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Unconventional Warfare on the Conventional Battlefield

 

Lt. Gen. Ken Tovo, U.S. Army, Retired
Maj. Kyle Atwell, U.S. Army
2nd Lt. Anthony Marco, U.S. Army

 

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As the global security environment returns to multipolarity after a thirty-year unipolar “moment,” Western militaries are necessarily laser-focused on rebuilding capabilities to prevail in large-scale combat operations (LSCO).¹ Rising tensions over Taiwan and in the South China Sea, the ongoing war in Ukraine, a bellicose and nuclear-armed North Korea, and escalating brinkmanship between Iran and Israel heighten concerns about the outbreak of major war. Concern is buoyed by evidence from conflict datasets frequently employed by scholars, which note a rise in conflict globally, to include a 12 percent increase from 2022 to 2023 and 40 percent overall from 2020 to 2023.² Such observations drive a sense of great war inevitability within the United States, reflected in a March 2023 survey, which finds “the majority of Americans believe that another world war is at least somewhat likely to happen in the next five to 10 years.”³

As the defense establishment pivots focus from the Global War on Terrorism to strategic competition, some have questioned the role of irregular warfare (IW) and special operations forces (SOF).⁴ Irregular warfare—which includes the tasks of unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stabilization—has become synonymous with failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.⁵ SOF has excelled at counterterrorism, which some argue presents a distraction in strategic competition.⁶ Sen. Joni Ernst argues that “within the Pentagon SOF is seen almost as a ‘one-trick pony’ that’s focused solely on counterterrorism.”⁷ In this view, SOF and IW are tools of the last wars; “wise” national security policy and military force generation will look to conventional weapons and tactics to prevail in LSCO should strategic competition turn into conflict. This is reflected in recent personnel cuts to Army SOF.⁸

Challenging these arguments, history suggests that IW will play a prominent role in both strategic competition and LSCO.⁹ Especially in the nuclear age, major powers will seek to avoid the devastating effects of direct conflict.¹⁰ Instead, they are most likely to pursue goals with other tools, to include IW approaches.¹¹ SOF’s role in strategic competition short of direct war is well documented, generally understood, and outside the scope of this article.¹² Prudent military planning demands that we also examine the most dangerous case—where strategic competition escalates to conflict. The U.S. government definition of IW itself suggests it will play an important role in LSCO; IW is defined as “a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare [italics added].”¹³

For some, strategic conflict evokes a picture of purely conventional LSCO: capital ships, aircraft, and ground formations facing off to destroy their adversary’s similarly equipped forces. Analysis of the past century of LSCO is replete with examples of this; it also reveals that IW tools, especially unconventional warfare (UW)—support to indigenous resistance forces—can provide a significant supporting line of effort to the overall campaign. While the capabilities needed to conduct UW reside in SOF, it is senior civilian and military decision-makers and planners who must understand when and how to employ UW as part of broader campaigns. However, there are two challenges in the employment of UW: many leaders know too little about how it can contribute to LSCO, while others expect too much of it. This article provides an overview of the use of UW in support of historical LSCO with the aim of aiding current joint force military leaders in understanding how they might employ UW and SOF in future LSCO.

History of UW in Conventional Campaigns

Unconventional warfare is simply understood as providing support to a resistance movement.¹⁴ It is one of the core activities of U.S. SOF and falls under the aegis of IW.¹⁵ Within SOF, UW is the primary mission set for which Army Special Forces (a.k.a. “Green Berets”) are selected, trained, organized, and equipped. UW provides a means for the United States to indirectly attack its rivals’ interests through advising, assisting, training, and equipping indigenous fighters to pursue U.S. interests. This is done in lieu of or in support of a direct conventional war.

Over the past century, UW has been frequently employed as a shaping operation in broader LSCO campaigns. During World War I, T. E. Lawrence trained, advised, and equipped the Arab Revolt to tie down a sizable portion of the Ottoman army during the Sinai and Palestine campaign. A continent away in Africa, German Gen. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck leveraged indigenous fighters to skirmish with French and British rivals in the colonial periphery of the Europe-centric war. During World War II, the United States and United Kingdom employed special operations teams through the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Special Operations Executive (SOE) to mobilize French resistance to prepare the environment for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France.¹⁶ Similarly, Detachment 101 employed UW approaches to advance U.S. objectives in the China-Burma-India theater.¹⁷ UW continued to play a prominent role in post-9/11 LSCO fights, to include the United States partnering with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban, U.S. partnering with the Kurds to fix Iraq’s conventional units in northern Iraq during the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and most recently, Ukraine and its partners leveraging resistance in the Russian-occupied territories in support of the frontline fight.

These cases indicate two scenarios where UW proves useful for conventional commanders: either to supplement limited conventional forces with additional indigenous forces (the resistance fighters) or to substitute indigenous forces where conventional forces are unable to operate due to political or physical constraints. These concepts of supplementing and substituting for conventional forces have been extensively analyzed in two fields of academic research. The proxy warfare literature identifies that “belligerents use third parties as either supplementary means of waging war or as a substitute for the direct employment of their own forces.”¹⁸ Similarly, literature on the theory of SOF identifies that SOF is often employed in order to achieve “economy of force” or “expansion of choice.”¹⁹ Both logics are relevant to the conventional commander, who in LSCO will find themself operating with constraints—either resource constraints or constraints on their freedom of action to employ conventional force. These literatures provide the theoretical and historical foundations for conventional military leaders to understand the role of SOF in LSCO.

Supplementing conventional forces. Economy of force and the concept of supplementing reflect the same logic. In all forms of warfare, commanders inevitably face constraints and hard decisions on where to employ forces and allocate resources. This is especially true in LSCO, where forces are likely to be more evenly matched and combat losses and resource expenditures are orders of magnitude larger. While the main effort warrants the bulk of a commander’s forces, there will be shaping efforts that benefit from economy of force approaches at additional risk. Unconventional warfare and SOF, experts in mobilizing indigenous force multipliers, provide options to joint force commanders to directly support main effort forces or to conduct important shaping activities.

The use of specialized capabilities to fill the void of conventional forces is not a uniquely contemporary approach. Spartan commander Lysander argued 2,400 years ago, “Where the lion’s skin will not reach, it must be patched out with the fox’s.”²⁰ This sentiment—that guile/unconventional solutions must fill the void where strength reaches its limits—is still relevant today. As LSCO imposes resource constraints on decision-makers, working through indigenous partners can cover where the conventional effort is insufficient. Historical examples abound of UW used to supplement conventional military forces through indigenous mass, a few of which we explore here.

Both the British and Germans employed UW as a shaping operation during World War I. The British, after two years of fighting in Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, faced a deteriorating strategic situation in the Middle East. In the opening months of 1916, their twin campaigns against the Ottomans in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia culminated in calamitous defeats, staining the Empire’s prestige and draining manpower. Equally concerning, the Germans and Austrians overran Serbia, and both powers held plans to divert small arms, artillery, munitions, and troops to the Ottomans. These setbacks, in addition to a heavy commitment of forces elsewhere, made a partnership with the Arabs attractive to the British. The Saudi Hashemites proved to be an amenable partner. Concerned with an invigorated hyper-Turkic nationalist Ottoman government guided by the Committee of Union and Progress, colloquially the “Young Turks,” Hussein ibn Ali, the sharif of Mecca and leader of the Hashemites, coveted his own autonomous kingdom in the Hejaz.²¹

British war planners hoped an Arab revolt in the Hejaz would threaten the integrity of the Ottoman troops, as Arabs comprised one-third of the Ottoman army.²² They further surmised that an Arab revolt would compel the Ottomans to divert a sizable force for counterinsurgency operations despite ongoing combat operations across multiple other fronts. Senior British strategists further deduced that an Arab insurgency could enhance the security of the Suez Canal and Egypt. Importantly, the British intended to mount a major conventional campaign in the Sinai and Palestine to knock the Ottomans out of the war. British war planners envisioned utilizing UW, via an Arab revolt, as a shaping operation to the larger conventional offensive.²³ To achieve this, the British relied on a cohort of anthropologists and regional cultural experts turned army officers—personalities like T. E. Lawrence—to embed with Arab rebels and lead them into Palestine.

From 1914 to 1918, the Germans, facing a comparable resource-constrained scenario, relied on UW to ward off repeated Entente (initially the United Kingdom, France, and Russia) incursions against its colonies in East Africa. At the onset of hostilities, the Entente pounced on Germany’s colonies in West and East Africa. With the British Royal Navy and the French Navy dominating sea lanes worldwide, the Germans were unable to reinforce their African colonies.²⁴ Furthermore, with the Kaiser’s armies facing off against the British, French, and Russians in a two-front land war, Berlin knew the war would be won on the battlefields of Europe and allocated most available forces toward that main effort.

On the other hand, the British and French had larger colonial armies stationed in Africa at the war’s start. Although the Entente captured West Africa in the war’s opening moments, Maj. Gen. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck led three thousand Germans and eleven thousand African Askari auxiliaries in an unconventional campaign against Belgian, British, French, and Portuguese armies numbering approximately three hundred thousand troops at their height.²⁵ Anticipating war in the years preceding 1914 and recognizing their inferior military position in East Africa, the Germans demonstrated prescience by creating a “self-reliant mini-army” that was better organized, equipped, and trained than their Entente counterparts.²⁶ When Vorbeck took command of the Schutztruppe of East Africa in January 1914, he inherited a highly capable force that could supplement Germany’s main war effort in Europe.

Unconventional warfare also played a supplementing role during World War II. Since the “Arsenal of Democracy” could not commit conventional forces in significant numbers everywhere, the United States relied on SOF in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater to supplement its main effort elsewhere. The British employed SOF in the CBI, but also maintained a significant conventional presence in Field Marshal William Slim’s Fourteenth Army, which ultimately delivered the decisive blow against Japanese forces in Burma in 1945.

In December 1941, the Japanese invaded British-controlled Burma and quickly evicted the British from their colony.²⁷ Poised to threaten British India directly, the Japanese also cut the Burma Road, which served as an indispensable lifeline to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese forces who faced the preponderance of Japanese land forces in the Pacific theater. The United States had an interest in Nationalist China’s survival but could not spare the tens of thousands of ground troops required to keep the Burma Road open, nor the shipping to get those troops into the theater.²⁸ “The Burma Campaign is probably not going to be the big show, but it is the going show,” observed an OSS operative describing the U.S. efforts in CBI.²⁹ For key American decision-makers, Brig. Gen. William Donovan’s nascent OSS became an attractive option to keep the artery to China open. The U.S. Army formed OSS Operational Detachment 101, initially comprising twenty men (later a few hundred) under Maj. Carl F. Eifler in April 1942, to satisfy American objectives in CBI to reopen the Burma Road and enervate the Japanese occupation.³⁰ American war planners intended for Detachment 101 to raise an army of irregular fighters from northern Burma’s Kachin people, a group marginalized by the Japanese occupation forces, to execute UW behind Japanese lines.³¹

Though not a comprehensive list of examples where UW supplemented conventional forces in LSCO, these cases capture important ways that SOF and UW can be leveraged by conventional commanders for shaping operations in the context of a broader military campaign. While SOF “patched out” the lion’s skin in the First and Second World Wars cases above, we now demonstrate how SOF and UW can serve as a substitute for conventional forces who face either physical or political constraints to action.

Substituting for conventional forces. During LSCO, decision-makers not only face resource constraints but also other restrictions in the form of politically or physically denied spaces that forestall conventional operations.³² In these contexts, UW offers the ability to substitute conventional forces with indigenous partner forces. Substitution is the practice of employing military forces capable of gaining access to territory otherwise denied to conventional forces; specifically, this means working through indigenous partners, often with the support of specially trained personnel who can infiltrate and operate in denied spaces to include the deep battle area. The Allies’ employment of OSS/SOE teams during Operation Overlord in 1944, the use of SOF in northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in 2003, and Ukraine’s UW efforts against Russian forces today serve as examples of substitution in LSCO.

By June 1944, the Allies postured themselves for the invasion of mainland Europe. While conventional forces were tasked with carrying out major ground operations in Normandy, France, senior Allied leaders accepted plans to prepare the environment by carrying out UW in regions of occupied France inaccessible to conventional forces. Prior to the invasion, SOE and OSS operatives across France gathered intelligence for the impending campaign, which included designating drop zones, organizing supply and munitions drops for the French resistance, and determining the requirements for varying resistance groups.³³ Once the invasion was underway, Allied planners intended to parachute highly trained three-man multinational OSS/SOE Jedburgh teams and other SOF elements into France in the weeks following D-Day to train, advise, and command thousands of French Maquis fighters to “provide a strategic reserve that could create and control offensive action [for conventional forces].”³⁴ Alongside resistance across occupied France, Jedburgh teams disrupted German reinforcements to the frontlines and diverted some German forces against the rear area threat. The OSS/SOE teams were able to access physically denied terrain and influence French resistance fighters due to specialized capabilities that provided a valuable shaping operation for the conventional main effort.

More recently, the American-led coalition that invaded Iraq in March 2003 to depose Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime demonstrates SOF serving as a shaping operation for the campaign. Among the 160,000 troops entering Iraq, two U.S. Army Special Forces groups, a naval special warfare group, and nearly the U.S. Air Force’s entire SOF capacity took part in what may be the largest employment of SOF.³⁵

When devising OIF, war planners identified an advance through the Tigris-Euphrates Valley as the invasion’s main effort with the goal of capturing Iraq’s political center, Baghdad.³⁶ Acting in a supporting role, the 4th Infantry Division (4ID), 173rd Airborne Brigade, and Joint Special Operations Task Force North (JSOTF–N), also known as “Task Force Viking,” would advance from the north. Coalition planners tasked JSOTF–N’s main element, consisting of forty-eight operational detachment-alphas belonging predominantly to 10th Special Forces Group with leading Kurdish Peshmerga militias in an offensive in northern Iraq.³⁷ While the United States saw movement from the south as the main effort, Baghdad anticipated the decisive advance would come from the north and maintained three Iraqi army corps and an armored division—totaling 150,000 soldiers—in a defensive posture in northern Iraq.³⁸ If the coalition failed to fix Iraq’s forces in the north, they could shift these forces toward Baghdad and more than double their strength in the south, bludgeoning the coalition’s main effort.

The coalition originally intended for JSOTF–N to supplement the 4ID conventional advance southward; however, on the eve of OIF, political shifts in Türkiye imposed constraints on conventional force insertion. Days before OIF’s scheduled start, Türkiye’s parliament rescinded basing access to all American ground forces due to long-standing grievances surrounding American military support for Iraq’s Kurdish population. Türkiye’s decision threatened to derail coalition planning in the north as the 4ID required Turkish border access to invade Iraq. Unable to delay OIF’s start, JSOTF–N assumed command responsibility for the region, which included all supporting conventional contingents including the 173rd Airborne Brigade and a Marine expeditionary unit. JSOTF–N was able to substitute 4ID conventional forces as SOF units entered Iraq through specialized air mobility capabilities in the context of political constraints that denied conventional units access to Iraq.³⁹ In the context of the broader U.S. invasion of Iraq, JSOTF–N played a vital shaping operation, tying down and destroying multiple divisions of Iraqi conventional forces where U.S. conventional forces were unable to operate.⁴⁰

Achieving Campaign Effects

There are a wide range of activities and effects UW offers a joint force commander; here, we focus on a few of them from the historical record. These include sabotage and kinetic actions in denied territories that divert enemy resources and deny freedom of maneuver in rear areas; intelligence operations, information operations, and other efforts to prepare the environment for conventional attacks; and replacing conventional forces with indigenous partners as maneuver elements in the close fight. While examples below largely lean on historical precedents, it is not difficult to imagine how these activities are applicable to the current war in Ukraine or to potential LSCO in the South China Sea.

Sabotage and kinetic effects. Unconventional warfare can be employed to target enemy formations, lines of communication, and logistics nodes. These actions can divert enemy resources from the conventional battlespace and degrade their capabilities for the conventional fight.

In the summer of 1944, OSS/SOE teams and their resistance partners carried out operations to sever German lines of communication. In a well-touted action, Maj. Tommy MacPherson’s Team Quinine and its twenty-seven Maquisards (French resistance fighters) delayed the elite 2nd SS Panzer Division—numbering 17,283 men—for several hours during its movement to the front in Normandy.⁴¹ MacPherson and his resistance fighters repeatedly destroyed the lead vehicles to block the primary German avenues of approach while killing dozens of fleeing German Panzergrenadiers.⁴² Daily Jedburgh missions like this forced the German High Command to make “strategic misjudgments” and overestimate the scale of the resistance. Rather than expediently driving to Normandy, many German units were delayed by the Jedburgh-led Maquis and detached portions of their force to address the rear area threat.⁴³

Similarly, Detachment 101 conducted sabotage and attacks in Spring 1944 to support an American-Chinese offensive spearheaded by Merrill’s Marauders to capture the Japanese airfield at Myitkyina. After setting conditions for the Myitkyina offensive through intelligence gathering, Detachment 101’s primary mission changed to support the Allied advance in northern Burma through direct action. By February, Detachment 101 had over four thousand Kachin fighters for the Myitkyina offensive.⁴⁴ During the American-Sino advance, the Kachin, formed into company-sized formations, acted as screening forces, protecting the flanks of the main conventional force.⁴⁵ The Kachin carried out diversionary attacks to protect the Allied main body, and in one incident, a company of Kachin diverted three Japanese battalions away from the main advance.⁴⁶

   

Once the combined force reached Myitkyina and captured the airfield, they battled with the Japanese for control of the area. During this phase, the Kachin carried out extensive ambushes and raids in the Japanese rear areas, targeting supply depots, troop-marshalling areas, and command-and-control nodes.⁴⁷ The tempo of attacks had a psychological impact on the Japanese, further demoralizing them. Illustrating the impact, a Japanese prisoner of war confessed during interrogation that one Kachin fighter equaled ten Japanese soldiers.⁴⁸ Furthermore, the Kachin served as dependable guides and scouts for the Marauders throughout the offensive. In a noteworthy incident, a Kachin scout successfully guided the Marauders during their surprise attack on the airfield.⁴⁹ The force multiplying effect achieved by Detachment 101’s Kachin fighters was significant. “Thanks to your people for a swell job. Could not have succeeded without them,” attested Col. Hunter, commanding Merrill’s Marauders, in a note to Col. William Peers, commanding Detachment 101.⁵⁰

Intelligence support and preparation of the environment. Indigenous partners, particularly partisan “civilians” who can blend in with local populations in occupied territories, provide an intelligence-gathering capability in denied territory that can support conventional forces. In the months preceding the Myitkyina campaign, Detachment 101 conducted extensive intelligence missions that set the conditions for the Allied offensive. Spread out across northern Burma, Detachment 101’s Kachin contacts gathered intelligence on Japanese force strengths, troop disposition, unit type, and terrain; their efforts directly shaped considerations at CBI theater-level command and confirmed the Allies’ intent to strike in north Burma.⁵¹ In addition to keeping CBI theater-level command informed, Detachment 101 provided the 10th U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) with Japanese target locations. This enabled the 10th USAAF to severely reduce Japanese logistical infrastructure in north Burma, compounding Japanese struggles once the American-Sino offensive began.⁵² Maj. Gen. Howard Davidson, commanding the 10th USAAF, reported, “OSS furnished the principal intelligence regarding Japanese troop concentrations, hostile natives, stores and enemy movement. Up to 15 March 1944, some 80% of all combat missions were planned based on intelligence received from this source.”⁵³

More recently, resistance fighters reportedly provided intelligence in support of a Ukrainian air strike that sank the Russian Novocherkassk warship in the Black Sea in December 2023.⁵⁴ News reports and Ukrainian partisan social media indicated that not only did resistance fighters provide critical intelligence, but that President Vladimir Putin was furious at the attack and diverted Russian military forces to hunt down the resistance. This event suggests that resistance in denied spaces serve as intelligence sensors in support of conventional Ukrainian attacks in the deep fight.

Maneuver forces in the close fight. In some cases, indigenous forces led by SOF achieve effects in the close fight. As mentioned earlier, in northern Iraq during OIF, JSOTF–N and the Peshmerga completely replaced the planned conventional force. Arrayed along the Green Line’s 200 km length, eighty thousand Peshmerga fighters, under JSOTF–N’s command, crossed the line of contact separating Kurdish and Iraqi forces in March 2003.⁵⁵ During the offensive, coalition airpower proved decisive in supporting the SOF-led Peshmerga. Before the advance across the Green Line, American aircraft reduced Iraqi defensive positions along the border, enabling initial attacks.⁵⁶ Kurdish forces advanced toward Kirkuk and Mosul under an umbrella of precision coalition airstrikes.

In an example emblematic of the fighting throughout northern Iraq, SF operational detachment-alphas coordinated several AC-130 gunship sorties against the 108th Iraqi Brigade dug in along an extensive ridge complex known as Objective Bushman.⁵⁷ The air attacks severely weakened the 108th, and the Peshmerga, exploiting the damage inflicted on the Iraqis, assaulted the position and established a foothold on the ridge.⁵⁸ Unwilling to abandon the position, the Iraqis repeatedly attacked the now-entrenched Peshmerga over four days. SOF continued to call in airstrikes that not only repulsed exposed Iraqi counterattacks but also rendered the 108th combat ineffective.⁵⁹ Akin to British bite-and-hold tactics from World War I, where a combatant takes ground and forces their opponent to attack them, SOF-led-Peshmerga utilized this approach to combat the Iraqis throughout the campaign. Battles across northern Iraq largely unfolded in this manner, and by early April, Iraqi forces had disintegrated, opening the way for the coalition’s capture of Kirkuk and Mosul.⁶⁰ An epitome of SOF-enabled UW, JSOTF–N prevented three Iraqi corps from influencing the U.S. main effort in the South.

Similar effects were seen in both world wars. By mid-September 1918, British forces under the command of Sir Edmund Allenby launched a climatic final act in Palestine, which culminated in the Battle of Megiddo. In support of Allenby’s masterstroke, the Northern Arab Army, led by Lawrence and Lord Feisal, launched an offensive to capture the vital railway hub at Deraa, which served as a communications and reinforcement node for the Ottomans. The Arab army successfully seized Derra and forced the Ottomans to dispatch their fourteen thousand-strong Fourth Army, a reserve force destined for the Palestine front, to deal with the Arab army.⁶¹ Instead of engaging an Ottoman army of about thirty-two thousand combatants, Allenby attacked seventeen thousand Ottomans, giving his army a decisive 3.4:1 numerical advantage over the Ottomans.⁶² As fighting progressed on Lawrence’s front, his Arab forces dealt the Ottomans a heavy blow by inflicting five thousand enemy killed and capturing eight thousand prisoners during the offensive.⁶³ During the Allied breakout in Normandy in World War II, fifteen thousand French resistance fighters, under OSS/SOE leadership, guarded the U.S. 3rd Army’s southern flank along the Loire River, enabling the 3rd Army’s drive toward the German border.⁶⁴ To further free up Allied conventional forces for operations elsewhere, the Allies also used Jedburgh-led resistance formations to reduce isolated German garrisons across France, namely in Brittany.⁶⁵

Limitations of Unconventional Warfare

As the character of warfare evolves, there will likely become additional uses for indigenous partner forces to supplement or substitute the joint force. Debates over the role of SOF’s value proposition in LSCO often lead to the question, “What line will they hold?” The analysis above suggests that first, SOF will supplement where conventional forces lack the resources to hold a line. Second, SOF can act where conventional forces are unable to gain access, such as the deep fight behind enemy lines or where politics immobilizes conventional units. The need for special capabilities to penetrate deep are increasingly important as adversary antiaccess/area denial makes air and missile strikes difficult without first setting conditions in denied territory.⁶⁶

Unconventional warfare and resistance elements provide valuable shaping effects and can impose costs and dilemmas on a conventional adversary, but they rarely serve as the decisive operation in LSCO. The conflict’s context matters, including the scale of the war, strength of the opponent, and feasibility of building resistance networks to carry out UW. In LSCO, on the scale of the Russia-Ukraine war or World War II, employing UW or resistance as a stand-alone tool would likely be ineffective. Allied reliance solely on SOE/OSS support to the French resistance is unlikely to ever have led to France’s liberation. In May 1944, 880,000 German troops were stationed in occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, including heavily armored panzer divisions; the French resistance could field only a fraction of that herculean German force let alone manage to obtain the quantity and type of equipment from the Allies to fight as a stand-alone force.⁶⁷

Similarly, in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Armed Forces would be remiss to rely exclusively on resistance when fighting against an opponent with sizable conventional advantages in fires, equipment, and manpower. However, in LSCO conflicts, UW can impose costs on the enemy, especially in occupied areas, that have favorable effects in support of the campaign plan. In other contexts, UW has proven capable of replacing large parts of conventional forces, such as in northern Iraq during OIF and in the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. In these contexts, UW had a greater relative impact on the overall campaign. It is critical for military planners and commanders to understand the context of the conflict to effectively apply unconventional warfare capabilities, fully cognizant of its potential and its limits to support LSCO and great power wars.

Conclusion and Implications

After a thirty-year hiatus initiated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has once again entered an era of strategic competition between peer great powers. Historically, such periods have been marked by competition phases, where nations attempt to achieve national objectives and expand influence below the threshold of direct conflict by wielding all the elements of power available to them. When measures short of war fail, nations resort to conflict. In other instances, chance and miscalculation have led to great-power war.

As military leaders seek to navigate strategic competition and potential escalation to direct conflict, analysis of historical conventional wars provides insights into the full range of capabilities available to joint force commanders to include understanding the role of UW in LSCO.⁶⁸ The United States and its allies can prepare to optimize the employment of IW and UW capabilities in multiple ways. First, UW doctrine should be incorporated into professional military education, combat training center and Warfighter exercise scenarios, and wargaming. Second, it is vital that SOF and conventional forces maximize their interactions to ensure each understands and can integrate the capabilities of the other. Last, as the Army builds the force for strategic competition, it must preserve its unconventional warfighting capability.

Our adversaries have spent decades analyzing the American way of war, on display from the first Iraq War (1991) through the present. They have designed their force structure and doctrine to counter U.S. advantages in precision fires and maneuver and created large, capable forces. Given the scale and efficacy of U.S. adversaries, the United States and its allies must think beyond exclusively conventional approaches and bring all available tools to the fight.

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Notes

1. Alisa Laufer and Matthew Moellering, Irregular Warfare Initiative, podcast, “Cold War Lessons for a New Era: Connecting IW and Great Power Competition,” 19 April 2024, https://irregularwarfare.org/podcasts/cold-war-lessons-for-a-new-era-connecting-iw-and-great-power-competition/.
2. “ACLED Conflict Index,” Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, updated July 2024, https://acleddata.com/conflict-index/.
3. Jamie Ballard, “Most Americans Think There Will Be Another World War within the Next Decade,” YouGov, 21 March 2024, https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48981-most-americans-think-another-world-war-within-the-next-decade.
4. James D. Kiras and Martijn Kitzen, eds., Into the Void: Special Operations Forces after the War on Terror (London: Hurst Publishers, 2024), xvii.
5. Catherine A. Theohary, “Defense Primer: What Is Irregular Warfare?,” Congressional Research Service (CRS) In Focus 12565 (Washington, DC: CRS, 8 January 2024), https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12565.
6. Marcus Hicks, “Countering Terrorism While Competing with Great Power Rivals: Mutually Reinforcing, Not Mutually Exclusive,” Modern War Institute at West Point, 29 March 2021, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/countering-terrorism-while-competing-with-great-power-rivals-mutually-reinforcing-not-mutually-exclusive/.
7. Todd South, “Personnel Cuts and Force Redesign Ahead for Army Special Operations,” Army Times (website), 1 November 2023, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/11/01/personnel-cuts-and-a-force-redesign-ahead-for-army-special-operations/.
8. Ibid.
9. Liam Collins and Jacob Shapiro, “Great Competition Will Drive Irregular Conflicts,” War on the Rocks, 8 April 2024, https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/great-power-competition-will-drive-irregular-conflicts/; Assaf Moghadam, Vladimir Rauta, and Michel Wyss, eds., Routledge Handbook of Proxy Wars (New York: Routledge, 2023), 113.
10. Daniel Byman, “Why States Are Turning to Proxy War,” National Interest (website), 26 August 2018, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-states-are-turning-proxy-war-29677.
11. Alexandra Chinchilla et al., “Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition,” Defence Studies 24, no. 1 (November 2023): 148–58, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14702436.2023.2279620.
12. Kyle Atwell and Abigail Gage, Irregular Warfare Initiative, podcast, “Back to the Future: Resetting Special Operations Forces for Great Power Competition,” 2 July 2021, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/back-to-the-future-resetting-special-operations-forces-for-great-power-competition/.
13. Joint Publication 1, Joint Warfighting, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2023 [CAC required]), II-7.
14. U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), Unconventional Warfare Pocket Guide (Fort Bragg, NC: USASOC, April 2016), https://www.soc.mil/ARIS/books/pdf/Unconventional%20Warfare%20Pocket%20Guide_v1%200_Final_6%20April%202016.pdf.
15. Department of Defense, Summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2020), 2, https://media.defense.gov/2020/Oct/02/2002510472/-1/-1/0/Irregular-Warfare-Annex-to-the-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.PDF.
16. Colin Beavan, Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America’s First Shadow War (London: Penguin Group, 2006), 292.
17. Troy J. Sacquety, “The OSS: A Primer on the Special Operations Branches and Detachments of the Office of Strategic Services,” Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History 3, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 34–51, https://arsof-history.org/articles/v3n4_oss_primer_page_1.html.
18. Geraint Hughes, My Enemy’s Enemy: Proxy Warfare in International Politics (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), 2.
19. Kiras and Kitzen, Into the Void, 4.
20. Plutarch, The Parallel Lives, ed. and trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), 251.
21. Neil Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War: The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 165–66.
22. Ibid., 169.
23. Ibid., 166–67.
24. W. O. Henderson, “Conquest of the German Colonies, 1914-1918,” History 27, no. 106 (September 1942): 125, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24401781.
25. Daune Koenig, “A Note on World War I: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa,” Military Affairs 34, no. 1 (February 1970): 14, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1984547. Belgium, having been overrun by the Germans in 1914, and Portugal both fought alongside the Entente during World War I.
26. Corey Reigel, The Last Great Safari (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 16–17.
27. Richard B. Frank, Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, vol. I (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020), 485–86.
28. David P. Coulombe, “Learning on the Move, OSS Detachment 101 Special Operations in Burma” (master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2015), 8.
29. Troy J. Sacquety, “The Organizational Evolution of OSS Detachment 101 in Burma, 1942-1945” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 2008), 16.
30. Ibid., 18.
31. David Hogan, U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1992), 98–101.
32. Kyle Atwell and Matthew Wiger, “Causal Logics of Proxy Wars,” in Moghadam, Rauta, and Wyss, Routledge Handbook of Proxy Wars, 17–30.
33. Sacquety, “The OSS: A Primer,” 37.
34. SOE/SO Headquarters London, “Basic Directive on Jedburghs,” December 1943, OSS London/War Diary of the Special Operations Branch and Secret Intelligence Branch War Diaries; Vol. 12, p. 36; Basic Documents; Records of the Office of Strategic Services, Record Group 226 (RG 226); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD (NACP).
35. Joel D. Rayburn and Frank K. Sobchak, The US Army in the Iraq War, vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2019), 103, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/386/.
36. Bruce R. Pirnie et al., “Land Operations,” in Operation Iraqi Freedom: Decisive War, Elusive Peace, ed. Walter L. Perry et al. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015), 63, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt19w72gs.12.
37. Ibid., 106.
38. Kenn Finlayson, “Operation Viking Hammer: 3/10 SFG against the Ansar Al-Islam,” Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History 1, no.1 (Winter 2005): 15, https://arsof-history.org/articles/pdf/v1n1_op_viking_hammer.pdf.
39. Cory Peterson, “Task Force Viking and the Ugly Baby Mission,” Air Commando Journal 9, no. 2 (October 2020): 34–41, https://aircommando.org/task-force-viking-and-the-ugly-baby-mission/. Operation Ugly Baby, a deployment from the intermediate staging base in Constanta, Romania, then a low-level infiltration by Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130s, was the longest infiltration of denied airspace since World War II.
40. Richard B. Andres, “The Afghan Model in Northern Iraq,” in War in Iraq: Planning and Execution, ed. Thomas G. Mahnken and Thomas A. Keaney (London: Routledge, 2009), 60.
41. SOE, “Quinine Team (Massingham)” and “To Stimulate & Sustain Guerilla Action on the Area of Lines of Communication Montauban/Brive,” 1944; folder 553, p. 3–5; France: The Jedburgh Teams and Operation Overlord, 1944-1945, series 1; Records of Special Operations Executive, HS6; National Archives (UK) at Kew; Niklas Zetterling, Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness (Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2019), 323. The term Maquisards refers to French members of the Maquis.
42. Max Hastings, Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division through France (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 141–42. Panzergrenadiers were German armored infantry.
43. Ibid., 142–43.
44. Sacquety, “The Organizational Evolution of OSS Detachment 101 in Burma, 1942-1945,” 163.
45. Ibid., 171
46. Ibid., 172.
47. William R. Peers and Dean Brelis, Behind the Burma Road (New York: Avon Book, 1963), 174.
48. Coulombe, “Learning on the Move,” 119.
49. Sacquety, “The Organizational Evolution of OSS Detachment 101 in Burma, 1942-1945,” 165–67.
50. Ibid., 174.
51. Ibid., 162.
52. Ibid., 163.
53. Ibid., 185.
54. Bradley Jolly, “Vladimir Putin ‘Completely Furious’ at Sinking of Novocherkassk Warship,” Mirror (website), 28 December 2023, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putin-completely-furious-sinking-31761334.
55. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2006), 386; Nathan Lowrey, “The Battle of Debecka Crossroads,” Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History 1, no.1 (Winter 2005): 79, https://arsof-history.org/articles/pdf/v1n1_debecka_crossroads.pdf.
56. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 390.
57. Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales, The Iraq War: A Military History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 192.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., 193.
60. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 391.
61. Faulkner, Lawerence of Arabia’s War, 428.
62. Ibid., 430.
63. Ibid., 449.
64. S. J. Lewis, Jedburgh Team Operations in Support of the 12th Army Group, August 1944 (Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1991), 61, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/lewis.pdf.
65. Ibid.; Office of Strategic Services (OSS), “Operations Team Lee,” entry 683, box 24-26; OSS London/War Diary of the Special Operations Branch and Secret Intelligence Branch War Diaries, Vol. 4, Bk. II, p. 685; RG 226; NACP.
66. Tim Nichols, “Special Operations Forces in an Era of Great Power Competition” (Washington, DC: Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, May 2023), https://sais.jhu.edu/kissinger/programs-and-projects/kissinger-center-papers/special-operations-forces-era-great-power-competition.
67. Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 27.
68. Hal Brands, The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022), 1.

 

 

 

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