Orphaned Tactics

Oops we did it again

Air defense interceptors over Tel Aviv during an Iranian missile attack

Once again the United States has entered into a conflict with no strategy. This time, there isn’t even a policy (without which you can’t have a strategy anyway). The war with Iran is little more than the joint targeting process unleashed. The Frankenstein’s monster that is the operational level of war, unsatiated after eating strategy, is now feasting on policy.

Tom Nichols, at the Atlantic, diagnoses this as victory disease. It’s a fine article (if you don’t have access he has posted gift links on his socials), but it’s also a misdiagnosis. Victory disease is attempting to replicate a prior victory in a new strategic context where it does not apply. But there is no victory that the U.S. is trying to replicate here. It’s replicating failed strategic bombing campaigns of the past. The strategic logic, such as it is, rests on three fallacies: The first is the ends-ways-means definition of strategy where X number of tactical successes plus Y number of operational successes equals strategic effect. The second is just the classic attrition fallacy, where the destruction of enemy forces is the aim of tactics. The third is that fires alone can be decisive, a fallacy dispensed with by Clausewitz two hundred years ago.

Measuring Destruction: The Usefulness of Bombing Surveys

Both sides are successfully employing salvo warfare, leaning on long-range strike systems to prosecute targets in lieu of the use of maneuver forces of any kind. So far anyway. As I wrote last June, the recon-strike tactics made possible by proliferating long-range strike and pervasive sensors, have recreated the conditions of Age of Sail ships that meet and simply blast away at each other, except at the national level. Unlike in naval warfare, however, it is never decisive. Because it’s not decisive, as the war goes on both sides will seek alternative methods, either more conventional uses of ground forces or something else. War naturally encourages such escalation, the idea that one side or the other can control escalation is another fallacy here.

What’s interesting here for tactics is Iran’s underground bunkers that house their missile platforms. This protects them from all but the largest bombs, but it turns out that it also makes their movements predictable since they must exit the bunkers to fire. The U.S. has thus far been able to “spawn camp” these exits with air assets and strike them as they emerge. Thus, most of the damage Iran has been able to do have been through smaller and less capable Shahed drones.

All of the above fallacies are tempting, of course. Modern technology fuels longer-range strike platforms than ever before, that are more precise than ever before, and intelligence that is more exquisite than ever before. Just witness the strike that not only killed Supreme Leader Khamenei. Israel or the U.S. not only knew exactly where he was but where all of his top leaders were and when they would be together. Shouldn’t that mean we will be more successful? That technology has enabled better strategy? Or obviate the need for strategy at all. It’s also tempting in this case because the Iranian leaders, including Khamenei, were all involved in strike campaigns of exactly this type, either by supplying proxies with weapons and intelligence or more directly as part of Iran’s frequent strike warfare against Israel. Iran’s strike warfare in the past has been frequently directed against civilians, not military targets, and they are the largest sponsor of terrorist organizations in the world. It’s like any of these people didn’t deserve a taste of their own medicine.

But strategy doesn’t work like that. The relationship between tactics and strategy is nonlinear. Successful tactics don’t necessarily lead to positive strategic effects and may in fact lead to negative strategic effects. Which does not necessarily mean that it is unpredictable; we have a wealth of historical data on when and what type of tactics lead to positive strategic effects. But that’s only a lot of reading if you do it. And if you don’t have a policy, let alone a strategy, there’s simply no way to know if your tactics are yielding positive or negative strategic effect. There is nothing against which to measure them. They are orphaned.

Which is where rules of engagement come in. Contrary to popular belief, rules of engagement are not some legal or ethical nicety (although crafting effective rules of engagement lean on both disciplines). Rather, rules of engagement are first and foremost an expression of strategy. They frequently (or at least should) limit civilian casualties and guide the strategic use of tactics. Not just because undue harm to civilians is illegal and unethical, but most importantly because it’s bad strategy. Such war crimes and atrocities produce negative strategic effect and make achieving the policy more difficult for your side, not the adversary. Rules of engagement exist to prevent own goals, a dynamic described by John Boyd in his almost unnoticed The Strategic Game of ? and ?. If you still don’t believe that, just witness the failure of Iranian strategy over the past few years. Violence against civilians and the sponsorship of terrorist organizations that also employ violence against civilians has seen their allies like Bashar al-Assad defeated and exiled, their proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas depleted and close to neutralized, and now their immediate neighbors supporting U.S. and Israel actions against them (even if only privately).

Of course, if you don’t have a policy at all, you can’t have a strategy and therefore can’t have rules of engagement either. You also can’t have a win. But if we can’t be strategically better than Iran, we should probably shouldn’t be in the game at all.