Terrorist Armies Fight Smarter and Deadlier than Ever
Terrorist Armies Fight Smarter and Deadlier than Ever by Robert H. Scales and Douglas Ollivant, Washington Post
Military transformations can be hard to detect. They generally occur over decades, sometimes over generations. Soldiers are usually the first to recognize them, but for the perceptive, the signs of a sea change developing on today’s battlefields are there. Look carefully at media images of ground fighting across the Middle East, and you will notice that the bad guys are fighting differently than they have in the past.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the West confronted terrorists who acted like, well, terrorists. In Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and other militant groups relied on ambushes, roadside bombings, sniper fire and the occasional “fire and run” mortar or rocket attack to inflict casualties on U.S. forces.
When terrorists were stupid enough to come out of the shadows, they fought as a mob of individuals. One rip of a Kalashnikov or a single launch of a rocket-propelled grenade was enough. If they stood to reload, they risked annihilation at the hands of their disciplined, well-trained and heavily armed American opponents.
Today, it’s different…
A thread has been created on SWC to discuss this viewpoint: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=21008
I think that a message of this piece is that we should stop our myopic focus on terrorism and learn to understand the threat(s) and more important the strategies as they truly exist and not through the narrow lens of terrorism. These threats are more in keeping with Frank Hoffman’s description of hybrid threats:
“Any adversary that simultaneously employs a tailored mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and criminal behavior in the same time and battlespace to obtain their political objectives.”
We need to understand that our adversaries (or the adversaries of many of our friends, partners, and allies) are using a combination of conventional, unconventional, and political warfare supporting strategies that are designed to accomplish objectives far beyond anything terrorism alone can achieve. We need to remove our terrorism blinders and look deeply and critically at the strategies that are being employed today.
I could post something about Colgen but I won’t. What would even be the point? And why does anyone trust anyone writing in the Washington Post, a conduit for State or the Pentagon, or any other DC bureaucracy, that uses its contacts with retired military and civilian bureaucrats to push a line on the American people.
Ambushes are what terrorists do. They use snipers, They hit and run. They fire mortars and rockets.
Isn’t that what’s taught at Ranger School and to SF? Isn’t that what the army calls unconventional warfare?
This article is a good example of how “terrorist” now has no meaning beyond “the enemy”.
I posted this short essay to my blog yesterday, hoping that SWJ would pick up the article.
Terrorist Armies?
In the Washington Post this morning (Aug.2 2014), Doug Olivant and MG Bob Scales USA (Ret.) have an excellent op ed on the rise of Terrorist Armies like that of ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The piece addresses the tactical learning curve of these groups but it breaks no new ground at the strategic level. This is not to say that the authors are wrong, they aren’t. And at the level they are writing about they have pointed out an extremely important development.
The strategic level, however, is another thing. In a 2002 article in the journal, Low Iintensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Kimbra Fishel identified Al Qaeda as an insurgency that had raised asymmetric warfare to the global arena. Nearly simultaneously, David Kilcullen independently described Al Qaeda as a global insurgent in an article later republished in his 2010 book, Counterinsurgency. Assuming these authors are correct in their analysis, then the key issue becomes the strategy of the insurgency. The classic writing on insurgent – or revolutionary – strategy is that of the late Mao Tse-tung, perhaps the greatest Revolutionary strategist of all time.
Mao’s strategy was, and is, a three phase war. He described these phases as Strategic Defensive, Strategic Equilibrium, and Strategic Offensive. On the Strategic Defensive the insurgents organize, conduct limited operations using terror and guerrilla tactics against the better armed and equipped enemy, and seek to preserve and expand their capability. During the Strategic Equilibrium the insurgents continue what they have been doing previously, expand their area of operations, and occasionally seek a fight with larger forces but always when they can mass local superiority. On the Strategic Offensive the insurgents seek to overturn the government by meeting the enemy in conventional, decisive battle. Mao is very clear, however, that the insurgents can move forward and backward into different phases as the situation dictates.
The terrorist armies that Olivant and Scales discuss are, as suggested, global insurgents. They are part of a radical Islamist movement that seeks the restoration (or establishment) of a worldwide caliphate. The various elements of this global insurgency are operating in different phases of Mao’s revolutionary paradigm. Specifically, ISIS is in Phase 3, Hamas appears to be in Phase 2 occasionally putting a foot into Phase 3, while Hezbollah has settled mainly into Phase 2 against Israel but is operating as a regular army (Phase 3) in Syria. Meanwhile, AQAP (in Yemen) is mainly in Phase 1 while “core” AQ tries to inspire all three phases as appropriate. Thus the challenge identified by Olivant and Scales at the tactical (and operational) level is even greater at the strategic level.
One problem that Gaza seems to illustrate is the inability to respond to indirect fire against ground forces without causing collateral damage. Iron Dome protects the civil population but mortar/rocket fire aimed at Israeli Forces inside Gaza is not addressed by Iron Dome. The traditional use of counterbattery fire into civilian areas is problematic even if Hamas is technically making it OK to respond in self defense by purposely using human shields. The resulting death toll makes Israel still appear the villain.
This sounds like something that a loitering situation-launched weapon like Switchblade could address with a smaller hand grenade sized warhead guided to target by imagery rather than the larger effect of a mortar round or Hellfire. The first Israeli attack on the launch site at a UN school appeared to be some sort of air burst as there was no crater and Palestinians claimed casualties were under overhangs and were hit by the airburst mortar shrapnel if that was what was used.
The constant presence of overhead UAS/RPA is driving Hamas to hug civilians and go underground and that lesson is likely to be universal. The problem for the Israelis then is how to target rocket storage and launch sites without creating an information warfare bonanza for the Palestinians. What if Hamas gets guided missiles that force Iron Dome to engage more targets and costs them (and us) enormous sums? What if Hamas gets a smaller cruise missile like system that flies low and probably cannot be engaged by Iron Dome?
This is why Israel cannot acquiesce and lift the blockade of Gaza because countless new rockets and missiles will arrive. Even if a separate Gaza Palestinian state existed, Israel knows the rockets and missiles would continue to filter in and engage Israel every few years getting more advanced each time.
As for RPG-29 and guided missiles against armor, we will need to wait to see how many Israeli Soldiers died under armor as a result of these weapons. I continue to be amazed at those claiming the loss of 62+ troops in this operation is catastrophic and a relative loss for Israel. It may be a tactical “mowing of the grass” but we all know grass must be mowed or the weeds take over.
As for the argument that we should not reenter Iraq, what if we had forces deployed in Kurdish areas and Turkey prepared to reinforce the Kurdish Peshmerga if they continue to lose ground to ISIS. If the Iraqi election does not work out and Maliki continues to reject a Sunni/Kurd role in governing, we may need to bail from Iraq and into a new Kurdistan. There would be few U.S. casualties fighting with enablers from there and actions also could advance against ISIS and Assad in Syria if other Sunni ground forces were forthcoming from Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
If we think terrorists are deadly now, how bad will they be if they continue to gain experience in fighting unopposed by serious opposition. We thought the Peshmerga was effective but they lost several towns today and oilfields with more sophisticated ISIS/ISIL attacks from 3 directions in one case with trucks. Overhead surveillance, Apache gunships, GMLRS unitary and fast movers could do a number on such attacks without our ground forces being there on the battlefield but only if enablers are in relative proximity.