Still, the so-called “studies” tended to be self-supporting rather than critical of the agency that sponsored the work. And too many of the books, articles, studies, and official documents misstated the facts, with the aim of salvaging a weapon system, military doctrine, or reputation whose worth could not otherwise be supported. They were public relations documents, not clear-eyed, honest appraisals, and they were aimed at influencing the soon-to-come budget reductions and debates over each service’s roles and missions.

Since the various conclusions tended to be contradictory, there were inevitable battles. The pie was finite.

These battles were best summed up in the debate over whether or not the Gulf War was a “revolution in military affairs,” or RMA, as it was expressed in the acronym-happy Pentagon.

The RMA debate divided those who wished to continue business as usual from those who believed that war had changed so fundamentally that new organizations, strategies, doctrines, and military forces were needed. The former tended to come from the land services. They took it as an article of faith that war was a matter of meeting the enemy army, navy, and/or air force on the battlefield, and inflicting such damage that he could no longer resist the will of the dominant military force. The goal was to destroy the enemy military so greatly that resistance was impossible or futile.

The revolutionaries—often air, sea, and space advocates—tended to talk about asymmetric warfare. In asymmetric warfare, an apparently weak nation (call it nation A) will refuse to engage its stronger enemy (nation B) in the areas of its strength, and instead will attack where B is most vulnerable. Thus, if B has a large land army, A will avoid ground combat, and perhaps use computer attacks against B’s national infrastructure to weaken it, while inflicting large numbers of casualties on B’s army with weapons of mass destruction. In asymmetric warfare, A’s forces may not even engage B’s in direct battle. For example, A might try to isolate B’s economy or to debilitate its political leadership to the point where A’s will could be imposed, while B’s military forces remained relatively intact.

In fact, both schools have missed the point of the Gulf War. Desert Storm was not about a revolution in military affairs, it was a demonstration of the revolution that had already occurred in technology. The RMA has not happened to any great extent because neither the United States military nor its counterparts around the world have been able to fully exploit the technological revolution revealed during the Gulf War.