7.1.2 How To Eliminate Singular Vulnerabilities
Clearly, singular vulnerability is a feature of military capability, not of system performance. A system in itself has no singular vulnerabilities, only shortfalls, and therefore improving system performance does not reduce vulnerability. The capability offered by a deployed system, on the other hand, does have singular vulnerabilities, namely the possibility that the operational assumptions about the enemy that one always makes when expecting capabilities to produce military effects on the battlefield, are not satisfied.
For instance, the expectation that our strike capability would produce destruction among enemy forces rests on the fundamental assumption that the enemy is available for detection. Consequently, if the enemy were to hide, much as al Qaeda had done in the caves of Afghanistan, our entire strike capability would come to naught; we could go on pounding the mountain sides until we either ran out of weapons or ran out of patience, whichever came first, but no enemy would be killed in the process unless they were forced to come out and expose themselves to detection.
Trying to overcome this seam in our strike capability by improving the detection and tracking performance of our radar systems would be a fool’s errand because this singular vulnerability, being a property of the tactical situation in which we embedded that system and not of the system itself, would continue to stand; the capability to kill the enemy would continue to be zero as long as he was allowed to hide.
The proper way to deal with this singular vulnerability is to find a means of forcing the enemy to come out and be detected. In the case described above, the means to forcing al Qaeda out of hiding turned out to be the Northern Alliance which threatened to take over the country and proceed to hunt the caves. Caught between two complementary systems, the American fire on the one hand and the Northern Alliance on the other, al Qaeda turned tail and ran out of Afghanistan.
As suggested by this Afghanistan example, we recommend that one deal with singular vulnerabilities by acquiring systems, or developing concepts of operations and strategies, that are complementary to those in place today. In the remainder of this section, we shall suggest, by way of illustration, the thinking process that leads one to the discovery of such complementary systems, operations, and strategies. We begin with antisubmarine warfare (ASW) because in that case, history having already provided the complementary system, our job is made easier by experience. The other two illustrative example apply the insight gained in the ASW case to the problem of eliminating singular vulnerabilities in two currently relevant cases: urban warfare and the war on terror.
7.1.2.1 Complementary Systems In Antisubmarine Warfare
During the Cold War, our antisubmarine warfare capability rested upon passive systems for detecting submerged enemy submarine. These system were designed to measure the amount of energy contained in the sound emitted by a submarine during its operation and then compare that energy to a predetermined threshold. The idea was that, if the measured energy exceeded the threshold, one would conclude that a submarine was the source of the received sound; otherwise, the received sound was declared to be nothing but noise.
The product provided by the ASW capability was actual detections of Soviet submarines; the corresponding operational effect, the ability to control the enemy submarine force. The seam separating the capability from the effect was the assumption we made for the longest time that the enemy submarine is noisy enough to allow for the long-range detections required to control his force. Since during most of the Cold War period Soviet submarines were indeed quite noisy, the enemy was in no position to exploit the singular vulnerability in our passive detection capability.
In the mid 1970s, however, the Soviets succeeded in making their submarines every bit as quiet as western submarines. Now, it happens that the range at which a submarine is passively detected gets shorter the quieter the target. Therefore, quiet submarines become detectable only at very short ranges. But, at short ranges, sound propagates in such a manner that improvements in our passive processing effectiveness produce only diminishing returns in detection range. Consequently, the quieter the submarine the harder to compensate for lost detection range through improved passive acoustic processing. As a result, we lost our capability to survey the vast reaches of the world’s oceans. By thus exploiting the singular vulnerability in our passive detection capability, the Soviets rendered our ASW capability all but useless.
Confronted with a total collapse of our ASW capability, we were forced to look for ways of recovering the lost dominance by means other than passive acoustic detection. The first thing we tried was to develop active acoustic systems, the operation of which does not depend at all upon the disappearing passive energy. These systems were complementary to our passive systems in that they could cover the circumstances when the passive capability was singularly vulnerable. Unfortunately, active systems have their own Achilles’ heel: their performance could easily be defeated by a submarine operating slow and shallow. The combination of passive and active acoustic detection capability would therefore not automatically translate into the operational effect of controlling the enemy submarine force.
To get there, we would have had to develop a new family of detection devices that perform well against slow, shallow submarines. Fortunately, such devices can actually be produced and are called non-acoustic detection systems. While non-acoustic systems perform poorly against submarines operating deep, they are quite good against the shallow ones, no matter how slow they move. A combination of acoustic and non-acoustic systems would therefore provide the means to eliminate the seams in our ASW capability by covering each other’s singular vulnerabilities.
The key point to take away from the ASW experience is that singular vulnerabilities ought to be eliminated, not by acquisition of improved versions of current systems, but by acquisition of complementary ones.
7.1.2.2 Complementary Operation In Urban Warfare
One of the most obvious seams at the operational level is our reluctance to generate significant collateral damage during a confrontation that does not touch directly upon the survival of the United States. This seam can easily be exploited by any adversary that, ill-equipped to confront us directly, would seek asymmetric advantages. All he would have to do is hide his military assets amongst the indigenous population. This kind of urban warfare confronted us in Iraq, where Saddam placed his air defense radars on top of hospitals, and has recently confronted Israel in Jenin, where Palestinian terrorist groups were hiding among the population while not engaged in acts of suicide bombing against civilians in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere in the West Bank.
This seam separates our capability to locate the adversary from the operational effect of destroying him. Complementary systems that would eliminate this singular vulnerability do not leap to mind. In fact, all systems under consideration by the Department right now are specialized versions of current systems and are, therefore, not complementary to them. As we argue below, it is complementary concepts of operations rather than complementary systems that are required here.
To see how that comes about, let us re-phrase the lesson learned from the ASW example as follows: to eliminate a singular vulnerability we must confront the enemy with the dilemma of choosing between undesirable options. Thus, an enemy submarine that would avoid our acoustic ASW capability by operating slow and shallow will have to contend with the equally powerful non-acoustic ASW capability we have deployed to cover simultaneously the same patch of ocean. On the other hand, an enemy submarine that would avoid our non-acoustic ASW capability by operating deep, would have to contend with our acoustic ASW capability. Since there is no comfort deep and there is no comfort shallow, the enemy submarine must submit itself to the consequences of our ASW capability. He can not exploit our singular vulnerabilities because there is an equally high price to pay no matter his choice.
Applying the same idea to urban warfare, suggests that we need to create conditions under which hiding in the city holds the same penalty to the enemy as not doing so. That can be done either by offering the enemy an irresistible target outside the city or, alternatively, by rendering enemy action taken from within the city ineffective. In other words, the enemy would have to abandon the city and suffer the full effect of our capability if he wanted to pursue his ultimate goal.
7.1.2.3 Complementary Strategies In The War On Terror
Having addressed the tactical and operational levels of military operations, we close this section by considering the War on Terror as an illustrative example at the strategic level. The singular vulnerability that terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda, are trying to exploit is our fundamental dedication to an open society and our essential dependence on a global economy. By doing so, they hope to sever our military capability from the effect they fear most, total destruction of their infrastructure and appeal throughout the Arab world.
It does not seem possible to eliminate this singular vulnerability either by activities at the tactical level, such as striking individual terrorist forces, or by activities at the operational level, such as enticing them into direct confrontation. What is needed here, we suggest, is a complementary strategy.
The main reason our pursuit of al Qaeda is war rather than law enforcement is the fact that it is an organized body with international reach. Consequently, the war on terror should be focused on destroying the organized character which makes al Qaeda an international threat. The capabilities we bring to bear in this war are military, economic, diplomatic, and legal. We can arrest key figures in the organization, we can collaborate with other nations, in and out of the western Alliance, to freeze al Qaeda’s financial assets, we can create diplomatic consensus for militarily dismantling governmental support for terrorism in countries sympathetic to it, and we can focus our homeland defense on controlling in-country movement of foreign nationals.
The effects we normally expect from these capabilities are systematic destruction of al Qaeda’s ability to network its operators. However, these effects will fail to materialize if the enemy can successfully exploit the seams in our capabilities, both military and otherwise. The various Achilles’ heels all eventually come back to a common singular vulnerability, the national character of the United States and its allies, with their open societies, their reluctance to undertake unilateral military action, and their relatively short attention span. To exploit these singular vulnerabilities, the enemy need only disperse its activities as widely as possible while preserving some form of effective organization.
Since we are not inclined to change drastically who we are, the enemy’s attempts at exploiting our singular vulnerabilities can not be overcome by mere increases in current capabilities and operations; we can not realistically expect to close the borders, arrest larger number of people, provide financial inducement to more nations to attract them into coalition with us, give up our civil liberties, or unduly militarize our societies. Rather, we suggest, the United States and its allies should create a strategy that would penalize al Qaeda for trying to distribute their forces, a penalty every bit as painful as the concentrated confrontation they are trying to avoid.
In essence, the idea is to find a strategy that would make it difficult for al Qaeda to organize itself while dispersed. Then, as it tries to avoid military confrontation by dispersing its forces, al Qaeda becomes less and less organized and thus subject to local law enforcement action; alternatively, as it tries to avoid law enforcement action by concentrating forces beyond the latter’s ability to handle, al Qaeda becomes subject to military action. The certain knowledge of failure whether dispersed or not, might therefore deter al Qaeda from terrorizing the western world.