Abstract: This report on unconventional operational concepts and the homeland was prepared as part of the Defense Science Board 2007 Summer Study on Challenges to Military Operations in Support of National Interests. The summer study recognized that asymmetric tools of war in the hands of potential adversaries may well be employed using non-traditional concepts of operation. Moreover, the battlefield may no longer be limited to regions afar, but may include the U.S. homeland. The United States could well confront the possibility of going to war abroad in the face of significant devastation in the homeland? dividing forces between homeland catastrophe relief operations and combat abroad, or even facing the possibility that deploy and supply of U.S. military forces could be delayed and disrupted. The capable adversary of the future will execute one game attacking U.S. interests wherever the nation is most vulnerable, and that could mean the homeland. When a determined adversary succeeds in attacking the homeland at the scale imagined in this study, the nation will call on the Department of Defense (DOD) to ?provide for the common defense? through both defense at home and offense abroad. DOD has, in fact, acknowledged such a future in its 2005 Strategy for Homeland Defense, which states unequivocally that DOD must be prepared to defend the homeland: The Department of Defense must change its conceptual approach to homeland defense. The Department can no longer think in terms of the home game and the away game. There is only one game--Defending the US homeland--our people, property, and freedom--is our most fundamental duty. Failure is not an option. How well has the department progressed in turning that strategy into reality?
| Limitations: |
 APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE |
| Pages: |
105 |
| Report Date: |
Mar-2009 |
| Report Number: |
A404894 |
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