Today in Iraq, elusive foes using terrorist and guerrilla tactics are proving more deadly than the now-defunct Saddam Hussein regime was in the "conventional" phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. We ignore asymmetric warfare, which makes everyone a target, at our peril.
The modern military must fundamentally adjust its training, employment, and conception of who fights and who does not to meet the challenges of a new century that promises frequent asymmetric conflicts. The military must evolve to match the threat. Most important, its perception of who and what are targets must change. To terrorists or guerrillas, there is no distinction between support or frontline forces—there are only weaknesses to be exploited. The military therefore must view all personnel as combat personnel who at some time or another could be directly involved in combat.
U.S. armed forces personnel today are organized into two basic groups: those who fight, and those who support. Much of how the military operates is predicated on this notion, including the training and employment of personnel. Technological advances have exacerbated this division by producing equipment whose increasing complexity requires ever more advanced skills from support personnel; training leaves them with less and less time for anything else. As a result, more than ever before, the military depends on an enormous logistics cadre that outnumbers the combat personnel it supports but has little combat training itself. Moreover, some combatants are so separated from their targets through the technologies of power projection that they operate from a position of perceived personal invulnerability.
This division of labor and the apparent safety of distance reflect the thinking of a linear battlefield. The United States, however, faces an era of enemies who will employ asymmetric attacks as well as potential regional conventional opponents who will avoid confronting U.S. strengths. Modern U.S. doctrine stresses the advantages of attacking critical vulnerabilities. Asymmetric warriors apply this doctrine as well. U.S. support forces are a critical vulnerability-and therefore are prime targets. In the first Gulf War, the bulk of those killed were support forces. Since then, there has been an increasing effort by terrorists and others (including the recently departed Iraqi regime) to attack not U.S. conventional combat power, but personnel "behind the lines."
There are few moments in the history of conventional war when there was a clear distinction between supporting personnel and combat personnel. From Agincourt, where the French slaughtered boys in the English baggage train to attempt to save the battle, to Douglas MacArthur's successful operational flanking movement at Inchon, attacking exposed rear support areas long has been a goal of conventional combatants. Naval blockades and modern developments such as the paratrooper, the helicopter, and deep air strike all seek to interdict enemies by attacking where they are most vulnerable.
Because of U.S. military prowess, conventional confrontation will be far less frequent than asymmetric conflict, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism. Among the asymmetric conflicts the United States is fighting at present are those in the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Operation Enduring Freedom, the drug war, and the global war on terror. The goals, missions, and tactics of asymmetric conflict challenge us in ways that differ greatly from conventional warfare.
The ultimate target of guerrilla and terrorist efforts usually does not reflect a strategy of annihilation-such as the total destruction of enemy combat power-as in the West's conception of conventional conflict. Asymmetric warriors often target adversary populations or engage in continued violence to change a government's policies. Representative governments such as in the United States are susceptible to influence applied to public opinion. A strategy of erosion of the will to wage war has succeeded against representative governments in the past—the Vietnam War being one example.
In a strategy of erosion, prolonging conflict and causing casualties are keys to success. Attacking the tactical critical vulnerability of support personnel accomplishes strategic goals because such personnel are not as effective at defending themselves and are critical to the continuation of the war effort. The tactic of blending into the local population, much used by the Vietnamese, is designed specifically for use against conventionally minded governments and populations. Iraqi attempts to target supporting rear-echelon personnel using civilian-clad fedayeen elements left behind the main battlefront, although ultimately unsuccessful, reflected this strategy.
The U.S. armed forces have for years steadily expanded their critical vulnerability. Advancing technologies coupled with the era of large-machine combat have driven up the ratio of support personnel to combat personnel. Civilian contractors often must be deployed forward with support personnel to keep weapon systems functioning. Adversaries take advantage of this vulnerability when possible, as the Iraqis did with the attack on the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company's stray vehicles near An Nasiriyah in the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Technology also has produced situations in which the physical or technological separation between friendly and adversary forces has created the illusion of invulnerability. Personnel manning warships or supporting expeditionary air bases may have little sense of the immediacy of personal combat. Events such as the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996, the attack on the Cole (DDG-67) in 2000, and Iraqi bombing attempts in Kuwait demonstrate that this kind of mentality creates a vulnerability that adversaries are able to exploit.
Modern operational planners repeatedly have devised methods by which to address the growing dependence on increasingly defenseless support personnel. Among the more dramatic of these is the Navy-Marine Corps concept of sea basing, which was used to support the initial U.S. actions in Afghanistan. Sea basing uses the inherent mobility and security of ships to remove support apparatus offshore. Likewise, the reemergence of the expeditionary concept in Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force planning demonstrates a recognition of the need to be able to function in hostile territory against adversaries who might not be easily distinguishable from those we shield. A staff focus on force protection likewise assists in providing a structure for dealing with asymmetric threats in a modern environment beyond field-unit security.
Stability and security operations are additional efforts that confront asymmetric issues. In situations where the United States is not even certain a conflict is a war, such as in the former Yugoslavia or Afghanistan, operations can involve participants whose perceptions of war differ greatly from conventional Western views. Like Somalia, these environments lend themselves to asymmetric approaches for those who attack U.S. forces.
The United States created the joint Special Operations Command in 1987 in part to have a force able to operate independently in hostile environments. Special operations support structures are kept much further from operational areas than their conventional counterparts. That the United States felt the need to resort to Special Operations Command to handle some missions highlights the generally linear perception of personnel in the armed forces. Because exposing the entirety of a conventional force, including its support personnel, to a hostile asymmetric environment is not acceptable, something else had to be done to accommodate such tasks.
The military, however, does have a history of exposing its regular forces to hostile and even asymmetric environments and relying on their skill, ability, and judgment, often with great success. The Army's history of handling asymmetric conflict includes the Indian Wars in the West, the Philippine Insurgency, some actions in World War II, and the Vietnam War. Marines worked with local forces in Central America and the Caribbean in the first three decades of the 20th century to suppress rebellions and establish security, and the Navy's handling of asymmetric threats extends back to the Barbary Pirates. All these operations involved exposing forces and their support personnel to hostile operating environments in which they had to defend themselves. Vestiges of such practices include the "every Marine a rifleman" concept. Although the concept is not well defined in modern practice, support Marines from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing demonstrated its continued utility by successfully defending their forward arming and refueling point facility in southern Iraq against fedayeen forces in March 2003. Moreover, trusting supporting forces to be able to defend themselves sets combat forces loose and allows them the freedom of movement that is a conventional force goal.
There are three fundamental areas where change must occur before the military can change from its current structure of personnel separated into combat and support forces: perception, training, and employment. The most important of these is to eliminate the perception that some personnel simply support and do not fight or only operate advanced systems without having combat skills themselves. This mentality creates a critically vulnerable class of tempting targets that can be exploited by asymmetric warriors. The services must perceive all members of the military as combatants; our enemies do.
Training and employment of personnel must match this new perception. Personal combat skills, including smallarms weapon handling and techniques, and basic tactics, mutual support, and security at the lowest levels prepare service members for combat. Discipline, hard training, perseverance, and leadership prepare military members for individual combat, regardless of whether they work primarily in foxholes or offices. Nothing sends a clearer signal that combat is not expected of a unit than a lack of physical fitness. Fit, trained support echelons can augment air base defense, secure and defend ships, maintain security in logistics trains, and possibly even conduct followon operations behind units designed for combat roles. Such support units could provide additional combat power as well, even though it might not be their primary duty. Moreover, they should be prepared even when in areas considered safe, such as in the United States. Use of contracted base police, for example, while a structure-saving measure, reinforces the erroneous mind-set that units need not establish their own security. It will take a reassessment of priorities to allow all personnel the time and resources to develop combat skills fully, but it will be time well spent.
Captain David is the assistant intelligence officer for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) based in Okinawa, Japan.