In late January, Air Force General Michael Minihan, commander of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, ordered his personnel to accelerate preparations for war with China. The ensuing debate about the general’s controversial prediction of war in 2025 and his direction to “aim for the head” at the pistol range distracted from an urgent need for combat readiness. Many military personnel view themselves as technical or administrative specialists removed from the brutality of war. Frank discussion of violence makes them uncomfortable. Yet, this squeamish perspective detracts from the military’s principal purpose of deterring or, if necessary, winning a war. Service members must embrace their role in combat to prevent conflict and respond to attacks.
Deterrence is not an agreement—it is a threat. Deterrence relies on the credible promise of unendurable violence. Russian President Vladimir Putin must believe that an attack on Poland would provoke NATO to decimate Russian forces. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un must know that launching a nuclear weapon into South Korea precipitates his death and the destruction of his government. Chinese President Xi Jinping must fear that an attack on U.S. interests ends with his fleet at the bottom of the ocean. Acknowledging the aggressive nature of deterrence does not require predicting inevitable war, but it demands a military that is technically, physically, and mentally prepared for combat.
A major conflict will not distinguish between combatants and support personnel. Modern combat will stretch rapidly across the globe and into space and cyberspace. Units and people far from the battle lines will see their operations and safety threatened. General Minihan’s cargo aircraft personnel may find the enemy sabotages their maintenance, disrupts their communications, and attacks their flight lines thousands of miles from the invasion beaches. Even in much smaller conflicts, violence can arrive unannounced. In October 2000, the USS Cole (DDG-67) was refueling in Aden Harbor, Yemen, with an insufficient force protection posture set. As a small boat maneuvered alongside, the men on board smiled and waved. Those men then detonated an explosive that blew a 32-foot-wide hole in the Cole, killing 17 of her crew.
Understanding these risks imparts a healthy sense of urgency. A ship deploying without a working self-defense system is not just an annoyance; it is a risk worth the effort to fix. An exercise with allies is not just political theater; it is an opportunity to ensure they can track a submarine that might otherwise sink an aircraft carrier. Aggressively improving minor capabilities builds credible deterrence. In today’s threat environment, that is an effort that cannot wait.
The same urgency applies to psychological readiness. History offers countless studies of combatants so mentally unprepared for violence that they fought and often died without employing perfectly functional weapons. An examination of World War II estimates that only 25 percent of frontline troops attempted to kill the enemy in combat. This deficiency held even for seasoned units and technical engagements. A study of an F-86 Sabre squadron in the Korean War showed that just 50 percent of pilots fired their cannons in combat, and a meager 10 percent ever hit anything. Aversion to violence robbed these forces of most of their firepower. Credible combat readiness demands countering this aversion with a force mentally prepared for violence.
In On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman identifies several psychological weapons that improve effectiveness in combat, including leadership, group cohesion, and mental conditioning. Aggressive leaders are role models of competence and composure under fire. They wield the moral authority to exhort and steady their subordinates in periods of chaos. Group cohesion motivates peers to improve individual performance. A cohesive team fights according to clear lines of responsibility. Members see each other performing their respective roles, and they execute their individual tasks to protect the team. Mental conditioning inoculates troops against the stress of combat and psychologically automates skills. Simulators offer a prime example of how realistic training mentally conditions warfighters. A pilot firing a missile in combat has practiced thousands of iterations in a simulator. Fear and apprehension fade behind executing conditioned procedures to designate and track targets and launch weapons. Employing these psychological weapons can transform victims into warriors.
To build a credible, aggressive deterrent force, military officers must apply the principles of leadership, group cohesion, and mental conditioning in three lines of effort:
- Sharpen your sword. Seize every opportunity to hone your tactical knowledge and decision-making. Refuse to accept mediocre training and apathetic support. Think about what war may demand of you and how you will meet those challenges.
- Harden your troops. Speak frankly to your teams about combat. Discuss your unit’s role and its vulnerabilities. Find ways to teach the skills and instill the toughness required to fight and win in a conflict. Assign individual expectations that personalize a member’s role in survival and victory.
- Embrace risk. Preparing for combat means intelligently accepting risk. Training for expeditionary operations may risk temporarily stranding an aircraft. Combining damage-control drills with a live fire requires a commanding officer to delegate authority to his or her subordinates. “Crawl, walk, run” is only a sound strategy if you have a plan to start sprinting. Accepting risks improves training scenarios and teaches leaders to manage risk in combat.
This approach embraces combat readiness across the force and reinforces General Minihan’s underlying message. Violence may arrive without warning and reach people who thought themselves safe. Effectively deterring conflict requires urgently building all units’ technical, physical, and mental warfighting capabilities. The best way to prevent war is to prepare as if it will start tonight.
