JULY/AUGUST AIRFORCEMAG.COMIn 1992, the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment conclud-
ed that the Russians had been right and that a Revolution
in Military Affairs was in progress. Regional conflicts in
Bosnia (1995) and Serbia (1999) lent further credibility to
that conclusion.
The RMA concept included all of the combat arms, but
it was increasingly identified with airpower. It was seen
as an alternative to the emphasis in traditional warfare
on attrition and the clash of force on force. The RMA was
recognized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1996 and by the
Department of Defense in 1997.
RMA advocates had not reckoned sufficiently with the
political power of the Army in the Pentagon. The RMA was
a threat to budgets and roles and missions for the ground
forces, and the Army struck back, rallying its supporters
to the slogan of “Boots on the Ground.”
The issue was not technology. It was airpower. The
ground forces could accept airpower in a supporting role
but not in the leading or supported role. Accordingly, the
RMA was rolled back. The JCS position was reversed and
the Air Force was reminded emphatically that its main role
was support of the ground forces.
After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,
D.C., in 2001, US strategy focused on low-intensity encoun-
ters with low-technology adversaries. The emergence of a
threat from a military “peer competitor” was of little or no
concern. The RMA doctrine was effectively dead.
Two decades into the 21st century, though, the deci-
sion to abandon the RMA no longer looks as incisive as it
seemed. In 2018, the bipartisan National Defense Strat-
egy Commission warned that the skills necessary for US
forces to conduct operations against capable adversaries
had “atrophied” and that they might actually “lose a war
against China or Russia.”
The National Security Strategy was revised in 2018
with a goal of better responding to “rapid technological
advancements and the changing character of war.” It was
carefully worded, but it sounded much like the Revolution
in Military Affairs.SIGNS OF A REVOLUTION
The concept of an RMA gained a foothold in the United
States when Andrew Marshall, the legendary director of the
Pentagon Office of Net Assessment, ordered a major study
of the Russian theory in light of the Gulf War experience.
The report, written by Andrew Krepinevich, was pub-
lished in 1992. It said that a RMA was indeed underway
and that “we are probably in the early stages of a transition
to a new era of warfare.”
Thomas Ricks, writing in the Washington Post, summa-
rized Marshall's views in an interview: “Mass armies may
be replaced by smaller, more professional forces packing
more firepower and fighting from a distance, rather than
closing with and destroying the enemy. The main mission
of forward ground forces may shift from laying direct fire on
the enemy toward spotting targets for ‘standoff ’ weapons
and assessing the damage they do.”
Adm. William A. Owens, Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, agreed that an RMA was coming and pre-
dicted that it would “lead to a more lethal military with
more interservice cooperation.”
The RMA gained additional standing from Operation
Deliberate Force, the NATO air campaign in Bosnia, inGen. Ronald
Fogleman
prepares to
board an F-15
at Langley AFB,
Va. Fogleman
said the US
was obligated
to transition to
an asymmetric
force strategy
that could bend
an adversary
to its will with
the least cost
of US lives
and treasure.
He meant
airpower.Photo: USAF via AFA library