NARRATOR: The world is changing at a rapid pace. Cellular phones, fax machines, computers, satellites, the Internet. Ever greater quantities of data can be transmitted faster and more widely than ever before. The silicon microchip has reduced complex systems to the palm of a hand. There's a revolution underway in information that will vastly affect the way we communicate, the way we learn, conduct business, and the way we make war.

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): One of the most farreaching consequences of the war against Iraq was the way that conflict left Americans with the impression that all modern wars could be fought quickly, cleanly and with very few US casualties. Today, the Pentagon and weapons-makers use that impression to promote scores of costly high-tech weaponry. We must provide our forces with whatever they need, but no one, especially our government, should ever believe that war is easy or requires less than the ultimate sacrifice.

NARRATOR: The miracle of microchip processing, the ability to manage vast amounts of information and complex systems of machines with small, portable, efficient computers has dramatically changed the way we live our lives, as individuals, as communities, as nations. While we meet the challenges brought on by the information age, so do our institutions. The military is no exception. Some observers predict that rapidly evolving "information-based" technologies will result in an equally dramatic change in the character of warfare, culminating in what has become known as a "Revolution in Military Affairs."

ANDREW KREPINEVICH: Typically, what happens during a period of military revolution is there is a surge or an advance in technologies that allows for the fabrication of new kinds of military systems. Those systems give military commanders, if you will, new kinds of tools in their military tool kit. They give them new ways of solving problems or conducting military operations. And oftentimes, militaries restructure to execute these new operations using these new tools. When that happens and there is a rather large leap in military effectiveness, you have a period of military revolution.

MARTIN LIBICKI: What's really going to change the face of war is going to be our ability to understand more and more things about the battlefield. It's going to be the manipulation of information.

NARRATOR: Since Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz first coined the phrase "the fog of war," military planners have understood that developing faster and better methods of obtaining information is a key to victory on the battlefield. Today, some military planners claim that the microchip's ability to rapidly process vast amounts of information will help armies see through the "fog" of the 21st Century battlefield. For example, soldiers on the battlefield of the future may receive information directly from reconnaissance satellites capable spying on 100,000 square mile areas of the globe. Meanwhile, dozens of aerial vehicles, or UAVs, will hover for hours at a time relaying live video images of enemy positions instantaneously to satellites and command centers. Small squads of widely dispersed ground troops will scout out enemy targets using computing devices worn on their wrists or helmets. Target information will be relayed directly to stealthy aircraft, ships and ground weapons positioned far away from the front lines. Together they will fire concentrated barrages of precision-guided bombs, missiles, and even laser energy beams at enemy targets.

DR. KREPINEVICH: Well, it could be that if this military revolution plays itself out the way that some people anticipate -- which is you will be able to strike the enemy at increasingly greater ranges with high accuracy -- that we could begin to see the end of mass armies, in the sense that you'll have to disperse your forces in order to avoid being the target of precision strikes. So, armies won't go away, but armies will be transformed.

NARRATOR: If all this sounds a bit like sci-fi fantasy, you may be surprised to learn that some of these futuristic weapons are already being tested in the field by the military.

NARRATOR: These American soldiers in Bosnia are preparing to launch an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. The US operation in Bosnia has become a proving ground for UAVs, which are flying robots that provide electronic surveillance. They provide US troops with continuous live video coverage of the war zone without any risk of American casualties. By the late 1990s, the US military expects to field a squadron of "stealthy" unmanned aerial vehicles like this prototype called "DarkStar" which promises to operate day or night, virtually undetectable by the enemy. Unmanned aerial vehicles are just one example of many new technologies at the cutting edge of smaller, less costly weapons systems that the Pentagon is developing. And at the big end of the weapons spectrum, the Pentagon has plans to replace its existing arsenal of formidable warplanes, tanks, ships and missiles with newer versions that employ all the latest in military technology. For example, the Pentagon has built a multimillion dollar experimental ship with a radar-evading stealth hull. The Navy has plans to build a $2 billion "Arsenal Ship," a gigantic, remotely controlled launch pad for over 500 cruise missiles. The Army wants to spend $37 billion on 1,300 Comanche helicopters equipped with the latest digital communications and weapons systems. The Navy, Air Force and the Marines together plan to build a new airplane called the Joint Strike Fighter, expected to cost a staggering $1 trillion over its operational lifetime. Other weapons under development for the Pentagon include a Boeing 747 equipped with lasers to track and destroy enemy ballistic missiles, and what are referred to as "smart munitions." Dropped from aircraft, they seek out and attack enemy targets from above. Most of these weapons are still under development, but Pentagon planners already see a role for these emerging technologies in their war-fighting plans for the 21st Century. Today the Pentagon is at an historic pass. Ahead lies the digital battlefield of tomorrow. There, technology will no doubt play an enormous role in shaping our military. But before we commit our national resources to a high-tech military, we must ask: What are America's national security interests? Who are America's enemies? And will these high-tech investments accomplish our military goals? With trillions of dollars at stake, the path we choose will determine how we keep America safe and strong for decades into the future.

NARRATOR: While the Pentagon invents advanced high-tech weapons to fight the wars of the future, it remains uncertain who they are preparing to fight. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, "The pace, variety and intensity" of foreign military technology development "is not what it was at the height of the Cold War because so many countries can't afford it." Adding emphasis to the DIA's assessment is the fact that the United States currently spends more on its military than every prospective enemy and neutral country combined. Even though US intelligence estimates do not see a major challenge for the US military in the near future, the Pentagon is driving for large purchases of newer, more high-tech weapons.

JEREMY SHAPIRO: It seems to me that the military needs a mission to justify these technologies. And yet, it seems that it clearly is the American military which is pushing all this, and I'm oftentimes unsure who they're thinking that they're going to fight and who they're responding to, who else is riding the wave of the revolution in the military affairs? It seems to me that as the top player, the United States might want to be a little bit responsive in this.

JAMES F. DUNNIGAN: There are no major enemies around anymore. As Colin Powell pointed, we've run out of enemies with the possible exception of Cuba and North Korea, which he knew would get a laugh more than anything else. Yet we still have all of this high-tech weapons development going on from the Cold War. We've since found out that the Soviets were not as advanced as we thought they were -- but then again it's always a good idea not to under-estimate the enemy -- and that we're in the catbird seat and there's a great reluctance to abandon a lot of this research.

NARRATOR: The United States currently possesses the most advanced weapons in the world: M1A1 tanks. F-15 strike fighters. Apache helicopters. Guided missile cruisers. All unmatched, battle-tested weapons that have shown US military superiority time and time again.

Mr. LIBICKI: We have a very large conventional military establishment, probably $200 billion worth, with about the other $50 billion worth being in the nuclear area, although that's a really rough approximation. To defend the United States against what? Who's going to come over and attack the United States? Even more broadly, with the exception of South Korea, who's going to be attacking any country to which we are formally allied?

NARRATOR: While maintaining an advanced fighting force capable of waging two large scale conventional wars, the Pentagon plans to make heavy investments in new high-tech weapons platforms, which have questionable utility on the battlefields of tomorrow.

DR. KREPINEVICH: The greatest challenges the United States military will face lie 10 or 15 years down the road, and the most likely challenges really have nothing to do with major regional conflicts. They are the peacekeeping operations that seem to be occurring with alarming frequency these days.

COL. DAVID HACKWORTH: The Pentagon is putting all their eggs in this high-tech basket when the real threat is coming -- the low-tech basket, the low-intensity basket, the one of terrorism, the one of fights that we saw in Somalia in 1993. And we're going to end up with the low-tech capability being absolutely denuded and we'll have stealth bombers and stealth airplanes and stealth shorts on every pilot, but we won't have the right stuff for the job.

Mr. LIBICKI: And so, we come to an existential question for the military: In fact, what is it used for? Is it an instrument of defense or is it an instrument of policy? And if it's an instrument of policy, what, in fact, do we use this policy for? In what interest?

NARRATOR: For the tax-paying public, the future role of America's military is not an idle question.

DR. KREPINEVICH: The interesting aspect from a budgetary perspective is how do you handle the problems that the US military faces today with today's equipment, which is quite good, and at the same time begin to move along the path of transformation towards a very different kind of military that you'll likely need 20 years from now.

NARRATOR: While precision strike weapons and enhanced communication promise a superior military force for the digital battlefield of tomorrow, the Pentagon is equally sensitive to the impact of these technologies on the difficult political and social dimensions of conflict.

Professor HARVEY SAPOLSKY: Taking on some new missions where it requires avoiding killing others and imposing your will, I think it's going to be very difficult to do even with the high technology.

NARRATOR: One uniquely American approach to technology's role in war-fighting is the idea that military operations can be conducted successfully with few or no casualties. We are the only country that has the strength, wealth and technology to protect not only its citizens from enemies, but also its soldiers in combat. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, American television audiences watched in awe as "smart" bombs and guided missiles destroyed enemy targets with near surgical precision. Only 7 percent of the weapons used against the Iraqis were actually precision-guided weapons, but for Americans watching the carefully orchestrated press coverage, that was irrelevant. What was important was how the war was perceived -- a neat, clean, fast victory.

DR. KREPINEVICH: Certainly there is the possibility that war in the information age will permit military organizations to conduct their operations with greater discrimination, greater ability to limit collateral damage, so-called collateral damage against people and against civilian assets. That's often, at least sometimes been predicted in the past, but as we see, warfare tends to be very unpredictable and quite messy. So, I think that remains more of a promise than a reality.

NARRATOR: In the information age, America's vision of war is to win quickly, decisively, and with a minimum of casualties. Send troops in with massive quantities of high-tech firepower, defeat the enemy quickly, and carefully control the images of the battlefield that are fed back to American living rooms via satellite.

Professor SAPOLSKY: We don't want Americans soldiers to die. That's a good thing. And so, we've worked very hard to make our forces have low casualties. The way to do that is to be very lethal, so we've developed technologies to be very lethal. The problem with that is that it can kill civilians and large numbers of relatively innocent enemy soldiers. And so, we're trying to work so we don't destroy everybody in sight when we encounter them. And our opponents recognize our great ability to do this in open fields or against mass armies, but what they realize is we're very casually intolerant.

DR. KREPINEVICH: If you look today, for example, at the US defense posture, it's one in which the US military is designed to fight regional wars and to win them quickly and decisively. And also antiseptically, one might add, with minimal casualties. Well, that poses, for a would-be adversary, an opportunity by exploiting the social dimension of strategy. It lays down a clear marker that says if you can make the war long, if you can make the war bloody, perhaps even not with the blood of Americans but with the blood of civilians on the other side, that by making a war protracted and bloody, you can offset the American advantage in technology.

NARRATOR: Increasingly, politicians and military leaders are sending American forces into low-intensity conflict situations like Bosnia, Liberia and Haiti to keep the peace, protect Americans and enforce US sanctions.

Professor SAPOLSKY: We're very casually intolerant. We don't want our casualties, we don't want to kill many of them, and they're getting us into situations or politically we're driven to situations which are just described that way. That is, they're mixtures of civilians and innocent people and some bad people. And to try to sort them out with high-technology may not be possible. The political will to go in and to do something when you encounter casualties, our own, it's going to be very hard to develop, too. And maybe the revolution in military affairs is a way to cover this by saying we're going to do it with high technology and then do it the way we have to do it, which is probably pretty low technology.

NARRATOR: American political and military leaders have continued to put more faith and money into high-tech weapons. which they believe will allow US forces to handle a variety of different scenarios. However, the same high-tech weapons that protect the troops may actually make the decision to send them into conflict easier.

Professor SAPOLSKY: If war isn't the business of slaughter, then it becomes a very difficult process if we try to do this without killing, and I can't see the way to do this in a costless, bloodless format. And until you either persuade the public that the goals are worth fighting for and risking lives, ours and theirs, then perhaps we shouldn't be undertaking these missions. And the hope on the part of some is that there's some magic technology, non-lethal warfare or information technology, to make this all bloodless and costless. That may get us into wars, I don't think it'll get us out of wars.

Mr. DUNNIGAN: Weapons are another form of political patronage. Throughout history, it's not just a current thing, the military budget has always been there. And in peacetime, there's always been the temptation to, well, let's play with the military budget, because who's going to notice, we're not fighting anybody.

NARRATOR: The very real possibility of a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States inspired a culture among military planners that applied technological advances to every conceivable threat, conventional or nuclear. ICBM missiles, the Trident submarine, Star Wars ballistic missile defense -- all products of a conscious military mindset preoccupied with the "worst case scenario." Thankfully, the "worst case scenario" never happened. And yet, multi-billion dollar Cold War systems like the F-22, the Seawolf submarine and the Comanche helicopter remain.

Mr. DUNNIGAN: I would say the biggest thing keeping a lot of these projects going is momentum. A lot of them are Cold War era projects. I mean, it normally takes 15 years or so for a project, a new weapons system to go from concept to actually being in the hands of the troops. Once it goes into development, which can be half the ultimate cost of the weapons system, the system develops a constituency. Now this is not just the people in the military who have basically hooked their careers on to this particular weapons system, but it's more the companies that are bidding to build it -- and we're talking about thousands of jobs here, dozens of companies. But perhaps more importantly, the politicians, the people in Congress who have signed on to back this weapon, because they have been made aware of the fact that certain components -- a certain amount of the money is going to be in their district and it -- I mean, this is an open secret.

NARRATOR: High tech sells. Americans are infatuated with high tech and its ability to enhance the quality of our daily lives.

Mr. DUNNIGAN: You can make a case for anything. And a lot of these projects -- all of these projects I would say start off with the best of intentions, but once they get going, it's very hard to stop them.

NARRATOR: But for all the appeal of high-tech weapons systems, paying for them diverts scarce national resources from other less glamorous military needs, such as well-trained troops and properly maintained equipment.

Mr. DUNNIGAN: There's basically two schools of thought. One says, 'We've got it, let's keep it,' so let's keep pouring the money into weapons that will basically beat the next strongest power in the world five times over. The other school says, 'Look, there's plenty of technology, we've got these people beat, let's just put it into readiness and having troops there who can use what we got. And, hey, if another arms race started, if our economy is strong, we'll just do what we always do. We'll turn the plowshares into swords.' And this is the struggle that's going on.

COL. HACKWORTH: I think what we need to do is freeze what we've got and just make upgrades to keep the stuff at the finest level of technology that we can without buying a new model. Just keep putting new motors in them, and so on, and try to take about a three-generation stride into the future, so we'll end up somewhere in 2020 with the smartest weapons possible.

DR. KREPINEVICH: What it seems to me you need to do is several things. One is to engage in a rather vigorous period of experimentation. And if you find something that works as a product of this process, it may not be the case that you want to buy into it at the initial opportunity. Especially if technology continues to progress rather rapidly, you could find that you've spent a lot of money buying into something that is going to depreciate rather rapidly.

Professor SAPOLSKY: Surely, we should explore new technologies and keep ahead on technology, but making big investments in new systems is a real question that people should raise. There's maybe no need, in some sense, to push too far and fast in these area. We already do quite well and we're very fortunate, we have great security.

Mr. LIBICKI: There is a tendency, which one can call "hammer madness." "Hammer madness" comes from the phrase, "If all you own is a hammer, then the entire world begins to look like a nail." If you have a high-tech information-rich war-fighting machine, you will have its natural tendency to take a look at military operations as things that can be done by this high-tech information warfare machine. Well, a lot of things can be done by this machine. That machine is a glorious thing for doing certain operations, but on the other hand, it is not appropriate for screws. It's not appropriate for many of the low-technology wars that we may get into. It's not necessarily going to be appropriate for peace operations. It's not necessarily going to be appropriate for psychological warfare. And you have to make up your mind, in fact, what is the warfare you're trying to fight. So, you have to be careful not to match your realities to your instruments.

NARRATOR: Certainly, the implications of the information age and emerging technologies loom large for the military. Yet, if their potential role is assessed in isolation from other social and economic factors, and especially in the absence of a very clear assessment of the threats that will confront us in the future, the promise of digital warfare could prove dangerously misleading.

Mr. DUNNIGAN: We can produce a lot of pretty good stuff. Our only problem is in peacetime is figuring out what's pretty good and what's not worth the effort.