Future War and Counterproliferation

The United States faces a small number of rogue states that either have or are working to acquire weapons of mass destruction. These NASTIs, or NBC-Arming Sponsors of Terrorism and Intervention, include such states as North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria. U.S. nonproliferation programs and policies have helped to keep this number small, but U.S. and allied counterproliferation programs are essential to reduce the danger. It is up to deterrence, active defenses, passive defenses, decontamination, and counterforce to turn enemy weapons of mass destruction into instruments of limited destructive effect.

Warfighters will also have to adopt a different strategy and concept of operations in fighting an adversary that is so heavily armed. This strategy will feature a combination of deception, dispersion, mobility and maneuver, diffused logistics, remote engagement, missile defense bubbles, non-combatant evacuation operations, and large area decontamination. It will also involve upgrades to NBC passive defense measures and equipment, as well as a counterforce capability that can find and destroy a variety of adversary targets, including mobile launchers and deeply buried and hardened underground structures.

BARRY R. SCHNEIDER is Director of the USAF Counterproliferation Center at Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Future Conflict Studies at the U.S. Air War College./e A former strategic analyst at several Washington, D.C.-based think tanks, and a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington, D.C., he is also co-editor of four books.