DoD Buzz: Distributed Manuever Beats Hybrid Enemies

Distributed Manuever Beats Hybrid Enemies
By Greg Grant Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 11:35 am
Posted in International, Land, Policy

In our ongoing discussions of hybrid war and how to counter a hybrid enemy, we’ve examined some of the evolving doctrinal concepts, such as the Marine Corps “distributed operations” concept. It envisions large numbers of small units using cover, either urban or complex terrain, to infiltrate the enemy’s defenses and then call in precision fire to destroy the enemy’s strongpoints.

An interesting paper, “Distributed Maneuver: 21st Century Offensive Tactics,” by Australian military thinkers, Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan, questions whether the Marine’s tactics would work against an opponent as robust as Hezbollah, the hybrid enemy archetype. They agree with the distributed operations idea that says forces must operate in smaller units, as the lethal combination of far-seeing sensors with precision weapons means that survival demands forces operate in groups sized below the “detection threshold.”

This evolution in lethality is not necessarily new, the authors say. What is new, and what Hezbollah demonstrated in 2006, is that the increased lethality of “portable weapons” available to these small groups enables them to generate a striking power as potent as that of massed forces in an earlier age.

The strength of well equipped small groups defending prepared terrain was amply demonstrated by Hezbollah: “In the thirty-four days of the July War, Hezbollah, with probably less than 3,000 fighters directly engaged, was able to avoid the consequences of six years of intensive scrutiny by Israeli intelligence, absorb the impact of over 9,000 sorties by Israeli attack aircraft, and exploit low-density urban terrain to substantially defeat an assault by three Israeli divisions,” the authors write.

The challenge is to restore offensive striking power in the face of Hezbollah like “distributed defenses.” One of the biggest obstacles is first locating small groups of hidden defenders in complex and urban terrain, the concealed defender invariably shoots first. “A thoughtful defender will not be postured to be destroyed by long-range fires and will need to be rooted-out, hunted-down and destroyed.”

Rest of article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/11/04/distributed-manuever-...