The Revolution in Strategic Affairs

Lawrence Freedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781136058288
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Rapid developments in information technology and precision weaponry are said to herald a 'revolution in military affairs' (RMA), making possible quick and decisive victories with minimal casualties and collateral damage. But has such a revolution taken place? The issues that drive conflict will persist, and many of the technical advances associated with the RMA will not necessarily produce a transformation in the nature of warfare. The end of the Cold War has highlighted another revolution one in political affairs. Major powers appear less likely to go to war with one another than they are to intervene in conflicts involving weak states, with potential opponents including militia groups, drug cartels and terrorists. RMA technology may be less suited to conflicts such as these.

If the cumulative effect of these changes has produced a revolution, it is a revolution in strategic, as much as military, affairs. This paper argues that:

• the RMA is the practical expression of a 'Western Way of Warfare', the key features of which are: professional armed forces; intolerance of casualties; and intolerance of collateral damage
• the key technological and conceptual components of the RMA were in place by the early 1970s. The trend has therefore been evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. The significant difference is in the new political setting of the end of the Cold War, and the revolution in perceptions of Western particularly US conventional military strength brought about by the Gulf War of 1991
• the Gulf conflict could mark the start of a true 'revolution' if future battles offer similar opportunities to exploit the RMA's technology. However, since the US and its allies appear unbeatable when fighting on their own terms, future opponents will fight differently
• the West will therefore face opponents who will follow strategies that contradict the Western Way of Warfare. They will avoid pitched battles, will exploit the West's reluctance to inflict civilian suffering, and will target theiropponent's domestic political base, as much as its forward troops.

The problem for the West is not how to prevail, but how to do so in an acceptable manner. The more warfare becomes entwined with civilian activity, the more difficult it is to respond with the type of decisive and overwhelming military means embodied in the RMA. The RMA does not create a situation in which information is the only commodity at stake, and so does not offer the prospect of a 'virtual war'. The new circumstances and capabilities do not prescribe one strategy, but extend the range of strategies available. The issue underlying the RMA is the ability of Western countries, in particular the US, to follow a line geared to their own interests and capabilities.

Chapter 1
A Western Way of War?

The Essence of the RMA

The RMA depends on the interaction between systems that collect, process, fuse and communicate information and those that apply military force. The so-called 'system of systems' will make this interaction as smooth and continuous as possible.¹ As a result, military force will be directed in a decisive and lethal manner against an enemy still in the process of mobilising resources and developing plans. The vision is of a swift and unequivocal victory in war achieved with scant risk to troops, let alone the home population and territory.

In the elaboration of the RMA over the 1990s, the stress has been on the role of information in and around a battlefield - what has become known, reflecting a more multi-dimensional perspective, as the 'battlespace', the box, including breadth, width and height, within which a commander positions and moves forces over time. This is normally put at 40,000 square miles. The objective is to achieve 'Dominant Battlespace Knowledge', a capacity to process information in such a way that the overall operational environment, and the key relationships between the military units within it, can be described in as close to real time as possible. This will make possible a 'Near-Perfect Mission Assignment' and thus the use of 'Precision Violence'.

The growing importance of information flows is revealed in the jargon surrounding the RMA. Once, it was sufficient to talk of 'command and control' when referring to the methods by which responsible officers would receive news from their subordinates about the state of a battle and send back orders about what should be done next. Later, it became increasingly both possible and desirable to keep units in touch with one another across theatres of operation, while intelligence was arriving from specialised systems and not just those units in direct contact with the enemy. This led to the discussion of command, control, communications and intelligence (C³I) as constituting a coherent set of problems. Now, defence analysts write about command, control, communications, computers, intelligence and battle management in the same vein. Although 'C⁴I/BM' is something of a mouthful, it conveys the view that information systems have become essential to an extremely wide - indeed comprehensive - range of functions and that they are also, in some critical sense, inter-dependent.

It is perhaps not surprising that the concept of the 'system of systems' was developed by an Admiral (William Owens). The US Navy's 'Co-operative Engagement Capability' integrates individual ship's radars to provide a single package of information available to all, pulling together units spread over thousands of miles into a coherent whole. At sea, as in the air, it may be possible to contemplate a battlespace empty of all but combatants. It has also always tended to be the case, even going back to the Second World War, that air and sea warfare have patterns susceptible to systematic analysis, which meant that the impact of technical innovations could be discerned. By contrast, land warfare has always been more complex, fluid and subject to a greater range of influences. Nonetheless, the aspiration for a 'system of systems' has also spread to ground forces. The US Army's Task Force XXI has been described as a 'digitized ground force' that will

enhance situational awareness by providing accurate, complete, real-time information about friendly and enemy forces. The idea is to cut through the fog of battle to achieve information dominance over the enemy.²

For this reason, the most radical consequences of implementing the RMA would be felt by ground forces. The vision is remarkable. The ability to strike with precision over great distances means that time and space could become less serious constraints. Enemy units within the battlespace would be engaged from outside it. 'Smart' weapons are already less dependent on active manned guidance, and even on their ability to identify and chase the signatures of hostile systems. They are able to travel to specific co-ordinates that are updated as they travel. Targets will not need to be attacked in a sequential order of priority: there can be 'parallel warfare', as critical targets are attacked immediately and together.³ 'Search and destroy' operations will become redundant if the enemy can be found electronically and destroyed from a distance. Ground forces may become little more than 'sensors', no longer needed to close with the enemy and seize territory. In order to stay agile and manoeuvrable, they will move with only that firepower required for self-defence, and will call in additional firepower from outside. Reliance on nonorganic firepower will reduce dependence upon large, cumbersome, self-contained divisions and their associated potential for high casualties.

Traditional views of lines of command will need to be rethought:

The new structure of warfare integrates and synchronises redundant, multiservice warfighting systems in simultaneous attacks on the enemy throughout his entire depth and in the space above him as well. All of this means that in future conflict the three levels of war, as separate and distinct loci of command and functional responsibilities, will be spaced and timed out of existence.⁴

If for each successful strike fewer and smaller munitions are needed, it becomes possible to envisage a much more austere transport infrastructure and reduced demands for storage of munitions and other consumables. As a result, 'heavy dependence upon ports, munitions depots and a large transport network' will decline.⁵ Logistics demands can be eased further with a move to 'just-in-time warfare'. This would follow commercial practice, where delivery of goods 'just in time' cuts down on overheads, slack time and inventories. According to one analyst, better information should allow smaller

the virtues of 'just-in-time' warfare

amounts of lethal force to be provided quicker, thereby making possible a reduction in inventories and, as a result, less dependence upon potentially vulnerable logistical connections:

Just-in-time suggests that forces need no longer be massed prior to attack. When mass is needed for offensive or defensive purposes, it need take place only at the point of impact. Large formations of ships, planes or armor can give way to staggered scheduling and positioning that presents no discernible pattern to an adversary. Not being able to sense where the attack is coming from - because it could come from everywhere at any time - takes away the other side's initiatives. Putting the adversary on the defensive, reactive mode simplifies our problem and complicates his. It implies synchronising, planning, scheduling, ordering and delivering military operations as needed to meet currently emerging demands.⁶

A Western Way of War

This could be a prospectus for war that could pass muster at the Harvard Business School. It offers the efficient use of resources, based on splendid information, productive use of capital to get the best out of labour, and the contraction of distance. It also fits in with some long-standing Western preferences that have continually been reasserted during the twentieth century's encounter with 'total war'.

In the aftermath of the carnage of the First World War, military theorists such as Basil Liddell Hart attempted to develop an alternative approach to warfare. Liddell Hart wanted to limit the UK's liabilities to its allies, and its demands on its enemies, in the hope that this could prevent total war and mass slaughter. His model war would be fought by professional armies and based on manoeuvre more than attrition. Although he looked to new types of weapons, in particular the tank, to provide for fast-moving and decisive campaigns, Liddell Hart's claim was not so much that he was defining the way of the future, but reasserting constant principles of strategy (the 'indirect approach' intended to avoid the bloodiest encounters) and a long-established British way in warfare - designed to limit the UK's liabilities - from which the country had foolishly deviated in 1914-18.⁷

Yet the Second World War was even more 'total' than the First, In a book completed just after the Japanese surrender entitled The Revolution in Warfare, Liddell Hart saw no reason to change his mind on the folly of conceiving of war in terms of unlimited aims and unlimited methods, but acknowledged that the combination of the atomic bomb with aircraft and missiles able to bridge the gap between fighting zone and hinterland meant that, in practice, war was changing 'from a fight to a process of destruction'.⁸

The effort to reverse this tendency, so that war can again become a fight, is the core theme of much of the strategic theory of the past quarter-century, even in the nuclear sphere. The RMA represents the culmination of these efforts. It is important to recognise, however, that these efforts reflect Western, and more particularly US, aspirations which may not necessarily be shared by others. The rest of this chapter describes the key features of the developing Western Way of Warfare.

Professionalism of Armed Forces

The professionalisation of their armed forces has not figured prominently in the current debate over the RMA in the UK and the US because both countries moved away from conscript armies some time ago. The stress on high-quality weaponry has reduced the relative importance of numbers, while at the same time putting a premium on high-quality troops. Conscripts are no longer needed as 'battle fodder'. Nor can they normally be trained to the level appropriate to modern warfare unless, as in Israel, society as a whole maintains itself at a high level of mobilisation. In addition, training young men and women inadequately to fight in unlikely wars is frustrating and alarming when a demand comes actually to fight. This became apparent to France during the Gulf War of 1991, when a reluctance to use conscripts left the country with remarkably few regular forces actually able to engage in combat.

Intolerance of Casualties

Edward Luttwak has argued the need to reorganise armed forces to cope with a 'post-heroic' age. The expectations and beliefs that sustained a tolerance of casualties in earlier times are no longer present. Low birth-rates and smaller families make losses in combat even more unbearable, while there is a lack of the exaggerated nationalism that could sanction 'thousands of casualties in any minor military affray'.⁹ All this puts a premium on framing strategies that keep casualties to a minimum. Whether popular attitudes are so fixed on this question is doubtful. It is by no means evident that thousands of casualties were ever tolerable in a minor affray, while for a conflict as serious as the Gulf War, preparations were made to cope with substantial coalition casualties, which fortunately did not arise. Nor is it self-evident that a lower value was put on human life in earlier times. The difference lay in circumstances and expectations. Nonetheless, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have declared that 'In all cases, US military forces must be able to undertake operations rapidly, with a high probability of success, and with minimal risk of US casualties'.¹⁰

Intolerance of Collateral Damage

The view that war is the responsibility of governments and armed forces but not the population at large leads to the presumption that all civilians must be deemed innocent unless proven guilty. This argues for targeting military assets rather than people. This is not only ethically much more acceptable, but also reflects the modern view that human beings are only as effective as the resources and technologies at their command allow. This morality interacts with the trend towards weapons of ever-greater precision, leading some to stress non-lethality, that is weapons that disable and contain rather than kill and that pose minimum long-term harm, either to combatants or to the environment.¹¹

The concept of non-lethality is not in itself new (for example, tear-gas). Agents that temporarily disable or sticky substances that temporarily deny movement have obvious applications in either police or peacekeeping roles, but this is now being extended, almost as a prerequisite for any sort of legitimate force. Referring to the use of non-lethal weapons in Somalia, such as foams used to immobilise hostile civilians, US Colonel Martin Stanton saw these promising 'kinder, gentler operations other than war':

We would like to see the development of nonlethal weapons as proof of our civility and restraint: nonlethal weapons show our reverence for life and our commitment to the use of minimal force.¹²

The series of developments that are brought together in the RMA have the connecting theme of the separation of the military from the civilian, of combatants from non-combatants, of fire from society, of organised violence from everyday life. As long as armed forces are organised around the Napoleonic belief in victory through decisive battle, it is natural to wish this to be achieved as quickly and as painlessly as possible, with the minimum of damage to civilian life and property. The alternative tendency - the hard battlefield slog, with casualties accumulating, treasury reserves depleted, industry pushed to full stretch and society becoming more fragile - is hardly appealing.

The advocates of strategic airpower arid mechanised warfare after the First World War offered a strategy capable of producing a decisive and relatively pain-free victory. The Second World War demonstrated how exaggerated their claims had been. Further confirmation of the apparent hopelessness of any attempt to contain war within acceptable limits was provided by the arrival of nuclear weapons in 1945. This suggested that the search for a route to a decisive battle was over. If the grim tendency towards total war could not be opposed by preparing to fight a limited war, perhaps it could be countered by making its 'deadly logic' inescapable. Preparing for a war that was likely to end in utter catastrophe pushed the logic to the extremes, so that war's initiation moved out of the realm of rational policy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 A Western Way of War?
• Chapter 2 The Origins of the RMA
• Chapter 3 Asymmetric Wars
• Chapter 4 Information Warfare
• Chapter 5 Americans and Allies
• Conclusion The Revolution in Strategic Affairs
• Notes