Thomas Friedman recently interviewed John Arquilla, the author of a next-generation treatise on warfare, Bitskreig: The New Challenge of Cyber Warfare.
“In that book, I outlined the three new rules of war, all of which I am seeing being employed by the Ukrainians,” he explained.
“The first is that many and small beats large and heavy. The Ukrainians are operating in squad-level units armed with smart weapons, and these are able to disrupt far larger formations and attack slow-moving, loud helicopters and such. So even though they’re outnumbered by the Russians, the Ukrainians have many, many more units of action — usually between eight and 10 soldiers in size.”
The second rule of modern warfare playing out in Ukraine, he said, “is that finding always beats flanking. If you can locate the enemy first, you can take him out. And especially if the enemy is made up of a few large units, like a 40-mile-long convoy of tanks and armored personnel carriers, you’re going to hammer the hell out of them with your small squads, without having to outflank them with an equal-sized force.”
The third rule of new-age warfare playing out in Ukraine, said Arquilla, is that “swarming always beats surging.” He explained: “War is not just a numbers game anymore. You don’t need big numbers to swarm the opponent with a lot of small smart weapons. I am sure you’ve seen some of the videos of these Russian tanks and columns, where suddenly one tank gets taken out at the front and then another at the rear, so the Russians can’t maneuver, and then they just get picked off.”
One of the reasons they’ve had so many generals get killed is that at the tactical level, they don’t have people who are empowered to make those quick decisions in a firefight; only general officers can, so they [generals] had to come down close to the front and do things that lieutenants and sergeants in the American military routinely do.”
So this is the fourth rule of modern warfare: decentralized always beats centralized. This means the loss of a unit’s commander can't bring down the responsiveness of an area’s warfighting.
So take note:
Rule #1: Many and small beats large and heavy.
Rule #2: Finding beats flanking.
Rule #3: Swarming beats surging.
Rule #4: Decentralized beats centralized.
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