Transformation (warfare)

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Transformation is a buzzword popularized by Donald Rumsfeld referring to a "change of mindset that will allow the [US] military to harness the technological advances of the information age to gain a qualitative advantage over any potential foe." [1]

A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes very popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used to impress others; although such "buzzwords" may still have the full meaning when used in certain technical contexts. Buzzwords often originate in jargon, acronyms, or neologisms. Examples of overworked business buzzwords include synergy, vertical, dynamic, cyber and strategy; a common buzzword phrase is "think outside the box".

Donald Rumsfeld U.S. Secretary of Defense

Donald Henry Rumsfeld is a retired American political figure and businessman. Rumsfeld served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under Gerald Ford, and again from January 2001 to December 2006 under George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the second-oldest person to have served as Secretary of Defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a three-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), Counsellor to the President (1969–1973), the United States Permanent Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as Secretary of Defense, he was a highly successful businessman, serving as the CEO and chairman of several companies.

Contents

Currently it is composed of three ideas.

"The three key elements of transformation thus far are knowledge, speed and precision. Knowledge, in the sense of being able to use the technical means at our disposal to seek, to track and to find out what the enemy is all about; speed: strategic speed, the ability to project forces over great distances very, very quickly; and precision is the ability to strike the enemy with sort of surgical strikes to kill the enemy quickly." Robert Scales Jr., Battle Plan Under Fire, Transcripts

"its key doctrine is 'network-centric warfare,' a strategy that has friendly combatants networked together for a previously unknown degree of fighting effectiveness." from Nova, Battle Plan Under Fire, Transformation

Transformation - The creation of a force that is dominant across the full spectrum of military operations - persuasive in peace, decisive in war, preeminent in any form of conflict.

See also

Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States Armed Forces in mid-2002. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more effective command and control of current and future weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red", with many lines of evidence pointing at Iran being the Red side.

The military concept of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a military-theoretical hypothesis, about the future of warfare, often connected to technological and organizational recommendations for change in the militaries of the United States and other countries. Broadly stated, RMA claims that in certain periods of the history of humankind, there were new military doctrines, strategies, tactics and technologies which led to an irrevocable change in the conduct of warfare. Furthermore, those changes compel an accelerated adaptation of novel doctrines and strategies.

Network-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations or net-centric warfare, is a military doctrine or theory of war pioneered by the United States Department of Defense in the 1990s.

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Information warfare (IW) is a concept involving the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent. Information warfare is the manipulation of information trusted by a target without the target's awareness, so that the target will make decisions against their interest but in the interest of the one conducting information warfare. As a result, it is not clear when information warfare begins, ends, and how strong or destructive it is. Information warfare may involve collection of tactical information, assurance(s) that one's own information is valid, spreading of propaganda or disinformation to demoralize or manipulate the enemy and the public, undermining the quality of opposing force information and denial of information-collection opportunities to opposing forces. Information warfare is closely linked to psychological warfare.

Trench warfare type of land warfare

Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied fighting lines consisting largely of military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I. It has become a byword for stalemate, attrition, sieges, and futility in conflict.

The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign. Military forces try to reduce the fog of war through military intelligence and friendly force tracking systems. The term is also used to define uncertainty mechanics in wargames.

Aerial warfare is the battlespace use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare. Aerial warfare includes bombers attacking enemy installations or a concentration of enemy troops or strategic targets; fighter aircraft battling for control of airspace; attack aircraft engaging in close air support against ground targets; naval aviation flying against sea and nearby land targets; gliders, helicopters and other aircraft to carry airborne forces such as paratroopers; aerial refueling tankers to extend operation time or range; and military transport aircraft to move cargo and personnel. Historically, military aircraft have included lighter-than-air balloons carrying artillery observers; lighter-than-air airships for bombing cities; various sorts of reconnaissance, surveillance and early warning aircraft carrying observers, cameras and radar equipment; torpedo bombers to attack enemy shipping; and military air-sea rescue aircraft for saving downed airmen. Modern aerial warfare includes missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. Surface forces are likely to respond to enemy air activity with anti-aircraft warfare.

AirLand Battle was the overall conceptual framework that formed the basis of the US Army's European warfighting doctrine from 1982 into the late 1990s. AirLand Battle emphasized close coordination between land forces acting as an aggressively maneuvering defense, and air forces attacking rear-echelon forces feeding those front line enemy forces. AirLand Battle replaced 1976's "Active Defense" doctrine, and was itself replaced by the modern "Full Spectrum Operations".

The "Rumsfeld Doctrine", named after former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, is a neologism created by journalists concerned with the perceived transformation of the military of the United States. It would be considered Rumsfeld's own take on RMA. It seeks to increase force readiness and decrease the amount of supply required to maintain forces, by reducing the number in a theater. This is done mainly by using LAVs to scout for enemies who are then destroyed via airstrikes. The basic tenets of this military strategy are:

Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy that advocates attempting to defeat the enemy by incapacitating their decision-making through shock and disruption.

Precision bombing refers to the attempted aerial bombing of a target with some degree of accuracy, with the aim of maximising target damage or limiting collateral damage. An example would be destroying a single building in a built up area causing minimal damage to the surroundings. Precision bombing was initially tried by both the Allied and Central Powers during World War I, however it was found to be ineffective because the technology did not allow for sufficient accuracy. Therefore, the air forces turned to area bombardment, which killed civilians. Since the War, the development and adoption of guided munitions has greatly increased the accuracy of aerial bombing. Because the accuracy achieved in bombing is dependent on the available technology, the "precision" of precision bombing is relative to the time period.

Modern warfare is warfare using the concepts, methods, and military technology that have come into use during and after World Wars I and II. The concepts and methods have assumed more complex forms of the 19th- and early-20th-century antecedents, largely due to the widespread use of highly advanced information technology, and combatants must modernize constantly to preserve their battle worthiness. Although total war was thought to be the form of international conflicts from the experience of the French Revolutionary Wars to World War II, the term no longer describes warfare in which a belligerent use all of its resources to destroy the enemy's organized ability to engage in war. The practice of total war which had been in use for over a century, as a form of war policy, has been changed dramatically with greater awareness of tactical, operational, and strategic battle information.

In military science, Force multiplication or a force multiplier refers to a factor or a combination of factors that gives personnel or weapons the ability to accomplish greater things than without it. The expected size increase required to have the same effectiveness without that advantage is the multiplication factor. For example, if a certain technology like GPS enables a force to accomplish the same results of a force five times as large but without GPS, then the multiplier is five. Such estimates are used to justify an investment cost for force multipliers.

Infantry tactics are the combination of military concepts and methods used by infantry to achieve tactical objectives during combat. The role of the infantry on the battlefield is, typically, to close with and engage the enemy, and hold territorial objectives; infantry tactics are the means by which this is achieved. Traditionally infantry have made up the largest proportion of an army's fighting strength, and consequently often suffer the heaviest casualties. Throughout history, infantrymen have sought to minimise their losses in both attack and defence through effective tactics.

Tunnel warfare warfare inside tunnels

Tunnel warfare is a general name for war being conducted in tunnels and other underground cavities. It often includes the construction of underground facilities in order to attack or defend, and the use of existing natural caves and artificial underground facilities for military purposes. Tunnels can be used to undermine fortifications and slip into enemy territory for a surprise attack, while it can strengthen a defence by creating the possibility of ambush, counterattack and the ability to transfer troops from one portion of the battleground to another unseen and protected. Also, tunnels can serve as shelter for combatants and non-combatants from enemy attack.

Battlespace is a term used to signify a unified military strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea, cyber and space to achieve military goals. It includes the environment, factors, and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly armed forces, infrastructure, weather, terrain, and the electromagnetic spectrum within the operational areas and areas of interest.

LandWarNet (LWN) is the United States Army’s contribution to the Global Information Grid (GIG) that consists of all globally interconnected, end-to-end set of Army information capabilities, associated processes, and personnel for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and managing information on demand supporting warfighters, policy makers, and support personnel. It includes all Army and leveraged Department of Defense (DOD)/Joint communications and computing systems and services, software, data security services, and other associated services. LandWarNet exists to enable the warfighter through Mission Command, previously described as Battle Command. Other U.S. service equivalent efforts to LandWarNet include the Navy's "FORCEnet" and the Air Force's "C2 Constellation."

Military swarming is a battlefield tactic designed to maximize target saturation, and thereby overwhelm or saturate the defenses of the principal target or objective. On the other-hand, defenders can overcome attempts at swarming, by launching counter-swarming measures that are designed to neutralize or otherwise repel such attacks.

Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) is a sensor network with integrated fire control capability that is intended to significantly improve battle force air and missile defense capabilities by combining data from multiple battle force air search sensors on CEC-equipped units into a single, real-time, composite track picture. This will greatly enhance fleet air defense by making jamming more difficult and allocating defensive missiles on a battle group basis.

The concept of four "generations" in the history of modern warfare was created by a team of United States analysts, including William S. Lind, for the purpose of an argument for "the changing face of war" entering into a "fourth generation".

References

  1. Boot, M. 2003. ‘‘The New American Way of War.’’ Foreign Affairs

The Center for Defense Information (CDI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, DC. It specialized in analyzing and advising on military matters. CDI was founded in 1971 by an independent group of retired military officers including Adm. Gene La Rocque and Adm. Eugene Carroll.