Terrorist Armies Fight Smarter and Deadlier than Ever by Robert H. Scales and Douglas Ollivant, Washington Post
Military transformations can be hard to detect. They generally occur over decades, sometimes over generations. Soldiers are usually the first to recognize them, but for the perceptive, the signs of a sea change developing on today’s battlefields are there. Look carefully at media images of ground fighting across the Middle East, and you will notice that the bad guys are fighting differently than they have in the past.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the West confronted terrorists who acted like, well, terrorists. In Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and other militant groups relied on ambushes, roadside bombings, sniper fire and the occasional “fire and run” mortar or rocket attack to inflict casualties on U.S. forces.
When terrorists were stupid enough to come out of the shadows, they fought as a mob of individuals. One rip of a Kalashnikov or a single launch of a rocket-propelled grenade was enough. If they stood to reload, they risked annihilation at the hands of their disciplined, well-trained and heavily armed American opponents.
Today, it’s different…
Comments
The jihadists are getting better for a lot of reasons covered in the article, and a couple I didn't see addressed. One reason I didn't see addressed is the large number of experienced former soldiers joining their ranks. This includes soldiers, even special operations forces, that we trained with our large scale security assistance programs. Another factor is time, prolonged conflicts give adversaries time to adapt. Not all do, but the jihadists over the past decade have demonstrated they're capable learning organizations that frequently have evolved their tactics based on their experiences.
I think there is an implication that runs against our current desire to rely on others with a focus on the inappropriately labeled "indirect" approach. There are pro's and con's with this approach, and with some adversaries excessive patience with the slow approach presents risks to our national interests that I think we under estimate. The so called indirect approach has been failing us for the past 13 years, and yet we continue to claim in our various strategic documents that it is the desired and decisive approach, and that our current combat operations/direct action is simply a supporting effort to buy time for the indirect approach to work. We certainly more capacity to wage decisive combat operations and we constrain ourselves based on a self-imposed strategy that appears to be based on false assumptions. I'm dumbfounded why this assumption hasn't been challenged.
One problem that Gaza seems to illustrate is the inability to respond to indirect fire against ground forces without causing collateral damage. Iron Dome protects the civil population but mortar/rocket fire aimed at Israeli Forces inside Gaza is not addressed by Iron Dome. The traditional use of counterbattery fire into civilian areas is problematic even if Hamas is technically making it OK to respond in self defense by purposely using human shields. The resulting death toll makes Israel still appear the villain.
This sounds like something that a loitering situation-launched weapon like Switchblade could address with a smaller hand grenade sized warhead guided to target by imagery rather than the larger effect of a mortar round or Hellfire. The first Israeli attack on the launch site at a UN school appeared to be some sort of air burst as there was no crater and Palestinians claimed casualties were under overhangs and were hit by the airburst mortar shrapnel if that was what was used.
The constant presence of overhead UAS/RPA is driving Hamas to hug civilians and go underground and that lesson is likely to be universal. The problem for the Israelis then is how to target rocket storage and launch sites without creating an information warfare bonanza for the Palestinians. What if Hamas gets guided missiles that force Iron Dome to engage more targets and costs them (and us) enormous sums? What if Hamas gets a smaller cruise missile like system that flies low and probably cannot be engaged by Iron Dome?
This is why Israel cannot acquiesce and lift the blockade of Gaza because countless new rockets and missiles will arrive. Even if a separate Gaza Palestinian state existed, Israel knows the rockets and missiles would continue to filter in and engage Israel every few years getting more advanced each time.
As for RPG-29 and guided missiles against armor, we will need to wait to see how many Israeli Soldiers died under armor as a result of these weapons. I continue to be amazed at those claiming the loss of 62+ troops in this operation is catastrophic and a relative loss for Israel. It may be a tactical "mowing of the grass" but we all know grass must be mowed or the weeds take over.
As for the argument that we should not reenter Iraq, what if we had forces deployed in Kurdish areas and Turkey prepared to reinforce the Kurdish Peshmerga if they continue to lose ground to ISIS. If the Iraqi election does not work out and Maliki continues to reject a Sunni/Kurd role in governing, we may need to bail from Iraq and into a new Kurdistan. There would be few U.S. casualties fighting with enablers from there and actions also could advance against ISIS and Assad in Syria if other Sunni ground forces were forthcoming from Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
If we think terrorists are deadly now, how bad will they be if they continue to gain experience in fighting unopposed by serious opposition. We thought the Peshmerga was effective but they lost several towns today and oilfields with more sophisticated ISIS/ISIL attacks from 3 directions in one case with trucks. Overhead surveillance, Apache gunships, GMLRS unitary and fast movers could do a number on such attacks without our ground forces being there on the battlefield but only if enablers are in relative proximity.
I posted this short essay to my blog yesterday, hoping that SWJ would pick up the article.
Terrorist Armies?
In the Washington Post this morning (Aug.2 2014), Doug Olivant and MG Bob Scales USA (Ret.) have an excellent op ed on the rise of Terrorist Armies like that of ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The piece addresses the tactical learning curve of these groups but it breaks no new ground at the strategic level. This is not to say that the authors are wrong, they aren’t. And at the level they are writing about they have pointed out an extremely important development.
The strategic level, however, is another thing. In a 2002 article in the journal, Low Iintensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Kimbra Fishel identified Al Qaeda as an insurgency that had raised asymmetric warfare to the global arena. Nearly simultaneously, David Kilcullen independently described Al Qaeda as a global insurgent in an article later republished in his 2010 book, Counterinsurgency. Assuming these authors are correct in their analysis, then the key issue becomes the strategy of the insurgency. The classic writing on insurgent – or revolutionary – strategy is that of the late Mao Tse-tung, perhaps the greatest Revolutionary strategist of all time.
Mao’s strategy was, and is, a three phase war. He described these phases as Strategic Defensive, Strategic Equilibrium, and Strategic Offensive. On the Strategic Defensive the insurgents organize, conduct limited operations using terror and guerrilla tactics against the better armed and equipped enemy, and seek to preserve and expand their capability. During the Strategic Equilibrium the insurgents continue what they have been doing previously, expand their area of operations, and occasionally seek a fight with larger forces but always when they can mass local superiority. On the Strategic Offensive the insurgents seek to overturn the government by meeting the enemy in conventional, decisive battle. Mao is very clear, however, that the insurgents can move forward and backward into different phases as the situation dictates.
The terrorist armies that Olivant and Scales discuss are, as suggested, global insurgents. They are part of a radical Islamist movement that seeks the restoration (or establishment) of a worldwide caliphate. The various elements of this global insurgency are operating in different phases of Mao’s revolutionary paradigm. Specifically, ISIS is in Phase 3, Hamas appears to be in Phase 2 occasionally putting a foot into Phase 3, while Hezbollah has settled mainly into Phase 2 against Israel but is operating as a regular army (Phase 3) in Syria. Meanwhile, AQAP (in Yemen) is mainly in Phase 1 while “core” AQ tries to inspire all three phases as appropriate. Thus the challenge identified by Olivant and Scales at the tactical (and operational) level is even greater at the strategic level.
I could post something about Colgen but I won't. What would even be the point? And why does anyone trust anyone writing in the Washington Post, a conduit for State or the Pentagon, or any other DC bureaucracy, that uses its contacts with retired military and civilian bureaucrats to push a line on the American people.
David---you bring up an interesting set of comments---yes there is an element of propaganda in the article that is hard to overlook, but if one reads between the lines the following displays a learning curve we in the US military cannot seem to understand nor implement when we talk about "adaptive learning". The UA and it's independent BNs fought initially conventionally then shifted to counter UW and since then have combined the two--and yet all we do is talk about it--I would call that a great example of implementing "adaptive learning".
Here is a country where the military was deliberately driven into the ground so as to not be a threat to Russia, then the shock at losing via annexation a large portion of their country, then the sudden appearance of "irregulars and heavy weapons"--and yet while at first appearing to be ragtag and losing they completely rebuilt on the fly a NG and their regular units, started the fight and gained while in the fighting more experience to the point of doing even end run mobile operations to finally developing a very solid operational strategy to counter UW.
So why is it we seem to not even come close and always choose the discussion route that takes years to come to a decision.
I wrote a recent article for Musings on Iraq on the question of were we in fact in a phase two guerrilla war before we had not even entered Baghdad and why has it not been debated as it has a great impact on the points you talk about. It is almost like do not pick of the edge of the carpet and look under it out of fear that the debate might in fact prove we took the wrong fork in the road and careers were made on that particular fork in the road.
Then around that article now crops up others who can confirm the same observations/evidence---which if true then we missed the entire boat by settling on COIN as the solution and listening to Kilcullen, Gen P and company when it was all about UW carried out via guerrilla warfare tied to political warfare which is exactly where the IS is today in 2014 in Iraq and seemingly winning with the concept.
Point---the IS took another set of towns and the major Iraqi dam this week by implementing a sweeping swarm attack which has been the hallmark of the Islamic Army in Iraq and AQI since early 2006 and yet the debate on swarm tactics never really got off the ground inside the Army and DoA training centers.
And yet we still have no answers.
Thanks for the link to this article Outlaw 06. I will leave it to the Ukrainian and Russian experts to judge the veracity of the analysis and whether this is an accurate portrayal of the the situation, capabilities, tactics and strategies. I wonder how well the California Army National Guard is prepared to operate in a situation like this one.
However, even if this is only propaganda (or counter-propaganda) and not all that accurate one thing that this brought to my mind is that while we debate the future characteristics of warfare, the rest of the world is leaving us (the US and the West) by the wayside. While we struggle with A2AD and strategic land power and future force structure and drawdown policies and sequestration effects and whether we should be a COIN focused irregular warfare dominant military or a force for predominantly conventional fights, I think our adversaries (such as Russia, Iran, ISIL/IS, AQ, China and others) are adapting the characteristics of warfare to suit achieving their strategic aims within their capabilities. They are bringing together conventional, unconventional, political, and hybrid warfare and spending more time on action than on words. We are debating while others are doing. Again this article may be pure or predominantly propaganda but it reminds me of "while Nero fiddled Rome burned."
Dave---here is an interesting link that goes to the Ukrainian Army observing the Russian Army's use of their newly formed SOF unit in the Crimea and then creating their own SF and deploying them in a SF UW fashion to capture a number of key towns in the last week.
You are right we need to fully understand the new strategies of say now the new Russian SF in a UW fight as it supports the political war they are carrying out against say the Ukraine.
If the Ukrainians can learn in the middle of a massive UW fight then so can US national decision makers learn to take the blinders off and ask Why?
http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/08/03/ukrainian-armed-forces-introducin…
Dave---this was taken out of the article and it is the first time I have seen this concept of the Russian six major priorities in warfare spelled out and references 1995---which if one looks at it--- fits into and underlines their new military doctrine New Generation Warfare.
Russian extremist theories of world dominance see the warfare from a perspective which could be unusual for Western audiences. Russians understand warfare far wider then one can expect. They see 6 major priorities in warfare (the more potent is to create an irreversible result and the more sustainable, but slower in time are at the top, the less potent tp create sustainable result but faster are at the bottom). This concept is known as the Social Security Concept of the all-Russian political party “Truth and Unity Course”. Hearings of this concept in the Russian Paliament (State Duma) were made on November 28, 1995 (text of the hearings can be found here). It was at the time when the West considered that democratic developments in Russia were irreversbile and that Russia would be allied country with Western democratic values.
I think that a message of this piece is that we should stop our myopic focus on terrorism and learn to understand the threat(s) and more important the strategies as they truly exist and not through the narrow lens of terrorism. These threats are more in keeping with Frank Hoffman's description of hybrid threats:
"Any adversary that simultaneously employs a tailored mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and criminal behavior in the same time and battlespace to obtain their political objectives."
We need to understand that our adversaries (or the adversaries of many of our friends, partners, and allies) are using a combination of conventional, unconventional, and political warfare supporting strategies that are designed to accomplish objectives far beyond anything terrorism alone can achieve. We need to remove our terrorism blinders and look deeply and critically at the strategies that are being employed today.
A thread has been created on SWC to discuss this viewpoint: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=21008