Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits Read Online Free PDF Page A

of irregular warfare must understand that speed and stealth can to some extent substitute for mass. The small size of irregular units—whether they are special operators, insurgents, or terrorists—also allows them a much wider range of movements likely to go undetected. It is hard to move a brigade or a division very far under cover. But a dozen members of a Special Forces A-Team? Sixteen SEALS in a platoon? Nineteen terrorists boarding planes simultaneously? Much easier to go much farther undetected.
    The irregular warfare strategist, knowing this, seeks to exploit the opportunity to force his adversary to spread his troops widely across the theater of operations, thus further enhancing his own side’s ability to move stealthily. In some respects this is a photonegative version of the conventional military concept of the force multiplier, the notion that some tactics or technologies make one’s troops far more efficient against an enemy that does not enjoy similar capabilities. For irregulars, the stealth advantage has some of this multiplier effect, but the real payoff comes in the form of what I would call a “force divisor” effect. That is, not knowing where and when a strike may occur, conventional forces must be dispersed to cover many points, making them more vulnerable to the irregulars’ attack.
    Among irregular planners, mastery may consist of integrating unconventional and conventional operations. In these hybrid campaigns, one side has both irregular and regular forces that operate simultaneously or sequentially. During the American Revolutionary campaign in the south, especially the period 1780–1781, Nathanael Greene had both types of forces operating at once against the British, almost completely confusing the Redcoats and exhausting them as they dashed from one crisis to another, finally compelling them to fall back on Yorktown, where they were trapped. Alternately, Vietnam’s Vo Nguyen Giap provided an example of the use of the two types of forces in sequence, with periods of purely guerrilla operations giving way to conventional offensives in 1954 (against the French at Dienbienphu), 1968 (Tet), 1972 (the Easter offensive), and the final overrun of the South in 1975. Interestingly, Greene never won a conventional battle but ultimately triumphed. Giap lost two of his four major attempts to fight in traditional fashion, once against a primarily American force in 1968 but also to South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, in 1972.
    But Greene and Giap seem to be exceptional, as most commanders of irregular forces have not had the option of going toe-to-toe with their more numerous and well-armed foes. Sometimes they have benefited from the looming presence of friendly conventional forces, as Lawrence did in the Arabian desert during World War I. The fact that General Allenby was engaging the Turks in a full-blown conventional campaign in Palestine no doubt diminished their ability to focus on Lawrence’s tribal irregulars. And before Lawrence, the Confederate cavalry leader Forrest enjoyed being able to operate widely and freely, with substantial friendly conventional formations serving to absorb most of the Union forces’ attention and efforts. Although, at one point, the depredations against General William Tecumseh Sherman’s supply lines grew so pernicious in their effects that about 80,000 of the 180,000 Union troops in the field during the drive to Atlanta in 1864 had to be diverted to thwart Forrest and his fellow raiders—a telling example of the “force divisor” phenomenon.
    On balance, then, the mastery of irregular warfare relies upon some modification of the classical principles of war, particularly with regard to the notion of “massing at the decisive point.” There must also be a willingness to recognize both the mixed nature of many military campaigns and, frequently, the just-off-stage presence of substantial conventional forces
    The twenty-first century already shows