Strategic Compression

[Tom Odom]

Compliments to your efforts to define an very relevant concept. It seems to me that strategic compression is in some ways the antithesis to what we try to instill in our warfighters on the battlefield that being the idea of tactical patience. Strategic compression often pushes leaders at many levels to "do something, anything" rather than appear hesitant or worse impotent.

Tactical patience is of course the art of judging when conditions for sucess are set and when acting takes the initiative from the opponent.

Personally I have seen or been involved in ops at once both strategic and tactical. My favorite example of such was the "Goma baby clothes" airdrop driven exclusively by that "do something, anything impulse" and "do it on CNN." Near fiasco is the best face I can put on it and the "near" only applies because I did my best to convince the media that nothing was really going to happen and many of them left.

Keep chewing this bone...it is worth the effort!

Best
Tom

[SWJED]

... but keep at it - looking for much more detail and discussion. Counting on you guys.

[Uboat509]

If I am not mistaken, strategic compression is the whole point of 4GW. The various non-state actors don't have the resources to have significantly effect the US or Israel at the operational or strategic level. All they are able to do is engage in various relatively small scale tactical actions which, in the absence of the media would be largely inconsequential. The enemy, however has learned to use I/O as a force multiplier. The use of the media and the proper application of rhetoric can lend a great deal of strategic weight to relatively small scale tactical actions. In the West the enemy seems to be aided somewhat by the rabid partisanship on both sides of the aisle and by the fact that many do not have a proper frame of reference to understand what is going on. At least that is the way I understand it.

SFC W

[selil]

It would seem that when considering compression of the strategic environment it would have more to do with the political, resources, and large world view rather than the tactical unit level. However, we know that strategic choices have incredible impact on the tactical capability at the unit level, and further that actions at the unit level have substantial consequence on the strategic choices. It would appear that with small world communications (global, ubiquitous, instantaneous, and broadband) and the ability to have instant access from anywhere that strategic compression is a communications control issue.

The good side of strategic compression is that operational commanders would seem to have a better understanding of the current operational environment. The bad thing is that operational commanders can see set pieces and not realize the actual situation with a dirt in the teeth world view. This would seem to create an environmental disconnect between capability/sustainability and realization. I would think that constant inputs on current missions by commanders to the unit level would create feed back loops of indecision and overload commanders with requests for further direction while halting unit operations.

Unlike historical conflicts the ability to move information around the battlefield is only controlled in limited ways. Any cell phone, DVD Camera, or other transmission device in the environment is going to dispense with operational superiority in information operations. The way that information is viewed is contextual and when the context is not made apparent the message can be skewed and changed substantially. Whereas we can talk about “yellow journalism” and “bias” it is much harder to apply that to the selectivity of the images presented by either side of a conflict. Never mind the veracity and legitimacy of the information. This might suggest that strategic compression factors affecting command decisions might be infested with inappropriate information and create command error in assessment.

Inherent in the idea of compression is the concept that it is finite, and more importantly with compression comes inflexibility. You can only compress a command structure, tactical environment, or communications conduit so far. When compressing the structure a certain amount of loss occurs (common concept in communications and communication compression technology). The loss partially would appear to be in the flexibility of the operational entity. The flexibility that could be considered lost is the creative capability of the field commander to overcome issues through creative measures. We might not want field commanders becoming “artistic” in the field, but we most assuredly want them using higher order thinking skills to accomplish their objectives. Slightly inconsistent with the above analogy strategic compression suggest that more information is available since the single lines of communications loose some information through compression, more information is provided to the strategic commander as an overall broader understanding.

Just some simple thoughts early on a Sunday…