By Ann Roosevelt
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.–While irregular warfare (IW) is the key problem today, the military must not succumb to tunnel vision and lose competency in other areas of military operations, according to the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM).
“Irregular warfare, from my perspective, is the key problem that we face today,” Marine Gen. James Mattis said here wrapping up the Joint Warfighting Conference 2008, co- sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association International and the U.S. Naval Institute, in coordination with JFCOM. “It is the problem we’ve got to focus on but not to the exclusion of other areas…[we must] not lose our sense of balance that war remains a human endeavor.”
Technology is no panacea, he said. Technology must enable troops, not replace them. “I want the highest capability we can bring to our troops in the field.”
In this information age, the U.S. technological advantage over the enemy is going to dissipate, he said. More and more often the human factors such as will and imagination will be how superiority over the enemy is created.
This is what Defense Secretary Robert Gates talks about, Mattis said, when he talks about his concerns over “next-war-itis,” Mattis said. Look to the war we’re in now, deliver things now and don’t wait until four years from now.
Mattis reiterated what Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz. director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, told the conference earlier: ” welcome to the future” and it’s not going to go away.
Gates was aiming at those who refuse to recognize the nature of the current fight and think they can wait it out and go back to the tank-on-tank battles away from the messy, dirty insurgency of today.
IW is key today, but people are still not oriented to it. We “must make this a full intellectual commitment,” Mattis said.
No one can match the U.S. conventional war capability. If they try, “they only have one role, depart the area quickly or we’ll hunt them down and kill them,” he said. However, “I think conventional wars are in hibernation right now,” but that doesn’t mean giving up conventional war capability and dominance.
The enemy has gone to a form of war where the United States is not yet superior, Mattis said, “We’re getting there, but we’re doing too much of it the hard way.”
Fundamentalists are not going to change their thinking and will insist on fighting, despite any U.S. military desire to return to conventional warfare, he said. Historically, this is not new. In fact, in 1902, the British Military press published authors, including military leaders who wrote that after the Boer War there would be no more conventional wars. Then came August 1914.
“We have to be very careful about deciding how history has taught us about the future,” he said. “Surprise will continue to be a dominant factor, and we’ll have to be flexible.”
Mattis suggests that the more young officers can be adaptable and operate indirectly, the better they are able to regain the initiative over the enemy.
JFCOM is examining the Joint Operating Environment looking at the future, using evidence and history to try and determine trends, he said. What’s becoming clear is that the future could be a “tapestry of conflict” that some call hybrid war. This trend is marked by the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
For example, looking at chemical or nuclear weapons, Mattis said, the current enemy would use them. “They have no reticence.” During the first nuclear regime, where the U.S., Soviets, British and French had nuclear weapons, they did not want to use them. That may not characterize what we see now as internal controls and ideologies provide no governors for the adversary.
JFCOM is using the Joint Operating Environment document to help the command focus on this sort of world in the future, even though it knows it won’t be 100 percent correct. Mattis mentioned numerous historical examples, to include a Pentagon staffer who said in 2001 the U.S. could potentially face conflict in many places in the world, but would never fight in Afghanistan. Six months later, U.S. forces were shivering precisely there.
The Joint Operating Environment document aims to get part of the future right, he said. However, it is not very realistic to look for certainty and clarity, Mattis said. “I believe war is war.”
First on the list of things to do is to properly identify the problem, he said. In Baghdad, JFCOM is harvesting lessons learned, comparing military activity with joint doctrine and, if needed, imparting the application right away and then rewriting joint doctrine.
The military is now moving away from effects-based operations. An effects-based approach to operations is “mechanistic,” he said, and will always fail when faced with human will and imagination.
Industry has a part to play and can help in IW, where technology will enable the human interface, he said. Finding the enemy is the big concern and solutions are needed. Take the IED and turn it against the enemy, he said, which would enable U.S. forces, not the enemy, to determine the time and place of detonation. Premature detonation could be enabled by technology, for example, to allow troops to detonate bombs where they are being built, as they are brought to the designated hide-site or while an air vehicle flies over it. There are ways to do this, but a “true, concerted, integrated effort” is needed.
Mattis also said as high performance small units are now a national priority, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance is needed from the joint force, as is access to joint fires.
Military use of networks, while increasing, but with persistent hackers, can’t be used as an excuse, he said. He recalled a training session he was told was canceled because “the system is down.” That’s no excuse, he said. Training is an area he’d like to see improve so infantry going into its first fight seems like “deja vu all over again.” He’d like to see the same investment for troop simulation training as for training on the F-22.
More than 30 years in the military has taught Mattis the value of the ability to “improvise, improvise, improvise.”