Bargain Basement Warfare in the Modern Age, by NC Scout

I was thumbing through Jac Weller’s classic from the early 60s, Fire and Movement, last night just before going on air with the Privy Council. There’s so much wisdom from that era that think, at least in some ways, has been lost amid modern technology and so-called new techniques to warfighting. But the reality is this, all joking aside, is that we did not win in Iraq, we did not win in Afghanistan, we did not win in Syria, Yemen, the horn of Africa, Colombia, or elsewhere, for that matter, just as we did not win the brewing conflict in Weller’s time, Vietnam. We are not decisively winning in Ukraine, despite the bravado of self proclaimed fellas far removed from the meat grinders of Bakhmut but happily sending others to die while claiming technological superiority. It has nothing to do with the tenacity or caliber of Men fighting on part of America. In fact, we lost and continue to do so in spite of their best efforts, imbuing a feeling of deep resentment leading to questions of why. There are no answers from the Brass, of course, they made their money. The Lloyd Austins of the world lined their pockets while the men of their charge lost life and limb in a hideous display of corruption. This article is not about them. It is in spite of them.

The central thesis to Weller’s work is found in its subtitle, “Bargain basement warfare in the far east”, and I think there’s no better explanation, shockingly brief and brutally effective, as to why high technology apparently loses these efforts. Technology absent strategy is a losing effort. This is not to say enablers on the battlefield are not welcome, quite the opposite. But it is reminded that they are enablers, not a crutch from which to operate with a dependency. Those prerequisite skills are absolutely necessary in all critical tasks. And with the Leviathan, where great money is to be made developing expensive solutions to cheap problems, this reality is apparently continuing to be lost.

There is nothing tactical, everything is strategic – COL Mike Bennett

This brings us to the ecology of the Guerrilla. By the very nature of civil conflict a Guerrilla is a manifestation of social change, either revolutionary or reactionary in his goal. As a reflection of that reality he has no supply line external to his own, no high technology to which he is supplied outside of his own, no one to do his thinking for him. Thus it becomes a reflection of the eternal truth that the mind is the best weapon. Utilizing whatever tools may be at one’s disposal, knowing at least what the enemy may be capable of, operating within those parameters to exploit the seams and gaps of their own over-reliance on technology. This is how America’s adversaries, from the Vietcong to the Taliban, learned to survive, enduring long enough to outlast their enemies. It would be a tactic Muhammad Ali would call rope-a-dope, finishing the fight only when the enemy had tired himself to irrelevancy.

A Guerrilla then fights with what he has as a reflection of the very same populace he represents. This is a truth few American thinkers apparently grasp. His equipment is provided by the budget he has to afford them, usually low, and leading to innovation. And the beauty of that reality is that in America, in 2023, an incredible level of capability is offered to the prospective people’s fighter on a relatively small budget. Would it satisfy a so-called Tier 1 operator? Probably not, but then again, that approach being Tactical did not win the Strategic war. An intimate knowledge of local terrain and a support network, an inexpensive but serviceable rifle, a magnified optic with a bullet drop compensator, an inexpensive radio with the knowledge to employ it properly and utilizing proven methods of physical encryption providing communications security. These are the basic tools of an asymmetric warfighter. Whatever other enablers he can afford are certainly welcome but not relied upon. His advantage lay with his local knowledge and the populace on which he represents. This is the reality, and this approach won, repeatedly, in the end. An adversary cannot kill what it cannot see, it cannot target that which it cannot hear, it cannot fight that which becomes a ghost. This is the reality of bargain basement warfare in the modern age, just as true as it was in Weller’s time.

Much is made of the ability of the Leviathan’s omnipotence in regard to surveillance in all things electronic, and in some ways physical. This of course is aided by the rise in AI technology but the fact remains there will always be seams and gaps. The only winning move, so to speak, would not be to play. And to do that the guerrilla simply vanishes. No cell phones to target. No recognizable patterns of life from which to be analyzed. A sea of human terrain from which to swim; a type of terrain that never could be mastered no matter how desperately America tried. In saying that, indeed nothing is tactical, everything is strategic, a reality the Colonel so succinctly pointed out. The mind is the most effective weapon, thinking several moves ahead while existing in that ecology made of the people he represents. The freedom of a free people is reliant upon it.