Douglas A. Macgregor

Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.)

This work proposes the reorganization of America's ground forces on the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Central to the proposal is the simple thesis that the U.S. Army must take control of its future by exploiting the emerging revolution in military affairs. The analysis argues that a new Army warfighting organization will not only be more deployable and effective in Joint operations; reorganized information age ground forces will be significantly less expensive to operate, maintain, and modernize than the Army's current Cold War division-based organizations. And while ground forces must be equipped with the newest Institute weapons, new technology will not fulfill its promise of shaping the battlefield to American advantage if new devices are merely grafted on to old organizations that are not specifically designed to exploit them. It is not enough to rely on the infusion of new, expensive technology into the American defense establishment to preserve America's strategic dominance in the next century. The work makes it clear that planes, ships, and missiles cannot do the job of defending America's global security issues alone. The United States must opt for reform and reorganization of the nation's ground forces and avoid repeating Britain's historic mistake of always fielding an effective army just in time to avoid defeat, but too late to deter an aggressor.

A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century

Breaking the Phalanx

W. Seth Carus

Seth Carus's book is a unique combination of scholarly discipline and astute political judgment. This is a succinct and insightful analysis of one of the most vital security challenges of this century. Janne E. Nolan Senior Fellow The Brookings Institution Since the vivid images of SCUD missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia were flashed on television screens all over the world, many have wondered how a country like Iraq could acquire and use such long-range ballistic missiles. Although Iran and Iraq had fired these missiles at each other many times during their 1980-88 war, the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's missiles was not fully realized until the SCUDs began raining down on Israel, and Saudi Arabia at the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This timely book by missile expert W. Seth Carus, written in cooperation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and including a foreword by Edward N. Luttwak, contains an alarming assessment of the missile threat worldwide. An up-to-the-minute postscript on the American-Iraqi war and its effects on further ballistic missile proliferation throughout the Third World is also included. Carus presents the facts behind the spread of ballistic missiles and their technology to Third World countries and suggests plausible responses for the United States and its allies. Various developing nations--among them Iran, Iraq, Libya, North and South Korea, Brazil, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, and South Africa--already possess large numbers of ballistic missiles and no longer rely on the superpowers alone for their weapons procurement or production. Carus covers all aspects of ballistic missiles--their capabilities and disadvantages, their possible fitting with chemical or nuclear warheads, their attractiveness for Third World leaders, and the responses of Third World countries to missile arsenals in neighboring states. The success of cruise missiles and anti-missile missiles (such as Patriots) in the Persian Gulf War make these missiles of even greater interest to Third World countries. Carus warns of the dire consequences of ignoring the spread of missiles and their technology to areas of the world where future wars are likely to occur.

Ballistic Missiles in Modern Conflict

Macgregor's study economically and convincingly makes the case for the inescapable importance of land forces in wars of the future and, no less important, in the deterrence of such wars.

Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.)

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