In the new construct massed effects would be achieved with massed firepower from dispersed forces, rather than from massed forces. Whereas Jomini advised throwing the mass of one’s forces on the decisive points of the battlefield at the proper time and with ample energy, Joint Vision 2010 foresaw the US military being ‘increasingly able to accomplish the effects of mass – the necessary concentration of combat power at the decisive time and place – with less need to mass forces physically’.22 The notion of creating mass effects without massing forces was reiterated in Concepts for the Objective Force which, notably, stated that de-massification would come in the form of creating smaller but more capable formations.23 Thus was set in motion a process that culminated in the US Army transforming from a ten-division entity to an ‘Objective Force’ made up of 33 (originally 45, before the post-Afghanistan downsizing) brigade combat teams as the basic organizational unit. In the period since, the idea of smaller, more mobile and deployable ground forces has been emulated by other great powers (see Box 2.1).
Box 2.1 Changes in Russian and Chinese army structures
• Over the past decade the armies of major powers have undergone a restructuring – or are in the process of restructuring – from the massive, largely static ground forces of the Cold War era to smaller, more mobile and deployable land forces.
• Russia’s intervention in Georgia in 2008 prompted a restructuring of its army. The force had significant problems overcoming the Georgian army because its mobilization took too long and there was a lack of proper unit command. Russia decided it needed a fast-acting military capability in the form of a professional, high-readiness ground force organized into smaller, more mobile units.
• By 2015 Russia’s 23 Soviet-style divisions had been reorganized into 40 high-readiness combat brigades, each manned with more professional soldiers than conscripts. The reforms significantly reduced the overall strength of the Russian army on paper, while increasing its capability.
• Although not driven by a particular conflict, China has embarked on a similar transformation of its ground forces. Over the past several years China has been progressively reducing the size of its army. In 2015 it announced yet a further significant reduction as part of a purported rationalization plan which will include changing the army command structure so that it less resembles a Soviet-era model.
• Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is in the midst of converting divisions to brigades, with the idea this will increase effectiveness by boosting overall combat capabilities.
See: Gustav Gressel, Russia’s Quiet Military Revolution (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, October 2015); Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 2015).
Joint Vision 2010 also argued new technologies would allow for increased capability at lower echelons – capabilities that had previously been reserved for more senior commanders at the operational or strategic level. Along these lines, Concepts for the Objective Force pointed out that new sensor and command and control technologies were providing common situational understanding to all levels. The overall effect would be to compress the strategic, operational and tactical echelons, and increase the importance of the tactical level of war to strategic outcomes.24
Deployability was a further characteristic of land forces highlighted in the army documents. As stated in the Army Vision’s accompanying briefing, future ground forces would be just as ‘deployable’ as light forces, without jeopardizing any lethality. ‘As technology allows, we will begin to erase the distinctions between heavy and light forces.’25 The notion of being rapidly deployable is captured in another familiar term of the era, that of having ground forces that are ‘expeditionary’ in nature. The idea reflects the view that it is not enough for ground forces to be mobile, agile and versatile in theatre; ground forces also have to be able to get to theatre at relatively short notice, within days or weeks.
A unique contribution of Joint Vision 2010 was its call for ‘full spectrum dominance’. The US military, it argued, should strive to be a dominant force not only in traditional, conventional landpower operations against a peer competitor, but across the ‘full range of military operations from humanitarian assistance, through peace operations, up to and into the highest intensity conflict’.26 The range of operations, Joint Vision 2020 later argued, included major theatre war, regional conflict and smaller-scale contingencies, as well as those ‘ambiguous situations residing between peace and war’ such as peacekeeping, peace-enforcement and humanitarian relief.27 The implications of this ambition are discussed in Chapter 6 as part of strategic thought on peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention.
Overall the picture of landpower that emerged from US joint and Army vision statements of this period was one of a mixture of the clever manoeuvring of Sun Tzu with the more visceral warfare of Clausewitz. The hallmarks of future ground force operations would be ‘maneuvering to positions of advantage; engaging enemy forces beyond the range of their weapons; [and] destroying them with precision fires and maneuver’.28 At the same time warfare remained brutal in nature and striking from afar may not be enough. In those situations, the only way to guarantee victory against the adversary was to ‘put our boots on the ground … and destroy him in his sanctuary’.29
Boots on the ground
In a precursor of things to come, Joint Vision 2010 was careful to caution that many military missions would continue to need a physical presence. Historian and military strategist Major-General Robert Scales was one high-ranking army officer who stressed at the time that warfare in the post-Cold War era, like all periods in history, would continue to require ‘boots on the ground’. As commandant of the US Army War College in the late 1990s he wrote of concerns about recent claims that technology and advanced precision weaponry could be used in place of combat forces. The debate about force size and structure, Scales argued, was quintessentially one about the future nature of war. Predictions that new technologies could permit friendly forces to defeat enemies from afar ‘with no need to risk lives in the maelstrom of land combat’ did not account for the fact that conventional warfare against states would still centre on the control of territory, and that defeating terrorists and non-state actors would demand the control of populations – both landpower-intensive tasks. The future war would indeed be ‘non-linear’ in nature. But ‘non-linear’ equated to ‘inherently chaotic’ – the game of chance identified by Clausewitz wherein the character of war changes in ways that cannot be predicted.30
In the wake of the Afghanistan War of 2001–02 and the Iraq War of 2003 Scales conceded that technology was impacting the character of conventional landpower. Operations resembled the distributed, non-linear attributes identified by earlier strategic thinkers, while wargaming revealed the dramatic effect of giving soldiers the ability to see all friendly forces and most enemy forces – that is, of giving them ‘dominant situational awareness’. As Scales recollected: ‘Freed from the need to maintain visual contact, the digitized brigade footprint expanded by a factor of four or more … Linear formations began to break apart … The ability to see the enemy from greater distances allowed the more clever commanders to engage the enemy at greater distances. The close fight was becoming less close.’31 Meanwhile, precision technology was having the effect of increasing tempo and speed on the battlefield because platforms did not have to be as weighted down with ammunition as was previously the case.
Along the lines of Sun Tzu, in his strategic thought Scales emphasizes the indirect, intellectual attributes of the contemporary warfighter. In contrast to the direct, action-oriented leadership of yesterday, he argues, the nature of warfare today is such that it requires ‘indirect leadership’ – that is, ‘the ability to think in real time and influence the battlefield by intent rather than directly by touch’.32 The current military system, he laments, tends to promote the promising tactician,
the ‘go-to, can-do’ types who can get things done, when what are needed are officers who understand of the complexities of war.33 The requirement is to imbue soldiers at lower and lower ranks with an understanding of the art of war at the strategic level, thereby inculcating mental agility and the ability to be creative. ‘More than ever war is a thinking man’s game. Wars … are won as much by creating alliances … reading intentions, building trust, converting opinions and managing perceptions’, as by firepower and technology.34 Thus where Clausewitz spoke of genius in war and Sun Tzu spoke of the qualities for effective command as they pertained to generals, today these attributes – as the Tofflers would have predicted – must be inculcated even among junior and non-commissioned officers.
The 2003 Iraq War (see Box 2.2) highlighted a number of important signposts about conventional landpower, many of which echoed early strategic thinking. The fighting revealed a greater degree of interdependence between air and land forces – that is, jointness – than had ever previously been achieved; it suggested the need for smaller, brigade-sized units that could fight independently; it reinforced the observation that the modern battlefield continues to empty and expand; it approached ‘simultaneity’ in operations, to give the Iraqi high command the perception it was under attack from everywhere; and it pointed to the imperative of mobility and speed on the battlefield, as well as to the need for forces to be ‘agile’ in the sense of adapting quickly to changing circumstances.
At the same time, the war underscored that precision in weapons was not enough to ensure precision of effects. In this new era of ‘firepower-centered warfare’ there would still be limitations in achieving stand-off massed effects – limitations that in the end could not obviate what Clausewitz called friction in war. ‘[N]o matter how efficient the network’, Scales argued, ‘coordinating the firepower from many dispersed locations will involve friction, confusion, and delay’.35 Indeed, the Iraq experience was such that advanced technologies, on occasion, actually exacerbated or intensified friction on the battlefield.
Box 2.2 The 2003 Iraq War
• The 2003 Iraq War demonstrated many themes about the conduct of conventional land war that have been identified by today’s strategic thinkers.
• The war began at nightfall on 20 March 2003 when US forces crossed the border from Kuwait to strike Iraqi observation posts. Events moved quickly and within 18 hours the US Army’s third infantry division had moved almost 60,000 troops to within 100 miles of Baghdad, an unprecedented distance for such a large force.
• The division was divided up into three smaller brigade combat teams, each a highly mobile self-contained close combat unit that was able to command as much ground as could an entire division during the Cold War. The overall size of coalition ground forces in the Iraq War was also substantially smaller, an attribute made possible by the radically increased precision and lethality of weapons.
• Contrary to strategic thinking at the time, heavy tanks still played a key role in the conflict, but they were backed up by numerous tank-killer helicopters armed with precision-guided munitions, along with transport helicopters capable of moving combat soldiers hundreds of miles to strike deep within enemy territory. A quintessentially ‘joint’ operation, the Iraq War was characterized by significant coalition air support to ground forces.
• The war also highlighted an unprecedented role for SOF, and cooperation between these forces and conventional ground forces.
• The 2003 Iraq War was not without its mishaps; at times, much-vaunted advanced situational awareness technology failed to reveal the true size of an Iraqi force, or when US commanders did have up-to-date information they could not transmit it quickly enough to frontline troops.
• Overall, the war was swift, agile, decisive and employed overpowering technology simultaneously in many dispersed locations at once – attributes that exemplified much of the strategic thinking about contemporary conventional landpower. Launched with the goal of regime change, the Iraq War itself ended in April 2003 when Baghdad fell into coalition hands.
• With the fall of the regime a whole new phase of low-level conflict emerged, one that required the application of strategic thought on irregular warfare.
Scholar Stephen Biddle interprets the Iraq War outcome, and indeed the changing nature in how war is conducted, in terms of what he calls ‘modern system force employment’, which first appeared during World War One. ‘The modern system’, Biddle argues, ‘is a tightly interrelated complex of cover, concealment, dispersion, suppression, small-unit independent maneuver, and combined arms at the tactical level, and depth, reserves, and differential concentration at the operational level’.36 What he means by this is a system whereby attacking forces use cover and concealment to reduce exposure, as well as dispersion and manoeuvre. At the same time, when attackers must be exposed, they are supported with suppressive fire through combined arms operations with artillery (and later, through joint operations with airpower).
The dominant technological fact of the modern battlefield, Biddle argues, is the increased lethality of battlefield weapons and it is this reality that drove the development of the modern system.37 The accompanying goal was and is to reduce the vulnerability of ground forces to the increased lethality. Through a process of trial and error, the four-year stalemate of World War One was finally overcome by replacing massed attacks in line, the norm for centuries, with the application of the modern system. The key was to work out the intricacies of controlling indirect fires and coordinating them with small-unit infantry movement. In later wars and today this concept has been taken to the next level through such things as the close air support of conventional land forces and SOF.
The modern system is extremely complex and difficult to implement. Those who master it succeed in protecting their troops while those unable to do so expose their militaries to the firepower of modern weapons. Thus during the 2003 Iraq War the United States employed its forces in ways that protected them from Iraqi firepower, whereas the Iraqis employed their forces in ways that left them exposed to the full lethality of US weapons. In essence, in the modern environment of extreme weapons lethality those militaries that do not move beyond the direct warfare of Clausewitz to the more complex indirect approach of Sun Tzu are destined to defeat.
SOF
One of the striking developments in the conduct of war during this period was the degree to which SOF and conventional forces were integrated at the tactical level. Special operations are defined by the US military as forces used to conduct operations ‘in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments to achieve military, diplomatic, informational, and/or economic objectives employing military capabilities for which there is no broad conventional force requirement’.38 Such forces have their origins in World War Two. Recognizing that the ‘ideal’ conventional force structure – infantry, armoured, artillery – possesses certain limitations, leaders created special units to undertake specific tasks, like intelligence gathering and sabotage missions to disrupt supply lines. Later, during the Cold War, SOF were used to work with indigenous forces and local populations to perform direct-action operations against hostile governments.39
But it was during the Afghan war of 2001–2002 that SOF ‘really came of age’.40 In response to the unconventional nature of the enemy in Afghanistan, America deployed SOF to call in precision air strikes by conventional airpower. SOF also worked closely with indigenous ground forces, and acted as mobile strike units to flush out fortified Taliban and al Qaeda positions. Their utility and performance in Afghanistan prompted US commanders to deploy SOF again in Iraq, operating in close conjunction with the US Army to conduct reconnaissance and provide the conventional force with up-to-date intelligence from local populations. SOF were also authorized to undertake their own operations, such as searching for scud missile launchers and WMDs, and leading Kurdish forces in the north. In these missions the tables were turned, with conventional forces supporting and enabling SOF, such as through
the provision of close air support.
Throughout the 2000s SOF were deployed in Afghanistan, and later in Libya. Today they are deployed in Iraq and Syria, in response to the threat posed by Islamic State. The appeal of SOF is not difficult to see: they offer the potential to perform vital tasks with minimal personnel and expenditure of overall resources. This is particularly attractive to leaders when responding to circumstances that do not pose a threat to vital interests – and therefore when a large force would not be politically supported – or when a large force would be the wrong choice in managing a crisis.
Viewed in the context of strategic thought on landpower it is clear that SOF are quintessentially counter to the Jominian and even Clausewitzian tradition of warfare which emphasizes mass armies and decisive battles. Indeed, the strengths of SOF can best be mapped against some key tenets of Sun Tzu’s strategic thought.41 Sun Tzu spoke of ‘extraordinary’ forces as distinct from the ‘normal forces’, where extraordinary forces are used to spring on the enemy when they least expect it. His principle of surprise is especially relevant to SOF because, lacking sustained firepower, SOF rely on surprise to achieve their mission. Gathering intelligence for strategic and tactical purposes, and adapting to and engaging the enemy at a quick turn of events are also strengths of SOF and components of Sun Tzu’s strategic thought. Finally, to achieve their mission SOF must use deception, a central tenet of Sun Tzu’s thinking. Overall, the trend toward SOF is a move away from Jomini and Clausewitz and toward the thinking and approach of Sun Tzu.
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