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``BATTLESWARM – A NEW FORM OF WARFARE
In today’s world, the main threat to many states, including
specifically the US, no longer comes from other states.
Instead, it comes from small groups and other organisations
which are not states. Either we make the necessary
changes and face them today, or what is commonly known
as the modern world will lose all sense of security and will
dwell in perpetual fear.
- Martin Van Creveld
Introduction
Since the advent of warfare the main effort to win the war has been to put maximum
combat power at the “decisive point” of the battlefield. In the information age with rapid
advancements in Information Technology (IT) this has become all the more relevant
since the forms of warfare are undergoing phenomenal changes. While the conventional
warfare is not a thing of the past, the asymmetric form of warfare, the Low Intensity
Conflict Operations, Peace Operations, Small Scale Contingencies are also becoming
important.
In the business world IT has triggered changes in organization from hierarchical to
networked forms of organization. The middle layers of management are flattened. There
is considerable discussion in informed circles in Armed Forces all over the world about
how the networked forms of organization, doctrine and strategy could be adopted to
meet the changing requirements of information revolution and warfare among the entire
spectrum of conflict.
The proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the increasing lethality of
cluster and Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) make it imperative that future ground
forces remain dispersed as much as possible. This has lead to discussions on concepts
such as dispersed operations, networking and greater autonomy for small units. One
important part of this doctrinal discussion relates to the feasibility and utility of “Swarm
tactics” which would have such small, distributed units and maneuverable fires
converge rapidly on particular targets.
Two researchers form American Think Tank, Rand Corporation have been consistently
proposing that the information revolution favours the rise of network based
organizations and the swarming will be the major mode of conflict in the future. They
propose that the US Army’s Air Land Battle doctrine may need to evolve to a doctrine
based on swarming. Their swarming proposal named “Battle Swarm” is still not
completely formulated but does suggest that smaller and more maneuverable tactical
units be deployed in dispersed networks and trained to use swarming as an operational
concept.
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