Have Drones (and Cyber . . . and SOF) Revolutionized Warfare? (Part Deux)

Making a point similar to Hsia and Sperli, last week former NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis suggested in a recent Foreign Policy.com essay that, together, unmanned vehicles, cybercapabilities, and special operations forces comprise a “New Triad” comparable the Cold War “strategic triad” of delivery systems for nuclear weapons. “Each has an important role to play,” Stavridis says, “but taken together, the sum of their impacts will be far greater than that of each of the parts when used alone.” Among his policy recommendations is that all U.S. cyberforces owned by the individual services be merged into a single organization modeled after U.S. Special Operations Command.

Although the Triad analogy is a bit strained, I find Stavridis’ recommendations/points for further analysis were generally sound. Apparently, the Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson disagrees . . . strongly. Thompson accuses Stavridis of believing “mass and firepower have had their day,” and asks (rhetorically, one hopes) “Is it really possible that senior military officers believe such nonsense?” Unfortunately, I think Thompson badly mischaracterizes Stavridis’ argument as a straw man to argue against strategic and technological innovation.

Yes, Stavridis – and Hsia, Sperli, and many others – believe that cyber, unmanned vehicles, and SOF (engaging in both kinetic and Foreign Internal Defense-like missions) will be increasingly important in future warfare, or strategic operations below the level of major combat. But this assessment stems from a few observations:

- Because of America's enormous advantage in conventional capabilities, potential adversaries will seek to weaken us through asymmetric means, i.e. cyber or insurgency/terrorism;

- As demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq (post-liberation), and in Lebanon in 2006, mass and firepower are in and of themselves insufficient to defeat irregular threats;

- The most effective way to counter a cyber threat is with equal or greater cyber capabilities (both defense and offense). The fact that a catastrophic cyberattack could cripple our ability to retaliate is what makes a cyber arms race potentially so unstable (any security studies academics reading this will nod their heads understanding the dangers of a significant first-mover advantage, which makes developing a second-cyber-strike capability vital);

- The most effective way thus far to attack a decentralized network in allied or U.S. occupied countries has proven to be SOF raids against leadership nodes in conjunction with the development of competent indigenous forces (which, to be sure, can be effectively supported with larger troop formations to protect the civilian population and gain the trust/intelligence necessary to perform the first two tasks);

- The most effective way thus far to attack a decentralized network in ungoverned or hostile territory has been UAV strikes against leadership nodes;

- Financial constraints due to America's massive structural debt, and the American public’s fatigue from the last decade of near continuous combat, will restrict our ability to engage in large-scale military interventions for less-than-vital interests.

Which of these contentions would Thompson dispute? Thompson says “Try flying a Predator over Syria, and see how long it lasts?” Well, the Israelis disabled Syrian air defenses through a cyberattack in 2007 and were able to successfully eliminate a nuclear weapons facility. Thompson says “Try using special operators to blunt a North Korean attack” across the DMZ, even though Stavridis never suggested they were a substitute for such a mission. One could easily counter “Try disrupting a terrorist plot by capturing/killing a jihadist leader with 100,000 troops that will take weeks to deploy to inhospitable terrain and produce hundreds of casualties.”

Again, this isn’t to say that large conventional forces won’t be required in the future and shouldn’t be maintained, but rather that the plethora of strategic threats America faces requires a range of more surgical military options than simply the sledgehammer of armored BCTs that take months to deploy in a world where threats emerge rapidly. (We won't even get into the problem of anti-access capabilities here . . . )

Incidentally, a much more balanced and effective critique of my argument above, unsurprisingly, comes from Major General H.R. McMaster, a highly successful counterinsurgent commander in Iraq, who challenged the potential over-reliance on Special Ops raiders and proxy forces in recent remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I highly recommend reading the transcript and anything else McMasters writes, as he is likely this generation's premier soldier/intellectual (or at least in the top three).