Text fwd: Pentagon Prepares For Conflict With Russia, China, Iran, N. Korea

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http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98831&sectionid=3510203
Press TV
June 23, 2009

Pentagon reviews war planning strategy

-While the US has been fighting in two separate fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan
in the past six years, Pentagon officials told the paper that the military needs
to be ready for possible operations against North Korea and Iran or even China
and Russia, which would present a hybrid range of challenges.

The US Defense Department plans to prepare the army for a complex mix of
conventional battles and countering terrorist attacks in the future conflicts.

The department, in a new strategy, intends to assure that the military is able
to handle a range of possible threats, including computer network attacks,
attempts to blind satellite positioning systems, precision missiles and roadside
bombing strikes, plus TV and online propaganda campaigns.

The Pentagon's new strategy will reject the historic American strategy of
preparation to fight two major wars at a time and will require training, troop
deployment, weapons procurement and other aspects of military planning, the New
York Times reported.

While the US has been fighting in two separate fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan in
the past six years, Pentagon officials told the paper that the military needs to
be ready for possible operations against North Korea and Iran or even China and
Russia, which would present a hybrid range of challenges.

The new strategy "derives from my view that the old way of looking at irregular
warfare as being one kind of conflict and conventional warfare as a discreet
kind of warfare is an outdated concept. Conflict in the future will slide up and
down a scale, both in scope or scale and in lethality,” Defense Secretary
Robert Gates said in a news conference last week.

Senior officials say hybrid warfare will be adopted as a central premise of
military planning in the top-to-bottom review required every four years by
Congress - namely the Quadrennial Defense Review - which will determine how
military budget is spent on arms, and influences the military training reforms.

The previous Pentagon strategy review focused on a four-square chart that viewed
the security challenges then as including traditional conflicts; irregular
warfare by terrorists; unconventional weapons used by terrorists or rogue
states; and disruptive threats, in which new technologies could counter American
advantages.

"The 'quad chart' was useful in its time...but we aren't using it as a point of
reference or departure,” said under secretary of defense for policy Michele
Flournoy. “I think hybrid will be the defining character. The traditional,
neat categories - those are types that really don't match reality any more.”
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