Revolution After Next

As the 21st Century dawns, warfare is in the midst of revolutionary change. Information Age warfare characterized by knowledge, speed, and precision is slowly supplanting Industrial Age war and its reliance on mass. The advent of precision firepower is but the first tremor of this tectonic shift. As it reverberates around the globe, the Precision Firepower Military Technical Revolution will dramatically increase the lethality and reach of defensive fires. Unless the means for offensive maneuver adapt to overcome the greatly enhanced power of the defense, future soldiers will face stalemate and indecision much like their forefathers confronted in 1914. As the world's leading economic and military power, the United States has both the resources and the incentive to sustain its ability to conduct rapid, decisive land combat. As air-mechanization's theorists and the Army After Next Project have shown, the key lies in creating air-mechanized Precision Maneuver forces that profit from the synergy created by digitization, precision firepower, and vertical envelopment. This monograph argues that there exists sufficient means and technology to create an initial Precision Maneuver rapid reaction corps before 2010. It would behoove the Army to embark on this project immediately. The nation's security demands the Army act now to build a new force, one that leads the next revolution in war by redressing the growing imbalance between fire and maneuver, one with the speed, reach, and precision required for rapid, decisive, land campaigns in the Information Age.