BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE

BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE
instant cumulative war, or parallel war and hyperwar, decades
before current theorists articulated "the five rings ." As
Desmond Ball has shown, SIOP nuclear weapons were
allocated against target sets in the former Soviet system
characterized as "leadership" (leadership), "nuclear force"
(nuclear forces), "economic and industrial" (organic essentials
and logistics infrastructure), and "other military" (other fielded
forces) .
17 The, SIOP also evidenced coherence and simultaneity,
using Cooper's terms . Thus, there is scant difference between
the targeting logic of the SIOP approach and the targeting logic
of the five-rings approach, save for the important distinction
that one employed nuclear weapons effects and the other did
not, but might have . 18 While the difference between the
nuclear SIOP and parallel war waged with conventional
weapons is critically important, there are more similarities
between the theories than differences . Both approaches
sought to strike decisive points, both sought to checkmate
enemy leadership, both were executed simultaneously and
with hyper speed, 19 both aimed at driving down enemy "energy
levels" dramatically, both sought to impose shock and
paralysis on the enemy system, and both sought to eliminate
rapid (or almost "any," in the case of the SIOP) enemy
post-attack recovery capability .2° Nuclear weapons use does
make a difference . The SIOP intended to be so threatening that
it also may have been self-deterring . Parallel warfare using
nonnuclear appears no less threatening in terms of its
immediate consequences, but has fewer constraints on its
employment . Even so, the difference in weapons is not a
difference in the theory qua. theory nor in the proximate effects
the SIOP and nonnuclear parallel war sought. 21
Strengths and Shortcomings
The strength of cumulative strategies, both the SIOP and
parallel war, even though they are the same theory, is that
they promise to reduce more rapidly the war-making capacity
of an industrialized enemy state . 22 It is indisputable that
industrial states may be organized as the kind of system
represented . The logic of a cumulative model appears sound,
130