Editor's note: The following is an excerpt of the last written piece by the late Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski. It is taken from a document posted on the Office of Force Transformation's Web site in March. A link to the full article can be found on FCW.com Download's Data Call at www.fcw.com/download.

In my travels and discussions with people, I am repeatedly asked several questions. What is the direction of transformation and what is its future? How enduring is transformation? My basic response is that the president and the Defense Department secretary have been talking about transformation for more than four years now and are likely to keep talking about it for another four

years. By Washington, D.C., standards, eight years is really quite a long time. If you put something in place and make it work for eight years, the concrete is usually set.

But back to the question of where is transformation going. Transformation and its advances are going to be with DOD for a very, very long time. It would be very difficult to undo some of the things that have been put into place -- changes in the Unified Command Plan. Changes in management procedures and processes have either been rewritten or legislatively changed. Changes of this magnitude are unlikely to happen summarily.

With an increasingly larger fraction of the officer corps obtaining combat experience, you are not going to have any backtracking on transformation.

The trends put to rest any discussion over whether transformation is likely to continue. That does not mean, however, that transformation will not change direction or emphasis. We have seen this during the past four years. Many defense intellectuals thought transformation was initially only about canceling big-ticket weapons programs and firing the odd recalcitrant general or admiral. That is not what transformation is all about. It is largely about behavioral change, and it contains profound organizational and process dimensions, which are major drivers of transformation.

We are fond of saying that this shift is occurring because of the U.S. military's tremendous prowess on the traditional battlefield. Enemies do not want to face such a formidable force so they vacate the field. But U.S. military power, of course, is supported by U.S. economic power. Where have our enemies gone?