Louis Lingg writes:
"The National Defense University has posted on its website the text of Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, published in 1996 and written by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade with L.A. "Bud" Edney, Fred M. Franks, Charles A. Horner, Jonathan T. Howe, and Keith Brendley.

An excerpt from the book's Prologue:


Since before Sun Tzu and the earliest chroniclers of war recorded their observations, strategists

and generals have been tantalized and confounded by the elusive goal of destroying the adversary's

will to resist before, during, and after battle. Today, we believe that an unusual opportunity exists to

determine whether or not this long-sought strategic goal of affecting the will, understanding, and

perception of an adversary can be brought closer to fruition. Even if this task cannot be

accomplished, we believe that, at the very minimum, such an effort will enhance and improve the

ability of our military forces to carry out their missions more successfully through identifying and

reinforcing particular points of leverage in the conflict and by identifying and creating additional

options and choices for employing our forces more effectively.

Perhaps for the first time in years, the confluence of strategy, technology, and the genuine quest for

innovation has the potential for revolutionary change. We envisage Rapid Dominance as the

possible military expression, vanguard, and extension of this potential for revolutionary change. The

strategic centers of gravity on which Rapid Dominance concentrates, modified by the uniquely

American ability to integrate all this, are these junctures of strategy, technology, and innovation

which are focused on the goal of affecting and shaping the will of the adversary. The goal of Rapid

Dominance will be to destroy or so confound the will to resist that an adversary will have no

alternative except to accept our strategic aims and military objectives. To achieve this outcome,

Rapid Dominance must control the operational environment and through that dominance, control

what the adversary perceives, understands, and knows, as well as control or regulate what is not

perceived, understood, or known.

In Rapid Dominance, it is an absolutely necessary and vital condition to be able to defeat, disarm,

or neutralize an adversary's military power. We still must maintain the capacity for the physical and

forceful occupation of territory should there prove to be no alternative to deploying sufficient

numbers of personnel and equipment on the ground to accomplish that objective. Should this goal

of applying our resources to controlling, affecting, and breaking the will of an adversary to resist

remain elusive, we believe that Rapid Dominance can still provide a variety of options and choices

for dealing with the operational demands of war and conflict.

To affect the will of the adversary, Rapid Dominance will apply a variety of approaches and

techniques to achieve the necessary level of Shock and Awe at the appropriate strategic and

military leverage points. This means that psychological and intangible, as well as physical and

concrete effects beyond the destruction of enemy forces and supporting military infrastructure, will

have to be achieved. It is in this broader and deeper strategic application that Rapid Dominance

perhaps most fundamentally differentiates itself from current doctrine and offers revolutionary

application.

Flowing from the primary concentration on affecting the adversary's will to resist through imposing a

regime of Shock and Awe to achieve strategic aims and military objectives, four characteristics

emerge that will define the Rapid Dominance military force. These are noted and discussed in later

chapters. The four characteristics are near total or absolute knowledge and understanding of self,

adversary, and environment; rapidity and timeliness in application; operational brilliance in

execution; and (near) total control and signature management of the entire operational environment.

Whereas decisive force is inherently capabilities driven—that is, it focuses on defeating the military

capability of an adversary and therefore tends to be scenario sensitive—Rapid Dominance would

seek to be more universal in application through the overriding objective of affecting the adversary's

will beyond the boundaries traditionally defined by military capability alone. In other words, where

decisive force is likely to be most relevant is against conventional military capabilities that can be

overwhelmed by American (and allied) military superiority. In conflict or crisis conditions that

depart from this idealized scenario, the superior nature of our forces is assumed to be sufficiently

broad to prevail. Rapid Dominance would not make this distinction in either theory or in practice."