Conflict

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C’est magnifique

mais ce n’est pas la guerre.

This is what I was thinking as I read John Arquilla’s intriguing article on cyberwar at Foreign Policy, “Cool War: Could the age of cyberwarfare lead us to a brighter future?”

Here’s his thesis:

On balance, it seems that cyberwar capabilities have real potential to deal with some of the world’s more pernicious problems, from crime and terrorism to nuclear proliferation. In stark contrast to pitched battles that would regularly claim thousands of young soldiers’ lives during Robert E. Lee’s time, the very nature of conflict may come to be reshaped along more humane lines of operations. War, in this sense, might be “made better” — think disruption rather than destruction. More decisive, but at the same time less lethal.

To which one can only add, “I hope so.” But one is reminded of Clausewitz’s warning that once you unleash the dogs of war, it’s hard to know where the escalation of violence will stop: “War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.” The side that holds back, loses.

So either cyberwar is not real war, or, which may be saying the same thing, it won’t replace violence but be merely an adjunct to it.

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Happy days are here again

Fabius Maximus has another post on the financial crisis: US economic update. Everything that follows is a result of what you see here.

I’m not an economist so I can’t comment on his analysis. However, he makes an interesting observation near the end of his post that applies to a lot more than economics:

Under stress people tend to narrow their circle of care.  Who is “us” and who is “them”.  Coordination both within and between nations becomes less likely; conflict becomes more likely.

Continue reading →

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Think fast!

Let me get this out of the way right up front: There is never a time when thinking slow is good. Ever.

So I was a little surprised when a friend alerted me to a piece on the Psychology Today site entitled “Thinking Fast Promotes Risky Behavior,” by Art Markman, a psychologist at the University of Texas. Any well-constructed research will tell you something, will, that is, give you a part or two for a future snowmobile, so I figured it was worth a deeper look. Often you have to dig in see what they did, rather than accept the wisdom of whoever wrote the title.

Continue reading →

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Ben Franklin – 4th Generation Warrior

What artillery and air power are in Third Generation war, cash is in the Fourth Generation: your most useful supporting arm. [FMFM-1A, Fourth Generation Warfare, 12 August 2009, p. 68.]

It’s an old idea:

In England, the rotten-borough system flourished, and the nabobs outbid all other purchasers. Franklin deplored the American war for a peculiar reason: “Why did they [the Continental Congress] not let me go on? If they had given me a fourth of the money they have spent on the war, we should have had our independence without spending a drop of blood. I would have bought all the Parliament, the whole government of Britain.” [Will and Arial Durant, Rousseau and Revolution, p. 733.]

All the 4GW manuals are available at DNIPOGO, http://dnipogo.org/strategy-and-force-employment/fourth-generation-warfare-manuals/

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Chart 141, part 2

As a synthesis of all that comes before it, chart 141 will repay a little more study. Like, if you’re at the snowmobile dealer’s, you might want to do more than just admire the paint scheme.

The first thing that might strike you is: What is it with all these levels? There are six, and “grand tactics” has three bullets all to itself. Does it have to be this complicated? Rather than accepting Boyd’s scheme or (God forbid!) trying to memorize it, you might think about this question. If you’re not into large-scale combat on land, then you should ponder whether the notion of “levels” even makes sense for you.

On the next chart, Boyd suggests that for armed conflict,  you’ll need at least two levels, a constructive ideal, represented by the top two, and some concept for compelling opponents to accede to your wishes (the bottom four).  So one thing you might start with is asking if such a scheme makes any sense for other forms of conflict, such as business.

My guess is that because Patterns is primarily concerned with armed conflict on land, Boyd started with the levels that are familiar to practitioners of that art: tactical, operational, and strategic. Roughly these are:

tactical — fighting the battle
operational — what you do between battles; maneuver
strategic — overall concept for the campaign; what you’re trying to accomplish with the battles you do fight

First thing he did is rename the operational level to “grand tactics.”

Next, remember back on chart 2, which I mentioned in an earlier post, one of his purposes was to “help generalize tactics and strategy.” He doesn’t say anything about “grand tactics” or “strategic aim.” In fact, when he briefed chart 2, he would always caution against becoming rigid or dogmatic in your definitions of “tactics” and “strategy.” He’d tell the audience, “strategy” is what you’re trying to accomplish, while “tactics” is how you’re going to do it. If you look at chart 141 again, each level can be thought of as tactics to the more strategic level above it. Put another way, for each level except tactics, the level just below it answers the “how?” question.

This is really interesting. If you are familiar with lean production or the Toyota Production System, you may remember something called the “five whys.” As one of the system’s creators, Taiichi Ohno (Toyota Production System, 1988, p. 17), illustrated it:

1. The machine stopped.
Why?
2. There was an overload and a fuse blew.
Why was there an overload?
3. The bearing was not lubricated properly
Why?
4. The lubrication pump wasn’t working right
Why?
5. The shaft of the pump was worn out.
Why?
6. There was no strainer attached and metal scrap got in.

As Ohno pointed out, if you didn’t go through this process and get to the root cause, you’d replace the fuse and sometime, probably in the near future, you’d have the same problem (and stop production again).

In “The Five Whys,” we’re asking “what caused it?”  If you start at the top of chart 141, you are, essentially, asking, “what are we going to do to make this happen?” or equivalently, “what’s going to cause it?” The distinction is inconsequential. Both produce the insight that leads off IOHAI.

If you start at the top level and ask “How?” five times, you get … six levels.

I’m reasonably sure that Boyd was not aware of the “five whys” when he created chart 141. I have a version of Patterns dated September 1981 that contains this chart with the same six levels (although the definitions did change some in the intervening five years), but as far as I know, Boyd didn’t encounter the five whys concept until he started reading about the TPS in the mid-1980s.

Coincidence? Probably. From his study of Sun Tzu, though, Boyd was familiar with the philosophical infrastructure that underlies both maneuver and moral conflict as well as the Toyota Way (of which the production system is a component). So perhaps five “hows?” just intuitively seemed right to him. This suggests that if your field isn’t armed conflict, you’re still going to want some structure inspired by the five whys/hows.

There’s more we can milk out of chart 141, but this should get you started.

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Criteria of a Sensible Grand Strategy

Chuck Spinney

Reposted with permission from: http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/criteria-of-sensible-grand-strategy.html

The Bush administration’s theory and practice of grand strategy could be summarized in the sound byte, “You are either with us or against us.” But the art of grand strategy is far more subtle than this, and it is now clear that Bush’s primitive conception led to all sorts of problems at home and abroad. Continue reading →

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Qadhaafi tries agility

Straightforward example of agility in the military — simple but effective.  Having adopted their opponents’ tactics, their superior (but still limited) training and cohesion are giving them an edge.

One of Boyd’s favorite sayings was that you don’t have to be perfect, only better than your opponents.

Another was “People, ideas, and hardware … in that order!”  Just a few days ago,   pundits were predicting that with the intervention of coalition airpower, the rebels would quickly resume their westward march and take Tripoli.

They may still do that, but it’s now going to take a focus on the people and ideas part. I wouldn’t be surprised if the coalition has special operations forces on the ground, and the primary mission of such units is to train local forces (not to conduct covert operations themselves, although they are certainly capable of that).  For more information on US Special Forces and their use in assisting insurgencies, see Pat Lang’s blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, particularly here and here.

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Libya crisis: Gaddafi forces adopt rebel tactics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12911904

Ras Lanuf has now changed hands for the fourth time in three weeks. BBC world affairs editor John Simpson in Tripoli has been assessing the fighting.

Colonel Gaddafi’s forces have changed their tactics.

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Welcome to Conceptual Spiral

I’ve put together a short introduction to Conceptual Spiral, Boyd’s last major briefing.  So few people, even those who can quote from Patterns of Conflict, ever take the time to look into CS that I thought perhaps a few introductory remarks might help ease folks into it.

Boyd considered CS to be one of his major pieces, in some ways the fulfillment of everything he had done up until then, so it will repay the effort needed to master it.

[YouTube has several videos of Boyd delivering and commenting on Conceptual Spiral.]

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Bookends of the Discourse

Here are the last two elements of John Boyd’s Discourse on Winning and Losing, the Abstract and Revelation.

When he was giving out copies of the Discourse, the “Green Book,” the order was:

  1. Abstract
  2. Patterns of Conflict
  3. Organic Design for Command and Control
  4. Strategic Game of ? and ?
  5. Destruction and Creation
  6. Revelation

In 1992, he completed his last major briefing, Conceptual Spiral, and then, in 1996, his last work of any length, The Essence of Winning and Losing.  He placed Conceptual Spiral right after the Abstract, but as far as I know didn’t include Essence in any last copies of the Discourse that he may have distributed.  Boyd died on March 9, 1997.

The logical position for Essence would be just before the Revelation because it assumes familiarity with the concept of “operating inside OODA ‘loops,'”  which is treated in detail in Patterns, Organic Design, and Strategic Game.

I wouldn’t put too much emphasis, though, on a canonical ordering.  Most people start with Patterns of Conflict and never get beyond it.  But there is a richness in considering the topic of winning and losing from a larger perspective, that of accomplishing our objectives — achieving happiness, in other words — in a world that appears to be conspiring against us.  There’s nothing to be lost by starting on the battlefields of Patterns and then exploring one’s way to wherever one’s fancy carries.

All of Boyd’s work is (or very soon will be) available at http://dnipogo.org/john-r-boyd/.

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Impeccable timing

Tony Perry reviews Robert Coram’s Brute for the LA Times:

Along with this brisk, highly readable, strongly reported biography’s other attributes, add impeccable timing.

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Coram does not shrink from Krulak’s unattractive side: He grabbed credit from others. He could be cold toward his family. He was devious in inter-service wrangling and Beltway politicking. He concocted stories to enhance his already considerable reputation for brains and bravery. He hid and then denied his Jewish heritage.

Still, Coram argues for a larger evaluation of his subject. And he suggests the future of the Marine Corps in the 21st century may depend on whether a new Krulak steps forward.