Unconventional warfare
Unconventional warfare (UW) is the opposite of
conventional warfare. Where conventional warfare seeks to reduce an opponent's
military capability, unconventional warfare is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. On the surface, UW contrasts with
conventional warfare in that: forces or objectives are covert or not well-defined, tactics and weapons intensify environments of subversion or intimidation, and the general or long-term goals are
coercive or
subversive to a political body.
Unconventional warfare seeks to instill a belief that peace and security are not possible without compromise or concession. Objectives include inducement of weariness, curtailment of civilian
standards of living and
civil liberties associated with greater security demands, economic hardship linked to the costs of war; hopelessness to defend against assaults, fear, depression, and disintegration of
morale. The ultimate goal of this type of
warfare is to motivate an enemy to stop attacking or resisting even if it has the
ability to continue. Failing this, a secondary objective can be to emasculate the enemy before a conventional invasion.
Limited
conventional warfare tactics can be used unconventionally to demonstrate might and power, rather than to substantially reduce the enemy's
ability to fight. In addition to the coercive use of traditional weapons, armaments that primarily target civilians can be used:
atomic weapons, urban
incendiary devices,
white phosphorus, or other such weapons.
Special forces, inserted behind an enemy's front line, can be used unconventionally to spread subversion and propaganda, to aid native resistance fighters, and to ultimately build environments of fear and confusion. Tactics of destroying non-military infrastructure and
blockading civilian staples are used to decrease the morale of civilians and, when applicable, also the soldiers in the field through concern for their families.
Globalization dissenters broadly criticise the managed-trade system as a planet-wide version of the
blockading tactic of unconventional warfare.
UW is one of the nine core missions of
United States Army Special Forces. The
United States Department of Defense defines UW as a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes
guerrilla warfare and other direct offensive, low visibility,
covert, or
clandestine operations, as well as the indirect activities of
subversion,
sabotage, intelligence activities, and evasion and escape.
*
Asymmetric warfare*
Low-intensity operations*
Terrorism*
Fourth generation warfare*
Special forces*
Coercion*
Gladio*
Conventional warfare*
Black (video game)*
Metal Gear (series)*
Allied war terminology (File #5a)*
goarmy.com/special_forces/unconventional_warfare*
Unconventional Warfare: Definitions from 1950 to the Present*
Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990*
Pentagon plans cyber-insect army
