The U.S. Army is in the midst of undergoing a radical transformation, adopting a "capabilities-based" and "modular-type" force structure, to combat "full spectrum" conflict for future threats. The premise behind restructuring all U.S. Army forces in this manner is that threats will be ambiguous and they will no longer present a situation where US military forces would necessarily fight a single opponent in a conventional manner at a known location. Although there is no clear agreement about the likelihood of any specific threat, most experts agree that the United States must transition from the focused strategy of containing a single statecentric threat to a broad, effective strategy able to confront a wide range of potential conflicts, from low to high intensity, anywhere in the world. U.S. strategy has deliberately made a trade-off between considering where and who a specific threat may be to considering and classifying the various types of threats the United States may face. In order to create the appropriate force structure in the U.S. Army, military planners have "forecasted" the common features of the full-spectrum of conflict and have proposed the development of various "expeditionary" capabilities that address future threats. Many contend that mobility is now the key ingredient in transitioning to this new capabilities-based strategy. Consequently, U.S. Army planners have recently begun to focus on the common aspects of how U.S. forces will confront a wide variety of future threats and have identified specific equipment and procedures that will facilitate "shaping and entry operations," "operating and maneuvering from strategic distances," and "intra-theater operational maneuver." This monograph will analyze three mobility technologies that address "expeditionary" goals and assess their contributions to "worse case" security issues and the "most likely" security issues. The specific technologies addresses in this paper are; the Future Combat System (FCS), the Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) Aviation program, and the Joint Mobile Offshore Base (JMOB) sea-basing program. Despite the ambiguous security environment, there is no longer much debate about the relevance of ground forces' significant contributions for achieving a national strategic objective. However, within the U.S. Army there continues to be much debate on the phase of conflict that U.S. ground forces are the most relevant. This monograph contends that ground forces are most relevant during phases associated with stability and reconstruction operations and that although the U.S. Army contributes as part of a joint, interagency, and multinational force during major combat operations, it must leverage the combat power of its sister services in this phase of conflict. This assessment has dramatic implications for how the U.S. Army allocates funds for air, sea, and ground mobility-enhancing technologies. Although these technologies, upon reaching full maturation, will provide immeasurable benefits, their focus on speed and overcoming anti-access challenges are too centered on major combat operations. Since these technologies come with an extraordinary price tag, some portions of their funding should be invested in alternative programs more related to stability and reconstruction operations. Specifically, this monograph contends that a portion of the budget tied to these technologies should be reallocated to language training, cultural awareness training, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism programs. Furthermore, this reallocation can be accomplished with only a fraction of the overall budget and without cancelling these programs in their entirety.

ADA450036 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)