Mr. Putin should urgently recruit a Kremlin brain trust of military reformers and charge them with reshaping Russia's forces to meet 21st-century needs.

Most important, military officials must be unapologetic about preserving military traditions and masculine culture - sexist as they may seem to military "reformers" in Washington.

He headed a military journal with his friend Gerhard von Scharnhorst, the Prussian military reformer for many years.

The original military reformers have dispersed, too - sometimes to unexpectedly far corners of the political landscape.

"Jointness" has been an elusive goal of military reformers for half a century, at least.

Senator Dan Quayle has sought to portray himself as a true military reformer, out to clean up the waste and abuse so prevalent at the Pentagon.

Steven Canby, a military reformer, has pointed out that sophisticated heat-seeking missiles can be confused by ordinary smoke pots.

Much has been made of the role of battlefield computers, but military reformers have warned for more than a decade against substituting technology for thinking.

That strategy is one of the favorite targets of military reformers.

The United States has two theories about preparing for war - that of the military establishment and that of the military reformers.