Sunday, June 2, 2013
4GW is Alive and Well
Based on Lind’s article, I am not sure it is clear what Lind thinks 4GW actually is. Lind mixes numerous events and activities and presents them under the umbrella of 4GW while criticizing others like TX Hammes for failing to understand 4GW’s true meaning. Lind also makes the dramatic assertion that 4GW "marks the end of Clausewitz’s definition of war as politics carried out by other means" without offering any tangible concrete evidence for his assertion. The fact that Clausewitz lived through the French Revolution and the disastrous wars it spawned suggests the opposite conclusion. In the last paragraph Lind suggests that an appropriate counter to the 4GW world is an Army that moves from "an inward-focused, centralized culture that prizes obedience over initiative to a culture that focuses outward, decentralizes to the greatest degree possible, and above all, rewards initiative."
Lind knows he is describing the Prussian-German concept of Auftragstaktik, something the US Army and Marine flag officers talk about, but neither genuinely understand nor execute. For that matter, it’s anathema to senior military leadership of the US Armed Forces. Lind’s point is valid and lots of us agree having said similar things for decades. However, the need for a new and different military command culture divorced from current practice is independent of Lind’s notions of 4GW.
In truth, as humanity becomes more sophisticated and interconnected, humans develop new tools and techniques to do the same basic things people have always wanted and needed to do. One of those things involves the constant battle between those who create prosperity and those who loot and/or enslave. Recorded history is filled with examples. For the civilized peoples it is a never-ending battle, but it’s not new. Nietzsche said it best: “History is the eternal returning of the same.”
Lind’s argument that the fabric of much of the world of states is fraying is accurate, but it’s just not new and it’s happened repeatedly in history. As Martin van Creveld noted ten years ago, there is nothing happening today in global military affairs that Marcus Aurelius would not recognize and understand. Wars waged by state or non-state actors are brutal, destructive actions conducted for the same old reasons: power, influence, wealth, resources and vanity.
If there is anything new it is “non-kinetic" cyber-warfare, existing in parallel with [not replacing] centuries-old kinetic warfare [and its hypertrophic nuclear variant], as well as, millennia-old irregular or insurgent warfare. In fact, many wars from the 100 Years’ War between England and the French to World War II involved everything from insurgency and criminality to nuclear weapons, but cyber-warfare, is a decidedly new battle space. For the moment, the terms of battle in cyber-space currently favor the Chinese, and to a lesser extent, criminal organizations fronting for the Russian government, and a host of other smaller powers. But this condition is not permanent and the advantage will shift continually in the years ahead. Yet, even in the age of cyber-warfare, there is a place whether it’s London or Boston for old-fashioned methods of espionage, sabotage, and subversion dating back to Neolithic times. Even in the age of nuclear and precision-guided stand-off weapons, there is a place [albeit a less significant one] for small arms, edged weapons, and non-explosive traps and snares as we see in Libya and Nigeria.
However, adjusting the purpose and nature of our Armed Forces as Lind seems to suggest to cope with the deteriorating economies and dysfunctional societies of places like Syria, Mexico, Nigeria or Venezuela is a dangerous mistake. Military intervention in these places is like tossing a two-gallon can of kerosene on a house fire and hoping it will put the fire out. Intervention inevitably increases the killing and suffering. Whatever our military culture becomes, we cannot rescue decaying states and lawless regions with American military power.
We cannot fight the "dirty wars" Lind is describing “nicely.” We cannot and should not fight irregulars, insurgents, terrorists or whatever you want to call them on their own territory “nicely.”
When General Sir Bernard Montgomery was a Major in Ireland in 1920, he realized this was the case with the IRA and argued for a withdrawal when most of his peers and superiors wanted to “outlast the IRA.” As he put it, only Cromwellian measures would work and those measures were unacceptable to the British public and counter-productive internationally, as well as in Ireland. Montgomery was right. If Iraq had ever been truly important to American strategic interests, we would have crushed the opposition to our unwanted occupation in a week. But it was not and like the British Army in Ireland, we withdrew.
In sum, Lind’s frustration with the misconduct of foreign and defense policy is widely shared by many of us inside and outside of the beltway. His criticism is valid. However, his confusing analysis and vague prescription are not. Thus, I am not enamored of the application of the Marxist inspired generational framework to an understanding of current, future or past warfare. 4GW, “Hybrid Warfare,” ASB and a host of other alleged concepts and ideas that are fabricated inside the beltway. They address aspects of warfare. They are not guide posts for understanding larger strategic conditions nor are they the basis for national strategy, let alone military organization, training and modernization.
The American people and those to whom they entrust the task of conducting foreign and defense policy must simply be smart enough to smell what’s being shoveled. Fortunately, it does seem the manure pile has grown so large the stench is actually waking people up.
4GW is Alive and Well
William S. Lind
Special to Slightly East of New
25 May 2013
So "the world simply didn't develop along the lines it (4GW) proposed"? How do you say that in Syriac?
The basic error in Chet Richards' piece of April 19, "Is 4GW dead?" is confusing the external and internal worlds. Internally, in the U.S. military and the larger defense and foreign policy establishment, 4GW is dead, as is maneuver warfare and increasingly any connection to the external world. The foreign policy types can only perceive a world of states, in which their job is to promote the Wilsonian nee Jacobin, follies of "democracy" and "universal human rights." They are in fact, 4GW's allies, in that their demand for "democracy" undermines states, opening the door for more 4GW.
In most of the world, democracy is not an option. The only real options are tyranny or anarchy, and when you work against tyranny, you are working for anarchy. The ghost of bin Laden sends his heartfelt thanks.
Third Generation doctrine has been abandoned, de facto, if not de jure, by the one service that embraced it, the U.S. Marine Corps. The others never gave it a glance. The U.S. military remains and will remain second generation until it disappears from sheer irrelevance coupled with high cost. That is coming much sooner than any of them think.
In the external world, meanwhile, fourth generation war is triumphing on almost all fronts. Somalia appears at the moment to be a setback. But elsewhere, the forces of stateless disorder (and there are many, not just AQ) have much to celebrate. The bottom line that defines victory or defeat for both states and non-states forces is one question: Is there a real state? A quick tour d'horizon shows spreading state failure. Libya is now effectively stateless, thanks to the "democracy" crowd in Europe and Washington. Fourth generation war is spreading from Libya into west Africa, where states are already largely fictions, Syria is now stateless. The Iraq created by the American invasion was always a Potemkin state, and 4GW there is growing fast, in part fueled from Syria. Fourth generation war is again kicking NATO's and the U.S.'s butt in Afghanistan, and entirely predictable outcome of invading the Graveyard of Empires. Far more dangerously, 4GW elements grow ever stronger in Pakistan, where the state is failing. Even in Egypt, which has been at least a proto-state for 5,000 years, the state is shaky.
In many of these cases, including Egypt and Pakistan, the only element strong enough to hold the state together is the army. But the "democracy" crowd in Washington immediately threatens aid cut-offs, sanctions, etc., if the army acts. Again, the children now running America's foreign policy are 4GW's best allies.
Fourth generation war includes far more than just Islamic "terrorism," and we see it gaining strength in areas far from the Middle East. Gangs have grown so powerful in Mexico, right on our border, that I predict the state will soon have to make deals with them, as the PRI has done in the past. Invasion by immigrants who do not acculturate is a powerful form of 4GW, more powerful than any terrorism, and that is occurring on a north-south basis (except Australia) literally around the world. Remember, most of the barbarians did not invade the Roman Empire to destroy it. They just wanted to move in. In fact, most were invited in. Sound familiar?
What should concern us most is precisely the disconnect between the internal and external worlds. Externally, 4GW is flourishing, while internally, in the US government and military, it does not exist. This is the kind of chasm into which empires can disappear.
Two quick additional notes:
1) Hammes's mis-definition of 4GW as merely insurgency as done a lot of damage because it lets the military and the government off the hook. They say, "Oh, OK, we know about that-nothing new here." That contributes to their refusal to face the reality that the state itself is in crisis.
2) As usual, Fabius Maximus has it right. I would disagree on only one point, where he says "4GW is a tool to produce political change." In part, for some 4GW elements, that is true. But 4GW is much broader than that. Many 4GW fighters are fighting for goals that have nothing to do with politics, ranging for impressing the local girls to loot to eternal salvation. Fourth generation warfare marks the end of Clausewitz's definition of war as politics carried out by other means. In many cases, it is simply "supply-side war," war driven by the large supply of young men with nothing to do but fight.
If the children now running our foreign policy and the mindless 'droids who head our armed services are ever replaced by serious adults, you will see two changes. First, our foreign policy will reflect the necessity of creating an alliance of all states against non-state, 4GW elements. Second, our armed services will focus on moving from a culture of second generation to that of the third, i.e., from an inward-focused, centralized culture that prizes obedience over initiative to a culture that focuses outward, decentralizes to the greatest degree possible, and above all, rewards initiative. Absent those two very large changes, the ship of state is going over the falls. My advice: Swim to shore while you still can.
William S. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook and director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation, where he also writes from time to time on national security issues. Many of his earlier articles (before December 2009) are archived at DNIPOGO. The views expressed here are his own.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Marine Corps Insists on High Speed ACV
The crowded sea lanes and widespread, cheap overhead surveillance, commercial, as well as, military, make the idea of maintaining tactical surprise by staying just over the horizon with an invasion fleet about as realistic as painting an elephant charcoal grey and trying to hide it in Time Square. The truth is today’s naval forces cannot conduct an amphibious assault today against even a moderately equipped enemy with an army, air force and air defenses. And, if a few amphibious tractors and helicopters made it ashore, how would these meager Marine elements meaningfully exploit the landing? The answer is clear: The Marines could not penetrate inland fast enough to either secure gains or survive.
Thus, the real question is if “force entry” with amphibious Marines is not operationally or tactically viable why do we need 3 divisions and 3 wings of Marines along with more than 30 large amphibious ships? In addition, if the Marines are going to restrict their operations to Third World areas where modern military capability does not exist – Fiji, Haiti, Belize, Liberia, Namibia etc… – then, the operations the Marines propose to conduct can be executed with far fewer Marines than we have today.
The Marine Corps has very limited maneuver/exploitation capability. It deploys two small tank battalions (33 tanks each) and four LAV (armored trucks) battalions with very limited artillery. In the words of a Naval War College Analyst: “The Marines are similar to the Jordanian Army, with one third of the Jordanian Army’s armored vehicles.”
It is force that depends heavily on air strikes for survival and effectiveness as explained in this 2004 report from Iraq:
“… in Najaf, two battalions of the Army’s tanks did what a lighter marine battalion could not, inflicting huge casualties on Mr. Sadr’s insurgents while taking almost none of their own. The 70-ton tanks and 25-ton Bradleys pushed to the gates of the Imam Ali shrine at the center of the old city. Meanwhile, the marines spent most of the fight raiding buildings far from the old city. Even so, seven marines died, and at least 30 were seriously wounded, according to commanders here, while only two soldiers died and a handful were injured.”
Alex Berenson, The New York Times, August 29, 2004
------
DoDBuzz.com
May 14, 2013
Marine Corps Insists on High Speed ACV
By Matthew Cox
U.S. Marine Corps officials told lawmakers that speed is a top requirement for its new Amphibious Combat Vehicle even if it means trading troop capacity to get it.
The Marine ACV program is designed to produce a modern ship-to-shore vehicle that’s twice as fast as the current Amphibious Assault Vehicle.
Corps officials maintain that the ACV is one it the services top modernization priorities, but lawmakers at a May 14 Senate Armed Services hearing seemed skeptical since the Marines last attempt at such an endeavor – the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle – ended in a $3 billion failure
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wanted to know “What are we doing differently this time? … When you look at the cost of the high speed in the water issue; when you look back on it in retrospect, it is just nonsense,” McCain said.
Marine officials explained that the Corps using all the lessons learned from the EFV program – which focused on achieving increased high-water speed – to ensure the same mistakes don’t occur again.
“Capabilities such as high-water speed will be weighed carefully for affordability and for trade space so we understand what we are giving up if in fact we want to achieve the high-water speed,” said Lt. Gen. Richard Mills deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, wanted to know how many Marines the new ACV will carry.
“The present AAV is designed to carry at least a squad of Marines,” Reed said. “When you look forward to the new ACV, is that going to maintain that same unit integrity?”
Marine officials said they would know more in October when the Corps is scheduled to receive a report from industry that will look trade space areas that will help program officials set requirement priorities.
“The number of Marines inside it would be one of those areas where we would look at possible trade space,” Mills said..
The ACV is capable of traveling at more than 15 knots in high water, compared to the current AAV which has a top speed of seven knots, Mills said.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Hagel: Pentagon Prepared to Make ‘Big Choices’ to Reduce Spending
By Sandra I. Erwin
The
Pentagon is not in denial about the coming austerity, Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel said. The prospect of $500 billion in sequester cuts over
the next decade, he cautioned, means sacred cows will no longer be
tolerated in the military’s budget.
In his first comprehensive policy speech since taking office, Hagel told military and civilian leaders at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., that the sequester cuts are only the beginning of what could be a steeper downturn.
“A combination of fiscal pressures and a gridlocked political process has led to far more abrupt and deeper reductions than were planned for or expected,” Hagel said April 3.
He noted that Pentagon spending has been on a downward trend for the past three years. Cuts already have been mandated in areas such as official travel and facilities maintenance, in addition to hiring freezes.
“We will have to do more,” said Hagel. “Cuts will fall heavily on maintenance and training. … Meanwhile, our investment accounts and the defense industrial base are not spared damage as we take indiscriminate cuts across these areas of the budget too.”
To soften the impact of the sequester — and of whatever other fiscal blows might come — the Defense Department must set priorities, he said. That would prepare the Pentagon to “deal with further reductions in the defense budget that could result from a comprehensive deficit reduction deal or the persistence of sequester level cuts.”
Hagel recently ordered a reexamination of the Obama administration’s 2012 strategy that calls for a “rebalancing” of the military towards Asia-Pacific and a greater emphasis on unconventional warfare and high-tech systems. This review should not be seen as a sign that the Pentagon is retrenching from its global commitments, Hagel said. At the same time, he added, budget cuts will demand adjustments in future plans. “We cannot simply wish or hope our way to carrying out a responsible national security strategy and its implementation.”
The strategy review, he said, is about “matching missions with resources. … This effort will, by necessity, consider big choices that could lead to fundamental change.”
The Defense Department can no longer afford to just tweak or chip away at existing programs and forces, he said. “We need to challenge all past assumptions, and we need to put everything on the table.”
The Pentagon should not only adjust to lower levels of spending overall, but must also address internal spending imbalances that could hollow out the military in the long run, Hagel said. “In many respects, the biggest long-term fiscal challenge facing the Department is not the flat or declining top-line budget, it is the growing imbalance in where that money is being spent internally,” he said. “Left unchecked, spiraling costs to sustain existing structures and institutions, provide benefits to personnel, and develop replacements for aging weapons platforms will eventually crowd out spending on procurement, operations and readiness — the budget categories that enable the military to be and stay prepared.”
Hagel said he agreed with former Chief of Naval Operations retired Adm. Gary Roughead, who warned that, unless spending trends are reversed, the Pentagon will become an agency that will be less about protecting the nation than one that administers benefit programs and buys only limited quantities of “irrelevant and overpriced” equipment.
“Difficult decisions and strategic prioritizing remain to be done,” Hagel said. “I am concerned that despite pruning many major procurement programs over the past four years, the military’s modernization strategy still depends on systems that are vastly more expensive and technologically risky than what was promised or budgeted for.”
Although the president exempted personnel accounts from sequestration cuts, Hagel warned of future downsizing in both military and civilian ranks. “This will involve asking tough questions such as what is the right mix of civilian and military personnel across the department. … Within the force, what is the right balance between officers and enlisted and what is the appropriate distribution of troops performing combat, support and administrative duties.”
The Pentagon’s bloated overhead structure also must be pared back, Hagel said. The military’s top-heavy organization is financially unsustainable, he said. Most current command charts date back to the early years of the Cold War, Hagel noted. “Cost and efficiency were not major considerations,” he said. “Today the operational forces of the military — measured in battalions, ships, and aircraft wings — have shrunk dramatically since the Cold War. Yet the three- and four-star command and support structures sitting atop these smaller fighting forces have stayed intact, with minor exceptions, and in some cases they are actually increasing in size and rank.”
The Pentagon’s back office also will be targeted for cuts, he said. Reductions can be expected in the office of the secretary of defense, the Joint Staff, the combatant commands and the defense agencies and field activities, as well as offices that provide health care, intelligence and contracting support.
Hagel acknowledged that his predecessors Leon Panetta and Robert Gates both made serious attempts at taming cost growth in the bureaucracies, with limited success. Although the military should not be run like a corporation, he said, “that does not mean we don’t have a good deal to learn from what the private sector has achieved over the past 20 to 30 years, in which reducing layers of upper and middle management not only reduces costs and micromanagement, it also leads to more agile and effective organizations and more empowered junior leaders.”
His call for fiscal responsibility and for changes in military posture come at a time when the Pentagon is under heavy criticism for having failed to plan for post-war spending cuts.
Current military budgets do not distinguish between "needs and wants," Benjamin Friedman, a national security analyst at the Cato Institute said at a recent conference hosted by the Project on Defense Alternatives.
A reexamination of the military structure has been long overdue, said retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor. During World War II, he said, the U.S. military had eight four-star generals and admirals leading a force of more than 15 million personnel. Today, there are 38 four-stars leading an active-duty force of 1.4 million. What is needed today, he said, is not only to cut spending but also to develop a coherent national security strategy, which has not been done since 1989.
Gordon Adams, a professor of national security at American University and a former budget official during the Clinton administration, has blasted the Pentagon for living in denial about the coming defense drawdown. The process of sequestration, he said, has compelled defense leaders to begin to set priorities, but more needs to be done.
Friedman said both Democratic and Republican administrations have conflated ideological ambitions to “fix the world” with what the nation truly needs to be secure. The United States, he noted, no longer has the financial wherewithal to continue to go down that road.
Photo Credit: Defense Dept.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the National Defense University.
In his first comprehensive policy speech since taking office, Hagel told military and civilian leaders at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., that the sequester cuts are only the beginning of what could be a steeper downturn.
“A combination of fiscal pressures and a gridlocked political process has led to far more abrupt and deeper reductions than were planned for or expected,” Hagel said April 3.
He noted that Pentagon spending has been on a downward trend for the past three years. Cuts already have been mandated in areas such as official travel and facilities maintenance, in addition to hiring freezes.
“We will have to do more,” said Hagel. “Cuts will fall heavily on maintenance and training. … Meanwhile, our investment accounts and the defense industrial base are not spared damage as we take indiscriminate cuts across these areas of the budget too.”
To soften the impact of the sequester — and of whatever other fiscal blows might come — the Defense Department must set priorities, he said. That would prepare the Pentagon to “deal with further reductions in the defense budget that could result from a comprehensive deficit reduction deal or the persistence of sequester level cuts.”
Hagel recently ordered a reexamination of the Obama administration’s 2012 strategy that calls for a “rebalancing” of the military towards Asia-Pacific and a greater emphasis on unconventional warfare and high-tech systems. This review should not be seen as a sign that the Pentagon is retrenching from its global commitments, Hagel said. At the same time, he added, budget cuts will demand adjustments in future plans. “We cannot simply wish or hope our way to carrying out a responsible national security strategy and its implementation.”
The strategy review, he said, is about “matching missions with resources. … This effort will, by necessity, consider big choices that could lead to fundamental change.”
The Defense Department can no longer afford to just tweak or chip away at existing programs and forces, he said. “We need to challenge all past assumptions, and we need to put everything on the table.”
The Pentagon should not only adjust to lower levels of spending overall, but must also address internal spending imbalances that could hollow out the military in the long run, Hagel said. “In many respects, the biggest long-term fiscal challenge facing the Department is not the flat or declining top-line budget, it is the growing imbalance in where that money is being spent internally,” he said. “Left unchecked, spiraling costs to sustain existing structures and institutions, provide benefits to personnel, and develop replacements for aging weapons platforms will eventually crowd out spending on procurement, operations and readiness — the budget categories that enable the military to be and stay prepared.”
Hagel said he agreed with former Chief of Naval Operations retired Adm. Gary Roughead, who warned that, unless spending trends are reversed, the Pentagon will become an agency that will be less about protecting the nation than one that administers benefit programs and buys only limited quantities of “irrelevant and overpriced” equipment.
“Difficult decisions and strategic prioritizing remain to be done,” Hagel said. “I am concerned that despite pruning many major procurement programs over the past four years, the military’s modernization strategy still depends on systems that are vastly more expensive and technologically risky than what was promised or budgeted for.”
Although the president exempted personnel accounts from sequestration cuts, Hagel warned of future downsizing in both military and civilian ranks. “This will involve asking tough questions such as what is the right mix of civilian and military personnel across the department. … Within the force, what is the right balance between officers and enlisted and what is the appropriate distribution of troops performing combat, support and administrative duties.”
The Pentagon’s bloated overhead structure also must be pared back, Hagel said. The military’s top-heavy organization is financially unsustainable, he said. Most current command charts date back to the early years of the Cold War, Hagel noted. “Cost and efficiency were not major considerations,” he said. “Today the operational forces of the military — measured in battalions, ships, and aircraft wings — have shrunk dramatically since the Cold War. Yet the three- and four-star command and support structures sitting atop these smaller fighting forces have stayed intact, with minor exceptions, and in some cases they are actually increasing in size and rank.”
The Pentagon’s back office also will be targeted for cuts, he said. Reductions can be expected in the office of the secretary of defense, the Joint Staff, the combatant commands and the defense agencies and field activities, as well as offices that provide health care, intelligence and contracting support.
Hagel acknowledged that his predecessors Leon Panetta and Robert Gates both made serious attempts at taming cost growth in the bureaucracies, with limited success. Although the military should not be run like a corporation, he said, “that does not mean we don’t have a good deal to learn from what the private sector has achieved over the past 20 to 30 years, in which reducing layers of upper and middle management not only reduces costs and micromanagement, it also leads to more agile and effective organizations and more empowered junior leaders.”
But
Hagel recognized that shaking up the status quo is easier said than
done. "Dramatic changes," he said, ultimately might prove to be "unwise,
untenable or politically impossible."
His call for fiscal responsibility and for changes in military posture come at a time when the Pentagon is under heavy criticism for having failed to plan for post-war spending cuts.
Current military budgets do not distinguish between "needs and wants," Benjamin Friedman, a national security analyst at the Cato Institute said at a recent conference hosted by the Project on Defense Alternatives.
A reexamination of the military structure has been long overdue, said retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor. During World War II, he said, the U.S. military had eight four-star generals and admirals leading a force of more than 15 million personnel. Today, there are 38 four-stars leading an active-duty force of 1.4 million. What is needed today, he said, is not only to cut spending but also to develop a coherent national security strategy, which has not been done since 1989.
Gordon Adams, a professor of national security at American University and a former budget official during the Clinton administration, has blasted the Pentagon for living in denial about the coming defense drawdown. The process of sequestration, he said, has compelled defense leaders to begin to set priorities, but more needs to be done.
Friedman said both Democratic and Republican administrations have conflated ideological ambitions to “fix the world” with what the nation truly needs to be secure. The United States, he noted, no longer has the financial wherewithal to continue to go down that road.
Photo Credit: Defense Dept.
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