AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND:

REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF WARFARE

Stephen J. Blank

June 28, 1993
* * * * *

The views expressed in this report represent those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the

U.S. Government. This report is cleared for public release;

distribution is unlimited.

* * * * *

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army

War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may

be conveyed directly to the author by calling commercial (717)

245-4085 or DSN 242-4085.
FOREWORD

This report provides an historical analysis of lessons from

one of the most important wars of the 1980s, the war in

Afghanistan. After reading this study, you will better understand

the nature of operations "other than war" in multiethnic states.

Many fear that these wars will set the paradigm for wars in the

1990s and will exert pressure on U.S. forces to conduct

peacekeeping, peace-enforcement and humanitarian assistance

operations in especially dangerous areas. Yugoslavia and Somalia,

each in their own way, bear out the ubiquity of these wars and

the pressures on the United States to act.

This report will, of course, contribute to the body of

material dealing with the war in Afghanistan. More importantly,

it increases understanding of future wars, particularly these

types of wars, so that policymakers and analysts alike will

better appreciate their military and political aspects. In turn,

we may devise mechanisms either to forestall and avert them, or

to bring them to the speediest possible conclusion.

Alternatively, should those mechanisms fail and troops have to be

committed, this and future analyses will enable commanders to

have a better grasp of the nature of the war they will fight. In

either case, understanding the war and the theater should

facilitate a solution more in keeping with U.S. interests and

values.

JOHN W. MOUNTCASTLE

Colonel, U.S. Army

Director, Strategic Studies Institute
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

STEPHEN J. BLANK has been an Associate Professor of

Russian/Soviet Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute since

1989. Prior to this appointment Dr. Blank was Associate Professor

for Soviet Studies at the Center for Aerospace Doctrine,

Research, and Education of Air University at Maxwell Air Force

Base. Dr. Blank's M.A. and Ph.D. are in Russian history from the

University of Chicago. He has published numerous articles on

Soviet military and foreign policies, notably in the Third World,

and is the author of a forthcoming study of the Soviet

Commissariat of Nationalities and editor of books on Soviet

foreign policies in Latin American and on the future of the

Soviet military.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Many military analysts believe or fear that the wars of the

1990s will be akin to the wars in the former Yugoslavia: smallscale but long-lasting and recurrent ethnic wars that also elude

easy international resolution. There are consequently

well-founded concerns about prospects for deployment of U.S.

forces there in a unilateral or U.N. capacity. Some of the

lessons of this kind of war were already apparent in the wars of

the 1980s. They were known then as low-intensity conflicts and

now as operations other than, or short of, war.

This report focuses mainly on lessons from one of the most

crucial of these wars, i.e., in Afghanistan as a result of the

Soviet invasion in 1979, and attempts to draw lessons that are

relevant for current wars, like those in Yugoslavia or the exSoviet Union. The purpose is to stimulate analysis and reflection

on the strategic and operational, if not also tactical nature of

these wars by both analysts and policymakers so that all

interested groups can more easily come to terms with a form of

warfare that promises to be both deeply destructive and deeply

rooted in longstanding political and social antagonisms that

cannot be easily or quickly resolved.

Naturally some of the lessons drawn from Afghanistan and

other wars may either only apply to Russian and Soviet forces or

conversely may apply to war in general. But our primary intention

is to make a contribution to the study of future wars

particularly of the ethnic and small-scale type that promise to

continue in many parts of the globe lest we devise better ways

for averting and then resolving them.
AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND:

REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF WARFARE

The Initial Period of the Afghan War and Low-Intensity Conflict.

The Soviet war in Afghanistan may fairly be seen as the

first rock in the avalanche that culminated in the collapse of

the USSR. Therefore the analysis of its lessons and those of the

subsequent conflicts of the 1990s in Yugoslavia, the

Transcaucasus and Moldova are of interest. These lessons suggest

new trends in the smallscale but no less terrible wars of the

present, even those having nothing to do with the former Soviet

Union.

It is only as a result of Afghanistan that Russian generals

came to consider the American terms of low-intensity conflict

(henceforth LIC) and counterinsurgency. Before 1991 those terms

and their implications had no meaning for Soviet commanders and

were attacked by Soviet writers.1

 In the Soviet context,

Afghanistan was:

• a war in defense of a socialist revolution menaced by a

combination of internal counterrevolutionaries and external

patrons: Pakistan, the United States, Iran, China, and Saudi

Arabia. As such it was a coalition war, particularly after

1980-81.

• It also was, in theater terms, a "local war" in a

mountain-desert theater of war (Teatr' Voiny-TV) . That is, it

took place in a single country or region and TV. (Some analysts

might restrict the dimension of the war to a mountain desert area

but Afghanistan and contiguous border areas as well as Pakistan

and the USSR experienced military operations, however small

scale, a fact that justifies use of the term, TV) Moreover, the

Soviets had extensively prepared this theater and studied it

topographically, ethnically, economically, and graphically. They

paid considerable attention to the road networks, to the seizure

of key economic regions and resources, and to transportation

infrastructures. Indeed, just as in Iran in 1941, Soviet strategy

aimed to maximize access to these key targets in its strategy.

Hence the invasion of Afghanistan had a pronounced combined arms

character and stressed simultaneous and gradual insertion of air

and ground troops along key axes as in 1941.2

• It was also an asymmetric or limited war in the sense that

the Soviet Union fought a limited war while its allies and the

Mujahedin fought a more or less total war.3 By limited war we

mean that both the scale of operations and forces that Moscow

committed were strictly limited. Of course, for the resistance

what was at stake was the future of their country--a total war

objective. Hence the asymmetry between them.

Bearing these facts in mind, clearly the war in Afghanistan,
broadly conceived, had numerous lessons and implications for

weapons design, tactics, operational art, force structure, and

strategy, if not doctrine (in the Soviet/Russian sense of the

term, i.e., the official views of a country on the essence, aims,

and character of future war/s and of the means of preparing the

country for fighting it) . In addition, these lessons apply to

the various stages of the war, i.e., the immediate invasion and

the subsequent period, once Moscow realized it was involved in a

long war. These lessons and trends that developed in the course

of the war also have made themselves felt in current conflicts

where operations other than war (formerly operations short of war

and before that low-intensity conflicts) are occurring.

The first stage of Soviet participation was 1979-80, the

time of the initial invasion. This first operation, the

occupation of Kabul and other cities, was a coup d'etat as well

as a coup de main. This operation was to replace a disintegrating

and recalcitrant regime with a pliable one and provide a shield

and breathing space behind and during which the Afghan army could

turn things around. What distinguishes it from a coup de main

like Panama in December 1989 is that no urgency was present in

Panama. The objective there was only to effect a transfer of

government, not to stabilize a disintegrating military situation

and then proceed to Sovietizing (or Americanizing as in Panama)

the state. At the tactical-operational level the invasion was a

complete success and validated many elements of Soviet doctrine

and strategy for war in general, including the European theater,

not just Afghanistan or the Third World.4 These elements of

success were:

• Moscow obtained complete operational surprise vis-a-vis

Kabul, Pakistan, and the United States, despite numerous warnings

and intelligence analyses suggesting that this was in the

offing.5

• The operation successfully coordinated airmobile forces,

rapidly advancing ground troops and local intelligence assets.

• This operation also successfully implemented Maskirovka

(cover, concealment, and deception). Western analysts and

governments were completely fooled. This use of Maskirovka

applies to all levels of a military operation and even a war

since Soviet commanders were directed to employ all forms of it

at each level: tactical, operational, and strategic.6

• The use of satellite communications as the link to Moscow

demonstrated their utility for power projection purposes and

missions involving force projection. This aspect of the invasion

highlights the growing possibility for detailed and even

micromanagement of a war by a command thousands of miles away, on

a day-to-day basis. In this sense it was a foretaste of what was

to come in Operation DESERT STORM and attests to the continually

growing influence of all aspects of space and electronic warfare

(EW) on war in general.7
• Overall, the entire operation validated doctrinal precepts

of seizing upon the enemy's C3I and aerial platforms (missile and

air bases) as the main target of strikes and missions to assure

their rapid neutralization, if not seizure or destruction. These

aspects of the Soviet operation point towards a trend that

recently has become more marked in Soviet and Russian thinking,

i.e., the upgrading of electronic warfare from a means of

supporting combat operations to a means of influencing them, if

not ultimately an independent operation.8

• This operation also illustrates the importance that the

Soviets attached to the initial period of the war. Soviet and now

Russian commentators believe that in this phase it is necessary

to fulfill those missions and objectives that allow one to

influence decisively the course and/or outcome of the war. In

other words, operations in this phase should convert tactical

successes into lasting operational and even strategic ones that

could even bring the war to a rapid and victorious termination.

The importance of the initial phase can also, from this

vantage point, assume an even greater importance as a major

question for future wars. First, every war since 1939 has begun

with surprise attacks often leading to a situation which confers

tremendous operational, if not strategic or even decisive,

advantages upon the attacker. Nonetheless, surprises as in 1941

in Russia and Pearl Harbor or in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War did

not always lead to victory for the attacker. To be effective,

surprise must be followed up to optimize its potentially

strategic benefits. This did not happen in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, the invasion only attained a tactical or

at best a tactical-operational victory. Moscow failed to convert

that success into a lasting strategic victory and instead

embroiled itself in an unforeseen protracted war. In light of

Afghanistan, it seems that a major lesson is that surprise, to be

maximally effective, must employ overwhelming force in the

initial phase. Otherwise the likelihood of a protracted war, the

last thing a distant invader wants, is enhanced. Operation DESERT

STORM, seen from Moscow, did just this and confirmed the rising

importance of surprise in warfare.9

 Attaining that level of

strategic surprise precludes the very possibility of defense that

could otherwise, given the economic potential for long-term war,

lead to protracted attritional war.

Conversely there will be virtually no surprise should the

U.N., EC, or the West enter more deeply into the Bosnian

quagmire. Here the Serbs have effectively preempted a surprise

Western strike and have forced policy planners to reckon with

equally unpalatable alternatives of protracted low-intensity

conflict in hostile terrain.10

Issues of surprise, mobilization processes, and logistics in

distant wars have returned to the forefront of military agendas
as a result of these considerations and not only in Russia. Those

considerations posed major questions for the development of

flexible mobilization plans which confer surprise through

Maskirovka, logistics to support the concentration of assets, and

the real time intelligence or information fusion systems to

strike accurately at key targets and platforms. Such requirements

place tremendous burdens of coordination upon a military, burdens

that clearly the Soviet army was incapable of mastering.

Therefore, we may well see that military literature in many

states besides Russia concentrates on such questions as surprise;

countering of surprise; mobilization; deception; logistics for

both long and short engagements or wars; and the revolutionary

impact of information fusion weapons, what Moscow calls

reconnaissance strike systems (RUK), on war in general.

If this is the case, the question of surprise and

concentration of forces on the first strike or operation also

raises the issue of limited versus unlimited war. In a limited

war, for either one or both protagonists the means of fighting

and scale of operations are limited as are the objectives, or at

least they should be. In an unlimited war, not only do we

approach a condition of total mobilization and largest possible

size of operations (right up to nuclear ones), the objectives,

too, become unlimited, culminating in a revolutionary

transformation of the defeated state and society. If the

objectives can and must only be seized or knocked out in the

initial phase and also constitute the main nerve centers of the

enemy's military and governmental activity, in what sense can one

talk about that war as one for limited objectives?

For example, the current war in Bosnia is one in which

Serbian attackers have targeted Sarajevo from the outset to

deprive Bosnia's government any effective means to govern or

mobilize in defense whereas against Croatia they moved only to

annex Serbian lands. In Bosnia, ethnic cleansing, as Serbia calls

its policy, could only begin where the government was

neutralized. Hence Bosnia's perspective has been that this is

essentially a total war. If it loses it disappears. But in

Croatia, the issue is the limited one of Serbian inhabited lands.

Hence that war, to date, has been a limited one.

The same issues apply to the wars in Moldova and the

Transcaucasus. In Moldova, Russian forces, supported by the army

and government, attacked Moldovan towns in order to secede from

Moldova and create their own Russian dominated Trans-Dniestrian

state. For Moldova what is at stake is the integrity of the

state, an issue that cannot be compromised. For the local

Russians, a defeat, even if disguised as an autonomous status in

Moldova, is, until now, equally unacceptable. And since they

enjoy much covert and overt support from the government in

Moscow, they are continuing to hold out for maximum terms making

the conflict an unlimited one regarding the participants,

objectives, though not the scale of operations. In

Nagorno-Karabakh, on the other hand, a different situation
obtains. At issue here is the disputed future of a territory

hitherto in the Azerbaidzhani Republic. Although for the local

Armenians there this is obviously an unlimited issue, neither

Armenia nor Azerbaidzhan is necessarily threatened with total

disaster and revolution should either be defeated. While the

local Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have adopted maximalist

postures and fighting is fierce, those trying to effect wholesale

revisions of territories and sovereignties, i.e., unlimited

objectives, have not yet prevailed.

However, the intensification of ethnic hatreds in these wars

could easily make them into unlimited wars where "ethnic

cleansing" becomes the order of the day and in turn ignites a

never-ending chain of hostilities. Protracted war is "ideally"

suited for engendering such hatreds over a long time, thereby

making them less amenable to either outside intervention or

mediation.

Moreover, as one reflects on Afghanistan, the issue of

limited aims and limited war in a Soviet context becomes even

more acute. Afghanistan's course and outcome illuminated some of

the fundamental strategic contradictions that inhered in Soviet

thinking and policy in the world of the 1980s. The inability of

the Soviet state to overcome those contradictions imposed cruel

penalties--ultimately leading to Soviet disintegration upon that

system and its peoples. Afghanistan illustrates the proposition

that when Soviet Russia resorted to war it had to win and thereby

revolutionize or Sovietize its enemy's territory and state.

Failure to achieve either a military victory by destroying enemy

forces or to achieve a political revolution in the enemy's state

meant that the nature of the Soviet project itself was called

into question. Moscow could not afford to choose of its own

accord direct involvement in uncertain campaigns. For the USSR

there was, indeed, no substitute for victory. Considerations

along such lines probably were behind the Brezhnev Doctrine,

itself a codification of past practice, and Marshal Grechko's

dictum that the Soviet forces marched in only one direction.

 Therefore, any war in which Moscow intervened immediately

and inevitably became a total one for the protagonists, whether

in the Third World or Europe, and regardless of what Moscow

originally thought its objectives were. To the other side its

national destiny was at stake--hence the resort to total war. The

attempt to fight a limited war in Afghanistan whose objective

ultimately was a total one for all Afghans could not but land

Moscow in an impossible strategic quagmire of its own making. By

the same token, foreign intervention in Bosnia that would be a

limited war intervention could impale the outside force upon the

horns of this dilemma, too. As Arthur Grant of the National War

College recently wrote:

In low-intensity conflict . . . We have decided to

limit our objectives and not dictate the terms of
peace. As a result, tactical successes that in total

war bring us closer to the end (destruction of forces,

occupation of territory) do not necessarily produce the

same ends in low-intensity conflict. In fact,

destruction of his forces and occupation of his

territory in low-intensity conflict may convince the

enemy that he is engaged in total war, defeat in any

form may become unacceptable to him, so he resists more

strongly and refuses to negotiate. Once again, the

asymmetry between the two sides meant that for the

protagonist fighting a limited war, clear-cut military

victories do not necessarily produce the desired result

of negotiating a peace that accomplishes his

objective.11

This happened in Afghanistan where apparently decisive

Soviet victories in 1979 and occupation for 10 years achieved

nothing strategically, largely because the limited means Moscow

employed were not commensurate to the total war considerations

that underlay the nature of the war it had started. one can

easily imagine that foreign intervention in Bosnia, Moldova, and

Transcaucasia might have the same outcome. The failure of the

protagonists to achieve an early decisive victory in any of those

three post-Soviet wars suggests that whatever their immediate

outcome, those conflicts will once again be protracted over

several years if not decades. That outcome would be in keeping

with decades, if not centuries old ethno-national conflicts

between peoples that lie at the root of these wars.

At the same time the tremendous concentration of assets necessary

to achieve operational or strategic level victory early militates

against considerations of limited war and objectives in a

conventional war. This is because such concentration of forces

and strikes at key targets will likely induce enemy counteraction

at a similar scale or the highest one available to him. While a

short essay cannot answer the thorny issue of limited versus

unlimited war or objectives, the Afghan war and these new "small

wars" raise it and associated issues in a most intense fashion.

Soviet Failure and the Lessons of That War.

Subsequent to the invasion of Afghanistan a second phase

began in 1980.12 Moscow adopted a conventional strategy of

seizing the cities, controlling the main roads, and converting

them into government strongholds and bases. Soviet forces sought

to engage the enemy by means of conventional armored sweeps with

extensive artillery preparation. As is well known, these sweeps

were quite standardized in preparation and execution, thereby

forfeiting surprise, as in countless previous wars of this

kind.13 They also were unsuited to the terrain (given both the

question of sustainability of equipment and limited mobility).

They demonstrated the poor physical and combat training of many

Soviet conscripts.14 One of the main reasons for this was that

Soviet battalion, regiment, and lower level commanders were only
schooled in drills relating to armored sweeps which normally had

been done by larger size divisions and corps or armies. Thus they

knew no other way to proceed, nor where they allowed to, given

the strict authority of higher command. Their men were equally

unfamiliar with other ways of operating in combat.15

However, this strategy was perfectly consonant with

traditional Russian strategy in frontier wars. That is, during

the expansion of the Russian and Soviet empires, the regime,

after inducing a class war among natives, projected power into

fortified areas behind which came armies, settlers, and the state

apparatus--so too in Afghanistan. However, here the breakdown

occurred because Soviet forces could not match the requirements

for mobility, speed, etc., with the means they brought to bear in

Afghanistan and would have used in Europe. This suggests that

Moscow eventually came to realize that Afghanistan demonstrated

its troops' actual incapability to conduct doctrinally required

highspeed offensive operations in Europe. For example, consider

the issue of mobility of forces as displayed in Afghanistan.

• Armored forces movements were slow, restricted and

predictable.

• Soviet commanders and troops, i.e., motorized rifle units,

tended to be roadbound, disinclined to dismount, and generally

unwilling to move or fight at night.

• The poor physical condition and unsuitability of men and

equipment to the terrain reduced both striking power and mobility

(if for no other reason than high rates of equipment

breakdown).16

• Their logistical links to Russia were vulnerable to mines

or ambushes and had to be heavily defended, again impeding

mobility. Indeed, some commentators view operations there as

largely revolving around the objectives of seizing, holding, and

denying logistical access and strong points, a fact suggesting

the greater salience of such targeting in any future wars.17

• Because the war rapidly came to involve extensive mining

and fortification on both sides, ground mobility was reduced.

Soviet forces had to rely heavily on air mobility for air

assaults, close air support, interdiction and logistics.

• In turn, this placed a premium on effective air/land

coordination at tactical and higher levels, a task which many

commanders and officers were unable to perform. Failure to move

or secure easy mobility--a clear operational goal--was linked to,

and exposed, the ongoing defects in the Soviets' C3I system, both

tactically and at higher levels.18

The numerous and repeated failures of Soviet C3I after 1980

were directly traceable to the military culture of unusually high

levels of authoritarianism and too heavy mechanization (as
pointed out in a seminal article by Col. Arjun Ray of the Indian

Armed Forces).19 These aspects of Soviet military culture

derogated from commanders' and troops' ability to fight

effectively in unpredictable situations and display the tactical

and operational requirements called for in a low-intensity

conflict. These failures also impeded commanders' abilities to

visualize correctly the nature of the war or of the operational

-level content of engagements in which they participated. Many

features of Soviet operations come together here as contributory

causes of poor performance. They included the reliance on

standard tactics and drills, the substitution of fire for troops,

ground mobility, and the general Soviet contempt for Afghanistan.

Amazingly enough, given past Soviet and Russian interest in and

study of Afghanistan, Soviet forces and commanders manifested a

surprising and unaccountable unfamiliarity with the theater's

climactic, topographical, and logistic requirements.20 Similarly,

the thorough stifling of initiative and demoralization of troops

through terror, drugs, smuggling, etc. also signified the failure

of the Soviet command structure to respond to the imperatives of

small wars and wars in the present period of high technology and

mechanization. Such reforms as are underway hammer home these

points but the problem was visibly highlighted in Afghanistan and

will continue to plague commanders of all forces in the future.

The second phase of the Soviet intervention began in 1980-81

and gradually expanded in scope until 1988, when Soviet forces

commenced their evacuation. Innovations in Soviet military

performance during 1980-88 appeared first in changes in force

structure and military art. In a larger analysis, this phase may

be broken down into several stages because it took the Soviets

approximately 4-5 years until 1985 to master sufficiently the

intricacies of such operations and strategies to the point where

they could begin to carry the war to the Mujahedin in brutal and

aggressive fashion. That stage of the larger phase became evident

in 1985-86, the period of the most brutal and aggressive Soviet

operations and use of airpower. In retrospect it appears that

Gorbachev gave the military about a year in 1985-86 to do what it

could to achieve victory; otherwise he would find a political

solution.21

Soviet forces became lighter and more airmobile. Moscow

employed more airborne and heliborne forces than had previously

been the case. Consequently the aerial arm, both fixed and rotary

wing, was called on to provide close air support, interdict and

destroy enemy supply positions and logistics (i.e., conduct

economic warfare along the lines of a scorched earth strategy),

and provide for Soviet troop mobility and logistics. The shift to

air and heliborne forces and fire signalled a dawning recognition

of the fragmented nature of the "front. Relevant for this

analysis, this shift also underscored the fact that Soviet troops

fighting in this terrain under such conditions had to fight

simultaneous offensive and defensive operations and engagements.

This last point signifies that the doctrinal process by which

Soviet analysts dialectically linked together defense and
offense in a single continuum of military action due to the

revolution in modern war was, at the same time, appearing in

small-scale and tactical engagements in Afghanistan. In this

case, practice, if anything, guided theory.

During this time, the Soviet forces, due to the tactical

situation they confronted, operated either alone or in tandem

with mechanized and/or motorized infantry to obtain greater

aerial mobility. They launched several offensives or engaged in

operations that signified Soviet application of the principle

that air control ultimately conferred ground control. In this

period, the vertical envelopment or hammer and anvil operation

also became a virtual paradigm that obliged commanders to

synchronize simultaneous air and land attacks based on accurate

military intelligence as to target locations, size, and enemy

forces' strength. These envelopments functioned in both offensive

and defensive operations, e.g., liberation of besieged positions,

thereby demonstrating the flexibility of Soviet concepts of both

defense and offense. They also represented, however imperfectly,

Soviet efforts to synchronize or coordinate joint operations

involving land and airmobile forces. These innovations were then

incorporated into general tactical and operational doctrine in

the 1980s. In this fashion, as noted above, actual trends in

warfare influenced theory and doctrine.22

Here we encounter the Soviet understanding of defense as not

precluding offensive operations. Soviet defensive operations

during this period employed echelonned, layered, and mobile

defense systems and vast mining and fortifications for their main

fortresses and air bases. In many ways such activities seem to

have heralded the turn to "defensive strategies" and operational

art in areas like layering, echelonment, and extensive mining and

fortifications. Current Russian military literature betrays a

strong and growing interest in defensive fortifications.23 Such

defense allowed Moscow to obtain secure bases and logistical

strong points from which the Soviets could use air power to

project both fire and forces as well as secure bases. From these

bases, Soviet or Afghan troops could sally forth and give

substance to the idea of maneuver by fire as a means of

shattering the basis or cohesion of the enemy's defenses.24

By these means, the tactical or even operational-level

offensive became indistinguishable from strategic level defense.

In effect, Soviet operations aimed to suppress enemy mobility by

fire in order to move forward and project power, while Mujahedin

operations, especially once they had adequate air defenses, also

aimed to neutralize Soviet mobility and maneuver capabilities by

their fire system, albeit a primitive one. This period,

therefore, might suggest the applicability of the concept of

maneuver by fire and the multiform capabilities of fire, air or

ground launched, to suppress or interdict mobility on the ground

or in the air. Operations during this period also showed the

corresponding vitality and validity of fortified defenses like

mountain redoubts where enemy air power could be neutralized.
The enhanced role of the helicopter and of airborne and

heliborne forces confirmed the multiple roles that the former

could perform. Soviet air assault, air-mobile (heliborne), and

airborne (parachute) troops could thereby perform all the

missions formerly associated in the West with cavalry or mounted

infantry. Since regular Soviet commanders and troops were

incurably road-bound and wary of fighting dismounted, this

innovation became necessary. But it also points again to the

impact of long-range firepower on modern combat, force structure

and the increasingly intense struggle for unimpeded mobility on

the expanded modern battlefield. The impact of these platforms

also suggests again the validity of controlling the ground by

controlling the air.25

Other important aspects of airpower for troops or firepower

were that airborne and/or heliborne troops alone could serve as

the Operational Maneuver Group or as a defensive force performing

an offensive mission. Moreover, suitably armed, these light

infantry forces could combine the aspects of flying tanks or

artillery and air assault to perform almost any mission, either

as mounted or dismounted troops. This innovation in the use of

heliborne and airborne forces represented an important Soviet and

now Russian tactical adaptation to the exigencies of contemporary

warfare. Indeed, it appears that in Russia's new military policy,

airmobile troops will be the first to arrive in conflict zones to

hold the ring for several days until heavier forces can arrive.

They then will conduct either peacekeeping or actual combat

operations.26

These operational developments in Afghanistan and elsewhere,

when combined with the revolutionary advances in computers,

electronics, and weapons technology have blurred the former

operational distinction between infantry and cavalry. This is

particularly true in regard to the increasing resort to airborne

and air assault or heliborne troops to give infantry a new

"aerial" shot in the arm. Air and heliborne forces' capacity to

carry out many missions and arrive rapidly in key sectors adds a

new aerial dimension to land warfare. That aerial combination

clearly multiplies the land forces' effectiveness when the two

are harmoniously combined. Moreover, new advances in computer

technology are enabling both fixed and rotary wing systems and

tanks to become both mobile and even stealthy platforms that are

both information processors and fire platforms. Such

technological adaptation now and in the future would move

significantly in the direction of optimizing those systems as

reconnaissance fire complexes at the tactical level or

reconnaissance strike complexes at the operational and strategic

ones, to use Ogarkov's terminology. Those developments go beyond

the rudimentary and even primitive examples of Afghanistan, to

what we saw in operation DESERT STORM. As such, air and heliborne

forces' multiple utility substantially alters both the role of

aerial and tank platforms. For the tank and aerial forces to

become optimal fighting forces, the new technology transforms the
old role of the tank as merely a fire platform. Instead, tanks

must become more mobile and more able to exploit to the fullest

the demands of the electronic and computer age. In the U.S. Army,

analysts are calling for just this development. Lieutenant

General Fredric J. Brown, USA-Ret, urges exploiting the new

technologies in just this way. Tank mobility will have to

approach something like that of aerial mobility to optimize the

various combined arms forces packages that we put together.27

Soviet combat experience indicates that these various forms

of airmobile forces (air assault, airborne, heliborne) can also

perform the missions of deep raids (with or without "special

forces"), reconnaissance in force, vertical and/or amphibious

encirclement, coups d'etat (i.e., independent seizure or

neutralization of the enemy's C3I), coups de main or flanking

operations. In other terms, these forces can independently, if

need be, carry out operational and/or strategic missions against

key targets whether we are discussing a typical conventional war,

or Afghanistan, or the kinds of conflict now embroiling Eastern

Europe and the old USSR. Russian authorities have openly embraced

this concept of such forces. Russian Defense Minister Grachev

stated:

Rapid deployment forces will play an important role in

the overall structure of the Russian armed forces; they

are based on airborne troops and marines, which are

capable--with the help of modern military- transport

aviation aircraft and helicopters and amphibious

warfare ships--of operating autonomously In any sector

from which an external threat to the country's security

may appear.28

Deputy Defense Minister Andrei Kokoshin was equally

explicit. He called for rapid deployment forces which can be

thrown into conflict zones in the CIS at the earliest possible

time, "to repulse external aggression, to end conflict on

favorable terms acceptable to us."29 These Russian airmobile

rapid deployment forces are usable in all contingencies. Thus,

they and their fire capabilities tend to efface the boundaries

between types of combat and warfare. This is one reason for the

new Russian army's and NATO's projected reliance on rapid

reaction forces that are particularly airmobile.30

Whether mounted or not, the Russian forces can carry their

own "artillery" or strike and fire systems and accomplish

operational or even strategic missions. Their presence

contributes further to the spatial expansion of the battlefield,

the likelihood of the economic and/or ecological war as in

Afghanistan or Kuwait, importance of reconnaissance strike

systems as instruments of both control and fire, and real time

intelligence. These forces, rising importance also indicates the

centrality of gaining mobility of fire or denying it to an enemy.

Lessons for the Wars of the 1990S.
As we have noted, the Afghan war was also a coalitional war.

On the Soviet side the post-1980 strategy described above had a

second side to it, namely, the gradual retraining of the Afghan

army to the point where it could* be reconstituted as a viable

combat force. It is clear that this force could not survive,

despite its clear improvement from 1980, without massive

infusions of Soviet arms and aid. The comparison with the Army of

the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) is appropriate in this case.

Nonetheless from 1989-91, probably due to just this kind of

massive Soviet aid, the Afghan army gave a reasonably good

relative showing in combat (that is, relative to its past

performance and that of the Mujhaedin). Several lessons can be

learned from this strategy of 11 incremental insertion" for

ensuing conflicts. First, the relative success in constructing

this army led to an army capable of sustaining both small and

large-scale operations (sieges and the lifting thereof) with

Soviet logistic supply and achieved unprecedented, though

temporary, unity of command in Afghanistan.31 Second, this

strategy facilitated the orderly withdrawal of Soviet troops from

Afghanistan and prevented the further likelihood of Soviet

society and government becoming the center of gravity of the war,

as in Vietnam or more recently in our Nicaraguan campaign. The

Mujahedin, on the other hand, failed to make this transition to a

higher level and only achieved victory through the defection of

pro-government forces, not their own activity. Precisely because

they f ailed to unify their political arm and thus their armies

they are now engaged in internecine strife among themselves.

The third, and most immediately relevant lesson appears in

the increasing resort by belligerent governments or armies

(Serbia, Armenia, Russia in Moldova) to allies And forces who are

irregulars, including ex-soldiers or men in civilian clothing "so

to speak." The Bosnian Serbs in the hills, the Russian Cossacks,

elements of the Russian XIV Army in Moldova, and local Armenians

in Nagorno-Karabakh are invariably said to be under very tenuous

if any control by the central authorities and thus are not

amenable to a cessation of the fighting until they get their way.

The claim that such forces are not controllable while they are,

in fact, either under direct leadership or allies of belligerent

states simplifies many of the difficult problems that inhere in

any coalition effort in a conventional war. These so-called

irregulars have more political, and hence strategic-operational,

flexibility and are more difficult to locate and track down.

Thus, they can use heavy weapons, as is happening in all the wars

listed above, but they deny the utility of advanced weaponry to

their opponents. Politically, too, the resort to operations by

such forces makes it easier for states wishing to achieve the

same aims as these forces but unable openly to conduct aggression

to claim that they cannot stop the fighting. Thus, those states

can delay international repercussions against them and prolong

the fighting until they achieve a satisfactory outcome or until

the costs run too high. In effect the result is a guerrilla or
low-intensity coalition war but one using systems that only 15 or

20 years ago were state-of-the-art and hence very lethal.

Still another outcome of Afghanistan and the wars in

Lebanon, Yugoslavia, and the former USSR relates to these

"irregulars'" involvement. These wars highlight the return of the

past phenomenon of warlordism. If the war goes on long enough,

particularly in multiethnic or multireligious areas with a

history of rivalry and conflict among peoples, there are

increasing prospects for warlordism. As time passes and organized

political life in the war zone disintegrates, the irregular

forces could increasingly elude any political control save that

of their commander. The tendency of General Aleksandr' Lebed,

commander of the XIV Army in Moldova, unilaterally to decide key

political issues illustrates the tendency towards conversion of a

general into a warlord. He who can control the supply and

provision of armaments becomes effective master of the territory

and can then defy the center or outside authority for a long

time. In Lebanon this was quite evident as its civil war

progressed and it certainly occurred among the Mujahedin who

represent, essentially, a congeries of rival tribes and factions.

The turn towards warlordism can only prolong these conflicts

as the number of combatants multiplies, central authority

fragments, and all parties, primordial attachment to a man or

ethno-religious cause intensifies. In past examples like China,

civil strife lasted 38 years from 1911-49, in Lebanon from

1975-92, and in Afghanistan from 1979-92. And the latter two are

by no means definitively out of danger. Nor can we ignore the

potential for warlordism in Moldova, elsewhere in the new

Commonwealth of Independent States, or even in post-Deng China.

Another lesson, in this case, of Soviet strategy, continued

by Najibullah, after 1980 pertains to the role of key cities as

heavily fortified strongholds. In contrast to the Afghan

countryside, the cities did offer the regime a social basis of

support inasmuch as the regime came to be seen as the only means

towards attaining a modernized Afghanistan. In other conflicts,

El Salvador until 1992 and the attempted Philippine coups of

1989-90, cities played key roles as lucrative targets for

guerilla attacks and in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Moldova, and

Nagorno-Karabakh, cities have increasingly been the center of

terror missile and rocket launchings against civilians. These

facts make it imperative for defenders to secure cities against

enemy infiltration. Infiltration into the heart of the urban

strongholds of any regime undermines both its national and its

international support as happened in San Salvador and Manila in

1989 and in Azerbaidzhan in 1991-92, where Armenian occupation of

cities has led to a collapse of the government in Baku and raised

the specter of an Armenian backed Kurdish separatist movement

there.32

Such infiltration, moreover, has a profound military aspect

as well. Mass enemy infiltration forces opponents to expend
military assets on protracted urban or siege fighting that

destroys the economic, political, and institutional

infrastructures that support their position. In effect, he who

must fight in his key or capital cities has to destroy them to

save them with predictable results. Recent episodes, in Beirut,

San Salvador, Sarajevo, and Manila, suggest that the battle for

urban strongholds may well intensify and perhaps even assume a

transnational character in low-intensity conflicts as foreign

states seek increasingly to influence or manipulate domestic

factions in such conflicts.

Lastly, the dissemination and proliferation of rocket,

missile, armored platforms, and heavy weapons generally to both

regular and irregular fighters in so called backward areas have

also brought about a spatial and social expansion of the

battlefield. Increasingly, terror directed against innocent

civilians has become a strategic operation in its own right, a

phenomenon as true of Iraq's performance in DESERT STORM, a

conventional theater war, as in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, NagornoKarabakh, and Moldova. Just as conventional warfare has eroded

the difference between front and rear, so, too, is low-intensity

conflict no longer primarily a rural affair. Increasingly, large

urban centers have become key "theaters" of those wars.

Operational and Strategic Lessons for the U.S. Forces.

Any analysis of the Soviet military experience in

Afghanistan and the lessons that were learned and are now being

applied must start, not at the tactical level as has virtually

all American analyses, but from the operational and strategic

level.33 From that perspective the tactical failures appear in a

different light. Moreover, the specific failures of the Brezhnev

leadership in 1979 are failures that remain relevant today to

analysts and policymakers who do not wish to embark on protracted

and unforeseeable contingencies in the Third World or even the

Balkans. Indeed, lessons learned from that war are important to

our policymakers.

Thus it is incontestable that, in 1979, Soviet leaders

fundamentally misjudged the nature of the enemy, the nature of

the war, and were poorly acquainted with the terrain and its

requirements for combat. The entire Afghan experience also calls

into question the adequacy of Soviet intelligence preparation and

policy making both before and during the war.33 It also

highlights the importance of both accurate intelligence

collection and analysis in warfare. Soviet operations throughout

the war in Afghanistan showed a very spotty use of

intelligence.34 Target acquisition and follow-up strikes were

rarely successfully coordinated, and offensives were regularly

leaked, as were assassination plots. Moreover, even when good

intelligence was obtained, commanders did not aggressively follow

up. All this casts doubt on the Russian military's capacity to

adapt itself to the new requirements of the reconnaissance strike

systems proclaimed by Ogarkov, et.al., let alone to the new
generation of information fusion weapons about to enter into

regular military use.35 These facts also suggest that the efforts

begun in 1992 to reform the army's structure to a much more

mobile and rapid reaction force, primarily relying on the

vertical dimension, will encounter strong resistance.36 In this

sense, tactical rigidity, overcentralized C3I, poor use of

intelligence, and unimaginative tactics and operational art

formed a systemically negative synergy. Civilian and military

reformers have concentrated their fire precisely against this

negative synergy.37

Afghanistan also implicated the entire military-political

system in an expensive, protracted, and visible failure that

began the pressure within the armed forces, Soviet society, and

government to de-militarize and transform the entire security

policy-making structure and mentality. Most critiques of those

systems focused on Afghanistan and the decision to place SS-20

missiles in Europe in 1977 as the two most emblematic and

outstanding instances of bankrupt security policies.

In this sense Afghanistan is comparable to Vietnam in

indicating the risks for any government which gets trapped in

such a war. Both examples have thus led American policymakers to

shy away from any strategy other than a "quick kill."38 This was

particularly the case with former Secretary of Defense

Weinberger's test for the recourse to war.39 In examining

Weinberger's criteria for the combat deployment of U.S. forces

abroad, two Army War College analysts sharply observed that:

Frankly, we have not had traditional military forces

available to cover our current military commitments.

Only the umbrella of massive nuclear deterrence or the

threat of massive retaliation has permitted this

country to effectively assist in the defense of Europe

. . . . This factor, together with our ever increasing

number of national commitments or areas of national

interest, makes it obvious that this particular test

(i.e., of committing forces as needed to gain our

objectives) could only be useful for short-term

operations like Grenada or raids against third-rate

powers like Libya. If it were ever applied to a

confrontation with a major power such as the Soviet

Union or China, we simply could never go to war.40

Therefore, those able to control the tempo and nature of combat

in such low-intensity conflicts like Yugoslavia's, or for that

matter any other conflict, have, for the moment, denied the great

powers the option of bringing military power to bear lest they

encounter another Vietnam, Northern Ireland, or Afghanistan. This

emerges in an analysis of lessons of the war against Iraq. Had we

not had uninterrupted leisure to build upon an already formidable

logistical base for 6 months before combat, who knows what we

would have encountered or done there. Moreover, that war offered

no lessons against resolute, competent enemies who possess at
least a modicum of strategic aptitude.41

The flawed strategy and operational art of the second phase

of the Afghan war unravelled in 1986 when the Mujahedin acquired

a viable portable or mobile air defense system in the Stinger.

This is not to argue that technological solutions were decisive,

but rather to highlight the strategic-level lesson that it

suffices to negate enemy air control for forces to obtain

(relative) freedom of maneuver and bring enemy counterstrikes or

offenses to a halt. For example in Bosnia, the inability of U.N.

forces to overcome antiair attacks on relief convoys has led to

periodic ruptures of the supply line to besieged Bosnian cities.

As long as hostilities continue, if Serbian forces can deny this

airlift without even committing their own planes, they can

effectively starve Sarajevo into submission. This lesson has

reached a canonical state and forces us to consider likely future

options and scenarios if we are to have more than just tactical

success in large or small conventional wars.

• The race to devise countermeasures of EW, ECM, and ECCM

(Electronic Warfare, Electronic Countermeasures, and Electronic

Counter-Countermeasures, respectively) (Radio-Blektronicheskaia

Borlba-REB in Russian] against anti-air missiles and systems will

intensify as does the race to devise more and still more

effective anti-air ordnance on land, sea, air, submarine, and

based in space.

• The growing role of RUK (Reconnaissance Strike Systems as

described by Ogarkov) or information fusion systems will put a

premium on the capacity to engage in SEAD (Suppression of Enemy

Air Defense) operations because, otherwise, mobility will grind

to a halt. All of the wars cited above lead to the conclusion

that negating enemy air power suffices either to move forward or

obstruct the enemy and impart considerable stability to the

offense. This is equally true for the low-intensity wars in

Eastern Europe and the Transcaucasus. One can imagine what would

happen to the Russian forces in Moldova if the Moldovans or their

allies could employ air strikes against them without risks.

Similarly, air strikes against Serbia might well have deterred

Serbian forces earlier but now they have been able to negate

aerial relief, not combat capability, to their enemies by their

attacks, thus gaining full freedom to move and strike at will,

and validating our point.

Moreover, as Russian analysts have written, the

proliferation of means of accomplishing deep strikes and maneuver

by fire raises the chances for defense as opposed to offense. But

this trend also simultaneously impArts to the "defense" the

opportunity to launch "offensive" operations and/or preemptive

strikes while remaining strategically on the defensive.42

• The presence of a Pakistani, or other, sanctuary, limited

both sides, capability to engage in aerial interdiction, leading

to a vicious economic war in Afghanistan proper. The effort to
deny sanctuary as in Bosnia has led to the expansion of large and

small wars (as in Kuwait and Iraq) against economic and civilian

targets. States will either go after the rearward sanctuary or

destroy the rear of the theater. In either case they will use

deep strike weapons that obliterate the classical distinction of

front and rear and make civilian installations a key target, thus

employing terror on a mass scale as a deliberate strategy. Should

the defensive sanctuary remain inviolate, its stability and that

of the defender's forces is, all things being equal,

strengthened. The same principle holds for the offense.

Accordingly, in future war we may expect economic targeting as

well as countervalue targeting (conventional as well as nuclear,

biological, and chemical [NBC] if things come to that) to assume

a larger strategic value. Such targeting has occurred in

Yugoslavia, Moldova and the Transcaucasus, and Angola, as well as

in the Gulf with the use of CBW and ecological warfare against

Kuwaiti oilfields. Thus, an NBC wartime environment cannot be

ruled out.

• Future commanders, like the Soviets or the Mujahedin, and

our own Air Force, will probably again be bewitched by

Wunderwaffen ideas, such as strategic bombing, overwhelming

reliance on fire strikes, CBW, high-tech platforms, space, the

ultimate weapon or missile, and so on. This is because of the

following considerations:

-- Since mobility is everything in an age of proliferation

of both firestrike systems and the means of supporting them, the

race for mobility will very likely correspond to the fact that

troop mobility cannot be easily attained to force a rapid

strategic or decisive conclusion. This suggests an intense search

for means or tactics that would enhance the mobility of strike

platforms as well as troop mobility. This is exactly what the

allied "Hail Mary" option was about in the Gulf, an attempt to

deploy a force with maximum multiplier effects to gain the

opportunity for mobile warfare. In Yugoslavia, too, the shelling

of airfields and ports has this aim in mind, albeit on a smaller

scale. As in World War I, both sides, if sufficiently armed, will

(or should) find ways of getting around or striking deeper than

the enemy and may obtain only localized tactical results. The

extensive capabilities of warring states in an age of

proliferation and missiles will likely result in a war of

attrition of both f ire strike and manpower systems once the

front stabilizes, and will be combined with devastating strikes

in the rear; or commanders will come under severe pressure to

launch preemptive strikes fearing that, as in Iraq, the first

strike may be the last. The results could well resemble the

Iran-Iraq War, the siege of Beirut, the subsequent Lebanese civil

war or World War I at an even more destructive level.

-- The race for mobility will lead to a greater search for

means of surprise and of the complex system involved in

Maskirovka operations to get in the first blow which might be

decisive strategically, if not operationally. Put differently, if
forces seek mobility as a key operational objective, they will

have to resort increasingly to surprise to achieve it. The

Yugoslav case exemplifies this point. A recent congressional

study by John Collins concluded that:

The Balkan arena is adverse by comparison.

Opportunities to apply U.S. military power swiftly as

well as decisively appear to be rare. Former Yugoslavia

contains few target concentrations similar to those

that centered on Baghdad. There are no clear military

centers of gravity--against which to focus U.N./U.S.

offensive forces. Fluid movement by large land forces

is infeasible anywhere except on the northern plain.

Potential opponents specialize in hit-and-run raids,

ambushes, sabotage, hostage-taking, and terrorism

rather than traditional tactics . . . Protracted

operations, in short, seem more likely than swift clean

victory for either side regardless of conflict

intensity.43

 This need for mobility and surprise to achieve it, is, in

turn, triggering an equal race to find means of denying surprise.

That race, in turn, fuels the search for surprise, and so on.

Information fusion and reconnaissance systems will be spurred on

as will the development of space systems to provide ever more

accurate real-time intelligence and ultimately the high ground

from which one can strike or interdict enemy operations. This

factor may be subsumed under the rubric of the struggle for

information. Moreover, winning this struggle may well make the

difference between a coup de main as in Panama or a long war.

• Because each side will have the means to deny the offense

a quick victory, the war could settle down to a protracted

attritional one in which the temptation for "ultimate weapons"

will be great, carnage enormous, and morale severely tested. This

is true even if the attrition period is severely telescoped

relative to World War I or the Iran-Iraq War. These developments

will occur because many modern societies, despite their lethal

arsenals, cannot long support war without profound and perhaps

disintegrative internal strains. Vietnam and the United States,

the Intifada and Israel, and Afghanistan and the USSR are all

examples of that stress. Indeed, apparently one reason Soviet

forces were kept numerically rather low was the authorities' fear

of the consequences of a mass mobilization.44 Those that can deny

to the enemy the short war option, therefore have a built-in

operational advantage.

As countless experiences tell us, operations short of war

(as LIC is now called), including insurgency warfare, represent

in many instances a deliberate strategy of trading space for time

and, therefore, maximizing the time factor against superior

forces. Commanders schooled in dynamic, offensive and

fast-moving, mobile operations will find themselves at sea and

may regress into a kind of tactical rigidity seen in Afghanistan
where the Soviets waged what Mujahedin leader Abdul Haq called

,cookbook warfare." This is because those commanders have (in

chess players' parlance) been "taken out of the books" and must

fight a war for which they are wholly unprepared. The onset of

such attritional warfare with little chance of victory or of

accomplishing the initial aims will severely test troop morale,

if not undermine it, as has been the case in both the Israeli and

U.S. Lebanon campaigns, the Intifada, Afghanistan, and Vietnam.

• All things being equal, the presence of RUK systems will

give the defense superiority and constrain, if not inhibit,

offensive mobility. Hence the search for a means of "outwitting"

or blinding these systems and for mobility of troops or platforms

to overcome that defensive superiority. Operationally, there will

be little if any distinction between offense and defense, and the

battle for the first salvo on land, sea, and air (and space) will

become critical. It may well be the only way, as in DESERT STORM,

to operationalize and/or realize the mobility upon which

successful offensive operations depend.

These "first strike" operations or campaigns will rely on

enormous fire strikes, SEAD operations and maneuver by fire to

destroy the cohesion of the defense, or on surprise operations

targeting its C3

I, and means of air and missile strikes. While at

first the front will be nonlinear, i.e., broken-backed,

fragmented, and interspersed with simultaneous offensive and

defensive operations by both armies in a vast theater, it is

likely that this situation, if allowed to continue, will result

in layered, echelonned, immobile, but highly destructive armed

forces.45

• Air assault, heliborne, airborne forces, and helicopters

will assume the ability to conduct virtually every kind of

operation with either mounted or dismounted troops, a fact which

reinforces the centrality of securing, or denying, early on to

the enemy, air control and superiority. Even if they cannot hold

ground in the face of modern conventional forces for long, their

operational and strategic advantage can be commanding. Current

U.S. doctrine for joint warfare, for example, advances the notion

that the relative importance (in and of itself) of holding any

particular ground is declining. Rather, that doctrine emphasizes

agility and (wherever possible) extension of operations

throughout the theater to force the enemy to disperse his forces.

As the doctrine statement indicates, the purpose of establishing

and then projecting presence on the ground is to contribute to

the sustainment of the operation through that extension to the

ultimate target upon which the campaign's operational and

strategic level efforts are oriented, the enemy's center of

gravity.46 As in World

War I and II, on a macro-strategic level, these forces'

encirclement mission will symbolize the larger efforts by powers

holding exterior lines to blockade and encircle the enemy

operating on internal lines.47
To summarize, based upon investigation of the war in

Afghanistan and selected aspects of current operations short of

war, we have suggested, either explicitly or implicitly, the

following tentative conclusions about the nature of future small

or unconventional wars.

• There will be intense efforts at surprise and Maskirovka,

primarily targeted at C3I air and missile bases in the first

strike. Indeed, this may become an independent operation designed

to win rapidly and avoid the possibility of attrition.

• At the same time, an enormous battle will take place for

superiority in the air or its denial, replete with space-based

systems' participation and an enormously complex electronic

warfare scenario with ECMs and ECCM systems heavily involved.

• At least to start, the front will be enormous and broken

backed. Offensive and defensive lines will be fluid and troops

will be simultaneously engaged in both kinds of operation in an

interspersed fashion. Belligerents will rely heavily on the

various forms of mobile forces: airborne troops and naval

infantry, including their various special forces and

diversionary-reconnaissance forces, e.g., Spetsnaz.48

• The ultimate tactical objective will be to obtain scope

and freedom to move. At higher levels of combat the ultimate

objective might well be to "behead" or disorient the enemy's

"central nervous system" to the point where it is unable to issue

commands, control troops, and communicate with them. Those goals

are attainable through the rapid coup de main or the blinding of

its reconnaissance and intelligence capability as well, not to

speak of strikes against C3I or neutralization of enemy C3I or

the cohesion of the defense by fire strikes and maneuver by fire.

• Using the new generation of high precision weapons and

information fusion systems (VTO and RUK in Soviet parlance),

economic and countervalue targeting will be extensive and

enormously destructive.

• Defenses will be fortified, layered, heavily mined, and

likely entrenched as well. Moreover, a possible return to siege

warfare on a broad front cannot be ruled out.

• There will have to be enormous campaigns of high

ideological fervor to motivate troops to be ready to fight long

attritional wars which will test the various combatants' systems

to the highest possible degree of cohesion. From here it cannot

be ascertained whether the economic-political forces making for

support of a long war can prevail over the moral-psychological

ones that militate against such an outcome. But current and past

wars caution against excessive optimism in either direction.

• The future battlefield will see more resort to CBW if not
conventional strikes that are almost equivalent in lethality and

destructiveness to atomic ones.

• There will be a continuing effort to reform force

structures in the direction of mobility and lightness as well as

combined arms. The Soviet Combined Arms Rifle Battalion, where

each battalion carries its own organic air and anti-air assets as

well being airmobile and endowed with destructive accurate fire

systems, exemplified this approach. So do the new reforms

undertaken by Yeltsin and Defense Minister General Grachev.49

• The unprecedented destructiveness of weapons systems will

come up against unprecedented levels of technical support for a

war, even in supposedly "Third World" states. This makes for an

equally unprecedented attrition of manpower and other assets and,

all things being equal, the supremacy of the defense in a long

attritional war.

• In low-intensity or even medium or high-intensity

conflicts, there may be a revival of urban fighting as in Beirut,

Sarajevo, Berlin or Stalingrad. Such combat operations entail

substantial difficulties for forces relying heavily on armor or

firepower because those assets cannot be easily used or used to

their full advantage in such scenarios. Indeed, they may be

counterproductive. Moreover, as we observed, attacks on cities or

defense of them (depending on the scenario, Beirut or San

Salvador, for instance) can be counterproductive to the political

strategy of one or both of the belligerents.

• Particularly in low-intensity conflicts, the need for

external patronage, supply, and sanctuary of insurgents, or of

counterinsurgents, if not both, increasingly becomes the key

means by which they are able to organize and equip to fight.

Absent such a sanctuary, and given the growing destructiveness

and lethality of war and weapons systems, such conflicts may run

up against daunting logistical and sustainability issues. But the

proliferation of arms producers and suppliers who are currently

chasing after buyers could reinvigorate such external "patronage"

necessary for wars to continue for a long time.

• It is increasingly clear that many factors are making for

a return of those issues--sustainability and logistics--to the

center of our attention, especially in a time of rising costs and

fiscal constraints. As weapons technologies proliferate and their

destructiveness grows, new ways will have to be found to do more

in these areas with less.

• With regard to Europe, the thinning out of forces as a

result of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and the

subsequent lowering of force densities and force-to-space ratios

will also have significant results. It is expected that smaller

forces will nonetheless still dispose of substantial firepower

assets there. The concentration of fire by such smaller scale

forces suggests a possibility of more closely focused targeting
by those forces upon particular key targets which may be urban or

significant logistical targets. That activity would further

contribute to erasing practical distinctions between front and

rear. This has already happened in Sarajevo.

• Finally, Afghanistan and other recent wars raise a host of

issues deriving from the race for surprise and for victory in the

first round of combat. These considerations and questions revolve

around issues of mobilization, logistics throughout the war, and

the organization, intelligence, target acquisition and fire at

those targets in real time, questions of limited and/or unlimited

war, and therefore, as well, issues revolving around targeting

and conflict termination.

Frankly, these are sobering perspectives, and the author

does not share the euphoria that the cold war is over. Rather,

the will emerging multipolar world of economic and ethnic wars

unconstrained by superpower influences, but with multiple

competitiveness for influence and wealth and proliferation of

advanced weapons technologies, leads us to the fear or

well-founded suspicion that we are sailing into very dangerous

and uncharted waters. The progress of the technology, art, and

science of warfare makes those waters more dangerous. As we sail

into those uncharted seas we had better see to it that we no

longer sail with a corpse in the cargo.

ENDNOTES

1. Anglo-Russkii Vdennyi Slovarl, two volumes, Moscow:

Voenizdat, 1987, Vol. 1, pp. 546, 649, 655, and Vol. 2, p. 584;

Slovarl Voennykh Terminov, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1988, p. 148; MSU

Sovetskogo Soiuza, S.F. Akhromeev, Ed., VoennoEntsiklopeclicheskii Slovarl, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1986, pp. 405,

593.

2. Gerold Guensberg, Soviet Command Stud of Iran (Moscow

1941): Draft Translation and Brief Analysis, Arlington, VA: SRI

International, January, 1980.

3. Andrew Mack, "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The

Politics of Asymmetric Conflict," in Klaus Knorr, Power,

Strategy, and Security, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1987, pp. 133-134.

4. Stephen Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons of the

Soviet War in Afghanistan 1979-1990, Carlisle Barracks, PA:

Strategic Studies Institute, 1991, pp. 29-42.

5. Remarks of Marshall Brement to the Conference on

Afghanistan, Center for Naval Analysis, Alexandria, VA, July

1990.

6. Ibid., and on Maskirovka, Ghulam Dastagir Wardak and

Graham Hall Turbiville, Jr., The Voroshilov Lectures: Materials
From the Soviet General Staff Academy, Raymond Garthoff,

Introduction, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,

1989, Vol. I, pp. 171-175.

7. Stephen Blank, "New Forces and Missions for Soviet Space

Forces," Defense Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 2/3, June-September 1991,

pp. 235-261.

8. Ibid.; James Bussert, "Soviet Military Communications in

the 1980s," Defense Electronics, October 1983, p. 139; James

Bussert, "Signal Troops Central to Afghanistan Invasion," Defense

Electronics, June 1983, pp. 102-108.

9. Stephen Blank, The Soviets View Operation Desert Storm: A

Preliminary Assessment, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies

Institute, September 1991.

10. John M. Collins, "Balkan Battlegrounds: U.S. Military

Alternatives," Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service,

Library of Congress, September 2, 1992, pp. 7-11.

11. Arthur V. Grant, "Strategic Decisions: The Mire of LowIntensity conflict," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1991,

p. 170.

12. Mark Urban, War in Afghanistan, London: Macmillan, 1988,

pp. 63-68; Blank, Operational.and Strategic Lessons, pp. 71-91.

13. Edward E. Rice, Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in

Undeveloped Countries, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University

of California Press, 1988, passim.

14. Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 43-48.

15. Stephen Blank, "Soviet Forces in Afghanistan: Unlearning

the Lessons of Vietnam," in Lewis B. Ware, et.al., Responding to

Low-Intensity Conflict Challenges, Maxwell AFB, AL: Air

University Press, 1990, pp. 81-88.

16. Ibid.

17. Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 48-51.

18. Ibid., pp. 71-94.

19. Colonel Arjun Ray, "Reform and the Way Ahead for

Armoured Infantry," RUSI Journal, Vol. 134, No. 3, Autumn, 1989,

pp. 32-38.

20. Blank, Soviet Forces in Afghanistan, pp. 81-88; and

Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 71-91.

21. Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: From the Cold War to a New

Era: The United States and the Soviet Union 1983-1990, New York:
Poseidon Press, 1991, pp. 236-239; Mark N. Katz, "Anti-Soviet

Insurgencies: Growing Trend or Passing Phase," Orbis, Vol. 30,

No. 2, Summer, 1986, pp. 365-392.

22. Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 71-91.

23. Ibid., pp. 51-53.

24. Ibid., pp. 71-91.

25. Ibid.; Stephen Blank, "Imagining Afghanistan: Lessons

From a 'Small War'," Journal of Soviet Military Studies, Vol. 3,

No. 3, September 1990, pp. 468-490.

26. Colonel David M. Glantz, Soviet Military Operational

Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle, London: Frank Cass Publishers,

1991, pp. 253, 262-263; Yossef Bodansky, "Returning Rapidity to

Warfare as a Means of Achieving Strategic Goals, No. 11, Defense

& Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, February 1992, pp. 18-22;

"Grachev on Personnel, Foreign Attachments," Foreign Broadcast

Information Service, Central Eurasia (FBIS-SOV), June 9, 1992, p.

38; "Rutskoy Expounds Views on Russian Army," Joint Publications

Research Service, Arms Control (JPRS-TAC), June 29, 1992, pp.

42-44; "New Russian Doctrine: Threat Perception, No. 11, Joint

Publications Research Service, Russia, Military Affairs

(JPRS-UMA), June 24, 1992, p. 53; Blank, "Imagining Afghanistan,"

pp. 468-490; Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 71-91.

27. Lieutenant General Frederic J. Brown, USA-RET., The U.S.

Army in Transition II: Landpower in the Information Age,

Washington, DC: Brassey's US, 1993, pp. 93, 141-142.

28. "Grachev on Future Shape of Defense Ministry," FBIS-SOV,

April 1, 1992, p. 32.

29. "Kokoshin Outlines Future Military Needs," FBIS-SOV,

March 18, 1992, pp. 26-27.

30. Bodansky, pp. 18-22.

31. Lieutenant Colonel Lester W. Grau, U.S. Army,

"Confrontation to Cooperation: An American/Soviet Military

Coalition?," Soviet Army Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS,

March 1991, pp. 10-11, on the extent of Soviet command of and

penetration of its coalition ally's forces in Afghanistan.

32. Elizabeth Fuller, "Kurdish Demands for Autonomy

Complicate Karabakh Equation, No. 11, Radio Free Europe/Radio

Liberty, RFE/RL Research Report, June 5, 1992, pp. 12-14.

33. Lieutenant Colonel Scott McMichael, U.S. Army, "Soviet

Tactical Performance and Adaptation in Afghanistan," Journal of

Soviet Military Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1990, pp. 73-105.
34. Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 57-70.

35. Stephen Blank, "New Strategists Who Demand the Old

Economy," Orbis, Vol. 36, No. 3, Summer, 1992, pp. 365-378.

36. Ibid.

37. Blank, Operational and Strategic Lessons, pp. 10-13.

38. Bob Woodward, The Commanders, New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1991, p. 324; Eric Schmitt, "U.S. Is Shying From

Bosnian Conflict," The New York Times, July 19, 1992, p. 10.

39. Caspar W. Weinberger, Annual Report to the Congress,

Fiscal Year 1987 Budget, FY 1988: Authorization Request and FY

1987-1991 Defense Programs, Washington, DC, February 5, 1986, pp.

77-78.

40. Major Samuel J. Newland, USANG, and Lieutenant Colonel

Douglas V. Johnson, U.S. Army, "The Military and operational

Significance of the Weinberger Doctrine," in Alan Ned Sabrosky

and Robert L. Sloane, eds., The Recourse to War: An Appraisal of

the "Weinberger Doctrine," Carlisle Barracks, PA, Strategic

Studies Institute, 1988, p. 125. Parenthetical addition by

author.

41. Jeffrey Record, Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the

Gulf War, Washington, DC: Brassey's US Inc., 1993, pp. 138-144.

42. Lieutenant Colonel Lester W. Grau, U.S. Army,

"Continuity and Change: A Soviet General Staff View of Future

War," Military Review, December 1991, pp. 11-24.

43. Collins, p. 14.

44. Mack, pp. 133-136; Grant, p. 166; J. Bruce Amstutz,

Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Soviet Occupation,

Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986, pp. 198,

375.

45. Lieutenant Colonel Lester Grau, U.S. Army, "Soviet

Nonlinear Combat in Future Conflict," Military Review, December

1990, pp. 16-28.

46. United States Department of Defense, Joint Pub 1: Joint

Warfare of the U.S. Armed Forces, Washington, DC: National

Defense University Press, November 11, 1991, pp. 30, 34, 46.

47. Ibid., pp. 91-97; Rod Paschall, LIC 2010: Special

Operations and Unconventional Warfare in the Next Century,

Washington, DC: Brassey's US Inc., 1990.

48. Bodansky, pp. 18-22.