- First generation: tactics of line and column; which developed in the age of the smoothbore musket. Lind describes First Generation of warfare as beginning after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years' War and establishing the state's need to organize and conduct war.[3] 1GW consisted of tightly ordered soldiers with top-down discipline. These troops would fight in close order and advance slowly. This began to change as the battlefield changed. Old line and column tactics are now considered suicidal as the bow and arrow/sword morphed into the rifle and machine gun.
- Second generation: tactics of linear fire and movement, with reliance on indirect fire. This type of warfare can be seen in the early stages of World War I where there was still strict adherence to drill and discipline of formation and uniform. However, there remained a dependence on artillery and firepower to break the stalemate and move towards a pitched battle.
- Third generation: tactics of infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy's combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them; and defense in depth. The 3GW military seeks to bypass the enemy, and attack his rear forward, such as the tactics used by German Stormtroopers in World War I against the British and French in order to break the trench warfare stalemate (Lind 2004). These aspects of 3GW bleed into 4GW as it is also warfare of speed and initiative. However, it targets both military forces and home populations.
- The use of fourth-generation warfare can be traced to the Cold War period, as superpowers and major powers attempted to retain their grip on colonies and captured territories. Unable to withstand direct combat against bombers, tanks, and machine guns, non-state entities used tactics of education/propaganda, movement-building, secrecy, terror, and/or confusion to overcome the technological gap.
- Fourth-generation warfare has often involved an insurgent group or other violent non-state actor trying to implement their own government or reestablish an old government over the current ruling power.
- However, a non-state entity tends to be more successful when it does not attempt, at least in the short term, to impose its own rule, but tries simply to disorganize and delegitimize the state in which the warfare takes place.
- The aim is to force the state adversary to expend manpower and money in an attempt to establish order, ideally in such a highhanded way that it merely increases disorder, until the state surrenders or withdraws.
- -Concept by Lind
5th Generation Warfare
Fifth-generation warfare (5GW) is warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems.
Fifth generation warfare has been described by Daniel Abbot as a war of "information and perception".[1]
There is no widely agreed upon definition of fifth-generation warfare,[2] and it has been rejected by some scholars, including William S. Lind, who was one of the original theorists of fourth-generation warfare.[3]
Alex P. Schmid said that fifth-generation warfare is typified by its "omnipresent battlefield", and the fact that people engaged in it do not necessarily use military force, instead employing a mixture of kinetic and non-kinetic force.[7]
References
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