War's Changed Landscape?
A quickfire book review
Note: I won’t have time to do formal book reviews for the foreseeable future, but will try to get quick thoughts on the books I am reading down if they’re widely relevant. This is the first one.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caught the authors of this book, Paddy Walker and Peter Roberts, mid-data collection. Specifically, they had reached out to over 60 military “thought leaders” to poll them on the future of warfare. Before the book could be completed, but after said thought leaders responded, Russia invaded.1
And they were all wrong.
It’s not hard to spot what happened. Experts looked at the last two decades of war against terrorist organizations in the Middle East and the Pacific and extrapolated their tactics for all future scenarios, both state and non-state. They assumed that strategic actors involved adopted those tactics because they were effective and innovative and therefore every other actor would as well. But what actually happened was that those actors were forced to adopt hybrid/asymmetric/irregular means because that is the only way to survive against a US-led coalition. To face the West’s warfighting strength, you have to resort bushwacking them by surprise. Challenging them to a duel in the middle of the street will only get you shot.
When Russia resorted to “conventional” force in Ukraine, which they could because they’re not facing a US-led Western coalition, everyone’s underlying assumption that irregular war is the future was invalidated.
The authors took this as an opportunity not to dump on a bunch of experts but instead to use the data they provided and the data coming out of Ukraine to take a deep dive on the conventional wisdom as it prevailed pre-2022. They compared this with what actually happened in the biggest war this century has seen so far. The result is a wealth of insights on contemporary warfare.
The feedback the authors received is included in an annex and although the names of participants have been withheld, it’s mostly a mix of buzzwords and technophilic wishcasting: all the threats are hybrid asymmetric irregular gray zone liminal actors, too smart to ever make a mistake, and AI/lasers/biotech/cyborgs will change everything overnight. The usual stuff that gets you published and gets you clicks but doesn’t last six months, let alone six years. With some gems of course, but not a lot.
Unlike most works in the defense space where buzzwords are taken at face value and then repeated ad nauseum (cough cough The Kill Chain cough cough), Walker and Roberts critically examine identified changes in warfare against actual evidence. The result is, as they intended, a primer on what is actually changing and what isn’t.
The lens of norms and forms is effective and really ties the book together nicely. I won’t give away conclusions, but in my opinion they got things mostly right, identifying some norms and forms that will endure and others that are changing. I’ve had to do a lot of analytical work on what is changing/what isn’t lately for my day job (which makes it unpublishable) and they got it mostly right.
The authors, however, are not immune from some of the shallow assumptions that characterize the conventional wisdom. For example at one point they write: “Precision artillery, moreover, is not only more effective than unguided munitions but also lessens force vulnerability through reducing that party’s overall logistical footprint.” It is one of those sentences that is so striking because every single assertion is wrong and yet it sounds like it makes sense. Precision munitions are more precise and therefore more useful for some missions and some targets. They are generally weaker in terms of destructive force than their “dumb” equivalents as well as more expensive, and therefore available in fewer numbers.2 Another weakness of precision munitions is that they are vulnerable to electronic warfare. Conventional munitions remain better at performing a wide range of missions, are not vulnerable to electronic warfare, and are much cheaper and easier to produce. A well-trained forward observer, Fire Direction Center, or JTAC/pilot combination can also be pretty damn precise with unguided munitions, despite the term “dumb” munitions. Because precision munitions are a niche capability, they are an added logistical burden to the conventional munitions which must still be transported in large quantities.
Overall though it’s a worthwhile book, and a refreshing change from typical “the sky is falling” commentary on current conflicts. The authors deftly weave between nothing-has-changed conservatism and everything-has-changed clickbait, providing a solid rundown of what is changing and what isn’t.
The authors provided the responses in an annex form that is non-attributed. They also provide a list of the experts consulted and they range from the “yeah I would hope they asked that person” to the “how in the hell did that guy get lumped in with actual experts?”
For example, a standard 155mm M795 High Explosive round contains about 10.8 kg of explosives. A standard M982 Excalibur round contains about half that, 5.4 kg, due to the space needed for the guidance and canard system.
Thanks for the brief review. Peter Roberts' podcasts helped spark my interest in military theory. I've ordered the book along with a copy of On Tactics.