Watching the counterinsurgency debate, I can’t help but observe two dueling strawmen. Critics of American COIN see it as armed nation-building and deride population-centric COIN as ahistorical and invalid. Some proponents of COIN respond to these criticisms by portraying the current mode of COIN as superior to a supposed alternative rooted in brutality towards the civilian population and “search and destroy” missions. In reality, however, there is no real practical difference between “enemy-centric” and “population-centric” COIN. Since COIN is a mission that matches military force against military force, it will by necessity focus on the enemy as the primary object, since it is the opponent’s presence that is causing the direct problem (as opposed to root one) that military force seeks to solve. It seems that the American COIN debate’s complications originate from factors outside of purely COIN theory and doctrine. [click to continue ...]
To expand and simplify some of the issues I raised in the last post, I want to explore in greater depth the idea of OPFOR conventional high-end asymmetric challenges. The point raised in many discussions of anti-access and denial challenges by “hybrid” threats is that conventional tactical challenges and defeats by a state or non-state OPFOR is more likely due to technology diffusion. But what would happen after tactical setbacks? What strategic effect would these have? The implicit idea, it seems, is that a tactical challenge of a modern “Task Force Smith” would result in strategic deterrence of the West. We can explore some of the problems with this in several tactical sketches. [click to continue ...]
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DOD Buzz‘s Greg Grant reports on a panel on future warfare at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS):
“The best panel at CNAS’s annual conference on national security last week featured SOCOM commander Adm. Eric Olson, CSBA’s Jim Thomas, CNAS’ John Nagl and Brookings’ Peter Singer discussing a future force for future wars. One of its conclusions: Battlefield advantage has swung back in favor of the defender (see southern Lebanon, 2006; Route Irish, Baghdad, 2004-?), which is, after all, the historical norm. With the further maturation and proliferation of long-range precision guided weaponry and attendant open-source battle command networks, warfare may be entering the “post-power projection era.””
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Good strategy is elusive. Some people can read The Art of War every day and never generate a single good strategy, while others can outthink Sun Tzu without ever opening a book. Reading can help, and so can training, but the effect is limited when an exploitable mindset prevails. Americans, for example, tend to emphasize technology and forget that every gadget comes with at least one new liability, usually several. [click to continue ...]
Commentators have outdone themselves the past few days criticizing the now-immortal Afghanistan slide. Unfortunately, they’ve largely missed the point.
What are we really looking at in the chart? (It’s available, among other places, at Small Wars Journal.) Yes, it’s a presentation slide, but the figure itself is a causal loop diagram. The presentation package merely provides the frame, and the standard debate regarding the quality of DoD presentations is, at best, secondary here. Tom Fiddaman’s thoughts at MetaSD on the utility of causal loop diagrams are much more informed, balanced, and relevant.
Regular RTJ readers will remember the article by Michael Skroch from last December titled “Modeling and Simulation of Red Teaming, Part 1.” For those who are interested in this topic, it’s worth visiting the updated Umbra site. The site offers information on the Umbra simulation engine as well as Dante, Operations Viewshed, and other related tools. As the site notes, “Umbra and derivative applications are generally export controlled, and are available for U.S. government use. Umbra may be available for universities and industries through various licensing arrangement[s].”
The intangible qualities that characterize a good red team can be difficult to measure but are arguably just as critical to success as a team’s technical proficiency. In fact, a technically proficient but arrogant red team may actually be less useful than a less proficient but more humble and adaptable one. After all, the less proficient but adaptable team can always contract the expertise it needs, particularly if it is first willing to consider and ask the right questions. [click to continue ...]
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Let’s pretend that I’m a stubborn, arrogant decision maker. My stakeholders are pressuring me to red team my current plan. The last thing I want is a red team nosing around in my business, so I decide to list the reasons why I think it’s a bad idea. (Of course, this list is just for me; I would never share it with the stakeholders.) Here’s what I’ve come up with so far: [click to continue ...]
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Red teaming remains stuck in the Wild West phase of its maturity. One of the main culprits is the lack of shared terms—a lack that makes it difficult for red teamers to compare methods, communicate insights, and, ultimately, build a consistent and structured discipline. IEEE 1471 can help. [click to continue ...]
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I have been looking forward to Dima Adamsky’s The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the United States, and Israel (very wordy title) for a while, so I was very excited when Stanford University Press sent me a review copy (I suppose I should note as a full disclosure that I regularly receive review copies from them as well as other publishers, free of charge). I have followed Adamsky’s work on the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and operational theory generally and have been eagerly awaiting his summary of how the RMA (or, the Military-Technical Revolution in Russia) concept diffused through three military cultures. [click to continue ...]
