<

Rumsfeld Says: 'Old Ways Out, New In’
Friday, July 12, 2002
By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service

Rumsfeld said defense officials are now focused on achieving six transformational goals. Over the next five years, he added, funding is being increased in each:

o Protecting the U.S. homeland and bases overseas, 47 percent.
o Projecting and sustaining power in distant theaters, 21 percent.
o Denying enemies sanctuaries, 157 percent.
o Protecting information networks, 28 percent.
o Using information technology to link joint forces, 125 percent.
o Maintaining access to space and protecting space capabilities, 145 percent.

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
What dangers loom in the days ahead? How might future adversaries attack the United States?

Dealing with future threats will take more than just new, high-tech weapons, according to the top man at the Pentagon. It will take new ways of thinking and fighting.

"The ability to adapt will be critical in a world defined by surprise an uncertainty," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote in a bylined article in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. "As we painfully learned on Sept. 11, the challenges of the new century are not nearly as predictable as were those of the last."

As future enemies acquire weapons of increasing power and range, the defense secretary warned, attacks could grow far more deadly than those of Sept. 11. He said America's new challenge is to defend itself against the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen and the unexpected. To accomplish what may seem an impossible task, he said, requires putting aside comfortable ways of thinking and planning, and taking risks, and trying new things.

Using the war in Afghanistan as an example, Rumsfeld said this first war of the 21st century showed that even the horse cavalry could be used in previously unimaginable ways. U.S. and coalition forces used today's laser-guided weapons, 40-year-old B-52 bombers and men with guns on horses in unprecedented ways to defeat a dangerous, determined adversary, he noted.

"What won the battle for Mazar-e Sharif and set in motion the Taliban's fall from power," Rumsfeld said, "was a combination of the U.S. special forces; the most advanced, precision-guided munitions in the U.S. arsenal, delivered by U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps crews; and the courage of valiant, one-legged Afghan fighters on horseback."

The secretary does not suggest, however, that the Afghan combination is a model for the future.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan