Anatomy of the Next War

It has been said that modern nations are now more vulnerable than ever before to the effects modern weapons. If that is true, we could expect to see some early upsets if the current international situation degenerates in to a shooting war. How much will today's hypothetical war look like past conficts? What will be new? Are today's national leaders capable of carrying on diplomacy in what is expected to be (early on) a fast-paced race to surgically incapacitate the opposition?

This hypothetical war could sneak up on us. Then again, we could see a decade of slow mobilization. Either way, we are faced with new forms of war which will mean an end to certain old rules and warfighting traditions.

It has been said that Generals train to fight the last war. If that has any truth to it, what should we expect from our politicians and diplomats?

As I write this, the chances are good that a shooting war could sneak up on us. Many of the regimes we are likely to face off against now have a higher degree of preperation than most of us think they do. It's a jistorical fact that the West has always been slow to mobilize against Eastern threats, and that seems to be the case today. The one (Western) exception may be Israel, which is currently "busy" in Lebanon.

The United Nations has recently voted to condemn the regime in North Korea.

Source

The language of this resolution demands that North Korea call a halt to its missile program. The measure appears to allow for military action if the North Koreans do not comply.

This is the most recent example of dangerous diplomacy that could spark a war that might take us all by surprise. International tensions already run high because of the battles now taking place in Lebanon between Israel and militia elements of Hezbollah.

It appears that North Korea will soon be economically isolated even further than they already are. Trouble is, the West can't do much more to cut off the North than they already have. China is not likely to suspend the civilian aid that keeps Kim Jong Il il power. Hard-core sanctions could force the North Koreans to take military action. This could mean war when we least expect it.

The anatomy of the next war is changing so quickly that even the pros can't keep up (or agree in all cases).

In 1995 Lt Col John Antal was warning us in Infantry Combat: Rifle Platoons that the next Saddam Hussien wouldn't give us 8th months to assemble over half a million men, and that we had to be prepared to deploy light infantry and adequate support to hold the line on only a few days notice.

But in 1996 Caspar Weinberger was still pondering the wars of the 19th and 20th Century fought with the weapons of the 21st in The Next War.

Less than a decade later, Paul Van Ripper put the US Military on notice that the tactics that were used against the USS Cole could undo an entire US operation, and proved it by "sinking" the entire US invasion force when he played the role of Saddam Hussien for pre-Iraq wargames. The really worrying part was that the enemy wouldn't have to be a state to pull that off.


In a way, they could all be right. Weinburger was right on the money as to the limitations that would be imposed on us by nuclear proliferation and the development of leaner but smarter militaries (the Iran and Japan scenarios respectively). We do still face conventional state enemies who will fight us on a traditional front, but whos weapons systems and greater ability to develop in a timely manner will challenge our ability to deploy.

The unconventional threat cannot be ignored though. Timothy McVeigh, Ibrahim al-Thawr, and Khalid Mohammed have together set the example for modern assymetrical warfare. I remember watching the news and seeing how many people became trapped on Manhattan on 9/11 and it suddenly occurred to me than a dozen men with truck bombs could shut down a major metropolis simply by bottlenecking the freeways with bridge attacks. What happens then?


Here's the sum of all fears- What if someone really did their homework and was ready to fight us assymetrically all the way from our own bases to the theater of battle?

D-1: Truck bombs strike barracks at army bases around the country, specifically targeting crucial occupations, mainly infantry NCOs and light infantry units. Simultaneously, road, water, and electrical infrastructure are attacked in 10 Major cities, creating potential riot situations to tie up the natonal guard. Suicide attacks with civilian aircraft target US aircraft carriers and heavy transports in their ports, hindering our deployability.

D-Day: The enemy suddenly attacks a neighbor, who happens to be a crucial US Ally.

D+3: The first US forces land in a friendly nation near the theater of battle. Enemy agents attack their aircraft with man-portable SA-7s while landing, inflicting further casualties.

D+5: US ships enroute to the crisis are attacked in a vulnerable location, most likely the Suez Canal or Straight of Hormuz, and are badly damaged.

D+7: Major us military bases are hit with an improvised, low effectiveness chemical attack, causing few casualties but hindering deployment operations. The Military is forced to establish curfews and no-go zones around its bases at home, taking manpower away from the deployment effort.

D+30: With US efforts to deploy badly hampered, the enemy accomplishes his objective before a substantial US force can be deployed. He proceeds to attack the friendly nation where US forces are assembling to drive him out of the occupied territory.

I grant that it's unlikely that you could pull off such a large scale terrorist attack, but we've got to think force protection at all points, from home to the theater, and we have to deploy while there's still a foothold in the region. Weapons are more accurate and more powerful today, so the ability to project power no longer depends on a substantial presence. A single missile smuggled into Egypt becomes the bane of a troop transport in the Suez, a truck full of nitrated fertilizers can kill 500 mission critical personnel who don't even know they are at war yet.

With enough money and the right contacts, just 1,000 men could wage a very real war against a super power these days.


There are no weapons which render your opponent inept unfortunately. The only defense is intelligence. The US has to know where threatening weapons are and where they're going. If there's going to be an Iranian missile waiting for us on the Southern coast of Spain we need to know about it before we send a carrier into the Med, etc.

We also have to have emergency plans in place for dealing with terrorist incidents during time of war. The Katrina show can't be repeated at a time when we can't spare many guardsmen.

Vagabond, if I had a vote remaining, I would've given u yet another one for WATS.

Carlton Meyer said in a recent article on his website that dealing with terrorists and guerrilla forces is a sport compared to more intense, higher-level forms of warfare. Yet we are having so much trouble with this sport.

Vagabond (as usual) really laid out a good introductory scenario to show the nature of warfare these days. The main problem which has been the cause of all our troubles is in doctrine. Even 16 years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. is still stuck in an industrial warfare state of mind, despite all the career soldiers and intellectuals stating and agreeing unanimously that after the fall of the Soviet Union, war would be dominated by asymmetrical, guerrilla, unconventional warfare. Even after all this time, the U.S. still has a vast WMD arsenal and continues to develop weapons systems and technology more suited to take on the Warsaw Pact rather than a widespread ideological network. In the game Deus Ex, a terrorist you arrest early on in the game states "you can't fight ideas with bullets." The U.S. and its allies are fighting ideas, not entities. The U.S. and its allies have gone completely the wrong way when it comes to this new age of warfare (which isn't much of a war in a traditional sense). I will even say that a possible war with China would be asymmetrical and unconventional to an extent, not a straight-up free-for-all like we traditionally envision war.

The advances made by socio-economic changes also change the nature of warfare and we simply have not adapted to it. Its rather pathetic, because unlike a World War III, we could theoretically win this war against ideas, in this age of globalization.

The coming war will be very asymetrical, indeed. My one concern is that we won't be as mobilized as we could be when things heat up.

President Bush's diplomatic efforts which are being played out at the G8 conference suggest to me that he's in the process of doing a little old-fashioned coalition building. The recent minor successs that Hezbollah has had with its rockets against Haifa and a ship at sea make it quite clear that this won't be your pappy's old school conventional war.

Modern man-portable weapons aren't as expensive as they used to be. They are also quite numerous. The opprtunities for smuggling and using these weapons are many. The effectiveness of modern "state of the art" battle systems will come as a surprise to many, when they are used.

As we watch events unfold on the Israel-Lebanon border, we begin to see what we're in for in certain parts of the world. If recent news reports are to be believed, we can expect the Hezbollah guerillas to pull out and use even more sophisticated weaponry than they are showing off now.

A review of the current U.S. force structure leaves me wondering how we might answer so many fire arlarms, if we choose to fight what little more than what we have now. Stockpiles of all important warfighting materials are at all-time lows. Cruise-missile inventories are negligable. Available shipping for rapid deployment is...really quite...limited. Even if we assume that we'll be fighting with a coalition, I'm left to wonder how ready THEY are for the fight?

Even if we assume that we'll be fighting with a coalition, I'm left to wonder how ready THEY are for the fight?

Well, you can count us out. We're stretched to the bollocks as it is.

The logistics side of the entire issue has got me concerned greatly. If fighting an asymmetrical, unconventional war is bleeding us dry of necessary warfighting materiel, then how on Earth do we expect to fight in more intense, higher-level forms of warfare?

War is definitely a racket, but not even our military-industrial complex is doing a good job of it.

Love this thread! Great title! Way Above, Justin.

I'm just reading for now, but I find this subject very interesting. Especially the way the war will 'come on'. It could be full steam ahead tomorrow or 10 years in the making. The unpredictability is probably the most mysterious factor.

In my opinion, the war has already begun. On 9/11/01, but the full-blown engagement is yet to come.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
Love this thread! Great title! Way Above, Justin.

I'm just reading for now, but I find this subject very interesting. Especially the way the war will 'come on'. It could be full steam ahead tomorrow or 10 years in the making. The unpredictability is probably the most mysterious factor.

In my opinion, the war has already begun. On 9/11/01, but the full-blown engagement is yet to come.

That is pretty much what really concerns me. My stern belief is that Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. The more devastating conflicts are coming in the next decade.

Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo
The logistics side of the entire issue has got me concerned greatly. If fighting an asymmetrical, unconventional war is bleeding us dry of necessary warfighting materiel, then how on Earth do we expect to fight in more intense, higher-level forms of warfare?

Bear in mind that the current conflicts are being fought with what's already on the shelf. Waht we're seeing now is a process of very slow mobilization. Even the kids in Hezbollah are just shooting what they've got on hand, and replacing as the cash flow allows.

The hot and heavy formation-on-formation encounters you're thinking of are years away...unless...things get jiggy overnight. Even then, we will have to see a much higher degree of mobilization than we're witnessing now. In thearly stages of high mobilization, you'll see the ranks of all-volunteer forces swell as national leaders put out the call to arms. If things heat up like many of us suspect, we could see outright conscription in the later stages of full-scale mobilization.

Right now, we're seeing the diplomats maneuver. Lebanon is the most extreme situation at this time. Even that, you're seeing the kind of incremental warfare that President Bush and others have proposed for dealing with the likes of North Korea and Iran.

In the long run, we will only solve these problems by putting boots on the ground. The Irsraelis, for example, will eventually have to invest Lebanon. That means house-to-house fighting. It also means eventual confrontation with the Syrians and other as-yet-to-be-named parties.

Its not just manpower. Its also weaponry and supplies. If we had to face the Warsaw Pact in 1985 in Central Europe, our massive pre-positioned stocks would've been depleted in at most three weeks. And that's assuming that the Warsaw Pact never destroyed any of it.

We can talk all we want about a war economy and total war, but those cases are extremely rare and for political reasons, almost unviable except in World War II-type scenarios. Even against a country like China, the nature of the war would mean the U.S. would fight with what it has and resupply itself without resorting to total war.

Ah-hah. That's a good question. Will this one go to total war? I'm dueto have dinner tonight with some friends to discuss this. It's a sticking point for my next book, so I'm trying to get a better sense of the thing.

I'm not sure that this one will go to total war. It could. I think that America's geographic position means that we won't see much of it...should that happened. Then again, as I've said in other threads, this war will be defined by missiles and what their owners do with them.

Does any country have the political will to fully mobilize? Does any country have the willpower to sustain the kind of damage that we saw done in WW2? I begin to think the answer is "no." Because this war will be a proxy-driven asymetrical affair, I'm enclined to think that because the major power will want so very much to stay in tact...that nobody will make those kinds of committments.

As it stands, I think that Western leaders will be overly challenged by their fear of body bags. they may value their jobs more than they value victory in war. This can certainly have its effect on the shaping of the anatomy of this war.

Well, I wasn't really asking a question (if you thought I asked a question). In fact, I was making the point, which is that situations where perpetual war economies and total war are instituted are extremely rare (which is a good thing). I personally don't believe perpetual war economy and total war in the future, due to the nature of modern warfare, which is why I refuted your earlier claim about full mobilization.

While we're on questions, let me ask you one then. Perpetual war economies and total war won't be instituted. So then, where does the material come from?

Originally posted by Justin Oldham
Ah-hah. That's a good question. Will this one go to total war? I'm dueto have dinner tonight with some friends to discuss this. It's a sticking point for my next book, so I'm trying to get a better sense of the thing.

I'm not sure that this one will go to total war. It could. I think that America's geographic position means that we won't see much of it...should that happened. Then again, as I've said in other threads, this war will be defined by missiles and what their owners do with them.

Does any country have the political will to fully mobilize? Does any country have the willpower to sustain the kind of damage that we saw done in WW2? I begin to think the answer is "no." Because this war will be a proxy-driven asymetrical affair, I'm enclined to think that because the major power will want so very much to stay in tact...that nobody will make those kinds of committments.

As it stands, I think that Western leaders will be overly challenged by their fear of body bags. they may value their jobs more than they value victory in war. This can certainly have its effect on the shaping of the anatomy of this war.

Our geographical position helps us for now, that is unless South America where to join our enemies? Chavez and the other leftist in South America hate us, and if the left won in Mexico it could be ugly. Right now, chavez supports Iran.. he may even shut off our oil supplies if we go to war with Iran, and the rest of South America may follow suit. That of course if the only case our enemies could get close enough, and if it ever got to that point im affraid time would have past for total war, and like the last century millions will loose their lives.

Okay, that's two of you now to make good points about war-time economies. Here's what I think.

In the short run, as long as the economy will support some degree of heightened military spending, U.S. war fighting efforts will continue at their present pace, or something close to it. Trouble is, as we already know, the deficit won't allow this spending to go on indefinitely. Even if the cash doesn'tbecome a problem...which it already is...we should expect to see competition for resource and labor begin to hurt the non-military commercial side of the economy within four years.

Here is my reasoning:

a. Given the current rate at which the military uses up manpower, it will be hard pressed to get new volunteers within four years because the ;private sector will out-bid the armed services for most of its skilled workers.

b. Many of the companies that provide finished war materials for Uncle Same are sole-source contractors. As the government is forced (by deficit) to cut back, some of tehse companies will go away. This means the short-term loss of certain knowledge, and some industrisl tool capacity. The long run stinger here is that the Fed will have to tighten its belt and short other parts of the economy to avoid this. They are damned if they do and similarly cursed if they do not.

Nazi Germany proved to the modern world that you can't fight a world war on a low-rev economy. U.S. economic performance during 1942-1946 proved that a "sprint" to high degrees of mobilization could tip the balance of power. the fate of the Soviet Union also proved that highest levels of readiness and inventory couldn't be maintained indefinitely.

My ultimate assertion is that our leaders will try to do the balancing act for as long as they can. I don't expect States like Syria, Iran, or North Korea to do that. they'll push for highest degree of mobilization earliest, which will allow them some good gains early on. Notice that I said early on. As long as the Western powers have the political will to stick it out, they can't lose. The have access to resources and production capacity that their enemies can't match.

The balancing act is especially crucial when fighting against smaller, inferior enemies.

However, as we are seeing, the whole point of asymmetrical and unconventional warfare is to make the economic side pretty much irrelevent. Winning has become a political thing, not an economic or military thing which is what war usually is.

I believe that mobilization, war-time economy, and total war all need to be redefined a bit for these times.

None of things means the same thing today that it meant in 1939, at least not across the board.

We must differentiate in each case between what it means in the next war between states and what it means in the next assymetrical war.

Mobilization has changed in both regards.

When nation states go to war tomorrow (or today for that matter) there will not be time to train a new crop of troops. For nation states at war, "Tactics is gettin' there firstest with the mostest". It was true when General Forrest said it and it's true today. I refer you to the none-to-soon arrival of the Marines at Pusan in Korea, Naval Academy required reading: Red Storm Rising, John Antal's Combat Teams: The Captain's War, the Iraqi hesitation in the early days of Desert Shield, The consequences of turning reinforcements back from Wake Island in WWII, etc etc etc.

Tomorrow's mobilization for a war between nation states means putting 30,000 men on aircraft armed with lighter, smarter weapons composed mostly of missiles, UAVs, robotic sentinels, etc, and putting them on a line in the sand within a week.

They will be expected to buy a few weeks time while a still small, but heavier force is deployed bringing heavier, more rugged, more economical weapons to the fray for the counter-attack.

A Marine who sets foot on the yellow footprints on the same day that the POTUS tells the Commandant we're going to war will be sitting down to the Warrior's Breakfast roughly 7 weeks into training when the enemy surrenders. There'll be no time for a draft nor new equipment when modern nations go to war.


Mobilization also means something different for assymetrical warfare. Certain assymetrical threats cannot be defeated by technology. You don't need a tank to stop an oil line from being blown up, but you do need boots on the ground patrolling. Counter-insurgency especially will require increases in manpower, and the time will exist for that, but kicking the economy into production mode will be largely unnecessary.


Because production has become less important to modern warfare, in that nation states will never get a new piece onto the field in time and terrorist organizations are immune to virtually every weapon other than spies and infantrymen, total war must also change.

The ammunition your enemy will fire at you is already chambered, the fuel he will use to get to you is already in storage, and the man who builds his tanks was fired last year. Every scrap of food that will be eaten during the course of the war is already in the backing plant or on the store shelf. You can't stop your enemy by attacking those resources.

You can stop him now by creating situations at home which demand his attention. You target things that the average person depends on so that there will be riots if the government doesn't put its manpower and organization into fixing those problems.

The 1st law of Moron-Dynamics clearly states that when the lights are out for more than a day, the average IQ of a population drops 40 points. The 2nd law of Moron-Dynamics is that the overall level of desire to make things worse is directly proportional to how bad things already are.
Therefore we can infer that if there is a war on, transportation infrastructure is not operating, and then the lights go out and stay out, there will be a riot.


Then there is wartime economy. Wartime economy proper doesn't exist anymore. It is becoming illogical to either field such a large army that the labor supply is appreciably impacted or to increase industrial capacity during a war.

At present in the United States the false impression of a wartime economy is created by the convergence of several factors:

1. A Vietnam-style treasury-raid war which is purposefully being fought in a manner more advantageous to defense contractors than to the nation.

2. The sudden realization that American capabilities are still better aligned with the needs of the cold war than with those of the war on terror, hence the need to invest in new acquisitions that should have been made gradually over time such as the new vehicle for destroying IEDs, crash programs for battlefield robots, better body armor, more UAVs, etc.

3. The fact that the beginning of the war on terror happened to coincide with the return to power of the party that tends to spend more money on defense even during peacetime, and that after the recently rare phenomenon of a two-term democratic presidency.

In other words, Ronald Reagan had been president from 1992-2000, if America were not learning a new kind of warfare (well not new, we just haven't done it in a few decades and are historically prone to strategic amnesia), and if defense contractors weren't chummy with this administration, the "War on Terrorism" economy would not be quite as pronounced.


Wartime economy for tomorrow's war will actually have more to do with protecting the country from the concerns over the war, planning the call-up of an enlarged reserve force in an economically-conscious way, and during peacetime going through carefully planned production cycles and R+D patterns as well as carefully analyzing our foreign trading in a way designed to sustain critical defense industries by ensuring that industries featuring dual-use technology are kept domestic and that vital defense sectors are kept alive during periods when new production is not actually necessary.

The days when the sewing machine company switched over to making machine guns and thereby made record profits during the war which could be invested in post-war expansion are over, as are the days when scientific advances made during a war would change the post war economy. Today the advancements are made during peacetime, which is nice because you can compromise on the pace to better suit the economy.


I think the sum of these conditions is that the military must shrink and specialize in order to be able to recieve and employ advanced mission-specific systems for the two types of war we face in the future.

We need to be able to put 3 divisions on the ground at the drop of a hat that have the technology to beat back the first wave from a force several times their size.

Behind them we need 3-6 active mechanized divisions to do the wholesale killing against nation states and also pinch hit against less conventional threats.

It should not be our goal to have an army that frequently deploys its reservists. We need to kill efficiently and get out for the most part.
The reserve should be necessary only when occupation is an issue, when the homeland is under threat, or when they are needed for non-defense duties.

Therefore our reserves should be larger and more oriented towards man-portable systems and the ability to perform both law enforcement and disaster relief functions as much as forming the last line of defense on the battlefield.

Then of course there is intelligence. Intelligence has to be something we're doing at a wartime level all of the time. There is no mobilizing the intelligence community. Your intelligence priorities only become crystal clear 6-12 months after it's too late to do anything about them unless you're already up to your eyeballs in everyone's business before you have any reason to suspect something is out of the ordinary.

I believe that mobilization, war-time economy, and total war all need to be redefined a bit for these times.

None of things means the same thing today that it meant in 1939, at least not across the board.

Total war is not a redefinable concept. It is far too specific, unlike the term war economy, so creating an entirely different term is more appropriate.

The days when the sewing machine company switched over to making machine guns and thereby made record profits during the war which could be invested in post-war expansion are over, as are the days when scientific advances made during a war would change the post war economy. Today the advancements are made during peacetime, which is nice because you can compromise on the pace to better suit the economy.

In total agreement here, you stated my point in more detail. Its a very important factoid to point out the consequences evolution in warfare have on society.

Wartime economy for tomorrow's war will actually have more to do with protecting the country from the concerns over the war, planning the call-up of an enlarged reserve force in an economically-conscious way, and during peacetime going through carefully planned production cycles and R+D patterns as well as carefully analyzing our foreign trading in a way designed to sustain critical defense industries by ensuring that industries featuring dual-use technology are kept domestic and that vital defense sectors are kept alive during periods when new production is not actually necessary.

The question is, what are doing about it now? Last I checked, the only forward-deployed pre-positioned supply stocks are now in Korea, and its only enough for a single brigade.

Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Peacetime is necessary in order to prepare for future contingencies in the manner you prescribe. War economy in the traditional sense and total war are not possible today; we still must get the materiel from somewhere.

We need to be able to put 3 divisions on the ground at the drop of a hat that have the technology to beat back the first wave from a force several times their size.

Behind them we need 3-6 active mechanized divisions to do the wholesale killing against nation states and also pinch hit against less conventional threats.

I also agree here. One way to make the above possible is to do away with all our forward overseas deployments. The Cold War is over and there is no reason to have such a powerful force in Germany, even if its only half of what it was in the Cold War. If we brought home the 1st Armored, the 1st Infantry, and the 2nd Infantry from Korea, then we would have all ten of our divisions in the CONUS. Thus, in a modern war, we'd have the entire XVIII Airborne Corps stateside and availiable for the first strike, supported by Marine Corps units, and then we'd have anywhere from 6 - 7 full divisions availiable for the "wholesale killing."

Great post. Keep them coming.

Perhaps America has already introduced a new form of warfare, no name for it because I'm not sure if it is any different from past wars, but I do not see any that come to mind like the war we fight now.

We where attacked, we quickly attacked Afghanistan, that country fell fast.

We prepared for Iraq, even though we were "being diplomatic", when we attacked we already had an army outside the country waiting to rumble in to Bahgdad.

Right now we are preparing for an Iranian and a North Korean invasion, even though we are "being diplomatic".

I think our new method, instead of an all out war on the entire "axis of evil" was to destroy one nation, scare the next one we intend to attack, then attack when it fits us best. We have been warming up to invade Iran by training a whole new army in Iraq, so we can leave on territory with troops we have trained, to invade the next nation. Then we will build Iran back up with a new army so that we can jump to the next. Nation hopping in a way.

The way we profit off of this is through high tech weapons development, re-arming or creating entire armies means big business for our companies, oil companies are getting first bids on new oil fields, and of course the states we take over are keeping the petro dollar instead of switching to the Euro.

Right now, Israel is taking out the threats that border their country, so that when we attack Iran, Israel will not be swarmed from all sides by militant groups. That in my opinion is why they pulled out from occupied territories and went behind their wall, to consolidate their people to attack, and be attacked. It is obviouse to me it is being planned years in advance, and it is great for the American people, because we don't feel the strain of war like in WWI WWII Vietnam, Korea. That is of course just my opinion, I do not claim to be a military stratigist.