Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
OMG!!!...
Minor exaggerations for dramatic effect, but yeah, I'm scared as well. We've been working down the slippery slope of drawing far too much from the "lessons learned" from the past 10 years as an oracle of the future. We've watched Irregular Warfare, Security Force Assistance, and now Unified Land Operations (ULO) with Combined Arms Maneuver (CAM) and Wide Area Support (WAS) all under a unified Mission Command (MC).

Frankly I think we have expanded "war" to mean so much that really isn't war at all, that to write a new definition for war that covered it all looked so rediculous that it was easier to just delete it and kick it under the carpet.

This effort to delete "war" and "Major Combat Operations" is mused upon in the The CCJO Activity Concepts in the first highlighted section below. We have stopped defining the term, but persist in using it throughout doctrine regardless. We may be outsmarting ourselves a bit on this one. I’m on the current CCJO writing team, so we will need to add this quirk to the agenda.

Most dangerous will remain the higher end, which will apparently remain nameless for now (perhaps we can just give it a symbol, like “the singer formerly known as Prince” used to use.) A symbol would take up much less room than writing out “the conflicts formerly known as war.”

Cheers!

Bob



2. THE NATURE OF COMBAT
Combat is organized action to defeat an armed enemy through the application of force to kill, destroy, or capture by all available means.4
4 Organized here means that the actions are not random, but rather have some rational aim, involve some level of planning, are conducted by combat forces (though not necessarily regular forces) assembled specifically for that purpose, and are conducted according to some tactical system. Defeat is defined as: “A tactical mission task that occurs when an enemy force has temporarily or permanently lost the physical means or the will to fight. The defeated force’s commander is unwilling or unable to pursue his adopted course of action, thereby yielding to the friendly commander’s will and can no longer interfere to a significant degree with the actions of friendly forces.
Defeat can result from the use of force or the threat of its use.” U.S. Army, Field Manual 3-90, Tactics (Washington: Department of the Army, 2001), Glossary-9.
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Combat seeks to destroy an enemy or by threatening destruction to compel capitulation. In practice, however, combat can support a variety of political objectives short of that. Moreover, the mere demonstration of credible combat power may deter a potential aggressor. For U.S. joint forces, therefore, the first requirement of combat is that its conduct conforms to the strategic objectives. At the same time, an understanding of the requirements and limitations of combat as a strategic instrument should inform the political decision to resort to combat.
Combat can assume a variety of forms and occur in a variety of circumstances, both in war and during times of nominal peace. It may take place on land, on and under the seas, in the air, and increasingly in space and cyberspace.5 It can range in scale and duration from limited, isolated strikes or raids lasting hours or days to major campaigns involving large land, naval, and air formations lasting months or years.6 It can vary in form from brutal close combat at distances of mere meters using basic individual weapons, sometimes improvised, to standoff combat from distances of thousands of miles using advanced long-range weapons and platforms, often controlled remotely.
Even when conducted with advanced weaponry, combat remains ultimately an intensely human activity, taking a physical and The current version of JP 3-0 does not define combat or discuss its nature or dimensions, although it mentions the term frequently. Under the section titled “Nature of Warfare,” it discusses “traditional warfare” and “irregular warfare,” but it does not discuss a mixing of forms. The final draft revision of JP 3-0 dated 15 July 2010 incorporates the constructs, future environment and precepts from the CCJO, including a discussion of the four categories of activity. JP 3-0, I-5 to I-6; U.S. Joint Staff, Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations Revision Final Coordination (Washington: Department of Defense, July 15, 2010), I-20 to I-23.
5 Space: “A medium like the land, sea, and air within which military activities shall be conducted to achieve U.S. national security objectives.”
Cyberspace: “A global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.” Cyberspace operations: “The employment of cyber capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve objectives in or through cyberspace. Such operations include computer network operations and activities to operate and defend the Global Information Grid.” All definitions from U.S. Joint Staff, Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary for Military and Associated Terms (Washington:
Department of Defense, 2010); available from http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/index.html. (Hereafter cited as JP 1-02.) U.S. Executive Branch, National Security Strategy 2010 (Washington: White House, 2010), 22. (Hereafter cited as NSS 2010.)
6 Examples of the former include Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S.-led intervention in Grenada from 25 October-2 November 1983, and Operation El Dorado Canyon, the punitive U.S. air strike against Libya on 15 April 1986. Examples of the latter include the campaigns of the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
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psychological toll on those who experience it and requiring arguably greater stores of fortitude, stamina, and strength than any other human endeavor. Although the CCJO argues that joint forces must be adaptive in all situations, this is truest of combat, which entails competing with a hostile and intelligent enemy who also will adapt.
Combat power may be applied against various targets, including enemy fighting forces, the political leadership that directs those forces, the economic or other institutions that create and sustain them, or the population from which they are drawn. Combatants might restrict themselves, for moral, cultural, legal, or strategic reasons, from attacking certain targets in particular situations, but these are self-imposed restrictions not intrinsic to combat. For example, the United States and many other nations reject the targeting of noncombatants, whereas some combatants intentionally target civilians.7 Finally, combat may vary in the forces and fighting methods used.
On one hand, it may be conducted by or against the regular military forces of a national government, who wear uniforms, are more or less regulated by law and custom, and are equipped and sustained by the national industrial base. Those representing modern states typically operate in identifiable combined-arms formations using advanced land, sea, and air-fighting platforms designed solely for that purpose.
Increasingly, many also operate in space and cyberspace. Some possess air and maritime power-projection capabilities. All tend to employ dedicated military command-and-control and logistics systems that are distinguishable from their civilian counterparts.
On the other hand, combat may be conducted by or against irregular forces, whether paramilitaries in aid of a nation’s regular military forces, the combatant arm of an insurrection, a terrorist organization, or outright criminals. Lacking ready access to a national industrial base and thus materially disadvantaged in relation to regular forces, irregular combatants tend to employ guerrilla warfare and terror tactics, often in violation of established laws and customs of warfare.Because they tend to blend into the larger population and subsist, at least in part, on the civilian infrastructure, attacking them may well risk collateral damage and increased popular disaffection.
As they have in the past, future combat challenges most likely will present a mix of these forms, whether involving an essentially irregular force enjoying some of the advanced capabilities of regular forces, such
7 Note however that the United States has not always taken that view. In the latter stages of World War II, both the United States and Great Britain conducted massive bombing raids against populated areas intended to break German and Japanese morale.
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as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, or an essentially regular force that employs irregular combatants and methods to complement its regular operations, as the North Vietnamese did during the Vietnam War. Moreover, the form that combat takes in any prolonged military contest likely will change over time. Future joint forces must be able to defeat such evolving hybrid threats whatever their complexion.