The 5GW warfare handbook should be out by Christmas!
As I've mentioned before, it makes a great stoking stuffer!
Showing posts with label The Fifth Generation of War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Fifth Generation of War. Show all posts
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
5GW Handbook is fast approaching....
Perhaps it will be out in time for the holidays?
In any case, here is my revised introduction:
In any case, here is my revised introduction:
The War for Robert Taylor (Brent Grace)
In this chapter I am going to explore what I believe could be a real world example of 5th gradient warfare waged against an urban insurgency. I am going to draw heavily on Columbia University sociology professor Sudhir Venkatesh’s three volumes on life in inner city Chicago to described a 5GW counter insurgency operation that was conducted by the Chicago Housing Authority, the city of Chicago and the Federal government against a second generation gang known as the Black Kings who operated out of the Robert Taylor public housing project in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I am going to argue that the CHA et al adopted a 5GW strategy because the BKs had become so embedded within community that it was necessary to change the whole community – or, to put it another way, shape the battle space – in order to defeat the BKs.
How My Example Fits Within the XGW Framework
One of the barriers to writing about the fifth gradient of war is that there is quit a bit of debate over what exactly constitute each gradient of warfare. So I must begin this chapter by stipulating a few assumptions I am making as I lay out my example of 5GW. Those assumptions include:
1. Warfare is organized violence.
2. Each successive grade of warfare represents a tighter focus of violence (aka kinetics) and a more sophisticated division of labor required to create the kinetics.
3. As a corollary to the point above, as the violence becomes more focused the role of the non-kinetic (aka “everything else) becomes more important in determining the outcome of the conflict.
There are two overall schools of thought when it comes to classifying warfare. The first is the Generations of Modern War that is perhaps best explained (at least to me) in Col. Thomas X. Hammes The Sling and The Stone (2004). GMW theory is a Hegelian view of war; that is, the history of war since 1648 is linear with each subsequent generation of war emerging out of social and technological developments to counter the previous generation of war. In this view 1st generation war is Napoleonic linear warfare, 2nd generation war is industrialized war with massed artillery fire (such as The American Civil War and WWI), 3rd generation war is Blitzkrieg and 4th generation war is asymmetrical warfare (such as Vietnam and Iraq).
The second system of classifying warfare is the XGW framework, which is similar in many ways to GMW, but does not necessarily assume that warfare progresses chronologically. Instead, XGW is concerned with the “principal behind an expression of force” (Herring 2009), in other words, XGW examines the specific goal that is sought in each generation of warfare. In this context, for example, 3GW has as its goal locating and focusing kinetics on the weak point(s) in the enemies network. Some of my coauthors (Abbott 2009; Herring 2009) have suggested that 5GW is concerned with manipulating what can be or is observed, and in my example I am going to expound upon that idea by showing that a 5GW campaign could be used to attack and eventually alter a battle space, thus making it more difficult for a given actor to orient himself within the battle space and therefore reducing the actors effectiveness as a fighter.
5GW: The Battle of Who Could Care More
In a 4GW caring is important. In a battle of ideas (capitalism/communism, Jihadism/Liberal Democracy) the fighter – especially the insurgent – is generally a passionate advocate for their position. A 5GW is, like a 4GW, typically an insurgency that pits a smaller force against a much stronger opponent, but unlike 4GW there is no ideology involved. 5GW fighters don’t care about ideology – and they hope their opponent dose not care that there is a battle going on (Abbott, 2009) :
Every other form of modern-warfare requires people to care. The aggressor needs to be able to morally and physically support his military forces for over a period of time — often a long time. The defender, once he realizes he is being attacked, will care about his own survival and fight back.
In many ways getting an enemy to not care is the essence of what happened in the Robert Taylor between the mid 1980s and mid 90s as the BKs rose to prominence. The gangs needed the city of Chicago to not care that they were operating. This was no Maoist insurgency; the BKs were not really looking for converts or comrades; they just needed enough space to operate freely. Much of what the BKs did, from paying off local elites to tamping down violence at the behest of the police was designed to make potential troublemakers not care just enough to decide that taking on the gang was more trouble than going along. On the flip side, anyone inside any level of government that really wanted to fight the gangs was fighting a battle to get someone to care; get the FBI to care about the racketeering; get the City to care about the conditions inside the projects and get the police to care more about a strong rule of law than a hassle free peace. And once this was accomplished, once the government started caring enough to dump resources into solving the problem, the war was won.
Once the authorities cared, they set off a series of developments that substantially weakened the Black Kings. To explain how that happened, I shall steal another concept from Abbott’s (2005/2009) blog posts on 5GW: waterfall development. In a waterfall development model:
· Requirements must be known a long time before fighting begins
· Requirements will be rigid and non-adaptable
· Long Time between proposal and victory
In the 5GW I am describing the insurgents, like all insurgents, draw strength from their environment. Not unlike the way the Viet Cong hid in the jungle and used the natural landscape of Vietnam as a weapon against American soldiers and marines, the Black Kings used their immense store of local knowledge and ability to blend into the environment of Robert Taylor as their primary defense. So the CHA et al defeated them by launching a 5GW against the environment itself. In their grand strategy to destroy the gangs of Chicago, the government turned construction workers, real estate developers and non-profit organizations into unknowing soldiers in a massive counter insurgency campaign. And when they were finished the insurgents found the environment had been so radically altered that they were unable to reorient themselves and many wound up walking away from insurgency all together.
If you want more? You want to see how this story ends? Want to find out how the 5GW went down?
You'll have to read the book!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Polemics != Science
Once upon a time, Paul Krugman was serious economist. He did serious research in the area of international trade and eventually won a Noble Prize.
But those days are long past. Paul Krugman has abandoned his roots as a serious social scientist and has devolved into the intellectual equivalent of Rush Limbaugh.
Social Scientists attempt to use basic scientific principals to gain greater understanding of human behavior, be it in the psychological, social, economic or political spheres. A social scientist strives to make testable, positive observations about the phenomena he is studying. For example, in his 2007 book The Conciseness of a Liberal Krugman makes positive claims about the impact of Republican economic policy on the wages of the average worker - specifically, he claims that the so called "Treaty of Detroit" between the UAW and auto manufacturers led to a steady growth in wages of the average worker.
Now, as it happens, Krugman is probably wrong about his claim.
However, social science is a process that is not always only about being "right" or "wrong" - everyone makes mistakes in their conclusions occasionally, but what is important is that the claims must be positive and testable.
Krugman has moved way beyond the bounds of science. Today he makes wild claims about whatever he saw on CNN the night before.
The problem with trying to link the work of one crazy person with some sort of supposed "movement" afoot is that crazy people do crazy things whenever they feel like it. Because if a Democrat in the White House "caused" a "crazy right winger" - whatever that mean - to go crazy then how would that explain the murder or a Jewish radio host named Alan Berg during the Reagan administration?
Furthermore, how would that explain a shooting at the White House during the Bush administration?
Beyond the acts of lone gunman, all this recent focus on "Right Wing Terrorism" is nonsense anyway. While acts of "Right Wing Terrorism" seem to spark all sorts of comments from the likes of Paul Krugman there is little concern about the ongoing resource based insurgency going on within our inner cities.
I wrote about one such insurgency in my chapter in the upcoming 5th Generation Warfare Handbook, and occasionally the media reports on it in bits and pieces, but rarely do we get the full story.
Anyone who was truly concerned about "domestic terrorism" and actually knew anything would ignore both the words of idiots like Glen Beck and actions of crazy lone gunman and would instead focus on the need for a concerted grand strategy for Urban COIN in America.
But those days are long past. Paul Krugman has abandoned his roots as a serious social scientist and has devolved into the intellectual equivalent of Rush Limbaugh.
Social Scientists attempt to use basic scientific principals to gain greater understanding of human behavior, be it in the psychological, social, economic or political spheres. A social scientist strives to make testable, positive observations about the phenomena he is studying. For example, in his 2007 book The Conciseness of a Liberal Krugman makes positive claims about the impact of Republican economic policy on the wages of the average worker - specifically, he claims that the so called "Treaty of Detroit" between the UAW and auto manufacturers led to a steady growth in wages of the average worker.
Now, as it happens, Krugman is probably wrong about his claim.
However, social science is a process that is not always only about being "right" or "wrong" - everyone makes mistakes in their conclusions occasionally, but what is important is that the claims must be positive and testable.
Krugman has moved way beyond the bounds of science. Today he makes wild claims about whatever he saw on CNN the night before.
But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.
There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.
The problem with trying to link the work of one crazy person with some sort of supposed "movement" afoot is that crazy people do crazy things whenever they feel like it. Because if a Democrat in the White House "caused" a "crazy right winger" - whatever that mean - to go crazy then how would that explain the murder or a Jewish radio host named Alan Berg during the Reagan administration?
Furthermore, how would that explain a shooting at the White House during the Bush administration?
Beyond the acts of lone gunman, all this recent focus on "Right Wing Terrorism" is nonsense anyway. While acts of "Right Wing Terrorism" seem to spark all sorts of comments from the likes of Paul Krugman there is little concern about the ongoing resource based insurgency going on within our inner cities.
I wrote about one such insurgency in my chapter in the upcoming 5th Generation Warfare Handbook, and occasionally the media reports on it in bits and pieces, but rarely do we get the full story.
Anyone who was truly concerned about "domestic terrorism" and actually knew anything would ignore both the words of idiots like Glen Beck and actions of crazy lone gunman and would instead focus on the need for a concerted grand strategy for Urban COIN in America.
Friday, May 8, 2009
A Fifth Generation of War?
Back in January, I responded to a call for chapter put out by Dan at TDAXP.com for chapters to include in a volume on 5GW he was editing for Nimble Books.
I turned in my chapter in late April and and the book is slated for release sometime this summer.
My chapter concerns what I believe could be a real life example of a 5GW COIN campaign that was conducted right here in the United States. Below is a brief excerpt from my chapter, entitled The War for Robert Taylor:
Stipulations, Assumptions and a Theoretical Model
One of the barriers to writing about the fifth gradient of war is that there is quit a bit of debate over what exactly constitute each gradient of warfare. So I must begin this chapter by stipulating a few assumptions I am making as I lay out my example of 5GW. Those assumptions include:
1. Warfare is organized violence.
2. Each successive grade of warfare represents a tighter focus of violence (aka kinetics) and a more sophisticated division of labor required to create the kinetics.
3. As a corollary to the point above, as the violence becomes more focused the role of the non-kinetic (aka “everything else) becomes more important in determining the outcome of the conflict.
With those 3 factors in mind, here is a list of the 5 existing grades of war, as I understand them:
0GW: This is genocide. There is not a distinction made between a soldier and a civilian and violence is therefore directed at the whole society. There is no-such- thing as “everything else” – the socio-political-economic factors that come into play in further grades are made irrelevant by the complete and total destruction brought about by an OGW campaign.
1GW: This is warfare waged with a basic professional army. Division of labor now comes into play because there needs to be a some sort of rudimentary economy that allows a percentage of the (usually) young male population to drill and go away to fight a battle. This type of war has been going on since ancient times – think of Sparta or Roman Legions –and the outcome of battle will often be determined by which country has better trained soldiers, NCOs and officers – think Thermopolis.
2GW: This is industrialized war. The outcome will be determined by which belligerent can bring the most firepower to bear the quickest. Division of labor on the home front is now extremely important. The society that wishes to wage such a war must be able to command a large enough industrial base to produce the weapons required and must have a political system which provides for mass mobilization of an entire society. Think about the American Civil War or World War I. This is the first gradient of warfare where the home front arguably becomes more important than the battlefield; because the society that will win is the society that can out produce the other side and not necessarily the side with the best trained or most effective soldiers.
3GW: This is a Blitzkrieg. Borrowing or building on similar technological and economic developments as 2GW (mass industrialization, repeating arms and motor vehicles, for example) 3GW attempts to focus the kinetics onto the enemy’s C2 (command and control) functions. Historical examples include the German invasions of France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941), Operation Desert Storm (1991) and the initial phase of operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). Winning often dose not depend on having the biggest army but rather on being able to deliver just the right amount of firepower on key targets; cutting key lines and communication and maneuvering to cut off the enemy’s ability to share information and make decisions.
4GW: This is guerilla warfare. A 4GW is like an election with guns. In this form of warfare the socio-economic and political factors are more important than the military factors – a smaller force will often defeat a larger force (see: Vietnam) if the smaller force can better attract followers to the cause. The winner will be the side that gains the support of the people. Violence is as likely to be focused on some militarily significant aim as it is to be used for political theater. For example, in the early stages of the insurgency in Iraq the insurgents would often fire a few mortars at American soldiers knowing that the Americans would fire back and that the American battery would destroy civilian buildings. While victory in a 1,2 or 3 GW is easy to define and has historically often involved a formal peace conference and official recognition of cessation of hostilities by all belligerents (historical examples range from Appomattox to the Congress of Vienna to V.J. Day) a 4GW might end in a much more ambiguous way with one side simply giving up and going home.
5GW: The Battle of Who Could Care Less
“Do you never rest? Fighting the battle for who could care less” –The Ben Folds Five, The Battle for Who Could Care Less
Blogger Dan Abbott has observed that a key component of 5GW would be caring:
“Every other form of modern-warfare requires people to care. The aggressor needs to be able to morally and physically support his military forces for over a period of time — often a long time. The defender, once he realizes he is being attacked, will care about his own survival and fight back.”
In many ways getting an enemy to not care is the essence of what happened in the Robert Taylor between the mid 1980s and mid 90s as the BKs rose to prominence. The gangs needed the city of Chicago to not care that they were operating. This was no Maoist insurgency; the BKs were not really looking for converts or comrades; they just needed enough space to operate freely. Much of what the BKs did, from paying off local elites to tamping down violence at the behest of the police was designed to make potential troublemakers not care just enough to decide that taking on the gang was more trouble than going along. On the flip side, anyone inside any level of government that really wanted to fight the gangs was fighting a battle to get someone to care; get the FBI to care about the racketeering; get the City to care about the conditions inside the projects and get the police to care more about a strong rule of law than a hassle free peace. And once this was accomplished, once the government started caring enough to dump resources into solving the problem, the war was won.
Once the authorities cared, they set off a series of developments that substantially weakened the Black Kings. To explain how that happened, I shall steal another concept from Abbott’s blog posts on 5GW: waterfall development. In a waterfall development model:
“ * Requirements must be known a long time before fighting begins
* Requirements will be rigid and non-adaptable
* Long Time between proposal and victory”
Figure 1
In the 5GW I am describing the insurgents, like all insurgents, draw strength from their environment. Not unlike the way the Viet Cong hid in the jungle and used the natural landscape of Vietnam as a weapon against American soldiers and marines, the Black Kings used their immense store of local knowledge and ability to blend into the environment of Robert Taylor as their primary defense. So the CHA et al defeated them by launching a 5GW against the environment itself. In their grand strategy to destroy the gangs of Chicago, the government turned construction workers, real estate developers and non-prophet organizations into unknowing soldiers in a massive counter insurgency campaign. And when they were finished the insurgents found the environment had been so radically altered that they were unable to reorient themselves and many wound up walking away from insurgency all together.
I turned in my chapter in late April and and the book is slated for release sometime this summer.
My chapter concerns what I believe could be a real life example of a 5GW COIN campaign that was conducted right here in the United States. Below is a brief excerpt from my chapter, entitled The War for Robert Taylor:
Stipulations, Assumptions and a Theoretical Model
One of the barriers to writing about the fifth gradient of war is that there is quit a bit of debate over what exactly constitute each gradient of warfare. So I must begin this chapter by stipulating a few assumptions I am making as I lay out my example of 5GW. Those assumptions include:
1. Warfare is organized violence.
2. Each successive grade of warfare represents a tighter focus of violence (aka kinetics) and a more sophisticated division of labor required to create the kinetics.
3. As a corollary to the point above, as the violence becomes more focused the role of the non-kinetic (aka “everything else) becomes more important in determining the outcome of the conflict.
With those 3 factors in mind, here is a list of the 5 existing grades of war, as I understand them:
0GW: This is genocide. There is not a distinction made between a soldier and a civilian and violence is therefore directed at the whole society. There is no-such- thing as “everything else” – the socio-political-economic factors that come into play in further grades are made irrelevant by the complete and total destruction brought about by an OGW campaign.
1GW: This is warfare waged with a basic professional army. Division of labor now comes into play because there needs to be a some sort of rudimentary economy that allows a percentage of the (usually) young male population to drill and go away to fight a battle. This type of war has been going on since ancient times – think of Sparta or Roman Legions –and the outcome of battle will often be determined by which country has better trained soldiers, NCOs and officers – think Thermopolis.
2GW: This is industrialized war. The outcome will be determined by which belligerent can bring the most firepower to bear the quickest. Division of labor on the home front is now extremely important. The society that wishes to wage such a war must be able to command a large enough industrial base to produce the weapons required and must have a political system which provides for mass mobilization of an entire society. Think about the American Civil War or World War I. This is the first gradient of warfare where the home front arguably becomes more important than the battlefield; because the society that will win is the society that can out produce the other side and not necessarily the side with the best trained or most effective soldiers.
3GW: This is a Blitzkrieg. Borrowing or building on similar technological and economic developments as 2GW (mass industrialization, repeating arms and motor vehicles, for example) 3GW attempts to focus the kinetics onto the enemy’s C2 (command and control) functions. Historical examples include the German invasions of France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941), Operation Desert Storm (1991) and the initial phase of operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). Winning often dose not depend on having the biggest army but rather on being able to deliver just the right amount of firepower on key targets; cutting key lines and communication and maneuvering to cut off the enemy’s ability to share information and make decisions.
4GW: This is guerilla warfare. A 4GW is like an election with guns. In this form of warfare the socio-economic and political factors are more important than the military factors – a smaller force will often defeat a larger force (see: Vietnam) if the smaller force can better attract followers to the cause. The winner will be the side that gains the support of the people. Violence is as likely to be focused on some militarily significant aim as it is to be used for political theater. For example, in the early stages of the insurgency in Iraq the insurgents would often fire a few mortars at American soldiers knowing that the Americans would fire back and that the American battery would destroy civilian buildings. While victory in a 1,2 or 3 GW is easy to define and has historically often involved a formal peace conference and official recognition of cessation of hostilities by all belligerents (historical examples range from Appomattox to the Congress of Vienna to V.J. Day) a 4GW might end in a much more ambiguous way with one side simply giving up and going home.
5GW: The Battle of Who Could Care Less
“Do you never rest? Fighting the battle for who could care less” –The Ben Folds Five, The Battle for Who Could Care Less
Blogger Dan Abbott has observed that a key component of 5GW would be caring:
“Every other form of modern-warfare requires people to care. The aggressor needs to be able to morally and physically support his military forces for over a period of time — often a long time. The defender, once he realizes he is being attacked, will care about his own survival and fight back.”
In many ways getting an enemy to not care is the essence of what happened in the Robert Taylor between the mid 1980s and mid 90s as the BKs rose to prominence. The gangs needed the city of Chicago to not care that they were operating. This was no Maoist insurgency; the BKs were not really looking for converts or comrades; they just needed enough space to operate freely. Much of what the BKs did, from paying off local elites to tamping down violence at the behest of the police was designed to make potential troublemakers not care just enough to decide that taking on the gang was more trouble than going along. On the flip side, anyone inside any level of government that really wanted to fight the gangs was fighting a battle to get someone to care; get the FBI to care about the racketeering; get the City to care about the conditions inside the projects and get the police to care more about a strong rule of law than a hassle free peace. And once this was accomplished, once the government started caring enough to dump resources into solving the problem, the war was won.
Once the authorities cared, they set off a series of developments that substantially weakened the Black Kings. To explain how that happened, I shall steal another concept from Abbott’s blog posts on 5GW: waterfall development. In a waterfall development model:
“ * Requirements must be known a long time before fighting begins
* Requirements will be rigid and non-adaptable
* Long Time between proposal and victory”
Figure 1
In the 5GW I am describing the insurgents, like all insurgents, draw strength from their environment. Not unlike the way the Viet Cong hid in the jungle and used the natural landscape of Vietnam as a weapon against American soldiers and marines, the Black Kings used their immense store of local knowledge and ability to blend into the environment of Robert Taylor as their primary defense. So the CHA et al defeated them by launching a 5GW against the environment itself. In their grand strategy to destroy the gangs of Chicago, the government turned construction workers, real estate developers and non-prophet organizations into unknowing soldiers in a massive counter insurgency campaign. And when they were finished the insurgents found the environment had been so radically altered that they were unable to reorient themselves and many wound up walking away from insurgency all together.
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