The Road to Success in Military Operations Other Than War: Paved by the Synchronization of Conventional and Special Operations Forces.

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Schick
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Evans ◽  
Gregory Steeger

Purpose In the present fast-paced and globalized age of war, special operations forces have a comparative advantage over conventional forces because of their small, highly-skilled units. Largely because of these characteristics, special operations forces spend a disproportionate amount of time deployed. The amount of time spent deployed affects service member’s quality of life and their level of preparedness for the full spectrum of military operations. In this paper, the authors ask the following question: How many force packages are required to sustain a deployed force package, while maintaining predetermined combat-readiness and quality-of-life standards? Design/methodology/approach The authors begin by developing standardized deployment-to-dwell metrics to assess the effects of deployments on service members’ quality of life and combat readiness. Next, they model deployment cycles using continuous time Markov chains and derive closed-form equations that relate the amount of time spent deployed versus at home station, rotation length, transition time and the total force size. Findings The expressions yield the total force size required to sustain a deployed capability. Originality/value Finally, the authors apply the method to the US Air Force Special Operations Command. This research has important implications for the force-structure logistics of any military force.


Author(s):  
Donald S. Travis

Post-9/11 civil-military challenges associated with sustained military operations against assorted enemies in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other regions around the world are examined through the Clausewitzian concept known as the "paradoxical trinity" of the people, the military establishment, and the civilian government. As America's wars are conducted by a consortium of land forces that General Peter Schoomaker once characterized as a "new strategic triad" composed of the Army and Marines with Special Operations Forces (SOF), the Clausewitzian framework is employed to help reassess three interrelated lessons drawn from the Vietnam War: the legality of war, the use of advanced weapons and their associated strategies, and the persistent debates over how best to employ military power focused on conventional versus unconventional forces' roles, missions, and tactics. Potential futures of landpower and civil-military relations are identified and discussed to challenge current political and military policies and stimulate further inquiry.


Author(s):  
John G.L.J. Jacobs ◽  
Martijn W.M. Kitzen

Hybrid warfare has been the bandwagon term to describe modern warfare in academic, policy, and journalist accounts. It describes a wide array of warfare techniques that do not correspond with earlier notions of warfare. Yet none of these are really to be called “new” and the military thought associated with them can be traced back as early as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Perhaps it was the shock of being faced with unfamiliar tactics, the breach of morality with hybrid tactics disregarding jus in bello principles, or the rigged black/white understanding of the dichotomy of war and peace—but whatever the reason, it has led to a plethora of terms and monikers to describe the phenomena now labeled hybrid warfare. The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), for example, in discussing the “gray zone,” points out that this topic has had many monikers within the US literature. To name a few: low-intensity conflict or low-intensity operations, small wars (this one did lead to an excellent online journal called Small Wars Journal, or SWJ), irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, and military operations other than war (MOOTW). Hybrid warfare might indeed encompass a low-intensity operations type of conflict. All of these include elements of hybridity and hybrid warfare as this bibliography seeks to demonstrate. In particular the authors seek to address the perception that hybrid warfare has mainly been conducted by the adversaries of the West. Western governments do use hybrid tactics and hybridity comes to the front in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. (For more on counterinsurgency see Oxford Bibliographies article in Military History “Counterinsurgency in the Modern World”). For non-state actors hybrid warfare is mostly linked to the insurgencies, with recent insurgencies using elements of terrorism.


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