There's a dichotomy in the fire service today. Some "traditional" fire service authors and leaders are suggesting that we get back to the basics of firefighting and avoid diluting our efforts with other services such as ems or special operations. Another group with more "progressive" ideas tells us that change is something we should not only expect, but openly embrace - that "business as usual" is no longer an option for the fire service in most communities.

One fire service leader asked recently if the fire service might be blessed with too much national leadership and too many fire service organizations, all with different agendas, which leads to a lack of consensus on the important national issues. With these divergent views, how can anyone in the fire service plan for the future?

The organization of the fire service in the United States has closely paralleled the military. For example, we traditionally use military ranks and units to define our departments, and we have adapted military innovations, such as radios, scba, fog nozzles and paramedics, to our missions.

In the last 10 years, leaders have begun to plan and implement not only a new identity for the military, but new strategies and tactics to face an ever-changing international role as well. Without a doubt, no other branch of the federal government has had to contend with more downsizing and change than the Department of Defense. These efforts haven't been without criticism, especially in the areas of personnel retention and training. But to their credit, the military has performed very well under the constraints of the "Do more with less" philosophy.

So what can the fire service learn from these most recent changes in the military, and how do they relate to our future? Several books and articles have helped shed a great deal of light on this subject, including "War and Anti-War" by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, "Hope is Not a Method" by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, and a recent report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff titled "Joint Vision 2010."

Tides of change Starting with the Tofflers, we find that the way societies create wealth has changed over the centuries, and with it, the way we organize government, fight wars and even fight fires. They describe this phenomenon in terms of three waves. The First Wave is the agrarian period, when civilization was dominated by the land owners. While there were advances in weapons and tactics, the main objective of war was to capture land.

The Second Wave coincided with the Industrial Revolution. During this period, weapons became more sophisticated and were also standardized with interchangeable parts. Transportation, such as the railroads and steam ships, allowed supplies to be stockpiled, then transported to the front where needed. Campaigns extended well past the spring and summer months that dominated First Wave warfare.

Two key examples of Second Wave warfare from the American Civil War were the first clash of ironclad ships (c.s.s. Virginia and u.s.s. Monitor) and Grant's use of the North's stronger industrial base and transportation system to move large numbers of troops and supplies deep into Southern territory, resulting in sustained sieges that lasted throughout the year. The Industrial Revolution eventually led to the expansion of national markets and the strengthening of the nation-state system, which permeated our Second Wave warfare throughout World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Third Wave thinking and warfare are knowledge-based and use advanced technology. Knowledge and power are almost synonymous in the modern age. Third Wave countries sell information and innovative uses of new software and services. Desert Storm provided examples of the transition to Third Wave warfare in that instantaneous delivery of information and more sophisticated technology were teamed to devastate a Second Wave Iraqi military.

Future Third Wave wars may be over information itself. War may be fought via computer and won by wiping out the other country's information infrastructure. Imagine the chaos if a country had access to the computers governing an enemy's energy grid, financial network or telecommunications system.

Evolutionary current How, you may ask, does any of this relate to today's fire service? Let's look at the evolution of the fire service in America. There's no doubt that when Benjamin Franklin started his fire company in Philadelphia, America had a First Wave agrarian or land-based economy. The simple tools of Franklin's fire department were the ax, hook and ladder, along with early fire engines that used muscle power to pull, pump and extinguish fires. The fire service had several advances, including water mains and flexible hose for hand lines, but for more than a century, muscle power essentially ruled.

Second Wave technology came to the fire service with the advent of horse-drawn steam engines. Career fire departments, coupled with steam engines, allowed fewer firefighters to cover a greater area with a quicker response. The Industrial Revolution also gave the fire service many other inventions, including the fire alarm box (from the telegraph) and interchangeable parts.

While gasoline replaced steam, and triple-combination pumpers replaced the need for separate steam engines, hose carts and chemical wagons, tactics and technology remained relatively unchanged until recently. Following the military's lead of increased communications and better support, the number of fire stations and pieces of equipment decreased in many regions.

The Third Wave entails the rethinking of the fire service into a newer concept of emergency mitigation using information and technology to aid the modern firefighter. Here the fire service can learn from the effort to reshape the post-Gulf War U.S. Army. As Sullivan discusses in "Hope is Not a Method," the Army transformed itself into a leaner, more efficient and more adaptable fighting machine capable of multiple roles - peacemaker, provider and augmenter to civil authority, as well as the traditional defender of our national interests - on the national and international scene. (Sound similar to the fire service out there?) As in the Army, there will always be the grunt work in the fire service, but now we've been shown it can be done faster, smarter and under budget.

As early as 1992, while maintaining the core elements of the recently victorious army, Sullivan assembled a group of his best planners to resculpt the army, asking first which future roles they would be called on to perform. Input was solicited from all ranks. Sullivan himself was in the vanguard of the project, providing the vision of the future that his personnel needed to stay a difficult course. At the same time, he maintained the traditional values developed throughout the Army's history to ensure organizational stability and a personal sense of security.

The product of the new Army is still in transition, but it now provides more information via Global Positioning Systems, secure microwave communications and onboard computers to an individual tank commander than most generals had in World War II. Computer displays identify the friendly and enemy forces in the engagement. Precision weapons coupled to this technology allow a numerically inferior force to literally annihilate a larger force in short order. (Does this sound like the "do more with less" theory? )

In addition, the U.S. Army has found itself in an ever-changing series of roles. Domestically, it was called on after Florida's Hurricane Andrew to not only feed and shelter thousands of civilians, but to help reestablish civil authority, including the reopening of the Dade County school system. Internationally, it has stabilized situations around the world from Somalia to Haiti and provided peacekeeping in war-ravaged Bosnia and humanitarian relief in Rwanda and central Africa.

When we apply these concepts to daily fire service emergency situations, does Third Wave thinking mean that the fire service needs to look at changing technology and its evolving role? The "back to basics" mentality is usually grounded in Second Wave thinking. Third Wave is not just adding ems or hazmat, however, it's the marriage of technology and information on the emergency scene while constantly improving safety and service to our public and ourselves.

We've only begun to see the significance of using Class A compressed-air foam systems to fight fires, or thermal imagers and gps technology to find downed firefighters. Third Wave thinking is limited only by the imagination of the fire service leadership in adopting an integrated approach to the ever-changing role of the fire service.

Integrated response But what of the future? The military has taken several steps beyond those proposed by Sullivan. "Joint Vision 2010" outlines a truly integrated, or "joint," approach to the military of the future.

The Joint Chiefs envision a future in which all military services will be integrated through information and communications toward common objectives. A problem isn't one just for the Air Force or Marines, it's ideally one shared by all the military services with fully integrated systems and a fully integrated response.

How does this relate to the future fire service? It means that we must be looking beyond ourselves to find solutions. City administrators are looking for a unified municipal approach - involving police, building, public works, health and other agencies - to help combat what may have previously been only a "fire" problem, and they, like the military, are looking nationally and internationally for potential solutions. These may be found through the state fire marshal, epa, fema, cdc, cpsc or even our counterparts in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

In "Hope is Not a Method," former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sullivan observes that organizations which are successful in the transition to the new age are similar. They all have:

* A genuine passion for what they do.

* A sense of becoming and never of merely being. This is accompanied by a healthy sense of urgency.

* An openness of vision that accommodates risk-taking - daring to succeed - grounded in values and linked to the future by a strategic architecture that people believe in.

* A zest for learning from everything they do.

* A deep, abiding belief in people, without whom all the words and good intentions are meaningless.