Looking Through the Fog: United States National Security Strategy, National Military Strategy, Air Force Doctrine and the Impacts to ISR (1990-2012).

摘要

The United States Air Force lacks a solid, holistic approach to managing or planning for the application of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance (ISR) platforms, systems, or infrastructure. Hence, the DOD, which resides at the top of the military strategy creation chain, must be able to produce a coordinated plan for ISR, or any other mission set, that adequately meets the intent of the nation's grand strategic security guidelines. This procedure for providing guidance allows the various agencies to organize, train, and equip their respective organization to provide the commensurate capability required in order to guarantee national security. However, recent external reviews have provided a report card of the success of this process and the overall effects on ISR capabilities. This thesis will focus on three distinct time-periods and answer three baseline questions in order to provide an examination of the utilization of ISR in US strategy from 1990 to 2012. This examination will identify: 1) The key elements that explained the nature of individual National Security Strategies (NSS), 2) The key elements as described in the National Military Strategy (NMS), and 3) How the US Air Force provide capabilities meeting the nation' requirements for ISR. These help explain the reported shortfall in ISR as captured in the GAO reports and COCOM urgent operational requests, and assist the DOD and Air Force in better forecasting the need for reformation within the service. The three distinct time-periods are 1990-1999, 2000-2009, and 2010-2012. Each period highlight a distinctive environment event that precipitated strategic change, but, more importantly, each will also feature details on the United States Air Force's presentation of mission design series (MDS) platforms to support the NSS and NMS.