Net War Limits

By LAWRENCE SELLIN,
UPI Outside View Commentator
Published: Nov. 18, 2008 at 5:48 PM
Courtesy Of United Press International

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Network Centric Warfare was all the rage in the early years of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's time running the Pentagon. But the theory failed to anticipate or provide solutions to the counterinsurgency conflicts that have kept the U.S. armed forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan to the present day.

In their article "Dynamic Molecules: The Theory of Diffused Warfare," retired Israeli Vice Admiral Yedidia Yaari and Haim Assa argue that military doctrine is experiencing a fundamental shift from a linear approach to "diffused" warfare that takes place simultaneously on the entire battle space, distributing the force mass to a multitude of separate pressure points, rather than concentrating it on traditional centers of gravity.

Unfortunately, obsolete doctrine has affected even the most current concept of Network Centric Warfare because one can still trace a benign spillover from past linear paradigms and its dependence on the kinetic or combat component of warfare. The lengthy conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failures of the Israeli Defense Forces against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Party of God, in southern Lebanon point to the need for greater efforts to apply the appropriate processes and technologies to provide our side an asymmetric edge.

Yaari and Assa correctly note that the new combat environment is the convergence of two phenomena. Precision weapon systems and the need to operate within non-combatant population centers have created a new view of the battlefield, which is no longer the enemy's territory per se, but the sum of designated legitimate targets within it.

More importantly, however, it needs to be recognized that combat operations will not always be the major component of stability operations. In late 2005 the U.S. Department of Defense acknowledged that the immediate goal often is to provide the local populace with security, restore essential services and meet humanitarian needs. The long-term goal is to help develop indigenous capacity for securing essential services, a viable market economy, rule of law, democratic institutions and a robust civil society.

Many stability operations tasks are best performed by indigenous, foreign or U.S. civilian professionals in coordination with military forces.

In places like Africa, the tip of the U.S. armed forces' military spear may not be "trigger pullers" but medical units of doctors, nurses and veterinarians.

It can be argued that the requirements to develop a force capable of effective stability operations offer the precise framework for the transformation for which the U.S. Department of Defense has been searching, one in which combat power and technology of Network Centric War contribute to operational effectiveness, but are not the bases for it.

As Noah Shachtman stated in his article "How Technology Almost Lost the War," in Afghanistan and Iraq the critical networks are social, not electronic.

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(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., is an Army reservist and an Afghanistan veteran.)

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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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