Posted by William F. Owen
Swarming is essentially perceived phenomena by people observing a condition and arbitrarily assigning the word "swarm" to what they see. It has no basis in tactical doctrine, other than the successful application of normal and well understood tactical applications may look like a "swarm" to the victim.
Agree with you that "military" examples cited are pretty lame, and probably the result of someone asking RAND to do a study on what swarming means to the military. Every military tactic I have seen described as swarming is simply an ambush, encirclement, isolating maneuver, raid, etc. Absolutely nothing new, and largely a waste of tax payers dollars to conduct such a study.

Going back to my original post where I cited examples ranging from the activists in Iran, the Battle for Seattle, etc. as potential events that could be described as swarming (though still no utility in doing so), where you have a trigger event(s) and a spontaneous reaction that self-organizes (to some extent). Kind of like kicking a hornet's nest. The hornets don't have a plan for such an event (an assumption), but quickly react by swarming their poor attacker. Understanding it that way may have some value (the availability of information globally can lead to spontaneous swarming events, etc.), but tend to agree with the so what crowd. Need to call it what it is, but on the other hand the study of such biological phenomia is fascinating.