Unconventional warfare

Unconventional Warfare (UW) is a concept that puzzles a lot of people. Due to its large and complex mechanism, UW is not an easy task to define or understand. To comprehend UW principles can take a form of formal and informal education. Lack of knowledge makes people uncomfortable, especially if they supposed to be a subject matter experts on this particular topic. Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) exposed me to UW during Robin Sage training. UW concept and some of its activities were new to me. Seven years later when someone mentions UW, I remember my Robins Sage training. In my experience, Foreign Internal Defense (FID) is the majority of training I conducted. I heard how SF prides itself in UW, but the focus was on conducting foreign…

Unconventional Warfare is challenging to understand due to perception and culture among politicians and their high ranking military advisers. The perception of UW often scares politicians. They remember the CIA’s past failures and don’t like the idea of something they have no control over. They also fail to plan long term. The United States has been extremely reactionary to world affairs for a long time. UW is a concept that takes time and preparation that cannot happen in a crisis. COCOM…

Unconventional Warfare (UW) is considered the trademark of the U.S. Army Special Forces (SF). In fact, UW often serves as the focus for training, planning, and discussion within every aspect of the SF community. Most debates involving UW turn into an analysis of defining Unconventional Warfare and trying to figure out how to fit current SF operations into that definition. Special Forces prides itself on owning UW and serving as the Department of Defense’s subject matter experts on operating…

and secondly, it is something, such as a situation, that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is true or possible. Both definitions, although close to each other are much different upon closer look. I argue that the gray zone is more in line with the second definition rather than the first, but the gray zone just like the term of Unconventional Warfare is a complex term, hard to define, and therefore challenging to understand fully. Either way, the two paradoxes I…

International and domestic law are not perfect instruments to fight against cyberattacks, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) agents and weapons, terrorism finance, or terrorism in general, the private sector and civilian population has to be involved. This is because the nature of these unconventional attacks, coupled with the impossibilities of “perfect security” only allows for a balancing of risk that can be achieved through a redundancy approach to managing these threats.…

Unusual measures to solve conflict are often used in war: give examples here. But, what happens when the measures become radical? When a party is desperate to solve a political disagreement or win a war, their measures are often expedient and short sighted. As a result, innocent civilians become vulnerable to the horrors of warfare. Total destruction becomes imminent not only in the infrastructure of a population, but also in the civilization itself. In “After The Sirens,” Hugh Hood uses…

precision bombing (Baghdad, Belgrade); counterterrorism (Belfast)” among others. To minimize these risks, commanders and their staffs should select carefully the targets inside a town and respect strictly the rules of engagement. Thereby, urban warfare can be carried out without killing city populations in large number. Similarly, negative or positive opinion of media can affect the course of operations in urban areas. Negative effects occur for instance when places such as schools and hospitals…

Were the basic philosophical positions, and tactical choices, of the “urban guerrilla” movements significantly different from those of classical terrorism? – Essay Proposal Biljana Madzevska 17202788 LaTrobe University Erica Millar 21/08/2014 Were the basic philosophical positions, and tactical choices, of the “urban guerrilla” movements significantly different from those of classical terrorism? Classical terrorism and Urban guerrilla were used variedly throughout history following specific…

long way since the days of the American Revolution or either of the World Wars. Today war is all about airstrikes, drones, and the use of any other new technology in order to find a way to keep our troops at home and fighting conflicts without having “boots on the ground” as the saying goes. However even with, or perhaps because of, this new technology our country finds itself involved in conflicts that are unconventional to what we have seen in our history. The young generation of Americans…

Introduction The failure of the Iraq and Afghanistan War has triggered an immense increase in the number of academic literature regarding asymmetrical warfare. It is generally assumed that the power disparity between a strong state and a weaker non-state opponent would permit the stronger adversary to win. However, history illustrates a different picture, since weak non-state actors have been the side reaping victory. This paper will limit its scope by examining why strong counterinsurgent…