Unconventional Warfare: A Case Study

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.

With at least 13 ambush shooting of law enforcement during the last few weeks, Minneapolis police are making changes to how they handle 911 calls. Ambush shootings of officers nationwide were up 50% in 2014 and today's numbers stand at a 70% increase over 2015! Washington-based National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says ambush-style attacks are the leading method in the surging numbers of shooting deaths of law enforcement officers.

The combination of regular military forces, unconventional forces such as terrorist or insurgent groups, and criminal elements working together towards a common goal is what makes up a hybrid threat. In today’s current political and economic arenas very few of the United States’ enemies could mount an effective conventional military campaign against us. This has caused many of our enemies to turn towards using hybrid threats and tactics in order to further their attacks. The United States must in turn use hybrid tactics in order to defeat its enemies.

Warfighting in today’s environment often leans towards the Irregular Warfare (IW) side of the house where Operational Preparation of the Battlefield (OPB) is required to ensure that should conventional military forces be deployed, they

The Mine Resistant Ambush Protective (MRAP) program featured remarkable speed of development and mass production at the same time that the United States shifted its counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. The main controversy over the MRAP program revolved around the three year delay from its initial identification as a need to its production. This paper asserts that while MRAP development and production speed was impressive, the slow realization of the enemy’s Improvised Explosive Device (IED) capability and the lack of doctrine and concept development led to inaction. To support this position, this essay describes the strategic environment with its competing demands, and it highlights the roles of senior leaders, the Armed Services and the Combatant

The problem I would like to address is how can we shared values and new security strategies to reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction.  I would align two solutions.  One solution for the problem of sharing one set of values.  Another solution for the new security strategies.  The two solutions I would align to reduce ethnic conflict, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction is identify functions parts of the value system within in the security system and create a systemic process system with kanban for check and balance.  It is important to create prosocial behavior with stable and predictable patterns from the pre existing social arrangements using one language to identify them due to social forces.  The social forces impact how we think and behave, how we see people, and how people see us (Durkin & Carrothers, 2015).  Identifying the norms and values within the system allows creates a structure were true understanding of reasoning and logic are made clear for communicating the meaning of norms and values that shape prosocial behavior.  The norms and values are a functions part to the whole system.  The society is the whole system.  Norms and values are a functioning part.  A framework driven by common sense to communicate the function part (norms and values) is idea for promoting facts and evidence that would motivate prosocial behavior and encourage balance at check points.  A communication network would be the base to a systemic process system with kanban for check and balances.  The kanban points for check and balance would be areas for adjustments or maintenance from formulated objective or scope calculation.  The

The challenges of fully understanding Unconventional Warfare fall into two categories. First, the socioeconomic factors that drive a society are incredibly complicated, much more so than any military campaign, conventional or otherwise, is prepared to address. Second, self-imposed restrictions within our military, government and society have hampered attempts at sincere UW campaigns. In COL(R) Maxwell’s article, he suggests that there is a lack of understanding due to a dearth of intellectual study of UW. I tend to disagree, I believe that there is an adequate understanding of UW, however there is a lack of political will to engage in it.

The existing geopolitical world environment continually tests current United States National Security Strategy and exposed several flaws. The current grand strategy, formulated piecemeal following U.S. victory in World War II, seeks to both retain American hegemony and act as global champion for the ideals of liberal democracy. Ultimately continued exercise of this strategy has exposed the ever increasing commitment to capability delta and challenges the existing ends, ways, and means methodology. Russia’s recent exercise of its expeditionary capacity in Syria as well as China’s expansion and annexation of islands in the South China Sea only serve as reminders to U.S. strategic limitations. Patrick Porter rightly posits that the U.S. is at

The United States needs to adopt and maintain an irregular warfare mindset, above that of conventional, to ensure adaptable economic, political and military capabilities in an ever evolving global environment. In

The purpose of this Foundation of Strategy paper is to defend this author’s opinion as to “What have been or are currently the three greatest challenges for the United States in translating its military power into desired political outcomes or end states?” (Air War College) Additionally, the paper will “evaluate the three challenges in the context of two different conflicts.” (Air War College) In today’s ever dynamic and changing strategic landscape, there are plenty of challenges facing the United States. As one can imagine, the palate is full given the many facets and combinations in which senior leaders make decisions as to how best to reach a desired end goal and/or political outcome.

U.S. forces will operate in strategic environments that consist of considerable uncertainty. These area are in persistent conflict. This (OE) will be characterized by protracted confrontation among state, non-state, and individual actors using violence to achieve their political and ideological desired end states.

In 2012, Barack Obama declared, “Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked the U.S. on 9/11. We have. We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead” (“Remarks”). Flashback to about twenty-two years ago when very few people had heard of the Taliban. In the early 1990’s, after the war between the Afghanistan people and the Soviet Union ended, Afghanistan was left in a state of economic destruction, with over one million people dead. Afghanistan was a country in distress looking everywhere for answers; one group rose to the meet the needs of the people, and that group was the Taliban. The Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1996-2001 was detrimental overseas and at home.

Though conventional and irregular warfare (IW) are both forms of warfare with the desired objective of affecting the opposition’s government, the means by which they achieve that objective differ greatly. A major war against a near-peer competitor would likely place the Marine Corps against another military superpower. Preparation for such a conflict would ideally focus on tactics suited for a conventional military. Meanwhile, preparing for success against an irregular threat would conversely focus on non-traditional and indirect means and skills intended to earn or degrade trust and support from the target population. As state and non-state actors place more emphasis on IW, preparation for success against irregular threats increases rather than undermines the Marine Corps’ ability to fight and win a major war against near-peer competitors.

As the case studies of the Civil War, WWII, Containment, and the Gulf War demonstrate strategies conceived with clear objectives, with political and popular will, multi-laterally, with the intangible elements of strategy in mind and proper whole of government resourcing, outcomes are successful. In contrast, those strategies undertaken without the elements above and devoid of understanding the culture, geographic, and ideological factors may win tactically but will probably fail strategically. Howard sums best with, “it was the inadequacy of the sociopolitical analysis of the societies with which we were dealing that lay at the root of the failure of the Western powers to cope more effectively with the revolutionary and insurgency movements that characterized the postwar era, from China in the 1940s to Vietnam in the 1960s” and I submit this same weakness cripples the US strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan

Unconventional Warfare (UW) use as a strategic option is undersold due to a lack of understanding. The lack of understanding cause further political constraints and leads to interagency bickering. Military leaders need to do better at articulating the merits of UW as a viable and strategic option.