The swift and overwhelming nature of the initial warfighting phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom has prompted some defence experts to proclaim the arrival of a new way of war designed around Effects-based Operations (EBO). In essence, such operations seek to move away from an attrition and linear approach to warfare. In an effects-based philosophy, campaign planning seeks to identify the outcomes that are required from fighting and then to derive the means required to achieve such outcomes. This article examines the dimensions of EBO by analysing the origin and evolution of an effects-based approach to warfare and some of the challenges involved in implementing them.
The Origins and Development of Effects-Based Operations
Implicit in EBO theory is the focus on shaping the behaviour of an adversary to such an extent that an enemy will eventually prefer surrender over fighting. Such an approach is, of course, not new. An effects-based approach to warfare resonates with the ideas of the classical military theorists Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, both of whom discussed the importance of psychological aspects in war in their respective works. 1 Several 20th-century thinkers, notably B. H. Liddell Hart and Giulio Douhet, also emphasised the need to influence the behaviour of an adversary by using either an indirect strategy or by striking deep with air power in order to paralyse an opponent. 2
EBO can be used at each level of war: tactical, operational and strategic. At the tactical level of war, EBO can act as a planning methodology for the conduct of operations. A tactical planning methodology emphasises the use of both military and nonmilitary means to attack an adversary. EBO can also be considered as a means to conduct efficient tactical targeting by seeking to exploit the weak points of a particular enemy and viewing the adversary’s capabilities in terms of a ‘complex adaptive system’. Such a view of EBO focuses on the destruction of critical nodes in the enemy’s infrastructure and command-and-control system in order to achieve a desired effect. Tactical-level EBO also envisage the conduct of parallel operations by employing simultaneous rather than sequential attack. 3 Effects-based targeting was used extensively by Coalition forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 to try to avoid collateral damage, limit civilian casualties and achieve operational objectives with the use of discriminate force.
At the operational level of war, EBO has come to be synonymous with rapid dominance, or the ‘shock and awe’ school of warfare. The characteristics of rapid dominance have been described as knowledge of oneself, of one’s adversary and of the environment, combined with brilliance in execution, rapidity of action and control of the operating environment.4 Achieving rapid dominance often relies on the employment of a series of unrelenting strikes from sea, air, land and space forces in order to persuade an enemy to end military resistance.
For example, early in Operation Iraqi Freedom, cruise missile strikes and air bombardment of hundreds of targets proceeded in conjunction with the use of ground-based manoeuvre forces. The result was a rapid drive by Coalition forces towards Baghdad and the collapse of the Iraqi regime in three weeks. At the operational level of war, EBO also requires collaboration between a theatre commander and other key actors in a campaign in order to deal with an adversary that might be complex and adaptive. Interaction and networking between the operational commander and his tactical commanders in the field are required at both the planning and the execution phases of a campaign. 5 At the strategic level of war, EBO can be viewed as the application of all the resources of national power: political, economic, diplomatic and military. From a strategic perspective, EBO advocates believe that integration of all resources improves the effectiveness of a campaign.6
The Practice of Effects-Based Operations
Successful EBO require the application of advanced information technologies that can create precise effects in warfare. Detection technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and space-based platforms with attendant sensors have evolved to such an extent that achieving positive identification for fixed installations and static weapons emplacements has become a reality. A combination of sensing capabilities across the electromagnetic spectrum on platforms that operate at different altitudes permits the military to perform continuous surveillance and targeting.
In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) employed three advanced KH-11 type visible and infrared imaging spacecraft and several Lacrosse all-weather imaging radar spacecraft. These assets provided 24-hour coverage in order to identify fixed installations, detect Iraqi armour, and locate fixed emplacements and missiles launches. At least one of the satellites was in a position to survey portions of the battlefield every few hours with about twelve passes over Iraq occurring per day. In total, during the Iraq War, space-based assets detected twenty-six missile launches, and 1493 static infrared and 186 high-explosive events. 7
A high-altitude UAV, the Global Hawk, was used as a strike coordination and reconnaissance asset, and was particularly effective in locating air defence and surface-to-surface missiles. Global Hawk’s synthetic aperture radar had the advantage of being able to operate in inclement weather, including sandstorms. In twenty-four hours, a single Global Hawk was able to locate up to fifty surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers, more than ten SAM batteries and approximately seventy missile transport vehicles. A medium-altitude UAV, such as Predator, was used both as a surveillance vehicle and as an autonomous strike asset. During the warfighting phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States also extensively employed manned surveillance assets such as the U-2 high-altitude surveillance aircraft and the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) in order to improve surveillance and targeting. 8
Another valuable resource in sensing technology was derived from signal intelligence using electronic eavesdropping with the RC 135 Rivet Joint aircraft. Electronic eavesdropping was used to sift airwaves for mobile-phone transmissions in order to locate a user’s position. Such electronic capabilities proved particularly useful in plotting the whereabouts of SAMs and SAM launchers once their operators betrayed their positions through too much chatter. 9 Elements of the Iraqi leadership were often located once they were forced to use high-frequency radio, which was easily intercepted because fibre-optic landline and public switching networks were interdicted by Coalition forces. 10
Despite advances in sensing technologies during the 2003 Iraq war, current information capabilities are still unable to perform some critical functions. For example, they are unable to detect and identify high-value, well-protected mobile missile launchers or discriminate between military trucks and civilian vehicles. Nor can information technology easily detect and identify enemy forces hiding in complex terrain or in urban buildings. 11
Effects-Based Operations and Managing Knowledge
Sensing must be accompanied by the use of physical force in order to create precise effects. Force might include precision missile strikes, ground manoeuvre, and special force and information operations. All of these forces were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom. While sensors collect information on an adversary, translating information into usable knowledge for EBO remains a significant challenge. Advanced militaries have developed various software and hardware models for facilitating targeting and behavioural management, and for dealing with complex adaptive systems. 12 Targeting models include Colonel John Warden’s ‘Five Rings’ theory of aerospace warfare, designed to paralyse an enemy from the inside out rather than from the outside in by striking at command-and-control nodes. Variations of the Warden model include Jason Barlow’s National Elements of Value (NEV) model and Maris McCrabb’s Meta agent adaptation model, both of which are aimed at paralysis. 13
The weakness of these various targeting models is the assumption that physical effects can be translated into behavioural outcomes. Current behavioural models try to incorporate both targeting calculation and a situationally aware, recognition-primed (SARP) decision-making approach in order to try to determine the required actions needed to shape an adversary’s perceptions decisively.
The recognition-primed model of behaviour postulates that all decisions flow from precedents and analogies drawn from both current and previous situations that have been experienced by humans in real life. 14
Behavioural models such as SARP do, however, often fail to recognise the adversary as a complex adaptive system. Such a system is one in which the interacting autonomous and semi-autonomous entities that comprise a system can successfully adjust their behaviour to resist pressures from external military forces. As a result, complex adaptive system modelling has included statistical and probabilistic methods that attempt to come to grips with nonlinear military behaviour of potential adversaries. 15 Complex adaptive system modelling requires an approach to war that incorporates self-learning not simply in terms of technology but also in terms of understanding the enemy culturally. Unfortunately, the development of a cultural–military–economic model for EBO lags behind contemporary developments in information technology. 16
Challenges of Effects-Based Operations
While EBO hold promise for the future of warfare through the application of economy of force, limited casualties and by minimising infrastructural damage, they are complex undertakings. Achieving economy of effort across a battlespace requires an array of information technology resources that deliver situational awareness. Such awareness, combined with knowledge of the enemy, confers the potential ability to anticipate enemy courses of action and the likelihood of bringing force to bear in order to direct effects at the right time and place. Such an approach demands a common network architecture that gives dispersed forces the power to concentrate a precise application of effects.
The range and depth of assets employed by the United States during Operation Iraqi Freedom suggest that the acquisition of military resources to conduct EBO is costly. The US military budget accounts for 42 per cent of global military expediture and, in fact, is greater than the combined total of the next fourteen leading defence spending countries in the world. 17 The United States has reached a high level of attainment in areas of effects-based planning and targeting, and possibly in the conduct of rapid decisive operations. However, it has not yet mastered employing all resources of national power for conflict resolution—as evidenced by the postwar difficulties experienced in the occupation of Iraq.
Conclusion
To date, US attempts to implement EBO have been focused mainly on the technological dimension of war. Successful conduct of EBO requires more than the acquisition of sophisticated software and hardware systems. Despite all human efforts to instrumentalise war, a Clausewitzian fog remains inevitable in human conflict. As a result, it will continue to be necessary to focus strongly on the human dimension of war. Soldiers have to operate in complex environments and to confront uncertainty. In this respect, professional military education and the fundamentals of war remain important in producing ground forces capable of judgment.
EBO require educated humans ‘in the loop’ of decision-making in order to control the dynamics of combat effectively. Former US Marine Corps commandant, General Charles C. Krulak’s notion of a ‘strategic corporal’ having to exercise an exceptional degree of independence, maturity, restraint and judgment in the conduct of operations in the 21st century is likely to become an increasing reality in the future. In essence, success in EBO requires not only an array of technological devices, but a grasp of multidimensional skills by well-trained and knowledgeable military professionals who are capable of mastering chaos in the battlespace. With the human dimension at the forefront, it may not be an exaggeration that one commentator has gone so far as to describe EBO as being the equivalent of ‘PhD-level warfare.’ 18
Endnotes
1 See Tao Hanzhang, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Sterling Publishing, New York, 1987; and Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1976.
2 Basil H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, Praeger, New York, 1972, pp. 338–9; and Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari, Coward-McCann, New York, 1942, p. 20.
3 David A. Deptula, Effects-Based Operations: Change in the Nature of Warfare, Defense and Airpower Series, Aerospace Education Foundation, Arlington, VA, 2001, pp. 3–6.
4 Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Rapid Dominance—A Force for All Seasons, Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, London, 1998, pp. 1-2.
5 See Edward A. Smith Jr, Effects Based Operations: Applying Network Centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis, and War, CCRP Publication Series, Department of Defense, Washington, DC, November 2002, p. 26.
6 See Dennis J. Gleeson, Gwen Linde, Kathleen McGrath, Adrienne J. Murphy, Williamson Murray, Tom O’Leary and Joel B. Resnick, New Perspectives on Effects Based Operations: Annotated Briefing, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, VA, June 2001, pp. 11–15.
7 See David A. Fulghum, ‘Offensive Gathers Speed’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 24 March 2003, vol. 158, no. 12, p. 22.
8 See Martin Streetly, ‘Airborne Surveillance Assets Hit the Spot in Iraq’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, 1 July 2003.
9 Martin Cook, ‘The Proving Ground for America’s New “Warform”’, Scotland on Sunday, 23 March 2003.
10 Michael Knights, ‘USA Learns Lessons in Time-Critical Targeting’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, 1 July 2003.
11 Alan Vick, Richard M. Moore, Bruce R. Pirnie and John Stillion, Meeting the Challenges of Elusive Ground Targets, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, 2001, pp. 32–6; 40–3; 64–5; 110–15; 121–33.
12 Jacqueline R. Henningsen, Dean Cash, Richard E. Hayes, Susan Iwanski, Analyzing Effects-Based Operations, Workshop Report: 29–31 January 2002, Military Operations Research Society, Alexandria, VA, 2 January 2003.
13 John N.T. Shanahan, ‘Shock-Based Operations: New Wine in an Old Jar,’ Air & Space Power Chronicles, 15 October 2001, p. 4; and Daniel F. Fayette, ‘Effects Based Operations: Application of New Concepts, Tactics, and Software Tools Support the Air Force Vision for Effects Based Operations’, Air Force Research Laboratory’s Horizons, June 2001, <http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/June01/IF00015.html>.
14 See Maris McCrabb and Joseph A. Caroli, ‘Behavioral Modeling and Wargaming for Effects-Based Operations’, paper presented to the Workshop on Analyzing Effects-Based Operations, Military Operations Research Society, McLean, VA, 29–30 January 2002.
15 See Michael Senglaub, ‘The Analytic and Philosophical Imperatives of Effects-Based Operations (EBO)’, paper presented to the Workshop on Analyzing Effects-Based Operations, Military Operations Research Society, McLean, VA, 29–30 January 2002.
16 Shanahan, ‘Shock-Based Operations: New Wine in an Old Jar’, p. 8.
17 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, ‘The 15 Major Spender Countries in 2002’, SIPRI Data on Military Expenditure, 2003, <http://projects.sipri.se/milex/mex_data_index.html>.
18 Greg Mills, ‘New War, Fresh Tactics ... and Old Lessons’, Straits Times, 27 March 2003.
