385 Guillem Colom Piella Defining the US Navy in the 21st Century of Vision…Presence…Power.28 This white paper not only laid down the bases of the revolution and the U.S. naval transformation, but it turned the Navy into the staunchest backer and defender of the revolution. In effect, the National Defence Panel– an independent commission of experts created ad hoc to examine the 1997 Quadrennial Defence Review – had concluded that the Navy’s future plans were scarcely revolutionary, considering at the same time that their acquisition plan was anchored in the industrial war paradigm.29 To amend this situation, the commission put together a package of recommendations geared towards the transformation of the Navy so that it could attain the RMA reclaimed by Donald Rumsfeld four years later when he produced the Quadrennial Defence Review of 2001. Among these recommendations was the cancellation of the last Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft-carrier, the F-18E/F Hornet and F-35 Lightning II combat planes and the convertiplane V-22 Osprey, a reduction in plans for acquiring CG(X)-class cruisers and DD(X) destroyers and the redefinition of the EFV expeditionary fighting vehicle developed for the Marine Corps; and in their place the acquisition of unmanned strike air systems and submarines, small aircraft-carriers from which these drones would operate, submarines equipped with cruise missiles or Arsenal ships almost invisible to radar and strongly armed with ballistic and cruise missiles.30 Similarly, it 28 Department of the Navy, Vision…Presence…Power, Washington DC: GPO, 1998. 29 National Defense Panel: Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century, Washington DC: Department of Defense, 1997. More specifically, this work claimed that the United States was at a strategic crossroads, given that on the one hand it was at the cusp of a revolution capable of transforming the art of war and guaranteeing the military supremacy of the country in the new century, while on the other hand the apparent world stability was hiding the gestation of new risks and threats of a very different nature, intensity and provenance that would come to the fore in the early decades of the 21st Century. As a result, the recovery of the RMA and the preparation of the armed forces to engage in the future operational environment required identifying the emerging challenges – conventional war against advanced adversaries, counter-insurgency, counterterrorism, asymmetric war, information missions, war in space, cyber-war, capability of access to hostile zones away from enemy defence lines, protection of their forces deployed abroad or defence of national territory from direct attacks or the disruption of information networks – and developing and implementing military capacities distinct to those required during the Cold War. The report deemed it essential for the Pentagon to launch an ambitious “strategy of transformation” to bring about the revolution and anticipate the challenges that could be on the horizon from 2010-2020; thus achieving a flexible future force, stealthy, fast, modular, network-centric, highly deployable, capable of carrying out precision strikes and conducting combined inter-agency operations in any scenario. In other words, this report laid the foundations for defence transformation. 30 Considered the battleship of the 21st Century, the Arsenal was the star of the CS-21 project that was to provide the navy with a family of ships optimised for land strikes. Conceived as a semi-stealth platform of 20,000 and 30,000 ton displacement, heavily protected and armed with over 500 missiles to strike ground objectives with precision, this ship was considered the paradigm of naval revolution. In this context, see: DRIESBACH Dawn: The Arsenal Ship and the U.S. Navy: A Revolution in Military Affairs Perspective, Monterrey, Naval Postgraduate School, 1996; LANCE, Joseph: Can the
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