United States Military Doctrine
The military doctrine of the United States describes the self-image of the armed forces of the United States in the context of their political guidelines. The aim of the doctrine is to conceptually coordinate all relevant facets of military strategy , military operations , tactics and other areas such as logistics and information acquisition in such a way that the armed forces can fulfill their assigned tasks. In the United States, all aspects of military doctrine are governed by the National Security Strategy and are highlighted in a variety of official documents and commentaries.
The most important doctrinal publication by the United States Armed Forces is their general military doctrine, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States , or Joint Publication 1 or JM-1 for short .
history
The latent anti-European affect of the United States also found its way into the military doctrine of the United States and was directed against the use of European tactics, which could only develop to a limited extent on American soil. The debate about the future political organization of the United States, in which the federalists ultimately prevailed against the centralists, prevented the development of a clear military strategy for a long time, so that many concepts remained in flux and were imprecise.
In the civil war, the armed forces on both sides lacked sophisticated strategies due to constant reorganization of the troops. The concept of "annihilation", which came from Ulysses Grant and provided for an attack with numerically and technologically superior troops, was established. In addition, because of its chaotic course, which often encouraged atrocities and indiscipline, the Civil War offered many commanders the opportunity to develop their leadership skills. In contrast, the military leadership used the knowledge of the civil war.
The military doctrine of the United States was under discussion even before the end of the Second World War, given the expected victory. The Continental-Maritime Debate , i.e. the question of whether greater weight should be attached to the control of the seas or the provision of land forces, polarized the military leadership.
Basically, “[the] American idea of warfare [...] was offensive after the civil war up to the Vietnam war [...]. Every war that the USA could or had to wage outside the American continent was ideally a war of aggression. "
Today's military doctrine is based on military-scientific considerations by officers John Boyd ( USMC , 1979) and Huba Wass de Czege ( US Army , 1983). Wass de Czege's students later gained great influence as high-ranking commanders. However, Norman Schwarzkopf rejected his ideas in the Second Gulf War, above all the extensive use of special forces. Wass de Cezege's elaborations were incorporated into Joint Vision 2020 .
Current status
The military doctrine of the United States is characterized by a process of transformation , which the then Chief of Staff John M. Shalikashvili heralded in 1996 with the publication of the strategy paper Joint Vision 2010 . The impetus for implementing the ideas contained in Joint Vision 2010 was provided by the Joint Vision 2020 strategy paper published in 2000 , which called for “superiority on a broad front” ( English full-spectrum dominance ) for the armed forces. This requires four operational deployment concepts that are simultaneously valid: “superior mobility of the units, precise and time-critical combat against targets and comprehensive protection of the troops against attacks of all kinds.” The terrorist attacks of September 11th increased the political and economic willingness to invest in the transformation process, its structural Changes should be completed by 2008. The transformation should enable the US military to be ready for a serious attack worldwide in the shortest possible time.
Given the challenging tactical situation in Iraq, however, the armed forces were still under Donald Rumsfeld on the feasibility of participation in up to four military deployments , and declared their unwillingness to future instruments of ideologically motivated change of government ( English regime change ) to be. There was also a doctrine of parallel warfare under Bill Clinton . The major theater war concept required deployment in two war zones, whereby asymmetrical warfare was not taken into account due to a lack of current defense policy and insight.
Fixed results of the American transformation are the conversion of the army into a mobile intervention force and the turning away from the comparatively centralized platform- oriented warfare of the short 20th century , which oriented the doctrine towards the usability of the effectiveness of essential weapon systems . In contrast to this, in the now introduced network-oriented warfare, called Network-Centric Warfare in the English original , information rather than units should be shifted. At the same time, there is a network of all units, command posts and commanders involved. This is where Metcalfe's law comes into play, so that the cost of war increases proportionally to the number of nodes, while the benefit in the form of speed increases exponentially. Because of the simultaneous shifting of decision-making powers, which has enabled the increased flow of information, NWC is based on the command tactics of the Wehrmacht . The Marines Maneuver Warfare, which is similar to mission tactics , has been expanded accordingly and adapted to NWC . The network that allows the armed forces to communicate with one another is called the Global Information Grid .
Even after several years of discussion, the question of which threat the military should orient itself towards has not been clarified. This debate between two strategic schools of thought flared up after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which made the first QDR of the millennium, which had just been published, obsolete. A school of thought advocated the final abandonment of heavy weapons and massive associations in order to be able to wage the war on terror declared by the Bush administration also militarily, while their opponents warned that the People's Republic of China would gain military strength. Both sides accuse each other of disregarding the real threat.
The final decision is critical because it will make fundamental decisions about training, tactics, and the cost of purchasing new equipment for decades. The costs are a similar point of contention as the direction: while conservative security politician Robert Kagan is calling for a full increase in the defense budget to finance an increase in troops, critics such as Lawrence Korb demand that such a deliberate burden on the US economy be intensively examined in order to increase capacity to create an expansion of the contingents in the operational area, which both sides consider to be inevitable.
The transformation of the air force and the navy is not as extensive as that of the two armed forces fighting on land, but there are full-fledged concepts in the Fleet Response Plan and in the Air Force Transformation .
In October 2007, the Chiefs of Staff of the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard launched a collaborative strategy called A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower . The key aspects of the concept were summarized in the key words Security, Prosperity, Seapower (“Security, Thriving, Strength at Sea”).
Web links
- Official website of the Joint Electronic Library , a collection of all network doctrines (English)
supporting documents
- ↑ a b "With regard to the question of a federal state with a weak center or a strong central leadership, the latter was chosen. From a military point of view, the above question kept the United States in a state of amateur improvisation for a long time, supplemented by some brilliant men and moments that helped to lead the War of Independence in such a way that defeats were bearable and the few victories had a lasting effect. ”From: From“ Annihilation ” to "Shock and Awe" - The Doctrine Discussion in the USA . Study by Friedrich Korkisch for the Austrian Federal Ministry for National Defense. Date of discovery: July 12, 2007.
- ^ Fred Kaplan: Force Majeure - What lies behind the military's victory in Iraq. In: Slate . April 10, 2003, accessed April 19, 2017 (on the development of the doctrine that led to symmetrical victory in Iraq).
- ^ "The transformation of the US armed forces in the light of the Iraq war.", Page 10. Study by Benjamin Schreer for the Science and Politics Foundation from December 2003. Date of discovery: July 18, 2007.
- ↑ Thomas Pany: "Win every war at any time". In: Telepolis . Retrieved January 26, 2006, April 19, 2017 (on Developing the Doctrine That Led to Symmetrical Victory in Iraq).
- ^ "Network-Centric Warfare. A new concept of warfare. ”Seminar paper by Júlio Decker ( Memento of the original from June 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from the University of Cologne in 2003, page 7. Accessed on June 13, 2003 (PDF)
- ↑ Description of the debate on Telepolis Online on January 26, 2006 and in the Military.com blog on the occasion of the Quadrennial Defense Review 2006 ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Accessed June 30, 2007.
- ↑ Lawrence J. Korb, Peter Ogden, Frederick W. Kagan: Jets or GIs? How Best to Address the Military's Manpower Shortage. In: Foreign Affairs . 2006, accessed April 19, 2017 .
- ↑ Strategy website . Accessed January 25, 2008.
- ↑ Overview of the content of the strategy ( memento of the original from September 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Accessed January 25, 2008.
