspin, did not assume the United
States would confront an adversary armed with weapons of
mass destruction in either of the two nearly simultaneous
major regional conflicts (MRCs) that US forces are supposed
to be able to fight and win . Yet, it is clear that radical and
hostile states such as Iraq and Iran are probably just a few
short years away from having a nuclear weapons capability
and North Korea may already possess one . All three are
presently credited with biological and chemical weapons
capabilities .