Last year, based on recommendations in PPI's December 1995 report, "Defense in the Information Age," Senators Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) and Dan Coats (R-IN) co-sponsored legislation establishing a National Defense Panel and empowering it to undertake a comprehensive assessment of U.S. security needs for the next century. Earlier this week, the nine- member panel released its report, titled Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century. Its findings just might kick off the long overdue, serious discussion the nation needs on the future of its military.

The panel did not challenge the Pentagon's plan for the next five years nor the way it wants to spend the $1.3 trillion U.S. taxpayers will pay for the nation's security between now and 2002. The military and several of the civilian members of the panel, after all, had earlier helped build the momentum for those plans, and the entire panel recognized that trying to change things too quickly can undercut arguments for any change at all. So, it resorted to the device of focusing on the period beyond the budget--the second decade of the next century. And that changes the discussion greatly.

Since the Cold War ended nearly a decade ago, the Pentagon has focused on how to maintain the powerful, effective, and well-honed military the nation built and paid for after Vietnam. In the Pentagon's view, Desert Storm confirmed rather than questioned that effort. And in each of the relooks since--from Gen. Colin Powell's "Base Force," through former Defense Secretary Les Aspin's "Bottom-Up Review" and then-Sen. Sam Nunn-sponsored "Commission on Roles and Missions," to the "Quadrennial Defense Review" completed earlier this year--the concern has been how to shave down the military while maintaining its essential Cold War character.

But while the panel echoed some of this, it leaned in another direction--toward the future, not the past. That is, its real contribution and the new bumper sticker it proposes--"transformation"--not only captures the truth of what should be done, but highlights the essence of the debate we must have. Should we as a nation continue to invest in the past, remaining reluctant to alter a military that by past and current standards "ain't broke?" Or, should we be much more serious about innovation and willing to invest in the effort--for it is effort, not money, that is the issue here--to accelerate what some call the American Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).

The National Defense Panel opted--carefully--for the second view. It compiled many of the arguments that have been around for the better part of this decade (although whispered by a minority within the Defense establishment). It called for more investment in the information technologies that promise dramatic leaps in timely battlespace knowledge for U.S. forces and in the U.S. military's ability to wield firepower with much greater accuracy and precision, over longer distances. And it advocated the real world experimentation and testing that can build the military structures, organizations, and operational doctrine to take advantage of what the new information technology offers.

It was less candid about what should be given up to free the funds and change the cultures needed to bring about the transformation. And some of the specific recommend-ations it made are far from radical. Forming a new "Joint Forces Command" to consolidate and coordinate the "battle labs" and the experiments currently dispersed throughout the individual military services is, for example, a great idea. But doing this, as the panel proposes, without freeing the actual forces assigned to the new command from high readiness requirements so they can concentrate on developing new ways of doing things--and suggesting how this can be done without reducing the military's ability to respond to real world contingencies--is a cop out.

But these are nit-picks that do not cast much shadow on the panel's essential contribution. It said what needed to be said, raising good questions about the Pentagon's intellectual apparel, and coming down hard on the need to shift the debate from what has worked in an era that is gone to what the future will demand. That meets the mandate Congress levied on the panel when it set it up last year in an effort to get alternative views on what kind of military the nation needs into public discussion. The panel has for the most part provided a vision and argument that is a true alternative to that provided so far by the establishment inside the Pentagon. Now it's up to Congress--and the American public--to push the discussion and debate toward the specifics.