386 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 4 / 2014 recommended furthering the integration of platforms, sensors and arms systems and the implementation of networked warfare. Bearing all these elements in mind, Vision…Presence…Power was proposed as a guide to the modernisation and materiel acquisition programmes being undertaken within the Navy in fulfilment of the tenets in Forward…From the Sea following the precepts of Joint Vision 2010.31 This report not only responded to the voices of criticism vindicating the Navy’s long revolutionary tradition, but also explicitly recognised the existence of the RMA and underlined the need for undertaking a transformation to secure the revolution and adapt the facilities and the capabilities of the Navy to the challenges of the 21st Century. In relation to the RMA, the work showed –following the lines marked down by the National Defence Panel– that the United Stated armed forces were at the initial stage of a revolution which, conditioned by the military application of information technologies and communications, would transform the art of warfare in the first decades of the 21st Century. This profound technological, doctrinal, operational, organisational and institutional change and one that hinged on a new style of networked warfare,32 was to combine with a Revolution in Business Affairs33 that would improve the financial management of defence externalising numerous support functions (logistics, coordination, maintenance or administration); the use of commercial or dual-use technologies in military systems, the introduction of business management techniques, the reduction Arsenal Ship Replace the Battleship?, Fort Leavenworth, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1997 or FRIEDMAN, George and Meredith: The Future of War…op. cit., pp. 180-204. 31 An interesting analysis of these programmes, enumerated in chapter 3 of Vision…Presence… Power and divided into platforms, sensors, arms, C4I systems and anti-mine war machinery, can be found in: SCOTT, Truver: “A Selected View of…”, op. cit., 33-50. 32 For a more complete study of the Navy’s Network Centric Warfare and of all the programmes that underpin it– the Cooperative Engagement Capability, the Joint Fires Network, the Information Technology for the 21st Century, the FORCEnet and the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet – see the following work: O’ROURKE, Ronald: Navy Network-Centric Warfare Concept: Key Programs and Issues for Congress, RS-20557, Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 2001. 33 The Navy took serious note of the need to externalise functions, rationalise acquisitions, flexibilise funding or use spiral design for its products so as to save on R + D costs and accelerate their entry into service . An example of this was the process followed for the designing, funding and planning of the life cycle of the LCS, of the Independence and Freedom classes or the Zumwalt-class destroyers. However, these programmes have not been without their delays, overruns, and redefinitions of technical specifications. For further information see: Government Accountability Office GAO: Significant Investments in the Littoral Combat Ship Continue Amid Substantial Unknowns about Capabilities, Use, and Cost, GAO-13-738T, Washington DC: GAO, 2013 u O’ROURKE, Ronald: Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs: Background and Issues for Congress, RL-32109, Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 2013.
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