Lightning Over Water

Sharpening America's Light Forces for Rapid-Reaction Missions — Executive Summary

by John Matsumura, Randall Steeb, John Gordon IV, Thomas J. Herbert, Russell W. Glenn, Paul S. Steinberg

Download

Full Document

FormatFile SizeNotes
zip file 0.2 MB

The file(s) provided above are ZIP-formatted archives, which most modern systems can natively unpack. If your computer does not unpack the archive when you double-click it, you may need to use a separate decompression program such as UnZip.

Purchase

Purchase Print Copy

 FormatList Price Price
Add to Cart Paperback38 pages $20.00 $16.00 20% Web Discount

As the world continues its post-Cold War thaw, fears of major theater-level war have given way to a reality of increased numbers of smaller regional conflicts and crises. There is a growing need for a quickly deploying,rapid-reaction capability-in particular, U.S. Army light forces-to directly respond to these events. To address this need, both the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army are calling for developing forces that are strategically responsive across the full spectrum of military operations. Although there is new dialogue on what might be done, there is also considerable research that has examined many of the issues now coming to light, such as, How might light forces be changed to offer greater rapid-reaction capability? This executive summary synthesizes research drawn from numerous studies conducted by the authors in the past few years on the topic of improving light air-deployable forces.

Table of Contents

  • Preface

  • Figures

  • Tables

  • Abbreviations

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Chapter Two

    Current-Generation Light Forces Do Not Fare Well Against a Powerful, Armored Opponent

  • Chapter Three

    Making Enhancements to the Current-Generation Light Forces Strongly Improves Overall Force Effectiveness

  • Chapter Four

    Making Light Forces Smaller/More Dispersible Has Benefits but Makes Them More Vulnerable and Less Capable

  • Chapter Five

    Introducing Maneuver Adds Significant Benefits, but the Viability of Creating and Deploying Such a Force Is Unresolved

  • Chapter Six

    How Can the Army Improve Rapid-Reaction Capability?

Research conducted by

This research was conducted within RAND's Arroyo Center and National Defense Research Institute.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Monograph report series. The monograph/report was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1993 to 2003. RAND monograph/reports presented major research findings that addressed the challenges facing the public and private sectors. They included executive summaries, technical documentation, and synthesis pieces.

Our mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis is enabled through our core values of quality and objectivity and our unwavering commitment to the highest level of integrity and ethical behavior. To help ensure our research and analysis are rigorous, objective, and nonpartisan, we subject our research publications to a robust and exacting quality-assurance process; avoid both the appearance and reality of financial and other conflicts of interest through staff training, project screening, and a policy of mandatory disclosure; and pursue transparency in our research engagements through our commitment to the open publication of our research findings and recommendations, disclosure of the source of funding of published research, and policies to ensure intellectual independence. For more information, visit www.rand.org/about/principles.

Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.