PREFACE

The following two articles were written during and immediately after the war in Kosovo. The first is anadaptation of an earlier work written after a trip to Asia in 1998. In that essay, I suggested that foreignmilitaries were beginning to perceive our fixation on a firepower-centered way of war as an exploitableweakness. In fact, some states, armed with experience gained against us in real war, had already begun toevolve a doctrine to counter our superiority in precision. These potential adversaries concluded thatdispersion, deception, patience and a willingness to absorb punishment offered them the means to endureprecision strike long enough to outlast a technologically superior foe. Subsequent practical experience inKosovo caused me to modify this thesis somewhat, but not much.

The “From Korea to Kosovo” article was written after a visit to Albania in May 1999. There I developedthe central thesis for this essay: In wars of limited liability, success must be gained with a limitedexpenditure of means. A brief review of recent history tells us that we have been practically learning thislesson in real wars for half a century, beginning with Korea. The imperative to prepare for a full-scale waragainst the Soviets, however, has effectively impeded our ability to embed this lesson into our warfightingdoctrine. Kosovo is a wake-up call. This article concludes with a maneuver warfare concept for this new eraof limited liability wars in the Precision Age.

This Issue Paper has been developed to provide some insights into the possible course of future limitedwars and to suggest how we should fight them. The Cold War is over. Thankfully it will be some time beforewe will have to face the prospect of fighting a major military competitor who can threaten our vital nationalinterests. But recent events such as Kosovo seem to be telling us that lesser conflicts fought for less thanvital interests will continue to challenge us. We must develop an understanding of these conflicts. We mustalso develop a realistic doctrine for winning them based on our own practical experience.

ROBERT H. SCALES, JR.Major General, U.S. ArmyCommandantU.S. Army War College

1

Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr.

This article has been accepted for publication by:Joint Forces Quarterly

Issue Number 23, Autumn/Winter 1999-2000

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Adaptive Enemies:Adaptive Enemies:Achieving VictoryAchieving Victoryby Avoiding Defeatby Avoiding Defeat

Once the dogs of war are unleashed, and theshooting begins in earnest, conflicts tend to followunpredictable courses. As Clausewitz warnedmany times in his military classic,1 wars arecontests between two active, willing opponentsboth of whom expect to win. Thus an action by oneside to gain advantage precipitates a response bythe opponent to counter it. Once begun, war with itsneatly crafted plans and comforting expectationsquickly devolves into a series of stratagems andcounter stratagems by both sides as each seeks toretain advantage on the battlefield long enough togain a decisive end by collapsing the enemy’s willto resist.2

In spite of its video game image, NATO’s waragainst the Serbs proved to be no exception to theclassic Clausewitzian construct. The Serbs soughtto overcome a tremendous materiel and techno-logical disadvantage by capitalizing on their ownstrengths: the ability to gain operational objectivesquickly and then disperse in order to avoid theinevitable aerial assault they knew would follow.The Serbs trusted that patience, tenacity, guile andthe ability to sequester ground forces throughoutthe countryside would give them the interval theyneeded to out wait the resolve of the NATOcoalition. This plan, however, did not work. Thepolitical will of the NATO coalition proved to bestronger in the end than that of the Serbs. But theskill and perseverance of the Serbian army, in theface of an overwhelming onslaught by a thousandor more NATO aircraft armed with precisionweapons, present us with a compelling demon-stration of a thinking, creative, and adaptiveopponent who can foil the best prepared plans of asuperior opponent simply by capitalizing on his

own inherent strengths while minimizing those ofthe opposition.

For the last fifty years the militaries of theWestern powers, and particularly the UnitedStates, have been remarkably consistent in howthey have chosen to go to war. We have inheritedthe remarkable ability to translate technologicalinnovation, industrial capacity and national wealthinto effective battlefield advantages because of ourenormous defense expenditures during the ColdWar. However, in this new era of limited wars, ourcommitment to limited ends now demands the useof limited means. Therefore, the lives of oursoldiers have become our most precious resourceand we increasingly seek to develop a method ofwar that will replace manpower expenditures withan ever multiplying expenditure of firepower.

But as we have seen in Kosovo, our futureenemies are watching. They understand ourpreoccupation with firepower. Therefore, weshould not be surprised when we encounter a futureopponent who has learned how to nullify ourfirepower advantage. We have consistently beenslow to perceive the growing effectiveness of theopposition in part because of a characteristicWestern arrogance that presumes that, to be achallenge, non-Western militaries must eithersymmetrically challenge us or mimic Westernways of war. As a result, the growing skill amongnon-Western militaries at countering our firepowercentered method of war has remained shrouded inthe shadows of unfamiliar military cultures. Thus,U.S. military analysts have missed much of thediscourse and experimentation occurring amongthinking military institutions outside the West due

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Adaptive Enemies:

Achieving Victory by Avoiding Defeat

1. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.

2. This Adaptive Enemy thesis was originally published within the Winter 1999 issue of Strategic Review. Major portions of this JFQ essay

are reproduced with permission granted by Strategic Review.

in part to the cultural schism that divides theworld’s advanced industrial democracies from theother four-fifths of the planet.

The Serbs were certainly not the first opponentto demonstrate adaptive strategies against ourWestern way of war. More than five decades ago,the Japanese demonstrated their analytical abilityto survive America’s firepower intensive attacksduring the closing months of the Pacific campaignin World War II. During the battles of 1943 and1944, the Americans won a series of quick anddecisive victories by using the mobility andfirepower of their amphibious forces. But theJapanese carefully observed this method of attackand by the end of 1944 they had entirely revampedtheir defensive plans for the islands that guardedthe approaches to their Homeland.

In Okinawa, the Japanese abandoned theirfailed doctrine of beach defense and buried theirforce under a vast array of pillboxes, switch lines,and deep bunkers to carry out an extendeddefensive scheme centered in the southern portionof Okinawa. The Japanese recognized that theycould never match American firepower, but theymaximized what little firepower they had by usingmortars and artillery in sufficient numbers and withenough deadly effect so as not to completely cedethe firepower advantage to the Americans.Fighting their way through deep defensive lines,the Marines and Soldiers eventually took the islandand destroyed the Japanese Tenth Army—withapproximately 70,000 Japanese soldiers and70,000 Japanese civilians killed. But the U.S.casualty bill for the island fighting was horrendous:65,631 killed or wounded.

The Chinese Civil War:

Soon thereafter, another effort to redefine andcodify an Eastern approach to defeating theWestern way of war began in the mountain fastnessof Manchuria immediately after the end of thePacific war. Mao Tse-tung and his marshalsdeveloped a body of doctrine adapted from theirsuccessful wartime guerrilla campaigns andmodified their concepts to fit the demands of aconventional war fought against an enemy superiorin technology and materiel.3 Mao perfected his newway of war against the nationalists during theChinese Civil War fought between 1946 and 1949.His concepts were simple and centered aroundthree tenets, the first and most important of whichwas “area control.” To be successful Mao’s armyfirst needed to survive in the midst of a larger,better-equipped enemy.4 To ensure survival hedivided his army into small units and scatteredthem across a broad expanse of territory.Controlling and maintaining cohesion among sucha disparate and scattered force was and remainedhis greatest challenge.

Once his force was supportable and stable, Maoproceeded to apply the second tenet, which was to“isolate and compartmentalize” Nationalist forces.The challenge of this phase was to leverage controlof the countryside to such a degree that the enemygradually retreated into urban areas and alongmajor rail and road lines of communications.5 Thefinal act of the campaign demanded an ability tofind the enemy’s weakest points in order to collectand mass overwhelming force against each pointsequentially, much as one might take apart a stringof pearls, one pearl at a time. Mao’s new style ofconventional war, while effective, demanded anextraordinary degree of discipline and patience topersevere under extreme hardships. It alsodemanded the ability to transition quickly from an

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3. Mao Zedong, “On the International Front Against Fascism,” Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. III, Beijing: Foreign Language Press,

1967; William H. Whitson, The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Politics, 1927-1971, New York: Praeger Press, 1973.

4. Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. I and Vol. III, Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1967.

5. Frederick Fu (F.F.) Liu, A Military History of Modern China: 1924-1949, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956.

area control force to a force capable of fighting awar of movement.

From China to Korea:

Within a year of the end of the Chinese CivilWar, the Americans severely tested Mao’smethods in Korea. During the early days of theChinese intervention—beginning in October1950—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) badlymisjudged the killing effect of American artilleryand tactical air power. Pushed too quickly intomaneuver warfare, the Chinese massed in the open,often in daylight, to expand their control over thenorthern portions of the Korean Peninsula.6 Theyextended their narrow lines of communicationsfarther down the mountainous spine of Korea asthey advanced.7 But they soon found their logisticsupport exposed to the terrible effects of Americanair power. The Chinese paid a horrific price fortheir haste. Their spring 1951 offensive sputteredto a halt as U.S. artillery and aerial firepowerslaughtered Chinese soldiers in masses, while airinterdiction cut their supply lines and forced aretreat back across the Han.

Brutal experiences led quickly to sober lessonsrelearned from the Chinese Civil War. As a highlyskilled complex adaptive system, the ChineseArmy quickly adjusted to the actual conditions ofthis new war. Over the next two years, subsequentChinese attacks remained limited and controlled.The Chinese high command learned to hold mostkey logistic facilities north of the Yalu River wellout of reach of U.S. air attacks. South of the riverthe Chinese dispersed and hid their forces whilethey massed only in the period immediately beforelaunching an attack. PLA soldiers moved at nightand chiseled their front lines of resistance deep intohard, granite mountains. American casualties soonmounted, while the Chinese stabilized their

casualties at a rate acceptable to their politicalleadership. Far more Americans died in combatduring this “stability phase” of the war than duringthe earlier period of fluid warfare. A costacceptable to the Chinese became too costly to theAmericans. The result was an operational andstrategic stalemate. To the Chinese, stalemateequaled victory.8

From Korea To Vietnam:

Over the next two decades the Vietnameseborrowed extensively from the Chinese experienceand found creative ways to lessen the killing effectof firepower, first against the French and thenagainst the Americans. The Vietnamese alsoproved highly skilled in adapting to the newchallenges posed by their Western opponents. TheViet Minh based their tactical and operationalapproach on Mao’s unconventional methods.Their conduct of the battle was remarkablyreminiscent of siege operations conducted by thePLA during the Chinese Civil War. In both casesthe secret of success proved to be dispersion andcareful preparation of the battlefield. The VietMinh remained scattered in small units wheneverpossible to offer smaller, and thus less detectableand less lucrative targets, and to allow their troopsto live off the land. Fewer supply lines and logisticsites offered even fewer opportunities forinterdiction fires.

To win, the Chinese, and eventually the VietMinh, needed to attack. Successful attacksdemanded the ability to mass, at least temporarily.The Viet Minh needed to exercise great care inmassing under the enemy’s umbrella of protectivefirepower. Superior intelligence providedsufficient information to select the right time andplace. Their ability to collect and orchestrate themovement of tens of thousands of soldiers at just

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6. Bin Yu, “What China Learned from Its Forgotten War in Korea,” Strategic Review, Summer 1998.

7. Russell Spurr, Enter the Dragon: China’s Undeclared War Against the U.S. in Korea, 1950-51, New York: Newmarket Press, 1987.

8. T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963.

the right moment allowed attacking forces tocollapse the enemy’s defenses before Frenchfirepower could regain the advantage. Thisremarkable ability to “maneuver under fire”perfected against the Nationalist Chinese and theFrench, reached new levels of refinement duringthe second Indo-China War against the UnitedStates.

General Giap learned quickly to accommodatehis strategic plans to the new realities imposed byAmerican firepower. The North Vietnameserelearned the importance of dispersion andpatience. They redistributed their forces to keeptheir most vulnerable units outside the range ofAmerican artillery while they moved their logisticsystem away from battle areas into sanctuariesrelatively safe from aerial detection and strikes.Thus, the VC and NVA dusted off and appliedmany of the same methods that had proven usefulin previous Asian wars against Western stylearmies.

From Vietnam to Afghanistan:

Half a decade later, and half a continent away inAfghanistan, the Soviets learned the same harsh,firsthand lessons of overconfidence whenfirst-world military organizations confrontthird-world militaries which have the will,tenacity, and skill to remain effective in the fielddespite complete firepower inferiority. Year afteryear, the Soviets arrayed themselves for con-ventional combat and pushed methodically up thePanjir Valley only to be expelled a few months laterby a seemingly endless and psychologicallydebilitating series of methodical and well-placedambuscades and minor skirmishes. Borrowing apage from the American textbook in Vietnam, theSoviets tried to exploit the firepower, speed, andintimidating potential of armed helicopters. Theyemployed helicopters principally as convoy escortsand to provide fire support. At times, Hindhelicopters proved enormously lethal andeffective, particularly early in the war, when the

Mujahideen were psychologically unprepared. Butthe Mujahideen eventually borrowed a page fromthe Vietnamese textbook. They first learned toemploy heavy antiaircraft machine guns and laterStinger shoulder-fired missiles to shoot thegunships down in increasing numbers. The resultof military frustration and defeat in Afghanistanpresaged the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Israel and the Middle East:

Beginning in 1982, after nearly three decadesof failure in open warfare, an alliance of Arab stateand non-state actors pushed Israeli mechanizedforces out of Beirut. Back streets, tall buildings,and other forms of urban clutter provided the Arabsjust enough respite from the firepower intensivemethods of the Israelis to wear away Israeli moraleboth in the field and at home. Unable to bring thefull force of their superior maneuverability andshock effect to bear, the Israelis paused just short oftheir operational objectives. Excessive casualtiesand the public images of bloody excesses on bothsides eventually resulted in an Israeli withdrawalfrom Beirut. This success in Beirut soon providedIsrael’s enemies in the region with a new andpromising method to offset the Israeli superiority inopen mechanized combat. Now a spectrum oflow-tech threats, that run the gamut from weaponsof mass destruction delivered by crude ballisticmissiles, to random acts of terrorism, to childrenthrowing rocks at soldiers, confront an increasinglyfrustrated Israeli military and public.

One of the more curious ironies of the recentwars in the Middle East has been the fact thatWestern style militaries have had great successwhen fighting against non-Western enemies whomimic Western firepower doctrines. The Gulf Waris the most recent example of failed efforts by Arabstates stretching back through the conflicts in theMiddle East to 1948. In 1973, Arab armies enjoyedsome measure of success while employingWestern methods, but their success was as much

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due to Israeli overconfidence as to the limited aimsthe Arabs sought.

Operation Desert Storm:

During the Gulf War, despite an extraordinarylevel of incompetence at the highest level of theIraqi leadership, the Iraqi Army displayedconsiderable capacity to adapt on the battlefield.As the American air campaign began to focus onthe destruction of the Iraqi ground forces in theKuwait Theater of Operations (KTO) in earlyFebruary, the Iraqis almost immediately began toadapt in order to limit their losses.9 By constructingberms around their tanks and by scattering themwidely across the desert, the Iraqis insured that anaircraft dropping precision-guided bombs wouldonly be able, at best, to destroy a single vehicle witheach pass. By burning tires next to operationalvehicles they spoofed their tormentors into missingthe real targets; and finally by using antiaircrafteffectively they kept a substantial portion ofcoalition aircraft at an altitude where they wereunable to do substantial damage.

The best trained Iraqi units endured severalweeks of allied air bombardment with unbrokenwill and their combat capability essentially intact.The most impressive indication of the Iraqi abilityto adapt came in the operational movement of asubstantial portion of the Republican Guard duringthe first hours of Desert Storm. Elements of twodivisions shifted from a southeastern defensiveorientation to defensive positions facing to thesouthwest along the Wadi al-Batin. In thosepositions the Tawakalna Republican GuardDivision and the 50th and 37th Armored Brigadeswould be destroyed by the U.S. VII Corps.10

Nevertheless, sacrifice by these units providedtime for the remainder of the Republican Guard toescape. Significantly, the Republican Guard

carried out this movement in terrain and weatherconditions ideally suited to interdiction and despitethe overwhelming superiority of coalition airpower.

NATO and Kosovo:

Placed in suitable historical context, theSerbian response to the NATO onslaught is nothingmore than another data point along a continuum ofprogressive, predictable adaptation by techno-logically dispossessed militaries who are willing tochallenge Western militaries armed with superiorprecision firepower. Like their fellow Asiantravelers, the Serbs sought victory by avoidingdefeat. In a similar fashion, the Serbs conceded thevertical dimension of the battlespace to NATO.They were content with an approach that onlyhoped to shoot down a few allied aircraft usingground mounted guns and missiles. This hope wasunderscored with the expectation that a few dead orcaptured allied airmen would contribute to thegradual degradation of NATO’s resolve. Even if ashoot down was not possible, the Serbian forcesought to keep their antiaircraft assets sufficientlyviable because they knew ground targets would bedifficult to spot from high altitudes.

The surest way for the Serbians to avoid defeatwas to keep their army in the field viable — both toact as a defiant symbol of national resolve and to bethe legitimate Serbian guarantor of sovereigntyover the occupied territory. To maintain aneffective “army in being,” the Serbs likewiseborrowed from successful past precedents. Unitsquickly went to ground, and dispersed across abroad expanse of territory. They quickly computedthe pace at which the allies could find, target, andstrike uncovered targets and then devised themeans to relocate mobile targets inside the alliedsensor-to-shooter envelope. Camouflage, decoys

9

9. Robert H. Scales, Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War, Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Staff United States Army,

1993.

10. Scales, op. cit.

and spoofing techniques proven so effective byAsian armies were repeated with varying degreesof success by the Serbs. As the allies became moreproficient at spotting troops, the Serbs sought evengreater dispersal and went deeper to ground.

Toward the end of the conflict, significantsuccess from the air came with the appearance of aninfant ground presence in Kosovo in the form of theKosovo Liberation Army. The KLA was notterribly effective in open combat against the betterarmed Serbs but the presence of large scale KLAunits amongst them forced the Serbs to come out ofprotective cover and mass. The results werepredictable and remarkably consistent with pastexperiences in combat against the Chinese andNVA. Troops moving, massed, and in the openpresent the most lucrative targets for destruction byfire from the air. Yet the Serbian army was neverseverely damaged because it was simply too largeand well protected to be completely destroyed fromthe air. Since total destruction was not feasible, asin all battles of attrition, the contest in Kosovo soondevolved into a test of time and will. Ultimatevictory would be achieved by the side that couldendure the longest without collapsing their nationalresolve. Once it became evident to Milosevic thatNATO’s political resolve would not be brokenbefore a threatened ground assault couldmaterialize, he chose, as always, the mostexpedient path. Seeking to ensure his own politicalsurvival, the Serbian leader ceded Kosovo to theAllies.

Implications for the Future:

The example of Kosovo again reinforces theconclusion that non-Western militaries areincreasingly internalizing the lessons of recentwars against technologically superior foes. Recentthoughts and writings concerning the operationaland tactical problems confronting them in a fightagainst Western style military organizationssuggest some clear warnings for the future.

First, non-Western militaries understand thatthe West does possess vulnerabilities: an aversionto casualties and excessive collateral damage, asensitivity to domestic and world opinion, and anapparent lack of commitment to prepare for andfight wars that are measured in years rather thanmonths. They also perceive that Americans, inparticular, still remain committed to a style of warfocused primarily on the single offensivedimension of precision strike. Moreover, they arealready thinking about how to target Westernvulnerabilities while capitalizing on their threeintrinsic advantages: time, will, and the inherentpower of the defensive. Taking a page from Maoand Giap’s strategy, our potential future opponentshave learned the value of time and patience. Fromtheir perspective, swift success is not essential toachieve ultimate victory.

Future adversaries have also discovered theapparent advantages that can be gained when theyinterfere with an intruding power’s intention to endthe conflict quickly and at minimum cost. Thus, thelogic of their strategy will lead to efforts thatimpede rather than prevent the intrusion of aWestern opponent. In recent wars, non-Westernarmies have learned to limit the damage andduration of air campaigns by dispersing their forcesin the field and by distributing telecommuni-cations, logistics, and transportation infra-structures as widely as possible. Moreover, theyunderstand that sophisticated air defense networks,whose effectiveness depends on airfields, surfaceto air missile sites, and complicated and vulnerablecommand and control nodes, have become more ofa liability than an asset.

Once conflict on the ground begins, potentialopponents understand they must capitalize on theirsuperior mass to offset the lethal firepower andprecision technology of Western armies. They willcapitalize on the positional advantages of being onthe defensive in or near their own territory. As theygain confidence, they will search for opportunitiesto mass sufficient force to achieve local successes.As in the air campaign, the enemy will seek to

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frustrate Western ground forces by employing justenough modern weaponry to extend the campaignindefinitely. A few precision cruise missilesagainst major logistic bases will add to the casualtybill that Western militaries must explain to theircivilian populations back home. The object will notbe decisive victory, but rather stalemate. Moreimportantly, a stalemate arrangement willinevitably result in the erosion of Western politicalsupport for the conflict, especially if it is sustainedfor any prolonged period of time.

Early Signals of Change:

As non-Western militaries develop conceptsfor defeating the American firepower-centeredmethod of war, the character and composition oftheir forces will slowly change. The impulse thatexisted during the Cold War to mimic Westernforce structures is rapidly disappearing. Foreignmilitaries that were once Cold War clones aretaking on identities unique to their own culture and

societies. The mountains of metal, consisting ofexpensive yet often second-rate air, sea, andground machines of war that today serve aspotentially lucrative targets in a conflict againstmodern Western militaries are rapidly disap-pearing. Non-Western armies, in particular, aregetting lighter. The need to survive and remaineffective against the threat of overwhelmingWestern killing power is forcing them to developmeans to disperse, hide, or if possible eliminate thevulnerable logistics, transportation, and telecom-munications facilities that now characterize theWestern way of war.

Evidence of this trend lies in the shopping listsof many wealthier non-Western militaries. Insteadof investing in sophisticated aircraft and blue waterfleets, most are purchasing or developing cheapweapons of mass destruction and methods ofdelivering those weapons. Mines, both sea andland, as well as distributed air defense weapons addcredence to the conclusion that the intent of these

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Non-Western Militaries Adaptingto the Realities of the Precision Age!

!

!

!

!

!

!

!

!

!

Shedding Cold War impedimentaStreamlining forces: Less weight, more mobilityLess corrupt, more ideologically tunedFrom internal security to regional projectionMore mature, professional, educatedDoctrinal focus on Operational Art-Deflect air/seapower to preserve “Armies in being”Off-the-shelf information age technologiesJust enough conventional weapons technology to keep low tech forces viableOffensive strategy: Satisfy long simmering hegemonic ambitionsDefensive strategy: Primitive strategic forces to prevent interference from abroad

India

North Korea

Pakistan

Iran

Iraq

Russia

China

980,000

923,000

520,000

350,000

375,000

420,000

2,090,000

Asymmetric InvestmentsArmy

militaries is to use such weapons as a means to keeppotent ia l enemies at bay. Most defenseexpenditures and attention are going toward landforces because armies provide political legitimacyin non-democratic states. They are also the mostuseful instrument for regional wars of aggression,as well as the surest means for suppressing internaldissent and thwarting troublesome outsiders.

The Information Age Is Neutral:

At present there are too many in the U.S. andother Western military organizations who believethat they can best address the appearance of a majorcompetitor in the next century by exploring thetechnologies of the information age to develop evermore effective means of finding the enemy andkilling him from a distance. There are, unfortu-nately, a number of troubling concerns with thispremise. The most obvious is that the informationrevolution will be neutral in this loomingcompetition; in fact it may favor the competitionmore than it favors Western militaries becausepotential enemies will be able to tailor newtechnologies to their particular style of war withoutbecoming information-dependent. On one hand,the increasing flow of information is quite literallydrowning commanders, staffs, and intelligenceorganizations. This information overload chal-lenge is one of the crucial by-products of theinformation age—one that we have yet to solve.The evidence is already clear that informationtechnology will not simplify the decision-makingprocess, but in fact makes it more complex. Ourfuture opponents, however, given their expecta-tions and aims, will require much less informationto strike effectively—particularly since their aim isnot to win a decisive victory. They will be,moreover, less dependent upon the microchip toconduct their method of warfare. A thinkingopponent will quickly realize that our intensivereliance on information age technologies becomesa weakness that can become an asymmetric target.

A reading of current military writing fromabroad, particularly Asia, reveals that many armiesare already placing extraordinary emphasis oninformation operations and information warfare.At present, American analysts are takingconsiderable comfort in the observation that fewhave made serious investment toward eitherinformation warfare or precision systems similar tothose possessed by Western military organizations.What, however, they fail to see is that Asian armiesalready understand that advances in informationtechnologies will favor their style of warfare just asmuch as it does the western style. In particular, theInternet and wireless, non-nodal communicationswill allow dispersed armies to mass rapidly. Asinformation becomes more secure and informationcenters more dispersed and less vulnerable,potential opponents will wield more flexible andagile land forces. Moreover, they will be able todivide their forces into smaller and thus lessdetectable increments. In perhaps one of thestrangest potential ironies of the future, Westerninformation technology may well provide non-Western armies solutions to two vexing problems.First, cellular technology and the Internet mayallow them to maintain a concert of action for longperiods among widely dispersed units. Second,these same technologies will allow them toorchestrate the rapid massing of dispersed unitswhen opportunities arise to transition onto theoffensive.

The result may well be a technological foot racethat either side could win. As we develop thetechnologies to find and kill an enemy, ourpotential opponents will develop the technologiesto become even more difficult to find. The prospectbecomes even more sobering when one considersthe fact that the commercial sector is now in theprocess of providing future competitors with thetools they need, as our research centers continue toperfect non-nodal, distributed, and netcentricglobal information technologies for payingcustomers on a world-wide basis. Moreover,potential U.S. opponents do not have to spend adime for the development of any of these systems.

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And again we must remember that such opponentshave a very different strategy in mind for the nextwar. They have only to create a stalemate andinflict sufficient casualties on Western forces toraise political difficulties for the political leaderswho decided to intervene —in the words of NevilleChamberlain — in “a quarrel in a far away countrybetween people of whom we know nothing.”

Defeating the Adaptive Enemy:

Clausewitz provides us with a harsh andaccurate warning about the fundamental nature ofwar:

War, however, is not the action of a living forceupon a lifeless mass (total nonresistance would beno war at all), but always the collision of two liv-ing forces. The ultimate aim of waging war …must be taken as applying to both sides. Onceagain, there is interaction. So long as I have notoverthrown my opponent I am bound to fear he

may overthrow me. Thus, I am not in control: hedictates to me as much as I dictate to him.11

It is this fundamental Clausewitzian point thatWestern, and American military organizations inparticular, are in danger of forgetting. Our potentialopponents in the next century will have thoughtlong and hard about how to attack our weaknesses.

To be sure, firepower can be paralytic in itseffect. But paralytic effects by fire are alwaysfleeting. Armies have shown time and again thatthey can become inured to the paralytic effects offirepower and can even learn creative ways tolessen its destructive effects. Add to this factor theability of non-Western armies to utilize theadvantages of time, mass, will and the power of thedefensive, and the single American advantage ofsuperior killing power becomes much lesspersuasive as an instrument of war than it appearson first consideration.

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Adaptive Opponents are Learning Faster:The Newton Corollary

YE

AR

ST

OL

EA

RN

2

1

1805 1861 1940 1950 20100

6

5

4

3

8

7

10

9

12

11

1805-1815 (Austerlitz-Wagram-Waterloo)1861-1863 (Bull Run-Antietam-Gettysburg)1940-1941 (France-Moscow-Winter Offensive)1950-1951 (Yalu-Operation KILLER-Spring Offensive)??? (War Circa 2010)

11.Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, p. 77.

The corollary to Newton’s fundamental law ofphysics echoes with a sense of urgency: everysuccessful technical or tactical innovation thatprovides a dominant military advantage eventuallyyields to a countervailing response that shifts theadvantage to the opposing force. America’smilitary dominance in firepower and attritionwarfare has been on display for almost fivedecades. We must anticipate a future military

challenge that will attempt to defeat ourpreoccupation with precision strike. We must usethe time we have in the decade ahead to restorebalance in our future method of war. Our futurearsenal of military capabilities must include a 21stCentury sword with two equally compelling edges:precision maneuver as well as precision firepower.Without these two applied in balance and harmony,future conflicts might well devolve into massive

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wars of attrition. Let’s begin now to take on the challenge of a future adaptive enemy and beginnow to build a balanced force to defeat him.

15

Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr.

A modified version of this essaywas published by:Armed Forces Journal International

December 1999 Issue

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From Korea to Kosovo:From Korea to Kosovo:How America’s ArmyHow America’s Army

Has LearnedHas Learnedto Fight Limited Warsto Fight Limited Warsin the Precision Agein the Precision Age

Many in the professional ranks of the Americanmilitary see the reluctance to put soldiers on theground in Kosovo as a disturbing precedent thatcalls for future wars to be fought and won by airpower alone. A close examination of Americanbattlefield performance, however, suggests that theKosovo experience marks nothing more thananother data point, albeit a dramatic one, along aclearly defined continuum of transformation by theUnited States. Since the end of the Second WorldWar, America’s military forces have adjusted theirunique capabilities to produce a new style ofwarfare. This is the result of a fundamental shift inthe relationship between the dynamics of firepowerand maneuver. When the dynamics of combatundergo substantial transformations, radical shiftsin doctrine must be made to accompany andcapitalize upon them. During this last half-century,the principal factors affecting the conduct of

wargeostrategic, political and technological

conditionshave been altered by the events of ourtime.

Geostrategy:

The end of the Cold War stand off between thetwo major global powers removed the protectiveblanket that had dampened all of the old ethnic,tribal and religious embers left smoldering sincethe end of the Second World War. Lifting greatpower control gave the green light for aggressiveregimes to set about righting perceived regionalwrongs. Frustrated autocrats felt free to satisfy

their hegemonic ambitions usually at the expenseof some less powerful neighbor. At home, nationalparanoia over the threat of a great cataclysmic wargave way to social outrage directed at powers whotramp on the territory, rights, or well-being oflesser states.

No longer are our wars desperate struggles topreserve our right to exist as a nation. Instead, ourmost recent conflicts have been fought as wars ofconscience to further peripheral interests in manydiverse corners of the globe. Our potential enemiesare increasingly being perceived as local tyrantswho are intent upon gaining hegemony over somepart of the world only tangentially important to ourdomestic welfare.

Technology:

The course of war would be difficult enough toanticipate if the shifting relationships betweeninternational actors were the only significant factorto influence change in the future. But we must alsoaccount in our calculation for the fact that we live ina transitional era set within a crease between themachine age and the information age. Themicrochip is altering the way armies fight just asthoroughly as did the gasoline engine and radio bylifting armies off their feet and mounting theminside land and aerial vehicles.

We know enough now from field experimentsand practical experience with information age

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From Korea to Kosovo: How America’s Army Has Learned to Fight Limited

Wars in the Precision Age

Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own

preconceptions. Each period, therefore, would have held to its own theory

of war.1

Carl Von Clausewitz

1. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, p.

593.

1. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, p.

593.

warfare to anticipate with some clarity how themicrochip will continue to alter the course of war.The battlefield will continue to expand, perhapsgeometrically, now that communications no longereffectively limit the amount of territory a militaryforce can occupy and control. The ability to seewith great clarity and strike with even greaterprecision will force ground units to take fulladvantage of the opportunity to spread out anddisperse in order to survive. Fear of destruction indetail by precision strikes, principally from above,has already made linear, echeloned, massedarmored formations an anachronism of a machineage that is now just passing.

Domestic Politics:

Both the geopolitical and technological trendsof the recent past have raised expectations by theAmerican people that our wars will be fought in amanner such that the political ends are worth thecosts and the costs are increasingly measured interms of expenditures of human life. Casualtiessoon may represent a dominant, perhaps thedominant measurement of success or failure inwars of limited ends and means such as Kosovo.Dead Americans are becoming our most

vulnerable center of gravityand our enemiesknow it. As we have seen from recent events,serious doubts on the part of our national leadersabout casualties may not only delay, but may wellprevent commitment of ground forces.

The tolerance bar that we use to measure ourcasualties has been driven ever downward byAmerica’s changing attitudes toward conflict.Since our most recent wars have been foughtincreasingly to further peripheral interests abroadrather than for national survival, we are less willingas a nation to send our sons and daughters intoharm’s way. Likewise, modern weapons techno-logy has also raised the expectation that precisionweapons can now substitute explosive killingpower for manpower on the ground.

Limited War Precedents: Korea to Viet-

nam:

To its credit the American military began,intuitively at least, to sense these shifts inbattlefield dynamics as early as the Korean War,the first of our modern wars in which limitedstrategic interests did not justify unlimitedcommitment. Combat commanders in the field,quick to recognize the importance of preserving thelives of their soldiers, routinely modified their wayof fighting to achieve success at minimum cost.The most pervasive doctrinal adjustment madeduring our first two experiences with limited warwas to increase the firepower available to supportmaneuver forces in close combat and to lessen theexposure of close combat soldiers to direct attackby the enemy.

Early battles in Korea began with theapplication of doctrinally correct proportions offirepower to maneuver inherited from the SecondWorld War.Very quickly, however, field com-manders increased their demand for artillery andair power to support ever more compact andself-contained assault forces. What began astraditional dismounted infantry assaults in 1950soon became elaborate tank, infantry, andfirepower intensive demonstrations intended togain the objective with minimum cost in lives.

During the Battle of Soryang in the spring of1951, twenty-one battalions of artillery fired overthree hundred thousand rounds in five days insupport of a single push by X Corps. Two yearslater, at Pork Chop Hill, nine battalions fired overthirty-seven thousand rounds in less thantwenty-four hours in support of a single regimentalassault. As the weight of firepower increased, thedensities of infantry formations decreased inproportion. By the winter of 1950-51, GeneralRidgway conducted most of the Eighth Armycounter attacks at regimental level. That spring,Ridgway consistently used nothing larger thancompany teams to spearhead his advance to theHan River.2

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Similarly in Vietnam commanders learnedquickly and adapted a European style, maneuver-centric method of war to match the realities oflimited war in constricted Asian terrain. Closecombat units gradually increased the proportion ofsupporting fires and lessened the exposure of leadelements moving into contested areas.

General William DePuy, commanding the FirstInfantry Division in 1966-67, realized quickly thatartillery and tactical aircraft were responsible formost enemy casualties. His casualties, on the otherhand, came principally from three sources: enemymortars, concentrations of enemy small arms firedelivered against infantry units in set-pieceambushes, and mines. His common sense solutionwas simply to use much smaller infantry units tolocate and fix the enemy, usually squads orplatoons, and then orchestrate a varied medley ofsupporting firepower systems to do most of thekilling.3

Once the enemy was located, the infantry’s taskwas to stay out of the killing zone, avoid decisiveengagement and pull back just far enough to alloweffective delivery of ordnance, but not so far as toallow the enemy breathing space to disengage andescape the firepower trap. The old infantry adage“close with and destroy the enemy” became simplyget close enough with as few forces as possible to“find, fix, flush and set up the enemy fordestruction by fire.”

DePuy was among the first to grasp the fact thatmodern firepower technology and the imperativeto win at lower cost together were sufficient tocause a shift in the relationship between firepowerand maneuver. In later years he was fond of saying“On a battlefield increasingly dominated bylethality, if you can be seen you can be hit, if youcan be hit, you will be killed.” Whether

traditionalists liked it or not, DePuy believed thatthe balance had in fact shifted to the point thatfirepower systems, not infantrymen, had nowbecome the central instrument for achievingdecisive effect on the battlefield. To DePuy, thedoctrinal maxim that firepower supportedmaneuver may well have been reversed.4

While seeming to offer the promise of lesscostly victories, DePuy’s concept of maneuversupporting fires failed to last as a viable doctrinemuch beyond Vietnam. There were culturalobjections. Commanders rightfully feared thattraining combat soldiers not to close with theenemy might diminish fighting spirit and createhesitation and a loss of decisiveness and élan.

Experience in real combat also demonstratedshortcomings of a firepower-centered doctrine.The most persistent complication was offered bythe enemy who learned over time how to lessen thekilling effects of our fires. After suffering horriblyfrom American firepower during the Tet offensivein 1968, the North Vietnamese quickly changedtheir fighting doctrine. They learned to “hug” closeto units in contact and to keep larger formationsdispersed and positioned just out of artillery range.The enemy soon became very adept at hiding inbuilt-up areas and the jungle. They also learnedimaginative ways to deceive reconnaissance andspoof even the most sophisticated detectiontechnologies.

Second, pressure late in the war to reducecasualties served to pervert DePuy’s intent. As thewar dragged on, firepower became too much of agood thing. Maneuver commanders began tocomplain that a firepower intensive doctrine hadbecome a millstone around their necks. A singleexample serves to make the point. The “force-feed-fire support system” used by the 25th Infantry

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3. Paul H. Herbert, Deciding What Has To Be Done: General William E. Depuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5, Operations, Leavenworth

Papers, No.16, Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1988, p. 19-23.

4. John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to Airland Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982, Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. Army

Training and Doctrine Command, 1984, pp. 8-9.

Division toward the end of the war relegated thecontrol of every contact, however minor, to theduty officer at division headquarters. He wasinstructed automatically to dispatch a stream offirepower systems into the fight to include AirForce gunships, tactical airpower, attackhelicopters, and even “flame bath” helicoptersequipped with napalm. The firepower would comeeven if the battalion commander felt that such a richdose was either wasteful or counter to his schemeof maneuver.5

Another extreme example of the debilitatinginfluence of firepower late in the war comes from acorps artillery commander in the CentralHighlands region of Vietnam who reported that hiscommand fired almost two million rounds in sevenmonths of relatively inactive combat equating, byhis best estimate, to a ratio of 1,000 rounds orroughly $100,000 per kill. Lives were saved to besure, but the resulting loss of flexibility and controlwas rightfully lamented by infantrymen on theground.6

Yet in spite of these shortcomings, maneuvercommanders returning from Vietnam supportedDePuy’s hypothesis. The new limited warimperative to win at minimum cost demanded thatthe traditional balance between fire and maneuverbe altered significantly just as DePuy suggested. Aremarkable study done by a group of returninginfantry commanders at the Army War College in1969 concluded that firepower was now thedominant factor on the American battlefield. Theywrote that maneuver is performed primarily to

pinpoint the location of the enemy, and to increase

the effectiveness of the massive application of fire

on the enemy. Ideally the enemy should be killed at

the maximum effective range of organic

weapons.The need to advance infantry to “zero”

range will proportionately increase friendly

casualties and decrease the ability of foot infantry

to maneuver or use fire support.7

Post Cold War Precedents:

Practical experience in subsequent warscontinued to reinforce the lesson that the cost of aconflict must remain in proportion to the perceivedvalue of the endeavor. The Gulf War in particulartaught the value of a protracted preliminary aerialbombardment to wear down and demoralize theIraqis sufficiently to make the land campaign ascasualty free as possible. The battlefield continuedto thin in the Gulf as the firepower quotient rose.The range and lethality of modern tanks and theability of maneuver forces to see vast distances inthe desert allowed armored formations to open upto an unprecedented degree thereby exposingforward maneuver elements as little as possible.What might have constituted a battalion front inWorld War II was now occupied by a force as smallas a platoon. Instinctively when faced with therealities of real war against a thinking enemy theArmy returned to DePuy’s maxim of minimumexposure for maximum killing effect.

The loss of eighteen rangers in close, back alleyfighting in Somalia dramatically underscored acorollary to DePuy’s maxim: a tactical engagementfought for too high a price for too little return mightvery well by itself determine the strategic outcomeof a national endeavor.

Recent experience in Kosovo now seems tosuggest that the bar continues to lower as thecountry begins to accept the burden of limitedliability wars fought to prevent harm to one ethnicor cultural group by another. Some even suggestthat the bar has been lowered so much for wars like

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5. Robert H. Scales, Firepower in Limited War, Washington DC: National Defense University, U.S. Government P:rinting Office, 1990, pp.

287-296.

6. Scales, p. 143.

7. Richard E. Cavazos, et al., “Analysis of Fire and Maneuver in Vietnam: June 1966 - June 1968,” unpublished Student Research Paper, U.S.

Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 1 March 1969, pp. II-v and II-210, II-212.

Kosovo that a ground campaign with its attendingrisk of casualties is a thing of the past at least forAmerican troops. Perhaps, the argument goes, theprecision revolution has given us the ultimate tool,the silver bullet, to win future wars by firepoweralone.

However, a closer look at Kosovo suggeststhat, while improvements in precision munitionsmay continue to tilt the firepower-maneuverequation in favor of the former, the nature of theenemy and the immutable character of warcontinue to argue for the preservation of balancebetween the two classic components of war. TheSerb reaction to firepower dominant assault wasremarkably similar to the North Vietnamese over aquarter century before. The Vietnamese realizedthat overwhelming firepower alone could nevercompensate for the presence of an aggressive forceon the ground to find, fix and fight them in closecombat. Without a ground threat, they merely hadto array their forces in order to endure punishmentby fire alone.

Serb tactics followed the Vietnamese examplewith remarkable fidelity. Units went to ground anddispersed over wide areas. Soldiers hid theirequipment with great skill and constructeddummies that proved effective at spoofing aerialobservers and image interpreters. Trouble for theSerbs arrived with the ground threat from theKosovo Liberation Army. However amateur andineffective, the presence of the KLA in their midstforced the Serb army to come out of hiding andbegin to mass. Once in the open, the Serbs wereobliged to trade the security of their hiding placesfor battle in the open.

If Kosovo suggests that maneuver still remainsessential to a balanced approach to war, how thendo we resolve the problem of maneuvering withoutsuffering excessive casualties? Back to DePuy andhis maxim. DePuy’s maxim correctly grasped thetrend of the expanding battle area as the range andlethality of weapons continues to increase. Soonthe battlefield will become so expansive andporous that the conventional schemes for ground

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Areas of Control

Enemy Invades, Disperses and “Sets” Defensively to Absorb Precision Strike.

maneuver may well play more to the advantage ofthe enemy rather than to ourselves. On an expandedbattlefield an adaptive enemy, armed first andforemost with patience and guile, might well beable to offset our advantage of superior firepowerwith a countervailing strategy centered around theoccupation and control of large thinly occupiedareas of territory. His tactic will be defensive andcentered on controlling ground. He cedes the otherdimensions of war because he knows he cannotcompete against a technologically superior enemyon the sea and in the air. On the defensive, he mayappear to lose the initiative and with it, in theconventional wisdom, the ability to win, but likeGeorge Washington during our RevolutionaryWar, not losing either forces or ground becomesthe effective equivalent of a new kind of winning.So his object is not to win but to avoid losing byholding on and preserving his forces in the field justlong enough for the enemy to tire of the conflict andgo home.

DePuy’s maxim, reinforced by experience inKosovo, suggests that as an enemy disperses acrossa broad area and goes to ground in order to avoiddestruction by fire he makes his force increasinglyvulnerable to defeat by maneuver. A dispersedenemy force cannot mass quickly, nor can it coverall of its territory by fire from static positions. Anenemy gone to ground cannot see beyond the end ofits nose and cannot react in time to turn back forceswhich might suddenly rush to occupy theuncovered, unprotected terrain in its midst.

But DePuy also demonstrated that a groundforce must change its style of maneuver to gain fulladvantage of the potential provided by modernfirepower systems. A force optimized to fullyexploit precision fires must be able to maneuverquickly against a dispersed, static enemy. This canonly be done if that force has adopted new methodsof warfighting at the strategic, operational andtactical levels of war.

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Areas of Control

Intervening Force Interposes Enclaves between Enemy’s Major Defenses.

Strategic:

The surest way to win at minimum cost is to winquickly. A decisive, quick victory can best beassured by an early arriving force of overwhelmingpower capable of conducting a strategic takedown.A “strategic preemption” force would first seek touse airpower to frustrate enemy deployment longenough for early arriving ground forces to positionthemselves between the enemy and his initialoperational objectives. Enemy ground forcescaught in the act of deploying or moving forward inthe attack can be easily targeted and destroyed byprecision weaponry.

Time is a particularly critical factor on abattlefield dominated by firepower. As we haveseen in Korea and Vietnam too long a delay incollapsing an enemy greatly heightens the risk thatan act of strategic preemption will be stretched into

a wasteful war of attritiona war the enemy knowswe cannot win. As we have seen from our ownrecent experience with limited wars of attrition,given enough time an enemy will learn to avoiddestruction by dispersing and burrowing into thecountryside or by massing inside his urban terrain.

Our difficulties with projecting forces toKorea, Iraq, Kosovo and elsewhere, tell us thatquick victories are hard to achieve when anintervening power like the United States is anocean away from an enemy who perhaps has onlyto violate a neighbor’s territory to fulfill hisaggressive intentions. An enemy acting unilat-erally can mobilize quickly and achieve almosttotal surprise. A major power like the UnitedStates, on the other hand, can respond only withgreat deliberation. Time must be taken to buildpolitical consensus for action both at home andwithin the international community. Thus thechance exists that an enemy will be able to initiateaggressive actions, or even possibly gain his initialobjectives before we can intervene.

The example of the Serbian dash into Kosovodemonstrates the particular futility of attempting to

preempt an enemy force using airpower alone.Similar experiences with strategic intervention byair in previous limited wars suggests that such aneffort can be made orders of magnitude moreeffective if aerial platforms are guided to theirtargets by eyes on the ground. Special operationsforces planted deep inside North Korean, NorthVietnamese, and Iraqi territory have proven theirability repeatedly both to survive and to take awaythe enemy’s ability to hide from or spoof attackingaircraft.

Given the right strategic conditions andresources, however, strategic preemption cansucceed and succeed decisively. Our strategictakedown in Panama took only a day to cause thecollapse of Noriega’s army of thugs. The secret ofsuccess lay in the ability of the American commandto synchronize the delivery of overwhelmingpower simultaneously against a multitude ofobjectives spread throughout the entire Republic.That power was an effective mix of air operationsto paralyze and disorient through selectivedestruction and ground operations to seize, holdand ultimately to confirm the effects.

Before the Panamanian forces could evenbegin to comprehend what was happening, theyfound themselves surrounded, overwhelmed andblocked at every turn. Victory, as evidenced by thedisintegration of the PDF, came, not with physicaldestruction so much as with the utter inability of theenemy to react effectively in any direction, leadingto the ultimate collapse of his will to resist.

Operational:

The apparent shift in the firepower-maneuverbalance in favor of firepower works to the dis-advantage of a force which seeks to intervene in adistant theater and operate offensively against astatic foe. It has been a long-standing tenet ofwarfare in the modern age that a firepowerdominant battlefield environment favors thedefensive. Experience has shown that the surest

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way for an offensive force to overcome thisdisadvantage and succeed on a firepower dominantbattlefield is to employ an operational offensive-tactical defensive method of war. The concept isboth simple and timeless. An attacking forcemaneuvers to place himself between the defenderand his line of communications. The defender thencan either remain static and wither or leave thesecurity of his defenses to attack the force to hisrear now set firmly in place and ready to receivehim. Defenders like the Serbs who must disperseand go to ground in order to survive a precisionattack are particularly vulnerable to such astratagem because the attacker can take advantageof the enemy’s thinly occupied battlespace tolocate and then occupy voids left uncovered by fireand observation.

The secret of success against an enemy gone toground would be to paralyze him with precisionfires just long enough to allow an early arrivingground force to simultaneously occupy multiple

points throughout the enemy’s area of operationsand saturate the enemy’s most vital areas withsmall, discrete, autonomous and highly lethal,mobile combat elements.

In order to gain and maintain maneuverdominance ground combat units would not need tophysically occupy key terrain or confront enemystrong points directly. Instead, an intervening forcewould occupy uncontested terrain close enough tocontrol and thus dominate these vital centersthrough direct observation and the use ofshort-range precision weapons. Such a violent,unanticipated and overwhelming act would takethe form of a strategic takedown or coup de mainrather than a conventional form of linear maneuver.

A once cohesive body of enemy forces wouldnow be divided into isolated pockets, each asub-critical mass severed from its parent bodyunable to communicate or maintain itself for verylong without resupply and unable to be reinforced.

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Areas of Control

Enemy Has Two Choices: Defend and Concede the Initiative, or Mass, Attack and Be Destroyed.

Once the intervening force gains the advantage ofposition over the enemy the factor of time alsoshifts to his favor. The enemy cannot linger verylong in a fractured state. His choices are either tofight or wither. But fighting will be a problem.Once set within the enemy’s critical area theintervening force is in a position to call the tacticalshots now that he can leverage the power of thedefensive to his advantage.

Modern precision technology strengthens theinherent power of the defensive phase of anoffensive-defensive stratagem. The range andlethality of our superior firepower weaponryexpands the killing zone making it far moreexpensive for a less sophisticated enemy to moveunprotected against us in the open. The static sidehas the advantage of watching and engaging withfirepower from positions well out of the enemy’smuch shorter lethal reach while remainingrelatively secure in fixed, covered positions. Theenemy is trapped and can only escape by massingto attack. If he masses he becomes a perfect targetfor destruction by precision strike. Check andcheckmate.

Our dominance in situational awareness givento us by our overwhelming advantage ininformation technology will help us solve theproblems that DePuy and other American fieldcommanders found most vexing in this new style ofwar. DePuy realized that a change in tactics alonecould reduce casualties only to a limited degree. InVietnam, no matter how small and protected hemade his lead elements, the cost of the initialcontact was still too high. Also, DePuy wasfrustrated by the ability of the enemy to escapebefore his supporting firepower became mosteffective. The enemy could slip away becauseground forces could be not be assembled quicklyenough or spread thin enough to cover all avenuesof escape particularly in the rugged wooded terrainin Vietnam.

The Army learned from its experiments withdigitization at the National Training Center in 1997

that a properly internetted maneuver brigadeprovided with an immediately available suite ofaerial sensors could expand its area of control by afactor of four or more. Superior situationalawareness allowed units to locate all friendly unitsand most of the enemy immediately around them.The ability to see the battlefield with great clarityand immediacy allowed them to anticipate eachenemy movement and avoid being surprised. Also,units participating in these force-on–forceexperiments discovered that the ability to spreadout, yet still remain cohesive and able to maneuver,freely allowed them to outflank and surround muchlarger units in open combat.

Tactical:

If we have been successful at gaining positionaladvantage and paralyzing the enemy at theoperational level then we must seek to finish thefight in close combat with the smallest possible lossof life. Once secure in operational sanctuaries,tactical units will expand outward to find thespecific location of previously unlocated enemyground units. These tactical scouts will be precededby aerial eyes in the form of Unmanned AerialVehicles (UAVs) or other downlinked aerialsensors. These sensors must be capable enough tofind small discrete pockets before the scoutsstumble within the range of enemy direct fireweapons. The scouts’ mission will be to define theoutline of the enemy formation clearly and thenlocate and destroy all significant points ofresistance without the finding force becomingdecisively engaged or suffering casualties.

Seen from a point high above, the battlespace ina culminating campaign against a dispersed enemymight appear in the mind’s eye like a distant prairieablaze with a thousand fires. All of the individualfires would be surrounded simultaneously bygroups of firefighters building fire lanes andpouring on flame retardant selectively in order tokeep the smaller fires from combining to formlarger conflagrations.

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Most enemy points of resistance would be leftto burn themselves out, particularly those indifficult areas such as close terrain, forests andcities. Those which threaten people or propertywould be fought aggressively, but from a distance.Firefighters would move in close enough to beeffective but not so close as to be trapped by theflames.

Close combat of this sort will be decisive to besure, but decisive from a distance. Close combatunits will maintain just enough contact to surround,contain and feel out the shape and size of eachenemy formation. As precision strikes begin towear away the will of the enemy, close combatforces converge methodically with deliberation.By this stage of the fight time becomes our ally.The initiative belongs entirely to us. We can onlylose now if impatience causes us to be careless andallows a desperate enemy to inflict more casualtiesthan we can afford. Eventually, surrounded, unableto mass, out of touch with adjacent units and higherauthority, each discrete enemy force slowlycollapses.

Finding the Balance:

Our Cold War fixation on fighting the big battlehas impeded the development of weaponsappropriate for fighting limited liability wars justas surely as it has impeded our ability to internalizeand accept limited war fighting doctrine. This haslead to some curious ironies.

Recent experiences have taught us that thesurest way to win limited wars is to win themquickly. Time is our greatest enemy and ourenemy’s greatest friend. Yet as our experience inKosovo has shown, we still lack the means totransport decisive landpower to even a local theaterof war in time to preempt or preclude the offensiveactions of a minor tyrant.

We seek to win at minimum cost. During warsin this century the overwhelming majority of

battlefield deaths have been suffered byinfantrymen in close combat. The greatest killer ofAmerican infantry has been the homely andunglamorous mortar, followed closely by the rifleand machine gun. Yet while today we possess thetechnology to remotely locate strategic targets inBelgrade or Baghdad, a platoon leader must stillrely on DePuy’s tactic of direct observation andcontact in order to locate a machine gun position.We can strike strategic targets with precision fromthousands of miles distance but our platoon leaderhas no way to destroy a mortar over the next hillwith any degree of precision.

Recent post-Cold War experience in Kosovoand Iraq have shown that even an army of ineptpetty tyrants can, if given time, adapt and learn tocounter our unique method of fighting limitedwars. Add to this uncomfortable truth therealization that the American people will continueto demand cheap victories and it seems absolutelyapparent to those who have studied recent historythat the United States will no longer have theluxury to improvise on the battlefield. Fortunately,the recent history of limited wars offers more thanjust a warning. It offers us a historical trail ofpractical and empirical evidence which provides apath to guide us into an uncertain era. In sum therecent past seems to be telling us that:

l A battlefield dominated by precision fire fa-vors the defensive. Therefore, the surestway to win at acceptable cost is to employ anoperational offensive-tactical defensivestrategy whereby the attacker uses superiormobility to place his forces amongst and be-tween the enemy such that the enemy isforced to wither and concede or to attack inthe most disadvantageous circumstances.

l Firepower intensive wars must be wonquickly. Over time, the effects of firepowerdiminish. Therefore, decision on the battle-field must be achieved before the weight ofmunitions needed to achieve effects exceedsthe practical limit of the force to deliver

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them. However, the promise of a geometricincrease in killing power for a given weightof munitions offered by cheap distributedprecision weaponry will relieve us at last ofthe millstone of the ammunition train. Infan-trymen will now be able to kill the enemy ef-fectively in the close fight without sufferingsubstantial loss in mobility.

l The enemy must be located precisely andfixed with the smallest possible exposure ofthe maneuver force. In the long term thisfinding function might well be performedremotely from air or ground vehicles.

l An adaptive enemy will most likely counterour superior precision strike capability bydispersing, hiding and going to ground.While such a posture limits his vulnerabilityto precision, it also makes his force ex-tremely vulnerable for exploitation by ma-neuver forces capable of controlling hismost vulnerable points from the ground.

l The object of close combat in the future willbe to find and fix the enemy without closingto within decisive distance of the enemy’sweapons. Decisive range is defined as thepractical limit of the enemy maneuver unit’sorganic weapons.

l Maneuver forces must be provided the toolsto adequately support an offensive strategythat is dominated by precision firepower.We can kill very deep targets with great pre-cision, principally from the air. Likewise,combat units can kill with precision veryclose using direct fire from guided anti-tankmissiles. But the firer is exposed and vulner-able during this direct exchange. We lackthe ability to kill with precision in the zone

between these two extremesjust wherethis new style of warfare needs precision

mostclose enough to find, fix and track di-rectly without being so close as to become

vulnerable to the enemy’s direct fire sys-tems.

A Cautionary Conclusion:

DePuy’s doctrinal method is best suited forwars of limited liability which clearly occupy onlya narrow segment of our potential future conflictspectrum. Surely, for the near term at least,America’s soldiers will find themselves mostinvolved in non-shooting peacetime contingencies.True, but we already have shown that we can dopresence, peacekeeping and peace enforcementmissions well as demonstrated by the performanceof American soldiers in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti andelsewhere. We can do better to be sure. But our pastperformance tells us that our doctrine for stabilityoperations today is fundamentally sound.Improvement is always needed but the imperativefor changing the way we conduct these kinds ofoperations is not pressing. Our most seriousdoctrinal challenge starts when bullets begin to fly.Recent history tells us that limited wars are whatwe do most often with least success. These kinds ofwars need the most attention to insure that we willbe able to win them at the least possible cost in thefuture.

A second caution deals with the perception thatAmericans are no longer willing to expend blood inforeign adventures. The day may well come soonwhen a serious competitor threatens an interestvital enough to allow a serious sacrifice in blood.However, while the American people maysomeday allow military professionals to spendlives more freely, they will never again allowsoldiers’ lives to be wasted. So even in a major warwe will continue to shoulder the obligation to fightand win at minimum cost.

Our experience in recent war tells us thatregardless of how intense the combat, cheapvictories will come only if we change ourwarfighting doctrine to accommodate the newrealities of the precision age. Modern weapons

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technologies have changed the dynamics of battle.The relationship between the dynamics offirepower and maneuver has shifted funda-mentally. We must begin now to alter the way we

fight in order to stay ahead of potential enemieswho, as we have seen in Kosovo, already havebegun to understand and exploit our tendency torely on firepower alone to win on the battlefield.

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SUGGESTED READING LIST

We are not the first Army to face the challenges of transforming our warfighting doctrine to meetsocietal, geo-strategic and technological change. Students at the Army War College use the followingpublications to gain insights into the process of change with an emphasis on the period between the twoWorld Wars. A few other works pertinent to military transformation are also listed.

Bacevich, A. J. The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam. Washington: NationalDefense University Press, 1986.

Corum, James S. The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and the German Military Reform. Lawrence,KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

D’Este, Carlo. World War II in the Mediterranean, 1942-1945. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books ofChapel Hill, 1990.

Doubler, Michael D. Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945. Lawrence,KS: University Press of Kansas, 1994.

Doughty, Robert A. The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939.Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1985.

Heller, Charles E., and William A. Stofft, eds. America’s First Battles, 1776-1965. Lawrence, KS:University Press of Kansas, 1986.

Kiesling, Eugenia C. Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning. Lawrence, KS:University Press of Kansas, 1996.

Lupfer, Timothy T. “The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine during the FirstWorld War.” Leavenworth Paper No. 4. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S.Army Command and General Staff College, 1981.

Murray, Williamson, and Allan R. Millett. Military Innovation in the Interwar Period. New York:Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Romjue, John L. From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982.TRADOC Historical Monograph Series. Ft. Monroe, VA: U.S. Army Training and DoctrineCommand, June 1984.

Scales, Robert H., Jr. Future Warfare Anthology. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S.Army War College, 1999.

Starry, Donn A., General, USA-Ret. “To Change an Army,” Military Review, Vol. LXIII, No. 3 (March1983): 20-27.

Winton, Harold R. To Change an Army: General Sir John Burnett-Stuart and British Armored Doctrine,

1927-1938. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1988.

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U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr.

Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

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Colonel Larry M. Wortzel

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Chairman,

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and

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Second Printing: December 1999