Planning For the Future

Def. Secretary Rumsfeld used a WW2 analogy of the immortal Higgins Boat to explain how the military is planning for the future: Rumsfeld used the example of the Higgins boat as an example of why capabilities are so important. The Navy and Marine Corps began looking at the problems of amphibious warfare after World War I. They could not have imagined the needs that would confront the Allies in World War II. Andrew Higgins - an industrialist in New Orleans - developed the Higgins boat that allowed troops and supplies to land on beaches. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war, said if Higgins had not designed and built those boats, the whole strategy of the war would have had to be different. "The best security planning recognizes that it's impossible to predict precisely the character of future adversaries and of future conflicts," Rumsfeld said. "Therefore, planning ... is designed to increase capabilities rather than to respond to any single threat." And our troops are adapting well: As we've seen in recent years, our outstanding soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines must act at any given moment as warfighters, civil police, engineers, diplomats, humanitarians," Rumsfeld said. "This range and unpredictability of missions means that theater commanders have to have sufficient authority and capability to adapt rapidly to changing conditions on the ground. We must continue transforming the department to get better arranged for speed, agility, mobility and precision in most everything we do."