The Scientific Way of Warfare

The question of formations and tactics appeared all the more paramount due to the considerable upheaval that the organisation of armies was undergoing in this period. Improvements in firearm technologies had made musket-equipped infantry the core unit of any army, with mobile artillery providing support. Following the adoption of the bayonet at the

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As Steve Niva recounts, JSOC established itself as a truly joint command under McChrystal, systematically breaking down bureaucratic barriers to forge connections between the military’s elite units, ranging from the Navy SEALs to the Army’s Delta Force, and the Air Force’s Special Tactics Group. With the support of Donald Rumsfeld who was intent on

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As a result, ‘static choreographies were modified through the introduction of dynamic elements which allowed the infantrymen to increase the mobility of their bodies, enhance the speed of their movements, and become more flexible in the execution of given orders.’26 Having suffered several recent military debacles, the French were receptive to new

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Although appointed to oversee the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, the choice of McChrystal belies the popular notion of a wholesale shift to a less kinetic campaign intent on building relations with the local population. In his earlier role, McChrystal had led Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for 5 years; this was t

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For Deleuze and Guattari, ‘it was the tank that regrouped all of the operations in the speed vector and recreated a smooth space for movement by uprooting men and arms.’46 If most military practitioners were initially unsure about the value of this new weapon system, Colonel J. F. C. Fuller had no doubts about its revolutionary impact: As the tank

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Two Sides of the Same Chaoplexic COIN As Iraq descended into a vortex of civil war that the Coalition seemed powerless to arrest, military leaders initiated a major shift away from the ‘light footprints’ of nimble ground forces supported by air power that had been the signature of the Rumsfeld approach to visible ‘boots on the ground’ tasked with ‘

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The Vietnam War and the Failure of Cybernetic Warfare The limits of the centralising cybernetic model were laid bare by the Vietnam War where the most powerful and technologically advanced military in history was held in check by a Third World guerrilla army. James Gibson has perhaps done the most to document the dramatic failure of ‘technowar,’ an

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