New Rules of War

[Chris jM]

thus loosing the good points that may have been made.

Are you being kind here Wilf, are do you genuinely see some good points in this? I'm normally very cautious of trashing someone's work without reflection and secondary sources/ opinions to put it into perspective (or, from another perspective, I'm an easily persuaded sell-out...)

However I failed to see anything of relevance or utility here at all.

Rule 2: Finding is the new flanking is flawed, albeit the least flawed of the three. If you can't find the enemy then flanking, attacking by fire or even an all-out up-the-guts assault will simply not be possible. As to portraying 'finding' rising to prominence over the 'strike, exploit' (the flank) I'd suggest this is rather a part of fighting an enemy who seeks to employ guerrilla/ unconventional tactics. Alexander's forces in Bactria would empathise with the difficulty in finding an enemy who seeks to avoid pitched battle - and history could provide countless more examples. If the author wanted to say that finding the enemy in the COE/ any COIN-type undertaking is more important as a tactical function than striking him then I would agree. We enjoy a huge advantage in terms of technology and firepower (most counter-insurgents do) so delivering death and destruction isn't the problem, but finding him is. But to portray a grand narrative of battle whereby flanking was once being a dominant form of manoeuvre and is now replaced by that of finding? Uh, no.

Rule 1: "Many and Small" Beats "Few and Large." Nice idea I'd like to subscribe to, but god does tend to be on the sides of the big battalions that are backed by overwhelming firepower supported by solid doctrine and led by competent leaders... all of which is outside the simplistic rendering of the above. After all, a big battalion can split into the 'small and many' when required.

Rule 3 - Swarming is the New Surging I'll admit that I struggle to create a solid argument against the concept of swarming, but it has always struck me as being infeasible. My gut feeling is that swarm tactics lack operational mobility once deployed, they are too difficult to resupply/ their logistic chain is simultaneously too fragile and too inefficient and the individual part of the swarm is too easily suppressed, fixed and defeated in detail by a competent enemy.

As to the concept of netwar, I don't think too much needs to be said as I doubt anyone will argue in support of it.

At the practical level I see it as inevitable that increased technology will be pushed down to the lowest level. I hate the term 'Network Centric Warfare' as it seems to replace the concept of warfare with the concept of a network - better perhaps is work towards a 'Warfare Centric Network'. Much like the concept of recon pull/ push we need to think of technology as being a network push, not a network pull. The core concepts of close combat won't dramatically change, so best support the core combat functions as we know them rather than trying to change.

In my capacity as a student of war/history, I'm seeing military progress as evolution rather than revolution. Along with that reading comes the caveat that anyone peddling revolution or the silver bullet ought to be treated with great suspicion.