Comments on: Battles of Military Doctrine

By: Dave Dilegge

Dave Dilegge — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:01:35 +0000

I get the impression that you have a strong opinion here, Dave.

Ya think?

By: zen

zen — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:50:28 +0000

Hi guys,
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Wow! Fantastic comments all around -especially Dave’s. I’m not dismissing the memo and I am neither an expert in nor an uncritical supporter of EBO but I’ll respond to a couple of your key points:
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"Ok, you try and isolate the enemies army by bombing C4ISR nodes, key leadership, political and intelligence facilities, and so on. What happens when the Army cannot be easily identified like we have seen in OIF and OEF? What happens when you cannot target easily? "
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I’d say that’s not a time to use an EBO based operational strategy and such enormous gaps in knowledge themselves point to an overriding, urgent, need to make intelligence a high priority and that air power is probably best considered for a support role. EBO was best suited for attacking modern, urban, complex, industrial to information based societies but the caveat is - and has been since the great Strategic Bombing Survey - that the reach of strategic bombing has historically always exceeded the promised grasp.
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It’s very hard to permanently knock out "critical nodes" from the air or forsee the actual redundancies built into complex systems ( frankly, we don’t even really know where all of our own redundancies are until some disaster strikes, much less somebody else’s). That said, EBO type air attacks have caused measurable and important degradation of enemy systems of command and control, power, civilian communications etc. and forced adversaries into expensive investments like laying fiber optic cable communication lines and deep "super-bunker" construction projects ( which just basically tell us where they are going to hide initially). We don’t want to go overboard in the other direction.
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"Attacking and measuring nodes as part of a physical infrastructure that have signatures are one thing - they can be hit kinetically and the effects have hard metrics. It is another thing when you add in the social infrastructre or human element of warfare. "
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Very true. Human social systems are among the most complex ( akin to say, planetary climate) imaginable in terms of predictive modeling. That there are secondary and transient sociopolitical effects in war is certain but calculating what is essentially more art than science ( psychological warfare) ahead of time or in real time is unlikely to ever be possible. Too many variables, most of which are unknown. A pruning back here of EBO to a reality-based, quantifiable domain, approach would be good.
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"EBO was nothing more than a bumper sticker con job that kept a lot of otherwise useless people employed full time at tax payers expense. And that is a crying shame if not criminal."
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I get the impression that you have a strong opinion here, Dave.

By: Dave Dilegge

Dave Dilegge — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:47:09 +0000

I’ll make this simple - and I had to fight the EBO battle from its inception - first as an assistant to LtGen Van Riper and then as a Marine rep on a USMC - USJFCOM cosponsored program - General Mattis did the right thing.

For those inclined to dismiss his memo I enjoin you to clear your head of all preconceived notions and read each line. Effects have been part of military operations since Christ was a corporal - JFCOM bastardized the whole meaning of effects - cheered on by the Air Force. Attacking and measuring nodes as part of a physical infrastructure that have signatures are one thing - they can be hit kinetically and the effects have hard metrics.

It is another thing when you add in the social infrastructre or human element of warfare. JFCOM attempted to plop one template over the other and complicated the whole process by touting Operantional Net Assessment - ONA - an automated system that would spit out metrics for the entire network - real time.

EBO was nothing more than a bumper sticker con job that kept a lot of otherwise useless people employed full time at tax payers expense. And that is a crying shame if not criminal.

By: Ski

Ski — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:10:34 +0000

I think the entire military has become too infatuated with new doctrines, new concepts, and anything that sounds cool. It’s been a trend since the end of the Cold War, and I for one am glad that Mattis has deep-sixed EBO for the time being.

The old story of Napoleon’s corporal should apply to any new doctrine, theory, concept or invention when it applies to military affairs. If it’s too complex to be understood by a 21st Century American specialist, it’s probably going to confuse a whole lot of other people as well.

I was never sold on EBO - mainly because it just gave another name to strategic bombing if one uses Warden’s "Checkmate" plan in ODS as an example. Ok, you try and isolate the enemies army by bombing C4ISR nodes, key leadership, political and intelligence facilities, and so on. What happens when the Army cannot be easily identified like we have seen in OIF and OEF? What happens when you cannot target easily?

It’s clear to me at least that the nature of warfare is in flux today, and there are a seemingly endless string of new theories, ideas and concepts to try and identify these new trends. From EBO to NCW to 4GW to Hybrid War to Mosaic War…I can keep going…it’s become a vast miasma of jumbled thought, theory and what if’s. We are so quick to try and identify these trends that we don’t allow them to play out to see if they are really trends or just blips on the screen.

Sorry for rambling.

By: Smitten Eagle

Smitten Eagle — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:45:08 +0000

I think Gen Mattis was put in charge of JFCOM to bring that command back to earth and back to basics. EBO is a concept that has proven worse than useless in the recent wars. With limited resources, I can understand why the JFCOM CG would want to get rid of it.
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Besides, EBO will be resurrected with another TLA (three lettered acronym). The Air Force likes the concept too much for them to acknowledge the death of their concept. As a counterpoint, can you imagine a GEN Dunlap, the 2012 nomination to command JFCOM (and a historic pick at that, since MG is a friggin lawyer!), putting out a directive that Maneuver Warfare be killed as a concept?