ENTROPY-BASED WARFARE A Unified Theory for Modeling the Revolution in Military Affairs h Mark Herman Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc. July 1997 Introduction There is a hypothesis, first proposed by the Soviets in the late 70's, that the new generation of precision weapons coupled with new sensor and information architectures will generate a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). 1 This vision of future warfare has been explored for over a decade by a small group of analysts and is now partially embodied in the U.S. JV 2010 (Joint Vision 2010).2 This view holds that the period of the '90's and the early 21st century will be analogous to the interwar years of the 20's and 30's when the Blitzkrieg and carrier warfare were first developed. Within this analogy, it is estimated that the world is in the equivalent of the early 20's with almost two more decades of developmental thought before some more stable military regime is established. 3 The use of precision strike weapons, nascent information warfare capabilities, and advanced collection systems used during the Gulf War are touted as evidence of the analogy's validity. As the RMA concept develops, the international defense community has had to grapple with understanding the impact of advanced warfare concepts, such as information warfare, and with the broader advantages conferred by high levels of situation awareness on the battlefield. Inadequate understanding of warfare dynamics beyond the current attrition-based paradigm has, to date, constrained understanding of the RMA. Virtually all models4 currently used by the U.S. Department of Defense are fundamentally attrition-based. 5 When used in an analytical roles, these models often provide quantitative results that support one recommendation over another. 1 The Economist, "The Future of Warfare, The Economist (August 3, 1997), from Website http://www.economist.com/issue/08-03-97/id4s63.html,p. 1. 2 Joint Chiefs of Staff, Toint Vision 2010.(Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 19. 3 AndrewMarshall quotefrom The Economist, "TheFuture of Warfare, The Economist (August 3, 1997),from Website http://www.economist.com/issue/08-03-97/sfoBl3.html,p. 1. 4 Forpurposes of this paper theterm model is used to encompass, models, simulations, and wargames. © 1997, Booz-Allen& Hamilton Inc. Pagel These attrition-based models, however, do not account for many of the important factors that impact conflict outcome, such as command. The few models that attempt to quantify C4ISR6 lack an analytic construct that goes beyond attrition, resulting in basic effects that are usually measured as increases in the rate and efficiency of attrition. When relying on models that quantify only part of the conflict equation, decision makers have had to fill in the blanks based on qualitative judgment alone. The analytic construct behind simulations influences the types of forces built and the types of wars that are fought with those forces. During the Cold War, attrition- based simulations strongly influenced the acquisition of large attrition-oriented forces. In the Post Cold War era, both the U.S. and international defense communities need to reduce military establishments and focus resources on more productive investments. While continued reliance on an attrition-based paradigm in a Post Cold War era is likely to perpetuate the rationale for large military forces, a more robust analytic construct can illuminate a more efficient and effective way of conducting warfare with smaller, more agile forces. Fundamental to such a paradigm shift is an understanding of the broader dynamics of warfare and how new technologies and techniques impact future warfare. This paper proposes a new analytic paradigm of warfare, articulating some of its implications for the emerging RMA. This new modeling paradigm is predicated on the historical view that warfare can be directed against the cohesion of enemy units or states rather than exclusively against the physical components that comprise those entities. Thus, for example, destruction of an armored unit's ability to maintain situation awareness, coordinate actions, and apply its will can destroy that unit's effectiveness at least as certainly as 5 Andrew Marshall (Director of the Office of the Secretary of Defensefor Net Assessment), interviewed by Mark Herman at OSD/NA (Pentagon 3A930), notes, Washington DC, USA, February 20, 1996. 6 Command, Control, Communications,Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance,and Reconnaissance © 1997, Booz-Allen& Hamilton Inc. Page2 elimination of the unit's systems through firepower. Such great captains as Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great practiced this style of warfare to generate decisive one-sided outcomes. For example, in two of Alexander's most famous battles (Issus and Gaugamela), his direct threat to the opposing commander (Darius III) caused the collapse of the Persian army's cohesion before the majority of the force had engaged in combat. 7 The resultant Persian collapse gave Alexander's numerically inferior forces domination over the Middle East and Southwest Asia. In the context of this paradigm, the goal of forces is to disorder the enemy while maintaining their own cohesion. Certainly the destruction of an enemy force can accomplish this, but there are other dimensions that can now produce the same impact. The author enlists a physics metric, entropy8, to describe the state of disorder imposed on a military system at a given moment. Broadly, this metric is based on the fact that military forces are trained — and required — to act in a cohesive and organized manner. In conflict, a military force is subject to various pressures that create disorganization. In this paradigm, a military unit that has been whose entropy has risen to the maximum level is no more than a mob. The mechanism by which enemy disorganization and ineffectiveness are measured is entropy. The organized application of the entropy metric is the foundation of entropy-based warfare. The inaccuracy of attrition metrics in measuring conflict should raise questions throughout the Department of Defense about the validity of these models and about the limitations inherent in force-on-force paradigms. Department of Defense analytic model runs prior to the Gulf War almost universally predicted an attrition- oriented outcome involving large numbers of Coalition force casualties, which thankfully never materialized. This paper articulates an alternate model of warfare, based on the entropy metric, that demonstrates the commonality of different styles 7 Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander,translated by Aubrey De Selincourt and J.R. Hamilton, (Middlesex:Penguin Books., 1976),pp. 119-120and 168-170. 8 Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines Entropy as the steady degradation or disorganization of a system or society. © 1997, Booz-Allen & HamiltonInc. Page 3 of warfare across the conflict spectrum. The thesis of this paper is thatfuture warfare cannot be adequately modeled using attrition as the primary measure of effectiveness. This thesis will be tested against dissimilar historical cases as a proof of its efficacy. To relate the theory to a more inclusive set of conflict measures of effectiveness, this paper will be broken into three sections. The first section will deal with those factors cited by classic theorists and military historians as key to the dynamics that drive combat outcome. The second section will take these key factors and articulate a model of combat to illustrate how these factors operate across three styles of warfare (guerrilla, mobile, and conventional). The third section will examine some key concepts emerging from the RMA and how they can be modeled. Dynamics of Combat: Theory and History Warfare has three unchanging physical factors: force, space, and time.9 Commanders have manipulated these physical factors since the dawn of warfare. These factors are subsumed within the human enterprise of warfare, which extends beyond the physical factors to include such elusive qualities as morale, troop quality, and leadership. Traditionally, force is the measure of the physical dimensions of an army, combat unit, or a society (e.g., economic force). It is the most easily quantifiable measure, since it basically counts objects, such as tanks, and categorizes them to produce various statistics that can be used for a variety of purposes. Space is the measure of movement and control. How fast is the army moving? How much territory does one side control? Subtler measures are also possible. One of Napoleon's great strengths was his ability to coordinate the movement of his 9 Carl Yon Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton: Princeton University Press., 1976),pp. 204-205.Clausewitz spoke in terms of forces in © 1997, Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc. Page 4 various corps components and have them mass upon the battlefield in a manner that gave him both force and spatial advantages (e.g., flank attack) over opponents. Napoleon's operations in support of his siege of Mantua during his Italian campaign demonstrate his ability to use the spatial advantage of the central position to repeatedly defeat numerically superior Austrian armies. 10 Time has traditionally been the hardest factor to quantify. Clearly time is measurable, but its impact on warfare is poorly understood. Great commanders have always understood the value of time. Caesar crossed the Rubicon with only the XIII legion because the political nature of the conflict rendered time, not force, as the key to the conquest of Italy. 11 It is in the temporal dimension that advanced RMA concepts hold their greatest promise, and it is this area that is least amenable to attrition-based measurements. Not surprisingly, armed strength is most commonly measured on the basis of force. Force — particularly when massive — is easily quantifiable, can be validated tactically, and lends itself to analysis using such straightforward metrics as attrition. Attrition is a measure of physical destruction. Since attrition effects can be explicitly measured by counting methods and statistics, it has become the basic metric of military success.