Asymmetric Warfare

Military tactics used by a small force to target the specific weaknesses of a larger force. Asymmetric warfare includes actions such as sabotage, guerilla warfare, and attacks on civilian populations. It also involves studying an opponent's military doctrine—one's assumptions about war and how it should be fought—and adopting tactics that the doctrine does not anticipate. Using asymmetric warfare allows an attacker to inflict damage on a significantly stronger opponent. For this reason, it is a favored strategy of terrorist organizations and revolutionary groups that do not have the troops or equipment to take on a country's conventional armed forces.

Asymmetric warfare is not a recent development, according to Philip Wilkinson, professor of military history at King's College, London. Wilkinson points out that the English army used classic asymmetric warfare tactics in defeating the much more powerful French forces at the battle of Agincourt in 1415. The French possessed the world's finest cavalry, which was the medieval equivalent of today's main battle tank. The military tactics of the day featured a charge by mounted knights in armor to rout the opposing infantry. At Agincourt, the English had many fewer mounted knights than the French. However, their archers were equipped with longbows, which could penetrate steel plate armor at long ranges. As a result, when the French cavalry charged, the English archers devastated them from a distance. The smaller force of English knights then charged the weakened and confused French and routed them in one of history's most celebrated battles.

[Page 50]Perhaps the most dramatic recent example of asymmetric warfare was the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Using nothing more sophisticated than knives, a handful of individuals successfully seized several airliners and crashed one into the ground in Pennsylvania, missing its target of the White House, and others into buildings in New York and Washington, DC, killing and injuring thousands of civilians. The terrorists who conducted the attacks studied security procedures at airports to find weaknesses and to determine the best way to carry out the hijackings. They also chose a method of attack that was unexpected and difficult for conventional military forces to prevent.

A 1998 report by the Emergency Response and Research Institute (ERRI), “Asymmetric Warfare, the Evolution and Devolution of Terrorism; The Coming Challenge for Emergency and National Security Forces,” argues that most of the conflicts the United States will face in the near future will be asymmetric. The report expresses particular concern about the possibility of cyberattacks against the computer infrastructure of the United States. The U.S. government and military depend heavily on computerized information-processing and battlefield-management systems to give them a technological edge in combating opponents. Attacks on the computers and support structures (such as phone lines) that control these systems could seriously impair the ability of the United States to respond to national security threats.

The ERRI report offered several recommendations for responding to the use of asymmetric warfare. It urged that U.S. military doctrine, which still focuses on preparing to fight conventional wars against other nations, be changed to recognize the greater threat posed by nonstate actors such as terrorist groups, armed independence movements, and violent drug cartels. Because few future conflicts will feature battles between large armies, the military should concentrate on forming small groups of highly trained and equipped units to monitor, infiltrate, and destroy terrorist groups. The report suggested that small, flexible forces such as these, operating within the groups they target, are much more effective than conventional military forces in combating asymmetric threats.

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