Timothy J Sakulich

Precision Engagement at the Strategic Level of War: Guiding Promise or Wishful Thinking? Timothy J Sakulich

Publisher Marketing: Air Force basic doctrine asserts that the precise application of force can reliably generate desired, discriminate effects at the strategic level of war. A deconstruction of that assertion reveals three necessary assumptions: the ability to clearly define desired discriminate effects at the strategic level of war, the ability to trace the desired discriminate effects back to a triggering action, and the ability to ensure that the actual effects generated by the triggering action are only the discriminate ones being sought. This paper presents evidence that these assumptions suffer from important conceptual weaknesses that are amplified when examined from the perspective of nonlinear and complex systems. Further evidence suggests that technological fixes are not likely to resolve these weaknesses nor produce the strategic efficiencies implied by the doctrinal concept. In fact, such fixes could increase the potential for small errors to combine in unexpected ways to create a system accident, where outcomes diverge in significant and undesirable ways from the intended discriminate strategic effect. This paper cautions against using the term "precision" in ways that imply congruency between technology and war, and recommends that doctrine clearly differentiate technical exactness from strategic correctness. It concludes that effect-based approaches can foreclose adversary option sets with far more reliability than compelling specific, predetermined behaviors, and it emphasizes the need to ensure that adaptation remains a fundamental feature of any effects-based concept.