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Document created: 1 March 2008
Air & Space Power Journal - Spring 2008
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All of war is about will. Those who wage war follow Clausewitz’s dictum: “To impose our will on the enemy is [war’s] object. To secure that object, we must render the enemy powerless” (emphasis in original).1 Down through history, rendering the enemy powerless most often meant denying him the means to resist by defeating his fielded military forces. There are, however, other ways of rendering an enemy powerless or otherwise convincing him to accede to one’s will. Collectively called strategic attack (SA), they have a historical pedigree that long predates the name.
This article examines portions of that pedigree, reveals its length and variety, and wonders openly why one finds so little written on the subject. Always an intuitive part of the commander’s tool kit, SA nonetheless has not received much explicit attention in documented US best practices. Such documentation takes the official form of joint doctrine, which mentions SA only seven times.2 Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Joint Operations, offers this short paragraph as the only explanation of SA:
The JFC [joint force commander] should consider conducting strategic attacks, when feasible. A strategic attack is a JFC-directed offensive action against a target—whether military, political, economic, or other—that is specifically selected to achieve national or military strategic objectives. These attacks seek to weaken the adversary’s ability or will to engage in conflict or continue an action and as such, could be part of a campaign, major operation, or conducted independently as directed by the President or [secretary of defense]. Additionally, these attacks may achieve strategic objectives without necessarily having to achieve operational objectives as a precondition. Suitable targets may include but are not limited to enemy strategic COGs [centers of gravity]. All components of a joint force may have capabilities to conduct strategic attacks.3
This is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. One finds no mention of historical best practices or unique aspects of SA that may entail doctrinal consideration. Furthermore, joint doctrine does not address how such attacks achieve strategic objectives without achieving operational objectives as a precondition. It clearly states that a JFC “should consider” SA and just as clearly implies that it represents an effective use of “all components” of a joint force. Still, no joint doctrine exists on the subject, save this one brief mention. In contrast, one finds entire books on barriers, obstacles, and mines as well as the use of “intermodal containers” in the joint-doctrine hierarchy.4 Doubtless, these important subjects warrant full mention in doctrine, but isn’t a form of warfare that promises neutralization of enemy COGs without having to fight through enemy forces also worthy of doctrinal treatment?
In fairness, Air Force doctrine includes an entire book on SA. (In fact, a new and improved version hit the streets as of June 2007.)5 Perhaps therein lies part of the reason that joint doctrine does not contain fuller treatment. But we will return to the reasons for the dearth of joint doctrine at the end of this article, after considering SA itself in greater detail.
Joint doctrine’s definition of SA, cited above—“JFC-directed offensive action against a target . . . specifically selected to achieve national or military strategic objectives”—does not reveal much. An earlier joint definition described SA as “offensive action intended to directly affect an adversary’s centers of gravity.”6 The current Air Force publication on SA defines it as “offensive action specifically selected to achieve national strategic objectives.”7 These provide little additional illumination. An older Air Force definition, produced by a general-officer-level symposium on the subject held in 2002, is perhaps the most illuminating (and certainly most specific): “offensive action conducted by command authorities aimed at generating effects that most directly achieve our national security objectives by affecting an adversary’s leadership, conflict-sustaining resources, and/or strategy.”8 This puts the subject in a bit more context. To understand the matter fully, however, one must examine the specifics of that definition.
“Offensive Action”
Victory normally requires offensive action; thus, SA is the proactive and aggressive portion of strategic operations, which also include strategic defense (e.g., Cold War nuclear deterrence and the placement of Patriot missiles in Israel during Operation Desert Storm) and other strategic operations (e.g., the Berlin airlift), all of which “most directly achieve our national security objectives.”
“Conducted by Command Authorities”
The joint definition gives the option of directing SA to the JFC. SA is most often conducted by components of the joint force, particularly the air and special operations components; thus, SA operations come under the purview and approval of those component commanders who support the JFC’s intent. Conversely, SA often assumes such importance and sensitivity to a campaign that it receives approval directly from national leaders above the JFC, such as the president, secretary of defense, or a combatant commander. In fact, combatant commanders other than the one who appointed the JFC (such as the commanders of US Strategic Command [STRATCOM] or Special Operations Command) may sometimes have authority to conduct SA operations in the JFC’s area, independent of that commander’s own plan or intent—one of the reasons that we need joint doctrinal guidance on SA.
“Aimed at Generating Effects”
Defeating or coercing adversaries requires effects-based SA. That is, one must design actions against adversary systems to create specific desired effects that contribute directly to achieving military and political objectives, attainment of which delivers a set of end-state conditions that confers continuing advantage. Furthermore, one must do so while avoiding specific undesired effects that will hamper the creation of such conditions. The conduct of SA encourages taking an effects-based approach to military operations.
“Most Directly Achieve Our
National Security Objectives”
The phrase most directly is the key to understanding this aspect of SA. Oftentimes, the accumulation of tactical actions against an enemy’s fielded military forces also offers an effective way of achieving national security objectives; however, it frequently does not represent the most direct means in terms of level of effort or of targets selected. Such tactical victory against fielded forces often comes at a higher cost with regard to lives, treasure, time, and opportunities. So SA may prove more efficient as well as more direct. Ironically, historians such as B. H. Liddell Hart labeled attacks that bypass enemy forces “the indirect approach.”9 This illustrates how deeply ingrained the idea of force-on-force war has become in the military mind-set. In fact, SA is more direct, seeking to bypass the operational-level effects of traditional warfare and directly achieve strategic aims (see figure).
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Every system has some sort of directing function; every human system has a leader or leaders. In many cases, attacks that neutralize these leaders can eliminate enemy resistance, rendering the enemy powerless. Historically, as we shall see, this has most often entailed directly attacking strategic leaders; moreover, we now have the ability to attack the infrastructure that supports and connects that leadership function to the rest of the system. Of course, in today’s context, one must conduct attacks on leadership in accordance with the law of armed conflict, which maintains that leaders must be legitimate military targets.
“Conflict-Sustaining Resources”
It is often possible to target an adversary’s means of conducting or continuing a conflict. The support necessary to sustain resource-intensive modern warfare (even primitive war relies on resources of some sort) provides many lucrative targets, speeds the enemy’s collapse, and removes options from enemy commanders.
“Strategy”
Sun Tzu said that the best policy in war is to defeat the enemy’s strategy; this requires that one hold at risk what the adversary seeks to obtain or deny him the ability to obtain it. SA can often deny an adversary strategic choices, frequently in conjunction with the denial of conflict-sustaining resources. That is, SA may deny the enemy the means of engaging in conflict or the pursuit of certain strategic choices in ways that do not involve direct destruction of his military forces.
Unique Considerations
Many considerations distinguish the conduct of SA from that of more traditional counterforce warfare. The selection of targets differs, of course, as may the means of attacking them. The sophistication required to conduct SA successfully against modern systems entails a much greater intelligence-analysis cost than do operations that simply attrit enemy fielded forces. This necessitates the development of intelligence-federation partnerships with national-level agencies and sometimes even with intelligence services of foreign governments in order to analyze systems adequately. Commanders must ensure that such preparation work happens before crises develop and conflict ensues. Further, in counterforce operations it may be possible to gauge progress simply by counting numbers of enemy troops killed or pieces of equipment destroyed, but assessing the effects of SA demands much greater sophistication in choosing measures and indicators. It also calls for more patience from commanders and national leaders since progress toward the achievement of objectives may show few outward signs until one fulfills the objectives themselves. Yet, joint doctrine mentions none of these considerations.
One Thing Strategic Attack Is Not
SA is not synonymous with nuclear or atomic, as the Cold War’s long association of the word strategic with nuclear used to imply. Nonetheless, one can use nuclear weapons to conduct SA, as in the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945. In the context of SA, strategic refers to the level of effects—not the methods used to create them. Potentially, one can employ any weapon system to conduct SA, even those as simple as the spear and the sword, as historical examples show.
From what source is this information on SA derived? Is there a record of historical success that demonstrates best practices? In fact, one does exist although, of course, attacks we would consider SA today were not so named by historians.
One early instance occurred at the Battle of Issus in November of 333 BC. Alexander the Great defeated the Persians when he “drove hard with his cavalry at [Persian] King Darius himself, wanting not so much to defeat the Persian army as to win the victory with his own hands.”10 Alexander drove Darius from the field and wrested his empire from him. Similarly, Charles Martel’s Frankish infantry at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD isolated Emir Abd-er Rahman, the Muslim commander, and “pierced him through with many spears, so that he died, then all the [Muslim] host fled before the enemy,” thus saving Western Europe from further Muslim advances.11 The story of David versus Goliath also comes to mind. In the context of ancient battle, ground forces usually conducted SA against strategic leaders. Getting to the leader, of course, usually involved a degree of force-on-force engagement, but not the tactical defeat of the entire enemy force (as in most other ancient battles). Still, the long existence of SA proves its pedigree and the fact that surface forces can conduct it as well as any other element of the joint force. Although force-on-force engagement settled most battles, SA (when possible) proved at least an effective adjunct to attrition and annihilation, rendering military operations both more effective and efficient. Some people might consider Gen William T. Sherman’s famous march to the sea and Gen Philip Sheridan’s pillage of the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War SA campaigns, in that they sought to deny the Confederacy vital conflict-sustaining resources while avoiding direct engagement with Confederate forces.
Within what joint doctrine has come to call “irregular warfare,” SA has also had its place.12 From 1899 to 1902, the United States engaged in a war to suppress Philippine insurrection against American rule. Regardless of the propriety of this imperialist venture, bloody and brutal on both sides, the war’s most famous incident involved the capture of Philippine insurrection leader Emilio Aguinaldo by US troops in 1901. Some question exists regarding the legality of the ruse used to capture Aguinaldo according to the rules of war (US troops posed as prisoners of allied Filipino scouts, dressed in Filipino Army—not US—uniforms). Nonetheless, the action effectively ended resistance throughout most of the Philippines and represented an effective use of SA by a ground force in the context of irregular warfare.13
Special operations forces (SOF) often play a critical role in SA. In 1943 Norwegian and British commando teams destroyed German supplies of heavy water and sabotaged the plants used to produce them in an action dubbed by the British special operations executive “the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II.”14 It also offered a tremendously effective example of SA designed to deny Hitler a strategy option by preventing him from creating weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Similarly, the Allied submarine campaign against Japan in the Pacific theater during World War II showed an effective use of SA against resources: Allied submarines specifically sought to avoid contact with the Imperial Japanese Navy, instead going directly after commercial shipping. This campaign not only receives almost as much credit as the atomic bombing of Japan for forcing an end to the war, but also demonstrates the effective use of SA by a purely naval force. Of course, the atomic bombing, perhaps the most famous example, embodied the purest form of SA: delivery of two weapons that had direct and nearly immediate desired strategic consequences.
After World War II, the aircraft became one of the most effective systems for conducting SA. In 1942 Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle and a small contingent of B-25 bombers operating off carriers in the central Pacific conducted an almost similarly “pure” example of SA. Avoiding Japanese air defenses, the raids caused only insignificant damage to the enemy’s capabilities. Though intended primarily to bolster morale in the United States and demonstrate that Allied forces could indeed strike Japan, this action had more far-reaching strategic consequences. First, it revealed to Japan’s political leadership the country’s vulnerability, leading to a strategic realignment of its air forces from China to the home islands, causing, in essence, virtual attrition of the enemy’s capability in China. Second, the attack convinced the Japanese general staff to pursue the course of action that led to the Battle of Midway and decisive defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In this case, SA greatly facilitated operational-level campaigns concurrently under way and effectively shortened the war in the Pacific.
During the Combined Bomber Offensive in Europe in World War II, Allied air attacks against German rail and inland waterway systems struck a fatal blow against the German economy. Even though the productive capacity of individual factories increased throughout most of 1944, the disruption of transportation nearly immobilized the economy as a whole, almost stripped Germany of electrical power (due to the interruption of coal shipments), and greatly hampered the movement of the enemy’s armies. These efforts might have ended the war in Europe by themselves had Germany’s resistance in the field not collapsed simultaneously. “The attack on transportation was the decisive blow that completely disorganized the German economy. It reduced war production in all categories and made it difficult to move what was produced to the front. The attack also limited the tactical mobility of the German army.”15 In essence, this amounted to a fatal attack on a conflict-sustaining resource.
The SA portion of Operation Just Cause in Panama in 1989—aerial gunships destroying Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega’s Commandancia, for example—disrupted his command and control capabilities and helped set the context for his eventual isolation and capture by US forces. Similarly, the extensive SA portion of Desert Storm disrupted Saddam Hussein’s command and control by neutralizing many of his regime-control mechanisms, nearly leading to the downfall of his regime in the wake of the ground campaign that removed his troops from Kuwait. In Operation Allied Force, SA conducted by combined air forces coerced Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic into withdrawing his forces from Kosovo.
The case of Allied Force is interesting from the SA perspective for a couple of reasons. First, the true SA portion of the campaign began late, after many weeks of direct aerial attacks on Serbian fielded forces had failed. Second, the selection of SA targets was very sophisticated. Coalition strategists chose to selectively target industries and businesses associated with Milosevic’s kleptocratic cronies. They combined physical attacks against these facilities with cyberspace attacks on the cronies themselves (e.g., personally addressed faxes telling them that their businesses were being bombed). Although we targeted civilian infrastructure to weaken Serbian public support for Milosevic, these nonlethal assaults caused no lasting damage (e.g., carbon-filament attacks against electrical facilities that temporarily took down much civilian power).16 Unlike coalition counterforce action, SA did prove effective in bringing about a desirable end to this particular campaign.
This success, however, does not point the way toward what commentator Ralph Peters has called “immaculate warfare.”17 Campaigns in which nondestructive SA “wins the day” will be the rare exception, not the rule. SA is most effective in concert with other efforts, including counterforce operations. Operation Iraqi Freedom offers a better template. That campaign began with an unsuccessful but nonetheless disruptive attempt to kill Saddam outright, and SA continued throughout, disrupting leadership functions, denying conflict-sustaining resources, and neutralizing suspected Iraqi WMD sites. We used SA in much the same way in Desert Storm—or, for that matter, in World War II. Regardless of the medium from which it is conducted, SA helps the joint/combined force seize the initiative, disrupt the adversary’s decision cycle and decision calculus, critically affect the adversary’s strategic COGs, and otherwise establish the terms of the conflict in the manner and time of our choosing. It is a vital part of comprehensive strategy and operational design.
Our enemies certainly think so: they used one of the more spectacular examples of SA against us in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, even choosing to use aircraft as the means of delivery. Whether their use of SA was successful remains to be seen, but it certainly did have profound strategic consequences. For example, we use SA today in ongoing operations in the global war on terror to deny our enemies access to vital resources such as conflict-sustaining financial assets and to eliminate the enemy’s legitimate combatant leadership, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The hunt for al-Qaeda and other terrorist leaders continues daily in the ongoing war (much of it carried out by elements of the joint force other than air). With boots on the ground in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, SA will once again become the province of all service and functional components of the joint force.
As we have seen, SA remains distinct from other operations and has a track record of historical best (and worst) practices. It also requires that commanders consider factors sufficiently different from other operations to warrant doctrinal treatment. So why the relative silence in joint doctrine?
The answer to that question leaves many people uncomfortable. The simple explanation is that most opposition to SA in joint doctrine comes from the ground services, which see it as a threat to their perceived status as the decisive arm of the US military instrument of power. The fact that joint airpower and SOF conduct most SA today acts as an irritant since many members of the ground forces—the US Army and Marine Corps—consider those components of the joint force mere supporting elements of their decisive arms. Such a reaction is understandable to a degree: armies fight other armies, and ground-force commanders think in terms of defeating enemy forces. This situation has created a culture rich in tradition and emotional attachment to the concept of force-on-force, attritional warfare. One finds it difficult not to become emotionally affected when considering the sacrifice of men (and now women) in uniform who have given their lives for America’s causes during force-on-force engagements. Yet, is it possible that a prejudice exists against SA in certain joint circles because of the perception that it offers airpower and SOF an equal footing in the quest to be decisive? Advocates for the use of SA must take care not to overemphasize such aspects as its apparent air-centricity. All elements of the joint force can conduct SA, and all joint commanders must know how best to use forces to employ it. In today’s integrated joint/combined environment, we should think in terms of defeating the enemy, not just his forces. Again, all war has to do with will and with compelling the enemy to do ours. SA can be a vital part of rendering the enemy powerless and creating conditions of continuing advantage.
Nonetheless, certain elements of the joint community have resisted SA in proactive and emotional terms. At one time, a draft joint publication existed—JP 3-70, “Joint Strategic Attack”—and at various times it enjoyed the sponsorship of the Air Force and STRATCOM, but elements of the joint-doctrine community fought it tooth and nail. It was cancelled at the behest of certain doctrine representatives from other services, who thought that the passing reference to SA in JP 3-0 constituted adequate treatment. The publication reemerged briefly under STRATCOM, but a joint-doctrine colloquium in 2005 voted it out of existence again. Since then, no one has tried to revive it or to craft doctrine that would well and truly represent SA’s unique characteristics to a joint audience. During the document’s coordination, doubts arose about the quality of the drafts submitted (SA can be difficult to write about, especially if practitioners aren’t involved), but opponents maintained that we did not need it—that adequate coverage in joint doctrine already existed. This argument is false on its face. As mentioned before, we have a wealth of doctrine on such issues as mine warfare and intermodal containers (no doubt, all of it valuable) but only a paragraph on SA. Certainly, a form of war fighting that (a) commanders have used extensively in the past, (b) involves unique considerations compared to traditional force-on-force warfare, and (c) may involve potentially contentious issues of command/control and execution warrants fuller treatment in joint doctrine.
The joint-doctrine community must put aside any emotional resistance to the concept of SA and to the fiction that SA entails airpower “cowboys” trying to go it alone. The portions of the joint community that endorse SA must avoid overpromising and put aside any thoughts that it will yield “immaculate warfare,” realizing that it represents only one tool in the commander’s kit. Nonetheless, SA’s pedigree and distinctiveness warrant granting it a permanent place in the joint-doctrine hierarchy. We need a joint-doctrine publication on strategic attack.
*The author is a senior doctrine analyst in the Joint and Multinational Doctrine Directorate at the Air Force Doctrine Development and Education Center, Maxwell AFB, AL.
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
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Notes
1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 83.
2. Four times in Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Joint Operations, 17 September 2006, and three times in JP 3-30, Command and Control for Joint Air Operations, 5 June 2003.
3. JP 3-0, Joint Operations, III-21 through III-22.
4. JP 3-15, Barriers, Obstacles, and Mine Warfare for Joint Operations, 26 April 2007; and JP 4-01.7, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Use of Intermodal Containers in Joint Operations, 7 January 1997.
5. Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 2-1.2, Strategic Attack, 12 June 2007.
6. JP 3-70, “Joint Strategic Attack,” third draft, March 2005, I-1 (copy at Air Force Doctrine Development and Education Center, Maxwell AFB, AL).
7. AFDD 2-1.2, Strategic Attack, 2.
8. AFDD 2-1.2, Strategic Attack, 30 September 2003, 1. The version of 12 June 2007 uses a modification of the joint definition. Though preferable in that it has some degree of “joint buy-in,” the new definition is not as descriptive.
9. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2d rev. ed. (London: Plume, 1991), 383.
10. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, trans. C. H. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), bk. 17, sec. 23.1-3.
11. Anonymous eighth-century Arab chronicler, quoted in Edward Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 144.
12. Irregular warfare is “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population.” JP 1, “Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States,” draft final-coordination revision, 27 October 2006, I-2.
13. Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 99–128.
14. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage,”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage.
15. The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (European War) (Pacific War) (1945; repr., Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1987), 30.
16. See, for example, “CBU-94 ‘Blackout Bomb,’ BLU-114/B ‘Soft Bomb’,” Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network, 7 May 1999, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm.
17. Ralph Peters, “The Myth of Immaculate Warfare,” USA Today, 5 September 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-09-05-warfare-edit_x.htm.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University
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