Ok, I've been fairly absent lately and there doesnt seem to be much interesting discussion going on so I'm posting parts of my current reading. The authors, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, work for RAND.
There may be some oddities in the formatting but I dont have time to clean it - enjoy.
Information and the Evolution of Military Organization and Doctrine
As we observe in earlier writings (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997, 1998a), the history of military organization and doctrine is largely a history of the progressive development of four fundamental forms of engagement: the melee, massing, maneuver, and swarming. Briefly, warfare has evolved from chaotic melees in which every man fought on his own,to the design of massed but often rigidly shaped formations, and then to the adoption of maneuver. Swarming appears at times in this history, but its major advances as a doctrine will occur in the coming years. Organizations evolve according to the information that can be embedded in and processed by them. The skillful conduct of all modes of conflict requires information—both embedded structural information, so that people know (and are trained to know)
what to do and why in an organized manner, and information-processing systems, so they can spot attacks and targets, identify friend from foe, and coordinate operations. Each stage in the progression noted above represents a higher level of organization, and each depends on the existence of ever more advanced information structuring. The distinction between information structuring and information processing—and the importance of emphasizing the structuring as well as the processing roles of information—is discussed in Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997, 1998b.
This four-part analysis of the evolution of military organization and doctrine has its origins in the four-part
framework about the organizational forms (tribes, institutions, markets, and networks) that lie behind longrange
social evolution (see Ronfeldt, 1996).
Stated another way, each stage is associated with a progression in the
quantity and quality of information, from both structural and processing viewpoints.
When there was little reason to train as a body, little ability to communicate during battle
with one’s own forces, and only notional understandings of the opponent’s intentions,
the free-for-all melee dominated. As means of signaling emerged (e.g., semaphores) and
weaponry was introduced that benefited from coordinated fire (e.g., muskets), more
controlled formations came into being (usually linear in nature). Further advances in
organization and technology led to ever more supple maneuver capabilities, with mobile
columns to some extent replacing linear formations (Van Creveld, 1989; Keegan, 1993).
This progression in organization and doctrine—from the melee, to massing, to maneuver,
and onward to swarming—appears in all the realms of war: on land, at sea, and in
the air. While this progression applies mainly to the history of military warfare, it has
counterparts in the history of social movements as well.
The melee, a chaotic, undirected clash of arms at close quarters, is the earliest of the four
to have appeared, and the least demanding in terms of organization and information.
Massing probably began to emerge somewhere in our distant past, as it was noticed that,
by remaining nearby one’s fellows, advantages were to be had. One might derive some
protection, therefore, from being in a mass, as well as improve the overall striking power
of the army. As massed formations took deliberate shape, battle became more of a
bloody shoving match; but at least it featured somewhat cohesive sides.
These early “ways of war” had to await advances in both organization and information
flows before maneuver could emerge. But with the redesign of a generic armed force into
several smaller units, each commanded by a field grade leader, the possibility of more
complex operations arose. Some of the force could defend while the rest attacked, for
example, enabling the rise of the essence of maneuver—which has always aimed at striking
one small part of an enemy force with a larger mass of one’s own, crushing it in detail.
The emergence of writing and literacy facilitated the rise of elaborate mass and maneuver
operations. Writing made possible the conveyance of orders, both before and during
battle, and made sense of the notion of creating many smaller units of maneuver beyond
the immediate command of the leader. Later, along with mechanization, the spread of
the telegraph and the radio fostered the development of more advanced maneuver doctrines.
To these three traditional approaches to battle, we add a fourth: swarming. By this we
mean the systematic pulsing of force and/or fire by dispersed, internetted units, so as to
strike the adversary from all directions simultaneously. This does not necessitate sur-
rounding the enemy, though swarming may include encirclement in some cases. Rather,
emphasis is placed on forces or fires that can strike at will—wherever they will.
Historically, there have been a few instances of this approach to battle. For example,
swarming can be glimpsed in some ancient mounted armies (e.g., Parthians, Scythians,
even the imperial Byzantine cavalry) that gave fits to phalanxes, legions, and other conventional
military formations (see Edwards, 2000, for a historical overview). Better
examples appear in the Mongol approach to war, in Mao Zedong’s concept of “Peoples
War,” and in the Battle of Britain. But swarming could not come into its own as a major
way of war, because its organizational and informational requirements are huge.
Swarming has had to wait for the current information and communications revolution
to unfold as robustly as did the earlier forms of fighting.
Each of the four forms incorporates and builds upon what came before. Aspects of the
melee remain in present-day close-in, hand-to-hand combat. And the role of mass lives
on in more sophisticated, maneuver-oriented forms of battle (e.g., AirLand Battle); but it
is much transformed. Massing is still a crucial element in maneuver—but it is massing at
the “decisive point,” as Jomini, the great interpreter of Napoleonic strategy ([1838] 1992)
called it, that counts most of all. Similarly, the melee will likely still have a role with the
advent of swarming—but this nonlinear, very often close-in approach to fighting will be
organized rather than chaotic. The information structuring (the “embedding” of all
manner of information in the new military organizational forms) and processing done to
prepare for and then to conduct battles will allow for controllable swarm tactics to
emerge that may make an adversary think he is being overwhelmed in melee. But there
will be far more structure to the attack than he may be able to discern. At least this is the
ideal of the swarming concept—an ideal heavily reliant upon robust information flows
and the development of junior-level officers who can think in high-level ways. Needless
to say, these challenges for communications and command are substantial; and they
suggest that a swarming force, when it fights close in, may often skitter along on the
chaotic edge of an uncontrolled melee.
Since the newest approach to war may contain within it the oldest, theorists and practitioners
should remain alert to the persistence of all four forms. Mass and maneuver have
not gone away and may persist even in a conflict spectrum that may one day be dominated
by swarming. Indeed, one need only look at the maneuvers-gone-awry of Task
Force Ranger in Somalia in 1993 (see Bowden, 1999) to observe that some adversaries
may actually cultivate opportunities to engage in modern-day melees where they detect
vulnerabilities in a major power’s operational stance.
The Melee—Earliest Form of
Organization (and Doctrine)
The melee emerged out of necessity. Quite simply, for a long time there was virtually no
way to maintain command or control of an armed force that had neither much organization
nor smooth information flows. This was, basically, the primeval state of war, and
it persisted for many millennia (Turney-High, 1949). Attempts to line up or face off
against the enemy were sometimes made; but no battle plan or formation could persist
well beyond the first clashing of arms. The only communications available were shouts
and waving for the transmission of messages, and eyes and ears for reception. Battles
often dissolved into bunching and rushing and flailing, man to man, rather like what
may still be seen today in a chaotic bar, street, or gang fight.
This chaotic form of war persisted into the historical era and dominated even among the
first of the Asiatic empires of the Sumerians, Akkadians, as well as others. In Europe,
during the dark feudal age after the fall of Rome, a period of technical stagnation and
social dissolution, European warfare once again reverted to the melee—seemingly
wiping out the gains in massing and maneuvering that constituted hard-won progress in
military affairs made over many centuries, including by the Greeks and the Romans.
The melee is found in all forms of early conflict. On land, the melee was a prominent
form of fighting among countless primitive tribes and among the earliest empires. It may
have been best exemplified, though, by the German resistance to Roman invasion in the
early common era (9–18 A.D.). Led by Arminius, the Germans took good advantage of
their heavily forested terrain to force the Romans into breaking their legionary formations,
which resulted in fighting that consisted of a wild, extended series of small handto-
hand combats. The Romans suffered a terrible loss at the outset of this struggle, in the
Teutoberg Forest. But even after they rebounded, under the skillful Germanicus, winning
at Idistaviso, the ferocity of the Germans convinced the Empire to expand no further
than the Rhine and the Danube (Delbrueck, [1921] 1990, pp. 97–109, 149–159). After the
fall of Rome in the fifth century, the next thousand years of European land warfare would
be characterized generally by melees. Only the rise of the longbow would be able to
break the spell of this form of warfare.
At sea a similar pattern was followed, over roughly the same period, with troop-laden,
oar-powered galleys always aiming at getting close enough to the enemy to be able to
fight hand-to-hand melees like those on land. This pattern persisted even into the 16th
century, as the Christian and Turkish fleets that fought at Lepanto in 1571 (see Figure 1)
were closely and hotly engaged for the better part of a day. Even the widespread presence
of firearms and naval artillery did not work against the melee. However, in 1588, the
embryonic British Royal Navy would hold off the Spanish Armada with firepower alone,
marking the end of the era of naval melees (see Rodgers, 1940; Padfield, 1988).
Although air warfare did not emerge until the 20th century, it too followed the pattern of
being dominated by the melee in its infancy. In this case, the air battles were called “dogfights,”
a term that clearly evokes the chaotic nature of this mode of conflict. World War
I in the air was dominated by the melee, since there was no way, beyond wing-waggling
and hand signals, to control air forces during battle. Further, there were no electronic
means of detecting enemy air movements under way, leading to a large number of
unplanned “meeting engagements” (see Mitchell, [1928] 1960; Overy, 1997). Although
this would change in World War II—and even more in subsequent wars—the aerial melee
has never entirely disappeared; and dogfighting skills remain highly valued even in the
missile age.
Finally, at the level of social conflict, the melee has been evident from very early times. A
good example is the social chaos that came with “mobocracy” as found in Plato’s
recounting of Athenian life and political processes in the wake of the Peloponnesian War
(ended in 404 B.C.), which culminated in the call for Socrates’ execution for “impiety”
(see Stone, 1989). After the fall of Greece (which coincided closely with the death of
Socrates), democracy seldom took hold, flaring up decisively only in the American and
French Revolutions of the late 18th century. And in both—but especially the French
case—mob-driven melees played important roles in popular conflicts with authorities.5
Invention of the telegraph helped move social activism away from uncoordinated mob
melees and toward something more strategic and purposive—as seen in the social revolutions
of 1848 in Europe.
Next Development: Massing
As the ability to command and control ever-larger forces improved, it grew incumbent
upon military leaders to achieve advantages in mass over their adversaries. Strategy and
tactics came to focus upon the various means by which the most force could be brought
together on the battlefield, to provide maximum shock and firepower. This new emphasis
encouraged the growth of well-articulated formations, featuring stacking and a geometric
approach to set-piece battles with clearly defined fronts and rear areas. A
premium was placed on the ability to keep some forces nearby, but not hotly engaged, so
as to make them available for “wave” attacks, and as a reserve of mass to be employed at
the decisive point and time. Military doctrine became very hierarchically oriented in
pursuit of mass, because the maintenance of formation was crucially important to the
continuing ability to apply mass in battle.
Written orders provided the first opportunity for armies to undertake field operations
beyond the voice command of the general. But instructions alone could not guide a force
engaged in a fluid, developing battle. For this, it grew necessary to develop signaling systems
that would provide “real-time” aids for junior commanders. Thus, from mirrors,
flags, and semaphores to the modern radio, signaling systems have played a vital role in
the ability to apply mass on the battlefield. A further refinement favoring massing was
the development of drilling routines, which both socialized the combat forces them-
selves and provided the tactical means for getting them to the battle and ensuring that
their impact would have maximum effect. In essence, the communications technologies
were ever extending the “reach” of forces, and drilling routines were enhancing their discipline,
ensuring that troops would enter battle at the peak of their combat potential
(McNeill, 1982, pp. 125–132).
The sixteen-deep ranks of the Greek phalanx were the ultimate expression of mass in the
ancient world; and this formation gave Alexander the Great’s forces a massed “punch”
that simply could not be equaled. His ability to apply this mass in battle, and to integrate
its use with his mounted maneuver forces, gave him an advantage that was unequaled in
his era. In particular, his victory over the Persian empire demonstrated that massing and
maneuvering toward the “decisive point” in battle could allow an overall smaller force to
defeat a much larger enemy in detail (see Fuller, 1960, pp. 147–199). The Persians had far
greater numbers of troops, but their loose, undisciplined formations and inability to
maintain command and control ensured that Alexander’s much smaller force would
retain a decisive advantage.6
The paradigm provided by Alexander would serve well when military affairs were revived
during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; and even as late as the Thirty Years’ War
(1618–1648), his techniques of mass, drill, and discipline would remain decisive. Indeed,
the zenith of mass-oriented battle may have been reached in the campaigns of the brilliant
Swedish general Gustavus Adolphus, whose greatest victory, Breitenfeld (see Figure
2), was a testament to the power of localized, concentrated mass. Of equal importance to
Gustavus, though, was the discipline and drill of his forces, enabling him to blend skillfully
the strengths of muskets (fire) and pikes (shock) into a battle-winning combined
arms approach to warfare (Wedgwood, 1938; Liddell Hart, 1927; Roberts, 1967).
At sea, the Royal Navy’s defeat of the Armada with massed firepower soon led to an
emphasis on strict adherence to formations that kept ships close enough together to
bring their combined firepower down on an opposing force in as well-timed a manner as
possible. This led to the development of the “line of battle” and the “ship of the line.”
Because of the emphasis on mass, naval doctrine (and formations) became very rigid.
The exemplars of this approach to war at sea were the British and Dutch, who fought
three bitter naval wars against each other during the 17th century. Each side enjoyed
often brilliant leadership from their admirals: the Dutch from De Ruyter and Tromp, the
British from Monck. What all three had in common was their devotion to the principle of
mass and their ability to instill both the discipline and the drill necessary to fight in very
compact, controlled formations for hours, sometimes days, on end (see Mahan, 1890;
Barzun, 1944; and Marcus, 1961). This devotion to mass, seemingly for its own sake,
would survive even the transition from sail to steam, and to long-range guns, and would
characterize the Anglo-German engagement at Jutland in 1916 (see Bennett, 1964).
Air warfare, too, would move from the melee to mass. Airpower pioneer Billy Mitchell
himself noted that the Germans, late in World War I, did begin to move systematically
away from the melee, toward massed formations. As he put it: “The Germans . . . sent
their machines over in a mass . . . which were able to go anywhere they desired against
the smaller forces of the French” ([1928] 1960, p. 152). After World War I, significant
improvements were made in both the range and payload of aircraft. The rise of radar and
radio also made tactical and strategic command and control of large air forces possible.
All these advances hinted at the rise of a distinct form of war from the air, which many
thought would change the nature of conflict (DeSeversky, 1942; Douhet, 1942). And every
theorist of airpower expounded on the importance of mass, both for achieving maximum
bombardment effects, and for the security of the aerial force itself. Indeed, one of
the lead bombers of this era, the B-17, bristled with machine guns and was dubbed the
“Flying Fortress” precisely because of the security it was thought to enjoy in closemassed
squadron “box” formations. The use of airpower in World War II and even in
Korea and Vietnam—although in these cases to a lesser extent—also represented the
dominance of the principle of massing (see Pape, 1995).
In the realm of social conflict there was also movement away from wild melees in the
streets and fields to more controlled and coordinated activities. The difference between
the chaos of social conflict during the French Revolution and the synchronized social
revolutions of 1848 across Europe is perhaps the best contrast between melee and mass.
In 1848, the telegraph enabled the revolutionaries to achieve unprecedented mass
effects—both at the tactical level, by enabling crowds larger than ever before to assemble
at specified sites, and at the operational level, by enabling a coordination of mass
effects across large geographic areas, including beyond the borders of several states.
However, massing alone could not overturn the existing European social order—just as
massing on land and sea led to deadlock during World War I, and massed bomber formations
suffered mightily during World War II. It would take further developments in the
nature of massing, as eventually epitomized by Leninist doctrines, but also something
more to unleash the ultimate potential of mass: the emergence at the social level of the
third basic form of conflict, maneuver. It had ancient origins, but its evolution quickened
in the 1700s and came to fruition in the 20th century.
Maneuver Warfare
The key elements of maneuver include complex, synchronized movements of entire
forces, most often at a high operational tempo. The desired goal is to enlarge the battlespace
well beyond the fixed limits imposed by mass-on-mass engagements, posing the
prospect of massing selectively against small portions of the enemy forces—preferably,
at what Clausewitz ([1831] 1976) and Jomini ([1838] 1992) both referred to variously as
the “decisive point” upon which the adversary’s continued cohesion depended.
Maneuver of this sort entails using multiple axes of advance as well as flanking movements
to generate surprise and penetration of the enemy “front.”
Maneuver has been around since ancient times. It has, under skillful leadership (e.g.,
Alexander, Genghis Khan, Turenne, and Napoleon in his early years), sometimes been
briefly ascendant over massed brute force. But, over the past century-plus, maneuver has
grown to be generally superior to massing. This state of affairs has been brought about
in large part by the rise of electronic communications—especially radio. Radio allowed
the battlespace to be greatly expanded, turning armed forces into “sensory organizations”
as well as fighting units. This combination of sensing and shooting enabled the
emergence of doctrines of hitherto unimagined complexity and speed, and was deepened
by the new information technology of radar, which came into its own during the
1920s and 1930s—and which would make World War II, with its far-flung maneuver campaigns,
so different from World War I.7 The invigorating effects of the new information
technologies also opened the possibility of compromising the enemy’s information
security, so as to be able to anticipate maneuvers and thwart them. Indeed, under code
names like Ultra and Magic, such information operations played crucial roles in both the
European and Pacific theaters during World War II (on this, see Kahn, 1993; Prados,
1995).
But we should not forget that maneuver has early origins. The supple checkerboard formation
of the Roman maniples (literally “handfuls”) enabled swift, complex tactical
movements, making the legions virtually unbeatable for centuries. Yet, few other examples
stand out in such stark contrast to mass-oriented warfare—with the exception of the
Mongols of the 12th and 13th centuries—at least until the emergence of Frederick the
Great’s “oblique order” of battle, perfected over many years of campaigning, always at a
numerical disadvantage, from the 1740s to the 1760s. Perhaps the greatest expression of
this Prussian way of war was seen in the Battle of Leuthen in 1757, when Frederick’s army
of 36,000 took on 80,000 Austrians. Clearly, mass alone would not suffice. The Prussians
won a stunning victory by achieving the ultimate aim of maneuver: application of superior
mass against a portion of the opposing force, leading to the disruption of the rest of
the enemy army. In a day of hard fighting, Frederick’s “right hook” at Leuthen did just
that (see Figure 3).8
About 25 years after Leuthen, British Admiral Rodney would do at sea what Frederick had
done on land. He would deviate from the long-held “fighting instructions” of the Royal
Navy, which enjoined all to maintain the mass of the “line of battle.” Instead, he took part
of his forces, maneuvering them so as to strike at a small portion of his French opponents.
His victory at the Battle of the Saints (in the West Indies), foreshadowed Lord
Nelson’s more systematic development of naval maneuver principles, which would be so
brilliantly executed during the Napoleonic wars, culminating in the Battle of Trafalgar in
1805. Napoleon himself would observe, years later while in his final exile, that it was
British advantages in communications (the Hopham flag-hoist system) that were the key
to the defeat of the French navy. One hundred years after Trafalgar, Japanese Admiral
Togo would employ similar Nelsonian maneuver principles to defeat the Russian Navy at
Tsushima—yet another battle in which the management of information allowed complex
maneuvers to be coordinated at (relative to the time) high speed.9
The emergence of maneuver in the aerial realm can be seen most clearly in the integration
of ground attack aircraft with mobile armored forces in what became known as
blitzkrieg. Indeed, this form of war, featuring the close coordination of air and ground
forces, raised maneuver to a dominant place as a doctrine, beginning with the Battle of
France in 194010 and the invasion of Russia in 1941, and culminating 50 years later in the
signal victory over Iraq won by American and British mobile maneuver ground forces—
which were as dependent upon airpower as the panzer divisions of half a century earlier.
Indeed, in the GulfWar case, the reliance upon airpower was so great that seven weeks
of aerial bombardment preceded mobile ground operations.11
Another major effort to use airpower as a means of facilitating maneuver consisted of
operations aimed at air-dropping ground forces at chosen points in the battlespace. The
problem with this was that such drops necessarily entailed keeping the ground troops
light (i.e., absent artillery and tanks), resulting in costly engagements for the airborne
troops since they often had to face superior firepower. In World War II, the German invasion
of Crete and the Allied airdrop on Arnhem are both examples of the costly consequences
of this form of war. Later on, air maneuver with helicopters was tried, with
similar results for the Americans in Vietnam and for the Russians in Afghanistan—even
though, in these latter two cases, both heliborne protagonists were able, because of their
air supremacy, to airlift in some heavier weapons (generally artillery).12
At the level of social conflict, advances in information technologies and organizational
methods had similarly powerful effects. Whereas, during the 19th century, social
activism and revolution evolved from melees to massing, in the 20th century complex
maneuver strategies began to emerge, under skillful guidance from leaders aware of their
growing ability to mass selectively at points and moments where the governments they
opposed were weak. Thus, although the social revolutions of 1848 all failed, the Mexican
and Russian Revolutions of the early 20th century, occurring but a few years apart, were
wildly successful. These revolutions involved an emphasis on the creation of mass
organizations that could hold mass demonstrations, but they were also the harbingers of
“maneuver-oriented” social revolutions that would, in coming decades, help bring about
the downfall of colonial empires and the rise of both totalitarian and theocratic (i.e.,
largely Islamic) regimes. One of the best cases of “social maneuver” was Gandhi’s nonviolent
campaign to undermine British rule in India. This last example, although it reflects
the selective massing—in the Indian case, for strikes and protests—that goes with
maneuver, is also replete with (successful) efforts to overwhelm the whole British system
of colonial governance on the subcontinent—and may thus be thought of as a case that
involved “swarming” as well.
Emerging Way of Fighting: Swarming
Swarming requires complex organizational innovations and more information structuring
and processing capabilities than do the earlier paradigms (melee, massing, and
maneuver). While the notion of a “swarm” conjures up an image of attackers—from bugs
to bombers—striking a target from every direction, it is less clear whether swarmers
should operate autonomously or follow some controlling authority. In nature, swarms
are composed of independent units whose actions are largely instinctual. In human conflict,
swarms may be either independently targeted or guided. For example, the Vietcong
attacks during the Tet Offensive in 1968, while ordered by Hanoi, enjoyed a very large
degree of freedom of action—in line with Mao’s strategic dictum of “strategic centralization,
tactical decentralization” (Griffiths, 1961, p. 114). Conversely, during the World War
II Battle of the Atlantic, German U-boat wolfpack attacks that converged on convoys
were tightly controlled by Admiral Doenitz’s direct orders (see Doenitz, 1959).
The key active process of the military swarm is “sustainable pulsing,” of either force or
fire. By this we mean that swarmers will generally take their positions in a dispersed fashion
—much like U-boats on patrol. Then, they will be able to come together, concentrating
their force or fire, to strike at selected targets from all directions. After a strike, they
will be able to redisperse—not only to blanket the battlespace but also to mitigate the
risk posed by enemy countermeasures—ready to “pulse” to the attack again, as circum-
stances permit. This should not be thought of as a strictly military phenomenon.
Sustainable pulsing can be undertaken in social action as well. As seen from time to time
in Serbia, those protesting the Milosevic regime’s nullification of local elections a few
years ago, for example, were able to assemble in very large numbers on many occasions.
A similar effort is under way by civil society actors in Serbia now.
Swarming has two fundamental requirements. First, to be able to strike at an adversary
from multiple directions, there must be large numbers of small units of maneuver that
are tightly internetted—i.e., that can communicate and coordinate with each other at
will, and are expected to do so. The second requirement is that the “swarm force” must
not only engage in strike operations, but also form part of a “sensory organization,” providing
the surveillance and synoptic-level observations necessary to the creation and
maintenance of “topsight.” Thus, swarming relies upon what Libicki (1994) calls “the
many and the small,” as well as upon Gelernter’s (1991) notion of a command element
that “knows” a great deal but intervenes only sparingly, when necessary. These two fundamental
requirements may necessitate creating new systems for command, control,
communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I).
Even though the rise of precision-guided munitions heralds an era in which stand-off
weapons have come into their own, we must emphasize that our notion of swarming can
be carried out by either fire or force. Swarming from afar, through directed fire, may
sound most appealing, but it is likely that swarming “close-in” will still be quite common.
Swarming in force will probably be seen mainly in low-intensity conflicts, as in the operations
of the Chechens during their 1994–1996 war against the Russians (see Arquilla and
Karasik, 1999). But it may be especially evident in peacekeeping and/or peacemaking
operations. The “blanketing” swarm of U.S. forces in Haiti in the wake of the American
intervention stands out as a signal success. A capacity for swarming in force is perhaps
the best hope today for keeping the peace in Kosovo—even though such a capacity is
lacking and apparently is not being cultivated.
The Haiti and Kosovo examples speak implicitly to the point that swarming in force may
depend very much on local friendliness. When fighting takes place in populated areas—
as opposed to a swarm-permissive desert theater with little local population to be concerned
with, such as was featured in the Gulf War—goodwill may matter quite a bit.
Haitians were and Kosovars would have been very accepting of the presence of U.S.
forces. Haitians did and Kosovars would have provided valuable information to the
swarmers. But a swarming force operating amid a hostile people would have difficulty
moving undetected. More generally, it reflects the need to consider the conditions under
which swarming will be more achievable and effective. It may turn out that swarming
operations will be easier to mount when on the defensive, when one is more assured of
22 Swarming and the Future of Conflict
fighting on friendly terrain (e.g., see the swarming Soviet anti-tank networks that played
such a brilliant role in defeating the German blitzkrieg in the Battle of Kursk).14
The ultimate aim of a swarm may be less the physical destruction of an enemy—
although much damage can be done—and more the disruption of its cohesion. Once
deeply disrupted, the enemy will lose his ability to maneuver or fire effectively, and the
military aims of the “swarm force” will come readily to hand. A good illustration of the
disruptive power of a swarm can be seen in the military operations of the Zulus during
the 19th century. Fast-moving Zulu impi, capable of marching over 40 miles per day,
would break into small units as they went into the attack, surrounding their opponents
and swiftly destroying their cohesion. This was swarming in force on a grand scale and
was quite different from the flanking movements common in maneuver warfare because
the weight of a Zulu attack was roughly equally distributed at all points. For decades,
their way of war proved unassailably effective, and a great Zulu empire rose. Ultimately,
the Zulus clashed with the Europeans; and they even gave hardy Boer commandos and
British regular forces—both armed far better than they—a close run in the war of 1879
(Morris, 1965, is the definitive study of the Zulus).
Is swarming a realistic possibility as the next major fighting doctrine? Can it supplant the
apotheosis of maneuver, AirLand Battle? Should it? Or is this too high a goal? Will
Clausewitz’s “friction” and the fog of war prove intractable obstacles to swarming?
Finally, how can swarming be conceptualized and depicted in ways that allow for doctrinal
development and, ultimately, its practice? This last question must be asked and
answered before any assessment of the potential merits of swarming can be judged.
Fortunately, the analytic task is eased a bit by the presence of swarming both in nature
and, episodically, in earlier history. An examination of these antecedents follows in the
next chapter.
Reply With Quote
