Irregular Warfare Mindset Needed for Our Modern World Essay

2. The National Defense Strategy (NDS) counterbalances the Defense Departments tendency to focus on winning conventional conflicts rather than irregular wars by empowering those small nations to improve the security of their countries to prevent conflicts from happening. The NDS focuses on the different irregular warfare tactics that can be used by our enemies in the strategic environment. It gives us guidance on what we need to do to prevent the use of these irregular warfare tactics. It was not until the last decade that the U.S. military started fighting the irregular wars; our Special Forces units were the ones that were fighting the unconventional wars. The U.S. military has had a difficult time changing its focus on fighting conventional wars to fighting irregular wars. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military became very experienced in guerrilla warfare tactics. However, when that war ended the focus shifted back to fighting the conventional wars and that experience was lost. Now, because of the lack of experience, the U.S. military is having a difficult time fighting the unconventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Conflicts within the nation of Somalia were sometimes planned as a means to an end. Whereby the United States Government supported a certain regime before they used their power to gain control of the situation and overthrow the tyrant. In other cases the use of national power was used such as the Islamic Courts Union to gain control over Somalia by implementing logical line of operations by providing the people their needs and services to gain their trust. In these situations it would be considered as an irregular warfare environment, because they were violent struggles

Every year, since the Taliban regime ended, foreign troop numbers within the country have increased dramatically. The greatest increase of troops was about twenty thousand additional troops added to the grand total of sixty-six thousand. With increased troops, the Taliban activity has also intensified. Mullah Saifur Reheman, a Taliban, began to rebuild his militia forces to support the anti- United States fighters. His forces amounted to over one thousand by the beginning of Operation Anaconda in March of 2002. Rebels against the revolution had planned to use the region as headquarters for launching guerrilla attacks (Shapiro). The United States used Kandahar International Airport as an operational base for taking and dispersing personnel and supplies. The number of U.S. troops who operated in the country grew to more than ten thousand against the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Eventually, the United States and its allies drove the Taliban from power and curtailed al Qaeda’s efforts to plan and execute terrorist attacks at a high cost. The United States special inspector for Afghanistan reconstruction has reported that, when the security for aid workers is counted, the total amount of nonmilitary funds that Washington has appropriated since 2002 “is about one-hundred billion dollars (Emadi).” That is more than the United States has ever spent trying to rebuild a country. There is no need to spend that much money to have an impact, that money just needs to be spent well. In

Given the context of current strategic guidance, it is important to ask if the U.S. can be prepared to conduct both conventional and irregular warfare successfully. The answer is yes. However, preparation for conventional operations should always be the priority. Preparation for irregular warfare should not come at the expense of conventional warfare preparation. This is necessary because of the reasons discussed below: the strategic limitations of irregular warfare, the enduring nature of conventional war, resource constraints, and prioritization of operations and training.

In both cases, rather than quick victory, the limited aims of the United States government came up against insurgencies fighting with less limited aims. The operational artists in both campaigns were unable to link limited political goals to tactical actions in the ever-changing operational environments where defeating a military did not translate to victory. Achieving victory in Iraq and Afghanistan required the establishment of security and governance that the local population considered legitimate. The modern US military struggled in connecting these population centric needs with tactical battlefield

While the development of guerrilla war does not factor into Weigley’s thesis that the United States has moved from a strategy of attrition to a strategy of annihilation, it is important in understanding how and why the United States made that change. For Weigley, this change came during the American Civil War when Grant became Commanding General of the Army. Grant did not believe the war could be won with a single, decisive victory against the Confederate Army, rather, he initiated a strategy to destroy the Confederate Armies through many battles and by attacking their economic resources. The orders to begin destroying the war resources of the Confederacy may have had their roots in the Western and Trans-Mississippian Theaters of the war because of frustrations associated with guerrilla war.

This case study is on the battle of Mogadishu. This battle took place on October 3rd and 4th of 1993 in the country of Somalia which is located in Africa. This battle changed the foreign policy of the United States. The battle cost the Americans 18 lives, and 77 wounded. Estimates are that it cost the Somalis about 500 lives and wounded 1000.1 This battle was fought with some of Americas most highly trained and lethal warriors. The main effort of the battle was led by Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Operations Forces Detachment- Delta. It started out as a peace keeping mission and escalated into a mission to capture a Somali warlord. It ultimately ended up being a mission

As the Army begins to move from counter insurgency (COIN) operations to decisive action (DATE) operations; there is going to be a shift towards peer to peer threats. The Army’s ability to strike fast, seize and hold key terrain and win the war through precise action is what the current doctrine is pushing. (CROZIER 2013) Although, there still will be counter insurgency operations to fight guerilla warfare with non-state actors. The main focus will be fighting countries who are peer or near peer threats such as China and Russia.

Over the course of history, there have been many terms to describe warfare tactics that do not follow traditional warfare tactics, ranging from “guerrilla warfare, to irregular warfare (IW), to asymmetric warfare, and to what some call fourth generation warfare or 4GW.”1 Throughout history, the side with the more traditional warfare tactics generally has had more difficulties when nontraditional warfare tactics have been used against them.2 This paper will focus on a few similarities between how Napoleon’s French forces and the current U.S. forces have handled irregular warfare tactics, with the focus on their inability to transition from traditional warfare to nontraditional warfare tactics when needed, their failure to utilize a population centric viewpoint rather than the enemy

Irregular warfare has become the centre of much military and academic study in recent years, due mostly to the ongoing NATO operations in Afghanistan. However irregular warfare is by no means a recent revelation in the evolution of warfare and strategy, numerous examples exist throughout history in which irregular warfare tactics and strategy have been adopted and later analysed by academics and military professionals. This author will focus on the key issues that governments face in creating effective strategies for irregular warfare with a particular emphasis on counter-insurgency (COIN) and terrorism. Resources such as time, space, legitimacy and support present themselves as key issues in dealing with insurgency and terrorism and are

Clausewitz defines war as an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” The nature of war is enduring yet the character of war changes over time. Current US strategic guidance is advancing the point of view that since the character of war has changed to focus on irregular wars then the US military should prepare for a future of irregular wars. This shift in focus forgets that the nature of war is enduring and in order to be successful, we must prepare for all types of conflict. This paper will define the types of conflict and the likelihood of each followed by a discussion of US strategic guidance and ending with an analysis of the training resources and force structure requirements needed to achieve success for all types of

Giulio Douhet, in his seminal treatise on air power titled The Command of the Air, argued, “A man who wants to make a good instrument must first have a precise understanding of what the instrument is to be used for; and he who intends to build a good instrument of war must first ask himself what the next war will be like.” The United States (US) military establishment has been asking itself this exact question for hundreds of years, in an attempt to be better postured for the future. From the Civil War, through the American Indian Wars, and up until World War II (WWII) the American military’s way of war consisted of fighting traditional, or conventional, wars focused on total annihilation of an enemy. Since that time, there has been a gradual shift from the traditional framework towards one that can properly address non-traditional, or irregular wars. While the US maintains a capability to conduct conventional warfare, the preponderance of operations where the US military has been engaged since WWII have been irregular wars. Therefore, this question articulated by Douhet, as to understanding the character of the next war in order to properly plan, train, and equip, is certainly germane to the current discussion of regular war versus irregular war. In today’s fiscally constrained environment, the questions remains, which will dominate the future and therefore, garner further funding and priority. Based on the current threats and the US role as a superpower, the US

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

Since a vast majority of wars over the last 100 years have been fought using the irregular warfare construct it would be extremely important for the US military to train and equip a sizable piece of the force to focus on fighting an irregular war. However, this does not negate the need to train and equip forces to fight a regular war. Our strategic policy should be to fully incorporate irregular warfare into our defense industrial complex to provide for the greatest coverage of war contingencies.

The goal of our deployment in Afghanistan that has been repeatedly announced by the White House and the Pentagon is to prevent a return to power of the Taliban and with it the restoration of a safe-haven for al-Qaeda. Shortly after he took office, President Barack Obama announced a “surge” of more than 30,000 fresh troops into Afghanistan. In making the announcement he set clear objectives, which he reiterated in his June 22nd speech to the nation: “To refocus on al-Qaeda; reverse the Taliban's momentum; and train Afghan Security Forces to defend their own country.” [6]