Signals of War: The Flaklands Conflicts of 1982 by Lawrence Freedman is pretty good but nothing beats:
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Some more reads...
Signals of War: The Flaklands Conflicts of 1982 by Lawrence Freedman is pretty good but nothing beats:
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
"What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."
It was not blatant. It was flagrant.It’s nice to see that Tom isn’t beneath engaging in a little blatant self-promotion of his many literary accomplishments.
Or was that flatulent?Originally Posted by Tom Odom
It was not blatant. It was flagrant.
In all seriousness, Tom, your book's on my "to buy" list. Only "Mars Learning" is ahead of it right now.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
As a southern boy I don't do flatulenceOr was that flatulent?
In all seriousness, Tom, your book's on my "to buy" list. Only "Mars Learning" is ahead of it right now.
I merely fart
More than ever or so my wife tells me
And tells me...
Good choice, from the standpoint of how leaders can become locked into the execution of pre-determined plans (Moltke the Younger), despite intelligence that the actual situation is different from the one for which you planned.
I also recommend Stoessinger's Why Nations GO to War, specifically chapter one, for a discussion of how personality and state of mind affect rational thought under stress.
"Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
One point that hasn't been made yet, is that most of our intelligence sources (SIGINT, ELINT, etc.) tell you about capability and potential. They give no insight into intentions, which are, in any case, changeable as the wind.
With regard to the latter, the only source is human intelligence, i.e. the mistress, cabinet member, bureaucrat, etc. who's been turned and is now feeding information to the other side. (A US capability that was gutted in the late seventies and is only now being rebuilt.) Even then, the intel is only as good as what the source is told. If his own people are lying to him, the best he can do is pass on the lies. On top of which, the source may be lying to us for his own motives.
Our decision to go into Iraq provides a good example of the problems:
1. We knew Saddam would use chemical weapons. (He already had, against Iran in war and Kurdish civilians in "revolt.")
2. We knew he had the capability to produce them. (Anyone who can't convert a fertilizer, pesticide, pharmaceutical, etc. plant to manufacture chemical weapons, and hide the capability, simply isn't trying.)
3. We were getting reports from inside his cabinet that he claimed to still have them. (These apparently were true.)
4. We were told by Iraqi expats that he had them. (These apparently were false, and presented out of personal motives.)
5. We had chatter among his officer corps about the use of their own chemical weapons. ("Do you think he'll really use them?" "Are you ready if he does?")
To summarize, the intel that he had chemical weapons was good. As it turns out, the reason it was good is that Saddam was trying to make it good, running a domestic and international bluff.
Didn't work out well for him.
(WHAT!?! Tom wrote a book!?! Who knew?
Last edited by J Wolfsberger; 03-28-2008 at 11:24 AM.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
As a career HUMINTer, I have to say that any claim that only HUMINT can provide insight to intentions is false. SIGINT, when collection is targeted effectively, is also a valuable direct source of information regarding intent. When HUMINT and SIGINT are effectively coordinated to collect on a target set, each feeding into the other in a structured collection effort, then the degree to which intentions can be ascertained is greatly expanded beyond the individual capabilities of either. Of course, the other INTs often have significant value in corroborating, invalidating, or simply providing additional indicators of assessed intent - IMINT immediately comes to mind.
You also must understand that capabilities are inextricably linked with intent. Neither intentions without capabilities nor capabilities without intentions pose a threat. A threat only exists when both are manifested together. The statement that "capabilities give no insight into intentions" is false. Capabilities, how they are obtained, structured and used in the context of the collection target, are often an important indicator of intent. So, it is not a question of capabilities vs intentions, but of coming to a logical judgment of intent in light of a host of indicators from the spectrum of collection assets available.
It is rare that a single collection asset, no matter how well placed, will provide stark warning of a clear and unmistable intent (decision made, action about to be initiated) for a specific course of action to be taken at the national strategic level by a potential threat. If only it was that easy.....
Only an idiot could have won this war, and he did.
It seems to me that it isn’t always true since the Grand Fenwick Expeditionary Force had intentions without capabilities yet still managed to bring the US to its knees.
"What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."
If you recall, the original strategic intent of Grand Fenwick was for their army to attack the US and lose, thus capitalizing on the perceived American willingness to fund rebuilding of defeated enemies - which appeared a foolproof plan, given the state of their army.It seems to me that it isn’t always true since the Grand Fenwick Expeditionary Force had intentions without capabilities yet still managed to bring the US to its knees.
However, it was only after they stumbled into attaining a unique capability - the Q-Bomb - that their designated military leader was able to bring the US and other world powers to accept terms. But this was in contradiction to the original intent of his political leaders, who never made clear to him in the first place that he wasn't supposed to win.....
In relation to the analysis of roaring mice and their wartime aspirations, I suggest this book.
However...
it was the United States’ blatant disregard for the fragility of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick’s pre-industrial economy, which was dependent almost entirely on making Pinot Grand Fenwick wine. After the US-produced the spurious "Pinot Grand Enwick" wine, the loss of revenue threatened to undermine Fenwick’s economy. Thus the Duchess Gloriana XIII was placed in a completely untenable position and, faced with total economic collapse, approved Prime Minster Count Rupert Mountjoy’s plan to send a punitive expedition to punish the US.
It is a little known fact that the Grand Fenwick Expeditionary Force is one of the few foreign powers to successfully invade the United States. Consisting of 20 long bowmen selected from the 700 in the Duchy and three men-at-arms selected from the 20 who have the right to carry spear and mace, clad only in chain mail, and nobly led by that epitome of military professionalism the stalwart Tully Bascombe, the GFEF inadvertently snatched victory from certain defeat.
"What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."
To piggyback on this post, I'd add that a failure to use an integrated intelligence effort is more likely to produce a false picture. I submit the August 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia as a case study in how not to do I & W intelligence. Or at least how not to use the data that assets used for I&W have collected.
Hmm. I understand your points. Let me try to rephrase in way we might agree on: The other forms of intel serve to confirm (through observation of activity) our estimate of intent.
The point I was getting at (perhaps poorly) is that no amount of SIGINT (for example) will inform you whether a telephone reference to "Uncle's birthday present" is to a terrorist event ... or a new tie.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
Too true but
If you happen to know that the "Uncle's birthday present" was recieved opened and being used for the last two months then one does know to further investigate what this "new" present may be
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
Here you are operating on the generalization that SIGINT is ineffective in collecting information on intent because the communication is coded in one or form or another.
First off, many collection targets do make statements that help us to assess intent in the clear, with no attempt at disguising what they are saying. It may be because they are naively assuming that we can't intercept the mode of comms that they are using - or that they assume that we can't understand the language/dialect used in the conversation. In both cases they are often dead wrong. Sometimes literally.
Secondly, as stated in my previous post, no collection asset operates in a vacuum. Each feeds into the others, in multiple continuous loops, that integrates both raw and finished intel in collection planning that is constantly updated. To follow up on your example, a HUMINT asset may learn that a specific code-phrase of the type you refer to will be used to initiate ramping up the threat attack phase, but has nothing more than a general idea of to whom - or exactly how - the code-phrase will be passed along. That will key multiple collection assets into the hunt for the phrase - which will also lock us on to some of the key players in the emerging event. If we are lucky enough to intercept that specific communication.
As an aside, today's wireless comms, linking cell phones, internet, etc. fuses many operational aspects of both HUMINT and SIGINT and absolutely requires close collaboration in order to detect, intercept and exploit these comms and the human networks involved.
All the collection disciplines must work together to be effective. Unfortunately, too often we see turf battles and conflicts over resources rather than true collaboration - especially at the national level in the IC.
Amalgamated Ints, Inc.
I agree with your premise -- in all senses -- but we, as nearly as I can tell, have denigrated Humint to the point where it and on the ground reports (at strategic, operational and tactical levels) are virtually discounted by many analysts unless corroborated by technical means. Technical primacy isn't an unmixed blessing.
I submit that isn't terribly smart...
(I will forego my Stansfield Turner diatribe to avoid offending young ears)
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