Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid DominanceUllman, Harlan
History
Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid Dominance
Ullman, Harlan
Rapid dominance (Military science)
In building an alternative intellectual concept, it is useful to rely
on successful lessons of the past. For five decades, we have been
successful in applying containment and deterrence in the Cold War.
When deterrence or diplomacy failed as in Kuwait, then the use of
force was inevitable. A first-order issue is how can we augment or
improve the use of existing military capability should it be required.
Should force be needed, our proposal calls for establishing a regime
of Rapid Dominance throughout the area of strategic as well as
operational concern. By Rapid Dominance, we are seeking the capability
to dominate, control, and isolate the entire environment in, around,
over, and under the objective area as quickly as possible, and with
fewer forces than currently envisaged, although direct insertion of
forces is an important component depending upon the tactical
situation. In many cases, this capacity need not be the traditional
firepower solution of only physically destroying an adversary's
military capabilities. Our focus is on the Clausewitzian principle of
affecting the adversary's will to resist as the first order of
business, quickly if not nearly instantaneously. A second goal would
be to stop an attack during the first stages. A third goal, should it
be achievable, would be to promote a regime of political deterrence
that might restrain aggression in the first place.
To accomplish the rendering an adversary incapable of action means
neutralizing the ability to command; to provide logistics; to organize
society; and to function; as well as to control, regulate and deny the
adversary of information, intelligence, and understanding of what is
and what is not happening. This means we must control all necessary
intelligence and information on our forces-the ultimate form of
stealth-and on an adversary's forces as well and then exploit total
situational awareness for rapid action.
Regarding the emergence of current military thought and doctrine, as
implied earlier, warfare today may be in the early and far less mature
stages of a major revolution than is generally assumed. It is
understandable that despite major strategic reassessments, current
doctrine is still highly influenced by Cold War tactics and strategy
and perhaps by the iron grip of the history of conflict since the
early 19th century.
Since Napoleon, the conduct of war between major states has been
largely dominated by combining industrial might with vast amounts of
manpower over time and space. The United States advanced Napoleon's
use of industry and mass armies in the Civil War and our planning up
to the Cold War tended to follow this same pattern. World War II, of
course, exemplified the triumph of this industrial, mobilization, and
massive use of force approach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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