Americans ‘must continue to adapt tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment to counter a thinking, adaptive enemy.’Americans Must Understand Irregular Warfare To Defeat It – Pentagon ReportBy Cliff Montgomery – Oct. 8th, 2007That America must understand irregular warfare was the subject of an August 2007 Air Force Doctrine Document.We quote from the timely report below:“The United States’ overwhelming dominance in recent conventional wars has made it highly unlikely that most adversaries will choose to fight the US in a traditional, conventional manner. Thus, for relatively weaker powers (including non-state entities) irregular warfare (IW) has become an attractive, if not more necessary, option.”IW presents different challenges to our military and to the Air Force. This document highlights Air Force capabilities and outlines how they should be employed. It will also increase Airmen’s understanding of the different nature inherent in IW.”The Air Force’s ability to operate in the air, space, and cyberspace domains provides our fighting forces with a highly asymmetric advantage over IW adversaries. Command of the air prevents adversaries from conducting sustained operations in this domain while allowing US and coalition forces to exploit numerous advantages.”While our IW adversaries have their own asymmetric capabilities such as suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and the cover of civilian populations, they lack and cannot effectively offset unfettered access to the high ground that superiority in air, space, and cyberspace provides.”Exploiting altitude, speed, and range, airborne platforms can create effects without the impediments to movement that terrain imposes on ground forces.”The unique perspective that Airmen bring to a conflict is as relevant in IW as in past traditional conflicts. Innovation and adaptation are hallmarks of airpower. Innovative, forward-thinking Airmen must continue to adapt tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment to counter a thinking, adaptive enemy.”US airpower in its myriad forms is capable of operating simultaneously in multiple theaters, producing invaluable combat and enabling effects across a wide spectrum of operations.”When properly integrated, Air Force capabilities have been—and will continue to be—integral to the success of US military power.IW DEFINED“The US has struggled to understand the threats posed by what has been referred to at various times as IW, low-intensity conflict, insurgency, small wars, and indirect aggression.”For the purpose of this document, IW is defined as a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will.”Rather than seeking to impose societal change from the outside by a decisive defeat of the population’s military and security forces, proponents of IW seek a change from within by de-legitimizing the institutions and ideologies of the targeted state, and eventually winning the support of the population (or at least acquiescence) for their cause.”However, because IW is a complex and nuanced type of warfare, it does not lend itself easily to a concise universal definition.”IW is not a new concept; organizations have clashed for political control for thousands of years. Today, changes in the international environment due to rapid global communications, near instantaneous 24-hour world news coverage, increasingly interdependent global commerce, and the proliferation of technologies and weapons of mass destruction/disruption make ensuring US security more of a challenge.”Air Force forces play an important role in IW, but just as with more traditional operations, their most effective employment requires careful study of the environment and appreciation for the unique characteristics of the conflict.”The following definitions highlight some key differences between IW and traditional warfare, and conventional and unconventional warfare. Understanding these differences allows Airmen to have a common frame of reference when discussing these types of warfare:
- Traditional warfare—A confrontation between nation-states or coalitions/alliances of nation-states. This confrontation typically involves force-on-force military operations in which adversaries employ a variety of conventional military capabilities against each other in the air, land, maritime, space, and cyberspace domains.
The objective may be to convince or coerce key military or political decision makers, defeat an adversary’s armed forces, destroy an adversary’s war-making capacity, or seize or retain territory in order to force a change in an adversary’s government or policies.
- Irregular warfare—A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations.
- Conventional warfare—A broad spectrum of military operations conducted against an adversary by traditional military or other government security forces that do not include chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons.
- Unconventional warfare (UW)—A broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source.
It includes, but is not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.”Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!
