The decapitation theory originated from Colonel Walter's Five Rings Theory in the United States Air Force. In Colonel Walter's five-ring model, the human brain is regarded as the first ring from the inside out, and it is considered that the strategic center of human beings is the brain, which is irreplaceable. Without brain, eyes, ears and nervous system, even if there is a perfect body, it can only be a vegetable. Such a vegetative person will no longer be able to operate strategically, because the brain is responsible for integrating and guiding human organs and neural networks. Equivalent to the enemy's command organization. Once destroyed, the enemy's big system will stop working. There are many ways to destroy, which can be destroyed by fighting or paralyzed by information warfare. Comparing human heart, liver and lungs to two rings is equivalent to fresh water, food, electricity, oil and other necessities. Compare human bones, blood vessels and muscles to three rings, which are equivalent to railways, bridges, highways, ports, airports and other infrastructure for transporting goods, transmitting information or providing support. Compare the tens of millions of cells in the human body used to transmit food and oxygen to the fourth ring, which is equivalent to human groups. There are many targets and it is difficult to eliminate them. Excessive destruction and killing by enemy personnel does not necessarily lead to low morale. On the contrary, it may arouse national indignation and boost morale. Comparing human protective cells such as white blood cells to the five rings is equivalent to the armed forces.
The relationship between the five rings is that each part of the human body constitutes its own unique system, which is ultimately commanded and operated by the brain, so the human body is a large system composed of many subsystems. In this big system, the brain is irreplaceable, and the heart and bones are replaceable. After the brain is damaged, the human body will lose its value as a human being, but after other parts of the human body are lost, people still enjoy human dignity and can still carry out some normal thinking or strategic activities.
The characteristics of the five-ring model are: first, the first ring is located at the core, with few goals, but the position is the most important. The more you expand to the outer ring, the more goals you have, and the worse your importance is; Second, the past wars were more about attacking the outermost two rings, namely the Fifth Ring Road and the Fourth Ring Road, that is, attacking personnel and troops; Third, the future war will mainly attack the inner and inner circles, that is, the enemy's command organization, organic necessities and infrastructure. Destroying the command organization is like brain surgery, making the enemy's brain useless; Destroy organic necessities, make the enemy lack logistics supplies and supplies, and lose the ability to continue fighting; Destroying infrastructure will make the enemy cut off the material flow and information flow and lose all war potential. In this case, even if the two outer rings are not destroyed, there is not much combat capability.
During the Gulf War, the US military launched an attack on the Iraqi army according to this procedure. It first destroyed the command structure and ground air defense system of the Iraqi army, then destroyed its power, energy, communications, bridges, highways, airports and other infrastructure, and finally began to carry out ground operations with Iraqi combat troops to destroy their personnel and troops. This feature was more fully reflected in the Kosovo war. The Yugoslav army suffered little heavy losses, and NATO ended the war.
By destroying the core ring without attacking the outer ring, the purpose of war can be achieved quickly, and a large number of military weapons will be saved, and the political, diplomatic and military initiative will be gained. This is the theoretical basis of the "decapitation action" of the US military. The U.S. military believes that if 45 missiles and 4 laser-guided bombs are thrown at Saddam Hussein's side and killed at the beginning of the war, it will certainly exert great strategic effectiveness. However, if the same number of missiles and bombs are thrown at the Iraqi defense positions in the center of Baghdad or outside the city, no matter how destructive the effect is, it will not deter his regime.
The decapitation in the Gulf War and the Kosovo War was mainly aimed at the enemy's strategic command and control system, while the Murray conflict in 1986, the Afghanistan war in 5438+0 in 2006 and the Iraq war in 2003 were directly and accurately aimed at the enemy's top leaders, which reflected the strategic idea of directly attacking the enemy's vital points and directly killing him.
shock
The original intention of shock and awe is shock and deterrence, and the core is to win without fighting, which comes from the deterrence theory of defeating the enemy without fighting. The basis of deterrence is strength. Only through strong strength and actual combat shock can we force the other side to surrender without a fight. Shock depends on paralysis, which comes from the rational use of information warfare equipment and precision-guided weapons. The theory of shock and awe was first applied to the Kosovo war, and then it was comprehensively experimented in the Iraq war.
Judging from the experience of the Iraq war, deterrence will become an important strategic action in information warfare. The principle of effective deterrence mainly grasps two points: First, we should pay attention to the comprehensive application of soft deterrence. Soft deterrence is mainly aimed at attacking the enemy's psychological defense and cognitive system. No matter what method is used, as long as the enemy is misled and confused in understanding, what was thought to be right before the war suddenly feels wrong and is cheated, and the effect of winning without fighting is achieved. Iraq and the National Guard surrendered without a fight, senior Iraqi government officials fled before the war, and the Iraqi army did not resist in the later period, all because of the role of soft shock.
Second, soft shock must be matched with hard shock. There are many ways of soft deterrence, which can be psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, legal warfare, and of course, dollars or material inducements can also be used to fight. If these methods are not supplemented and echoed by hard fire, they will not play their due role. Therefore, the methods of soft and hard shock should echo each other, the front battlefield and the hidden battlefield should cooperate with each other, and talking and fighting should complement each other. We can't rely entirely on peace talks, which are the result of struggle. Only by beating, beating, wounding and defeating the enemy can the effect of peace talks be achieved. Of course, you have to watch while you fight hard, and you can't fight hard. If the killing and injury are excessive, especially if excessive collateral damage is caused to the other party, it may be counterproductive and lead the other party to turn to desperation and resolutely refuse to negotiate. It is best to strike with precision, and collateral damage must be minimized, so that diplomacy, public opinion and peace talks will have room for manoeuvre.
The application of soft deterrence means should focus on psychological warfare, including political warfare, diplomatic warfare, psychological warfare and information warfare. This reflects the strategic thinking that psychological warfare is the highest and military warfare is the second. Soft shock is mainly carried out through three levels: first, psychological shock is carried out through media warfare. The main method is to do everything possible to vilify the leader of the other side, so that he loses his prestige and even reaches the level of disgust in people's hearts. Finally, he calls on the people to rise up and overthrow the current regime in order to establish a new democratic and free regime. Milosevic in the Kosovo War and Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War had similar experiences. The second is to mislead the public through press conferences and directional broadcasts. The main method is to vigorously publicize the great power of information weapons and equipment, render the achievements in the war, publicize the tragic and bloody war, create terrible war scenes, and make the other side feel afraid of the war and have the idea of surrender and non-resistance. The propaganda of the mother of bombs and the fake news of 5 1 division commander's surrender all reflect this point; Third, by destroying daily necessities and the infrastructure on which ordinary people depend for survival, they will increase their fear and disgust of war, so as to alleviate the pressure of anti-war, urge the people to rise up and overthrow the current regime, thus ending the war at an early date and restoring a peaceful life.
There are three main ways of hard shock and awe: one is to destroy the electromagnetic radiation source of the other side through electronic warfare, making it blind, deaf and paralyzed, and being in a passive state of being slaughtered; The second is to destroy the other party's key targets with air strikes, strike hard, hit the enemy's center of gravity, always keep the pressure, watch while hitting, and blow up before reaching the goal; The third is to use the rapid advance of ground warfare to seize key targets and areas, and even use special forces to infiltrate and commandos to cross the city, which directly constitutes a psychological shock and causes a situation in which the general trend has gone.
The use of hard deterrence means focuses on beheading assault, precision strike, ground assault and special operations. Shooting a man first shoots a horse, catching a thief first captures the king, and beheading has existed since ancient times. The decapitation action in the information war embodies three characteristics: first, it is listed as a campaign stage and an independent combat style for the first time, which shows that this kind of combat action has strategic value rather than ordinary assassination or attack action; Second, for the first time, the decapitation action was changed from paralyzing the enemy's command and control system in the sense of information warfare to killing and destroying the enemy's leader's body, which reflected the operational purpose of attacking the enemy's key points and eradicating the root causes; Third, beheading is regarded as an important means of deterrence for the first time. The Iraq war shows that this deterrent effect is more significant than any other war. As far as hard deterrence is concerned, the Kosovo war and the Iraq war are mainly reflected in the comprehensive deterrence of air power. Air power becomes a whole concept. It can integrate the forces of all services and plan the target attack system, air mission instructions and air strike effectiveness evaluation in a unified way. The concept of air power, starting from the Kosovo war, includes not only air power, but also space satellites, naval carrier aircraft, helicopters, sea-based cruise missiles, marine corps aircraft, army helicopters, drones and so on. After all these air forces are integrated into integrated combat forces, they can form fists and severely attack the enemy; Second, in the strategy of shock and awe, it emphasizes punching hard, keeping pressure, hitting the enemy's center of gravity directly, blooming in the center, shaking the mountains and shaking the tigers, and finally achieving the strategic goal of defeating the enemy without fighting and winning with less fighting; Third, in terms of deterrent effect, it emphasizes the interaction between time and space.
Combined with the experience of the Kosovo war and the Iraq war, the deterrent effect was not obvious in the early stage of the war, but it became more and more obvious as the war went on. Therefore, deterrence requires the concentration of time and space, and it is necessary to always maintain the increasing pressure of air strikes. In addition, the deterrent effect is also related to target selection. War practice shows that no matter how hard it is to attack military targets, it is difficult to achieve the effect of shocking people and political power. The precise attack on key and symbolic targets, especially on civilian targets and infrastructure such as hydropower, can often play a huge deterrent role and quickly paralyze the resistance of the people and the government, thus achieving the strategic efficiency of overthrowing a political power and occupying a country.
In addition, full depth impact is also a very effective way. Full-depth shock and awe is mainly carried out by using intercontinental strategic attack capability and theater campaign attack capability, which can realize global forces and global operations. Although the U.S. military is scattered all over the world, it can concentrate its combat effectiveness, keep real-time information transmission during the movement, and ensure the precise attack on designated targets. Since the Kosovo War, Type III strategic bombers have been used in conventional warfare for the first time, which reflects the new trend of the traditional trinity strategic force shifting from nuclear to conventional in information warfare. For the defensive side, it is always in a passive state of paralysis and full-depth attack, which is hard to prevent and hard to hide. If this deterrent effect continues, it will easily lead to the complete collapse of the psychological defense line. The side at the disadvantage of weapons and equipment, because it can't control the battlefield, can't control the situation, can't create a record, has poor information in the war, is helpless, is passively beaten, and finally loses morale and gives up the war.
Full depth precision strike
Full-depth precision strike capability mainly refers to intercontinental strategic attack capability and theater campaign attack capability. In the Kosovo war, the US military already had intercontinental and long-range full-depth strike capabilities, which almost exceeded the radar sight range and defense zone of Yugoslavia.
In the Iraq war, the US military relied on information weapons and equipment to verify the theory of full-depth precision strike, parallel operation, rapid containment and shock. The main characteristics of its precision strike are: the long range of precision-guided weapons makes it possible to attack outside the defense area, thus making nonlinear and non-contact operations possible; When the range of precision guided weapons reaches hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, and the circular probability error reaches several meters or even below 1 meter, it is possible to stab. When weapons and equipment are basically or completely autonomous, they can fly autonomously to find and destroy targets without human intervention, thus making intelligent and unmanned attacks possible.
In the Iraq war, the information weapons and equipment used by the US military can be roughly divided into three categories: one is information weapons used for information attack and defense. New concept weapons and information weapons with non-lethal killing mechanism are not used much in combat, and few weapons are used for the first time. Basically, they are anti-radiation missiles and electromagnetic pulse bombs.
The second is an autonomous weapon for precision strikes. There are three kinds of fully autonomous intelligent weapons: Tomahawk -III cruise missile and AGM—86C air-launched cruise missile, Jeddah GPS guided bomb, Predator and rq-4.
The third is the information-based combat platform for weapons carrying and maneuvering. It mainly includes three types: stealth combat platforms, such as B-2 strategic bomber and F- 1 17A fighter; Combat and support aircraft with high information level, such as F/A- 18 shipborne combat/attack aircraft, F- 15e fighter, E-3B early warning aircraft, E-8 battlefield radar controller, EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft, longbow Apache reconnaissance attack helicopter, M 1A2 main battle tank and other operations with certain information capabilities.
Judging from the use of these weapons and equipment in the Iraq war, the effect is good, but there are also some thought-provoking problems: although the information-based weapons and equipment can greatly improve the combat capability and produce a powerful deterrent, they have not achieved the effect of quickly containing and bombing the forced landing, which shows that the information-based weapons and equipment can easily achieve the campaign goal, but it is difficult to achieve the strategic goal.
No matter how advanced the performance of information weapons and equipment is, it cannot play its due role without matching operational theory and operational guidance. Great achievements have been made in the digital construction of the US military in the new military revolution. Due to the mistakes in operational guidance and operational theory, the effectiveness of information-based weapons and equipment has been greatly limited, and the ground forces have fallen into an embarrassing situation of being at a loss whether high or low. Therefore, in the process of the new military revolution and the development of information weapons and equipment, special emphasis should be placed on the high-tech quality of commanders and their ability to control information weapons and equipment. Otherwise, when we get to the battlefield, it will be a mess, and we will have to engage in contact operations with non-contact combat weapons in our hands. So, we put aside the information weapons and equipment and continue to fight with traditional guns. This is a very painful lesson.
(Excerpted from How to Win the Information War, World Knowledge Publishing House, June 2004, pricing: 38.00 yuan. Address: No.51Ganmian Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing, with postal code 1000 10)
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