Effectiveness, Combat

Combat effectiveness is the ability of a military force to sustain itself and adapt to a continuously changing theater to ensure the success of its mission. The sustainment of troop strength and equipment readiness is vital in maintaining a state of combat effectiveness. The modern battlefield is abstract and in a state of continuous evolution. Traditionally, the effectiveness of a military force has been measured by its ability to close with, engage, and destroy its enemy. While this is relevant still, the nature of battle has evolved greatly over the past 20 years. Eliminating the threat is no longer the isolated objective that determines the effectiveness of a force. Involvement in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency operations in the post-Vietnam era has tested the effectiveness of the U.S. military on levels exceeding that of direct action warfare. This entry examines factors important to combat effectiveness.

The U.S. military’s foreign-based operations since 1990 have ranged from direct action combat to peacekeeping operations in their truest forms, requiring the military to maintain a high state of effectiveness on all levels. After 1989, major missions conducted by the U.S. military fit easily into the category of either peacekeeping or direct action warfare. This remained the case until the attacks of September 11, 2001, after which the two categories rapidly lost their definition and began to overlap. With the face of battle changing on a seemingly daily basis, the United States has learned through success and failure how to adapt to the current situation and maintain a fluid state of combat effectiveness.

While combat is the word that catches the eye first, effectiveness is the key word in the phrase. With the diverse nature of modern military operations for the United States, the ability to accomplish missions both in and out of wartime is essential. U.S. military effectiveness, wrote the historian Timothy K. Nenninger of the U.S. military leading up to its involvement in the First World War, was wholly dependent on American ability to adapt past wartime experiences to those of a world war. This holds more true in today’s conflicts where the nature of the mission changes at a more rapid rate than it did at the beginning of the 20th century. It can be argued that while the United States made the necessary preparations for the World Wars and the Korean War, where combat effectiveness relied almost entirely on utilizing the most efficient means of killing the enemy, few changes were made when they were needed in Vietnam. Insurgent warfare affected U.S. operations as early as the Philippine War at the turn of the 20th century, and still the strategic changes necessary to counter the threat in Vietnam were widely ignored, allowing the same issue to go unaddressed until the darkest days of fighting in Iraq. The nature of U.S. involvement in world affairs today changes so frequently that the military must be able to identify these changes and be prepared to make modifications to its strategy. In short, the effectiveness of the U.S. military in history has been defined entirely by [Page 510]its ability, or lack thereof, to identify the threat and take the necessary steps to overcome it with as little loss of life as possible.

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