Some people are willing to forgive the defense establishment for its zeal in pursuing high-tech solutions. Gen. James Mattis, commander of Joint Forces Command, is most definitely not one.
In a wide ranging critique of defense planning over the past decade, Mattis blasted the wrongheaded thinking of recent years that led military planners to seek technological solutions to solve wars fundamental challenges and naively dismiss wars unchanging reality. We embraced some wishful thinking, we espoused some untested concepts and we ignored history, he said yesterday at CSIS in Washington.
Mattis didnt mention the previous Pentagon leadership by name. But it was former SecDef Rumsfeld who turned transformation into the catch-all buzzword signaling the militarys embrace of a Toefler-certified digital future. Phrases such as information dominance and Effects Based Operations filtered into doctrine manuals. In the new American way of war, near-perfect intelligence gathered from unblinking electronic eyes would replace the fog of war that causes confusion, casualties and uncertain outcomes with predictability in American military operations.
Mattis is determined to bury that notion. Defense planners will not be allowed to adopt a single preclusive view of war, he said. War cannot be precisely orchestrated. By its nature it is unpredictable. You cannot change the fundamental nature of war.
The military has swung too far in its embrace of high-technology, Mattis said, using as an example what he called over-centralized command and control. That over-centralization can create a single point of failure, he warned. The U.S. military is the single most vulnerable military in the world if we overly rely on technical C2 systems. In future wars, technical systems will be under attack and will go down, he said, so forces must disaggregate authority and decision-making to much lower levels. Were going to have to restore initiative among small units and individual leaders.
Tasked with crafting a force for the combatant commander after next, Mattis is striving to prevent the military from repeating past mistakes such as grabbing concepts that are defined in three letters, and then wondering why the enemy dances nimbly around you. He recently decreed that EBO be dropped from the American military lexicon. The rhetorical battle over EBO was largely between those who see troops on the ground as the linchpin of future conflicts, versus airpower enthusiasts, who believe just the right amount of precision weaponry applied at just the right point can produce, well, most any desired effect.
In future wars, ground forces supported by aviation and naval forces will be the linchpin, Mattis said. It is on the ground, in complex terrain, mixed in with the civilian population, where today and tomorrows enemy will confront U.S. forces. These wars will be fought among the people were going to have to deal on human levels with human beings and not think that technology or tactics by targetry will solve war. The likelihood that most wars will be of the irregular variety (Ive noticed Mattis tends to avoid using the descriptive term counterinsurgency when discussing current and future wars) will demand troops with cultural savvy who know when to shift gears from one form of war to another. War is a human endeavor and so defense planning must focus on the human factors, he said.
The advise and assist capability of ground forces will be key, requiring that regular forces achieve a seamless integration with special operations forces. High performing small units are now a national imperative, Mattis said, capable of operating independently at increasingly lower echelons. The effort he envisions is not designed to turn regular forces into special forces, rather, it recognizes that the individual and the small unit are the key players on a decentralized battlefield. Fundamentally, quality becomes much more important than quantity. The vulnerable gaps JFCOM is seeking to plug are those at the small unit level, where guerrilla fighters have targeted U.S. forces over the past eight years.
Read the rest of this story over at DoD Buzz.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Amen!
After reading “Breaking the Phalanx” and “Carnage and Culture” I am in total agreement with Mattis on these points. Western military dominance was, is, and will be defined by our ability to provide qualities of scale from the bottom up and to make unconventional decisions for unconventional situations.
Technocracy and over-centralization of our military forces and strategic thinking make us more vulnerable. As in biology, business, and politics, diversity of thought, action, and structure breeds survival!
Murphy’s Law of Unconventional Warfare: “If you broadcast your exact position by any mode, somebody will kill you.”
I think a good book that points out alot of what Mattis is trying to get at is “The Phantom Soldier” by Gunny Sgt. O’Poole.
We need to better improve our ground tactics, use infiltration more and rely less on massive arty. Becoming masters of the close range fight will instill not just precision in our engagements, it will also garner fear and respect that our forces do not need cruise missile to engage them. Much of the bravado and false propaganda spread in insurgent and terrorist groups is the false myth that our forces are scared to engage in battle.
Obviously our protracted engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan has gone some way towards putting that lie to rest to a degree, but using advanced infantry tactics and having initiative at the lowest levels with MOST importantly upper echelons pushing for this and it NOT being a defacto situation as a result of being overextended is URGENT!
Poole is half-way between orthodox and good. He’s got a lot of nonsense in his books and doesn’t grasp some things.
Then again, he’s right on some other stuff.
Sven,
I’ve taken to reading Defense and Freedom, which I believe is your blog, correct?
What is it that Poole has got wrong in your opinion? I mentioned it as very applicable to today’s need for precision which is gathered by HUMINT by our own troops who have infiltrated the target. Less explosives more precision, less collateral damage and more fear in the enemy.. I can’t see how it’s a bad thing.
It does mean though that more initiative will have to be accorded to our troops as Mattis is hoping for. It’s about time that our high ranking officers give more leeway to the strategic corporal.
My take is more along the lines of not letting the tail wag the dog. All that whizz bang stuff briefs real nice on the powerpoints at the 5 sided puzzle palace. Someone needs to keep in mind that the leadership needs to be wary of allowing the support functions to usurp the commander’s role in setting the course.
@atacms:
The list of problems with Poole is long and would take at least a book to explain – he’s written several ones, after all.
You can see one of the problems at the D&F blog in the May 23rd post.
Poole isn’t right just because he advocates less firepower and more tactics (infiltration and exfiltration mostly). He got the direction partially right, but not much else.
I know some very serious people who dismiss his books as a waste of time even though they’re not of the firepower-centric faction at all.
Gen. Mattis is correct in worrying about “over-centralized
OK let me get this straight. Because one day someone might find good ways to attack our communication networks we should ditch communication networks? Honestly I understand the need to train without them, I also understand the need to train without CAS, but I don
One part of this that I most certainly agree with is the empowerment of the lower units.
The real intel war should be focused on the space between our soldiers ears. Smarter, more capable troops capable of operating with the minimum of supervision if necessary.
The intel tech is not failed in and of itself, the problem is that the leadership uses it to play “God Mode” warfare, exerting ever more control over their people, inserting themselves ever deeper into the decision making process, negating the authority of their subordinates.
Its control vs leadership; the two are not the same thing.
One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine…
- From a Soviet Junior Lt’s Notebook
empowerment of the lower level unit was a lesson learned in WWII, and was very very slowly made part of the military doctrine until the gulf war came. there was abundant use of hi tech gadgetry and the leaders military and political ones were so mystified by such that they embraced the use of “hitech” gadgets without contemplating the short term and long term effect of that to the grunts who would eventually use them.
the political leaders, and most of our military commanders are still in the era of the soviet style war scenario and of using “hitech” weapons in every event there is.
victory was glorious in the gulf war with the use of cruise missiles and mlrs, the enemies we face now use a more cunning and brutal tactic but they are not that different from the day our country was established. they are still humans, people, persons which should be seen not through an optical camera but through the eye of another person.
i just stroken by such unbelievable stupidity here! you do realy belive all this sifi-shit was done for real action?
here some facts:
1: higtech shit was done not for the army it was done for firms developing for the army.
2: 90% of money flooding into those firms were got by “country club connections” and “self-helping elite-lobbies”.
3: 90% of those firms do it not because they have an idea or need in such weapons or tools but because they are in the position to get a big bunch of money by just sticking around, playing with high-speed computers and doing sifi-presentations.
r do you realy belive that LCS and 200 F-22 can save USA by doing it bankrupt?
Boots on the ground has been the way wars are won since the stone age. The technology was inteneded to give them the advantage of intelligence and suprise. The over reliance on technology led to Germany’s defeat in WWII, we are wise not to follow their example.
Germany lost because Hitler didn’t listen to his generals, not because of a reliance on technology. Although more than likely the technology gave Hitler too much confidence. Our politicians would be wise to not do the same. Wait, did I just say wise and politician in the same sentence? I guess we are screwed.
As long as our army is robust enough to survive without selective elements of technology. Building it around the assumption we will never have fog of war again with digital tech is naive, since all of our enemies will seek to strip it from us as part of their opening move.
If anything, I see it as giving the enemy more things to destroy at the outset.
The general should be careful not to judge everything on the current situation. He and others talk of future conflicts as if large conventional war will never happen again. Maybe they have a great crystal ball on that but history shows we have made that mistake in the past. Prior to the American Civil War the Federal troops were largely involved in small unit tactics and the early part of the war took its toll. Again in WWI we were little prepared and then again in WWII when we had troops in the Phillipines fighting with Spanish American war systems. Just becuase we have these irregular conflicts now doesn’t mean that we won’t have to face something much larger down the road.
Actually, those of us who were around know that transformation started way before Rumsfeld. It was only during his watch that it became unpopular with the press, mainly because they hated him so much.
I don’t think “transformation” in the ’90s is quite the same as when Rumsfeld rammed it through. But my memory of the ’90s is a little shaky, so…
What can I say? Mattis is awesome. Strategic-level systems don’t mean a thing at the confusing, tactical level. I totally agree that it’s time to embrace our dominance of strategic challenges like air superiority and force projection, and start filling in our weak spots.. namely, reliable intelligence technologies at the combat formation-level, and good, reliable equipment for the infantry. Ma Deuce seems to be the model citizen for infantry-proven development.
Its the flexibility stupid. The military needs to be able to adapt. Within 2 days of the invasion of Iraq it was obvious that more protection would be needed on the Humvee. Yet the bureaucracy resisted up-armour projects that did not go through their decade long development process.
Adaption and change will be far more important in the future.