New Rules of War

[Fuchs]

That's why I want effect over efficiency and not "cheap stuff" or "cost saving." The debate is what serves the purpose. Not what it costs.

Look up the definition of efficiency.
It's effect per cost.

There's no way how a look at effect only (ignoring cost) could be superior to a look at efficiency.
The word has been mis-used by unintelligent parrots a lot, but that doesn't change its definition.

[Ken White]

is he saying that flawed perceptions from erroneous or politically skewed information should not drive decisions?

I suspect he like I knows that happens but bitterly regrets that it does. It isn't a question of wishful thinking, simply stating the fact that it happens, should not -- and need not. As he said, a lot of 'historians' write drivel -- and a lot of decision makers do not allow themselves to be swayed by 'information' (see Bush, G.W. for a recent example).

Take the Saigon Embassy and Tet, both discussed above but in the terms of the historian's views on them . Some of us who were around back then have a totally different take on the actions and reactions to them. While it is true that perception is reality, it is not quite true that Politician's perceptions are deliberately attuned to what they THINK their voters want, they are attuned to what the Politician personally wants and attributes to what his or her voters should want in his or her view.

I believe that and a few other aberrations are the issues Wilf alludes and object to...

Fuchs:

There's no way how a look at effect only (ignoring cost) could be superior to a look at efficiency.

Depends on your viewpoint or emphasis. Militarily to look at effectiveness is the only sensible option.

However, holistically and politically for the majority of circumstances you're certainly correct. Cost is, of course, always a factor and in times of peace or near peace it dominates. Frequently in times of minor war it is an inconsequential issue; it literally becomes a non-issue in total existential war or anything near it (like WW II) when military effectiveness and/or combat effectiveness (not the same thing) take precedence, occasionally totally.

The military professional should look solely at effectiveness for his plan and recommendation, the Politicians will then tell him what they will support and he must retool his plans accordingly. In many cases, there will be minimal constraint imposed by 'cost efficient' models and the effectiveness can and will rule what happens. If, however, one plans with an eye on efficiency (which entails giving costs undue emphasis), then one is likely to produce a flawed plan that will not be effective. I emphasize that in this respect, I'm speaking of financial costs only; impacts such as economy of force or effort, casualties, terrain or initiative lost or gained are in reality more an effectiveness issue, current and future, than one of efficiency.

[Fuchs]

Fuchs:Depends on your viewpoint or emphasis. Militarily to look at effectiveness is the only sensible option.

You can maximize effect at given cost or minimize costs at given effect.

There's absolutely no point in preferring effectiveness over efficiency because efficiency in achieving a desired effect (= at minimum cost) is simply unbeatable.
Effectiveness is only about one variable while efficiency considers two important variables - it's a much richer term.

No one with a functioning brain will ever strive for the best ratio of effect and cost and willfully fail to achieve the desired level of effect by doing so.

A military that looks only at effectiveness is bound to waste resources and fail its master, the people, by performing poorly.
Look at the LCS, F-35 or the fuel cost in AFG, Puma for examples. In fact, every Western military force is extremely wasteful because they don't strive for efficiency.
I won't accept any excuse like "militarily only effectiveness counts" because the latter is ethically the same as to send a troop of soldiers every hour to rob a bank.
The damage that wasteful behaviour in the military does to the welfare of the nation is extreme.

Many "victories" were more damaging (net) to the "victorious" nation than staying at peace would have been. The costs of military & war suck and threaten to badly impair the Western nations in their ability to reform themselves for the future.

[Ken White]

You can maximize effect at given cost or minimize costs at given effect.

There are others. Lot of gray out there...

There's absolutely no point in preferring effectiveness over efficiency because efficiency in achieving a desired effect (= at minimum cost) is simply unbeatable.

Unbeatable in many respects, no question -- but sometimes the desired result will require a degree of effectiveness to be achieved that is inefficient.

Effectiveness is only about one variable while efficiency considers two important variables - it's a much richer term.

It also puts the two variables in competition.

Sometimes efficiency will win, occasionally effectiveness will.

No one with a functioning brain will ever strive for the best ratio of effect and cost and willfully fail to achieve the desired level of effect by doing so.

I agree with that, however, not everyone has a functioning brain. If one has functioning brain, one may occasionally run across an opponent whose brain functions a little better, causing efficiency to take second place to effectiveness.

The damage that wasteful behaviour in the military does to the welfare of the nation is extreme.

We can agree on that as well

Many "victories" were more damaging (net) to the "victorious" nation than staying at peace would have been.

And that...

The costs of military & war suck and threaten to badly impair the Western nations in their ability to reform themselves for the future.

Probably true. Shame there are people out there who either don't realize that or don't care...

Economics is indeed the dismal science. Warfare OTOH is not a scientific endeavor -- it is the application of an art. Art is inherently inefficient.

[William F. Owen]

Based on some private e-mails from lurkers on this board, I think I can now add this,

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.

[zenpundit]

Dr. Marc,

The devil, however, is in the details and, let's face it, the details in both Iraq and Afghanistan morphed into the construction of "democracies" which was not part of the original, political calculus of cost; neither were the "insurgencies" .

Very true. Iraq was a stretch and Afghanistan morphing in under a half-century is an impossibility.

That being said, then why has the response to the economic "warfare" of various and sundry financial institutions not been dealt with in a similar manner? Why is he not advocating swarming by accountants which, IMHO, would have far more effect

Amen. For an anthropologist, you are a fine economist.

Ken,

Impressive response. You wrote:

That's merely one small point, a far larger issue is what capability those dollars bought and what combat effectiveness was or is produced. Cost effectiveness is too easily skewed to prove that money is being 'wasted.' What should be purchased for the spending is combat effectiveness. I have no doubt what so ever that the average Infantryman in Viet Nam was more capable than his WW II counterpart probably by a factor of two-- and I have no doubt that my serving Son and his contemporaries are miles ahead of us old guys, probably by another factor of at least two and quite possibly up to four. So yes, we're spending more but we're buying far more capability with fewer but considerably more expensive people.

Fuchs already carried on the discussion with you on effectiveness/efficiency, so I won't beat a dead horse.

Agree with you that combat-effectiveness per soldier has been greatly multiplied (very Cebrowskian ), and expensive technology is part of that. That's a good thing. I'm not looking for cost savings by going "cheap" on what individuals or small units use. Given pie-in-the-sky objectives by politicians, the military naturally tries to secure maximum deployment of personnel and resources when most of the realistic military objectives (as opposed to political/diplomatic/economic objectives) that can be acheived in any given situation short of a great power war require less. Sometimes much less because the military is often used as a blunt instrument for inherently political and murkily complex problems ( ex. Lebanon 1980's, Somalia and Haiti 1990's) to which they are ill-suited as the primary instrument of national policy.

I fully understand the perspective of military specialists needing to plan a campaign or a mission from the point of effectiveness over cost. They should. However, the purpose of civilian leadership in is to ensure that the war effort is sustainable over time until victory is acheived, which means setting parameters and priorities whether it is "Germany, First", "Don't go north of the Yalu" or "we're building carriers not battleships". Our national political leadership have pursued the war on terror generally in a way that maximizes expenditure without maximizing effect. As we are waging war on borrowed money, we ought to, at least, bring our strategic goals into alignment with what the military is most likely to be able to accomplish and put more heft into the activities of HUMINT operators, diplomats and economic development rather than chase diminishing returns with marginal dollars.

Wilf,

Tet was significant. It did not loose the war, or even represent a turning point. It wasn't Kursk or Stalingrad. - and was the North better of with Nixon than LBJ?

LBJ was inept in foreign affairs and Nixon was adept. After Tet both sought a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam, but the difference is LBJ had no idea even how to begin such a process and Nixon did; moreover, he intended to try and drive a hard bargain with Hanoi. Nixon's foremost worry in the summer of 1968 was that LBJ would give away the store to the Communists in order to get Humphrey elected.

Nixon had a strategy, unlike LBJ. He was no less determined to "win."

We agree that Richard Nixon had a strategy. Unfortunately, winning in Vietnam was not part of it and never was ( to use one of your phrases, such a position is "evidence-free"). In Nixon's own words he was looking for "unexplored avenues to probe" in "finding a way to end the war".

Nixon began moving beyond Vietnam as a national priority in 1967 when he penned "Asia After Vietnam" for Foreign Affairs. This position hardened after his pre-presidential campaign world tour. The idea that Nixon intended to "win" is belied by the record of Kissinger's Paris talks and numerous other documents.

Sorry but it was. It was instrumental in the coup in Cambodia and it knocked out all the major NVA base areas for two years. No single action did more military damage to the NVA than the Cambodian invasion. It was military action focussed on military forces, and yes it had strategic effect.

Sorry, it was not. With Cambodia, Nixon gave his military leaders - whom he did not trust, nor who trusted him - far more of what they had been asking to do for years but this was in part because of the demands he was imposing on them with the pace of troop withdrawals. Arguably, Cambodia bought GVN a breathing space and was the right thing to do but it was not (and did not) going to compel Hanoi to come to terms. It was on Saigon, not Hanoi that the USG ultimately imposed peace terms.

Watergate and the 73 Oil crisis doomed SVN greatly more than the very minor reversals of Tet five years before

Watergate certainly rendered Nixon and later Ford of extending air power and military assistance to GVN as the USG had promised Saigon. Tet however did not doom GVN, it changed American perceptions of the war and political support for it here at home.

[William F. Owen]

Arguably, Cambodia bought GVN a breathing space and was the right thing to do but it was not (and did not) going to compel Hanoi to come to terms. It was on Saigon, not Hanoi that the USG ultimately imposed peace terms.

So what did compel Hanoi to start peace talks?
By 1972, Nixon is sending more Carriers, mining North Vietnamese harbours and increasing the bombing. NVA desertions reach record levels. Military force is getting Nixon what Nixon wants - flawed as those desires maybe.

My point is that even as late as 1973, the Vietnam War was America's to loose. This had all moved things on a very far way from the very minor tactical effects of Tet, 4-5 Years earlier!!

[marct]

Hi Zen,

Very true. Iraq was a stretch and Afghanistan morphing in under a half-century is an impossibility.

Yeah, what more can I say on that one .

Amen. For an anthropologist, you are a fine economist.

Oi vey! I guess we never can get rid of some of our roots (I was originally accepted into university in economics .....).

[Rex Brynen]

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.

Nicely put. For example:

Hizbollah guerilla fighters "swarmed" Israeli Merkava MBTs (Main Battle Tanks)–including possibly Merkava Mk4 MBTs–and fired at the sides and rear of the tanks with multiple ATGMs simultaneously.... ATGMs placed in over-watch positions at the rear provided fire support for Hizbollah fighters in the frontline trenches and hidden bunkers, who would suddenly pop out and attack the Merkava tanks at close range with their swarm tactics, and then quickly disappear again...

Are Anti-Tank Guided Missiles the New Primary Threat in Urban Warfare/MOUT?, Defense Review, 19 August 2006.

Which shorn of the trendy "swarm" word, actually means:

Hizbullah conducted AT ambushes. Having done so, they then took cover.

Personally, I think we could go further with the application of analogies drawn from the animal kingdom to make warfare sound more avant-garde. For a start, I would suggest replacing platoon with "hunting pack," CAS with "raptor strikes," and C4I with "hive brain."

[William F. Owen]

Are Anti-Tank Guided Missiles the New Primary Threat in Urban Warfare/MOUT?, Defense Review, 19 August 2006.

Which shorn of the trendy "swarm" word, actually means:

Hizbullah conducted AT ambushes. Having done so, they then took cover.

...a good example of people looking a reports of phenomena, extrapolating and getting it wrong.

[William F. Owen]

I suspect he like I knows that happens but bitterly regrets that it does. It isn't a question of wishful thinking, simply stating the fact that it happens, should not -- and need not. As he said, a lot of 'historians' write drivel -- and a lot of decision makers do not allow themselves to be swayed by 'information' (see Bush, G.W. for a recent example).

Thanks Ken. Gold standard as ever.

Information is not understanding and everyone has three versions of history and ten versions of every new story.

[William F. Owen]

Look up the definition of efficiency.
It's effect per cost.

Well aware. I was using the term within the strict confines of military performance and capability. I am also well aware its an issue of balance and high degrees of efficiency have huge pays-offs in effectiveness, and vice versa.
My point is that I want to bias end-states and not process.