Warfare's newest revolution
Too often the amateurish dialogue of self professed military pundits in the media and elsewhere becomes petulantly narrow-sighted and one-dimensional to the point of absurdity. There are far too many provincial-minded “Arm-Chair Generals” who count tanks, personnel and aircraft and then assess the strength of an armed forces capability solely on that basis. They habitually claim that their analysis is somehow more profound, often inserting some utterly irrelevant numerical analysis about "quality" or "training," and then promptly disappear from discussion.
This annoys anyone with even the most basic understanding of warfare to no end. The overestimation of the combat strength of numerically bloated, hollow forces like Russia, Pakistan, India, and China, and the type of thought process which perpetuates such mindless drivel is a plague of oversimplification. A force of 100,000 soldiers which has a defense budget of 50 billion dollars is more combat effective, more versatile, and more valuable than a force of 1,000,000 soldiers with the same budget. Why can't people understand that?
None of this is to say that numbers aren’t a factor in determining the outcome of a military confrontation, but rather that quantity is but one aspect of an equation that includes a plethora of complex variables. History is fraught with examples of vastly outnumbered armies triumphing with the use of revolutionary tactics, superior leadership, superior training and organization, superior technology, or some combination thereof.
It's useless to have 20,000 tanks if your armored divisions never or rarely go on exercise, have never fired a shot in anger, aren't rigorously maintained, don’t have enough spare parts or fuel, aren't upgraded regularly with the latest fire control and imaging systems, don't possess systems that promote battle-field awareness, don't have an entrenched logistics system to keep them supplied of fuel and ammunition, cannot communicate effectively and speedily with each other, cannot act in coordination with other branches of the military, cannot be moved anywhere, and are manned by poorly trained conscripts who have never even been in a simulator.
Similarly, Its useless to have 3,000's fighter aircraft if your air force has limited or even no Airborne-Early-Warning (AEW) capability, has limited to none air to air refueling, limited or no spare parts and fuel, no means by which to efficiently coordinate their efforts with ground and naval forces in a combined-arms environment, pilots that don’t receive training on simulators, have never flown in "hot-zones" and have a dismally low amount of actual flight hours
In today’s combined-arms netcentric battlefield, the ability to identify enemy positions and equipment, assess their capabilities, their intentions, and the threat they pose to your assets, and maneuver the right combination of battlefield-assets efficiently and speedily to deal with said threat is key. If organization, communication, and coordination were crucial keys to victory in the past, the advent of advanced information technology has made them doubly important. Indeed, on the modern battlefield, the information revolution has had just as profound (if less visible) an impact as Gunpowder, Stirrups, or the Longbow. It is high time that more people realize this.
In these aspects, the almost absurdly archaic, bloated, and almost clumsy Chinese, Indian, North Korean, Pakistani and Russian war machines are obsolete almost to the point of humorous anachronism. They are nothing more than fat men... physically intimidating as a result of their sheer size, but relatively ineffective. They are slow and clumsy and simply can’t react quickly enough. They can’t coordinate themselves. They have few or no precision guided weapons, relatively poor training, mostly ancient equipment, and little or no battlefield awareness.
In the case of Russia, China and to a slightly lesser extent, India, this is changing, but not quickly enough. Due to the corrupt and nepotistic nature of these nation’s military industrial complexes, change comes slowly, if at all. The relationship between the top brass of these nation’s militaries to the sordid, Machiavellian power politics of their respective governments breeds doctrinal lethargy and systemic incompetence in mid-and upper level leadership. For example, in China, Russia, and to a greater extent in North Korea, promotion to the upper and even middle echelons of power in the military is often dependent not on actual competence and skill, but rather on perceived loyalty, the currying of political favor, and family connections. The consequences of such policies are all too often overlooked, and can be catastrophic on the battlefield.
As the modern battlefield continually evolves and information replaces ammunition as the principle asset, it is enormously important that armed forces eschew bloated force structures in favor of smaller, more mobile, more organized, more technologically sophisticated, more disciplined, more interoperable, more coordinated, and more competent armies. The armies of the west, especially the United States, Britain, and to a smaller extent, France, are succeeding in implementing these revolutionary reforms. Russia, India, China, North Korea, and Pakistan are not, and if they continue to delay, they will one day find themselves left ever further behind in the dust.
United We Stand.
"Now, while still pursuing the method of realising our overall strategic concept, I come to the crux of what I have travelled here to say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. Thus, whatever happens, and thus only, shall we be secure ourselves and able to work together for the high and simple causes that are dear to us and bode no ill to any. Eventually there may come—I feel eventually there will come—the principle of common citizenship, but that we may be content to leave to destiny, whose outstretched arm many of us can already clearly see.
Winston Churchill
