CHomscky Has Words - No Ideas

Protests Cannot Change Anything for long - but they help to recruit and educate

In the real world people should study the Imperialist war strategies and plan their response - not much time is left -

Dear citizens and --- interested in turning the tide of UsA-led Fascism, I am a military strategist. I have worked in British intelligence services and for the American-based private security firms which helped to direct the wars in Bosnia. For 10 months I have worked for a faction of the Iraqi resistance. I am a strategist and not much a philosopher by training, but I can tell you of my experiences. I cannot tell you which political, social or religious systems work the best ¡V because ¡§the best¡¨ or even what is good for the short ort the long-term has been degraded and mystified in this existence that we call the modern world. People can not talk about the definitions of things or about why communications/understanding are so difficult.

I can tell you what I have seen. These are stories from behind the curtain of the rich and powerful. Wherever US-UK money goes it breeds the most vile corruption. From the sex-slavery of Dyncorp in Bosnia to the same group and many other security contractors committing torture, murder and atrocities in Iraq; from the jokes about the Colombian and Peruvian airlines/airforce drug smuggling to the hilariousness of naive and stupid US activists and eco-tourists.

I write to you because a great war is breaking out that will make or break this planet. Call it the Fourth World War - the War of Global Imperialism or the spread of fourth generation warfare ( soon to be fifth generation if the Imperialists don¡¦t win soon) -

Please visit and comment on - or pass on to those who know something about the world scene the following web sites

www.mblog.com/imperialiststrategy

communitydefense.blogspot.com

What if Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did a National Defense Review?

Chester W. Richards- May 2001, A product of the Center for Defense Information Military Reform Project.  http://www.cdi.org/mrp/


Sun Tzu and John Boyd considered the problem of conflict in a wide scope. They explored the essential, but limited, role of military force in resolving conflict, and they examined in some detail the issue of -- What makes a force effective? -- The answers they derived are largely independent of the particular age in which one dwells and the specific weapons one uses.

Sun Tzu (c. 500 B.C.) emphasized harmony on the inside in order to create and exploit chaos outside. If done well, such a strategy eliminated, or at worst greatly reduced, the need for bloody battles. Employing time as his primary weapon, Sun Tzu strove to create ambiguity in the minds of enemy commanders as the milieu for weaving his web of surprise, deception, and rapid switching between orthodox and unorthodox tactics. The ideal result is -- to win without fighting.

Boyd (1927-1997) used his well-known -- observe-orient-decide-act-- pattern to operate inside his opponent’s decision cycles, generating first confusion, then frustration, and finally panic in the enemy ranks. Once thus set up, the enemy could be finished off with a bewildering array of distracting and probing attacks, leading to multiple thrusts aimed at destroying his cohesion and collapsing his will to resist. A primary measure of merit was prisoner -- not body count. To allow forces to sustain such high operational tempos, Boyd codified an organizational climate derived from Sun Tzu, the German blitzkrieg, and the early Israeli Army.


The US military has completed recommendations on how to change personnel management systems to foster Boyd’s organizational climate. Boyd’s formula of – people—ideas--hardware, in that order, holds as well for warring states on the plains of ancient China as for guerilla warfare or national missile defense today.


This paper attempts to make four fundamental points:

1. What is important is forces -- combinations of people, ideas, and hardware -- not individual weapons programs.

2. The strategic framework expounded by Sun Tzu and John Boyd provides a coherent and historically validated method for comparing one force with another.

3. Neither Sun Tzu nor Boyd gave explicit guidance on selecting hardware. One can, however, construct hypothetical forces including a hardware component and, using their framework, compare them to current and planned U.S. forces.

4. To illustrate this process, this paper posits one such force and claims that not only would it be more effective than what the US has today, but that it would require fewer resources.


This synthesis relies heavily on the style of fighting Boyd espoused, which he derived from Sun Tzu and from commanders, including Americans such as Grant and Patton, who employed this style with remarkable success down through history. One can use the precepts of what is called --maneuver warfare-- to help choose between alternative force structures, but not, as it turns out, between individual weapons.



This paper suggests deactivating from the U.S. Army that part of it which is unlikely to reach a theater of conflict while any modern war is still going on. The Marine Corps and those units of the Army generally called – unconventional-- would remain. Properly supported, this provides a mobile striking force that could rapidly descend on any part of the globe, should that prove desirable, and strike directly at the heart of an enemy nation. It could have won the Gulf War several months sooner than the ponderous formations eventually deployed. This study assumes, as did Boyd and Sun Tzu, that for all but the briefest operations, the US will fight in conjunction with allies.


[ Notation: One problem with these proposals is that a smaller elite force might decide to coup – because they are better and smarter than the rest of us – though a time may come when the Military Industrial Complex sees the need for a coup coming and the need to have a small force that it can more easily control ]

Summary of an Evolutionary Force
A. Personnel system that fosters trust, cohesion, and leadership.

B. Doctrine built around third and fourth generation warfare ideas.

C. Land forces, a U.S. Strike Force, built around:

Current active U.S. Marine Corps divisions
U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division
Special Forces
Rangers, Delta Force, etc. expanded as necessary
SEALs and other U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force unconventional forces
Carrier and land-based tactical air
New aircraft for direct support and shaping of land combat
Heavy armor & mechanized infantry capability in elite Reserve / Guard units
Intra-theater lift
Seaborne fire support (battleship as interim)


D. U.S. Mobility Force composed of:

6 aircraft carrier (CVN) task forces
Inter-theater air and sealift
Attack submarines (SSNs) (in addition to those in the CVN task forces)


E. U.S. Strategic Force composed of:

All strategic offensive assets (bombers, missiles, ballistic missile submarines)
All strategic defensive interceptors, if any become operational
Space assets

F. Robust research, development, prototyping, and experimentation to support the above areas.

G. Greatly increased emphasis on intelligence, including revamping the personnel system to make it co-equal in stature with operations.


The core of force effectiveness lies in understanding fully -- why people fight, why they polish their fighting skills, why they refuse to quit until they have won.


Increasing U.S. defense spending at this point is like giving more food to an obese, but very hungry and insistent, relative. It may quiet him down for a few minutes, but somehow you know it isn’t the solution to his problem.


To begin to answer the question of -- What could be done to improve the Defense Department (DoD) and its forces -- one must first ask, -- What makes one force more effective than another -- Which immediately leads to the question of -- Effective at what? Differences in the answers one gives to this question will make large differences in the types of forces one buys and operates. If one envisions U.S. military forces as global enforcers, for example, taking the primary responsibility for suppressing opposition to U.S. interests, one arrives at a quite different military than one charged primarily with territorial defense of the United States.


Sun Tzu 101

The time in which Sun Tzu lived, like those that spawned other great strategic works, was a laboratory for the creation, testing, and evolution of military ideas. During the aptly named -- Warring States-- period, China broke into some eight major states and a dozen or so principalities, each of which was attempting to subdue the others by armed conflict. Invasion by one or more neighbors posed a constant threat, so that war truly was, in the famous opening words of the book, the -- path of survival and destruction.


The strategy devised by Sun Tzu fit the circumstances perfectly. It rested on two major and complementary elements, one internal and one external. Harmony on the inside is The Way (Tao) of war. All else flows from this basic idea, and without it, there is little reason to press forward into the stress of military operations. Externally, Sun’s goal was to create confusion in the opposing side and then exploit it. The focus was not on winning through superior tactics or individual fighting technique (although these are important), but, as Griffith notes, -- the enemy commanders must become confused and if possible, driven insane. His primary tool for accomplishing this was quickness, which helps create ambiguity and also increases the effectiveness of a panoply of tools, such as deception, security, and intelligence, that will be addressed in the following sections.


This strategy differs fundamentally from the core of Western military doctrine, which follows the strategy of Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz¡¦s primary goal was to bring the opposing army to -- decisive battle, and then win it. Sun Tzu wanted to achieve victory in war, but preferably by causing the enemy army to disintegrate before the battle:

Therefore, those who win every battle are not really skillful -- those who render other’s armies helpless without fighting are the best of all.

Although this may not always be possible, it sets a completely different focus on how one approaches the conduct of conflict. As Boyd noted, Clausewitz, even if his strategy is successful, invariably leads to bloody battles of attrition.

[ Notation: But large-scale battles are slower, safer, patriotism-building and more amenable to the political cycles. ]


Sun Tzu and Intelligence

The final chapter of The Art of War deals with use of spies.

So what enables an intelligent government and wise military leadership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishment is foreknowledge. Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.


The section on spies is actually the culmination of the entire work. Sun Tzu makes this clear in the final passage:

-- So only a brilliant ruler or a wise general who can use the highly intelligent for espionage is sure of great success. This is essential for military operations, and the armies depend on this for their actions.

Sun Tzu’s commanders are not passive – consumers-- of intelligence. A general in the Sun Tzu tradition takes as much personal interest in employing spies as he does in issuing orders to his subordinate commanders. He is as active in intelligence as he is in operations:

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is as intimate as the secret agent; of all rewards, none more liberal than those given to secret agents. To be parsimonious with positions, compensations, or hundreds of pounds of gold, and thereby blind to the enemy’s status, is to be extraordinarily inhumane: such a man can never be considered his people’s commander, can never be his lord’s aide, and can never be the ruler of victory.

A commander whose primary contact with intelligence is the daily coordinated, scripted, and rehearsed -- intelligence briefing-- could never be successful in the Sun Tzu school.


John Boyd

Sun Tzu is widely studied today in Japan, where one of its most influential strategy texts, Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings (1645 A.D.) is a direct adaptation of the ideas of The Art of War to the military situation of the time.


Boyd represents the most recent major member of this school. Of all the strategists he considered, and the list includes such luminaries as Clausewitz, Jomini, Bonaparte, Saxe, and most of the other classroom standards, Sun Tzu was the only one that Boyd did not critique in his major work, A Discourse on Winning and Losing.

Boyd was the first to derive a mathematically coherent theory of air combat, -- energy maneuverability, -- which for two competing fighters shows precisely which will have the advantage in any flight state (combination of airspeed, altitude, and direction). – Maneuverability-- is the ability to change flight states -- to climb, for example, turn, or accelerate or any combination thereof.


Boyd acknowledged a fundamental shortcoming in his theory and his correction proved to be more powerful than this original idea (and far more applicable to other forms of conflict, such as business). Basically, there were times when the less maneuverable aircraft won. It is true that for this to happen, both aircraft had to be roughly comparable -- that is, the original theory still held in most cases -- but there were instances, such as the F-86 vs. the MiG-15 and the YF-16 vs. the YF-17, where energy maneuverability alone did not adequately explain the results. These anomalies led Boyd to the idea of -- fast transients, -- that is, the ability to transition between maneuver states. He called this ability, -- agility. To give an example: At a given airspeed and altitude, the more maneuverable fighter could make a tighter turn, while the more agile could more quickly change from a (perhaps not quite so tight) turn in one direction to a (perhaps not quite so tight) turn in another:


The ability to shift from one maneuver to another more rapidly than an adversary enables one to win in air-to-air combat.


Boyd made a critical observation, that the pilots of the more maneuverable but less agile fighters often became frustrated while trying to pin down their more agile adversaries, and this sometimes caused them to make mistakes. The pilots of the more agile aircraft could spot and exploit these mistakes to win a victory. Boyd was a student of military history and this rang a bell. This idea of discombobulating the enemy first and then -- and only then -- engaging in close combat was fundamental to several earlier strategists, most notably Sun Tzu.


Boyd made his best-known contribution to modern strategy, expanding the concept of – agility -- from a largely physical property of aircraft to a largely mental property of competitive organisms in general. He concluded that it is as if the more agile competitor is able to observe, orient, decide, and act more quickly than the other. If he can consistently go through this loop ¡§more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity,¡¨ which Boyd equated to ¡§operating inside the opponent’s OODA loops, -- he will disorient and confuse his opponent precisely as Sun Tzu had mandated. This leap from air-to-air combat to the now famous Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop (Figure 3) and its link to the strategic purpose of Sun Tzu is perhaps the most brilliant insight of strategy in the last 100 years.


Over the course of about 10 years, Boyd evolved an 8-hour briefing, -- Patterns of Conflict,-- that led viewers to this conclusion. Beginning with Sun Tzu, continuing through the Battles of Marathon and Leuctra (Epaminondas’ classic victory over the then-invincible Spartans in 371 B.C.), visiting Alexander’s conquests, then winding its way finally to the blitzkrieg (particularly against France in 1940) and modern guerilla warfare, Boyd showed that his pattern held, time after time. More agile armies had defeated their larger and technologically advanced opponents with remarkable frequency, and this pattern continues to the present day, most obviously in the Arab-Israeli Wars from 1947 to 1973 and the Vietnam War.


Boyd and Intelligence

For the Rest of this Article and MORE

see www.insurgeny.joeuser.com


Force Structure Options

If hardware is tertiary, why not just stick with what the U.S. military already has? The problem with this alternative is that it requires spending at Cold War levels on Cold War equipment, but without a Cold War threat. It also turns leaders’ attention away from creating effective forces and towards lobbying for hardware programs. The issue is whether the US could carry out a maneuver warfare strategy by using fewer resources, do it better, and in the process avoid some of the problems caused by continuing an enormously large defense establishment.



Implementing lean production forces an organization to eliminate waste, thereby reducing cost while simultaneously improving quality, efficiency and time to market. Enterprises that successfully employ lean production routinely take market share from those who do not, and, because of their lower costs, generally post far better bottom lines. Improving mutual trust is a key element in implementing lean production, and that coincidentally, the people who invented lean manufacturing were careful students of Sun Tzu. To see the power of Sun Tzu’s strategy applied to business, one need only note that between 1980 and 1990, General Motors’ share of the U.S. market declined from 52 percent to less than 30 percent, largely driven down by the inroads of Toyota, Nissan, and Honda.


To summarize the guidelines for constructing a Sun Tzu / Boyd force following the discussion above:

1. Military force is a key component of furthering national interests, but it is not the only component or in many cases even the primary one. It should always be used sparingly.

2. Military forces, when they are used, should obey Sun Tzu’s dictum: end the conflict in the quickest possible time with the least possible damage to either side.

3. Military operations against conventional forces, for example, to assist an ally under conventional attack, must be conducted as maneuver warfare. That implies a substantial capacity to play the cheng / chi game against any potential opponent.

4. Military operations in 4GW must be carefully measured so that, by their very success, they do not strengthen the hands of opponents. It truly is not necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.


Maneuver warfare provides a framework for implementing such a force and history suggests that there are some characteristics of a force that can reinforce its capabilities for maneuver warfare in the post-Cold War era. The following table is from a recent book on maneuver warfare by experts on the subject from all four armed services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (reflecting their personal views, not official policy):

1. Increased focus on littorals (regions within a hundred miles of the sea), where most of the world's people, wealth, commerce, instabilities, and U.S. interests are concentrated.

2. Decreased need for large standing land and air forces, and an enhanced role for reserve forces.

3. Decreased need for heavy naval forces configured for global war at sea and heavy bombing forces, with a concurrent shift to maintaining control of littoral regions in support of interventions.

4. The need for intervention and extraction capabilities to protect lives, property, commerce, and other interests, with an emphasis on high-speed lighter forces configured for autonomous operations in hostile regions.

5. The rise of fourth-generation warfare, resulting in an increased need for irregular war-fighting skills/capabilities in close-quarters combat and small-unit operations among state/non-state actors. Characteristic of this are the following:

a. Decreased reliance on firepower/attrition in ground warfare.
b. Decreased reliance on deep-strike/interdiction/strategic bombardment of "infrastructure" in air warfare.
c. Increased reliance on fast-transient littoral penetration operations, info-war operations, Special Forces operations, political-military operations, counter-drug/ antiterrorist/ antinuclear operations, and increased occurrences of urban/suburban combat.
d. Increased resource constraints resulting in internal competition for resources.


With this in mind, let’s construct an alternative defense capability. Please keep firmly in mind that neither Boyd nor Sun Tzu ever built such a force, so the recommendations are solely those of the author. The other caveat is that if this paper is successful, the force represented below will satisfy the requirements of maneuver warfare, but that is not to suggest that it is the only force that will do so, or even the best that could ultimately be attained by continuing to experiment and select.


Strike Forces

First, the U.S. Marine Corps provides all the conventional ground warfare capability needed to engage the land forces of any Third World country. The three active duty U.S.M.C. divisions provide a range of capabilities, including heavy armor, light armored vehicles, organic artillery, air support, infantry, and so on. In addition, the Marine Corps, beginning with its 1989 edition of Warfighting, is the farthest along in adopting maneuver warfare concepts. Using them, the Marines liberated Kuwait in two days and probably could have done it as early as the end of September 1990. Once the rout began, there was nothing to stop a Patton-esque penetration ¡V properly supported from the air (as Patton¡¦s was) and logistically (as Patton¡¦s was not) ¡V from continuing straight on to Baghdad. The big hook around the left flank was at best cheng, perhaps unnecessary, and in any case, failed to accomplish its stated objective, since the bulk of the capable Iraqi forces escaped over the Euphrates and are still enforcing Saddam¡¦s regime. This paper will use the existing Marine Corps structure to provide the backbone for conducting maneuver warfare.


The United States then can simplify its defense establishment by eliminating active Army armor and mechanized infantry divisions, and all of their supporting units, higher headquarters, commands, the Department of the Army, etc., representing a sizable savings and a great simplification of the U.S. defense establishment. A certain amount of additional heavy capability can be maintained in the Guard and Reserve, and exercised frequently with the legacy U.S.M.C. conventional components. If done properly, transferring these missions to the Guard and Reserve could actually increase their effectiveness in the rare cases when additional heavy combat capability is needed.
Active Army ¡§unconventional¡¨ forces, including Ranger, Special Forces, and Airborne units, will be retained, which have the unique capability among Army units of actually being able to reach the fight while it is still going on. In addition to being major players in 4GW, they can participate in cheng / ch¡¦i combinations against both the conventional and unconventional forces of Third World armies. The idea would be to combine them with the Marine Corps into a new ¡§Strike Force.¡¨ It is not that these unconventional forces will be the ch¡¦i to the Marines¡¦ cheng. Enemies would react to that pattern and exploit it. It is that combining these two elements provides a wider range of options for commanders.


This force should provide the requisite variety for carrying out cheng / ch¡¦i operations against any threat it is likely to face on the ground during the next 15 or so years.
The U.S. military does need to continue research and development to support land forces, particularly in areas that increase tempo of operations and reduce logistical requirements. A large number of ideas for these initiatives will come from ¡V and be tested in ¡V the free play exercise cycles.

Fire Support

In order to make the land forces more effective, particularly when engaged against conventional opponents, it is necessary to ensure adequate fire support. In keeping with an increased focus on the littorals, one way to provide this in the near term would be to recommission two battleships and modernize their main armament and fire control systems. The battleship provides an invincible platform for delivering effective fire support in the littorals, 16-inch rounds being difficult to counter. Also, the battleship can carry an enormous number of cruise missiles for use against known, fixed targets. The psychological effect of these behemoths, which unlike aircraft carriers can safely steam close enough to shore to be seen, heard, and felt by the inhabitants, is a capability worth keeping. Since they get everybody¡¦s attention, they personify cheng. Paint giant American flags on the side.


To cause enemy formations to stop moving to engage land forces ashore, the new force would need an effective close air support and air interdiction capability. This would facilitate maneuver warfare in littoral areas outside the battleship¡¦s range, and it could also provide fire support and interdiction in conjunction with unconventional forces operating much deeper ¡V perhaps in a thrust / feint towards the capital or ruling junta¡¦s residences, weapons of mass destruction storage / launch facilities, etc. In order to support high operational tempos and interfere with the enemy's, an aircraft must be developed capable of operating from carriers, as well as far forward from austere bases, and of generating very high sortie rates. Such considerations suggest a short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft with high system redundancy, very low vulnerable area, low visible signatures, and high loiter capability. Particular attention should be paid to allowing it to operate successfully in an environment infested with man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS ¡V typically shoulder-fired infra-red missiles), of which there are upwards of 500,000 in the world today, and which have accounted for roughly 2/3 of all aircraft destroyed by ground fire over the last 15 years. This implies a very low infra-red signature, perhaps less than one-tenth that of an F-16, which is itself some 35 times that of an AH-64 Apache helicopter. It should be designed to rain enough chaos from the sky to cause Third World troops to rapidly leave their vehicles and not return for an appreciable time.


The Marines have the AV-8B Harrier, but it is expensive, complex, and vulnerable to ground fire. U.S.A.F. studies in the1980s demonstrated the feasibility of developing a simpler and more rugged aircraft to meet these requirements. Armed helicopters would largely be retired, since they were developed because the Army was not allowed to have fixed-wing combat aircraft. They are slow, vulnerable to ground threats, and require logistics out of proportion to their effectiveness, as was demonstrated by Task Force Hawk in Albania.


Since this force is depending on maneuver warfare, there is a need to ensure that enemies cannot use their own air forces to significantly inhibit the ability of U.S. forces to maneuver. This implies at least local air superiority and a robust organic air defense capability. American fighter pilots, flying continually improved versions of current air-to-air platforms ¡V the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 ¡V are more than capable of engaging any conceivable enemy air forces and keeping them away from on-shore troops. They can operate in conjunction with cruise missile and unconventional attacks against enemy air bases. The force should retain a small number, perhaps 6, modern aircraft carriers (CVNs) to provide protection from enemy air forces until bases can be established ashore and for operating the more vulnerable intelligence, electronic warfare, and command-and-control platforms. It also should keep a robust research and development program in this area, including MANPADS and other highly mobile, logistically simple means of air defense and improvements to our air-to-air fighters. The Strike Force should establish on-going prototyping initiatives and use the series of free play exercises to test their effectiveness.


All systems to support the land forces, including tactical fighter, attack, and reconnaissance aircraft, would belong to the Strike Force, in harmony with the concept that the legacy U.S.M.C. forms the backbone of conventional land force capability. This would put the onus on the land forces, who are going to have to live with the effects of their decisions, to determine the balance among options for air defense and for fire support.

Strategic and Mobility Forces

As for the Air Force, its mission would become purely strategic. There are still thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles in the world, and more countries are joining this club. Part of the Air Force¡¦s mission would be to deter anybody from ever using them. All strategic delivery systems, including submarines and unconventional methods, would belong to this force, as would any eventual strategic defensive systems. Combat missions in space would also belong to this new force.


Tactical aircraft from the Air Force and the Navy would be transferred to the Strike Force. Intra-theater, or tactical transport by whatever means, including C-130, helicopter, or ground, would belong to the Strike Force, which would have to determine the balance between transport by air and by other means in the vicinity of operations on land. Inter-theater transport aircraft, such as the C-5 and C-17, would be transferred to the Navy/Mobility Force, whose mission would become to move and support the Strike Force anywhere in the world.


Strategic bombers, if they are kept, would be just that: strategic. Their long mission cycles means they are basically airborne trucks, hauling weapons that will attack either stationary targets or those that move VERY slowly. To the extent that these types of targets figure in maneuver warfare, with its emphasis on rapid creation and exploitation of vulnerabilities, they can be already by engaged with cruise missiles from offshore or with stand-off weapons from existing fighters. Large-scale attacks on ¡§infrastructure,¡¨ of the type carried out by B-2s in Serbia, almost always have an effect on civilians and so can solidify support for the enemy regime.

Assessing Effectiveness

The proper way to assess such a force is not by its numbers or its Lanchester coefficients or results of computerized models or by any other measure of predicted effectiveness. As paradoxical as this might seem, it rests on the fact that if one can perform these calculations, so can one¡¦s opponents, and they will take pains to ensure that one encounters something different on the actual battlefield. The measure of this conceptual force is its ability to engage in maneuver warfare, to play the orthodox against the unorthodox, to shroud itself in ambiguity, to execute the response that is least expected, to cause the maximum amount of confusion and then exploit it, and so to win before the battle is fought.


An examination of this force shows that the need for jointness is vastly reduced over today. The Strike/Land Forces own all combat on land, including fire support. Similarly, the Mobility Forces own all assets for moving the strike forces into the theater, and the Strategic Force has all the wherewithal for launching weapons of mass destruction and countering those launched by an enemy. The net result will be a breathtaking reduction in the complexity of the defense establishment.

In constructing this force, this paper has concentrated on Third World opponents. Doesn’t this leave the US vulnerable to other threats? A look at the globe shows that as of 2001, the only other countries that could even potentially threaten the US conventionally would be China and Russia. This paper has not used either of these as a justification for sizing conventional forces for several reasons:

1. Neither has shown any sign that it is intending a conventional attack against its neighbors, with the possible exception of China against Taiwan.

2. Both face massive internal problems that limit the resources they can devote to military programs. The same week the Chinese impounded our EP-3 on Hainan, 26 more Chinese refugees were discovered in a shipping container in Los Angeles.

3. Both have thousands of miles of borders with countries that could pose threats. The newly independent states in Central Asia, for example, are experiencing insurgencies involving religion that could spread to China and Russia.

4. The US alone already outspends China and Russia combined by a factor of three, and much of the spending that these two countries do undertake is wasted in corruption and inefficiency.

5. Both countries maintain only a marginal military capability in anything other than size. Russian pilots, for example, average around 10 flying hours per year, compared to the over 20 per month considered a minimum for U.S.A.F. pilots. Roughly half of their 2,000 aircraft are unserviceable and many fighter regiments get no flying hours at all. Recent detailed analyses by Western think tanks do not rate the Chinese much higher. Chinese pilots, to cite one instance, typically train only for one-on-one tail chase intercepts. The Chinese strategic capability consists of around 20 nuclear weapons.

6. For the United States to engage either of these countries on the ground, at least in the foreseeable future, it would have to go to them.

7. Any scenario that envisions U.S. forces alone confronting Russia or China on the ground would represent a massive failure of grand strategy. Where are the allies? If the United States is the only country in the world that believes that armed combat is the solution in this case, then perhaps that is a sign the strategy is flawed. Otherwise, it is necessary to add the assets of NATO and other allies into the equation.

8. All this could change, but it will take time. The US can influence events as they unfold with an active grand strategy, combined with effective intelligence and selective use of other instruments. If the U.S. government and public are unwilling to stay so engaged, then it is truly only a matter of time until the nation becomes isolated -- physically, mentally, and morally -- and is inflicted with the confusion and internal disorder Boyd predicts.

Intelligence

Since both Sun Tzu and Boyd believed that an ounce of intelligence in the hands of a capable general is worth several pounds of combat, the U.S. military must improve its ability to operate as open systems and pull in information. The best way to do this, as Sun Tzu noted, is to accord successful performance in intelligence the same high honor as one does successful performance on the battlefield proper. In other words, the changes needed involve people and culture. Consider:

1. The highest-ranking officers actively involved in intelligence are the directors of the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Both are 3-star assignments. Neither is considered a pathway to a fourth star.

2. In the Air Force, intelligence is now a directorate within Operations. The head of Air Intelligence is a 2-star. Air Intelligence Agency is now a subordinate unit under Air Combat Command.

3. With rare exception, highest rank is earned from a successful career in operations. In the Air Force, this means as a pilot (originally bombers but now generally fighters) with command of successively larger flying units, and then head of a major command (Air Force Materiel Command, Air Combat Command, etc.) or as a regional commander in chief. Similar situations hold in the other services.

4. The heads of the service support commands, e.g., Air Force Materiel Command, outrank the senior officer involved with intelligence in the entire U.S. defense establishment.

5. Even at the lower levels, intelligence is rarely considered a plum assignment, on a par with leadership or command of a combat arms unit or a flying squadron or a ship.
Within DoD, intelligence must be raised to a level co-equal to operations. Assignments in human source intelligence (HUMINT), especially overseas in designated regions, should be considered as combat tours. This is spying, pure and simple, and it can be deadly, even in -- peacetime. Most target countries are not known for their respect for human rights in general, and they have limited senses of humor when it comes to spies.

Developing an effective HUMINT capability is difficult and requires years of experience, both in tradecraft and in knowledge of the people and regions of interest. Nowadays this is practically the whole world: How many people, even in intelligence, could have found Kosovo on a map before 1994? However, the time needed to develop this capability, and the secrecy required, seem always to lead to inbreeding, inward focus, and bureaucracy, as has been seen over the last several years with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Somehow this paradox must be solved.

The CIA should become just that, a data gathering and intelligence-generating agency. DoD should have responsibility for covert operations for other purposes.
To the extent possible, competition is good, especially in interpreting raw data and information. In the case of most ¡§intelligence failures,¡¨ post-mortems show that the facts on the ground were known somewhere in the intelligence community, but the correct interpretations did not reach senior leaders in time. Rarely is the situation so clear and moving so slowly that a fully coordinated intelligence document will do any decision-maker any good.

The rule for intelligence is the more it is used, the better. People selecting combat arms might go their entire career without firing a bullet in anger, but intelligence operatives will have plenty of opportunity to practice and therefore be assessed on their performance in the real world. This should help attract a larger number of highly dedicated and trained fast burners into the field.

In the Sun Tzu scheme, the commander is his own director of intelligence. He strives to develop a fine sense for the physical, mental, and moral state of the enemy force. He is constantly probing the enemy for information by recruiting agents of his own and turning enemy agents, and he uses his agents to sow confusion and mistrust in the enemy camp. On rare occasions, he may also engage in combat operations (to win without fighting is best). If we try to make maximum use of Sun Tzu’s advice today, we might conclude that it would make more sense to place Operations under Intelligence.
Application: National Missile Defense (NMD)


Neither Sun Tzu (of course) nor Boyd addresses this area directly. There are, however, some ideas one might be able to apply. Most concepts for missile defense are explicit and expensive. That is, they rely on development of complex systems to physically destroy enemy missiles during various stages of their flight. To achieve any degree of confidence, it would probably be necessary to develop and deploy some combination of systems. Also, U.S. leaders and the public need to be convinced that these systems will work first time against all enemy attempts to deceive, decoy, elude, overwhelm, or otherwise counter them. So NMD is not simply an engineering problem of -- hitting a bullet with a bullet, -- although this is proving difficult enough.


Finally, once all these problems are solved, one must find ways to detect and destroy nuclear devices delivered by any number of other means. According to a recent study, there are some 80,000 cruise missiles, with ranges starting at 100 kilometers, deployed by 81 countries around the world. Although 90 percent of these are anti-ship missiles, the study concludes that it would not be difficult to convert them to the land attack mode. Adding to the ways of delivering a weapon to U.S. shores are the limitless number of pilotless or kamikaze (martyr) aircraft, commercial freighters (which could provide a platform for launching a salvo of short-range cruise missiles), rental trucks, and ¡K well, let your imagination run wild. In summary, explicit missile defense represents contracts for the defense industry into the dim and distant future, but doesn¡¦t appear to offer much hope for true security against attack by weapons of mass destruction.

When ¡§solutions¡¨ become more complex than any conceivable threat, something is wrong. From the standpoint of Sun Tzu and Boyd, one could note:

1. All these concepts surrender the initiative to the attacker. This is something that neither Sun Tzu nor Boyd would ever do. Ever.
2. By trying to prepare a defense against every possible point of attack, one would seem to be violating one of Sun Tzu¡¦s primary maxims: ¡§Preparedness everywhere means lack everywhere.¡¨ This is also known as the ¡§Maginot Line Syndrome.¡¨
3. Both Boyd and Sun Tzu insist on attacking the mind of the enemy first. Both rate attacking alliances higher than direct military action.
4. Both value ambiguity. Our explicit schemes and long development cycles clear any ambiguity from the attackers¡¦ minds.
5. Both see military means as only one tool in the art of war, even after recourse to war has been selected.
6. Sun Tzu really liked spies.
Putting all this together suggests a strategy for national missile defense ¡V and for protection against weapons of mass destruction in general ¡V something like the following:

At the grand strategic level, sell the idea of ¡§rogue states¡¨ (or whatever is the currently acceptable term for Third World countries the United States does not like) to allies and other strong powers such as Russia and China. One could remind these powers that likely new entrants to the weapons of mass destruction club, no matter how friendly they may seem today, are much closer to Europe and Asia than to the United States. It is much more likely that potential new users of mass destruction weapons, such as the Taliban and its admirers and allies, will seek to expand their influence and control into North Ossetia than into North Dakota, at least for the next several years.

Sell the notion that the US, its allies, and others potentially threatened have a moral right to ensure that they are not attacked by weapons of mass destruction. Do not specify the ways this can be done. Sell the notion that development of such weapons outside the group mentioned above is a crime against humanity.

There are three options for dealing with the threat: deterrence by for example certainty of massive retaliation, elimination of the capability prior to use, or destruction of the weapon itself once it is launched or otherwise employed. Given Sun Tzu’s and Boyd’s preference for ambiguity and Boyd’s insistence on a variety of options in any circumstance, one would probably want potential opponents to believe that all three of these are possibilities.

Publicize a number of programs, some in conjunction with allies or others threatened by rogues with mass destruction weapons, to develop countermeasures. Although one does not need to spend into deficit on these projects, they will also provide a stream of funding to help sustain U.S. defense R&D capabilities and might produce useful spin-offs.

Greatly improve intelligence efforts directed against countries that appear to be developing (or even could develop) nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. More effectively exploit the assets of U.S. allies, many of whom have historical ties to the target countries.

Engage in selective covert measures to retard development of weapons of mass destruction, and to send a personal signal to those involved in such development that they are playing a dangerous game. Train selected forces specifically to rapidly penetrate a threat country, destroy nuclear/biological/chemical weapons and facilities, and perhaps arrest the people involved and even the country¡¦s leadership. Deny the existence of this capability or fabricate cover stories that don¡¦t work very well.

All measures must be harmonized with U.S. grand strategy so that they are generally supported by allies and by the uncommitted around the world.


Conclusions

The force illustrated above is purely the author’s own creation and not anything Boyd ever proposed. In fact, as noted in the paper, after he retired from the military, Boyd spent very little time or effort on specific hardware or force structure alternatives. I am not willing to make any prediction of whether he would have approved, and people who have reviewed this paper and who are familiar with both Boyd and Sun Tzu are all over the map: There is hardly a single recommendation in the force structure section that does not have both defenders and detractors among this group.


I am much more confident in the people and ideas sections since Boyd did offer prescriptions in these areas, and I have tried to follow them as faithfully as possible. Even if the U.S. military were to leave its current hardware spending plans intact and just implemented the people and ideas sections, it would make major improvements in the effectiveness of forces (and save some money, although that is not the primary purpose). However, I also believe that if the US had a military composed of people trained and selected on their demonstrated abilities to carry out maneuver and fourth-generation warfare, they would demand weapons more suited to these missions. The military-industrial-congressional complex as constituted today could not stand without its military component.


What sort of force would such newly trained military personnel come up with? It cannot be known at this time. If it could, potential enemies would react to it, thereby causing the U.S. military to do something else. This idea of action / reaction or shaping / being shaped is central to Boyd’s philosophy, which reflects his remarks in the beginning of ¡§Patterns of Conflict¡¨ that the theory of evolution by natural selection is one of the two pillars of his study of conflict, survival, and conquest (the conduct of war is the other). This suggests that one should not worry too much about what the final Boyd / Sun Tzu force will look like, but that if we get the people and ideas parts right, the force structure will naturally evolve by a process of experimentation, selection, and rejection.


What I have tried to do in this paper is show that the set of possibilities is not empty -- there is something the current U.S. force structure can evolve towards that is better than that of today in carrying out a strategy focused on maneuver warfare and 4GW. But it is likely that even if it were adopted, it would be merely a way station along the path to something vastly different and better, that is, assuming we get the people and ideas part right.


Endnotes

Blumenson, Martin, Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, 1885¡V1945, Berkeley, 1987, p. 156. Patton was very much in the Sun Tzu tradition and was considered our most dangerous general by many German officers.

For Grant, see J.F.C Fuller¡¦s Grant and Lee; A Study in Personality and Generalship, Eyre and Spotiswoode, 1933 (widely available in paperback). For Patton, one might start with Blumenson, op. cit. General Fuller was one of the primary authors of the Blitzkrieg and one of the first major strategists to rehabilitate Grant. Boyd’s own -- Patterns of Conflict -- is probably the best summary of the power of maneuver warfare (available at  http://www.d-n-i.net).


Wolfe, Frank, -- Senate Passes Budget Resolution Amendment With $8.5 Billion More For Defense, -- Defense Daily, April 6, 2001.

Pork is in the eye of the beholder,¡¨ (Sen. Trent) Lott recently explained to reporters. “ Where I'm from, that's federal programs that go north of Memphis.¡¨ In Murdock, Deroy, -- Defense Spending, The Barons Of Pork Lose Priorities, -- Atlanta J. and Const., April 23, 2001. Sen. Lott (R-Miss.) is the Senate Majority Leader.

I wish I could take credit for this observation, but it was Basil Liddell Hart who commented that having spent so much money on the Maginot Line, French doctrine just had to support it. See History of the Second World War, Da Capo Press, 1999 and Strategy, Meridian Books, 1991.

During those years (1909-1916), I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.U.S.M.C. Major General Smedley Butler on his operations in Central America (a longer selection from this 1933 speech is available at  http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm). Smedley Butler was, as far as I know, the only Marine officer to win the Medal of Honor twice.

the sun is POWER - we are ?