Comments on: Collateral Damage

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:08:21 +0000

Here are some more Boyd goodies I dug up. I just read his Patterns of Conflict via slideshow, and it was quite the read. I found some quotes that jumped out at me in regards to today’s COIN stuff, and the situation in Afghanistan.

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Mao Tse-Tung synthesized Sun Tzu’s ideas, classic guerilla strategy and tactics, and Napoleonic style mobile operations under an umbrella of Soviet Revolutionary Ideas to create a powerful way for waging modern (guerilla) war.

Result: Modern guerilla warfare has become an overall political, economic, social and military framework for “total war”. Page 66

Break guerillas’ moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.

*If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides! Page 108

Without support of people the guerillas (or counter-guerillas) have neither a vast hidden intelligence network nor an invisible security apparatus that permits them to “see” into adversary operations yet “blinds” adversary to their own operations. Page 109

Patterns of Conflict Link
http://www.d-n-i.net/boyd/patterns.ppt

By: Rapid Learning, for Startups and for the Military — Can Sar

Rapid Learning, for Startups and for the Military — Can Sar — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:16:23 +0000

[...] that. Because of this I found the following bit about decision/feedback loops in the military from Free Range International extremely interesting: “According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of [...]

By: Prestwick

Prestwick — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:49:21 +0000

Great article. One reason why many European NATO outfits are finding it a steep learning curve is a mixture of the men they put into the field and how their forces are geared. Italy, like Germany, I would suspect is geared in kit and attitude towards fighting off millions of bloodthirsty Siberians swarming across the border and into West Germany and securing the Mediterrenian for NATO.

You can go someway to offset the disadvantage of not having the kit to fight a low-intensity conflict by putting the best men you can into the field and preparing them specifically for this task. The UK for example tends to rotate several elite formations along with experienced regular army formations for example.

From what you’ve found and seen on the ground there Tim, I honestly don’t think the likes of Germany, Spain and Italy are doing that and thats resulting in inexperienced and dissaffected men who don’t appear to be prepared for what awaits them cocking up like this and that results in, as you say, murder or manslaughter at least.

By: David M

David M — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:48:03 +0000

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 05/11/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.

By: PreviouslyNFGDave

PreviouslyNFGDave — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:05:20 +0000

Man, I just had the OODA loop explained to me last week, and now you are writing about it in even greater detail than I had previously experienced… yay for learning! I am torn whether or not to agree with you on the village casualties. I definitely see your point, but I wonder if you are a tad hasty in assuming uniform levels of resistance to insurgents across villages. In my recent travels, I visited 7 different villages all with varying levels of defensive capabilities ranging from complete dependence on the Afghan Forces and CF to “Thanks but no thanks, everyone here has an AK, and we’ll be just fine if they come-a-knockin’.” I’m not familiar with the security situation in Farah, but i’m fairly certain that it isn’t as big a focus as RC South and RC East, currently. There’s a pretty good chance that our usually-less-than-stellar awareness of village life and politics is even weaker in an attention-starved area such as Farah. That being said, the end state of villagers knowing that harboring insurgents will bring them nothing but problems motivating them to actively seek security as quickly as possible is a good thing. The “defenseless” argument only goes so far; as in criminal activity, war has an “accessory to the crime” aspect as well.

Enough ranting, here is an interesting Asia Times article on how Obama’s shunning of Karzai turned out to work in Karzai’s favor:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE06Df03.html

Keep up the good work Tim-san.

By: Farah-cide « Machiavelli’s Closet

Farah-cide « Machiavelli’s Closet — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:56:49 +0000

[...] usually-respectable Free Range International seems to blame the civilians for allowing the Taliban to operate out of their village in the first [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:16:41 +0000

Outstanding, and just to continue the Boydism’s. If the Italians, or any military, become ‘closed systems’ they will sink into chaos and eventually die. Or so that is the idea behind why closed systems suck. lol The second law of thermodynamics comes up for that, and thanks to Boyd’s Destruction and Creation paper, it has become very clear to me the importance of understanding this to understand OODA. Are we defeating the enemy, when we allow these kinds of tactics to be used? Or are we becoming isolated further in the moral department? Are we becoming isolated by living out of FOBs? Are we becoming isolated mentally, when we don’t listen to the people or learn from the lessons of the past? Things to think about, and closed systems suck.
Also, one of these days, I hope to hear the briefing from Chet Richards or an Osinga type briefing. One day…. Semper Fi Tim.

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Wikipedia

Boyd divided warfare into three distinct elements:

* Moral Warfare: the destruction of the enemy’s will to win, via alienation from allies (or potential allies) and internal fragmentation. Ideally resulting in the “dissolution of the moral bonds that permit an organic whole [organization] to exist.” (i.e., breaking down the mutual trust and common outlook mentioned in the paragraph above.)

* Mental Warfare: the distortion of the enemy’s perception of reality through disinformation, ambiguous posturing, and/or severing of the communication/information infrastructure.

* Physical Warfare: the destruction of the enemy’s physical resources such as weapons, people, and logistical assets.