Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

Athena’s Camp. They see swarming as the logical emerging paradigm in warfare, followingthree earlier paradigms in military history: the melee, massing, maneuver. The central idea isthat IT offers the potential for small networked units to operate as a swarm in a ‘seeminglyamorphous but deliberately structured, coordinated strategic way to strike from all direction,by means of a sustainable pulsing of force and/or fire, close in as well as form stand-offpositions. It works best if it is designed mainly around the deployment of myriad, small,dispersed maneuver units that are tightly internetted and capable to communicate andcoordinate with each other at will and are expected to do so’ 114 . A swarm force must not onlyengage in strike operations, but also form part of a “sensory organization”, providing thesurveillance and synoptic-level observations necessary to the creation and maintenance of“topsight” 115 . A Boydian concept indeed.These studies did not remain confined to the academic world. On the contrary, ithas come to define the US way of war and the vision of the future for the Pentagon. In 1997then US defence secretary William Cohen asserted that:the information revolution is creating a Revolution in Military Affairs that will fundamentallychange the way US forces fight. We must exploit these and other technologies to dominatein battle. Our template for seizing on these technologies and ensuring dominance is JointVision 2010, the plan set forth by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for militaryoperations in the future 116 .Joint Vision 2010 condenced both some core Boydian ideas, the tenets of information age –or postmodern - warfare and the US defence aspirations in the following lines:By 2010, we should be able to change how we conduct the most intense joint operations. Instead of relying on massed forces and sequential operations, we will achieve massed effects inother ways. Information superiority and advances in technology will enable us to achieve thedesired effects through the tailored application of joint combat power. Higher lethalityweapons will allow us to conduct attacks currently that formerly required massed assetsapplied in a sequential manner. With precision targetting and longer range systemscommanders can achieve the necessary destruction or suppression of enemy forces withfewer systems, thereby reducing the need for time consuming and risky massing of peopleand equipment. Improved command and control, based on fused, all-source real-timeintelligence will reduce the need to assemble maneuver formations days and hours in advanceof attacks. Providing improved targetting information directly to the most effective weaponsystem will potentially reduce the traditional force requirements at the point of main effort.All of this suggests that we will be increasingly able to accomplish the effects of mass - thenecessary concentration of combat power at the decisive time and place - with less need tomass forces physically than in the past. 117In the latter part of the nineties, an overarching concept – Network Centric warfare (NCW) -was proposed, that incorporated many of the concepts developed in various studies on theimpact of the information age on warfare, including swarming and the network structure.114 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Swarming and the Future of Conflict, (RAND, Santa Monica, 2000),pp. 21-23.115 Ibid.116 William S. Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, D.C., U.S. DefenseDepartment, 1997), p. iv.117 Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision 2010 (Washington D.C.: Department of Defense, United StatesGovernment), 1997, p.17. For a short but adequate description of JV2010 see major-general CharlesLink, ‘21 st Century Armed Forces – Joint Vision 2010’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn 1996, pp.69-73.308