But in Desportes’ view, future wars will be against an enemy that seeks to outflank the Western technical and industrial armory. That undercuts the effectiveness of the transformation effort, which assumes a state enemy with a hierarchy of decision-makers and physical assets suitable for precision bombing.
“This typically American approach focuses on the destruction of the enemy rather than the search for better paths to obtain the political result,” Desportes writes. “It is about conducting technically perfect strike operations rather than transforming these operations into strategic success.”
Transformation has been ineffective against nonstate entities like the Taliban, now fighting from caves, insurgents triggering roadside bombs in Iraq and suicide bombers. In Afghanistan, small groups of combatants avoid attacking in open ground.
One of the book’s central messages: Military planners’ focus on mobility, strike and communications, if devoid of political awareness, may win battles but end up losing wars. Thus, while precision-strike weapons are necessary, they are insufficient to winning the war, because stand-off weapons destroy but cannot occupy territory and control population.
Technology is useful, but troops must be able to fight without sophisticated networks, because such systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks.
A network-enabled approach is valuable because it allows troops to be more cost-efficient, but a network-centric Army is one that is geared to destruction, and therefore counterproductive in the strategic sense, in Desportes’ opinion.
Tags: Military Transformation, Net-centric warfare
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