Formless Warfare: An Innovative Concept to Gather More Information, Analyze it Faster, and Strike Harder
by Michael Kim and Charles Schultz
Journal Article | March 22, 2017 - 10:52am
“If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it.”
-- Sun Tzsu, Art of War
On March 21, 2013, in a conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, LTG H.R. McMaster stated that there are four main continuities in war and warfare: 1. War is an extension of politics, 2. War is a profoundly human endeavor, 3. War is uncertain, and 4. War is a contest of wills.
These thoughts reflect those established by Clausewitz in the early 19th century and continue to reverberate throughout the US Army’s development of doctrine and capabilities. Although it is fair to say that war will continue to be a human endeavor, history has shown that the instruments used to carry out this “contest of wills” can drastically change. This paper presents a vision of future warfare by extrapolating technological trends and uniting them under an operational concept that, when followed, allows the US to remain the sole dominant military force in 2030-2050.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/formless-warfare-an-innovative-concept-to-gather-more-information-analyze-it-faster-and-str
