美国政要第12课
Research on the Force XXI
--Interview with Dr. Douglas V. Johnson, Senior Fellow of the Army War College (May 1, 1998) 访美国陆军军事学院战略研究所高级研究员道格拉斯•约翰逊博士
MR. CHEN BOJIANG: The U.S. Army has begun research on the Force XXI1 and the Army After Next2 for several years. What is the main purpose and highlights of this research? What is the progress on this research?
DR. JOHNSON: My area of focus is the future, but it’s also American doctrine and American military history. My particular task at the moment is development of this army after next idea, looking forward to the year 2025,and trying to discern the shape of things and consider what requirements we might have.
The purpose is to take advantage of what we believe may be a revolution in military technology, and change the organization and the equipment in the Army, so that it is abreast of the latest most effective technologies. Whether this will nean we have a smaller force or not is very unclear; but we do know hat we can increase the capability for the force that we do have through the technologies, which are maturing now in very interesting ways.
If you go back into our “Army” magazine-it’s a magazine that the Association of the United States Army3 publishes in a monthly basis Go back to 1950, and you will see systems in there or drawings of weapons which we are now beginning to see become reality. And what it’s saying to us is that it’s taken about 40-year for the technologies to mature.
We believe that this 40-year cycle4 is going to get shorter, maybe to 30, maybe to 20, maybe even down to 10 years. But we know that part of it is technology, part of it is politics and part of it is money that’s available. So we’re trying to investigate now as many new technologies as we can to try to decide which we want to invest money in now so that we can develop as quickly as possible, so we don’t have a 40-year lag in the real generation of equipment.
The Force XXI is an investigative5 process by which we test and experiment as many things as we can. The objective is out at about 2010 to have Army XXI.
The Force XXI is going to look an awful lot like today’s army in terms of the equipment. The equipment will be better. We’ll still have 70-ton M-1A - whatever -Abrams tanks, but they’ll be able to do a lot more things a lot better.
The Army After Next will focus on the period from 2010 to, maybe 2025, maybe beyond 2025. This period will witness great loops. Things are not going to look like today. At least that’s how we’re thinking of it now.
The first time we looked at it we said we want to have flying tanks. Well, we’ve looked at that, and we’ve said, not by 2025. We can’t do that. But we might be able to have a vehicle which weighed, let’s say, 15 tons, but it could move 100 miles an hour, maybe 50 miles an hour cross country. It wouldn’t necessarily have a gun on it, but it would be able to, through a whole system of sensors - it would be able to attack targets out at ranges of 10, 20, maybe even 30 kilometers, with about a 0.99 probability that it would kill them. But it wouldn’t be a direct fire weapon, it would be an indirect fire weapon, with a fire-seeker head6 on it or something like that. It would have a couple of missiles on board for self defense in case it came around the corner and met a tank. Because it’s a 15 tons, you know, that it can’t stand up to any kind of modern tank today, and it would just be blown away.
We would like this thing to be able to fly. We still want that flying tank, but we know we’re not going to be able to get it. So we want to get it down to some much lighter weight, so that we can move it about the battlefield more rapidly. Now, that’s one line of thought7.
There is another line of thought that says, that’s interesting, and that’s also a waste of money. In fact, the war that you’ll be fighting out here in 2025 will all be with computers, maybe. Instead of a 15-ton vehicle, maybe you’ll have a 4-ton vehicle but it will be robotic, and it will be controlled by a broadly distributed set of sensors, and it will be able to do great and wonderful things. And there are other variations on this thing.
But what this is going to look like out here, we’re not sure. We’ve run three war games, and each one has been very different, and I expect that we will run at least one game a year, devoted to what this thing is for the next 10 years. And we’re going to investigate wider and wider areas.
What do we really want? We want fast-moving, agile8, all-weather fire power, that has a very good capability. Well, is that a helicopter? For right now the answer is yes, that’s the helicopter. But out here could it be something else?
By the year 2010, we will have helicopters, tanks, some of these sensor nets, overhead communications9, and lots of other things, and they will be really good, but you’re still going to have this 70-ton behemoth10 tank, so your ability to move it around strategically is going to be very limited. And there will be places in the world where you can’t move it tactically very well.
So this is sort of the structure, the basic underlying structure that we look at. Normal, incremental progression out to about 2010, and then hopefully somewhere in the next 15 years beyond that, a leap as these emerging technologies mature, and we have to figure out what we can really do.
WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS 词汇提示
1.the Force XXI“21世纪陆军”
2.Army After Next“后天的陆军”
3.the Association of the United States Army 美国陆军协会
4.cycle [] n.周期
5.investigative [] a.调查研究的
6.a fire-seeker head 火力探头
7.one line of thought 一种思路
8.agile [] a.灵敏的
9.overhead communication 空中通讯
10.behemoth [] n.庞然大物
QUESTIONS AFTER LISTENING 听后答题:
1. What is Dr. Johnson’s area of focus?
A.It is the security situation.
B.It is the future of Army.
C.It is the missile.
D.It is the nuclear weapon.
2. What is “Army” magazine?
A.It is a magazine that the U.S. Army publishes on a monthly basis.
B.It is a magazine that the U.S. Army publishes on a quarterly basis.
C.It is a magazine that the Association of the U.S. Army publishes on a quarterly basis.
D.It is a magazine that the Association of the U.S. Army publishes on a monthly basis.
3. How long has it taken for the technologies to mature?
A.About 20 years. B.About 15 years.
C.About 25 years. D.About 40 years.
4. What does the Force XXI mean?
A.It means an investigative process.
B.It means a decision-making process.
C.It means a nurturing process.
D.It means a proving process.
5. When will the objective of the Force XXI be out?
A.At about 2010. B.At about 2020.
C.At about 2015. D.At about 2025.
6. What period will the Army After Next focus on?
A.It will focus on the period from 2010 to 2020.
B.It will focus on the period from 2000 to 2010.
C.It will focus on the period from 2010 to or beyond 2025.
D.It will focus on the period from 2020 to 2025.
7. What did they want the first time they considered the equipment of the Army After Next?
A.Flying boat. B.Flying tank.
C.Flying truck. D.Flying robot.
8. How many times did they run war games?
A.Four. B.Five. C.Three. D.Seven.
9. What did Dr. Johnson expect about the equipment development of the Army about 2010?
A.Rapidly development.
B.Great breakthrough in new weapons.
C.Similar things like today.
D.Normal, incremental progression.
10. What did Dr. Johnson expect about the equipment development in the next 15 years beyond 2010?
A.A leap in missile technology.
B.A leap in tactical nuclear weapons.
C.A leap in precision weapons.
D.A leap as the emerging technologies mature.
【参考译文】
21 世纪陆军研究
陈伯江：美国陆军开始“21世纪陆军”和“后天的陆军”的研究工作已有好几年了，这一研究的主要目的和重点是什么？已取得哪些收获？
约翰逊：我的专业领域是未来研究，但也包括美国的军事理论和军事历史。我目前的主要任务是研究“后天的陆军”，展望2005年，力求弄清到那时将会出现哪些新情况，及这些新情况可能向我们提出的要求。
研究“21世纪陆军”和“后天的陆军”的目的，是充分利用我们认为可能引起军事上革命的技术，变革陆军的编制和装备，使之与最新最有效的技术发展同步。虽然我们还不清楚部队的规模是否会更小，但我们的确认为通过现在正在以非常有意思的方式成熟起来的技术，我们可以使现有的部队的能力提高。
如果你回头看看我们1950年的《陆军》杂志（由美国陆军协会出版的月刊），你会看到现在正在变为现实的各种系统或武器的草图。这就会告诉我们，这些技术的成熟花了大约40年时间。
我们认为这个40年的周期将会缩短，可能30年，可能20年，甚至可能缩短为10年。但我们知道技术更新一部分取决于技术，一部分取决于政治，还有一部分取决于可获得的资金。因此，我们现在正尽可能调查了解尽量多的新技术，以确定我们想要投入资金的领域，使我们能尽快地发展，使武器装备的更新换代不需要40年时间。
“21世纪陆军”是一个调查研究的过程。通过这一过程，我们要尽可能地进行多方面的试验和实验，其目标是在2010年建成“21世纪陆军”。
就装备而言，“21世纪陆军”将在许多方面与今天的陆军相似，但会更好些。不管怎样，我们仍将拥有70吨的M-1A艾布拉姆斯坦克，但它们能做的事情更多，做得也要好得好。
“后天的陆军”研究2010年之后到2025年（可能再长一点时间）陆军的发展问题。这期间会发现飞跃性变化。“后天的陆军”看起来与今天的完全不同，至少我们现在这样认为。
在我们最早想象“后天的陆军”的装备的时候，我们想有一种“飞机坦克”。于是，我们进行研究，认为到2025年还不行。我们不可能做到。我们有可能会有重15吨的坦克，它每小时可行驶100英里，也可能达到50英里的越野速度。在这种坦克上不一定要装备枪炮，但它通过一个集中的传感器系统，可以以0.99的杀伤概率攻击10、20、甚至30公里以内的目标。这种坦克不是直瞄火力系统，而是带有火力探头的间瞄武器或者类似的什么东西。它将会装备几枚导弹用于自卫，以防在转弯时突然遇到敌方坦克。因为它才15吨，你知道它无法与今天任何类型的现代坦克相对抗，它是不堪一击的。我们希望它能飞行，我们仍想有这种“飞行坦克”，但我们知道这不可能实现，因此我们想有重量更轻的坦克，以便能够让它们在战场上更快地机动。现在，这是一种思路。
另一种思路认为，这挺有意思，但这也是一种浪费。事实上，2025年的战争将可能都是以计算机来进行的。你可能会有4吨的战车而不是15吨的“飞行坦克”，新战车是一种类似机器人的装置，由广泛分布的传感器来操纵，它将能出色地完成许多重要任务。在这方面还有一些其它的设想。
但是，我们并不知道武器将会怎样发展。我们已进行了三次作战模拟，每次结果都很不一样。预计每年至少还要进行一次模拟，连续进行10年才能确定将来到底要发展什么样的装备。我们还将要在更为广泛的领域进行调查研究。
我们真正想要的东西是什么？我们想要的是能快速运动、灵敏、全天候的火力，它有非常好的能力。那么，它是不是直升机？就目前来说，答案是肯定的，它是直升机，但在今后是否会是其它东西？
到2010年，将会有直升机、坦克、一些传感器网、空中通讯以及许多别的东西，这些装备都将有很好的性能，但你将仍然有重达70吨庞然大物似的坦克，因此，你的战略机动能力将仍很有限。在世界的一些地方，你是无法用70吨的坦克进行战术机动的。
因此，这就是我们进行研究的基本框架。在2010年以前，进行正常的渐进发展，然后随着目前出现的技术趋于成熟，希望在其后15年的某个时候产生飞跃，我们的任务就是弄清真正能做些什么。
KEYS TO THE QUESTIONS 参考答案：
1.b 2.d 3.d 4.a 5.a 6.c 7.b 8.c 9.d 10.d
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