Commanding the Contested Zones

 
The U.S. military currently enjoys "command of the commons," to use one academic's phrase.1 This translates into an unparalleled capacity to leverage the oceans, space, and air—and the corresponding ability to negate their use by our antagonists. It is a crucial element of our overwhelming military superiority. While we dominate the commons, however, recent combat operations suggest a shift toward more complex contested zones, including the dense urban jungles and congested littorals, where the majority of the world's population and economic activity are centered.2

Our adversaries realize their relative impotence in conventional force-on-force operations, and they are making an effort to draw U.S. forces into arenas where our conventional capabilities and technological edge are blunted. As evidenced in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to engage us in contested zones, our adversaries will adopt tactics and modes of operations they believe will offset our advantages.

The U.S. military must develop more agile strategies and adaptive tactics if it is to succeed in this complex environment. While our current capability overmatch in conventional operations will continue for some time, we must achieve the same level of capability in more unconventional situations. Building on their expeditionary skills, U.S. forces must improve their capacity for irregular warfare: decentralized and nonlinear operations in the contested zones, including the littorals and complex terrain. This new requirement does not obviate the need for the core competencies we currently provide to the combatant commanders (CoComs). The capabilities we seek to develop and test have been articulated in a concept called distributed operations, which adds an arrow to the CoComs' quivers.

Distributed Operations Defined

Distributed operations entail netted units physically dispersed and operating over an extended battle space. They are characterized by decentralization, multidimensionality, simultaneity, and continuous pressure over the adversary's entire system to preclude his ability to reconstitute or adjust. Distributed operations are conducted by squad- to battalion-sized units operating as part of a Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF). Units trained and equipped to perform such operations can make a contribution across the full range of military operations, from stability and support missions to joint forcible entries.

This concept is consistent with current trends in conflict and the enduring aspects of the operational art. It is particularly oriented on the acute requirements for greater agility, decentralization, and multidimensionality in future conflict.3 Distributed operations seek to achieve the high degree of operational tempo and fluidity inherent to maneuver warfare. They avoid linear, sequential and predictable operations, and they do not rely extensively on attrition. They are based on decentralized means of command and control, which pushes decision making down to the lowest level, exploits human capital and agility, and accelerates the operational speed and tempo of operations.

Success in the contested zones requires situational awareness, autonomy, and increased freedom of action at lower tactical levels, thereby enabling subordinate commanders to compress decision cycles, seize the initiative, and exploit fleeting opportunities. Shared situational awareness—owing to extensive training and a common operating picture—accelerates the horizontal integration and mutually supporting action of spatially dispersed units. Centralizing decisions at too high a level leads to greater uncertainty and increased latency of information. In the contested zone, opportunities are fleeting and must be exploited rapidly.

Distributed forces present complexity to the adversary. The relative mobility of the dispersed force and its modular structure enable rapid adaptation and self-organization, thus presenting the opponent with a greater degree of uncertainty regarding its positions, intentions, and objectives. Complexity induces confusion and ambiguity in the opponent and produces a competitive advantage for our forces. The more inputs (or ambiguity) the enemy must recognize and react to, the harder his decision making becomes and the slower he can react. Our advantage also leverages our ability to introduce forces and create effects over an extended battle space, which puts the enemy at a potential disadvantage in many locations—in time and space. The challenge for us in the future is to present an appropriate degree of complexity at the right scale as the enemy adapts.4

Another means of increasing complexity is to employ combined arms in concert with strike operations. We call this multidimensionality to extend the traditional definition of combined arms to include kinetic and nonkinetic means and all forms of joint fires. The challenge is to target the opponent from multiple sources, thereby limiting his options while increasing ours. This rarely can be achieved with a single source or form of attack. U.S. military operations in Kosovo disproved the idea that a single-dimensional attack could achieve operational results.5 Like precision air power, unitary solutions can produce only limited effects, and those effects frequently are transitory if not followed up by maneuver forces.6
 
The adversary is further disrupted by combined arms or multidimensional attacks if our force can combine these effects across the depth of his force or defensive system simultaneously. Rapid dislocation of the opponent is best achieved by concomitantly striking or maneuvering against him in many dimensions. This is the essence of simultaneity.7 Achieving operational shock in this fashion remains an enduring and valid means of gaining success.8 By increasing the ability to simultaneously attack in many directions with all forms of fires and maneuver, distributed operations put continuous pressure on the enemy. The resulting higher tempo prevents the opponent from adapting or readjusting his force posture or from effectively reconstituting capabilities. Continuous pressure degrades his overall combat effectiveness and produces paralysis or induces systemic collapse. The ultimate aim of any commander is to "implant a picture of defeat in his opponent's mind."9 Continuous pressure from multiple lines of attack throughout the battle space is how we seek to implant this picture against a diffused and unconventional threat.

The combination of these characteristics blinds and disorients the adversary. It produces a sudden psychological dislocation when he realizes his options and assets are declining at an accelerating rate. Distributed operations provide an additive capability to the combatant and MAGTF commanders. They influence a much greater area—in depth and breadth—than can be accomplished with more conventional operations. The commander is able to influence and shape the battle space across the range of military operations, from patrolling during stability operations to shaping missions conducted during sustained operations ashore in a conventional fight.

Distributed operations can be used to:

• Enable persistent and actionable intelligence collection by maintaining observation over designated objectives or personnel. This can be accomplished from the lower end of the conflict spectrum to joint advanced force operations by an expeditionary strike group (ESG) early in the campaign. (Persistent, actionable intelligence obviously is essential during major combat operations ashore as well.)
• Shape the battle space or act as a screening force; again, either to precede forcible entry operations or during sustained operations ashore.
• Direct and call precise joint fires on targets, especially elusive moving targets in complex terrain.

Distributed operations help to build situational awareness and provide persistent and actionable intelligence by building a complete picture from the bottom up. Inserted teams can contribute to the overall intelligence effort and can provide additional fidelity to the common operating picture. The MAGTF will exploit this intelligence throughout the operation using "reconnaissance pull" tactics to take advantage of gaps while avoiding identified obstacles and strong points.

From a commander's perspective, distributed operations generate options for exploitation by either ground forces or by other elements of the joint force. Precision targeting devices enable distributed units to conduct observation and the calls for fires. Automated position-location devices and a strong communications network enhance fire support coordination. Ground mobility assets will promote maneuver and reassembly of squads when a gap in the enemy's defensive posture is identified, or when the enemy attempts to maneuver against separate units. Distributed operations include maneuver throughout the extended battle space.

Maneuvering across the dispersed battlefield may trigger an opponent to try to mass his defensive forces in response. By doing so, he increases his vulnerability to our precision fires, made more lethal with the intelligence and targeting guidance of distributed units. As the enemy disperses to avoid our strikes, he is increasingly vulnerable to our attacking squads or larger units.
  10 (See Figure 1.) Commanders normally will deploy with their subordinates or position themselves to best support the mission. They must be prepared to seamlessly transition between various modes of operation and conduct conventional operations as part of a larger MAGTF.

In addition to enhanced and more focused training, execution of distributed operations will require certain capabilities, including position-location indicators, networked communications systems, and target designation equipment designed for small-unit use. Depending on the mission and nature of the terrain, teams will be provided with tactical mobility assets, usually internally transportable vehicles that can be deployed by the MV-22 Osprey. Logistic support will be air delivered primarily by unmanned aerial vehicles or unmanned logistics delivery systems.

Development and testing of this concept will focus in the near term on the forward-deployed ESG and its organic Marine expeditionary unit (special operations capable) (MEU[SOC]). Although distributed operations are relevant across a wide range of scenarios and are applicable to larger formations, we deliberately focus here on forward-deployed naval forces at the unit level (squad to company) to provide combatant commanders the speed of response and flexibility they need to provide early joint operations with persistent surveillance. This level of capability is most relevant to today's global threat. Further, it will allow us to refine the individual and unit training necessary to bring this capability to the operational level of war.

The basic building block of distributed operations is the rifle squad, augmented as necessary with mission-essential specialists. Underpinning this team will be additional small-unit training aimed at independent tactical actions, patrolling, and fire support coordination. This special training will be part of the ESG and MEU predeployment training cycle. We will develop the necessary training and experimental plans to field a prototype distributed operations capable MEU as part of an ESG deployment in 2006. The operational experimentation will increase understanding of the potential for distributed operations and help planners rapidly refine the requisite training and required technologies with the help of field input from the Fleet Marine Force.

The idea of dispersed or distributed operations is not new. It is consistent with the historical trajectory of combined arms warfare, reflecting a trend for combined arms by smaller and smaller units over increasingly extended areas. Distributed operations shares some commonality with the tactics and techniques pursued by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory during the Hunter Warrior experiments in the 1990s.11 The current concept, however, places greater emphasis on decentralized decision making and more dynamic maneuver, while seeking to leverage many insights about command and control and training garnered from the Hunter Warrior series. This approach is consistent with guidance from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and emerging joint concepts and is compatible with Marine Corps doctrine.12 Finally, it accepts the enduring nature of the fog, friction, uncertainty, and chance that are "conditions embedded in the fabric of war."13 Distributed operations are designed to deal with ambiguous threats and help commanders fill in the blanks that technology alone cannot resolve. We seek to leverage the abilities of Marine forces by harnessing technology, without becoming slavishly devoted to the technological dimension.

Historical Examples

Looking back farther, there are other precedents that contain elements consistent with distributed operations. During World War I, the German Army developed "Hutier" tactics to escape the mindless attrition of trench warfare.14 These tactics revealed a remarkable element of adaptation under severe wartime conditions. After the war, German military officers devised the fundamentals of blitzkrieg (lightning war). Their approach maximized the shock and simultaneity of combined arms to achieve a breakthrough and collapse of enemy defenses.

U.S. Marines are no strangers to distributed and simultaneous operations. In World War II, they devised a multidimensional series of strikes to dislodge the Japanese defending Guadalcanal and its surrounding islands. Mixing naval gunfire with close air support, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner's Task Force 62 conducted five separate assaults in early August 1942 that initially stunned the Japanese defenders. Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Edson's 1st Raider Battalion conducted an assault on Tulagi, while another rifle company landed on Florida Island as a supporting attack. The 1st Marine Division then conducted the main attack on Guadalcanal. Later in the afternoon, the 1st Parachute Battalion seized Gavutu and Tanambogo. This demonstrated the versatility of well-trained and well-led Marines, in both conventional and unconventional warfare.15

The Marines employed different variations of distributed operations in the Vietnam War. Combined Action Program (CAP) units reinforced Vietnamese Popular Force units in isolated villages and demonstrated how squad-sized elements can have operational effects in stability operations. Their limited connectivity made them vulnerable, but they secured many villages against the Viet Cong, and history views the CAP effort as an effective counterinsurgency measure.16

In the 1990s, versions of distributed operations occurred in Chechnya. Vastly outnumbered and completely outclassed in terms of technology, the defenders of Grozny managed to maul their Russian attackers. As reported by a team of analysts, this may be the face of future conflict. The Chechens fought back with small, mobile teams of light but well-equipped fighters. Instead of centralized command and control, the Chechens gave great latitude for action to their dispersed but highly interconnected bands, which fought in a nonlinear fashion, enabling them to repeatedly swarm on advancing Russian columns from all directions.17

Afghanistan and Iraq

Our lessons-learned efforts underscore the utility of distributed operations in today's war on terrorism. During Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), for example, al Qaeda fighters proved quite elusive until cornered. Long-range, precision fires did not dislodge them, and standoff warfare was not effective. It took determined and highly professional forces, capable of adroitly applying fire and maneuver, to defeat determined elements that knew how to exploit complex terrain and proved resistant to unitary solutions.18

Lessons from OEF and early lessons gathered in Iraq reinforce the need for improving our capacity to conduct distributed operations. The joint after-action report from Operation Iraqi Freedom indicates that many commanders believed there was limited actionable intelligence and excessive reliance on overhead imagery (with long cycle times) that caused a reversion to attrition operations. Units trained and equipped to conduct distributed operations could have been deployed to augment reconnaissance efforts, screen the Iraqi borders to prevent infiltration, and perform more responsive battle damage assessments.19

As Marine Corps battalion commanders found in Fallujah, small-unit leaders have to be prepared to face complex situations with all the training and tools at their disposal. Agile adversaries have demonstrated the ability to adapt with increasingly sophisticated tactics, including simultaneous attacks.20 We must prepare our "strategic" corporals and sergeants for their roles in winning the three-block war.

Conclusions

National security objectives require us to do more than "command the commons." We must leverage our dominance of the commons to achieve operational success ashore. This cannot be achieved from afar or with a single tool because tomorrow's threats are too adaptive. To secure our nation's interests, we must master the ambiguity and chaos of the contested zones, where future fights will be won or lost.

The barbarians are not at sea—they are at the city gates and beyond.21 This does not mean that four pillars of "Sea Power 21" are inappropriate to today's global challenge and tomorrow's conflicts. Sea Shield, Sea Basing, Sea Strike, and ForceNet are necessary components of naval transformation. Commandant of the Marine Corps General Michael Hagee and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark have detailed how their services are adapting in tandem to deal with tomorrow's threat. Distributed operations are a new element of this ongoing effort.

Because we do not have all the answers yet, we are pursuing operational experimentation with an ESG, which is part of an ongoing process of debate and discovery. Like the MEU(SOC) and maritime prepositioning in the 1980s, the distributed operations concept is the latest in a series of transformational initiatives. The Corps can extend its impressive record of innovation—but only with the invaluable input of Marines and sailors around the world. While we continue to dominate the commons, we must master the contested zones.

General Schmidle is director of the Expeditionary Force Development Center at Quantico, Virginia. Colonel Hoffman is a research fellow at the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at Quantico.

   1. Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security 28, no. 1, Summer 2003, pp. 5-46. back to article
   2. Ralph Peters, "Our Soldiers, Their Cities," Parameters, Spring 2000, pp. 43-50. back to article
   3. Robert H. Scales Jr., Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America's Military (Baltimore, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); Richard Sinnreich and Williamson Murray, "Joint Warfighting in the 21st Century" (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis, 2000), Joint Advanced Warfighting Program, pp. 10-12. back to article
   4. Maj. Christopher D. Kolenda, USA, "Transforming How We Fight: A Conceptual Approach," Naval War College Review, Spring 2003, pp. 100-121; VAdm. Arthur Cebrowski, USN (Ret.), "Transforming Transformation," Transformation Trends (Washington, DC: Office of the Sec. of Def., 19 April 2004). back to article
   5. Stephen Biddle, "The New Way of War?: Debating the Kosovo Model," Foreign Affairs, May-June 2002, pp. 138-44. back to article
   6. Eliot A. Cohen, "Kosovo and the New American Way of War," in Andrew J. Bacevich and Eliot A. Cohen, eds., War over Kosovo: Politics and Strategy in a Global Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp. 54-55. back to article
   7. Williamson Murray and Robert Scales, The War In Iraq: A Military History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 248. back to article
   8. See Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory (London: Frank Cass, 1997). back to article
   9. Richard E. Simpkin, Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare (London: Brassey's, 1994), p. 227. back to article
  10. On harmonious initiative see Gen. C. C. Krulak, USMC, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting (Washington, DC: Headquarters, USMC, June 1997), p. 88. back to article
  11. James A. Lasswell, "Assessing Hunter Warrior," Armed Forces Journal International, May 1997, pp. 14-15. For a counter, see John Schmidt, "A Critique of Hunter Warrior Concept," Marine Corps Gazette, June 1998, pp. 13-19. back to article
  12. Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 1, Warfighting, pp. 88-89. back to article
  13. Paul K. Van Riper and Robert H. Scales Jr., "Preparing for War in the 21st Century," Parameters, Summer 1997, pp. 4-14; H. R. McMaster, "Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War" (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, November 2003) (student monograph). back to article
  14. Timothy T. Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine during the First World War (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, July 1981). back to article
  15. On Edson and the Raiders, see Jon Hoffman, Once a Legend: Edson of the Raiders (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994). back to article
  16. Andrew Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 72-77; Francis J. West Jr., The Village (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). back to article
  17. John Arquilla and Theodore Karasik, "Chechnya: A Glimpse of Future Conflict?" Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 22, June 1999, p. 208. back to article
  18. Stephen Biddle, "Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for the Army and Defense Policy" (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 2002) (monograph). back to article
  19. Elaine Grossman, "JFCOM Draft Report Finds U.S. Forces Reverted to Attrition in Iraq," Inside the Pentagon, 25 March 2004, p. 1. back to article
  20. Thomas Ricks, "Insurgent Display New Sophistication," The Washington Post, 14 April 2004, p. A1. back to article
  21. Paul H. Marx, "Barbarians at the Gate," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May 2004, pp. 32-36. back to article

                                                                                        
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