On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 11:30 PM, Reggie Bautista wrote:
John Garcia wrote:I recently read a paper by an associate of John Boyd outlining what a military force organized on his principles of strategy would look like. ...
What I can glean from the public statements made by our strategists, the plan is to get inside the Iraqi's "decision cycle" (the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) by setting up multiple threats in different areas. When Saddam reacts to one of those threats, he will be weakened in some other area, and our opportunities in that area will be enhanced. Also, there is a strong element of psywar involved in 4GW, and I believe we can see some evidence of this in the President's appeals to Iraqi troops to not resist, and in the general's statements about how we will have instructions for any Iraqi force that wants to on how to make itself a non-target.
It's a bold concept, requiring among other things, total battlespace awareness and troops who can quickly seize unforeseen opportunities.
As a person who's pretty new to the whole concept of 4th generation warfare, this sounds to me a little like Ender's Dragon army in _Ender's Game_ by Orson Scott Card, especially the last part about quickly seizing unforseen opportunities and total battlespace awareness. Is it reasonably fair to say that Ender's strategies might be described as 4GW? My background includes very little history of military tactics, and I'm just trying to get a handle on 4GW using any comparison that I can get my hands on and understand pretty easily...
Reggie Bautista
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on military or national strategy. I just read a lot.
Here is a working definition of 4th Generation Warfare (4GW) from a paper presented at a 4GW conference:
4GW encompasses attempts to circumvent or undermine an opponent’s strengths while exploiting weaknesses, using methods that differ substantially from an opponent’s usual mode of operations.
If we accept the definition above, then certainly the tactics used by Ender in Ender's Game would fall under 4GW. Even more so since IIRC, Ender was still an adolescent when he planned his "battles" (which in his reference frame were "games"), and (presumably) his opponent was adult. This would certainly be a method that differs substantially from an opponent's usual mode of operations.
Now that I think of it, Gordon Dickson's Childe Cycle contains 4GW battles in the books Tactics of Mistake, and the short story collection, Spirit of Dorsai. In Spirit of Dorsai, a planet's population defeats an occupying army, even though the planet's fighting forces are all off planet.
If you' re feeling like digging deeper, start with Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War.
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