FPRI: COMPLEX IRREGULAR WARFARE – PART I

A good article from FPRI via Younghusband that I am posting in its entirety after my friend and former FPRI man Bruce Kesler helpfully pointed out that I should read the distribution rights fine print :o)

I am breaking this in two parts. I disagree with some of the author’s normative choices but think, in general, that he has a very solid point. Given that he is surveying the spending priorities of all the services, some quibbling could hardly be helped.

Foreign Policy Research Institute

50 Years of Ideas in Service to Our Nation

1955-2005

www.fpri.org

COMPLEX IRREGULAR WARFARE

by Frank G. Hoffman

January 6, 2006

Frank G. Hoffman is a Researchá Fellow at the Center for

Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) in Quantico, VA,

and is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the FPRI.The views

represented here are the author’s alone and

do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or

the U.S. Marine Corps.

The U.S. National Defense Strategy identifies

irregular challengers as an increasingly salient problem.

The ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) was expected to

shape America’s capacity to deal with nonlinear and

irregular warfare, as well as balance the Pentagon’s

overdrawn checkbook But like the last two evolutions, this

QDR will probably be a dud.It is mired by major programs

the Services cling to, despite their high costs and

irrelevance in an era of intra-state warfare and global

insurgency. OSD’s leadership cannot convince the Services,

Congress, or swarming army of lobbyists that we need to

shift the Pentagon’s budget towards more irregular threats

and away from a rigid focus on conventional warfighting.

This essay outlines the emergence and implications of

Complex Irregular Warfare.This mode of warfare builds upon

and exploits nontraditional modes of warfare.The rise of

Complex Irregular Warfare is the natural reaction to

America’s overwhelming military superiority. The United

States has pushed future opponents to alternative means that

are purposely designed and deployed to thwart Western

societies. This mode of warfare exploits modern

technologies and the tightly interdependencies of globalized

societies and economies. A more appropriate alternative to

America’s current overall security architecture and its

national security investment portfolio is offered to shape

America’s military against this threat.

The nature of tomorrow’s irregular wars is not completely

clear. Most likely it will evolve into “War Beyond Limits”

as described by a pair of Chinese Colonels in a volume

entitled “Unrestrictedá Warfare.” It certainly will not

break out as described in the Pentagon’s strategy, with

enemies choosing discrete options between conventional,

irregular, catastrophic or disruptive strategies.We will

face hybrid forms purpose built to exploit U.S.

vulnerabilities. This would include states blending high-

tech capabilities like anti-satellite weapons, with

terrorism and cyber-warfare directed against financial

targets or critical infrastructure. They will surely

involve protracted and extremely lethal conflicts like the

insurgency in Iraq. Such wars will be neither conventional

nor low intensity. Above all, the enemy will be protean.

The posture of U.S. military forces under such a strategy

requires greater nuance and more of an indirect approach

than yesterday’s Garrison Era. Forward presence will be

costly but invaluable, shifting rather than fixed, depending

on the current context. Forces will have to be designed to

maintain American interests across a broader array of

missions and against more adaptive enemies.The following

constitutes an outline sketch of the changes needed.

ARMY

The evolution of the Division-based Army to one centered on

modular BrigadeáCombat Teams (BCTs) is spot on. These are

more self-contained,cohesive, and faster to deploy. But

the Army’s plan to transition the Army’s 10 Divisions, (33

BCT equivalents)into 43 smaller BCTs needs reexamination.

Creating the overhead costs for theá new BCT cuts out real

combat power, and the proposed mix of Heavy (armor), Medium,

and Infantry á brigades (19/6/18) is too conventionally

oriented.

The “modularity” concept offers less than meets the eye.

The claim that the proposal increases combat power by 30

percent measures only a 30 percent increase in the number of

brigades, and not true combat power. The Army plan

decreases the number of Total Force maneuver battalions from

201 to 161. More thaná 20,000 “trigger pullers” have been

sacrificed to produce larger number of arguably weaker

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