Recently by deichmans

A Twitter "tweet" from @Selil earlier this evening roused a long-dormant post idea. Since Twitter is a "micro-blog", its constraint of just 140 characters limits its utility to low-bandwidth, big-idea (or mundane-activity) broadcasting. Prof. Liles's "big-idea" (in response to @mtanji of Haft of the Spear and CTLab fame) was:

"C4isr as the battle space. More than the Arquilla network centric warfare concept. Beyond hacking. Sun Tzu and Clausewitz"

I certainly agree with Prof. Liles that there is more to the information domain than John Arquilla and net-centric warfare (which always struck me as an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophesy -- despite the fact that network superiority has no deterrent value). Where I differ is in the proposition that C4ISR is a "battle space".

C4ISR, or (as ADM Giambastiani liked to refer to it during his tour as my boss at U.S. Joint Forces Command, "C2 + C2ISR"), is simply a tool. The technology only provides a medium by which information can be shared, the same way that Roman signal towers allowed information to be conveyed rapidly across great distances millennia ago.

Part of the Tanji-Liles dialog emphasized the lack of any truly "revolutionary" capabilities in recent decades. I'm inclined to agree -- from a purely technological perspective. Our modern technology -- though impressive -- has not ushered in a unique "Information Age". In fact, today's technologies have not created wholly new capabilities; they have simply enriched capabilities that have existed for centuries. Rather than living in "The Information Age", I believe we are actually living in the fifth "information age":

1st: Verbal exchange of information (oral communication)
2nd: Physical representation of information (Sumerian writing)
3rd: Portability of information (papyrus)
4th: Mass-production of information (Gutenberg's movable type press)
5th: Information freed from physical form (telegraph, telephone, Internet)

The most significant effect of proliferating information technology and communications capabilities has been to neuter the initiative and empowerment of subordinates -- stunting the audacity that makes (or breaks) battles. Rigid hierarchies coupled with pervasive communications grids -- with "Net-Centricity" -- are demonstrably less effective than ones with "weak" links (q.v. Linked by Albert-László Barabási).

Consider the "Operational Level of War" -- the level between "Tactics" and "Strategy". Many organizations of the U.S. Department of Defense invest inordinate numbers of labor hours in developing an idea that peaked in Napoleon's time (when it was called "Grand Tactics").

Napoleon's logic was simple: he commanded an army so vast that its interior lines could exceed the distance of daily information propagation. (Information in the late 18th/early 19th century could propagate at approximately 100 miles per day.) But when technology increased the bandwidth of information transfer (as well as the speed, thanks to decoupling it from physical form and allowing velocity=c), the intermediate layer that once served as a proxy for the Imperial edict (i.e., empowerment of the on-scene commander to act on behalf of the Emperor) has remain entrenched.

Modern C4ISR tools have served to perpetuate this folly, giving today's commanders a beguiling sense of "Situational Awareness".  MIL STD 2525, the military standard for unit symbology merged with theater-scale maps, can give a commander a "realtime snapshot" of the entire physical battlespace.  But as the scale increases (since warfare is not scale invariant), the trade off between "relevance" and "intelligibility" becomes akin to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: as one becomes more precise, the other becomes dangerously less so.

The temptation to treat warfare like a game of chess (with its ordinal moves and perfect battlefield intelligence) is fallacious.  ARHerring, a co-contributor at Dreaming5GW, recently opined about the nature of chess on multiple boards -- a closer approximation to the adaptive and complex nature of war.  Clausewitz's description of "Genius" in battle is the antithesis of a reductionist thinker who seeks the unique solution to a given problem.  Complex adaptive environments can have multiple solutions -- but an even larger number of incorrect options.

Therefore, a better description of an effective military leader is not simply "charisma", but "network fitness": per Barabási, the ability to "attract" links in order to influence their perceptions.  This applies not only to COIN, but also to Information Warfare (h/t mtanji) and the renascent field of Public Diplomacy championed by Mountainrunner.


Update: Michael Tanji and Tyler Boudreau (h/t John Robb) sound off.


[Crossposted at Wizards of Oz]

I've thoroughly enjoyed the rich intellectual debate broiling this past month in the 'blogosphere over the construct of the "generational" model of warfare: from D5GW host Curtis Gale Weeks to co-contributors tdaxp (several posts and more) & General of the Hordes Subadei, Younghusband (twice) at Coming Anarchy, Smitten Eagle (channeled by Lexington Green), Fabius Maximus (who also critiqued a Friedman piece from STRATFOR), Arms and Influence, Stephen Pampinella (twice), and Skilluminati.

Much of these analyses focus on the implicitly ordinal nature of the "generational" model.  tdaxp's lucid post on "The Terminology of XGW" attempts to overcome this fundamental shortcoming in the model, but doesn't go far enough in jettisoning the troublesome implication.  His recommendation to abandon "generation" in favor of "grade" -- or, later, "gradient" -- still connotes an ordinal nature of the methods of warfare.

Recent efforts to diminish my "anti-library" (which have proven fruitless, since my propensity for borrowing books exceeds the rate by which I actually read and return them) has me deep into Karen Armstrong's outstanding biography, "Muhammad".  Early in chapter 1 ("Muhammad the Enemy"), Prof. Armstrong describes the 9th century monk Perfectus of Cordova, in Andalusia (née the capital of the Muslim state of al-Andalus).  His diatribe against the Prophet of Islam warranted a death sentence, and inspired dozens of others from all levels of society to similarly insult Muhammad -- and receive similar fates from the Qadi.

Perfectus, his contemporaries Eulogio and Alvaro, and the many other "Cordovan martyrs" had been influenced by an apocalyptic biography of Muhammad that (with extensive artistic liberties) linked the Prophet of Islam to the "Great Deceiver" predicted in the Apostle Paul's second epistle to the Thessalonians.  The association of Muhammad with the "... rebel [who] would establish his rule in the Temple of Jerusalem and mislead many Christians with his plausible doctrines" (2 Thes. 1:4-8, cited in Armstrong's Muhammad, p. 24), and with John's Book of Revelation through "selective addition" (claiming Muhammad died in the year 666 -- even though he lived another 38 years), were what we may call a "5th generation war": a secret war that exploited cultural icons in order to diminish and defeat an opponent.

My personal epiphany, while reading Armstrong in the midst of the ongoing 'blog dialog (diablog?), is that none of the "generational" models are necessarily exclusive -- nor for that matter are they strategic.  Rather, they are simply tactical methods that one may choose to apply in the achievement of an objective or the fulfillment of a task.

Consider George Friedman's recent STRATFOR analysis on Secretary Gates's dismissal of CSAF Mosely and SAF Wynne, where he describes the GMW put forth by Lind, Nightengale, Schmitt, Sutton and Wilson in their groundbreaking 1989 Marine Corps GAZETTE article:

"There is a school of thought in the military that argues that we have now entered the fourth generation of warfare. The first generation of war, according to this theory, involved columns and lines of troops firing muzzle-loaded weapons in volleys. The second generation consisted of warfare involving indirect fire (artillery) and massed movement, as seen in World War I. Third-generation warfare comprised mobile warfare, focused on outmaneuvering the enemy, penetrating enemy lines and encircling them, as was done with armor during World War II. The first three generations of warfare involved large numbers of troops, equipment and logistics. Large territorial organizations — namely, nation-states — were required to carry them out.  ... Fourth-generation warfare is warfare carried out by nonstate actors using small, decentralized units and individuals to strike at enemy forces and, more important, create political support among the population.

Whether a commander chooses to align his forces in columns (a staple of "close order drill", one of the most basic elements of modern day "Basic Training" in the armed services), or to mass fires, or to exploit maneuver, or to focus on "creating political support among the population" as GEN Petraeus is doing with "the Surge", the fact of the matter is that ALL of these are valid tactics at some point.  In fact, I submit that the methods are force structure neutral in many respects -- albeit some force structures are optimized for certain methods. 

The crux of the matter is that warfare is no longer the sole purview of the nation-state.  The proliferation of information technologies and ready access to design "best practices" is collapsing the barriers to entry in the bazaar of violence, as John Robb has been telling us for some time.  Even seemingly advanced weapon systems like cruise missiles (the "rich man's IED") will soon become accessible to self-subsidized organizations with DIY ingenuity, GPS-enabled cell phones and a modicum of propellant and guidance.  And we have all seen the power of networks for manipulating and influencing perceptions.

While the nation-state is optimized for the first of Boyd's three "Categories of Conflict" (Attrition, Maneuver and Moral [q.v. Patterns of Conflict, p. 113, cited by Younghusband]), the latter two have very low barriers to entry and are readily accessible for nearly any size of organization.  And while I disagree with Kotare's dismissal of Clausewitz and the overarching aim of "breaking" an enemy's will, his emphasis on the tangible nature of "strategy" as a target of collective effort is compelling.

In closing, Curtis Gale Weeks's "Triangulation" of Clausewitz and Boyd offers a finite, n-space description of the ways by which an entity may seek to compel another.  His taxonomy, with three principal environments (rationality, probability and rage), three primary target sets (governance, military and population) and three categories of conflict (attrition, maneuver and moral) elicit 27 strategic permutations.  Perhaps rather than debating the merits of the individual yardsticks by which we measure any one of these metrics, we should rather be examining which of these permutations pose the greatest risk to our own strategies -- and guarding against them.

Yesterday a good friend from Virginia sent me an article from "DataTech Government Newsletter" that harshly criticizes the Training Transformation program at U.S. Joint Forces Command (one of ten joint [all-service] Combatant Commands in the U.S. military).  Besides harshly maligning the corporate culture at my former employer (claiming the parking lot isn't full until nearly 9:00am, and almost empty shortly after 4:00pm), it also accuses the Joint National Training Capability of failing to deliver a product despite a budget of over $170 million.

The curious thing about this article is that DataTech Government Newsletter returns zero hits on a Google search.  And a search for "Bob Gerlach", the alleged "AFU Correspondent" who penned the article, yields a similar doughnut of results.  Furthermore, there is no date in the excerpted pages as one would expect from a legitimate publication.  And the reference to the current four-star USJFCOM commander (Gen. Jim Mattis, USMC) as "Lt Gen Mattis" (using the U.S. Air Force honorific for a three-star general, not the U.S. Marine Corps "LtGen") further erodes the credibility of the piece.  Lastly, the subsequent article references a non-existent "North American Health Logistics Forum" (again, zero Google hits) and "Section 16 under USC Code [sic] 27", the portion of U.S. federal law that addressed Prohibition and has been repealed for more than seventy years.  You can download the excerpted 1.4MB .PDF file here.

Could this be an elaborate hoax -- an attack designed to change the very context by which an entity is perceived -- to discredit U.S. Joint Forces Command's training activities?  A former colleague told me that not only are they aware of this piece, but that Major General Kamiya (the Joint Training Director) distributed it to all personnel.  When faced with an anonymous foe who wants to distort perceptions, I think MG Kamiya's response was very appropriate.

[Crossposted @ Oz]

Überblogger ZenPundit has summarized a ten-part series by Fabius Maximus from Defense and the National Interest.  Though only posted about two hours ago, ZenPundit's post has already elicited feedback from FM, as well as myself and D5GW moderator Curtis Gale Weeks.

ZenPundit has underscored a crucial factor in the evolution of the "xGW" model: how does one discriminate between 4GW (culture-based asymmetrical warfare focused on the "rage of the people") and 5GW (perception-based warfare focused on the context of conflict)?

Recent posts here at D5GW (in particular ARHerring's "Left of Boom/Right of Boom" analysis of kinetics in xGW, and Curtis's "X vs. X" follow-up) describe interrelationship of the various "generations" -- key to any theoretical framework.

I'd like to add another element to the foundation: the Clausewitzian "Trinity" (developed in Book II of Karl von Clausewitz's magnum opus, On War).  Clausewitz, in developing his famous assertion that "war is a continuation of politics by other means," describes three core elements of any campaign:

• Rationality (of the state)
• Probability (in military command)
• Rage (of the population)

Much of the "Cold War" ethos of warfighting was vested in the first premise: the rationality of the state (q.v., "Mutually Assured Destruction" doctrine in nuclear warfare).  Similarly, insurgencies like the U.S. faced in Vietnam forty years ago -- and in Iraq today -- are driven by the third premise: the rage of the people.

Could 5th Generation Warfare (where perception and context are key) be described as a fusion of popular rage with political rationality, where the very idea of "conflict" is altered in order to create conditions favorable to the 5th Generation warrior?  Such a feat would logically factor the second premise (the probabilistic calculus of the military commander) out of the equation -- or at least reduce its relevance in the larger battle of ideas.

Are the generations of war purely a response to developments within the earlier generation? To wit, is (x plus 1)GW driven primarily by a desire to thwart practitioners of (x)GW?

Consider this:

1GW: Marked by regimental structure and strict discipline. Noted historians Keegan and van Crevald have attributed this to the advent of firearms, which create a need for more rigorous safety mechanisms.

2GW: In response to 1GW rank-and-file formations, fires are massed to shatter their cohesion.

Command and Control (C^2) theory is very well developed for 1GW, 2GW and 3GW campaigns. Joint Publication (JP) 6-0 lays a solid foundation for communications between different elements of a joint force, and each uniformed service has well-developed doctrine with respect to C^2. [Note: I have posted an abbreviated primer on the "generational" model of warfighting methods at Oz -- along with links to other primers by Zen, Tdaxp and Soob.]

In 4GW contests, C^2 becomes more problematic. Lines of authority are often blurred, and effective 4th Gen. warriors rely on mission-type orders (auftragstaktik) and operational empowerment seldom seen in more strictly regimented militaries. Similarly, 4GW's reliance on "Mass" -- one of the nine principles of war in conventional military thought -- is also dramatically different: allowing them to exploit a very small signal-to-noise ratio through dispersion in the general populace and leveraging commercial communications (mobile phones, IM, Internet) to convey "intent" or "objectives".

But where 4GW is primarily a moral conflict, there is something else -- something deeper that can be manipulated, influenced and exploited to achieve desired objectives. The morality of a 4GW campaign is not the most fundamental force that drives people and shapes their support for, or opposition to, or acquiescence to, a campaign.

That distinction belongs to the context by which we perceive the world. By altering how the world is perceived, one can achieve what Sun Tzu called the "acme of skill": victory without fighting.

This raises some interesting questions. For instance, does a 5GW force require cohesion and unity of effort? (I have argued in the past that it does not -- rather, that a 5GW force becomes increasingly effective the more disparate its efforts become).

But what does this do to the notion of "command"? We Americans love heirarchies -- rigid, singular command structures with no doubt who's "in charge". But is such a command structure valid for a 5GW campaign?

Or could a 5GW opponent be "commanded" simply through the naturally emergent behavior of complex systems? Is "self-synchronization" valid as a method of C^2 for a 5GW campaign? And is the notion of a "campaign" even relevant in this context? Or is our lexicon lacking in describing emergent methods of influencing thought -- and, by extension, limiting our actions to those that a faceless adversary allows?