KOW readers are probably familiar with General Mattis’ recent Assessment of Effects Based Operations. Executive Summary: it’s rubbish; don’t use it any more. Not surprisingly, this ruffled a lot of feathers in the places where they wear wings on their uniforms. Now I see in Air Force Magazine the push-back: Improvization Won’t Do It.
Mattis, a well-regarded infantry officer, penned his memo with the specific goal of banishing EBO from joint affairs. As he said in a companion paper, “Effective immediately, USJFCOM will no longer use, sponsor, or export” any EBO terms or concepts.
He claims EBO assumes unachievable predictability and requires unattainable knowledge. As he observed in an earlier speech, “I will sum up in three words what I have learned about fighting over the last 30 years: improvise, improvise, improvise.”
For USAF, this is a big deal. EBO-type thinking entered joint doctrine a few years ago and has supporters in all services. Even so, it was USAF’s brainchild and is a good fit with airpower’s attributes of speed, range, precision, and flexibility. Failure to continue EBO doctrine development could inhibit full USAF contributions to the joint force.
Land force critics plainly have a hard time understanding the concept. (In Mattis’ paper, variations of the word “confusion” appear nine times.) This appears especially true in maneuver forces—infantry and armor units that aspire to “close with and destroy the enemy force” in close combat. USAF Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, a key architect, argues EBO is a “fairly simple” thing. He concedes, however, that some have distorted it and made and made it more complex than need be.
Meanwhile, in the latest issue of Orbis there are two must read papers. The first is by H.R. McMaster ‘Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War’. Extract below:
War is the final auditor of military institutions. Contemporary conflicts—such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq—provide opportunities for military innovation due to the urgent need for feedback based on actual experience.1 Analysis of the present, combined with an understanding of history, should allow the defense official to meet what Sir Michael Howard called the challenge to “steer between the danger of repeating the errors of the past . . . and the danger of remaining bound by theories deduced from past history although changes in conditions have rendered these theories obsolete.”2 In order to do this, we should improve dramatically the quality of our thinking about war. Understanding the continuities as well as changes in the character of armed conflict will help us make wise decisions about force structure, develop relevant joint force capabilities, and refine officer education and the organization, training, and equipping of our forces.
Such an effort might begin with an explicit rejection of the unrealistic, abstract ideas concerning the nature of future conflict that gained wide acceptance in the 1990s but have been thoroughly discredited in recent and ongoing experiences. Flush with the ease of the military victory over Saddam’s forces in the 1991 Gulf War and aware of the rapid advance of communications, information, and precision munitions technologies, many observers argued that U.S. competitive advantages in these technologies had brought about a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Many argued that if these technologies were pursued aggressively, military forces could “skip a generation” of conflict and achieve “full-spectrum dominance” over potential adversaries well into the future. It was assumed that, based on the military technological advantages the United States already enjoyed, there would be “no peer competitor” of U.S. military forces until at least 2020. In the near future, U.S. forces would achieve “dominant battlespace knowledge.” Military concepts based on this assumption promised rapid, low-cost victory in future war. U.S. technological advances would “lock out” potential adversaries from the “market” of future conflict. Ultimately, these ideas and their corollary of reduced reliance on military manpower became subsumed under “defense transformation.”3
One might think that experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have administered a corrective to these overconfident predictions. Our track record in learning from even our most proximate experiences, however, is not encouraging. Even before these particular conflicts, faith in the orthodoxy of defense transformation grew despite experiences that revealed fundamental flaws and false assumptions, such as the U.S. experience in Somalia from 1992-1994 and the NATO experience in Kosovo in 1999. RMA advocates “validated” new operational concepts in joint experiments that used attrition-based computer simulations against mirror-imaged future adversaries. These concepts separated war from its political, cultural, and psychological context; military campaigns in these simulations were largely reduced to targeting exercises. Concept developers, doctrine writers, and the military’s battle labs focused on how U.S. forces might prefer to fight and then assumed that preference was relevant to the problem of future war. It is past time to reject the flawed concepts of the 1990s.
Defense transformation advocates never considered conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq in which our troops are now engaged—protracted counterinsurgency and state-building efforts that require population security, security-sector reform, reconstruction and economic development, building governmental capacity, and establishing the rule of law. The disconnect between the true character of these conflicts and entrenched prewar visions of future war helps explain the lack of planning for the aftermath of both invasions. It also explains why it took so long to adapt to the shifting character of the conflicts after initial military operations removed the Taliban and Baathist regimes from power; why the overextension and strain on U.S. land forces was described as a temporary “spike”; why senior military and defense officials resisted reinforcing forces that were overtasked; and why leaders repeatedly denied the need to expand the size of the Army and Marine Corps despite the strain on these forces from the difficulty of conducting simultaneous counterinsurgency campaigns in two diverse theaters.4
…
Prior to 9/11, defense analysis founded on a ‘‘capabilities-based’’ approach reinforced shallow thinking about war and disconnected war from policy and strategy. The belief that surveillance and information technology could lift the fog of war elevated a desired military capability to the level of strategy. Bad habits and flawed thinking developed in peacetime carried over into wartime as military operations were not clearly subordinated to comprehensive plans that aimed to achieve policy goals and objectives. Proponents of capabilities-based analysis argued that: [T]he United States cannot know with confidence what nation, combination of nations, or non-state actors will pose threats to vital U.S. interests or those of our allies and friends decades from now. . . . A capabilities-based paradigm—one that focuses more on how an adversary might fight than on whom the adversary might be and where a war might occur—broadens the strategic perspective.5 In practice, capabilities-based analysis was narrow and focused on how the United States would prefer to fight and then assumed that preference was relevant. Operational concepts acknowledged ambiguity in the strategic environment but assumed U.S. technological advantages would allow the military to solve complex strategic problems through the precise application of military force. The elevation of tactical capabilities to strategy skipped the operational level of war that ‘‘links the tactical employment of forces to national and military and strategic objectives.’’6 The principal lesson of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and southern Lebanon might be that military campaigns must be subordinate to strategic plans that integrate political, military, diplomatic, economic, and informational efforts. It is illogical to acknowledge an uncertain, unpredictable strategic environment, yet believe in assured results in military operations.
Among the great things about Orbis (one of my favourite journals) is that they don’t leaver you hanging. If you’re looking for an example of ‘flawed concepts of the 1990s’… well just turn the page where you’ll find this other must read piece by Air Force General David Deptula ‘Air and Space power, Lead Turning, the Future‘. Extract below:
Just as combat tomorrow will look different than it did yesterday and does today, so too should the military with which we prosecute it. We should take maximum advantage of the asymmetric capabilities America possesses with her air, space, and cyber forces. A concerted focus on further developing and expanding these forces would serve the United States well, as they are uniquely positioned to underpin the kind of defense strategy and force structure appropriate to America’s future.
Capabilities employed through air, space, and cyberspace allow the United States to project precision effects over great distances, with asymmetries and speed not available in any other domains. They allow America’s military to project power while minimizing vulnerability—decreasing the requirement to put surface forces at risk. Adversaries have a limited opportunity to contest U.S. presence when we are delivering effects from outside their reach, and often operating outside their awareness. These circumstances also impose a psychological advantage not available any other way.
Additionally, the nature of America’s air, space, and cyber systems is such that they can be directed, redirected, pre-positioned, repositioned, and even recalled. They offer virtually limitless targeting possibilities, both in the effects levied and the recipients they can be levied upon. Air, space, and cyber systems deliver the kind of flexibility in which the United States should be making substantial investment—both in planning, and system acquisition—as they provide options that will be key to America’s future security.
I am sure Deptula is a smart guy. And I agree that where it is possible we should try to fight to our strengths one of which is undoubtedly air power. But the ‘other side’ clearly recognizes this advantage and, quite sensibly, tries rather hard (and with a good deal of success) not to be the nail for the USAF hammer. The paper bugs me. I would not mind if I thought Deptula was making an intellectually honest argument about air power and national strategy. Unfortunately; I don’t think he is; actually, I think he is promoting the corporate interests of the Air Force over actual national security needs. What’s depressing is that while McMaster may be right, I fear that Deptula has heavier firepower. With the economy in trouble what will politicians think is good value for money? What the USAF wants may make no difference in the GWOT but it can generate lots of votes. See Democrats Balking at Personnel Increases as Military Budget Crunch Looms:
“We need to strengthen our military forces, not by numbers, but by ability, through training and equipment and technology,” said Akaka. “In this 21st century, we’ll slim down personnel, we’ll improve their readiness, we’ll have better equipment.”
…
John P. Murtha , D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said that plans to increase by 2013 the end strength of the Army and Marine Corps by 65,000 and 27,000 troops, respectively, must be scaled back to pay for rebuilding the military after seven years of war and buying weapons for the future.
“[The Defense Department] is going to have to cut personnel in order to pay for procurement. . . . I don’t know that they are going to be able to keep growing the Army,” said Murtha, adding, “Personnel costs are out of control.”
(hattip to Armchair Generalist who posted about this article ages ago. It’s been rattling around in my brain for a while)
Getting back to Deptula, he writes ’Capabilities employed through air, space, and cyberspace allow the United States to project precision effects over great distances, with asymmetries and speed not available in any other domains.’
As one of my students commented:
Neat! He has appropriated a term that was coined to explain the insurgent’s comparative success (‘asymmetric warfare’) and applied it to the counterinsurgent, much as the aborigine ate the enemy’s liver, or the US bomber crew named its aircraft ‘Lili Marlene’.
The logic might go like this: bin Laden was able to do a great deal with very little. How? Asymmetry! Okay, we’ll name our next-generation fighter the F-36 Asymmetry, and we’ll whup his ass!
Now that’s good marketing.
Saturday, 25, October, 2008 at 4:17 pm |
Let me correct your misperception regarding “…promoting the corporate interests of the Air Force over actual national security needs.” First, the only reason for the existance of the Services is to serve our national security needs–there are no “corporate interests” in the Air Force other than national security.
Second, let me make you aware of the context for these papers that were published in ORBIS. They were originally prepared for a conference held at the NAVAL WAR COLLEGE, 14-15 Nov 07 with the subject being “DEFENSE STRATEGY AND FORCES: Setting Future Directions.” My paper was presented on the panel designated to specifically address air and space forces–ergo the focus on that topic. However, go back and read what I said up front “What is needed—particularly in these times of increasingly complex national security challenges, rising costs, and shrinking budgets—is a plan for going forward that is centered on a shared vision of the variety of threat conditions we are likely to face, an honest evaluation of their significance, and a mature appraisal of what will be required to deal with them. We should dedicate ourselves to crafting an overall defense strategy that will allow us to shape the environment and act flexibly across the entire range of operations, and that will also provide a framework upon which to base our jointly focused resource and investment decisions.”
To meet our Nation’s security needs we require the competencies resident in each one of our Services. That’s the strength of our joint approach to the conduct of warfare…it allows a joint force commnader to select the appropriate force elements to meet the needs of a particular contingency. Beware of those that advocate only one mode of warfare to address only one segment of the conflict spectrum. As a nation, we must be prepared to operate in contingencies across the spectrum of operations. That’s why we need each of our services to focus on building and maintaining their core competancies. Nations don’t have a good track record of anticipating the conflicts that they end up fighting.
With respect to your student’s accusation that the use of the term “asymmetric” as applied to America’s airpower was somehow “appropriated [as] a term that was coined to explain the insurgent’s comparative success.” With a little bit of research you and he may have discovered that is not the case. In my testimony on the subject of service modernization before the House Armed Services Committee, Military Procurement Subcommittee, on 28 March 2001–before counterinsurgeny operations became the topic of interest that they are today–I refer to U.S. airpower as one of America’s asymmetric advantages several times. If you don’t believe U.S. military leadership on the subject then perhaps you might be interested to hear what the Taliban have to say. The following is a conversation between two Taliban insurgents that was recently declassified…”Tanks and armor are not a big deal–the planes are the killers. I can handle everything but the jet fighters.”
Finally, I embrace honest discourse with folks that hold different perspectives. As a previous joint force commander I have commanded personnel in combact from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. I understand and appreciate the values of all the military services, so please don’t question my “intellectual honesty” when it comes to what I believe is best to meeting the needs of our Nation’s security. I’ve spent 34 years committed to doing that. Ad honimen attacks on individuals motives reflect more on the inability of writer to honestly debate than on the perspectives of the individual attacked.
Sunday, 26, October, 2008 at 4:11 am |
“there are no “corporate interests” in the Air Force other than national security. ”
Sir, you have every right to object to ad hominem attacks and thank you for your comments. But please remember that some of us are civilians – and are cynical about organizations. We believe that all groups (including the military) have ”corporate interests”.
Sunday, 26, October, 2008 at 10:12 am |
Beware of those that advocate only one mode of warfare to address only one segment of the conflict spectrum.
Well, we certainly agree on that point. Blue skies! — Dan Ford (the student with the big mouth)
Sunday, 26, October, 2008 at 12:14 pm |
General, thanks for visiting this site. You are right about ad hominem. It’s unbecoming and I apologize. I hope that you return, however, for we do have a disagreement and I welcome the opportunity to discuss it with you here.
You quote the two Taliban commanders saying ‘Tanks and armor are not a big deal–the planes are the killers. I can handle everything but the jet fighters.’ But as Charles Dunlap wrote a month ago starting with that same quote the Taliban does have a response to that asymmetry in the form of propaganda.
That strategy is working very well for them. We’re not on the brink of strategic defeat in Afghanistan because we are threatened with a Khe Sanh or Dien Bien Phu. One of the reasons we’re at this point is that there are not enough troops on the ground to do the sorts of things which are needed to convince Afghans that they should be on our side, like providing security, a modicum of responsible governance, and the chance to build a sustainable economy. That requires our long-term physical presence on the ground in close contact with the population. We are forced by tactical exigency to replace manpower with firepower in ways that undermine the strategic aim.
I do not deny air power’s ability to enable Western armies to produce massive combat power with relatively few troops. The problem is that this is less than half the job. Iraq and Afghanistan are a testament to the folly of judging the likelihood of strategic success on the basis of the ability to generate raw combat power. In your paper you write:
‘Capabilities employed through air, space, and cyberspace allow the United States to project precision effects over great distances, with asymmetries and speed not available in any other domains. They allow America’s military to project power while minimizing vulnerability—decreasing the requirement to put surface forces at risk. Adversaries have a limited opportunity to contest U.S. presence when we are delivering effects from outside their reach, and often operating outside their awareness. These circumstances also impose a psychological advantage not available any other way.’
I’m sorry if I am labouring under a misapprehension about what you mean. This seems to me to be the ‘never put a man where you can put a bullet’ logic which has been strategically debilitating for a long time—as far back as Vietnam, about which John Paul Vann said as early as 1962:
‘This is a political war, and it calls for the utmost discrimination in killing. . . The best weapon for killing is a knife, but I’m afraid we can’t do it that way. The next best is a rifle. The worst is an airplane, and after that the worst is artillery. You have to know who you are killing.’
I simply do not see air power generating significant psychological awe in our opponents. Actually the opposite is frequenty in evidence as seen, for example, in an interview in the Times newspaper with a Islamist radical following the 7 July 2005 terrorist bombing of the London Underground: ‘We do not have tanks or rockets, but we have something superior—our exploding Islamic bombs.’
We are not delivering effects from outside their reach. What we have generated is a propagandic ‘own goal’ of huge proportions with the United States and Britain viewed widely with a mixture of disrespect and contempt. It’s not just me saying this. Both the current and previous secretaries of defence have recognized this vital asymmetry. In February 2006 in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations Donald Rumsfeld noted:
‘Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today’s media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government, has not adapted. Consider that the violent extremists have established media relations committees – these are terrorists and they have media relations committees that meet and talk about strategy, not with bullets but with words. They’ve proven to be highly successful at manipulating the opinion elites of the world. They plan and design their headline grabbing attacks using every means of communication to intimidate and break the collective will of free people.’
It seems to me that one of the reasons the other side is having such success with the purposeful shaping of the beliefs and ideas of others is that we persist in handing them the ammunition they require.
Meanwhile, in the context of a contracting economy hard choices will be made about how defence spending ought to be divvied up amongst the services. Money spent on one capability will not be available for another. From the Murtha quote I used it seems to me the choice as far as some lawmakers are concerned is between technology and personnel. You’ve made a case that air and space power represents greater value for money. I apologize for suggesting that you place the institutional interests of the Air Force above the nation’s security. But I do think that your judgment is wrong and that the consequence of beggaring the Army’s Peter, in particular, to pay for the USAF’s Paul will be a diminishment of the nation’s security.
Sunday, 26, October, 2008 at 4:05 pm |
[...] over to Kings of War, where General Deptula has joined the debate. Good [...]
Monday, 27, October, 2008 at 11:10 am |
I was surprised to see that Colin Gray, in his 1999 book ‘Modern Strategy’, uses asymmetry in the same sense that Gen Deptula does–i.e., a weapon that the other guy doesn’t have. So in that sense the Harrier was asymmetric, since there was no other jump-jet in the sky.
More recently though the term has been applied to a type of warfare in which the weaker party (most often a non-state actor) attacks the stronger in ways that nullify his strengths, as by hijacking an airliner and flying it into the World Trade Center. Since I came more recently to this subject than did Dr Betz or Gen Deptula, that was my only understanding of the term. Thus my mockery of the F-36 Asymmetry.
I do think we’d be helped if we restricted the word to the more recent use, so as not to be fooled into thinking we were countering al Qaeda’s asymmetry by ordering up a newer or more lethal piece of hardware.
In 1954-55 I was a student at Manchester, where one of my friends was a veteran of the British army in Korea. He remarked on the different styles of war between our two forces, such that when a British platoon came under sniper fire, the sergeant dispatched one man to find and kill the sniper, while the Americans radioed for div arty to destroy the grove in which the sniper was concealed. So the US fondness for heavy machinery over individual marksmanship goes back before Vietnam, at least to Korea.
Blue skies! — Dan Ford
Monday, 27, October, 2008 at 2:58 pm |
Here is H. R. McMaster on the subject at hand: Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War. Blue skies! — Dan Ford
Friday, 31, October, 2008 at 3:48 am |
Let me preface comment by saying that I’m just a humble medical student with no military experience. Military history has been merely a past-time/hobby to me for the past 13 years.
While it is true that our insurgent enemies have targeted our weakness for hi-tech since Vietnam, the argument that we should thus switch our resources to low-tech/counterinsurgency/manpower has two flaws. First, there is a logical tendency to take for granted all of our current firepower, and forget that it results from previous resource and time intensive research efforts. Essentially, if we had not invested in high-tech, our current enemies would not be insurgents, they would be equals. In order to insure that our future enemies remain insurgents and not equals, we must continue investing in hi-tech.
Secondly, it seems to me that preparing for the most dangerous enemy is more important that preparing for the most common or probable enemy.
No one can predict what the most dangerous enemy of the future is, but since the only force capable of really hurting us is a doppelganger of our current military, it makes sense for us to invest in research to create an army that can wreak havoc with our own current military structure. The most probable enemy we will face is an insurgent. As the current wars show, it has taken us a relatively short time to fund, research, and field the personnel/technology/tactics necessary to defeat an insurgency. I suspect though that it would take a lot longer to field the revolutionary technology necessary to defeat a mirror version of the U.S. military industrial complex (which is what all major competitor nation states are trying to achieve, regardless of how far they may be from that objective)
As a doctor, sure, I would know how to deal headache-causing migraines (the insurgents of medical care). However, I would be spending all my time and money researching how to fix headache-causing strokes and cancers because even though they occur rarely, they’re much more severe conditions. Migraine headaches are after all, relatively minor occurrences.
Saturday, 8, November, 2008 at 11:53 pm |
Of particular interest to this debate is the opinion of T.X. Hammes in the most recent “National Interest” (Nov/Dec 08) with an article entitled “The Art of Petraeus”. While he sorts out the debate on conventional versus counterinsurgency warfare currently underway in the U.S. military establishment, he makes several critical points. First, “Petraeus’ real legacy is that of a general who understood and then adapted to fight the war he was in.” Which in turn leads to the idea that clear delineations between types of war in the future are a fallacy, they will be hybrid wars. We should be prepared to fight across a spectrum of conflicts with the requisite flexibility. Finally, there will be no such things as simple solutions. However, I should Hammes speak for himself, so read the article if you are interested.
However, I do believe that the capabilities desired by General Deptula are inherent and necessary for the U.S. for they do force opponents to counter with weaker strategies, or at least ones less tested.