The game changes. Will we?

Iran encounter grimly echoes '02 war game - International Herald Tribune

A number of 4GW lessons come from this incident. First and foremost, those boats presented a very real threat to US Navy vessels - a point driven home all too deeply by both the Cole bombing and the 2002 wargame described in the IHT article. It was interesting to hear how completely some of the Republican candidates (and Ron Paul in particular - no surprise there) dismissed the extent of this threat during the debate in SC - and illustrates the lack of understanding within our modern political leadership regarding the nature of these sorts of threats.

Secondly, within a day, the Navy had released video and audio footage of the incident for general consumption. Within that day, bloggers were second-guessing much of it (to include the radio broadcast threatening to blow one of the ships up). Within another day, the Iranians had released their OWN version of events - complete with video tape. Thus, the conflict (tactical in nature) was played out on multiple fronts, with multiple participants, and becomes, to a degree, strategic in nature.

Thirdly, watching both video clips made me cringe. It really did look like footage from WWII as German fighters tore into the expensive, heavily-armed, "impregnable" B-17 formations flying over Germany during daylight hours. Unfortunately, the "answers" to that problem are difficult to apply to this problem set. 

As we saw last year, the IRGC has worked diligently to figure out ways to get small (cheap...) vessels in close enough to larger naval vessels in situations where firing machine guns in every direction (as the B-17s did) isn't going to work (hiding behind oil tankers and other merchants and acting non-threatening until within detonation range is the 4GW version of naval "stealth" - but a whole lot cheaper than the American version...).

As we also saw last year, it can be quite easy to create local tactical situations with such grave strategic implications that local commanders hesitate until it's too late.

It's a new version of naval combat that the West is poorly trained and equipped to handle. I have a feeling that small boats operating in tight shipping lanes (manned by suicidal attackers), increasing use of very quiet (and cheap) diesel submarines, along with the proliferation of anti-ship missiles will prove to be the undoing of our current navel strategy just as the aircraft carrier and robust airplanes capable of swarming attacks undid our previous (pre-Pearl Harbor) strategy.

Our new opponents/competitors (whether state-based or non-state-based have chosen to operate by a fundamentally different set of rules than those with which our military is familiar. Dangerous times.

Too much the pessimist?

A Tactics Primer, by William S. Lind

Well...maybe "pessimist" isn't the right term. I would argue that the Americans showed flashes of 3GW in the first Gulf War (think 24th ID) and fought an aggressive campaign of maneuver vs. the Iraqis at the start of the the current conflict. The drawback to 3GW tactics is that they are often inconclusive if they do not completely incapacitate the regenerative powers of their opponent. The Germans used "3GW" from WWI on...and LOST both wars. Primarily because maneuver ended up being less important than mass, depth, and resources. All of their wonderful encirclements failed to knock Russia or Britain out of WWII. Once the Allies had developed their own style of "3GW," they stomped the Germans guts in because maneuver warfare, executed as the coup de grace after an attrition-based campaign, proved to be much more effective.

Looking again at Iraq, an aggressive maneuver campaign meant the Iraqi army was able to disintegrate. Because shedding a uniform did not mean ending hostilities, it turned out to be meaningless. In fact, by forcing the Iraqis out of OUR comfort zone (organized, hierarchical military formations that fit our targeting templates), we merely pushed them into their own comfort zone - one that is well outside of ours. We've been struggling ever since.

All that being said, the US could NOT have fought an attrition campaign prior to the ground war in 2003. With the stated objective(s) of the campaign, causing mass Iraqi casualties would not have helped. Of course, allowing euphoric looting and rioting to degenerate into lawlessness, chaos, crime, and insurgency didn't exactly help things either. But the bottom line truth is this: maneuver warfare tends to be much more effective at the tail end of a campaign of attrition (think of the air war prior to Gulf 1). Western Democracies cannot fight wars of attrition. A well-executed maneuver campaign CAN lead to early (and enduring) success...if the planning continues past the end of organized resistance by the enemy.