BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE

BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE
Will the enemy escalate at the end or will he be deterred from
launching NBC fusillades as his regime goes under? Will he
use some WMD and threaten more use still in an attempt to
achieve a better end-war settlement?
Or should allied forces keep out of range until such enemy
WMD can be destroyed or until the enemy leadership is killed
or replaced? If this is not possible, what then? It is possible
that the better part of valor might be to accept a compromise
peace that leaves the adversary regime and his military in
place rather than demanding total surrender as required of
Nazi Germany or Tojo's Japan in 1945 . If this option is
rejected, the allied side risks massive casualties, perhaps
numbering in the millions, before victory could be achieved
against a regional foe so heavily armed .
As in the 1991 Gulf War, the location of the enemy
leadership and his weapons of mass destruction may be
unknown . There will be a temptation at the inception of any
such conflict to target the enemy leader or leaders to create
disorganization and a regime change . However, the closes- such
counter-leader strike attempts come to success without
accomplishing the task, the greater the possibility that the
enemy regime will counter with desperate measures that might
include launching a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons
attack, even if they face a clearly superior allied nuclear force
that enjoys escalation dominance .
How do you achieve victory or a measure of victory in
regional combat with such an enemy, and how do you, at the
same time, limit the damage inflicted on allied forces and allies
in the region of operations? Further, how do you limit damage
to the continental United States and allied countries during
such regional conflicts?
Until effective US and allied theater or strategic defenses are
developed and deployed in the regions where foes developing
or deploying WMD are located, efforts to counter such threats
will have to rely upon deterrence of the adversary or on allied
conventional offensive capabilities .
While it would be the very rare contingency when the United
States or allied states could successfully identify, locate,
target, and destroy the force of a hostile radical state on the
verge of using WMD against the American homeland, US and
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