Effects-Based Operations: The End of Dominant Maneuver?
Abstract
This Strategic Research Paper investigates the theoretical and historical foundations of emerging effects-based operations concepts. Its goal is to determine the validity of such operations and the consequent implications for dominant ground maneuver. Many of the recent versions of effects-based operations argue that advances in stealth, precision engagement, and sensor technology have enabled strategic bombing to produce strategic decisions without dominant ground maneuver. The paper concludes that such thinking misreads a historical warfare lethality trend in a potentially dangerous effort to vindicate the Air Force doctrine of strategic attack. However, the ever-increasing precision and consequent lethality of all weapons will continue to impact ground maneuver, potentially allowing smaller ground force engagements and earlier exploitation of industrial age adversaries. Such a paradigm may well prove less effective at the lower end of the conflict spectrum where guerilla type forces do not present the physical targets for precision elements to attack. The paper also assesses effects- based thinking and contrasts tactical and strategic environments that might encompass such thinking. It concludes that the analytical nature of effects-based thinking is suitable for strategic decision making, but less applicable at tactical levels where standard operating procedures and hard training are the true determinants of success.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA401019
Entities
People
- Gary H. Cheek
Organizations
- United States Army War College