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Unrestricted Warfare!!!

Unrestricted Warfare!!!

By THANKMIC in 6 Apr 2020 | 07:53
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THANKMIC THANKMIC

THANKMIC THANKMIC

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TABLE OF CONTENTS


Preface

Part One: On New Warfare

Chapter 1: The Weapons Revolution Which Invariably Comes First

Chapter 2: The War God's Face Has Become Indistinct

Chapter 3: A Classic That Deviates From the Classics

Chapter 4: What Do Americans Gain By Touching the Elephant?

Part Two: A Discussion of New Methods of Operation

Chapter 5: New Methodology of War Games

Chapter 6: Seeking Rules of Victory: The Force Moves Away From the Point of the Enemy's
Attack

Chapter 7: Ten Thousand Methods Combined as One: Combinations That Transcend
Boundaries

Chapter 8: Essential Principles

Conclusion

Afterword
6 Apr 2020 | 07:53
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Preface [pp 1-5 in original] [FBIS Translated Text] Everyone who has lived through the last decade of the 20th century will have a profound sense of the changes in the world. We don't believe that there is anyone who would claim that there has been any decade in history in which the changes have been greater than those of this decade. Naturally, the causes behind the enormous changes are too numerous to mention, but there are only a few reasons that people bring up repeatedly. One of those is the Gulf War. One war changed the world. Linking such a conclusion to a war which occurred one time in a limited area and which only lasted 42 days seems like something of an exaggeration. However, that is indeed what the facts are, and there is no need to enumerate one by one all the new words that began to appear after 17 January 1991. It is only necessary to cite the former Soviet Union, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, cloning, Microsoft, hackers, the Internet, the Southeast Asian financial crisis, the euro, as well as the world's final and only superpower -- the United States. These are sufficient. They pretty much constitute the main subjects on this planet for the past decade. However, what we want to say is that all these are related to that war, either directly or indirectly. However, we definitely do not intend to mythicize war, particularly not a lopsided war in which there was such a great difference in the actual power of the opposing parties. Precisely the contrary. In our in-depth consideration of this war, which changed the entire world in merely half a month, we have also noted another fact, which is that war itself has now been changed. We discovered that, from those wars which could be described in glorious and dominating terms, to the aftermath of the acme of what it has been possible to achieve to date in the history of warfare, that war, which people originally felt was one of the more important roles to be played out on the world stage, has at one stroke taken the seat of a B actor. A war which changed the world ultimately changed war itself. This is truly fantastic, yet it also causes people to ponder deeply. No, what we are referring to are not changes in the instruments of war, the technology of war, the modes of war, or the forms of war. What we are referring to is the function of warfare. Who could imagine that an insufferably arrogant actor, whose appearance has changed the entire plot, suddenly finds that he himself is actually the last person to play this unique role. Furthermore, without waiting for him to leave the stage, he has already been told that there is no great likelihood that he will again handle an A role, at least not a central role in which he alone occupies center stage. What kind of feeling would this be? Perhaps those who feel this most deeply are the Americans, who probably should be counted as among the few who want to play all the roles, including savior, fireman, world policeman, and an emissary of peace, etc. In the aftermath of "Desert Storm," Uncle Sam has not been able to again achieve a commendable victory. Whether it was in Somalia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, this has invariably been the case. In particular, in the most recent action in which the United States and Britain teamed up to carry out air attacks on Iraq, it was the same stage, the same method, and the same actors, but there was no way to successfully perform the magnificent drama that had made such a profound impression eight years earlier. Faced with political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, ethnic, and religious issues, etc., that are more complex than they are in the minds of most of the military men in the world, the limitations of the military means, which had heretofore always been successful, suddenly became apparent. However, in the age of "might makes right" - - and most of the history of this century falls into this period -- these were issues which did not constitute a problem. The problem is that the U.S.-led multinational forces brought this period to a close in the desert region of Kuwait, thus beginning a new period. At present it is still hard to see if this age will lead to the unemployment of large numbers of military personnel, nor will it cause war to vanish from this world. All these are still undetermined. The only point which is certain is that, from this point on, war will no longer be what it was originally. Which is to say that, if in the days to come mankind has no choice but to engage in war, it can no longer be carried out in the ways with which we are familiar. It is impossible for us to deny the impact on human society and its soul of the new motivations represented by economic freedom, the concept of human rights, and the awareness of environmental protection, but it is certain that the metamorphosis of warfare will have a more complex backdrop. Otherwise, the immortal bird of warfare will not be able to attain nirvana when it is on the verge of decline: When people begin to lean toward and rejoice in the reduced use of military force to resolve conflicts, war will be reborn in another form and in another arena, becoming an instrument of enormous power in the hands of all those who harbor intentions of controlling other countries or regions. In this sense, there is reason for us to maintain that the financial attack by George Soros on East Asia, the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy by Usama Bin Laden, the gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the disciples of the Aum Shinri Kyo, and the havoc wreaked by the likes of Morris Jr. on the Internet, in which the degree of destruction is by no means second to that of a war, represent semi-warfare, quasi-warfare, and sub-warfare, that is, the embryonic form of another kind of warfare. But whatever you call them, they cannot make us more optimistic than in the past. We have no reason for optimism. This is because the reduction of the functions of warfare in a pure sense does not mean at all that war has ended. Even in the so-called post-modern, post-industrial age, warfare will not be totally dismantled. It has only re-invaded human society in a more complex, more extensive, more concealed, and more subtle manner. It is as Byron said in his poem mourning Shelley, "Nothing has happened, he has only undergone a sea change." War which has undergone the changes of modern technology and the market system will be launched even more in atypical forms. In other words, while we are seeing a relative reduction in military violence, at the same time we definitely are seeing an increase in political, economic, and technological violence. However, regardless of the form the violence takes, war is war, and a change in the external appearance does not keep any war from abiding by the principles of war. If we acknowledge that the new principles of war are no longer "using armed force to compel the enemy to submit to one's will," but rather are "using all means, including armed force or non- armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one's interests." This represents change. A change in war and a change in the mode of war occasioned by this. So, just what has led to the change? What kind of changes are they? Where are the changes headed? How does one face these changes? This is the topic that this book attempts to touch on and shed light on, and it is also our motivation in deciding to write this book. [Written on 17 January 1999, the 8th anniversary of the outbreak of the Gulf War]
6 Apr 2020 | 07:59
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6 Apr 2020 | 08:14
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Part One: On New Warfare "Although ancient states were great, they inevitably perished when they were fond of war" -- Sima Rangju .Technology is the Totem of Modern Man [1] Stirred by the warm breeze of utilitarianism, it is not surprising that technology is more in favor with people than science is. The age of great scientific discoveries had already been left behind before Einstein's time. However, modern man is increasingly inclined to seeing all his dreams come true during his lifetime. This causes him, when betting on his own future, to prostrate himself and expect wonders from technology through a 1000-power concave lens. In this way, technology has achieved startling and explosive developments in a rather short period of time, and this has resulted in innumerable benefits for mankind, which is anxious for quick success and instant rewards. However, we proudly term this technological progress, not realizing that at this time we have already consigned ourselves to a benighted technological age in which we have lost our hearts [2]. Technology today is becoming increasingly dazzling and uncontrollable. Bell Labs and Sony continue to put out novel toys, Bill Gates opens new "Windows" each year, and "Dolly," the cloned sheep, proves that mankind is now planning to take the place of God the Creator. The fearsome Russian-built SU-27 fighter has not been put to use on any battlefield, and already the SU-35 has emerged to strike a pose [3], but whether or not, once it has exhausted its time in the limelight, the SU-35 will be able to retire having rendered meritorious service is still a matter of considerable doubt. Technology is like "magic shoes" on the feet of mankind, and after the spring has been wound tightly by commercial interests, people can only dance along with the shoes, whirling rapidly in time to the beat that they set. The names Watt and Edison are nearly synonymous with great technical inventions, and using these great technological masters to name their age may be said to be reasonable. However, from then on, the situation changed, and the countless and varied technological discoveries of the past 100 years or so makes it difficult for the appearance of any new technology to take on any self- importance in the realm of human life. While it may be said that the formulations of "the age of the steam engine" and "the age of electrification" can be said to be names which reflect the realities of the time, today, with all kinds of new technology continuously beating against the banks of the age so that people scarcely have the time to accord them brief acclaim while being overwhelmed by an even higher and newer wave of technology, the age in which an era could be named for a single new technology or a single inventor has become a thing of the past. This is the reason why, if one calls the current era the "nuclear age" or the "information age," it will still give people the impression that you are using one aspect to typify the whole situation. There is absolutely no doubt that the appearance of information technology has been good news for human civilization. This is because it is the only thing to date that is capable of infusing greater energy into the technological "plague" that has been released from Pandora's box, and at the same time it also provides a magic charm as a means of controlling it [technology]. It is just that, at present, there is still a question of who in turn will have a magic charm with which to control it [information technology]. The pessimistic viewpoint is that, if this technology develops in a direction which cannot be controlled by man, ultimately it will turn mankind into its victim [4]. However, this frightening conclusion is totally incapable of reducing people's ardor for it. The optimistic prospects that it displays itself are intensely seductive for mankind, which has a thirst for technical progress. After all, its unique features of exchanging and sharing represent the light of intelligence which we can hope will lead mankind out of the barbarism of technology, although this is still not sufficient to make us like those futurists who cannot see the forest for the trees, and who use its name to label the entire age. Its characteristics are precisely what keep it from being able to replace the various technologies that we already have in great quantity, that are just emerging, or which are about to be born, particularly those such as biotechnology, materials technology, and nanotechnology, these technologies which have a symbiotic relationship with information technology in which they rely on and promote one another. Over the past 300 years, people have long since become accustomed to blindly falling in love with the new and discarding the old in the realm of technology, and the endless pursuit of new technology has become a panacea to resolve all the difficult questions of existence. Infatuated with it, people have gradually gone astray. Just as one will often commit ten other mistakes to cover up one, to solve one difficult problem people do not hesitate to bring ten more on themselves [5]. For example, for a more convenient means of transportation, people invented cars, but a long string of problems followed closely on the heels of the automobile -- mining and smelting, mechanical processing, oil extraction, rubber refining, and road-building, etc., which in turn required a long string of technical means to solve, until ultimately it led to pollution of the environment, destroying resources, taking over farmland, traffic accidents, and a host of thornier problems. In the long run, comparing the original goal of using cars for transportation with these derivative problems, it almost seems unimportant. In this way, the irrational expansion of technology causes mankind to continually lose his goals in the complex ramifications of the tree of technology, losing his way and forgetting how to get back. We may as well dub this phenomenon the "ramification effect." Fortunately, at this time, modern information technology made its appearance. We can say with certainty that this is the most important revolution in the history of technology. Its revolutionary significance is not merely in that it is a brand new technology itself, but more in that it is a kind of bonding agent which can lightly penetrate the layers of barriers between technologies and link various technologies which appear to be totally unrelated. Through its bonding, not only is it possible to derive numerous new technologies which are neither one thing nor the other while they also represent this and that, and furthermore it also provides a kind of brand new approach to the relationship between man and technology. Only from the perspective of mankind can mankind clearly perceive the essence of technology as a tool, and only then can he avoid becoming a slave to technology -- to the tool -- during the process of resolving the difficult problems he faces in his existence. Mankind is completely capable of fully developing his own powers of imagination so that, when each technology is used its potential is exhausted, and not being like a bear breaking off corncobs, only able to continually use new technology to replace the old. Today, the independent use of individual technologies is now becoming more and more unimaginable. The emergence of information technology has presented endless possibilities for match-ups involving various old and new technologies and among new and advanced technologies. Countless facts have demonstrated that the integrated use of technology is able to promote social progress more than even the discovery of the technology [6]. The situation of loud solo parts is in the process of being replaced by a multi-part chorus. The general fusion of technology is irreversibly guiding the rising globalization trend, while the globalization trend in turn is accelerating the process of the general fusion of technology, and this is the basic characteristic of our age. This characteristic will inevitably project its features on every direction of the age, and naturally the realm of war will be no exception. No military force that thirsts for modernization can get by without nurturing new technology, while the demands of war have always been the midwife of new technology. During the Gulf War, more than 500 kinds of new and advanced technology of the 80s ascended the stage to strike a pose, making the war simply seem like a demonstration site for new weaponry. However, the thing that left a profound impression on people was not the new weaponry per se, but was rather the trend of systemization in the development and use of the weapons. Like the "Patriots" intercepting the "Scuds," it seemed as simple as shooting birds with a shotgun, while in fact it involved numerous weapons deployed over more than half the globe: After a DSP satellite identified a target, an alarm was sent to a ground station in Australia, which was then sent to the central command post in Riyadh through the U.S. Cheyenne Mountain command post, after which the "Patriot" operators were ordered to take their battle stations, all of which took place in the mere 90-second alarm stage, relying on numerous relays and coordination of space-based systems and C3I systems, truly a "shot heard 'round the world." The real-time coordination of numerous weapons over great distances created an unprecedented combat capability, and this was precisely something that was unimaginable prior to the emergence of information technology. While it may be said that the emergence of individual weapons prior to World War II was still able to trigger a military revolution, today no-one is capable of dominating the scene alone. War in the age of technological integration and globalization has eliminated the right of weapons to label war and, with regard to the new starting point, has realigned the relationship of weapons to war, while the appearance of weapons of new concepts, and particularly new concepts of weapons, has gradually blurred the face of war. Does a single "hacker" attack count as a hostile act or not? Can using financial instruments to destroy a country's economy be seen as a battle? Did CNN's broadcast of an exposed corpse of a U.S. soldier in the streets of Mogadishu shake the determination of the Americans to act as the world's policeman, thereby altering the world's strategic situation? And should an assessment of wartime actions look at the means or the results? Obviously, proceeding with the traditional definition of war in mind, there is no longer any way to answer the above questions. When we suddenly realize that all these non-war actions may be the new factors constituting future warfare, we have to come up with a new name for this new form of war: Warfare which transcends all boundaries and limits, in short: unrestricted warfare. If this name becomes established, this kind of war means that all means will be in readiness, that information will be omnipresent, and the battlefield will be everywhere. It means that all weapons and technology can be superimposed at will, it means that all the boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed, and it also means that many of the current principles of combat will be modified, and even that the rules of war may need to be rewritten. However, the pulse of the God of War is hard to take. If you want to discuss war, particularly the war that will break out tomorrow evening or the morning of the day after tomorrow, there is only one way, and that is to determine its nature with bated breath, carefully feeling the pulse of the God of War today. Footnotes [1] In Man and Technology, O. Spengler stated that "like God, our father, technology is eternal and unchanging, like the son of God, it will save mankind, and like the Holy Spirit, it shines upon us." The philosopher Spengler's worship for technology, which was just like that of a theologian for God, was nothing but a manifestation of another type of ignorance as man entered the great age of industrialism, which increasingly flourished in the post-industrial age. [2] In this regard, the French philosopher and scientist Jean Ladrihre has a unique viewpoint. He believes that science and technology have a destructive effect as well as a guiding effect on culture. Under the combined effects of these two, it is very difficult for mankind to maintain a clear-headed assessment of technology, and we are constantly oscillating between the two extremes of technical fanaticism and "anti-science" movements. Bracing oneself to read through his The Challenge Presented to Cultures by Science and Technology, in which the writing is abstruse but the thinking recondite, may be helpful in observing the impact of technology on the many aspects of human society from a broader perspective. [3] Although the improvement of beyond visual range (BVR) weapons has already brought about enormous changes in the basic concepts of air combat, after all is said and done it has not completely eliminated short-range combat. The SU-27, which is capable of "cobra" maneuvers and the SU-35, which is capable of "hook" moves, are the most outstanding fighter aircraft to date. [4] F. G. Ronge [as published 1715 2706 1396 2706] is the sharpest of the technological pessimists. As early as 1939, Ronge had recognized the series of problems that modern technology brings with it, including the growth of technological control and the threat of environmental problems. In his view, technology has already become an unmatched, diabolical force. It has not only taken over nature, it has also stripped away man's freedom. In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger termed technology an "outstanding absurdity," calling for man to return to nature in order to avoid technology, which posed the greatest threat. The most famous technological optimists were [Norbert] Wiener and Steinbuch. In Wiener's Cybernetics, God and Robots, and The Human Use of Human Beings" and Steinbuch's The Information Society, Philosophy and Cybernetics, and other such works, we can see the bright prospects that they describe for human society, driven by technology. [5] In David Ehrenfeld's book, The Arrogance of Humanism, he cites numerous examples of this. In Too Clever, Schwartz states that "the resolution of one problem may generate a group of new problems, and these problems may ultimately preclude that kind of resolution." In Rational Consciousness, Rene Dibo [as published 3583 0355 6611 0590] also discusses a similar phenomenon. [6] In The Age of Science and the Future of Mankind, E. Shulman points out that "during the dynamic development of modern culture, which is based on the explosive development of modern technology, we are increasingly faced with the fact of multidisciplinary cooperation...it is impossible for one special branch of science to guide our practice in a sufficiently scientific manner."
6 Apr 2020 | 08:29
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Chapter 1: The Weapons Revolution Which Invariably Comes First "As soon as technological advances may be applied to military goals, and furthermore are already used for military purposes, they almost immediately seem obligatory, and also often go against the will of the commanders in triggering changes or even revolutions in the modes of combat" -- Engels The weapons revolution invariably precedes the revolution in military affairs by one step, and following the arrival of a revolutionary weapon, the arrival of the revolution in military affairs is just a matter of time. The history of warfare is continually providing this kind of proof: bronze or iron spears resulted in the infantry phalanx, and bows and arrows and stirrups provided new tactics for cavalry [1]. Black powder cannons gave rise to a full complement of modern warfare modes....from the time when conical bullets and rifles [2] took to the battlefield as the vanguard of the age of technology, weapons straightaway stamped their names on the chest of warfare. First, it was the enormous steel-clad naval vessels that ruled the seas, launching the "age of battleships," then its brother the "tank" ruled land warfare, after which the airplane dominated the skies, up until the atomic bomb was born, announcing the approach of the "nuclear age." Today, a multitude of new and advanced technology weapons continues to pour forth, so that weapons have solemnly become the chief representative of war. When people discuss future warfare, they are already quite accustomed to using certain weapons or certain technologies to describe it, calling it "electronic warfare," "precision-weapons warfare," and "information warfare." Coasting along in their mental orbit, people have not yet noticed that a certain inconspicuous yet very important change is stealthily approaching. No One Has the Right to Label Warfare The weapons revolution is a prelude to a revolution in military affairs. What is different than in the past is that the revolution in military affairs that is coming will no longer by driven by one or two individual weapons. In addition to continuing to stimulate people to yearn for and be charmed by new weapons, the numerous technological inventions have also quickly eradicated the mysteries of each kind of weapon. In the past, all that was needed was the invention of a few weapons or pieces of equipment, such as the stirrup and the Maxim machine gun [3], and that was sufficient to alter the form of war, whereas today upwards of 100 kinds of weapons are needed to make up a certain weapons system before it can have an overall effect on war. However, the more weapons are invented, the smaller an individual weapon's role in war becomes, and this is a paradox that is inherent in the relationship between weapons and war. Speaking in that sense, other than the all-out use of nuclear weapons, a situation which is more and more unlikely and which may be termed nuclear war, none of the other weapons, even those that are extremely revolutionary in nature, possesses the right to label future warfare. Perhaps it is precisely because people recognize this point that we then have formulations such as "high-tech warfare" and "information warfare" [4], whose intent is to use the broad concept of technology to replace the concept of specific weapons, using a fuzzy-learning approach to resolve this knotty problem. However, it seems that this still is not the way to resolve the problem. When one delves deeply into this, the term "high-technology"[5], which first appeared in the architectural industry in the United States, is in fact a bit vague. What constitutes high technology? What does it refer to? Logically speaking, high and low are only relative concepts. However, using an extremely mutable concept in this irrational manner to name warfare, which is evolving endlessly, in itself constitutes a considerable problem. When one generation's high technology becomes low technology with the passage of time, are we still prepared to again dub the new toys that continue to appear as being high tech? Or is it possible that, in today's technological explosion, this may result in confusion and trouble for us in naming and using each new technology that appears? Not to mention the question of just what should be the standard to determine whether something is high or not? With regard to technology itself, each technology has specific aspects, which therefore means that each has its time limits. Yesterday's "high" is very possibly today's "low," while today's "new" will in turn become tomorrow's "old." Compared to the M-60 tank, the "Cobra" helicopter, and the B-52, the main battle weapons of the 60s-70s, the "Abrams" tank, the "Apache" helicopter gunship, the F-117, the "Patriot" missiles, and the "Tomahawk" cruise missiles are high tech. However, faced with the B-2, the F- 22, the "Comanche" helicopter, and the "J-Stars" joint-surveillance target-attack radar system, they in turn seem outmoded. It is as if to say there is the concept of high-tech weapons, which is a variable throughout, and which naturally becomes the title of the "bride." Then, as the "flowers bloom each year, but the people change," all that is left is the empty shell of a name, which is continually placed on the head of the girl who is becoming the next "bride." Then, in the chain of warfare with its continuous links, each weapon can go from high to low and from new to old at any time and any place, with time's arrow being unwilling to stop at any point; nor can any weapon occupy the throne of high technology for long. Since this is the case, just what kind of high technology does this so-called high-tech warfare refer to? High technology, as spoken of in generalities, cannot become a synonym for future warfare, nor is information technology -- which is one of the high technologies of the present age and which seems to occupy an important position in the makeup of all modern weapons -- sufficient to name a war. Even if in future wars all the weapons have information components embedded in them and are fully computerized, we can still not term such war information warfare, and at most we can just call it computerized warfare [6]. This is because, regardless of how important information technology is, it cannot completely supplant the functions and roles of each technology per se. For example, the F-22 fighter, which already fully embodies information technology, is still a fighter, and the "Tomahawk" missile is still a missile, and one cannot lump them all together as information weapons, nor can war which is conducted using these weapons be termed information warfare [7]. Computerized warfare in the broad sense and information warfare in the narrow sense are two completely different things. The former refers to the various forms of warfare which are enhanced and accompanied by information technology, while the latter primarily refers to war in which information technology is used to obtain or suppress information. In addition, the contemporary myth created by information worship has people mistakenly believing that it is the only rising technology, while the sun has already set on all the others. This kind of myth may put more money in the pockets of Bill Gates, but it cannot alter the fact that the development of information technology similarly relies on the development of other technology, and the development of related materials technology is a direct constraint on information technology breakthroughs. For example, the development of biotechnology will determine the future fate of information technology [8]. Speaking of bio-information technology, we may as well return to a previous topic and again make a small assumption: If people use information-guided bio-weapons to attack a bio-computer, should this be counted as bio-warfare or information warfare? I fear that no one will be able to answer that in one sentence, but this is something which is perfectly capable of happening. Actually, it is basically not necessary for people to wrack their brains over whether or not information technology will grow strong and unruly today, because it itself is a synthesis of other technologies, and its first appearance and every step forward are all a process of blending with other technologies, so that it is part of them, and they are part of it, and this is precisely the most fundamental characteristic of the age of technological integration and globalization. Naturally, like the figures from a steel seal, this characteristic may leave its typical imprint on each modern weapon. We are by no means denying that, in future warfare, certain advanced weapons may play a leading role. However, as for determining the outcome of war, it is now very difficult for anyone to occupy an unmatched position. It may be leading, but it will not be alone, much less never-changing. Which is also to say that there is no one who can unblushingly stamp his own name on a given modern war. "Fighting the Fight that Fits One's Weapons" and "Making the Weapons to Fit the Fight" These two sentences, "fight the fight that fits one's weapons" and "build the weapons to fit the fight" show the clear demarcation line between traditional warfare and future warfare, as well as pointing out the relationship between weapons and tactics in the two kinds of war. The former reflects the involuntary or passive adaptation of the relationship of man to weapons and tactics in war which takes place under natural conditions, while the latter suggests the conscious or active choice that people make regarding the same proposition when they have entered a free state. In the history of war, the general unwritten rule that people have adhered to all along is to "fight the fight that fits one's weapons." Very often it is the case that only after one first has a weapon does one begin to formulate tactics to match it. With weapons coming first, followed by tactics, the evolution of weapons has a decisive constraining effect on the evolution of tactics. Naturally, there are limiting factors here involving the age and the technology, but neither can we say that there is no relationship between this and the linear thinking in which each generation of weapons making specialists only thinks about whether or not the performance of the weapon itself is advanced, and does not consider other aspects. Perhaps this is one of the factors why a weapons revolution invariably precedes a revolution in military affairs. Although the expression "fight the fight that fits one's weapons" is essentially negative in nature because what it leaves unsaid reflects a kind of helplessness, we have no intention of belittling the positive meaning that it has today, and this positive meaning is seeking the optimum tactics for the weapons one has. In other words, seeking the combat mode which represents the best match for the given weapons, thereby seeing that they perform up to their peak values. Today, those engaged in warfare have now either consciously or unconsciously completed the transition of this rule from the negative to the positive. It is just that people still wrongfully believe that this is the only initiative that can be taken by backward countries in their helplessness. They hardly realize that the United States, the foremost power in the world, must similarly face this kind of helplessness. Even though she is the richest in the world, it is not necessarily possible for her to use up her uniform new and advanced technology weapons to fight an expensive modern war [9]. It is just that she has more freedom when it comes to the selection and pairing up of new and old weapons. If one can find a good point of agreement, which is to say, the most appropriate tactics, the pairing up and use of new and older generation weapons not only makes it possible to eliminate the weakness of uniform weaponry, it may also become a "multiplier" to increase the weapons' effectiveness. The B-52 bomber, which people have predicted on many occasions is long since ready to pass away peacefully, has once again become resplendent after being coupled with cruise missiles and other precision guided weapons, and its wings have not yet rested to date. By the use of external infrared guided missiles, the A-10 aircraft now has night-attack capabilities that it originally lacked, and when paired with the Apache helicopter, they complement each other nicely, so that this weapons platform which appeared in the mid-70s is very imposing. Obviously, "fight the fight that fits one's weapons" by no means represents passive inaction. For example, today's increasingly open weapons market and multiple supply channels have provided a great deal of leeway with regard to weapons selection, and the massive coexistence of weapons which span multiple generations has provided a broader and more functional foundation for trans-generation weapons combinations than at any age in the past, so that it is only necessary to break with our mental habit of treating the weapons' generations, uses, and combinations as being fixed to be able to turn something that is rotten into something miraculous. If one thinks that one must rely on advanced weapons to fight a modern war, being blindly superstitious about the miraculous effects of such weapons, it may actually result in turning something miraculous into something rotten. We find ourselves in a stage where a revolutionary leap forward is taking place in weapons, going from weapons systems symbolized by gunpowder to those symbolized by information, and this may be a relatively prolonged period of alternating weapons. At present we have no way of predicting how long this period may last, but what we can say for sure is that, as long as this alternation has not come to an end, fighting the kind of battle that fits one's weapons will be the most basic approach for any country in handling the relationship between weapons and combat, and this includes the United States, the country which has the most advanced weapons. What must be pointed out is that, the most basic thing is not the thing with the greatest future. Aggressive initiatives under negative preconditions is only a specific approach for a specific time, and by no means constitutes an eternal rule. In man's hands, scientific progress has long since gone from passive discovery to active invention, and when the Americans proposed the concept of "building the weapons to fit the fight," it triggered the greatest single change in the relationship between weapons and tactics since the advent of war. First determine the mode of combat, then develop the weapons, and in this regard, the first stab that the Americans took at this was "Air-Land battle," while the currently popular "digitized battlefield" and "digitized units" [10] which have given rise to much discussion represent their most recent attempt. This approach indicates that the position of weapons in invariably preceding a revolution in military affairs has now been shaken, and now tactics come first and weapons follow, or the two encourage one another, with advancement in a push-pull manner becoming the new relationship between them. At the same time, weapons themselves have produced changes with epoch-making significance, and their development no longer looks only to improvements in the performance of individual weapons, but rather to whether or not the weapons have good characteristics for linking and matching them with other weapons. As with the F-111, which was in a class by itself at the time, because it was too advanced, there was no way to pair it up with other weapons, so all they could do was shelve it. That lesson has now been absorbed, and the thinking that tries to rely on one or two new and advanced technology weapons to serve as "killer weapons" which can put an end to the enemy is now outmoded. "Building the weapons to fit the fight," an approach which has the distinctive features of the age and the characteristics of the laboratory, may not only be viewed as a kind of active choice, it can also be taken as coping with shifting events by sticking to a fundamental principle, and in addition to being a major breakthrough in the history of preparing for war, it also implies the potential crisis in modern warfare: Customizing weapons systems to tactics which are still being explored and studied is like preparing food for a great banquet without knowing who is coming, where the slightest error can lead one far astray. Viewed from the performance of the U.S. military in Somalia, where they were at a loss when they encountered Aidid's forces, the most modern military force does not have the ability to control public clamor, and cannot deal with an opponent who does things in an unconventional manner. On the battlefields of the future, the digitized forces may very possibly be like a great cook who is good at cooking lobsters sprinkled with butter, when faced with guerrillas who resolutely gnaw corncobs, they can only sigh in despair. The "generation gap"[11] in weapons and military forces is perhaps an issue that requires exceptional attention. The closer the generation gap is, the more pronounced are the battle successes of the more senior generation, while the more the gap opens, the less each party is capable of dealing with the other, and it may reach the point where no one can wipe out the other. Looking at the specific examples of battles that we have, it is difficult for high-tech troops to deal with unconventional warfare and low-tech warfare, and perhaps there is a rule here, or at least it is an interesting phenomenon which is worth studying[12]. Weapons of New Concepts and New Concepts of Weapons Compared to new-concept weapons, nearly all the weapons that we have known so far may be termed old-concept weapons. The reason they are called old is because the basic functions of these weapons were their mobility and lethal power. Even things like precision-guided bombs and other such high-tech weapons really involve nothing more than the addition of the two elements of intelligence and structural capabilities. From the perspective of practical applications, no change in appearance can alter their nature as traditional weapons, that is, their control throughout by professional soldiers and their use on certain battlefields. All these weapons and weapons platforms that have been produced in line with traditional thinking have without exception come to a dead end in their efforts to adapt to modern warfare and future warfare. Those desires of using the magic of high-technology to work some alchemy on traditional weapons so that they are completely remade have ultimately fallen into the high-tech trap involving the endless waste of limited funds and an arms race. This is the paradox that must inevitably be faced in the process of the development of traditional weapons: To ensure that the weapons are in the lead, one must continue to up the ante in development costs; the result of this continued raising of the stakes is that no one has enough money to maintain the lead. Its ultimate result is that the weapons to defend the country actually become a cause of national bankruptcy. Perhaps the most recent examples are the most convincing. Marshal Orgakov, the former chief of the Soviet general staff, was acutely aware of the trend of weapons development in the "nuclear age," and when, at an opportune time, he proposed the brand-new concept of the "revolution in military technology," his thinking was clearly ahead of those of his generation. But being ahead of time in his thinking hardly brought his country happiness, and actually brought about disastrous results [13]. As soon as this concept -- which against the backdrop of the Cold War was seen by his colleagues as setting the pace for the time -- was proposed, it further intensified the arms race which had been going on for some time between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was just that, at that time no one could predict that it would actually result in the breakup of the Soviet Union and its complete elimination from the superpower contest. A powerful empire collapsed without a single shot being fired, vividly corroborating the lines of the famous poem by Kipling, "When empires perish, it is not with a rumble, but a snicker." Not only was this true for the former Soviet Union, today the Americans seem to be following in the footsteps of their old adversary, providing fresh proof of the paradox of weapons development that we have proposed. As the outlines of the age of technology integration become increasingly clear, they are investing more and more in the development of new weapons, and the cost of the weapons is getting higher and higher. The development of the F-14 and F-15 in the 60s-70s cost one billion dollars, while the development of the B-2 in the 80s cost over $10 billion, and the development of the F-22 in the 90s has exceeded $13 billion. Based on weight, the B-2 [14], which runs $13-$15 billion each, is some three times more expensive than an equivalent weight of gold [15]. Expensive weapons like that abound in the U.S. arsenal, such as the F-117A bomber, the F-22 main combat aircraft, and the Comanche helicopter gunship. The cost of each of these weapons exceeds or approaches $100 million, and this massive amount of weapons with unreasonable cost-effectiveness has covered the U.S. military with increasingly heavy armor, pushing them step by step toward the high-tech weapons trap where the cost stakes continue to be raised. If this is still true for the rich and brash United States, then how far can the other countries, who are short of money, continue down this path? Obviously, it will be difficult for anyone to keep going. Naturally, the way to extricate oneself from this predicament is to develop a different approach. Therefore, new-concept weapons have emerged to fill the bill. However, what seems unfair to people is that it is again the Americans who are in the lead in this trend. As early as the Vietnam war, the silver iodide powder released over the "Ho Chi Minh trail" that resulted in torrential rains and the defoliants scattered over the subtropical forests put the "American devils" in the sole lead with regard to both the methods and ruthlessness of new-concept weapons. Thirty years later, with the dual advantages of money and technology, others are unable to hold a candle to them in this area. However, the Americans are not necessarily in the sole lead in everything. The new concepts of weapons, which came after the weapons of new concepts and which cover a wider area, were a natural extension of this. However, the Americans have not been able to get their act together in this area. This is because proposing a new concept of weapons does not require relying on the springboard of new technology, it just demands lucid and incisive thinking. However, this is not a strong point of the Americans, who are slaves to technology in their thinking. The Americans invariably halt their thinking at the boundary where technology has not yet reached. It cannot be denied that man-made earthquakes, tsunamis, weather disasters, or subsonic wave and new biological and chemical weapons all constitute new concept weapons [16], and that they have tremendous differences with what we normally speak of as weapons, but they are still all weapons whose immediate goal is to kill and destroy, and which are still related to military affairs, soldiers, and munitions. Speaking in this sense, they are nothing more than non- traditional weapons whose mechanisms have been altered and whose lethal power and destructive capabilities have been magnified several times over. However, a new concept of weapons is different. This and what people call new-concept weapons are two entirely different things. While it may be said that new-concept weapons are weapons which transcend the domain of traditional weapons, which can be controlled and manipulated at a technical level, and which are capable of inflicting material or psychological casualties on an enemy, in the face of the new concept of weapons, such weapons are still weapons in a narrow sense. This is because the new concept of weapons is a view of weapons in the broad sense, which views as weapons all means which transcend the military realm but which can still be used in combat operations. In its eyes, everything that can benefit mankind can also harm him. This is to say that there is nothing in the world today that cannot become a weapon, and this requires that our understanding of weapons must have an awareness that breaks through all boundaries. With technological developments being in the process of striving to increase the types of weapons, a breakthrough in our thinking can open up the domain of the weapons kingdom at one stroke. As we see it, a single man-made stock-market crash, a single computer virus invasion, or a single rumor or scandal that results in a fluctuation in the enemy country's exchange rates or exposes the leaders of an enemy country on the Internet, all can be included in the ranks of new-concept weapons. A new concept of weapons provides direction for new- concept weapons, while the new-concept weapons give fixed forms to the new concept of weapons. With regard to the flood of new-concept weapons, technology is no longer the main factor, and the true underlying factor is a new concept regarding weapons. What must be made clear is that the new concept of weapons is in the process of creating weapons that are closely linked to the lives of the common people. Let us assume that the first thing we say is: The appearance of new-concept weapons will definitely elevate future warfare to a level which is hard for the common people -- or even military men -- to imagine. Then the second thing we have to say should be: The new concept of weapons will cause ordinary people and military men alike to be greatly astonished at the fact that commonplace things that are close to them can also become weapons with which to engage in war. We believe that some morning people will awake to discover with surprise that quite a few gentle and kind things have begun to have offensive and lethal characteristics.
6 Apr 2020 | 08:53
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Chapter 1 Continues..... The Trend to "Kinder" Weapons Before the appearance of the atom bomb, warfare was always in a "shortage age" with respect to lethal power. Efforts to improve weapons have primarily been to boost their lethal power, and from the "light-kill weapons" represented by cold steel weapons and single-shot firearms to the "heavy-kill weapons" represented by various automatic firearms, the history of the development of weapons has almost always been a process of continuing to boost the lethal power of weapons. Prolonged shortages resulted in a thirst among military men for weapons of even greater lethal power that was difficult to satisfy. With a single red cloud that arose over the wasteland of New Mexico in the United States, military men were finally able to obtain a weapon of mass destruction that fulfilled their wishes, as this could not only completely wipe out the enemy, it could kill them 100 or 1000 times over. This gave mankind lethal capabilities that exceeded the demand, and for the first time there was some room to spare with regard to lethal power in war. Philosophical principles tell us that, whenever something reaches an ultimate point, it will turn in the opposite direction. The invention of nuclear weapons, this "ultra-lethal weapon" [17] which can wipe out all mankind, has plunged mankind into an existential trap of its own making. Nuclear weapons have become a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of mankind which forces it to ponder: Do we really need "ultra-lethal weapons"? What is the difference between killing an enemy once and killing him 100 times? What is the point of defeating the enemy if it means risking the destruction of the world? How do we avoid warfare that results in ruin for all? A "balance of terror" involving "mutually-assured destruction" was the immediate product of this thinking, but its by-product was to provide a braking mechanism for the runaway express of improving the lethal capabilities of weapons, which was continually picking up speed, so that the development of weapons was no longer careening crazily down the light-kill weapons -- heavy- kill weapons -- ultra-lethal weapons expressway, with people trying to find a new approach to weapons development which would not only be effective but which could also exercise control over the lethal power of the weapons. Any major technological invention will have a profound human background. The "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and the more than 50 subsequent pacts related to it have established a set of international rules for human rights in which it is recognized that the use of weapons of mass destruction -- particularly nuclear weapons -- is a serious violation of the "right to life" and represents a "crime against mankind." Influenced by human rights and other new political concepts, plus the integration trend in international economics, the interlocking demands and political positions involving the interests of various social and political forces, the proposal of the concept of "ultimate concern" for the ecological environment, and particularly the value of human life, have resulted in misgivings about killing and destruction, forming a new value concept for war and new ethics for warfare. The trend to "kinder" [18] weapons is nothing other than a reflection in the production and development of weapons of this great change in man's cultural background. At the same time, technological progress has given us the means to strike at the enemy's nerve center directly without harming other things, giving us numerous new options for achieving victory, and all these make people believe that the best way to achieve victory is to control, not to kill. There have been changes in the concept of war and the concept of weapons, and the approach of using uncontrolled slaughter to force the enemy into unconditional surrender has now become the relic of a bygone age. Warfare has now taken leave of the meat-grinder age of Verdun-like campaigns. The appearance of precision-kill (accurate) weapons and non-lethal (non-fatal) weapons is a turning point in the development of weapons, showing for the first time that weapons are developing in a "kinder," not a "stronger" direction. Precision-kill weapons can hit a target precisely, reducing collateral casualties, and like a gamma knife which can excise a tumor with hardly any bleeding, it has led to "surgical" strikes and other such new tactics, so that inconspicuous combat actions can achieve extremely notable strategic results. For example, by merely using one missile to track a mobile telephone signal, the Russians were able to still forever the tough mouth of Dudayev, who was a headache, and at the same time eased the enormous trouble that had been stirred up by tiny Chechnya. Non-lethal weapons can effectively eliminate the combat capabilities of personnel and equipment without loss of life [19]. The trend that is embodied in these weapons shows that mankind is in the process of overcoming its own extreme thinking, beginning to learn to control the lethal power that it already has but which is increasingly excessive. In the massive bombing that lasted more than a month during the Gulf War, the loss of life among civilians in Iraq only numbered in the thousands [20], far less than in the massive bombing of Dresden during World War II. Kinder weapons represent the latest conscious choice of mankind among various options in the weapons arena by which, after the weapons are infused with the element of new technology, the human component is then added, thereby giving warfare an unprecedented kind-hearted hue. However, a kinder weapon is still a weapon, and it does not mean that the demands of being kinder will reduce the battlefield effectiveness of the weapon. To take away a tank's combat capabilities one can use cannons or missiles to destroy it, or a laser beam can be used to destroy its optical equipment or blind its crew. On the battlefield, someone who is injured requires more care than someone who is killed, and unmanned weapons can eliminate increasingly expensive protective facilities. Certainly those developing kinder weapons have already done cold cost-effectiveness calculations of this. Casualties can strip away an enemy's combat capabilities, causing him to panic and lose the will to fight, so this may be considered an extremely worthwhile way to achieve victory. Today, we already have enough technology, and we can create many methods of causing fear which are more effective, such as using a laser beam to project the image of injured followers against the sky, which would be sufficient to frighten those soldiers who are devoutly religious. There are no longer any obstacles to building this kind of weapon, it just requires that some additional imagination be added to the technical element. Kinder weapons represent a derivative of the new concept of weapons, while information weapons are a prominent example of kinder weapons. Whether it involves electromagnetic energy weapons for hard destruction or soft-strikes by computer logic bombs, network viruses, or media weapons, all are focused on paralyzing and undermining, not personnel casualties. Kinder weapons, which could only be born in an age of technical integration, may very well be the most promising development trend for weapons, and at the same time they will bring about forms of war or revolutions in military affairs which we cannot imagine or predict today. They represent a change with the most profound implications in the history of human warfare to date, and are the watershed between the old and the new forms of war. This is because their appearance has been sufficient to put all the wars in the age of cold and hot weapons into the "old" era. Nonetheless, we still cannot indulge in romantic fantasies about technology, believing that from this point on war will become a confrontation like an electronic game, and even simulated warfare in a computer room similarly must be premised upon a country's actual overall capabilities, and if a colossus with feet of clay comes up with ten plans for simulated warfare, it will still not be sufficient to deter an enemy who is more powerful with regard to actual strength. War is still the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction, and even the slightest innocence is not tolerated. Even if some day all the weapons have been made completely humane, a kinder war in which bloodshed may be avoided is still war. It may alter the cruel process of war, but there is no way to change the essence of war, which is one of compulsion, and therefore it cannot alter its cruel outcome, either. Footnotes: [1] Engels said, "In the age of barbarism, the bow and arrow was still a decisive weapon, the same as the iron sword in an uncivilized age and firearms in the age of civilization." (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 4, People's Press, 1972, p. 19) With regard to how stirrups altered the mode of combat, we can refer to the translation and commentary by Gu Zhun [7357 0402] of an article entitled "Stirrups and Feudalism -- Does Technology Create History?" "Stirrups...immediately made hand-to-hand combat possible, and this was a revolutionary new mode of combat...very seldom had there been an invention as simple as the stirrup, but very seldom did it play the kind of catalytic role in history that this did." "Stirrups resulted in a series of military and social revolutions in Europe." (Collected Works of Gu Zhun, Guizhou People's Press, 1994, pp 293-309). [2] "Compared to the development of any advanced new weapons technology, the invention of the rifle and the conical bullet between 1850-1860 had the most profound and immediate revolutionary impact.....The impact on their age of high-explosive bombs, airplanes, and tanks, which appeared in the 20th century, certainly does not compare to that of the rifle at the time." For details, see T. N. Dupuy's The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, part 3, section 21, "Rifles, Conical Bullets, and Dispersed Formations." (Military Science Publishing House, 1985, pp 238-250). [3] In the engagement of the Somme river in World War I, on 1 July 1916 the English forces launched an offensive against the Germans, and the Germans used Maxim machine guns to strafe the English troops, which were in a tight formation, resulting in 60,000 casualties in one day. From that point, mass formation charges gradually began to retreat from the battlefield. (Weapons and War -- The Historical Evolution of Military Technology, Liu Jifeng [0491 2060 6912], University of Science and Technology for National Defense Publishing House, 1992, pp 172-173). [4] If Wiener's views on war game machines are not taken as the earliest discussion of information weapons. Then, a comment by Tom Luona [as published 5012 6719] in 1976 to the effect that information warfare is a "struggle among decision-making systems" makes him the first to come up with the term "information warfare" (U.S., Military Intelligence magazine, 1997, Jan-Mar issue, Douglas Dearth, "Implications, Characteristics, and Impact of Information Warfare"). Through independent research, in 1990, Shen Weiguang [3088 0251 0342], a young scholar in China who has over ten years of military service, published Information Warfare, which is probably the earliest monograph on information warfare. On the strength of his Third Wave, in another best-seller entitled Power Shift, Toffler gave information warfare a global look, while the Gulf War happened along to become the most splendid advertisement for this new concept of combat. At that point, discussing "information warfare" became fashionable. [5] Foreign experts hold that "high technology" is not a completely fixed concept and that it is also a dynamic concept, with different countries emphasizing high technology differently. Military high technology mainly includes military microelectronic device technology, computer technology, optoelectric technology, aerospace technology, biotechnology, new materials technology, stealth technology, and directed-energy technology. The most important characteristic of military high technology is "integration," i.e., each military high technology is made up of various technologies to form a technology group. (For details, see "Foreign Military Data," Academy of Military Sciences, Foreign Military Research Dept., No. 69, 1993). [6] Regarding the definition of "information warfare," to date opinions still vary. The definition by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff is: Actions taken to interfere with the enemy's information, information processing, information systems, and computer networks to achieve information superiority over the enemy, while protecting one's own information, information processing, information systems, and computer networks. According to U.S. Army Field Manual FM100-6, "the DOD's understanding of information warfare leans toward the effects of information in actual conflicts," while the Army's understanding is that "information has already permeated every aspect, from peacetime to military actions in global warfare" (Military Science Publishing House, Chinese translation, pp 24-25). "In a broad sense, information warfare constitutes actions which use information to achieve national goals." That is the definition given to information warfare by George Stein, a professor at the U.S. Air University, reflecting a somewhat broader vision than that of the Army. In an article in the 1997 summer edition of "Joint Force Quarterly," Col. Brian Fredericks proposed that "information warfare is a national issue that goes beyond the scope of national defense," and perhaps this is the most accurate description of information warfare in the broad sense. [7] Running precisely counter to the situation in which the implications of the concept of "information warfare" are getting broader and broader, some of the smart young officers in the U.S. military are increasingly questioning the concept of "information warfare." Air Force Lt. Col. James Rogers points out that "information warfare really isn't anything new...whether or not those who assert that information warfare techniques and strategies will inevitably replace 'armed warfare' are a bit too self-confident." (U.S. Marines magazine , April, 1997). Navy Lieutenant Robert Guerli [as published 0657 1422 0448] proposed that "the seven areas of misunderstanding with regard to information warfare are: (1) the overuse of analogous methods; (2) exaggerating the threat; (3) overestimating one's own strength; (4) historical relevance and accuracy; (5) avoiding criticism of anomalous attempts; (6) totally unfounded assumptions; and (7) non- standard definitions." (U.S., Events magazine, Sep 97 issue). Air Force Major Yulin Whitehead wrote in the fall 1997 issue of Airpower Journal that information is not all-powerful, and that information weapons are not "magic weapons." Questions about information warfare are definitely not limited to individuals, as the U.S. Air Force document "The Foundations of Information Warfare" makes a strict distinction between "warfare in the information age" and "information warfare." It holds that "warfare in the information age" is warfare which uses computerized weapons, such as using a cruise missile to attack a target, whereas "information warfare" treats information as an independent realm and a powerful weapon. Similarly, some well-known scholars have also issued their own opinions. Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot Cohen reminds us that "just as nuclear weapons did not result in the elimination of conventional forces, the information revolution will not eliminate guerilla tactics, terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction." [8] Macromolecular systems designed and produced using biotechnology represent the production materials for even higher order electronic components. For example, protein molecule computers have computation speeds and memory capabilities hundreds of millions of times greater than our current computers. (New Military Perspectives for the Next Century, Military Science Publishing House, 1997 edition, pp 142-145). [9] Even in the Gulf War, which has been termed a testing ground for the new weapons, there were quite a few old weapons and conventional munitions which played important roles. (For details, see "The Gulf War -- U.S. Department of Defense Final Report to Congress -- Appendix") [10] Starting with "Air-Land Battle," weapons development by the U.S. military has mainly been divided into five stages: Propose requirements, draft a plan, proof of concept, engineering development and production, and outfitting the units. Development regarding the equipping of digitized units is following this same path. (U.S. Army magazine, Oct 1995). In March, 1997, the U.S. Army conducted a brigade-size high-level combat test, testing a total of 58 kinds of digitized equipment. (U.S. Army Times, 31 March, 7 April, 28 April 1997). According to John E. Wilson, commander of the U.S. Army's Materiel Command, his mission is to cooperate with the Training and Doctrine Command, thinking up and developing bold and novel advanced technology equipment for them which meets their needs. (U.S., Army magazine, October 1997). [11] Slipchenko [si li pu qin ke 2448 0448 2528 3830 4430], chairman of the Dept. of Scientific Research at the Russian General Staff Academy, believes that war and weapons have already gone through five ages, and we are now heading toward the sixth. (Zhu Xiaoli, Zhao Xiaozhuo, The New U.S. and Russian Military Revolution, Military Science Publishing House, 1996 edition, p 6). [12] The Journal of the National Defense University, No. 11, 1998, carried an article on Chen Bojiang's interview of Philip Odeen, chairman of the U.S. National Defense Panel. Odeen mentioned "asymmetrical warfare" several times, believing that this is a new threat to the United States. Antulio Echevarria published an article in Parameters magazine in which he proposed that "in the post-industrial age, the thing that will still be most difficult to deal with will be a 'people's war.'" [13] U.S. defense specialists believe that Orgakov already saw that electronic technology would result in a revolution in conventional weapons, and that they would replace nuclear weapons with respect to their effects. However, Orgakov's foresight and wisdom with regard to the issue of a revolution in military affairs ran aground because of structural problems. "If, in keeping up with the extremely high costs of the revolution in military affairs, a country exceeds the limits that can be borne by its system and material conditions, but it keeps engaging in military power contests with its opponents, the only outcome can be that they will fall further behind with regard to the military forces that they can use. This was the fate of Russia during the czarist and Soviet eras: the Soviet Union undertook military burdens that were difficult to bear, while in turn the military was unwilling to accept the need for strategic retrenchment." (See U.S., Strategic Review magazine, spring 1996, Steven Blank, "Preparing for the Next War: Some Views on the Revolution in Military Affairs"). [14] In 1981, the U.S. Air Force estimated that it could produce 132 B-2s with an investment of $22 billion. However, eight years later, this money had only produced one B-2. Based on its value per unit weight, one B-2 is worth three times its weight in gold. (See Modern Military, No. 8, 1998, p 33, and Zhu Zhihao's Analysis of U.S. Stealth Technology Policy.) [15] The U.S. Dept. of Defense conducted an analysis of the 13 January 1993 air attack on Iraq and believes that there are numerous limitations to high-tech weapons, and that the effect of the combined effect bombs was at times better than that of precision bombs. (U.S., Aviation Week and Space Technology, 25 January 93). [16] New-concept weapons primarily include kinetic-energy weapons, directed-energy weapons, subsonic weapons, geophysical weapons, meteorological weapons, solar energy weapons, and gene weapons, etc. (New Military Perspectives for the Next Century, Military Science Publishing House, 1997 edition, p 3). [17] The point in substituting the concept of "ultra-lethal weapons" for the concept of "weapons of mass destruction" is to stress that the lethal power of such weapons exceeds the needs of warfare and represents a product of man's extremist thinking. [18] The "kind" in "kinder weapons" mainly refers to the fact that it reduces slaughter and collateral casualties. [19] The April 1993 issue of the British journal International Defense Review revealed that the United States was energetically researching a variety of non-lethal weapons, including optical weapons, high-energy microwave weapons, acoustic beam weapons, and pulsed chemical lasers. The 6 March 1993 issue of Jane's Defense Weekly reported that a high-level non-lethal weapons steering committee at the Dept. of Defense had formulated a policy regulating the development, procurement, and use of such weapons. In addition, according to the 1997 World Military Yearbook (pp 521-522), the U.S. Dept. of Defense has established a "non-lethal weapons research leading group," whose goal is to see that non-lethal weapons appear on the weapons inventory as soon as possible. [20] See Military Science Publishing House Foreign Military Data, 26 March 1993, No. 27, p 3. Chapter 2 Coming Soon.....
6 Apr 2020 | 09:06
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Chapter 2: The War God's Face Has Become Indistinct "Throughout the Entire Course of History, Warfare is Always Changing." --Andre Beaufre Ever since early man went from hunting animals to slaughtering his own kind, people have been equipping the giant war beast for action, and the desire to attain various goals has prompted soldiers to become locked in bloody conflict. It has become universally accepted that warfare is a matter for soldiers. For several thousand years, the three indispensable "hardware" elements of any war have been soldiers, weapons and a battlefield. Running through them all has been the "software" element of warfare: its purposefulness. Before now, nobody has ever questioned that these are the basic elements of warfare. The problem comes when people discover that all of these basic elements, which seemingly were hard and fast, have changed so that it is impossible to get a firm grip on them. When that day comes, is the war god's face still distinct? Why Fight and for Whom? In regard to the ancient Greeks, if the account in Homer's epic is really trustworthy, the purpose of the Trojan War was clear and simple: it was worth fighting a ten-year war for the beautiful Helen. As far as their aims, the wars prosecuted by our ancestors were relatively simple in terms of the goals to be achieved, with no complexity to speak of. This was because our ancestors had limited horizons, their spheres of activity were narrow, they had modest requirements for existence, and their weapons were not lethal enough. Only if something could not be obtained by normal means would our ancestors generally resort to extraordinary measures to obtain it, and then without the least hesitation. Just so, Clausewitz wrote his famous saying, which has been an article of faith for several generations of soldiers and statesmen: "War is a continuation of politics." Our ancestors would fight perhaps for the orthodox status of a religious sect, or perhaps for an expanse of pastureland with plenty of water and lush grass. They would not even have scruples about going to war over, say, spices, liquor or a love affair between a king and queen. The stories of wars over spices and sweethearts, and rebellions over things like rum, are recorded in the pages of history--stories that leave us not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Then there is the war that the English launched against the Qing monarchy for the sake of the opium trade. This was national drug trafficking activity on probably the grandest scale in recorded history. It is clear from these examples that, prior to recent times, there was just one kind of warfare in terms of the kind of motive and the kind of subsequent actions taken. Moving to later times, Hitler expounded his slogan of "obtaining living space for the German people," and the Japanese expounded their slogan of building the so called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." While a cursory look at these slogans would suggest that the goals must have been somewhat more complex than the goals of any previous wars, nevertheless the substance behind the slogans was simply that the new great powers intended to once again carve up the spheres of influence of the old great powers and to reap the benefits of seizing their colonies. To assess why people fight is not so easy today, however. In former times, the ideal of "exporting revolution" and the slogan of "checking the expansion of communism" were calls to action that elicited countless responses. But especially after the conclusion of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain running all along the divide between the two great camps suddenly collapsed, these calls have lost their effectiveness. The times of clearly drawn sides are over. Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? These used to be the paramount questions in regard to revolution and counterrevolution. Suddenly the answers have become complicated, confusing and hard to get hold of. A country that yesterday was an adversary is in the process of becoming a current partner today, while a country that once was an ally will perhaps be met on the battlefield at the next outbreak of war. Iraq, which one year was still fiercely attacking Iran on behalf of the U.S. in the Iran-Iraq War, itself became the target of a fierce attack by the U.S. military in the next year (see Endnote 1). An Afghan guerilla trained by the CIA becomes the latest target for an attack by U.S. cruise missiles overnight. Furthermore, NATO members Greece and Turkey have nearly come to blows several times in their dispute over Cyprus, and Japan and South Korea, who have concluded a treaty of alliance, have come just short of an open break as a result of their dispute over a tiny island. All of this serves to again confirm that old saying: "all friendship is in flux; self-interest is the only constant." The kaleidoscope of war is turned by the hands of self-interest, presenting constantly shifting images to the observer. Astonishing advances in modern advanced technology serve to promote globalization, further intensifying the uncertainty associated with the dissolution of some perceived self-interests and the emergence of others. The reason for starting a war can be anything from a dispute over territory and resources, a dispute over religious beliefs, hatred stemming from tribal differences, or a dispute over ideology, to a dispute over market share, a dispute over the distribution of power and authority, a dispute over trade sanctions, or a dispute stemming from financial unrest. The goals of warfare have become blurred due to the pursuit of a variety of agendas. Thus, it is more and more difficult for people to say clearly just why they are fighting (see Endnote 2). Every young lad that participated in the Gulf War will tell you right up front that he fought to restore justice in tiny, weak Kuwait. However, the real reason for the war was perhaps far different from the high-sounding reason that was given. Hiding under the umbrella furnished by this high-sounding reason, they need not fear facing the light directly. In reality, every country that participated in the Gulf War decided to join "Desert Storm" only after carefully thinking over its own intentions and goals. Throughout the whole course of the war, all of the Western powers were fighting for their oil lifeline. To this primary goal, the Americans added the aspiration of building a new world order with "USA" stamped on it. Perhaps there was also a bit of missionary zeal to uphold justice. In order to eliminate a threat that was close at hand, the Saudi Arabians were willing to smash Muslim taboos and "dance with wolves." From start to finish, the British reacted enthusiastically to President Bush's every move, in order to repay Uncle Sam for the trouble he took on their behalf in the Malvinas Islands War. The French, in order to prevent the complete evaporation of their traditional influence in the Middle East, finally sent troops to the Gulf at the last moment. Naturally, there is no way that a war prosecuted under these kinds of conditions can be a contest fought over a single objective. The aggregate of the self-interests of all the numerous countries participating in the war serves to transform a modern war like "Desert Storm" into a race to further various self-interests under the banner of a common interest. Thus, so-called "common interest" has become merely the war equation's largest common denominator that can be accepted by every allied party participating in the war effort. Since different countries will certainly be pursuing different agendas in a war, it is necessary to take the self-interest of every allied party into consideration if the war is to be prosecuted jointly. Even if we consider a given country's domestic situation, each of the various domestic interest groups will also be pursuing its own agenda in a war. The complex interrelationships among self-interests make it impossible to pigeonhole the Gulf War as having been fought for oil, or as having been fought for the new world order, or as having been fought to drive out the invaders. Only a handful of soldiers are likely to grasp a principle that every statesman already knows: that the biggest difference between contemporary wars and the wars of the past is that, in contemporary wars, the overt goal and the covert goal are often two different matters Where to Fight? "To the battlefield!" The young lad with a pack on his back takes leave of his family as his daughters and other relatives see him off with tears in their eyes. This is a classic scene in war movies. Whether the young lad is leaving on a horse, a train, a steamship or a plane is not so important. The important thing is that the destination never changes: it is the battlefield bathed in the flames of war. During the long period of time before firearms, battlefields were small and compact. A face-off at close quarters between two armies might unfold on a small expanse of level ground, in a mountain pass, or within the confines of a city. In the eyes of today's soldier, the battlefield that so enraptured the ancients is a "point" target on the military map that is not particularly noteworthy. Such a battlefield is fundamentally incapable of accommodating the spectacle of war as it has unfolded in recent times on such a grand scale. The advent of firearms led to dispersed formations, and the "point" ["dian" 7820] type battlefield was gradually drawn out into a line of skirmishers. The trench warfare of the First World War, with lines extending hundreds of miles, served to bring the "point" and "line" ["xian" 4775] type battlefield to its acme. At the same time, it transformed the battlefield into an "area" ["mian" 7240] type battlefield which was several dozens of miles deep. For those who went to war during those times, the new battlefield meant trenches, pillboxes, wire entanglements, machine guns and shell craters. They called war on this type of battlefield, where heavy casualties were inflicted, a "slaughterhouse" and a "meat grinder." The explosive development of military technology is constantly setting the stage for further explosive expansion of the battlespace. The transition from the "point" type battlefield to the "line" type battlefield, and the transition from the two-dimensional battlefield to the three- dimensional battlefield did not take as long as people generally think. One could say that, in each case, the latter stage came virtually on the heels of the former. When tanks began roaring over military trenches, prop airplanes were already equipped with machine guns and it was already possible to drop bombs from zeppelins. The development of weapons cannot, in and of itself, automatically usher in changes in the nature of the battlefield. In the history of warfare, any significant advance has always depended in part on active innovating by military strategists. The battlefield, which had been earthbound for several thousand years, was suddenly lifted into three dimensional space. This was due in part to General J.F.C. Fuller's Tanks in the Great War of 1914-1918 and Giulio Douhet's The Command of the Air, as well as the extremely deep operations that were proposed and demonstrated under the command of Marshall Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky. Erich Ludendorff was another individual who attempted to radically change the nature of the battlefield. He put forth the theory of "total war" and tried to combine battlefield and non-battlefield elements into one organic whole. While he was not successful, he nevertheless was the harbinger of similar military thought that has outlived him for more than half a century. Ludendorff was destined only to fight at battlefields like Verdun and the Masurian Lakes. A soldier's fate is determined by the era in which he lives. At that time, the wingspan of the war god could not extend any farther than the range of a Krupp artillery piece. Naturally, then, it was impossible to fire a shell that would pass through the front and rear areas on its parabolic path. Hitler was more fortunate than Ludendorff. 20 years later, he had long range weapons at his disposal. He utilized bombers powered by Mercedes engines and V-1 and V-2 guided missiles and broke the British Isles' record of never having been encroached upon by an invader. Hitler, who was neither a strategist nor a tactician, relied on his intuition and made the line of demarcation between the front and rear less prominent in the war, but he never really understood the revolutionary significance of breaking through the partition separating battlefield elements from non-battlefield elements. Perhaps this concept was beyond the ken of an out-and- out war maniac and half-baked military strategist. This revolution, however, will be upon us in full force soon enough. This time, technology is again running ahead of the military thinking. While no military thinker has yet put forth an extremely wide-ranging concept of the battlefield, technology is doing its utmost to extend the contemporary battlefield to a degree that is virtually infinite: there are satellites in space, there are submarines under the water, there are ballistic missiles that can reach anyplace on the globe, and electronic countermeasures are even now being carried out in the invisible electromagnetic spectrum space. Even the last refuge of the human race--the inner world of the heart--cannot avoid the attacks of psychological warfare. There are nets above and snares below, so that a person has no place to flee. All of the prevailing concepts about the breadth, depth and height of the operational space already appear to be old-fashioned and obsolete. In the wake of the expansion of mankind's imaginative powers and his ability to master technology, the battlespace is being stretched to its limits. In spite of the situation described above, in military thinking, which is being drawn along by technology, there is still an unwillingness to simply stand still. Since technology has already served to open up more promising prospects for military thought, it is certainly not sufficient to simply expand the area of the battlefield in conventional "mesoscopic" [i.e., between macroscopic and microscopic] space. It is already clear that mechanical enlargement of the existing battlefield will not be the modus operandi for future battlefield change. The opinion that "the future battlefield expansion trend will be reflected in wars that are prosecuted in deeper parts of the oceans and at higher elevations in outer space" is merely a superficial point of view and conclusion that restricts itself to the level of general physics. The really revolutionary battlefield change stems from the expansion of the "non-natural space" ["feiziran kongjian" 7236 5261 3544 4500 7035]. There is no way that the electromagnetic spectrum space can be regarded as a battlespace in the former conventional sense. The electromagnetic spectrum space is a different kind of battlespace that stems from technological creativity and depends on technology. In this type of "man-made space," or "technological space" [see Endnote 3], the concepts of length, width and height, or of land, sea, air and outer space, have all lost their significance. This is because of the special properties of electromagnetic signals whereby they can permeate and control conventional space without occupying any of this space. We can anticipate that every major alteration or extension of the battlespace of the future will depend on whether a certain kind of technological invention, or a number of technologies in combination, can create a brand new technological space. The "network space" is now drawing widespread attention among modern soldiers. Network space is a technological space that is formed by a distinctive combination of electronics technology, information technology and the application of specific designs. If one maintains that a war prosecuted in this space is still a war in which people control the outcome, then the "nanometer space" which is emerging hard on the heals of the network space, bodes well for the realization of mankind's dream--a war without the direct involvement of people. Some extremely imaginative and creative soldiers are just now attempting to introduce these battlespaces, comprised of new technologies, into the warfare of the future. The time for a fundamental change in the battlefield--the arena of war--is not far off. Before very long, a network war or a nanometer war might become a reality right in our midst, a type of war that nobody even imagined in the past. It is likely to be very intense, but with practically no bloodshed. Nevertheless, it is likely to determine who is the victor and who the vanquished in an overall war. In more and more situations, this type of warfare will go along hand-in-hand with traditional warfare. The two types of battlespaces--the conventional space and the technological space--will overlap and intersect with each other, and will be mutually complementary as each develops in its own way. Thus, warfare will simultaneously evolve in the macroscopic, "mesoscopic," and microscopic spheres, as well as in various other spheres defined by their physical properties, which will all ultimately serve to make up a marvelous battlefield unprecedented in the annals of human warfare. At the same time, with the progressive breaking down of the distinction between military technology and civilian technology, and between the professional soldier and the non-professional warrior, the battlespace will overlap more and more with the non-battlespace, serving also to make the line between these two entities less and less clear. Fields that were formerly isolated from each other are being connected. Mankind is endowing virtually every space with battlefield significance. All that is needed is the ability to launch an attack in a certain place, using certain means, in order to achieve a certain goal. Thus, the battlefield is omnipresent. Just think, if it's even possible to start a war in a computer room or a stock exchange that will send an enemy country to its doom, then is there non-battlespace anywhere? If that young lad setting out with his orders should ask today: "Where is the battlefield?" The answer would be: "Everywhere." Who Fights? In 1985, China implemented a "Massive Million Troop Drawdown" in its armed forces. With this as a prelude, every major nation in the world carried out round after round of force reductions over the next dozen or so years. According to many commentators on military affairs, the main factor behind the general worldwide force reductions is that, with the conclusion of the Cold War, countries that formerly were pitted against each other are now anxious to enjoy the peace dividend. Little do these commentators realize that this factor is just the tip of the iceberg. The factors leading to armed forces reductions are by no means limited to this point. A deeper reason for the force reductions is that, as the wave of information technology (IT) warfare ["xinxihua zhanzheng" 0207 1873 0553 2069 3630] grows and grows, it would require too much of an effort and would be too grandiose to set up a large-scale professional military, cast and formed on the assembly lines of big industry and established according to the demands of mechanized warfare. Precisely for this reason, during these force reductions, some farsighted countries, rather than primarily having personnel cuts in mind, are instead putting more emphasis on raising the quality of military personnel, increasing the amount of high technology and mid- level technology in weaponry, and updating military thought and warfighting theory [see Endnote 4]. The era of "strong and brave soldiers who are heroic defenders of the nation" has already passed. In a world where even "nuclear warfare" will perhaps become obsolete military jargon, it is likely that a pasty-faced scholar wearing thick eyeglasses is better suited to be a modern soldier than is a strong young lowbrow with bulging biceps. The best evidence of this is perhaps a story that is circulating in Western military circles regarding a lieutenant who used a modem to bring a naval division to its knees [see Endnote 5]. The contrast between today's soldiers and the soldiers of earlier generations is as plain to see as the contrast which we have already noted between modern weapons and their precursors. This is because modern soldiers have gone through the severe test of an uninterrupted technological explosion throughout the entire 100 years of the twentieth century, and perhaps also because of the salutary influence of the worldwide pop culture; viz., rock and roll, discos, the World Cup, the NBA and Hollywood, etc., etc. The contrast is stark whether we are talking about physical ability or intellectual ability. Even though the new generation of soldiers born in the 70's and 80's has been trained using the "beast barracks" style of training, popularized by West Point Military Academy, it is difficult for them to shed their gentle and frail natures rooted in the soil of contemporary society. In addition, modern weapons systems have made it possible for them to be far removed from any conventional battlefield, and they can attack the enemy from a place beyond his range of vision where they need not come face to face with the dripping blood that comes with killing. All of this has turned each and every soldier into a self-effacing gentleman who would just as soon avoid the sight of blood. The digital fighter is taking over the role formerly played by the "blood and iron" warrior--a role that, for thousands of years, has not been challenged. Now that it has come on the stage of action and has rendered obsolete the traditional divisions of labor prevailing in a society characterized by big industry, warfare no longer is an exclusive imperial garden where professional soldiers alone can mingle. A tendency towards civilianization has begun to become evident [see Endnote 6]. Mao Zedong's theory concerning "every citizen a soldier" has certainly not been in any way responsible for this tendency. The current trend does not demand extensive mobilization of the people. Quite the contrary, it merely indicates that a technological elite among the citizenry have broken down the door and barged in uninvited, making it impossible for professional soldiers with their concepts of professionalized warfare to ignore challenges that are somewhat embarrassing. Who is most likely to become the leading protagonist on the terra incognita of the next war? The first challenger to have appeared, and the most famous, is the computer "hacker." This chap, who generally has not received any military training or been engaged in any military profession, can easily impair the security of an army or a nation in a major way by simply relying on his personal technical expertise. A classic example is given in the U.S. FM100-6 Information Operations regulations. In 1994, a computer hacker in England attacked the U.S. military's Rome Air Development Center in New York State, compromising the security of 30 systems. He also hacked into more than 100 other systems. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and NASA suffered damage, among others. What astounded people was not only the scale of those affected by the attack and the magnitude of the damage, but also the fact that the hacker was actually a teenager who was merely 16 years old. Naturally, an intrusion by a teenager playing a game cannot be regarded as an act of war. The problem is, how does one know for certain which damage is the result of games and which damage is the result of warfare? Which acts are individual acts by citizens and which acts represent hostile actions by non-professional warriors, or perhaps even organized hacker warfare launched by a state? In 1994, there were 230,000 security-related intrusions into U.S. DOD networks. How many of these were organized destructive acts by non-professional warriors? Perhaps there will never be any way of knowing [see Endnote 7]. Just as there are all kinds of people in society, so hackers come in all shapes and colors. All types of hackers, with varying backgrounds and values, are hiding in the camouflage provided by networks: curious middle school students; on-line gold diggers; corporate staff members nursing a grudge; dyed-in-the-wool network terrorists; and network mercenaries. In their ideas and in their actions, these kinds of people are poles apart from each other, but they gather together in the same network world. They go about their business in accordance with their own distinctive value judgments and their own ideas of what makes sense, while some are simply confused and aimless. For these reasons, whether they are doing good or doing ill, they do not feel bound by the rules of the game that prevail in the society at large. Using computers, they may obtain information by hook or by crook from other people's accounts. They may delete someone else's precious data, that was obtained with such difficulty, as a practical joke. Or, like the legendary lone knight-errant, they may use their outstanding on-line technical skills to take on the evil powers that be. The Suharto government imposed a strict blockade on news about the organized aggressive actions against the ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia. The aggressive actions were first made public on the Internet by witnesses with a sense of justice. As a result, the whole world was utterly shocked and the Indonesian government and military were pushed before the bar of morality and justice. Prior to this, another group of hackers calling themselves "Milworm" put on another fine performance on the Internet. In order to protest India's nuclear tests, they penetrated the firewall of the network belonging to India's [Bhabha] Atomic Research Center (BARC), altered the home page, and downloaded 5 MB of data. These hackers could actually be considered polite. They went only to a certain point and no further, and did not give their adversary too much trouble. Aside from the direct results of this kind of action, it also has a great deal of symbolic significance: in the information age, the influence exerted by a nuclear bomb is perhaps less than the influence exerted by a hacker. More murderous than hackers--and more of a threat in the real world--are the non-state organizations, whose very mention causes the Western world to shake in its boots. These organizations, which all have a certain military flavor to a greater or lesser degree, are generally driven by some extreme creed or cause, such as: the Islamic organizations pursuing a holy war; the Caucasian militias in the U.S.; the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult; and, most recently, terrorist groups like Osama bin Ladin's, which blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The various and sundry monstrous and virtually insane destructive acts by these kinds of groups are undoubtedly more likely to be the new breeding ground for contemporary wars than is the behavior of the lone ranger hacker. Moreover, when a nation state or national armed force, (which adheres to certain rules and will only use limited force to obtain a limited goal), faces off with one of these types of organizations, (which never observe any rules and which are not afraid to fight an unlimited war using unlimited means), it will often prove very difficult for the nation state or national armed force to gain the upper hand. During the 1990's, and concurrent with the series of military actions launched by non- professional warriors and non-state organizations, we began to get an inkling of a non-military type of war which is prosecuted by yet another type of non-professional warrior. This person is not a hacker in the general sense of the term, and also is not a member of a quasi-military organization. Perhaps he or she is a systems analyst or a software engineer, or a financier with a large amount of mobile capital or a stock speculator. He or she might even perhaps be a media mogul who controls a wide variety of media, a famous columnist or the host of a TV program. His or her philosophy of life is different from that of certain blind and inhuman terrorists. Frequently, he or she has a firmly held philosophy of life and his or her faith is by no means inferior to Osama bin Ladin's in terms of its fanaticism. Moreover, he or she does not lack the motivation or courage to enter a fight as necessary. Judging by this kind of standard, who can say that George Soros is not a financial terrorist? Precisely in the same way that modern technology is changing weapons and the battlefield, it is also at the same time blurring the concept of who the war participants are. From now on, soldiers no longer have a monopoly on war. Global terrorist activity is one of the by-products of the globalization trend that has been ushered in by technological integration. Non-professional warriors and non-state organizations are posing a greater and greater threat to sovereign nations, making these warriors and organizations more and more serious adversaries for every professional army. Compared to these adversaries, professional armies are like gigantic dinosaurs which lack strength commensurate to their size in this new age. Their adversaries, then, are rodents with great powers of survival, which can use their sharp teeth to torment the better part of the world.
6 Apr 2020 | 09:44
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Chapter 2 Continues..... What Means and Methods Are Used to Fight? There's no getting around the opinions of the Americans when it comes to discussing what means and methods will be used to fight future wars. This is not simply because the U.S. is the latest lord of the mountain in the world. It is more because the opinions of the Americans on this question really are superior compared to the prevailing opinions among the military people of other nations. The Americans have summed up the four main forms that warfighting will take in the future as: 1) Information warfare; 2) Precision warfare [see Endnote 8]; 3) Joint operations [see Endnote 9]; and 4) Military operations other than war (MOOTW) [see Endnote 10]. This last sentence is a mouthful. From this sentence alone we can see the highly imaginative, and yet highly practical, approach of the Americans, and we can also gain a sound understanding of the warfare of the future as seen through the eyes of the Americans. Aside from joint operations, which evolved from traditional cooperative operations and coordinated operations, and even Air- Land operations, the other three of the four forms of warfighting can all be considered products of new military thinking. General Gordon R. Sullivan, the former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, maintained that information warfare will be the basic form of warfighting in future warfare. For this reason, he set up the best digitized force in the U.S. military, and in the world. Moreover, he proposed the concept of precision warfare, based on the perception that "there will be an overall swing towards information processing and stealthy long-range attacks as the main foundations of future warfare." For the Americans, the advent of new, high-tech weaponry, such as precision-guided weapons, the Global Positioning System (GPS), C4I systems and stealth airplanes, will possibly allow soldiers to dispense with the nightmare of attrition warfare. Precision warfare, which has been dubbed "non-contact attack" by the Americans, and "remote combat" by the Russians [see Endnote 11], is characterized by concealment, speed, accuracy, a high degree of effectiveness, and few collateral casualties. In wars of the future, where the outcome will perhaps be decided not long after the war starts, this type of tactic, which has already showed some of its effectiveness in the Gulf War, will probably be the method of choice that will be embraced most gladly by U.S. generals. However, the phrase that really demonstrates some creative wording is not "information warfare" or "precision warfare," but rather the phrase "military operations other than war." This particular concept is clearly based on the "world's interest," which the Americans are constantly invoking, and the concept implies a rash overstepping of its authority by the U.S.--a classic case of the American attitude that "I am responsible for every place under the sun." Nevertheless, such an assessment does not by any means stifle our praise of this concept because, after all, for the first time it permits a variety of measures that are needed to deal comprehensively with the problems of the 20th and 21st centuries to be put into this MOOTW box, so that soldiers are not likely to be in the dark and at a loss in the world that lies beyond the battlefield. Thus, the somewhat inferior "thought antennae" of the soldiers will be allowed to bump up against the edges of a broader concept of war. Such needed measures include peacekeeping, efforts to suppress illicit drugs, riot suppression, military aid, arms control, disaster relief, the evacuation of Chinese nationals residing abroad, and striking at terrorist activities. Contact with this broader concept of war cannot but lessen the soldiers' attachment to the MOOTW box itself. Ultimately, they will not be able to put the brand new concept of "non-military war operations" into the box. When this occurs, it will represent an understanding that has genuine revolutionary significance in terms of mankind's perception of war. The difference between the concepts of "non-military war operations" and "military operations other than war" is far greater than a surface reading would indicate and is by no means simply a matter of changing the order of some words in a kind of word game. The latter concept, MOOTW, may be considered simply an explicit label for missions and operations by armed forces that are carried out when there is no state of war. The former concept, "non-military war operations," extends our understanding of exactly what constitutes a state of war to each and every field of human endeavor, far beyond what can be embraced by the term "military operations." This type of extension is the natural result of the fact that human beings will use every conceivable means to achieve their goals. While it seems that the Americans are in the lead in every field of military theory, they were not able to take the lead in proposing this new concept of war. However, we cannot fail to recognize that the flood of U.S.-style pragmatism around the world, and the unlimited possibilities offered by new, high technology, were nevertheless powerful forces behind the emergence of this concept. So, which [of many kinds of unconventional] means, which seem totally unrelated to war, will ultimately become the favored minions of this new type of war--"the non-military war operation"--which is being waged with greater and greater frequency all around the world? Trade War: If one should note that, about a dozen years ago, "trade war" was still simply a descriptive phrase, today it has really become a tool in the hands of many countries for waging non-military warfare. It can be used with particularly great skill in the hands of the Americans, who have perfected it to a fine art. Some of the means used include: the use of domestic trade law on the international stage; the arbitrary erection and dismantling of tariff barriers; the use of hastily written trade sanctions; the imposition of embargoes on exports of critical technologies; the use of the Special Section 301 law; and the application of most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment, etc., etc. Any one of these means can have a destructive effect that is equal to that of a military operation. The comprehensive eight-year embargo against Iraq that was initiated by the U.S. is the most classic textbook example in this regard. Financial War: Now that Asians have experienced the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, no one could be more affected by "financial war" than they have been. No, they have not just been affected; they have simply been cut to the very quick! A surprise financial war attack that was deliberately planned and initiated by the owners of international mobile capital ultimately served to pin one nation after another to the ground--nations that not long ago were hailed as "little tigers" and "little dragons." Economic prosperity that once excited the constant admiration of the Western world changed to a depression, like the leaves of a tree that are blown away in a single night by the autumn wind. After just one round of fighting, the economies of a number of countries had fallen back ten years. What is more, such a defeat on the economic front precipitates a near collapse of the social and political order. The casualties resulting from the constant chaos are no less than those resulting from a regional war, and the injury done to the living social organism even exceeds the injury inflicted by a regional war. Non-state organizations, in this their first war without the use of military force, are using non-military means to engage sovereign nations. Thus, financial war is a form of non-military warfare which is just as terribly destructive as a bloody war, but in which no blood is actually shed. Financial warfare has now officially come to war's center stage--a stage that for thousands of years has been occupied only by soldiers and weapons, with blood and death everywhere. We believe that before long, "financial warfare" will undoubtedly be an entry in the various types of dictionaries of official military jargon. Moreover, when people revise the history books on twentieth-century warfare in the early 21st century, the section on financial warfare will command the reader's utmost attention [see Endnote 12]. The main protagonist in this section of the history book will not be a statesman or a military strategist; rather, it will be George Soros. Of course, Soros does not have an exclusive monopoly on using the financial weapon for fighting wars. Before Soros, Helmut Kohl used the deutsche mark to breach the Berlin Wall--a wall that no one had ever been able to knock down using artillery shells [see Endnote 13]. After Soros began his activities, Li Denghui [Li Teng-hui 2621 4098 6540] used the financial crisis in Southeast Asia to devalue the New Taiwan dollar, so as to launch an attack on the Hong Kong dollar and Hong Kong stocks, especially the "red-chip stocks." [Translator's note: "red-chip stocks" refers to stocks of companies listed on the Hong Kong stock market but controlled by mainland interests.] In addition, we have yet to mention the crowd of large and small speculators who have come en masse to this huge dinner party for money gluttons, including Morgan Stanley and Moody's, which are famous for the credit rating reports that they issue, and which point out promising targets of attack for the benefit of the big fish in the financial world [see Endnote 14]. These two companies are typical of those entities that participate indirectly in the great feast and reap the benefits. In the summer of 1998, after the fighting in the financial war had been going on for a full year, the war's second round of battles began to unfold on an even more extensive battlefield, and this round of battles continues to this day. This time, it was not just the countries of Southeast Asia, (which had suffered such a crushing defeat during the previous year), that were drawn into the war. Two titans were also drawn in--Japan and Russia. This resulted in making the global economic situation even more grim and difficult to control. The blinding flames even set alight the fighting duds of those who ventured to play with fire in the first place. It is reported that Soros and his "Quantum Fund" lost not less than several billion dollars in Russia and Hong Kong alone [see Endnote 15]. Thus we can get at least an inkling of the magnitude of financial war's destructive power. Today, when nuclear weapons have already become frightening mantlepiece decorations that are losing their real operational value with each passing day, financial war has become a "hyperstrategic" weapon that is attracting the attention of the world. This is because financial war is easily manipulated and allows for concealed actions, and is also highly destructive. By analyzing the chaos in Albania not long ago, we can clearly see the role played by various types of foundations that were set up by transnational groups and millionaires with riches rivaling the wealth of nation states. These foundations control the media, control subsidies to political organizations, and limit any resistance from the authorities, resulting in a collapse of national order and the downfall of the legally authorized government. Perhaps we could dub this type of war "foundation-style" financial war. The greater and greater frequency and intensity of this type of war, and the fact that more and more countries and non-state organizations are deliberately using it, are causes for concern and are facts that we must face squarely. New Terror War in Contrast to Traditional Terror War: Due to the limited scale of a traditional terror war, its casualties might well be fewer than the casualties resulting from a conventional war or campaign. Nevertheless, a traditional terror war carries a stronger flavor of violence. Moreover, in terms of its operations, a traditional terror war is never bound by any of the traditional rules of the society at large. From a military standpoint, then, the traditional terror war is characterized by the use of limited resources to fight an unlimited war. This characteristic invariably puts national forces in an extremely unfavorable position even before war breaks out, since national forces must always conduct themselves according to certain rules and therefore are only able to use their unlimited resources to fight a limited war. This explains how a terrorist organization made up of just a few inexperienced members who are still wet behind the ears can nevertheless give a mighty country like the U.S. headaches, and also why "using a sledgehammer to kill an ant" often proves ineffective. The most recent proof is the case of the two explosions that occurred simultaneously at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The advent of bin Ladin-style terrorism has deepened the impression that a national force, no matter how powerful, will find it difficult to gain the upper hand in a game that has no rules. Even if a country turns itself into a terrorist element, as the Americans are now in the process of doing, it will not necessarily be able to achieve success. Be that as it may, if all terrorists confined their operations simply to the traditional approach of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, and plane hijackings, this would represent less than the maximum degree of terror. What really strikes terror into people's hearts is the rendezvous of terrorists with various types of new, high technologies that possibly will evolve into new superweapons. We already have a hint of what the future may hold--a hint that may well cause concern. When Aum Shinrikyo followers discharged "Sarin" poison gas in a Tokyo subway, the casualties resulting from the poison gas accounted for just a small portion of the terror. This affair put people on notice that modern biochemical technology had already forged a lethal weapon for those terrorists who would try to carry out the mass destruction of humanity [see Endnote 16]. In contradistinction to masked killers that rely on the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people to produce terror, the "Falange Armed Forces" [Changqiangdang Wuzhuang 7022 2847 7825 2976 5944] group in Italy is a completely different class of high-tech terrorist organization. Its goals are explicit and the means that it employs are extraordinary. It specializes in breaking into the computer networks of banks and news organizations, stealing stored data, deleting programs, and disseminating disinformation. These are classic terrorist operations directed against networks and the media. This type of terrorist operation uses the latest technology in the most current fields of study, and sets itself against humanity as a whole. We might well call this type of operation "new terror war." Ecological War: Ecological war refers to a new type of non-military warfare in which modern technology is employed to influence the natural state of rivers, oceans, the crust of the earth, the polar ice sheets, the air circulating in the atmosphere, and the ozone layer. By methods such as causing earthquakes and altering precipitation patterns, the atmospheric temperature, the composition of the atmosphere, sea level height, and sunshine patterns, the earth's physical environment is damaged or an alternate local ecology is created. Perhaps before very long, a man-made El Nino or La Nina effect will become yet another kind of superweapon in the hands of certain nations and/or non-state organizations. It is more likely that a non-state organization will become the prime initiator of ecological war, because of its terrorist nature, because it feels it has no responsibility to the people or to the society at large, and because non-state organizations have consistently demonstrated that they unwilling to play by the rules of the game. Moreover, since the global ecological environment will frequently be on the borderline of catastrophe as nations strive for the most rapid development possible, there is a real danger that the slightest increase or decrease in any variable would be enough to touch off an ecological holocaust. Aside from what we have discussed above, we can point out a number of other means and methods used to fight a non-military war, some of which already exist and some of which may exist in the future. Such means and methods include psychological warfare (spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will); smuggling warfare (throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order); media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along); drug warfare (obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries); network warfare (venturing out in secret and concealing one's identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against); technological warfare (creating monopolies by setting standards independently); fabrication warfare (presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy); resources warfare (grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources); economic aid warfare (bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret); cultural warfare (leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views); and international law warfare (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations), etc., etc In addition, there are other types of non-military warfare which are too numerous to mention. In this age, when the plethora of new technologies can in turn give rise to a plethora of new means and methods of fighting war, (not to mention the cross-combining and creative use of these means and methods), it would simply be senseless and a waste of effort to list all of the means and methods one by one. What is significant is that all of these warfighting means, along with their corresponding applications, that have entered, are entering, or will enter, the ranks of warfighting means in the service of war, have already begun to quietly change the view of warfare held by all of mankind. Faced with a nearly infinitely diverse array of options to choose from, why do people want to enmesh themselves in a web of their own making and select and use means of warfare that are limited to the realm of the force of arms and military power? Methods that are not characterized by the use of the force of arms, nor by the use of military power, nor even by the presence of casualties and bloodshed, are just as likely to facilitate the successful realization of the war's goals, if not more so. As a matter of course, this prospect has led to revision of the statement that "war is politics with bloodshed," and in turn has also led to a change in the hitherto set view that warfare prosecuted through force of arms is the ultimate means of resolving conflict. Clearly, it is precisely the diversity of the means employed that has enlarged the concept of warfare. Moreover, the enlargement of the concept of warfare has, in turn, resulted in enlargement of the realm of war-related activities. If we confine ourselves to warfare in the narrow sense on the traditional battlefield now, it will very difficult for us to regain our foothold in the future. Any war that breaks out tomorrow or further down the road will be characterized by warfare in the broad sense--a cocktail mixture of warfare prosecuted through the force of arms and warfare that is prosecuted by means other than the force of arms. The goal of this kind of warfare will encompass more than merely "using means that involve the force of arms to force the enemy to accept one's own will." Rather, the goal should be "to use all means whatsoever--means that involve the force of arms and means that do not involve the force of arms, means that involve military power and means that do not involve military power, means that entail casualties and means that do not entail casualties--to force the enemy to serve one's own interests." ENDNOTES 1. For more on the close relationship between Iraq and the U.S., the reader may refer to Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander, Junshi Yiwen [6511 0057 6146 2429] Publishing House, p. 212. "Iraq had established extremely close relations with the United States. Iraq had received weapons and valuable intelligence regarding Iranian movements from the U.S., as well as U.S. military support for attacks on Iran's navy." 2. An article by the then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin entitled "On the Sea Change in the Security Environment" was published in the February, 1993, issue of The Officer magazine, (published in the U.S.): A Comparison of The New and the Old Security Environments 1. In Regard to the Geopolitical Environment OLD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT Bipolar (rigid) Multipolar (complex) Predictable Uncertain Communism Nationalism and religious extremism U.S. the number one Western power U.S. only the number one military power Permanent alliances Temporary alliances A paralyzed U.N. A dynamic U.N. 2. In Regard to Threats Faced by the U.S. OLD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT Single (Soviet) Diverse Threat to U.S. survival Threat to U.S. interests Clear Unclear Deterrable Non-deterrable Europe-centered Other regions High risk of escalation Little risk of escalation Use of strategic nuclear weapons Terrorists using nuclear weapons Overt Covert 3. In Regard to the Use of Military Force OLD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT Attrition warfare Decisive attacks on key targets War by proxy Direct reinforcement Reliance primarily on high technology Integrated use of high, medium and low technology Forward deployed Power projection Forward based Home based Host nation support Reliance on own strength From the table above, one can see the sensitivity of the Americans to the changes in their security environment, and also the various types of forces and factors that are constraining and influencing the formation of the world's new setup since the conclusion of the Cold War. 3. "Technological space" is a new concept that we are proposing in order to distinguish this type of space from physical space. 4. According to the U.S. Department of Defense National Defense Report for fiscal year 1998, the number of U.S. military personnel has been cut by 32% since 1989. In addition, the U.S. retired a large amount of obsolete equipment, thus actually increasing combat strength to some degree even while large reductions in U.S. military personnel were being carried out. The U.S. DOD issued its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in May of 1997. The QDR emphasized "taking the future into consideration and reforming the U.S. military." It advocated continued personnel cuts and building the U.S. military in accordance with new military affairs theories. However, it also advocated comparatively greater expenditures for the purchase of equipment. 5. This story first appeared in the British Sunday Telegraph. According to this report, the U.S. military carried out a "Joint Warrior" exercise from Sep 18 until Sep 25, 1995, in order to test the security of its national defense electronics systems. During the exercise, an Air Force officer successfully hacked into the naval command system, (see The Network is King by Hu Yong [5170 3144] and Fan Haiyan [5400 3189 3601], Hainan Publishing House, pp. 258-259.) There are many similar stories, but there also are some military experts who believe that these are cases of "throwing up a confusing mist before someone's eyes." 6. In their book War and Anti-War, Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote: "If the tools of warfare are no longer tanks and artillery, but rather computer viruses and microrobots, then we can no longer say that nations are the only armed groups or that soldiers are the only ones in possession of the tools of war." In his article entitled "What the Revolution in Military Affairs is Bringing--The Form War Will Take in 2020," a Colonel in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces by the name of Shoichi Takama has noted that the civilianization of war will be an important characteristic of 21st century warfare. 7. Many hackers are adopting a new tactic which might be styled "network guerrilla warfare." 8. Precision warfare is a new form of warfighting. It came about as a result of combining increased weapons accuracy with increased battlefield transparency. (See "From Gettysburg to the Gulf and Beyond," by Colonel Richard J. Dunn III [McNair Paper 13, 1992], quoted in World Military Affairs Yearbook for 1997, [1997 Nian Shijie Junshi Nianjian], published by the PLA in Chinese, pp. 294-295.) 9. "Joint Vision 2010," a document prepared by the [Chairman of the] U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff/Joint Staff. See Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1996. 10. See the U.S. Army's 1993 edition of Operations Essentials, [translator's note: this probably refers to FM 100-5, "Operations," Department of the Army, June, 1993]. Consult ARMY Magazine (U.S.), June, 1993. 11. After his research on the Gulf War, the Russian tactical expert I.N. Vorobyev pointed out that remote combat is a warfighting method that has great potential. (Military Thought, in Russian, 1992, #11.) 12. There was an article entitled "Financial Markets are the Biggest Threat to Peace" in the August 23, 1998, issue of the Los Angeles Times. The article noted: "At present, financial markets constitute the biggest threat to world peace, not terrorist training camps." (See Reference News [Cankao Xiaoxi 0639 5072 3194 1873], Beijing, September 7, 1998.) 13. Who Has Joined the Fray?--Helmut Kohl, by Wang Jiannan [3769 0494 0589], China Broadcasting Publishing House [in Chinese], 1997, pp. 275, 232, 357. 14. An article entitled "A New York Corporation that Affects Economies" in the July 29, 1998, issue of The Christian Science Monitor disclosed how Moody's credit rating reports influence and even manipulate economic trends in Italy, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia. See Reference News, August 20, 1998. 15. Soros pours out all his bitterness in his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism. On the basis of a ghastly account of his investments in 1998, Soros analyzes the lessons to be learned from this economic crisis. 16. Some security experts in the U.S. have suggested to the government that it lay up large stores of antidotes, in order to guard against a surprise chemical attack by a terrorist organization. Chapter 3 to be Continue.....
6 Apr 2020 | 10:04
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7 Apr 2020 | 05:18
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Chapter 3: A Classic That Deviates From the Classics "Did the special nature of the Gulf War...trigger 'a revolution in military affairs' or not? This is ultimately a question of perspective." -- Anthony H. Cordesman, Abraham R. Wagner. Compared to any war in history, the Gulf War can be considered a major war. More than 300 warships from six carrier groups, 4,000 aircraft, 12,000 tanks and 12,000 armored vehicles, and nearly two million soldiers from more than 30 nations took part in the war. Of the 42-day war, 38 days were air strikes, while the ground war lasted only 100 hours. The U.S.-led multinational force crushed 42 Iraqi divisions, and the Iraqi forces suffered 30,000 casualties and 80,000 prisoners; 3,847 tanks, 1,450 armored vehicles, and 2,917 artillery pieces were destroyed, while the U.S. forces only lost 184 people, but incurred the enormous cost of $61 billion. [1] Perhaps because victory was achieved so easily, to this day there are very few people in Uncle Sam's wildly jubilant group that have accurately evaluated the significance of the war. Some hotheads used this to ceaselessly fabricate the myth that the United States was invincible, while some who could still be considered cool-headed -- most of whom were commentators and generals unable to take part in "Desert Storm" in a complex and subtle frame of mind -- believed that "Desert Storm" was not a typical war [2] and that a war conducted under such ideal conditions cannot serve as a model. When one listens to such talk it smacks somewhat of sour grapes. Actually, viewed from a traditional perspective, "Desert Storm" was not a classic war in the typical sense but [since it was a war conducted just as the greatest revolution in military affairs in the history of man to date was arriving it cannot be measured with traditional or even outmoded standards. At a time when new warfare required a new classic, the U.S.-led allied forces created it right on time in the Gulf, and only those who were fettered by the old conventions could not see its classic significance for future warfare. This is because the classics for future warfare can only be born by departing from traditional models. We have no intention of helping the Americans create a myth, but when "Desert Storm" unfolded and concluded for all to see, with its many combatant countries, enormous scale, short duration, small number of casualties, and glorious results startling the whole world, who could say that a classic war heralding the arrival of warfare in the age of technical integration-globalization had not opened wide the main front door to the mysterious and strange history of warfare - even though it was still just a classic created by U.S. technology and the U.S. style of fighting? When we attempt to use wars that have already occurred to discuss what constitutes war in the age of technical integration-globalization, only "Desert Storm" can provide ready-made examples. At present, in any sense it is still not just the only [example], but the classic [example], and therefore it is the only apple that is worthy of our close analysis [the author returns to the analysis of analyzing an apple later in the chapter]. The "Overnight" Alliance From Saddam's perspective, annexing Kuwait seemed more like a household matter in the extended Arab family compared to the taking of American hostages during the Iranian revolution, and besides, he had given notice ahead of time. However, he overlooked the differences between the two. When Iran took the hostages, it was certainly a slap in the Americans' face, but Iraq had seized the entire West by the throat. Lifelines are naturally more important than face, and the United States had no choice but to take it seriously, while other countries which felt threatened by Iraq also had to take it seriously. In their alliance with the United States, what most of the Arab countries had in mind was rooting out the Islamic heresy represented by Saddam to keep him from damaging their own interests were he to grow stronger unopposed, and it is very difficult to really say that they wanted to extend justice to Kuwait. [3] The common concerns about their interests enabled the United States to weave an allied network to catch Iraq very quickly. The Western powers are already thoroughly familiar with modern international political skills, and the anti-Iraq alliance was assembled under the United Nations banner. The halo of justice successfully dispelled the Arab people's religious complex, so that Saddam was playing the role of a modern-day Saladin, whose plan to launch a "holy war" against the Christians fell through. Numerous countries volunteered to be responsible nodes in this alliance network. Although they were unwilling, Germany and Japan finally seemed actually happy to open their purses, and what was more important than providing money was that neither of them lost the opportunity to send their own military personnel, thereby taking a stealthy and symbolic step toward again becoming global powers. Egypt persuaded Libya and Jordan to be neutral in the war and no longer support Iraq, so that Saddam became thoroughly isolated. Even Gorbachev, who wanted to get the Americans' support for his weak position domestically, ultimately tacitly recognized the military strikes of the multinational forces against his old ally. Even powers such as the United States must similarly rely on the support of its allies, and this support was primarily manifested in providing legitimacy for its actions and in logistical support, not in adding so many troops. The reason that President Bush's policies were able to get widespread approval from the American public was to a great extent due to the fact that he had established an international alliance, thereby getting the people to believe that this was not a case of pulling someone else's chestnuts out of the fire, and it was not just the Americans who were funding the war and preparing to have their blood spilled. They went so far as to send the VII Corps from Germany to Saudi Arabia, mobilizing 465 trains, 312 barges, and 119 fleets from four NATO countries. At the same time, Japan also provided the electronics parts urgently needed by U.S. military equipment, and this further demonstrated the increasing reliance of the United States on its allies. In the new age, "going it alone" is not only unwise, it is also not a realistic option. [4] For example, the alliance formed a kind of common need. From the Security Council's Resolution 660 calling for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait to Resolution 678 which authorized the member countries to take any actions, international society broadly identified itself with the alliance which was temporarily cobbled together. One hundred and ten countries took part in the embargo against Iraq, and more than 30 countries took part in the use of force, including numerous Arab countries! Obviously, every country had fully estimated where its interests were prior to this action. The full-scale intervention of the United Nations was not sufficient to make it possible for this fragile and dew-laden spider-web like alliance, which was formed in a very short period of time, to easily withstand the impact of a war. It can be said that, as far as the politicians were concerned, the alliance was only a single high-level meeting following a careful weighing of interests, a single contract signing, or even a verbal promise via a hot-line. However, for the troops carrying out the allied warfare, no detail could be overlooked. To avoid having U.S. soldiers violate Muslim commandments, in addition to stipulating that they must abide strictly by the customs of the country in which they were stationed, the U.S. military even leased a "Cunard Princess" yacht and anchored it at sea to provide Western-style amusements for the U.S troops. To prevent the Israelis from retaliating against the "Scud" missile attacks and throwing the camp which was assaulting Iraq into disorder, the United States made a tremendous effort to provide the Israelis with air support, taking great pains to look after the alliance network. More profoundly, the appearance of the "overnight" alliance brought an era to a close. That is, the age of fixed-form alliances which had begun with the signing of the military alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879. Following the Cold War, the period in which alliances were formed on the basis of ideology faded away, while the approach in which alliances are built on interests rose to primacy. Under the general banner of realpolitik, in which national interests are paramount, any alliance can only be focused more nakedly on interests, and at times they don't even feel like raising the banner of morality. Without a doubt, the alliance phenomenon will continue to exist, but in more cases they will be loose and short-term interest coalitions. Which is also to say that there will no longer be any alliances where only morality, not interests, are involved. Different periods have different interests and goals, and that will be what determines whether there are alliances or not. Increasingly pragmatic and unconstrained by any moral fetters, this is the characteristic feature of modern alliances. All forces are united by a network of interests, and they may be very short-lived but extremely effective. The interest relationships of modern states, as well as among trans-national organizations and even among regional forces have thus begun to be increasingly transitory. As the rock and roll singer Cui Jian sings, "It's not that I don't understand, it is that this world is rapidly changing." Today's mode of ever-changing combinations of force, along with the age of ever-changing technological integration and globalization, has given rise to certain tacit alliances which are by no means fortuitous. Therefore, the "overnight" alliance that was formed by the Gulf War formally opened the curtain to a new alliance era. Timely "Reorganization Act" The supercilious Americans often engage in actions which cause them to reflect on their mistakes, and this disposition, which would seem to be a contradiction, time and again amazes those who want to witness the presumptuous Americans suffering. At the same time it also enables the Americans to time and again reap considerable benefits. It truly seems as if the Americans are always able to find the key to open the door of the next military action among the lessons of each military action. Struggles between the views and interests of factions in the armed services have been around for a long time, and this is so in every country. The competition by the various armed services in the U.S. military to protect their own interests and strive for glory is well known to all, and they are not equaled in this respect. In this regard, what leaves a particular deep impression is that sixty years ago in combat with Japan, to emphasize the roles of their own service arms, MacArthur and Nimitz each came up with a Pacific strategy. Even President Roosevelt, who was circumspect and farsighted, had trouble balancing between the two. Another thing that demonstrates this point is that the U.S. aircraft which bombed Vietnam 30 years ago actually had to listen to commands from four different headquarters at the same time, which is truly hard to believe. Up until about 15 years ago, there were separate and independent command systems and it was not clear who was in authority, and this had disastrous consequences for U.S. troops stationed in Beirut, as it led directly to approximately 200 Marines losing their lives. However, even after he was made commander-in-chief of the allied forces during "Desert Storm," the problem that was exposed in Grenada was still fresh in the memory of General Norman Schwarzkopf. When he was deputy commander of the joint task force during the "Grenada" action, each of the service arms of the U.S. forces taking part in the action went its own way. The question [raised by this action] was, during joint operations, just who listens to whose commands? It is somewhat ironic that this problem, which had troubled the U.S military for several decades, was not overcome by generals who had experienced extensive combat or experts who were steeped in statecraft, but was resolved by two congressmen named Goldwater and Nichols. The "DOD Reorganization Act" [5] proposed by these two which was passed by Congress in 1986, used the legislative approach to resolve the problem of unified command of the various armed services during joint combat. Next, there were issues left over which required a war. Neither too soon nor too late but just at this time, Saddam foolishly launched his invasion of Kuwait and this was simply a heaven-sent opportunity for the Americans who were anxious to test whether or not the "Reorganization Act" would work. In that sense, rather than saying that the "Reorganization Act" was timely, it would be better to say that the arrival of the Gulf War was timely. Powell and Schwarzkopf were the lucky earliest beneficiaries of the "Reorganization Act" and at the same time they also became the two most powerful generals in the history of American warfare. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Powell for the first time had clearly attained the position of the President's chief military adviser, which enabled him to take orders directly from the President and the Secretary of Defense, as well as issue orders to the three services based on that; and he no longer had to serve as the coordinator for the endless wrangling that took place among the chiefs of staff of the armed services. As the battlefield commander, Schwarzkopf was spared the nagging and held the real power in his hands. As for the incessant chatter coming from the Pentagon, he was free to choose what to listen to and to do what he wanted to do with the air of a general who is outside the country and somewhat beyond the command of the monarch, while the great army swarming over the Gulf, as well as the satellites in space and the frogmen under the water, all the way to each roll-on roll-off ship, had to submit to his orders. This made it possible for him to exercise the trans-service authority granted to the commander of the joint headquarters by the "DOD Reorganization Act" without any hesitation when necessary. For example, when the front line Marine commanders urgently requested to carry out an amphibious landing on the shores of Kuwait, he looked at the overall situation and resolutely exercised his veto power, continuing to concentrate on operation "Left Hook," the well thought-out plan he had from the start. That a law which had not been in effect for five years could be implemented so thoroughly in a war that came along at the same time must be attributed to the contractual mentality of the people in the legal society represented by the United States. Furthermore, the new pattern of command which was derived from this became the most successful and fitting application of military command since the services were divided. Its direct result was to reduce the levels of command, implementing true entrusted command and causing the old deeply-rooted tree- structure command system to start to evolve toward a network structure; and a side effect of this evolution was to enable more combat units to share first-time battlefield information. If the "Reorganization Act" is considered against the wider backdrop of the age, it is not difficult to discover that this reorganization of the U.S. military was by no means a chance coincidence, but was timely and in conformity with the natural demands the new age posed for the old military command relations, that is, by recombining the service arm authority which was originally dispersed, then on that basis generating a super-authority that overrode the authority of all the service arms and which was concentrated on certain temporary goals, it became possible to be more than equal to the task in any battlefield contest. The emergence of the "Reorganization Act" in the United States and the effects it produced in the U.S. military are food for thought, and any country which hopes to win a war in the 21st century must inevitably face the option of either "reorganizing" or being defeated. There is no other way. Going Further Than Air-Land Battle "Air-land battle" was originally a strategy devised by the U.S. military to stymie the enemy when dealing with the masses of Warsaw Pact tanks that could come pouring out like a flood at any time onto the plains of Europe, but the military suffered from never having a chance to show what it could do. The Gulf War provided a stage for a full performance by those in the U.S. military, who were full of creativity and bloodlust, but the actual battlefield conditions were quite a bit different from what people had envisioned beforehand. "Desert Storm" was basically an "all-air," no-"ground" campaign that lasted several dozen days, and they barely got to use "Desert Sword," which was displayed at the last moment, including that beautiful "left hook," for only 100 hours before wrapping things up in a huff. The ground war did not become the next-to- last item on the program as hoped for by the Army, but was like a concerto which winds up hastily after the first movement is played. [6] Douhet's prediction that "the battlefield in the air will be the decisive one" seems to have achieved belated confirmation. However, everything that happened in the air over the Gulf far exceeded the imagination of this proponent of achieving victory through the air. Whether in Kuwait or Iraq, none of the air combat involved gallant duels for air supremacy, but represented an integrated air campaign that blended all the combat operations, such as reconnaissance, early-warning, bombing, dogfights, communications, electronic strikes, and command and control, etc., together, and it also included the struggle for and occupation of outer space and cyberspace. At this point, the Americans who proposed the "Air-land battle" concept have already gone quite a bit further than Douhet, but even so, they will still have to wait several years before they understand that, once they resort to the theory of integrated operations in real combat, the scope will go far beyond what they initially envisioned, extending over a broad and all-inclusive range that covers the ground, sea, air, space, and cyber realms. Although it will still require some time to assimilate the results of the Gulf War, it is already destined to become the starting point for the theory of "omni-dimensional" combat proposed by the elite of the U.S Army when they suddenly woke up. The interesting thing is that, while one may believe that the Americans' insight came somewhat late, this actually had no effect on their early acquisition of the key to "omni-dimensional combat." This is the famous "air tasking order." [7] The "air tasking order," which ran up to 300 pages every day, was drafted jointly by the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force and enabled Schwarzkopf, the supreme commander of the allied forces who was from the Army himself, to issue commands to the entire allied air force. It was the soul of the air campaign, and every day selected the optimum strike targets for all the aircraft in keeping with the overall operational strike plan. Everyday upwards of 1000 aircraft took off from the Arabian Peninsula, Spain, England, and Turkey and, in keeping with the computer-processed "air tasking order," launched trans-service, trans-border, precise and coordinated air strikes. Although in the eyes of the Navy this command program was overly "Air Force-oriented" -- and because of this they even took the petty approach of stealthily keeping behind some of their aircraft so they could be put to good use when an opportunity for the Navy to shine presented itself (even though it never came) -- ultimately this program successfully organized the most massive and most complex air campaign in the history of warfare. Not only that, but the "air tasking order" also provided a model for a kind of organizational command for all subsequent combat operations. One "order" represented an optimal scheme for combining the combat forces among the service arms, and the complexity and success of its trans-national combinations was where it really shone. In this respect alone, it was already far beyond the range of what was envisioned by the architects of the "Air-land battle" theory. This is to say that the U.S. soldiers unintentionally ushered the God of War into an open area in which she had never set foot. Chapter 3 Continues Soon....
7 Apr 2020 | 12:01
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Capter 3 Continues... Who is the King of Land Warfare? Isoroku Yamamoto was doubtless the most innovative and "extraordinarily talented" military man of his age, and the use of aircraft carriers in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the great victory he achieved represent the stroke of genius he left on the history of naval combat. What is hard to understand is that the same Yamamoto actually was unable to grasp the epoch-making significance of his own creative tactics. After commanding the combined fleet in dealing a severe blow to the U.S. Navy, he still held to the belief that only battleships were the main decisive force at sea, once again throwing the key that would open the door to victory and that was already in his grasp back into the vast waves of the Pacific ocean. While the first person to make a mistake can still be an object of pity, the second person to make the same mistake is simply incredibly stupid, particularly those people who make mistakes which have already been made but which they are just unable to anticipate. What is regrettable is that in the history of war there are frequent examples like this in which thinking lags behind acting. Just as with Isoroku Yamamoto at that time, although the U.S. Army used helicopters to smash the Iraqi armored and mechanized units, once the gunsmoke in the Gulf cleared it inexplicably reverted to its pre-war level of thinking, shunting aside the helicopters which by all rights should have been the new favorites in the war. It is said that during the entire ground war, other than one desperate fight put up by the "Medina" armored division of the Republican Guard when it was surrounded south of Basra by the U.S. VII Corps, there was hardly any tank warfare worthy of the name. However, the Americans, who had clearly already used helicopters to inaugurate a new age in ground warfare, [proceeded to] increase development outlays for other weapons, including tanks, while appropriations for helicopters was the only thing cut back. Sticking to their outmoded ways, they are still treating tanks as the decisive weapon in future ground warfare. [8] Actually, as early as the Vietnam war, helicopters had begun to display their abilities in the hands of the Americans, and soon afterward, the Soviet Union let helicopters show their exceptional skills in the hilly regions of Afghanistan, as did the British in the Falkland Islands. However, because their opponents were mainly guerrillas and non-armored infantry, it delayed the challenge that helicopters would pose to tanks a full 20 years. The Gulf War finally gave helicopters an opportunity to show what they could do. This time, not counting the helicopter units of the allied forces, the U.S. military alone deployed 1,600 helicopters of various models to the Gulf, and this enormous group of helicopters was sufficient to form one complete helicopter army. However, at this time the Americans, who had all along boasted of their innovative spirit, showed no originality at all, but just like the French who in World War II dispersed their tanks and assigned them to the infantry, they had the helicopters serve as a force attached to the armored and mechanized units and other troops. Fortunately, the helicopters, which were destined to establish their name in this war, did not allow this to mask their royal demeanor. Just as the Americans were praising the "Patriot", the F-117, the "Tomahawk" missiles, and other battlefield stars to the skies via CNN, the helicopters were unfairly given the cold shoulder (with just the "Apache," which was a favorite, getting passing marks). Other than the "Final Report to Congress" written by the Department of Defense after the war, very few people still recall that it was the helicopters, not some of the other favorite new weapons, that performed first-rate service in "Desert Storm." In the 20 minutes preceding the start of the continuous bombing, which lasted more than a month, following a ground-hugging flight of several hours, the MH-53J and AH-64 helicopters used "Hellfire" missiles to carry out advance destruction of Iraqi early-warning radar, opening a safe passage for the bomber groups and showing the incomparable penetration capabilities of helicopters. As the most flexible flying platform on the battlefield, they also undertook a large number of the supply transport, medical evacuation, search and rescue, battlefield reconnaissance, and electronic countermeasures missions, etc., and during the battle of Khafji, the main force which rapidly checked the Iraqi offensive and finally drove back the Iraqi military was again helicopters. During the war, the thing which truly left a deep impression and demonstrated the deep potential of the helicopters was "Operation Cobra." The 101st [Airborne] Division used more than 300 helicopters to perform the single most far-reaching "leapfrog" operation in the history of war, establishing the "Cobra" forward operations base more than 100 kilometers inside Iraq. Subsequently they relied on the base in cutting off the only escape route for the Iraqi military scattered behind the Euphrates River valley, as well as intercepting the Iraqi troops fleeing along the Hamal [as published] dike road. This was definitely the most deeply significant tactical operation of the ground war during the war. It proclaimed that, from this point, helicopters were perfectly capable of conducting large-scale operations independently. When the throngs of Iraqi soldiers ran from the fortifications destroyed by the helicopters and knelt to beg to surrender, they were in turn herded into a group by the helicopters just like a cattle drive on the Western plains, and the view that "only the infantry can ultimately resolve a battle" has now been radically shaken by these American "flying cowboys." Originally, however, the initial intent of the leapfrog operation by the helicopters was just to provide support for the armored units that were to handle the main offensive, but the unexpected success of the helicopter units caused the plan to fall far behind the developments in the battle situation. Because of this, Schwarzkopf had to order the VII Corps to attack 15 hours ahead of time, and although under the command of General Franks the speed of the advance of the VII Corps through the desert was far faster than that of Gudarian, who became famous at the time for launching tank blitzkriegs, he [Franks] did not win the good "blitzkrieg" reputation that the previous generation did, but actually was rebuked for "moving forward slowly, one step at a time, like an old lady." Following the war, General Franks refuted the criticism that came from the allied headquarters in Riyadh, based on the reason that the Iraqi military still had fighting capabilities. [9] In reality, however, neither the critics nor those who refuted them had grasped the essence of the problem. The reason that the mobility of the tanks under General Franks' command was criticized was precisely because of the comparison with the helicopters. To this day, there has still been no example of combat which has demonstrated that any kind of tanks can keep up with the combat pace of helicopters. Actually, this did not just involve mobility. As the former "kings of land warfare," the tanks are being challenged by the helicopters on all fronts. Compared to the tanks, which have to constantly labor to overcome the coefficient of friction of the earth's surface, the helicopters' battlespace is at treetop level, so they are totally unaffected by any surface obstacles and their excellent mobility is sufficient to cancel out the flaw of not having heavy armor. Similarly, as mobile weapons platforms, their firepower is by no means inferior to that of the tanks, and this represents the greatest crisis encountered by tanks since they ascended the stage of warfare with the nickname of "tanks." What is even tougher for the tanks is the energy required to organize a sizable tank group assault (transporting a given number of tanks to a staging area alone is a massive headache) and the risks one runs (when tanks are massed, they are extremely vulnerable to preemptive strikes by the enemy), so they really have no advantages to speak of when compared to helicopters, which are good at dispersed deployment and concentrated strikes, and which can be massed to engage in conventional warfare or dispersed to fight guerrilla warfare. In fact, tanks and helicopters are natural enemies, but the former is far from a match for the latter, and even the outmoded AH-1 "Cobra" helicopters, not to mention the AH-64 "tank-killer" helicopters, destroyed upwards of 100 tanks during the Gulf War while sustaining no casualties at all of their own. Faced with the powerful strike capabilities of the helicopters, who can still maintain that "the best weapon to deal with tanks are tanks?" [10] We can now say that helicopters are the true tank terminators. This new star, which rose gradually over the waves of the Gulf, is in the process of achieving its own coronation through the illustrious battle achievements during the Gulf War, and there is no doubt that it is just a question of time before it drives the tank from the battlefield. It may not take very long before "winning a land battle from the air" is no longer an over-dramatized slogan, and more and more ground force commanders are reaching a consensus on this point. Furthermore, the new concepts of a "flying army" and "flying ground warfare" in which the helicopter is the main battle weapon may become standard military jargon and appear in every military dictionary. Another Player Hidden Behind the Victory Leaving aside the point that as commander in chief of the three services Bush certainly knew the time the attack was to begin, when viewed simply in terms of the CNN television broadcasts, the whole world was the same as the U.S. president in that they saw at the same time the soul- stirring start of the war. In the information-sharing age, a president doesn't really have much more in the way of special privileges than an ordinary citizen. This is where modern warfare differs from any wars of the past, with real-time or near real-time reports turning warfare into a new program that ordinary people can monitor directly via the media, and thus the media has become an immediate and integral part of warfare, and no longer merely provides information coming from the battlefield. Unlike a direct broadcast of a World Cup soccer match, everything that people saw, other than that which was first limited by the subjective perspective of the television reporters (the 1300 reporters sent to the front lines were all aware of the "Revised Regulations Regarding Gulf War News Reports" that had just been issued by the Pentagon, so each person in his own mind exercised restraint about what could and could not be reported), also had to go through the security reviews at the joint news offices set up in Dhahran and Riyadh. Perhaps U.S. military circles and the media had both learned the lesson during the Vietnam war when the discord between the two was so great, but this time the news agencies and the military got along very well. There is one figure that perhaps can illustrate this issue very well. Of the more than 1300 news items released throughout the entire period of the war, only five were sent to Washington for review, and of these four received approval within several hours, while the remaining item was canceled by the press unit itself. With the concerted assistance of the news reporters, the battlefield commanders successfully influenced the eyes and ears of the entire world, getting people to see everything that the military wanted them to see, while no one was able to see anything that they did not want people to know. The U.S. press uniformly abandoned its vaunted neutrality, enthusiastically joining the anti-Iraq camp and coordinating with the U.S. military just like an outstanding two-man comic act, quite tacitly and energetically arriving at the same script for the war, with the force of the media and that of the allied army forming a joint force regarding the attack on Iraq. [11] Not long after Iraq invaded Kuwait, reports quickly appeared in the various media that a massive U.S. force was streaming into Saudi Arabia, causing the Iraqi military on the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border to flinch and quietly creating the momentum for a "hobbling" operation. The day before the start of "Desert Storm," the Western media again trumpeted the news of a U.S. carrier fleet passing through the Suez Canal, which served to confuse Saddam and have him believe that, with disaster looming, the U.S. forces had still not completed their deployment. Similarly, without the support of the embellishment by the media, none of the so-called high-tech weapons sent to be used in the Gulf War would have been as awesome as people believed. In the upwards of 98 press conferences held throughout the entire course of the war, people saw images of how the precision-guided missiles could penetrate the air vents in a building and explode, of "Patriots" intercepting "Scuds," and numerous other shots that left a profound impression. All these things represented an intense visual shock to the entire world, including the Iraqis, and it was from this that the myth about the unusual powers of the U.S.-made weapons was born, and it was here that the belief was formed that "Iraq would inevitably lose, and the U.S. was bound to win." Obviously, the media helped the Americans enormously. We might as well say that, intentionally or otherwise, the U.S. military and the Western media joined hands to form a noose to hang Saddam's Iraq from the gallows. In the "Operational Outline" that was revised after the war, the Americans took pains to suggest that "the force of the media reports was able to have a dramatic effect on the strategic direction and the scope of the military operations," while the newly-drafted field manual FM100-6 (Information Operations) goes even farther in using the example of the media war during the Gulf War. It would appear that, in all future wars, in addition to the basic method of military strikes, the force of the media will increasingly be another player in the war and will play a role comparable to that of military strikes in promoting the course of the war. Unlike battlefield propaganda, which has an excessively subjective tinge and is easily rejected by an opponent or neutral individuals, because it is cleverly cloaked as objective reporting the media has a quiet impact that is hard to gauge. In the Gulf, in the same manner that the U.S.-led allied forces deprived Iraq of its right to speak militarily, the powerful Western media deprived it politically of its right to speak, to defend itself, and even of its right to sympathy and support, and compared to the weak voice of Iraqi propaganda, which portrayed Bush as the "great Satan" who was wicked beyond redemption, the image of Saddam as a war-crazed aggressor was played up in a much more convincing fashion. It was precisely the lopsided media force together with the lopsided military force that dealt a vicious one-two blow to Iraq on the battlefield and morally, and this sealed Saddam's defeat. However, the effects of the media have always been a two-edged sword. This means that, while it is directed at the enemy, at the same time on another front it can similarly be a sharp sword directed at oneself. Based on information that was disclosed following the war, the reason that the ground war abruptly came to a halt after 100 hours was actually because Bush, influenced by a hasty assessment of the course of the war that was issued on television by a battlefield news release officer, later came to a similarly hasty decision of his own, "dramatically shortening the time from strategic decision-making to concluding the war." [12] As a result, Saddam, whose days were numbered, escaped certain death, and it also left a string of "desert thunder" operations, which were ultimately duds, for Clinton, who came to power later. The impact of the media on warfare is becoming increasingly widespread and increasingly direct, to the point where even major decisions by the president of a superpower such as this one involving the cessation of hostilities are to a very great extent rooted in the reaction to a single television program. From this, one can perceive a bit of the significance that the media carries in social life today. One can say entirely without exaggeration that an uncrowned king has now become the major force to win any battle. After "Desert Storm" swept over the Gulf, no longer would it be possible to rely on military force alone without the involvement of the media to achieve victory in a war. An Apple With Numerous Sections As a war characterized by the integration of technology that concluded the old era and inaugurated the new one, "Desert Storm" is a classic war that can provide all-encompassing inspiration to those in the military in every country. Any person who enjoys delving into military issues can invariably draw some enlightenment or lessons from this war, regardless of which corner of the war one focuses on. Based on that, we are terming this war, which has multiple meanings with regard to its experiences and lessons, a multi-section apple. Furthermore, the sectional views of this apple are far from being limited to those that we have already discussed, and it is only necessary for one to approach it with a well-honed intellect to have an unexpected sectional view appear before one's eyes at any moment: When President Bush spoke with righteous indignation to the United States and the whole world about the moral responsibility being undertaken for Kuwait, no responsible economist could have predicted that, to provide for the military outlays of this war, the United States would propose a typical A-A "shared responsibility" program, thereby launching a new form for sharing the costs of international war -- fighting together and splitting the bill. Even if you aren't a businessman, you have to admire this kind of Wall Street spirit. [13] Psychological warfare is really not a new tactic, but what was novel about the psychological warfare in "Desert Storm" was its creativity. After dropping an extremely powerful bomb, they would then have the airplanes drop propaganda leaflets, warning the Iraqi soldiers several kilometers away who were quaking in their boots from the bombing that the next bomb would be their turn! This move alone was sufficient to cause the Iraqi units which were organized in divisions to collapse. In the prisoner of war camp, one Iraqi division commander admitted that the impact of the psychological war on Iraqi morale was second only to the bombing by the allied forces. [14] When the war began, the A-10 was viewed by the Americans as an outmoded ground attack aircraft, but after forming what was dubbed a "lethal union" with the "Apache" helicopter, by eliminating Iraqi tanks on a large scale it staved off its own elimination, reaching the point where it became one of the myriad dazzling stars in the air over the Gulf. By matching a weapon that was far from advanced with other weapons, they actually achieved miraculous results like this, and the design and use of these weapons can be an inspiration that is hard to express in a few words. With regard to General McPeak, who was hastily given the job of the Air Force chief of staff not long before the war started, the toothmarks he left in "this apple" were during the war, when he was able to achieve his dream of breaking down the barriers between the strategic and tactical air forces and establish mixed air force wings, as well as his use of the "subtract seven and add four" approach following the war to bring about the most richly original reform of the Air Force command structure in its history. That is, following the elimination of seven Air Force commands, including the strategic, tactical, transport, logistics, systems, communications, and security commands, he organized them into the four air combat, mobility, material and intelligence commands. [15] It is hard to imagine how General McPeak's colleagues would have taken such a bold innovation had there been no Gulf War. [16] However, those of us who were outsiders during the Gulf War have no way of achieving enlightenment and lessons from it, et cetera, et cetera. If we pursue this to the limit, we will see that there are even more aspects to this apple, but not all of them are by any means things that can be pointed out or circled everywhere. To tell the truth, its flaws and questionable aspects are nearly as numerous as its strengths, but nonetheless this cannot cause us to treat it with the slightest contempt. Although this was a war that is rich with implications, it still cannot be treated as the encyclopedia of modern warfare, at least it does not provide us with any completely ready-made answers regarding future warfare. However, after all, it does represent the first and most concentrated use of a large number of new and advanced weapons since their appearance, as well as a testing ground for the revolution in military affairs triggered by this, and this point is sufficient to earn it the position of a classic in the history of warfare, as well as providing a completely new hotbed for our budding thoughts. Footnotes [1] See "The Gulf War -- Final Report of the Department of Defense to Congress," "Defense in the New Age: Experiences and Lessons from the Gulf War," and other research reports. [2] The first chapter ("A Unique War") in the research report Military Experiences and Lessons of the Gulf War put out by the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies holds that "Actually, the uniqueness of the Gulf War to a very great extent keeps us from being able to draw lessons and experiences from it...in fact, just how much in the way of important, long-term experiences and lessons can be drawn from the Gulf War is a major issue." (The Gulf War, Vol 2, Military Science Publishing House, 1992 internal publication, p 155) Following the Gulf War, people in the Chinese military, who had been shaken intensely, from the very beginning accepted the views of Western military circles almost completely, and at this point there are quite a few of them who are beginning to rethink the lessons and experiences of the Gulf War. (Conmilit, Nov 1998, No 262) [3] The anti-Saddam alliance in the Arab world was centered around Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. According to General Khalid, who was a commander of the allied forces in "Desert Storm," Iraq posed an enormous threat to them, so "we have no other choice but to ask for the assistance of friendly forces, particularly the United States." (see Desert Warrior, Military Translations Publishing House, p 227) The Americans also took the alliance very seriously. For details, see "Attachments to the Final Report of the Department of Defense to Congress," No 9, "Alliance Construction, Coordination, and Combat". [4] Chapter 2 ("U.S. Military Reliance") of the research report Military Experiences and Lessons of the Gulf War put out by the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies points out that "this war demonstrated without a doubt that, whether with regard to politics or logistical support, the U.S. military must rely on friendly states and allies. Without the considerable help of other countries, the United States has no way to carry out any major emergency operation. Other than in small operations, the option of 'going it alone' is basically unworkable, and all diplomatic and defense policy decisions must be based on this understanding." (Ibid.). [5] In the research report on the Gulf War done for the House of Representatives by L. Aspin and W. Dickinson, there is high praise for the "Goldwater - Nichols DOD Reorganization Act," writing that "the Goldwater - Nichols DOD Reorganization Act ensured that the three military services would pull together to fight the same war." The report also quoted Secretary of Defense Cheney, saying that the said act "is the legislation with the most far-reaching impact on the Department of Defense since the 'National Security Act.'" The generals in the military also had high praise for it, with Navy Admiral Owens, who was formerly vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff terming the "Goldwater - Nichols DOD Reorganization Act" "one of the three great revolutions in military affairs in the United States," and "this act stipulated that in all conflicts, the fight would be conducted using a joint force, and it also clarified that chiefs of staff of the services are no longer combat commanders. The combat commanders are the five theater commanders in chief." (Journal of the National Defense University, No 11, 1998, pp 46-47; Conmilit, No 12, 1998, p 24). [6] General Merrill McPeak, who was Air Force chief of staff during the Gulf War, stated that this was "a war which involved the massive use of air power and a victory achieved by the U.S. and multinational air force units," and "it was also the first war in history in which air power was used to defeat ground forces" (Air Force Journal (U.S.), May 1991). In a statement prior to the war, his predecessor Michael J. Dugan noted that "the only way to avoid much bloodshed in a ground war is to use the Air Force." Although Dugan was seen to have overstepped his authority and was removed from his post, his views were not at all mistaken. [7] Whether it is the report from the DOD or L. Aspin's report to the House of Representatives, both give a high assessment of the "air tasking order," holding that "the air tasking order orchestrated a precisely-planned, integrated air battle." [8] According to predictions by Russian and Western military specialists, "today, the lifespan of a tank as an individual target on the battlefield does not exceed 2-3 minutes, and its lifespan in the open as part of a battalion/company formation is 30-50 minutes." This kind of estimate by the experts notwithstanding, most countries still have tanks serving as a main weapon (Soldier (Russia), No 2, 1996). In an article entitled "The Future of Armored Warfare," Ralph Peter states that "'Flying tanks' are something that people have wanted for a long time, but when one considers the rational use of fuel and the physical and psychological factors during battle, the future need is still for ground systems. Seeing that attack helicopters are already a concentration of the various features that we envisioned for flying tanks, we believe that attack helicopters can complement armored vehicles, but cannot replace them." (Parameters, Fall, 1997). [9] Into the Storm: A Study in Command is the book that General Franks wrote after retiring. In it he mentions that the speed with which the VII Corps crossed the desert was not a mistake, and that the criticism from Riyadh was unreasonable. (See Army Times (U.S.), 18 August 1997). [10] See "Appendix to the Final Report of the Department of Defense to Congress," p 522. [11] See "Appendix to the Final Report of the Department of Defense to Congress," Section 19, "News Reports." [12] U.S. Army Field Manual FM100-6, Information Operations, discloses the details of this dramatic event (See pp 68-69). The television news reports on the "expressway of death" also had an effect on the overly-early conclusion of the war. (Joint Force Quarterly, Fall-Winter edition, 1997-98). [13] Section 16 of the "Appendix to the Final Report of the Department of Defense to Congress" has a special discussion of the issue of "shared responsibility." Contrary to the general belief, the main reason for the U.S. to get their allies to share the costs of the war was not the economic factor, but rather political considerations. In 21st Century Rivalries, Lester Thurow notes that, with regard to the $61 billion that the war cost, "compared to its annual GDP of six trillion dollars, this expense was hardly worth mentioning. The reason that they wanted those countries which did not send combat personnel to the war to provide fiscal assistance was entirely to convince the U.S. public that the war was not America's alone, but was a joint operation." [14] In the magazine Special Operations, Major Jake Sam [as published] reviews the circumstances of the psychological warfare conducted by the 4th Psyops Group during the Gulf War. (See Special Operations, October 1992). In the December 1991 issue of the U.S. military's Journal of Eastern Europe and Middle Eastern Military Affairs there is also an article devoted to psychological warfare during the Gulf War. [15] Air Force chief of staff McPeak advocated the use of "mixed wings" made up of several kinds of aircraft to replace the wings made up of just one kind of aircraft. He said that "if we were to do something else in Saudi Arabia today, we would no longer use wings outfitted with 72 F-16s, but rather a wing made up of some attack airplanes, air defense fighters, jamming aircraft flying outside the air defense zone, "Wild Weasels," and refueling aircraft, etc.... This tactic may be of use when an armed conflict breaks out in some region of the world." (Air Force (U.S. journal), February 1991. [16] Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice held that "the Gulf War explained this point (experience) very thoroughly: Air power can make the greatest contribution during the unified and integrated planning and implementation of combat operations." General Michael Lowe [as published], commander of the Tactical Air Command, pointed out that "using various terminology such as 'strategy' and 'tactics' to limit the types and missions of aircraft is impeding the efforts to develop air power, and at this point, we must carry out organizational and structural reforms." (See Air Force Manual AFM1-1 Basic Aerospace Theories of the U.S. Air Force, p 329, footnote 8). Deputy Chief of Staff for programs and operations Jenny V. Adams [as published] believes that the lesson to be drawn from the Gulf War is "to modify, not review, our combat regulations." USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for logistics and engineering Henry Weiqiliao [as published] also approves of carrying out reforms to reduce the weak links in the support area. See Jane's Defense Weekly, 9 March 1991.
8 Apr 2020 | 10:17
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Stil following
9 Apr 2020 | 21:46
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Following by somehow nt understanding
10 Apr 2020 | 05:26
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