The Need to Create an Unconventional Warfare Advanced Studies and Training Center
The Need to Create an Unconventional Warfare Advanced Studies and Training Center
by John Cochran
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Unconventional Warfare or UW is the most difficult and complex of any form of combat. UW’s complexity lends itself to the salient fact that it is not a straight on fight; instead it is a method of warfare that employs psychological warfare, subversion, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and intelligence operations. Its very nature is to attack from the inside of the enemy and through the use of a disenfranchised section of society force the enemy to acquiesce and capitulate. It requires its soldiers to meld into the sociological and physical environment, apparently a farmer or banker one moment and conducting a direct action or kinetic strike the next. UW is not just a slugger’s war or a thinking man’s war; it requires a mental and physical decathlete whose sole devotion is mastering its complexity. Assurance that the specified soldiers can conduct this successfully requires both continual exercises and a devoted education system which focuses solely on this multifaceted form of warfare. These facts necessitate the creation of an Unconventional Warfare Advanced Studies and Training Center whose sole responsibility is the advanced training and continual education of UW to facilitate the tactical, operational and strategic needs of the US military’s only force with UW as its fundamental mission: US Army Special Forces.
Download The Full Article: The Need to Create an Unconventional Warfare Advanced Studies and Training Center
CW2 John D. Cochran is a US Army Special Forces Warrant Officer currently assigned at Naval Postgraduate School pursuing a graduate degree in Defense Analysis. CW2 Cochran has had Command and Staff assignments in Iraq, Europe, Afghanistan and Africa. He holds a BA in Intelligence Studies/SOLIC and a MA in Military Studies/UW from the American Military University. The opinions he expresses in this paper are his own and represent no U.S. Government or Department of Defense positions.
