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  • Modern Warfare Doctrine

    What is the official doctrine for warfare in the 21st century? What are possible competitors? Oh and I mean this for the United States. Also what doctrines are other nations embracing?

  • #2
    What is the official doctrine for warfare in the 21st century?

    RMA all the way. As long as we don't continue to gut our heavy forces RMA promises a level of warfighting unlike anythign ever seen before. The US's emphasis on information and information management as weapons offer the possiblities

    Remove the fog of war through intergrated battle and battlespace management. Brigade commanders will be able to use every brigade element as an information point. Higher level commanders will be able to watch brigade actions looking down, and looking up will be able to see several hundred KM, and 2+ days travel into the future via integrated multi-platform elint platforms like JSTAR, RIVET, UAV, and Satellites. This will allow US Army formations to shape the battlefield before combat both with deep strikes (air and rocket attacks) and pick the fights they want to fight.


    RMA will allow the US to spot enemy flaws,movements, attacks, defenses, traps, plans and convert natural enemy movements and actions (he thinks he is doing what he wants) into tactical-strategic-operational opportunities for the US force. Because we can identify thier main effort, reserves, and orientation we can make better use of combat assets by reducing the need for sizable reserves allowing for smaller overall forces to still enjoy force overmatch at the point of contact.


    Plus improved information management will reduce logistics friction so that line units are not out of contact for extended period to maximize combat power. Convoys and supplies can be routed more effectively. Post battle care for wounded soldiers and vehicles as the net can be used to identify the the needs and the fastest and best care/repair options and assets.

    What are possible competitors?

    4th Generation warfare theory, its hogwash and tripe. People have been trying to use asymmetric force application vs conventional forces for millenia. its nothing new. It says that too few boots on the ground and a conventional fixation have created a military that cannot successfully conduct COIN ops. it claims that info-war is over rated.

    To an extent this is true, information is great but you need boots. However as the surge proves RMA is adaptable as long as the commander is.

    Comment


    • #3
      Is there any hope in hell for any country in the next 20-30 years to come anywhere near these kind of capabilities you are talking about?
      There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don’t..

      Comment


      • #4
        Hi Zraver,

        My military education has been sadly neglected, so bear with my slightly disjointed ramblings for a moment which really only amounts to a few questions and some minor counterpoints which are probably mostly semantic at best.

        Everything you say about U.S. forces implementation of RMA is of course spot on. However, might this phenomenon still be a sub-strategic evolution at many levels?

        Could it be that ultimately, U.S. military forces, regardless of their advanced state of warfighting capabilities, still represent a simple strategic problem? One only has to go over them, under them, around them or through them to achieve victory.

        Naturally, for even the nearest competitor, going over or through is pretty much a non starter.

        However, let us consider the asessment of Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui for a moment:

        "[The Americans] have tightened up more and more so that they have shrunk into a watching tree hung full with various types of sophisticated weapon fruits waiting alone for a muddle-headed and idiotic rabbit to come and knock into it. However, after Saddam knocked himself dizzy at the bottom of this tree, who else is there who would become the second type of this rabbit?"

        Now their work has been much ballyhooed and both under and overrated by various parties, but I think the point is clear. In OIF, Saddam was required to fight because he could not afford to be perceived as weak by his own or his enemies. However, the next guy might not be so constrained in which case he may choose to maneuver around our advanced military and strike elsewhere.

        This is where I suppose 4GW, which in itself has been overrated I agree, as well as possibly ill defined, comes into play. It does not fit the current RMA as articulated by the U.S. but what if you do not have a lot of boots to put on the ground in the first place?

        For instance Bin Laden did not have enough resources to take the RMA on frontally so he strategically attacked around it. Many other parties appear to be attacking around our forces right now with counterfeit currency, cyber attacks, industrial espionage, etc.

        As to information and its influence on warfare, I feel again that you are spot on in your asessment. However, there are two pitfalls herein. First, are we really at that much of an advantage for INFOWAR in all its facets appears to be, for lack of a better phrase, an isotropic plane. Secondly, our huge leaps forward in BM4CISRxyz, etc. would still appear to be particularly vulnerable to the other guy's C3D2. I might possibly be overrating the latter threat but what do you think on the matter?

        I guess what I am getting at in the big picture is that could our vast force on force superiority very possibly "drive prospective buyers out of the marketplace", so to speak, and potentially dilute the value of our monopoly in that regard?

        In the foreseeable security climate, is there/what is a/the point of diminishing returns on the track that U.S. forces are evolving along?

        Hope you have a good evening.

        Regards,

        Willliam
        Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by WhamBam View Post
          Is there any hope in hell for any country in the next 20-30 years to come anywhere near these kind of capabilities you are talking about?

          Several countries already are, its just a matter of money. Russia, China, Iran, India, Israel, and Pakistan all have RMA capabilities to some degree. None have the US budget of course but they are doing what they can.

          Plus nations ar elooking at ways to handicap RMA capable forces. Weapons like the R-77 to kill high-value air platforms, development of the Pak-FA,AESA based AWACS, Kolchuga EMS etc all offer various threats to us long term. We really really need more F-22's. We also need to not cut our defense spending something I fear we are about to do to finance Hillary Care.

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          • #6
            William, what you said about 4GW is good old fashioned guerrilla warfare. it is still an attempt to place strength on weakness. 9-11 did massive damage t the economy but it was all phantom pain. Don't ge tme me wrong hundreds of thousands of people lost thier jobs and a mountain of money was lost of never made but in the end except for a few buildings we didn't loses anything real. All of our bridges and factories power plants ect. were still here. We didn't even lose information thanks to off site storage. 4th GW does not offer the possibility to affect long term damage to its target on anything like the same level. And the only way to win a war is to hurt the enemy so bad he cries uncle.

            Barring the introduction of a nuke or other large scale WMD attack or a FOBs attack this is the weakness of 4GW offensively. Its like slapping a guy who is a black belt, bigger than you and using both fist and feet. When the fight is over he has a hand print across his face and he can taste blood, but your lying in a pool of it with shattered bones.

            On top of the US advantage in RMA is our fixation with breaking things. The US is like a 10yo boy licking over ant mounds when it comes to the tendency we have for going after things like bridges, power stations, communications hubs we don't just go after enemy military assets but after every single dual use target we can think of so that by the end our enemy is not just beaten but ruined. The US can and has undune half a centuries worth of infrastructure building in 30 days.

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            • #7
              Frankly, all USA needs to do is ramp up military production. Nothing beats quantity like else! I mean take a look at military weapons during WWII. Germans had developed superior tanks such as Panzer III to US Sherman, Messermicth 229 to p-51 Mustang and yet USA kicked Germany's ass because of superior production and logistics. All this talk about revolutionary RMAs, assymetric warfare, blah blah blah, only applies to regions where there is no conventional armies, not enough strategic importance to justify the expense. In other words, we are trying to fight a war on the cheap. War is not cheap nor will ever be. If I was in USA's shoes, in order to be better next time, I will continue to make sure that US Army remain the premier force, increase its sealift capabilities, ramp up production to ensure a qualitative quantity and reduce the national deficit and debt so we can afford to fight the next war that secures our national security interests. Moreover, we should contain regional conflicts in one region and keep it from spreading around and let them burn themselves out.

              If an enemy wants to use guerrilla tactics against us, no problem. We will bomb their base of operations & support to stone age. I mean, aside from the Iraq War, Al Queda was really on the run and its ability to plan out on the scale of 9/11 was really limited just because we changed our tactics and took out their base of operations that could fund these grand scale attacks. Right they are now limited to small scale attacks, while causing hundreds of casualties, that are pinpricks in the grand strategic scheme.

              If we really want to hurt the Islamic jihadists bad, we can always stop buying Arabian or Muslim oil and watch their economies crash down and their funding dry up in the absence of cash.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Blademaster View Post
                Frankly, all USA needs to do is ramp up military production. Nothing beats quantity like else!
                1- we already spend more than anyone else

                2- recruitment has to match production or all you get is stockpiles.

                3- Any long term budget has to be sustainable



                [/quote]I mean take a look at military weapons during WWII. Germans had developed superior tanks such as Panzer III to US Sherman, Messermicth 229 to p-51 Mustang and yet USA kicked Germany's ass because of superior production and logistics.[/quote]

                It can be argued I think correctly that Magic/Ultra, OSS, high speed recon planes like the Mosquito/P-38, Radar, sonar all played as big of roles or perhaps bigger roles than the Sherman tanks. These info-war precursors paved the way to victory.


                All this talk about revolutionary RMAs, assymetric warfare, blah blah blah, only applies to regions where there is no conventional armies, not enough strategic importance to justify the expense. In other words, we are trying to fight a war on the cheap.
                450 billion is not cheap, what we have done is to create a force that spends treasure rather than blood in achieving the same result.

                War is not cheap nor will ever be.
                Here we agree 100%, but there are different ways to pay the bill.


                If I was in USA's shoes, in order to be better next time, I will continue to make sure that US Army remain the premier force, increase its sealift capabilities,
                vs who? Why exacly do we need Cold War era sea lift capability right now with no existing threat or mission for said capability?

                ramp up production to ensure a qualitative quantity and reduce the national deficit and debt so we can afford to fight the next war that secures our national security interests.
                ramping up production and recruitment to mate soldiers to equipment requires positive spending (spending more), reducing the deficit and debt requires negative spending (spending less). The two almost exclude each other in the short term. Plus there are federal entitlements that must be met first.

                Moreover, we should contain regional conflicts in one region and keep it from spreading around and let them burn themselves out.
                If possible yes, but we live in a global world with a high degree of transnational mobility.

                If an enemy wants to use guerrilla tactics against us, no problem. We will bomb their base of operations & support to stone age. I mean, aside from the Iraq War, Al Queda was really on the run and its ability to plan out on the scale of 9/11 was really limited just because we changed our tactics and took out their base of operations that could fund these grand scale attacks. Right they are now limited to small scale attacks, while causing hundreds of casualties, that are pinpricks in the grand strategic scheme.
                Bombs alone cannot stop a movement.

                If we really want to hurt the Islamic jihadists bad, we can always stop buying Arabian or Muslim oil and watch their economies crash down and their funding dry up in the absence of cash.
                One day hopefully yes, but right now we are addicted to oil.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by zraver View Post
                  Bombs alone cannot stop a movement.
                  I would argue that it's simply a matter of not enough bombs ;)

                  I understand, more or less, the concept you described (though I'm not sure what RMA stands for) but what is the future military doctrine? turning every soldier into an information processing center that organically integrates with others around him? That seems like micro. What about macro? On the level of divisions? Are we looking at independent formations acting organically in a fluid mobility fashion, where the entire force is capable of outmanouevering any opponent simply through superior information, and then strike his weak spot?

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Feanor View Post
                    I understand, more or less, the concept you described (though I'm not sure what RMA stands for)
                    Revolution in Military Affairs

                    but what is the future military doctrine? turning every soldier into an information processing center that organically integrates with others around him? That seems like micro. What about macro? On the level of divisions?
                    The US seems to be using the Brigade as the new anchor point formation. information flows up and down from this point. while still under overall command form a higher HQ a Us field army should now be able to see and control a box several hundreds of kilometers in depth denying any enemy conventional force freedom of movement.

                    Are we looking at independent formations acting organically in a fluid mobility fashion, where the entire force is capable of outmanouevering any opponent simply through superior information, and then strike his weak spot?
                    pretty much, but thats the end result where it all comes together.

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                    • #11
                      Just joined the board and this looked like an interesting thread. RMA is more a concept on how to train and equip the warfighters. The actual doctrine would be net-centric warfare, which utilizes the RMA technologies described above to achieve essentially a warfighting economy of scale-- generate effects that are disproportionate to the fielded forces (more with less).

                      The macro doctrine is best described as "unified action", whether we are unifying the actions of interagency players, coalition partners, or joint services. The problem is the US tends to utilize military assets for foreign policy more than most countries. This leads to a wide range of military option that can only be covered by a generic doctrine like "unified action."

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                      • #12
                        *** sigh *** On this thread, I can count possibly four (including myself) who've read FM 3.0 Operations. There's the hint.

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                        • #13
                          I've read just a bit of 3-0, but a whole lot of Joint Pub 1.

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                          • #14
                            At what point does all this information become too much information and cripple rather than enable decision making? No matter how perfect the systems are, we will never see 100% of everything, let alone properly interpret everything. How, then, will all of this information impact a commander who still has to make timely decisions? Does this eliminate the "fog" or just add a new layer for a commander?

                            Additionally, knowing everything about what's going on invites micromanagement to ridiculous levels. Now, sometimes the ability to reach down through several echelons of command to exercise the "Directed Telescope" can allow for fast reaction to timely intelligence and so forth. On the other hand, it also leads to battalion TOCs sending messages to individual trucks asking why they stopped. That's not a good product, and promotes, rather than removes, friction on the battlefield.

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by ofogs View Post
                              At what point does all this information become too much information and cripple rather than enable decision making? No matter how perfect the systems are, we will never see 100% of everything, let alone properly interpret everything.
                              ofogs, Agree 100% with your point, when you talk an RMA centered on information the goal is either to achieve 100% accuracy (Cebrowski & Garstka, "NCW: It's origins and future" Proceedings Jan 1998) or simply to achieve information dominance (the goal as stated in US Joint Doctrine). This may sound geeky, but I think the proponents of NCW tend to fall into a trap that Clausewitz mentions, namely not understanding the difference between war in theory and war in practice.

                              You are also correct about micromanagement at ridiculous levels. It is a problem in all US services and the benefit in time does not outweigh the loss of organizational initiative, but I think the issue is with the commanders that micromanage, not because more information is available. Maybe we are seeing information actually replacing the Clausewitzian concept of military genius?

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