Conclusion

The technologies and systems presented in this section are not extraordinary nor do they comprise a complete list. Indeed, entire fields such as materials, bioengineering, and microelectronics are left for future consideration, although they are of obvious and vital importance. Also not addressed here are the training, education, and organizational implications required under a regime of Rapid Dominance. Given the overriding importance of information collection and management, these will need to be addressed across the defense community as it is most broadly defined.

Rapid Dominance combines a doctrine and operational concept that challenges the current process of how new technologies invented in the commercial sector are incorporated into defense, and provides an affirmative methodology for research, development, and system integration. We must learn to exploit the potential of these technologies even though, in many cases, this development process in the private sector is profoundly independent from how we conduct the business of defense. It is this environment of innovative upheaval that any useful foundation for strategic and operational thought must address. Rapid Dominance capitalizes on, and may even require, this rapid and chaotic development of technology.

We believe that what will distinguish Rapid Dominance from other doctrines is first that it uses an intellectual construct to drive innovation and innovation to drive exploiting and integrating technology into new and perhaps somewhat differently constructed systems. Second, it is the comprehensive quality of Rapid Dominance in which strategies, doctrine, technology, systems, operations, training, organization, and education are dealt with together that may make the most significant difference. But, as the reader will discern, specific identification and design of Rapid Dominance systems is part of the next step.

¹ CORBA (common object request broker architecture), OLE (object linking and embedding), ALSP (aggregate level simulation protocol), HLA (high-level architecture), DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation). These are all protocols or the architectures defining protocols that, in part, enable disparate software and/or hardware components to be linked or otherwise share information and logical elements.