XBradTC

Go hit CDR Salamander this morning.

LTG H. R. McMaster, arguably the best strategic mind in the Army right now, spoke recently  to the AUSA on the future of warfare.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 10, 2014) — Americans and their leaders all too often wear rose-tinted glasses when it comes to assessing future warfare, said the deputy commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command for Futures and director, Army Capabilities Center.
Too often, people think battles can be won through engineering and technological advances: cyber, advanced weapons systems, robotics and so on, said Lt. Gen. Herbert R. McMaster Jr.
Big defense firms sell big-ticket systems that are supposed to win wars, he said. The firms use subtle and not-so-subtle advertising that you need this system for the sake of your children and grandchildren and if you don’t purchase it, “you’re heartless.” Congress usually obliges…

…Although the Army has dominated the battlefield technologically in the recent past, that’s no guarantee against an increasingly agile, adaptive foe. The enemy is becoming more adept at eluding firepower through dispersion into civilian areas, disrupting communications and adopting new technologies, he explained. And, non-state actors like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are already fielding capabilities once the sole domain of states.
The “zero dark-thirty” myth is another, he said. This idea uses systems theory to explain warfare as a series of linked nodes. The idea is to selectively take out nodes that are critical to the enemy’s network.
In systems theory, the U.S. would simply conduct air strikes or a special operations raid of limited duration to disrupt the network, he said. The systems theory goes back to the Spanish-American War in 1898, when sea power was supposed to win the war, but it took boots on the ground, he said.

As CDR Sal alludes, sometimes the medium IS the message. This wasn’t an OpEd piece in a military journal or a newspaper. This was on the army.mil domain. That makes it, if not official policy, then official enough.

There’s a lively discussion in the comments at Sal’s, which has a greater depth and grasp of history than any coming from the White House about our operations against ISIS.