Before turning to the specific functions of military power—to deter attack, defend against attack, attack to enforce a better peace, and pacify a violent and armed population—it will be useful to address a more general question: What is military power? Wise strat-egists think of power, to whatever purpose it is put, in relative rather than absolute terms. All the sides in a conflict try to cause the humans on the other side to react as they intend. The outcome of the conflict is determined by a relative superiority of power spe-cific to the case at the essential points of confronta-tion. Thus relative military power is not determined by mere comparisons of the military potential inher-ent in the capabilities each side has at hand. Although the amount and quality of military capabilities and resources available to each adversary are important, relative power is determined in the main by how these capabilities and resources affect the humans on each side of the conflict when they are brought to bear.
From Potential to Power: Intangibles and Pyrrhic Victories.
The conversion of potential to power is largely a function of intangible and nonquantifiable factors. Su-perior knowledge of war and sound decisionmaking, better training, higher motivation, greater firmness of purpose, and, above all, the ability to learn and adapt more rapidly while operating, have caused armed forces and their leaders to succeed, even against nu-merical odds. The great captains of history—Alexan-der, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Fredrick, Napoleon, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and others—had the ability to upset simple force ratios.
Wise strategists also understand the difference between the power to win battles and the power to win wars. Winning battles is important, but the battles have to count toward winning wars. Understanding which battles do and which do not is purely an intellec-tual matter. Vietnam is the classic example. Although the U.S. Army demonstrated superior combat power in battle after battle and the Vietnamese suffered far greater casualties than the Americans, the United States did not succeed in causing Ho Chi Minh’s gov-ernment to withdraw its forces from South Vietnam and settle for a divided nation. The North Vietnam-ese regime’s ability to absorb far more losses than the American side thought possible ended up tipping the power balance and caused American combat forces to withdraw instead. Ho Chi Minh’s final victory over the South Vietnamese regime in 1975 resulted from his ability to win key battles against the American-armed and -supplied Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and then to consolidate power in all the human habitations (cities, towns, and villages) of South Vietnam.
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The power to decide battle is also relative and a matter of transforming given combat forces into the power to influence the decisions and options of ad-versaries. It does not matter what service or combina-tion of services comprise combat forces, nor whether battles are fought at sea, in the air, in space, or on land.
The logic is everywhere the same.
From Potential to Power: Maneuver, Firepower, Protection, and Leadership.
Prior to battle there exists only capability. Leaders and the forces of their environment, to include the ac-tions of the enemy, transform this capability into the power to contest the outcome. Superior leaders and units can generate enough power on the battlefield to prevail against forces vastly superior by any objective criteria. Combat potential transforms into superior power at the decisive point and time to win the bat-tle, by means of the appropriate combination of four factors: maneuver, firepower, protection, and skilled leadership.
Maneuver is the dynamic element of combat. It is achieved by concentrating forces in critical areas to gain and to use the advantages of surprise, psycholog-ical shock, position, and momentum to leverage avail-able combat capabilities and thereby create a decisive relative advantage vis-à-vis an opponent on the bat-tlefield. It may be the movement of forces to achieve a position on the battlefield from which to destroy or threaten destruction of the enemy. Its effect can be to throw the enemy off balance by uncovering or taking advantage of a weakness in dispositions, by unhing-ing his coordination, by invalidatunhing-ing his planned or current actions, by capitalizing on his unreadiness to counter our actions, or any combination of these.
It is the effects thus created which contribute to combat power. Mobility or movements in and of themselves do not create this effect although relative mobility or relative movements are enabling capabili-ties. These other factors, and the capabilities which contribute to them, are also important to create ma-neuver effects: knowledge of the enemy and terrain generated by study of the enemy, reconnaissance, and other intelligence activities; effective command and control of subordinate forces; flexible operational practices; sound organization; and reliable logistical support.
Firepower provides the enabling, violent, destruc-tive force essential to realizing the effects of maneu-ver. It is the means of suppressing the enemy’s fires, neutralizing his tactical forces, and destroying his ability to fight. This is done by killing, wounding, or paralyzing the enemy’s soldiers and by damaging the materiel and installations necessary for his continued combat effectiveness. In combat, personal arms, crew-served direct fire weapons, mortars, artillery cannons and missiles, air defense guns and missiles, attack helicopters, Air Force and Navy aircraft, and Naval gunfire bombardment all deliver firepower.
Again, it is the effect of firepower, which contrib-utes to combat power, and not its unapplied or misap-plied potential. Counting available weapons and mu-nitions is an insufficient predictor of the effects they can achieve. It is the accuracy and volume of fires, the lethality of munitions, and the flexible employment of weapons systems, which combine to create this effect.
Therefore, efficient and effective target-acquisition systems, viable and effective command and control, a steady supply of the right munitions, and the tactical and operational mobility necessary to place weapons
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within range of critical targets are necessary ingredi-ents of this element of combat power.
There has been a tendency to focus exceedingly on kinetic killing potential in defense planning—in essence, on weapons and their precise and lethal mu-nitions. But for weapons and munitions to produce valid firepower effects, they depend highly on rel-evant knowledge; strategic mobility; flexible sustain-ment; and robust, integrated command and control. In the recent military interventions and in the wargames the Services use to explore future force requirements, weapons and munitions were abundantly available at every stage. But shortages in the key enablers of firepower make it difficult to bring this impressive potential to bear. The tendency, ahead of operations, is to consider these enablers burdensome overhead, and to underestimate the value of investments in hav-ing more of them. Analytical wargames replicate le-thal effects easily, but the enablers not as well. This biases outcomes toward the contribution of weapons and munitions based on their numbers rather than on the lethal effects they can realistically produce. For in-stance, it will be very difficult to gather the volumes of information needed to perform the high tempo large-scale firepower-based operations some strate-gists imagine for the future. In reality, the capacity to produce relevant knowledge will limit the tempo of any such operations. When that capacity does not ma-terialize in actual situations, the tempo and effective-ness of firepower-based operations will slow.
Protection is the shielding of the fighting potential of the force so that it can be applied at the decisive time and place. Protection has two components. The first includes all actions to counter the enemy’s fire-power and maneuver by making soldiers, systems,
and units difficult to locate, to strike, or to destroy.
Among these actions are security, dispersion, cover, camouflage, deception, suppression, and mobility.
These actions routinely include the reinforcement and concealment of fighting positions, command posts, and support facilities. They also include the need to protect force elements from attack by irregular forces wherever they are—from fort to foxhole. The second component includes actions to keep soldiers healthy, to maintain their fighting morale, and to diminish the impact of severe weather. It also means keeping equipment in repair and supplies from becoming lost.
As in the other elements of combat power, the effects of protection contribute to combat power. These ef-fects are measured by the fighting potential actually available at the moment of decisive combat.
Leadership is the component upon which all oth-ers depend. It provides purpose, direction, and moti-vation in combat. Leaders function through personal interaction with their soldiers and through command and control systems and facilities. The primary func-tion of leadership in battle is to inspire and to motivate soldiers to do difficult things in trying circumstances.
While leadership requirements differ by echelon, leaders must be men and women of character; they must know and understand soldiers and the physical tools of battle; and they must act with courage and conviction. Leaders must understand how to control and to integrate fire, maneuver, and protection ef-fects. In short, it is the overall effect the leader creates on the battlefield vis-à-vis the enemy through proper application of his potential maneuver, firepower, and protection capabilities which generates relative combat power.
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Prior to battle, leaders set the pre-conditions which make winning possible. Superior combat power has its roots in proper preparation. Preparation includes many matters of long-term concern at the highest lev-els—force design, equipment design, procurement re-sources, doctrinal development, and the training and education of soldiers and their leaders, to name only a few. The tactical commander on the battlefield has a more immediate perspective. To him, preparation involves logistic readiness and motivation. It means continuous planning and training to the moment of, and even during, active combat. It means train-ing throughout campaigns because every endeavor causes the unit to learn either good or bad habits and to gain valuable insight about an ever-evolving situa-tion. Winning commanders and leaders in all Services and at all echelons must demand excellence under all conditions and must strive to make it habitual.
The outcome of battle can therefore be thought of as the complex interaction of the antagonists in a two (or more)-sided equation in which the sides attempt to maximize the effects of their leadership, maneu-ver, firepower, and protection, while simultaneously taking actions to degrade the ability of the other side to do the same. The leader who strives to win must operate on both sides of this equation before and during battle.
Transforming force potential into power is not a matter of brawn but brain. This way of thinking about military power applies to any purpose, but master strategists must take one further conceptual step be-cause the logic of power is specific to the end it serves.
As long as other states or groups exist and are capable of advancing hostile agendas by violent means, they will keep arms and the ability to use violence to serve them in four essential ways: to deter others from
us-ing arms against them; to defend themselves when others attack; to attack others to enforce their will on them; and to pacify armed internal subgroups. These basic purposes apply to nation-states and alliances of states, as well as tribes, clans, and families in the absence of states.. These basic purposes also apply to stateless political and criminal movements, as well as to state-based insurgent movements. Success in them requires mastering the logic unique to each.
THE LOGIC OF DETERRING MILITARY POWER