BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE

BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE
country . Perhaps you would agree to a moratorium on sales .
Your enemy might or might not accept these counterproposals ;
it would depend largely on how much he was willing to spend
to create a cost for you . In our ideal world we like to think we
don't negotiate with drug dealers or tyrants like Saddam
Hussein . In the real world we do so all the time . Very rarely
are we willing to invest the time and effort required to achieve
maximal results .
Our discussion of costs has so far been oriented at a
strategic level . Does it also apply at an operational level-the
level at which military forces are actually employed? The
answer is an absolute yes . Military commanders, with the
exception of a few really stupid ones, have always weighed
costs as they were planning or conducting an operation . Let's
take a hypothetical look at George Patton and the Third Army
in World War II .
George Patton was an aggressive commander who believed
that speed of advance was key to success . Obviously, then, the
Third Army needed to move quickly as a system-not just the
tanks, but the whole system that supported them at the front .
From the German side, if moving fast was good from George
Patton's perspective, it was bad from theirs . Now, let us do a
quick five-ring analysis of the Third Army from just the cost
standpoint . (We will return to it later when we discuss
operational paralysis .)
Let us suppose that something catastrophic happened to
Third Army's fuel supply in mid-September of 1944 . Let us
assume that someone tells General Patton at a staff meeting
that all fuel deliveries to his Army will cease in two days . His
choices are basically two : slow down or stop the movement of
his army so that it can assume a reasonable defensive
position, or tell everyone to plunge ahead as far as possible
until they run out of gas . Since the latter is likely to leave the
majority of the army in an untenable and unplanned position
and is unlikely to achieve anything final, Patton opts for the
former because he has assessed the cost of continuing as too
high for the possible results .
Realize also that unbeknownst to the commanding general,
every subordinate commander and soldier will start acting on
information about an impending fuel shortage as soon as he