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© St. Petersburg Times, published July 14, 2002
WASHINGTON -- A secret Pentagon plan for the next five years directs the military to focus more of its spending to combat Afghanistan-style threats and weapons of mass destruction and to develop greater precision-strike capabilities, according to a document the Los Angeles Times reviewed.
The "Defense Planning Guidance" for 2004 to 2009 puts into action the Pentagon's plan to replace a Cold War-era strategy of being able to fight two major-theater wars at the same time with a more complex approach aimed at dominating air and space on several fronts.
The annually updated five-year plan, the first since the Sept. 11 attacks, represents an acceleration of the shift toward the high-tech gadgetry of warfare on which the Pentagon has relied since the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
The classified document requires the military services to develop further the capability to launch "unwarned" pre-emptive strikes, a new doctrine President Bush outlined in a May graduation address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
The document appears to emphasize the kind of nontraditional enemy U.S. soldiers have faced in Afghanistan, rather than a peer-to-peer war with large numbers of conventional troops and weapons against possible foes such as North Korea and China.
The plan directs the armed services to spend their money on countering terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, intelligence, cyber-warfare, airstrike capabilities and military systems in space.
It also sets specific goals, such as the development of a squadron of a dozen unmanned fighter jets by 2012 and a "hypersonic missile" that can travel 600 nautical miles in 15 minutes -- capable of taking out mobile missile launchers before they can be moved -- by 2009.
Defense officials said the plan codifies the military transformation that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has touted since he took over the Pentagon.
It places emphasis on capabilities such as surprise "high-volume precision strikes," and calls for laser- and microwave-powered weapons and nuclear-tipped "bunker buster" bombs capable of striking deeply buried cave complexes such as those in Afghanistan.
The weapons called for in the plan enhance the military's ability to launch stealthy pre-emptive strikes against a new breed of enemy, which the Bush administration has suggested could include North Korea and Iraq.
The emphasis on high-tech warfare appears to benefit the Air Force most and the Army least, a senior defense official told the Los Angeles Times.
That might have an effect on the way the document is received by each of the military services. The document calls for the services to make cyber-warfare a "core competency." That includes protecting critical U.S. computer networks and destroying or sleuthing the enemy's networks.
The policy blueprint outlines a shift from a "threat-based" strategy, aimed at combating major adversaries such as China or Russia, to a "capabilities-based" system, designed to develop the ability to "deter, deny and defeat adversaries who will rely on surprise, deception and asymmetric warfare to achieve their objectives."
Some defense analysts expressed concern that the plan would send the message that wars can be fought with few casualties by "push-button warfare."
Nevertheless, some of the technologies envisioned in the plan could be used in traditional large-scale wars, said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington foreign policy think-tank.
WASHINGTON -- After passing the antiterrorism bill in record time in the fall, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees are making an unusually prompt and thorough, if sometimes unsuccessful, effort to determine how the Justice Department is using its new powers.
Last week, the House panel agreed to let the department have a few more days to finish answering 50 questions, some with as many as seven parts, that it submitted on June 13.
The Senate committee, which has shorter lists of questions that await replies, had planned to question Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday. But Ashcroft canceled his appearance, which would have been his first before the committee since Nov. 25.
Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the case was a rare example of congressional oversight that was not seeking scandal. If oversight "is focused on implementation of a law," Mann said, "it tends to come years after it is passed."
"To actually see them move this quickly is somewhat refreshing," he said. "It's surprising."
U.S. CONVOY TAKES FIRE: A U.S. convoy came under fire while traveling along a road linking Bagram air base with the capital Kabul before dusk Friday. No one was hurt, Col. Robert King said.
BIN LADEN ALIVE, GERMAN SAYS: August Hanning, head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that he believes Osama bin Laden is alive and hiding along the Afghanistan border. "He is still the symbolic figurehead of al-Qaida, but apparently moves around little and when he does, in a very secretive manner," Hanning said.
WOMAN CONVICTED IN ANTHRAX HOAX: Rosemary Zavrel, 58, of Pittston, Pa., has been convicted of trying to mail anthrax hoax letters to government officials, including President Bush, at the height of last fall's anthrax scare. The letters, which contained cornstarch, closed a post office for several hours on Oct. 25.