Calculus of War. In Practice.

This is a follow up to another post.

In principal the tactics used in a strong force weak force conflict create situations like the following. These decisions are carried out by people under stress.

Sit. 1:

Vehicle contains a command and control target. You have paid a member of the population to place a gps tag on this vehicle.

The vehicle is moving through a mixed use area, you have visual contact from a helicopter at 10,000m. target is unaware you are there.

You can:
do nothing, target continues to kill your people.
fire a modified laser guided missile. this missile has a warhead that is reduced 60% and will probably kill everyone in the car. low probability it will kill bystanders.
fire a unmodified hellfire missile. this missile will kill everyone in the car, and may kill people on the street.
call in air support and direct a 500 - 2000 lb laser guided weapon. This will kill everyone in the car and cause catestrophic damage to the surrounding area.

Strong force generally chooses option 1, maybe option 2 if the target is deemed valuable enough. Never uses option3 if smart.

The international community can not stop all conflicts but it can police over use of force.

Sit2:

You persue a force into a village.
you can:

sit back observe from cover and wait. Set up designated marksmen and plan safe lines of fire. Attack your target when it moves out. Be sure your designated marksman shoots the man with a radio, mortar base, or LMG first.
persue into the village and expose yourself to attack and increase the risk of death to villagers from heavy weapons fire.
Use a laser designator to target the building or buildings a person is in and destroy everything inside.

The SMART way here is choice 1. Wait the enemy out. Set up an attack that does not happen in a village. strong force has technology and training to do this.

Sadly choice 3 has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. When there is a CHOICE (you are not pinned down, under fire, etc) there is NO ADVANTAGE to using firepower.

We figured out number 2 is dumb many times, but it still happens from time to time.

Weak force:

You can not form divisions and fight on parity. You will be chopped up by 20mm and 155 if you step out in the open.

You can:
do nothing
form small groups use asymetric infantry tactics and run and gun. This includes attacking enemy lines of support, outposts, and vehicles with explosives. Destroying command and control. This has real impact as your enemy must use infantry to cover these resources one "behind the lines"
or you can fire unguided weapons into cities.

Successful weak forces have ALWAYS used option 2. This was effective in Europe, Iraq, and is effective now. It is accepted tactic and is legal under geneva. Highly effective, especially with a supporting population that has little chance of not supporting you.

Hamas is making a fundamental error by not attacking Israeli military targets.

Cheney once mentioned he felt that way as well, that it is better for America to be feared than loved.. some would disagree with that line of thought..

at least a smart one. disproportional use of force feeds the support of the enemy. Puling back into bases, isolation and exposing civilians all are critical failures in CI warfare.

You see the US reversing those tactics in the last 2 years.

Israel is a bit different but, at the end of the day, will have to contend with civilians. Those civilians will never like them but if not subjected to MILITARY overuse of force, will tolerate them.

Israel shot plenty of Egyptians, they are not friends, but coexist. That is all that is required.

Sit 2 is trickier. "You persue a force into a village.--sit back observe from cover and wait. Set up designated marksmen and plan safe lines of fire. Attack your target when it moves out," is not always the best option. I'm not even sure if it's usually the best option.

Allowing a fleeing force to fortify (couldn't resist the alliteration) and rest is a bad idea. Sitting back allows them to reorganize, resupply, rest, ready defensive positions, and attack from cover requiring you to either take the fire or put the civilians at risk. Safety of own forces outweighes potential civilian casualties, so it is better to risk civilian casualties than your own people.

Option 3 would be my preferred option IF the targetted building was reasonably isolated AND we could be reasonably sure there was not a signicant civilian presence in the building. But balancing safety of own forces while trying to minimize civilian casualties (where the precision of a bullet, even from crew-served weapons, is preferable to even precision bombing) would require direct pursuit quite frequently. Bullets are personal, all bombs and shells are addressed "to current occupant," so if there are civilians present, it's almost always better to avoid bombs/missiles/artillery.

I forgot to add all forces are small units. Scenario is on strong force terms. 20 to 30 guys max weak force. Anything more ( counter attack, massed forces)and new rules apply.

Force protection is important but risk can be changed by NOT moving into what could already BE a fortified position on momentum alone. Door to door is pretty risky for all involved.

My perspective was for "long war" mindset where the population is in play. By hanging back when possible and letting them sit then move strong force maintains control and does not kill population without pressing need.

Mortar fire from village, or other change in the situation could cause the slide rule to move from ambushing an unsuspecting enemy ( with anything from direct fire to air power) on your terms to using escalating fire power.

Any dead civilian is a blow to strong force. In the media it is worse. It has been said that images from abu graib did more to kill americans than any other factor in the war. Other than not having a phase 5 plan, of course.

It does illustrate the difficulty presented when fighting in these scenarios. This will be the battlefield for the foreseeable future.

Manufacture enough arms and armaments to kill every living thing on the planet a hundred times over. Keep poor track of what’s been made, who bought it, how they stored it, who it got re-sold to, and so forth. Make sure a yammering class is kept at a simmering boil to defend the right to keep and bear arms so that any reasonable regulation dies a-borning. Make sure profits for legal and illegal arms sales and shipments are high, maintaining a merchant of death class that can buy its way out of any legal entanglements or purchase a high enough standing in decent circles that no one will prosecute them. Exacerbate local and regional conflicts so that arms sales to both sides will maintain the profitability of arms manufacturers, dealers, suppliers and so forth. Use best efforts to promote violent solutions to any conflict.

Option 1: Keep it up, and if possible manufacture even more weapons and elevate tensions wherever they arise.

Option 2: There is no option 2.

man that is a stretch. We already have enough weaponry to stop all meaningful life on earth. Right now. Civilian arms are not relevant in the land of ordinance.

Want to see an interesting graph. Pull up, chart death in warfare from 1200 to 2000. You see a massive drop in 1945. What was invented in 1945?

This is about weak force strong force and fighting an insurgent war among non combatants.

Not a lot of arms sales in Congo. Just machetes and old aks. Death on a scale in the last few years that dwarf the entire me conflict since inception in 46.

Africa, no one cares no one notices. Not a pet issue like this topic.

I dunno. I didn't use the words "2nd ammend," so I'd have to say no. My point was about how drenched our culture and our nation are in the philosophy of the Cult of Redemptive Violence, and how the solution to any difficulty is the proper application of violence. And to be sure that violence is always one of the easiest resorts, we make sure that arms flow quite freely all around the world. Even an "old aks" can still inflict a pretty nasty hole in a person. And the arms manufacturers and merchants aren't interested in large scale death. If everyone gets killed, who's going to buy weapons? But if enough people are wounded, maimed, and crippled, relatively few deaths will make sure the conflicts keep going, the weapons keep getting bought, and the mayhem continues.

What's a "stretch" about that? Or is it just so obvious, pervasive and intractable (for the reasons previously stated), that it's unnecessary to state?

nor are they running around africa with machetes. Military force is, at times, required. How it is applied is the point of this post.

Old ak's resell for under $20 and are not being sold into africa. The USSR gave millions away. Note GAVE.

The money in that conflict is around natural resources. That is driving old tribal/ethnic tensions to mass killings.

Defensive use of force is very reasonable to me. Response to attack. Happens in nature and through time.

First strike is questionable, at best.

by what it's own population can bear.

Increasingly aggressive tactics will be DEMANDED the longer the population feels threatened. There are a finite amount of attacks any people will accept before the concerns about the opposing civilians evaporates. The demand that the threat be abated will force the hand, just as when a populace is fed up with bloodshed and financial burden they will demand peace/withdraw. There is no withdraw for these participants so its war or some compromise. What is the compromise and how can it be achieved?

at least 20 million people died. WW2 is not on parity with what in all reality is a land skirmish. However getting Egypt involved as a broker and enforcer could work.

Turnover of gaza, removal of hamas, which egypt would happily do. This could lead to a unified proxy state at first outside 1967 borders.

Egypt would have no interest in war with Israel and vice versa. After some time the state would become autonomous of Egypt and stable.

Stable means those sworn to perpetual war in Palestinian state are jailed or killed, by another muslim country.

Not democratic, but feasible.

No resolution by force is available.