Unconventional warfare (United States Department of Defense doctrine)
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Unconventional warfare (UW) is broadly defined as "military and quasi-military operations other than
conventional warfare Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted by using conventional weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more states in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined and fight by using weapons that target primari ...
" and may use
covert Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret. Secrecy is often controvers ...
forces, subversion, or guerrilla warfare. This is typically done to avoid escalation into conventional warfare as well as international conventions.


Description

Aside from the earlier definition of warfare that is not conventional, unconventional warfare has also been described as:
There is another type of warfare— new in its intensity, ancient in its origin—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It preys on unrest.


Methods and organization

Unconventional warfare targets the civilian population psychologically to win hearts and minds, and only targets military and political bodies for that purpose, seeking to render the military proficiency of the enemy irrelevant. Limited conventional warfare tactics can be used unconventionally to demonstrate might and power, rather than to reduce the enemy's ability to fight substantially. In addition to the surgical application of traditional weapons, other armaments that specifically target the military can be used are: airstrikes, nuclear weapons, incendiary devices, or other such weapons. Special Forces, inserted deep behind enemy lines, are used unconventionally to train, equip, and advise locals who oppose their government. They can also spread subversion and propaganda, while they aid native resistance fighters, to ultimately cause a hostile government to capitulate. Tactics focus on destroying military targets while avoiding damage to civilian infrastructure and blockading military resupply are used to decrease the morale of government forces. The USA Department of Defense defines unconventional warfare as activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. Also called UW.


History

The advent of the
Atomic Age The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the ''Trinity'' test in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, during World War II. Although nuclear chain reaction ...
changed forever philosophies of conventional warfare, and the necessity to conceal authorship of actions by hostile states. The age of asymmetric, or unconventional warfare & terrorism had begun. One of the first references is in "Manpower and Atomic War," which
Edward Fitzpatrick Edward Augustus Fitzpatrick, Ph.D. (August 29, 1884 – September 13, 1960) was an American college administrator, author, editor, government official, military officer, and conscription expert. From 1929 to 1954, he served as president of Mount ...
referred to as "the next kind of war- technological war, machine war, or atomic war." Using soft power methods, to target civilians instead of military units, however had begun earlier, particularly as a strategy for use against Republics. These were developed as a tool of national socialism, or neo-liberalism, and evolved into other doctrines. There is an overlap in the world of Corporate Security & Defense Contracting where these models have extended to the field of
Risk assessment Broadly speaking, a risk assessment is the combined effort of: # identifying and analyzing potential (future) events that may negatively impact individuals, assets, and/or the environment (i.e. hazard analysis); and # making judgments "on the ...
.; One of the first instances of Unconventional Warfare techniques against civilians was documented by the La Follette Committee.


See also

*
Asymmetric warfare Asymmetric warfare (or asymmetric engagement) is the term given to describe a type of war between belligerents whose relative military power, strategy or tactics differ significantly. This is typically a war between a standing, professional ar ...
* Gerasimov Doctrine *
Hybrid warfare Hybrid warfare is a theory of military strategy, first proposed by Frank Hoffman, which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare, and cyberwarfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy, ...
* Fourth generation warfare *
Irregular military Irregular military is any non-standard military component that is distinct from a country's national armed forces. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military orga ...
* Irregular warfare *
Low intensity conflict A low-intensity conflict (LIC) is a military conflict, usually localised, between two or more state or non-state groups which is below the intensity of conventional war. It involves the state's use of military forces applied selectively and with ...
*
Partisan (military) A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity. The term can apply to the field element of resistance movements. The ...
*
Political warfare Political warfare is the use of political means to compel an opponent to do one's will, based on hostile intent. The term political describes the calculated interaction between a government and a target audience, including another state's govern ...
*
Psychological warfare Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and M ...
*
Resistance movement A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objective ...
*
Terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
*
Counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ...
* ''
Unrestricted Warfare ''Unrestricted Warfare: Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization'' () is a book on military strategy written in 1999 by two colonels in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Qiao Liang ...
'' * Full-spectrum dominance * A seminal work on unconventional
stay-behind In a stay-behind operation, a country places secret operatives or organizations in its own territory, for use in case an enemy occupies that territory. If this occurs, the operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement or act as sp ...
warfare is Major Hans von Dach's ''Der Totale Widerstand'' ( Total Resistance). * '' Six-legged Soldiers'' - A scientific warfare book on another potential form of unconventional warfare, by Jeffrey A. Lockwood US & NATO specific: * Operation Gladio * Project Eldest Son *
Reagan Doctrine The Reagan Doctrine was stated by United States President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to ...
*
Special Activities Division The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two ...
* U.S. Army Special Forces *
Ranger Regiment (United Kingdom) The Ranger Regiment is a special operations-capable unit of the British Army which was formed on 1 December 2021 under the Future Soldier reform and is part of the Army Special Operations Brigade. It is intended to be used primarily in an unconv ...


References


External links


Insurgency Research Group
– Multi-expert blog dedicated to the study of insurgency and the development of counter-insurgency policy.
Allied war terminology (File #5a)

goarmy.com/special_forces/unconventional_warfare

Unconventional Warfare: Definitions from 1950 to the Present
{{Dead link, date=July 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=no
Unconventional Warfare: A Better Path to Regime Change in the Twenty First Century


* ttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4808342.stm Pentagon plans cyber-insect army Warfare by type