Office of Net Assessment

Department of Defense think tank created in 1973 and tasked with imagining all possible threats to the national security of the United States. The Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was created in 1973 by President Richard Nixon, who was dissatisfied with the quality of intelligence he was receiving. Nixon created a net assessment group in the National Security Council to evaluate intelligence from different agencies about Soviet and Chinese nuclear capabilities. Defense theorist Andrew Marshall was named to head the ONA, a post he has held ever since. The group was transferred to the Department of Defense in 1972.

The ONA arguably has been the most influential organization in shaping American military thinking. Its analyses of U.S. and Soviet military spending in the 1970s convinced U.S. president Jimmy Carter to increase the U.S. military budget during his term in office. During the 1980s, the ONA regularly criticized estimates of Soviet economic strength produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The accuracy of the ONA's views was confirmed after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. More recently, the ONA pioneered the transformation of the U.S. military using information technology. One of the tasks of the ONA has been to identify and define major transformations in the conduct of warfare that result when technological developments help cause a fundamental alteration in the conduct of warfare. Such developments are known as revolutions in military affairs, or RMA. The advent of strategic bombing between World War I and World War II is an example of RMA. The development of airplanes capable of carrying large bomb loads and flying far behind enemy lines led military commanders to realize that it was possible to strike at an enemy's homeland, targeting its civilian population as well as the factories that produce war material. This resulted in the creation of new military units and doctrines designed to strike directly at the enemy's capacity to make war and to weaken the morale of its citizens to continue to fight.

In the early 1990s, the ONA identified three areas of technology that provide the basis for the beginning of a new RMA. These include the information revolution, long-range, precision-guided weapons, computer battlefield simulation, and computer-aided design and manufacturing. The ONA also remarked on an apparent trend toward small “special operations” units gradually taking over many functions once performed by “heavy” military formations.

Despite mixed assessments of its work, there is no doubt that ONA has shaped U.S. military planning and strategy for decades. In a sign that ONA is still generating controversy, in 2004 it released a report predicting that climate change could lead to global ecological catastrophe as early 2020. The report warns that such change may well lead to political instability and increase the chances for war and unrest in the near future. This view directly contradicts the views of the administration of President George W. Bush, which discounts the threats caused by global warming.