Networked enemies pose multiple threats to global security
- By Defense Systems Staff
- May 09, 2012
The Defense Department has embraced the need to field agile, networked forces around the globe in future conflicts to confront networked, decentralized foes with something other than huge formations of troops representative of the conventional way of waging war in the previous century, said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a May 1 talk at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reports Defense News.
“We are just beginning to adapt from counterinsurgency as kind of our central organizing principle, and if I had to put a tagline on it today, it would be very premature for me to do it, but I’m gonna do it, I would say that where we’re headed is something that I would describe as a global networked approach to warfare,” Dempsey said, according to the story.
Among the lessons learned from fighting nimble insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are that the U.S. military must deploy smaller groups of forces around the globe that are capable of working with other nations in coalitions to combat such persistent threats as piracy, transnational crime and terrorism, the story said.
The upshot is that DOD will need to focus in the years ahead on building partnerships internationally, and integrating intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber and special operations capabilities developed over the last decade into a standard way of fighting these threats, the story said.