Pentagon switching from two-war strategy

By Jamie McIntyre
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The decade-old strategy of being prepared to fight two major wars simultaneously is being scrapped by the Pentagon in favor of a four-goal plan, Pentagon officials said Friday.

According to a classified document, the new guidelines mandate four broad military missions:

-- Defend the United States. -- Deter potential adversaries in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia by forward deployment of forces. -- Decisively win one major war. -- Concurrently conduct a number of smaller operations in other areas of the world.

RESOURCES Department of Defense: Transforming the U.S. military   Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's June 21 testimony

Senior Pentagon officials said the new force planning guidelines are intended to organize and equip the U.S. military to face threats that are more likely than the two-war possibility, while not diminishing the U.S. ability to fight more than one major conflict at the same time.

The New York Times reported Friday the Pentagon will use the 29-page classifed document, known as the "terms of reference," to guide policy and determine budget requests for everything from troops to carrier battle groups and jet fighters.

According to Pentagon sources, the document says, "In critical areas, Europe, Northeast Asia, East Asia Littorals, and the Middle East/Southwest Asia ... forward deployed forces should be able to swiftly defeat an enemy's effort with minimum reinforcement."

The sources also said the document says the U.S. military, "when directed by the president should be able to decisively defeat an adversary in any one of these critical areas."

One problem with the new planning guidance, according to one senior military official, is that it would require a much larger military than the U.S. currently has.

"An initial assessment found that to implement this strategy would require eight additional aircraft carrier battle groups, 12 additional air wings, and a substantially bigger Army," the senior official told CNN.

The Army took a step toward a lighter, more mobile force Thursday when officials announced the formation of four rapid deployment brigades.

The four units -- called "Interim Brigade Combat Teams" -- will be composed of about 3,500 soldiers each. Instead of tanks, they will employ relatively light and fast armored vehicles.

The first two such brigades have been training since 1999 at Fort Lewis, Washington, using an "Interim Armored Vehicle," a 19-ton carrier with eight oversized tires that can travel as fast as 60 mph and carry nine people.

Pentagon sources said the new brigades will be stationed in Alaska and Hawaii so they could be rapidly deployed to the Pacific region if necessary.

The requirement that the U.S. military be trained and equipped to fight and win two major theater wars nearly simultaneously has been a bedrock planning principle since the early 1990s.

It was also assumed that if the military was sized to handle two wars, it would be able to handle the more likely scenario of facing a large range of lesser missions.

Those missions could include humanitarian interventions, peace accord implementation, no-fly zones in Iraq, maritime intercept operations, counter-narotics, non-combatant evacuations and shows of force.

In June 21 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said missions such as those have recently left U.S. forces "underfunded and overused," which has led to much higher risks than when the two-war strategy was originally established.

Pentagon officials said there is broad agreement in the military with Rumsfeld's desire to move away from the two-war capability as a planning model for sizing the U.S. military.

Rumsfeld also testified that the change would be an "incrementally different adjustment."

"We have to be very careful that what we substitute is better than what we have," he said.