American forces press service (Jan. 27, 2005): DoD transformation here to stay, Cebrowski says.WASHINGTON -- Transformation has taken hold across the Defense Department and "will be with us a very, very long time," DoD's top transformational thinker said here today. In response to President Bush's directive to DoD to change itself to better confront 21st century threats. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has implemented many policies that have changed the way the military operates and does business, noted retired Navy Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski Vice Admiral (ret.) Arthur K. Cebrowski (August 13, 1942 – November 12, 2005) was a retired United States Navy admiral who served from October 2001 to January 2005 as Director of the Office of Force Transformation in the U.S. Department of Defense. , director of the DoD's Office of Force Transformation. The admiral ADMIRAL, officer. In some countries is the commander in chief of the naval forces. This office does not exist in the United States. , speaking at an American Institute of Aeronautics aeronautics: see aerodynamics; airplane; aviation. and Astronautics-sponsored luncheon, pointed to revamps made to the Unified Command Plan The document, approved by the President, that sets forth basic guidance to all unified combatant commanders; establishes their missions, responsibilities, and force structure; delineates the general geographical area of responsibility for geographic combatant commanders; and specifies as well other significant departmental changes that required legislation from Congress. The department remains committed to improved and expanded communications capabilities, said Cebrowski, who's slated to retire from his current position at end of the month. "We're not going to step back to a less-networked age," he said. The admiral said it's "difficult to undo To restore the last editing operation that has taken place. For example, if a segment of text has been deleted or changed, performing an undo will restore the original text. Programs may have several levels of undo, including being able to reconstruct the original data for all edits some of the things that have been done." For instance, he said, the U.S. Army isn't going to jettison jettison (jĕt`əsən, –zən) [O.Fr.,=throwing], in maritime law, casting all or part of a ship's cargo overboard to lighten the vessel or to meet some danger, such as fire. its new combat-brigade structure centered on the Stryker armored vehicle and go back to an old-style, division-based tactical force structure. "That's just the way things are," he said. Also, he noted, the U.S. armed forces "are raising up a very large number of NCOs and junior and mid-grade officers who have combat experience" under the new transformational doctrine. "That changes the force," he explained, noting today's servicemembers "have experienced many of these transformational things, whether they're items for procurement The fancy word for "purchasing." The procurement department within an organization manages all the major purchases. or they are tactics or they are organizational constructs." The Army and Marine Corps, Cebrowski pointed out, employ "a very robust way of capturing these (transformational) attitudes, turning them back into the training for the forces that are going to deploy again." Consequently, a culture of taking lessons derived from troop combat experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq has been developed across the Army and Marine Corps, the admiral noted. "What happens is the doctrine process just catches up later," Cebrowski concluded. |
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