Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to commend the Secretary of Defense, Bill Cohen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, the Commander in Chief Joint Forces Command Admiral Hal Gehman, and the Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki for their commitment to transforming our current military force to one which will assure our military superiority well into the twenty first century.
Secretary Cohen and General Shelton have taken strong and direct action to establish transformation as the guiding policy for the Department of Defense. Their leadership responds to what are now broadly accepted conclusions about the security environment we will face and the challenges and opportunities resulting from the Revolution in Military Affairs. Many, both inside and outside the Pentagon, have concluded that these changes are of such magnitude that they require that our military in the twenty first century be fundamentally different than today's military. This view was compellingly articulated by the National Defense Panel, which was created by this body. And it was given the force of policy by Secretary Cohen in the Quadrennial Defense Review.
But how are we to know what this very different military should look like? Secretary Cohen and General Shelton, encouraged and supported by legislation we passed last year, established a process to answer that question. On the first of October, 1998, they charged the Commander in Chief of the United States Atlantic Command, Admiral Harold Gehman, to put in place a joint experimentation process to objectively determine which new technologies, organizations, and concepts of operation will most likely to future military superiority. Since that time Admiral Theman has done a superb job of establishing a process and beginning experiments toward that end. In June, 1999, Admiral Gehman began experiments to address how the U.S. military should be equipped and organized to effectively find and strike critical mobile enemy targets, such as ballistic missiles. Other experiments to address near, mid, and far term strategic and operational problems will follow. On the first of October of this year the Secretary and the Chairman increased the priority of the policy of transformation by redesignating the United States Atlantic Command as the United States Joint Forces Command. This change is more than simply a change in name. It underlines the increasing importance of increased jointness in meeting the security challenges of the twenty first century, increases the priority assigned to experimentation, and reflects the expanded role that the United States Joint Forces Command assumes in order to achieve that goal. I applaud Secretary Cohen and General Shelton for their commitment to transformation of the U.S. military and their courage to make the tough changes needed to get it done.
I am also pleased to see that their leadership is having a positive effect on our military Services' plans to transform themselves to meet the coming challenges. The U.S. Air Force has begun to reorganize its units into Air Expeditionary Forces to be more responsive to the need for air power by the warfighting commanders. And I note with great admiration that on October 12, 1999 General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, announced his intention to begin to transform the U.S. Army from a heavy force designed largely for the Cold War to one that will be more effective against the threats that most now see as most likely and most dangerous. The goal is to make the U.S. Army more strategically relevant by making it lighter, more deployable, more lethal, and more sustainable. General Shinseki plans to find technological solutions to these problems, and intends to create this year an experimentation process at Fort Lewis Washington in order to begin to construct this new force. He has said that he wants to eliminate the distinction between different types of Army units, and perhaps in time go to an all-wheeled fleet of combat vehicles, eliminating the tank as we have known it for almost a century. These are historic and very positive steps. But there is much progress that must still be made. For example, the Army and the Air Force must now implement their plans in concert with the other services, and with the Joint Forces Command.
Fundamental change is very difficult to effect, especially in organizations, like the Department of Defense, that are large and successful. Frankly, I am a little surprised that we have been able to achieve these changes in so short time. But organizations that don't change ultimately fail, and that is not an outcome we can accept. So we should not only applaud these moves, but support them, and encourage faster and more direct action. An excellent report by the Defense Science Board in August, 1999 suggests some things we can do to provide this support. The most important are encouraging the development of a DOD-wide strategy for transformation activities, and insisting on the establishment of processes to turn the results of experiments into real capabilities for our forces. And we must ensure that this effort is not hobbled by lack of resources. Perhaps most importantly, we must insist that no Service plan nor program be agreed to or resourced unless we are assured that it has passed through a rigorous joint assessment and is consistent with the joint warfighting needs of our military commanders.
I urge my colleagues to join me in complementing our senior leaders and to support their efforts to move to the next level of jointness as they grapple with the difficult task of building the most effective American military possible for the 21st century.