Considerations on the Evolution of War

[Michael]

I have been asked by a forum member to start a new threat to post some information from another thread for folks to consider and make it a little easier to find. In the past couple of years I have seen a lot of great, well thought out posts about the direction military weapons should go, but in a lot of cases I am not sure as to the posters appreciation on where warfare is heading. Please don’t take this last statement the wrong way. I am not an expert, just a fairly dedicated student of the art of war.

First, the below link is to an article that talks about 4th Generation warfare. This is insurgency/guerrilla warfare that uses all elements to defeat a stronger force. The four generations of warfare are 1) the use of massed manpower (up to Napoleonic Wars), 2) firepower (up to WW I), 3) maneuver (WW II and focus of U.S. military strategy to date) , and now 4) an evolved form of insurgency that employs all available power and networks—political, economic, social, military—to convince an opponent’s decision-makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly.

I encourage you to read the link, and if it interest you, the author has a book titled ‘The Sling and the Stone’, and Max Boot’s ‘War made New’ is another good read on the evolution of war.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/sf214.pdf