January 1, 2006
Posted in Behaviour, Strategy at 14:59 by Graham King
This is sourced from Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center; Performance Maintenance during continuous flight operations; published 01 Jan 2000; and from USAF School of Aerospace Medicine; Warfighter endurance management during continuous flight and ground operations; published January 2003;
Before we start, we’ll need a couple of definitions.
Continuous Operations: Operations that extend over 24 hours at a normal rate. Each individual works a usual amount of hours, and is relieved at the end of a shift to return later. As the operation runs round-the-clock an individual will work different hours which may conflict with circadian rhythms, and disrupt sleep patterns.
Sustained Operations: Involve continuous performance longer than 24 hours. Work is continued until a goal is reached. Sleep deprivation is common. Prevalent in ground warfare.
After a night without sleep mental and motor skill performance degrades to that of an individual who is considered to be legally drunk, (i.e. blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.10 %). Even 18 hours of wakefulness equates to BAC of 0.05%.
Sleep cannot be stored up prior to a continuous or sustained operation. Sleep loss, circadian rhythm disruption and hard work combine to produce fatigue. Fatigue is not due to lack of motivation or attitude. Fatigue needs to be managed.
The planning and organisation required prior to the start of an operation may mean a team is already tired. This is referred to as preload.
Prior experience with sleep loss does not provide training to maintain performance. Resistance to fatigue varies between individuals.
Combat naps, the military equivalent of a power nap, help to maintain performance. After a power nap, individuals may experience 5 – 20 minutes of sleep inertia characterized by confusion and sluggishness. Taking more naps (practicing) appears to reduce this problem. During sustained or continuous operations, power naps should be encouraged and sometimes mandated.
Power naps should last less than 40 minutes from the time one begins to attempt sleep to the time of awakening. It is designed to be too short to allow the individual to enter slow wave sleep (SWS) and yet still get a brief, hopefully restorative, nap. The first SWS epoch occurs within about 60 minutes.
Research suggests that these naps can provide between 2 to 4 hours of useful physical and mental activity, for about 2-3 days, sometimes longer. After a few days however, cumulative sleep debt would be overwhelming.
A short sleep is best when more time is available for rest during a mission but not enough for a full sleep. Short sleeps are recommended to be at least 3-4 hours in duration. They are designed to allow the individual to progress through and avoid the SWS epochs. These sleep periods can maintain useful waking performance levels for 4-10 hours and perhaps longer. Although few studies have been done, anecdotal military evidence suggests that 3-4 hour naps can maintain crews for 4-5 days before sleep debt becomes overwhelming.
The minimum amount of sleep required to maintain performance during sustained operations is 4 – 5 hours per day. Fragmented sleep is less effective.
A ‘normal’ sleep is generally accepted as being 8 hours. Whatever the length of sleep, it should occur in 90 – 100 minute increments to avoid awakening during the deeper stages of sleep. This will minimize sleep inertia. Sleep should occur at the same time every day (including weekends), in a dedicated, quiet and dark place.
Sleeping more than 10 hours may cause sleep drunkenness and should be discouraged, even after a period of sleep deprivation.
There are numerous cyclic body rhythms in humans that collectively are described as circadian rhythms. Isolated from all external clues, humans seem to operate on a 25 hour cycle. External clues such as light and darkness (the most powerful cues), sleep, meals, social activities and clocks, reset the biological clock daily.
On an average circadian cycle, performance peaks between 12:00 and 21:00 hours (normally around 16:00), and falls to a minimum between 03:00 and 06:00 hours.
Continuous or sustained operations, trans-meridian travel (jet lag) and sleep deprivation all force the rhythmic systems of the body to re-adapt. They become out of phase with local time and with each other. Some phases will be delayed and others advanced. Seven continuous days of shift work are required to adjust the body temperature cycle. A single period of night work, or seven in a row, is more easily tolerated than three of four consecutive nights (which starts the process of circadian desynchronisation). If a round-the-clock operation is needed teams should specialise in either days or nights.
Extroverts, younger people, and those living on a more regimented schedule tend to have an easier time adjusting. As a general rule the body will adapt 40 minutes/day when traveling east and 60 minutes/day when traveling west. Westward travel requires lest time to acclimate. Bright lights maintain alertness and are a strong factor in accelerating circadian adaption.
It is easiest to initiate sleep twice a day; in the early afternoon and just before normal sleep time. Alcohol, while initially relaxing, significantly worsens the duration and quality of sleep. Caffeine interferes with sleep, and prevents effective napping. A nap or short sleep is most effective during the low point of the circadian cycle (03:00 – 06:00 hours).
Fatigue is both physical and mental. Physical aspects involve a loss of the power of muscles and sensors to respond. Mental fatigue includes the subjective feeling of weariness followed by worsening performance of cognitive tasks. This subjective sense of fatigue is the first indicator that people are getting tired. A useful external indicator is that the fatigued person loses their sense of humour.
During the Falklands conflict sedatives were used by the British to regulate sleep for pilots. Amphetamines were used by the British and Germans in WWII. During Vietnam both the American Air Force and Navy made amphetamines available to aviators. Intermittently since Vietnam up through Desert Storm the Air Force has used both amphetamines and sedatives in selected aircraft for specific missions. A combination of dextro-amphetamine (Dexedrine) and scopalomine are used by the Navy and NASA to combat motion sickness.
5mg of dextro-amphetamine (Dexedrine) help maintain alertness without causing other changes in mood and perception. 200mg caffeine compares favorably to amphetamine in improving cognitive performance but is less effective in maintaining alertness. 5mg of Dexedrine can be taken every 2 hours if required; dose should not exceed 30mg per 24 hour period.
Benzodiazepines produce the ‘most natural’ quality of sleep, and are used as sleep initiators. 5mg of zolpidem (Ambien) or 15mg of temazepam (Restoril) is used as an aide to sleep. A 7 - 8 hour period of restriction from higher cognitive activities is needed after taking this medication. No more than 10mg of zolpidem or 15mg of temazepam can be taken per 24 hour period.
Medication should be tested prior to it being needed, to allow individuals to adapt and gain familiarity with it. The Navy states that the use of stimulants or sedatives is appropriate only in combat or during exceptional circumstances of operational necessity.
October 30, 2005
Posted in History, Strategy at 16:54 by Graham King
by Jeff Elkins
Interesting details are emerging regarding a wartime tiff between General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and General Sir Michael Jackson of Britain, former commander of NATO “peacekeeping” forces in Kosovo.
The criminal NATO bombing campaign had finally ceased and Serbian military forces had agreed to withdraw from the province of Kosovo. General Jackson was preparing to move troops under his command into Kosovo from their base in Macedonia. The operation was due to begin on June 12th, 1999. However, unbeknownst to NATO, a Russian fly was about to spoil the Allied ointment.
A token force of 200 Bosnian-based Russian troops entered Kosovo from the north and occupied the Pristina airport, laying the groundwork for airborne reinforcements from Moscow – and red-faced embarrassment for General Clark, Madeleine Albright and then-President, William Jefferson Clinton.
Stunned and angered by the Muscovite maneuver, General Clark requested and received clearance from the Pentagon to prevent the Russians from solidifying their control of the Pristina airport. A mere 200 troops were nothing a handful of ragtag Russians could be easily overcome, but reinforcements from Moscow were totally unacceptable and could drastically change the Kosovo equation. Clark was prepared to prevent their arrival by any means necessary, even risking open war with Russia.
Supreme Allied Commander Clark swiftly developed a plan utilizing Apache helicopters and troops under the command of General Jackson to put paid to the Russian’s insolent interference in the Allied war. However, a minor problem occurred: General Sir Michael Jackson told General Clark to bugger off!
As revealed in Clark’s new book Waging Modern War, a heated exchange developed between the two NATO leaders. Meeting in Jackson’s headquarters, located in an abandoned shoe factory in Macedonia, Jackson flatly refused to obey Clark’s orders. His mission was twofold, said Jackson: peacekeeping and resettlement of Kosovarian refugees, not waging war against Russian troops.
According to General Clark, General Jackson was “angry and upset”, and the meeting was a “rapid-fire exchange and became too personal.”
More quotes:
Jackson: “Sir, I’m not taking any more orders from Washington,”
Clark: “Mike, these aren’t Washington’s orders, they’re coming from me.”
Jackson: “By whose authority?”
Clark: “By my authority as Supreme Allied Commander Europe.”
Jackson: “You don’t have that authority.”
Clark: “I do have that authority. I have the Secretary-General behind me on this.”
Jackson: “Sir, I’m not starting World War Three for you.”
Clark: “Mike, I’m not asking you to start World War Three. I’m asking you to block the runways so that we don’t have to face an issue that could produce a crisis.”
Jackson: “Sir, I’m a three-star general, you can’t give me orders like this.”
Clark: “Mike, I’m a four-star general, and I can tell you these things.”
Stung by Jackson’s mutiny, General Clark telephoned General Sir Charles Guthrie, Britain’s Chief of Defense, who seconded his subordinates refusal to risk war with the Russian bear. Up the diplomatic ladder it went, eventually “resolved” by what was essentially a slap to Clark’s already embarrassed face; British and French troops were put on so-called “high alert.” No Apache helicopters or Allied troops were deployed for a possibly disastrous confrontation with the Russians and Moscow now had a seat at the high stakes Serbian poker game.
And so it goes.
According to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the United States has an “inescapable responsibility to build a peaceful world and to terminate the abominable injustices and conditions that still plague civilization.”
To accomplish this, the corrupt Clinton regime launched a brutal 78 day bombing campaign followed by the subsequent occupation of Kosovo; pitting mighty NATO against tiny Serbia, a country that posed no threat whatsoever to the supposedly defensive alliance formed to protect Europe from Russian tanks.
Unknown to us at the time, the commander of NATO was willing to launch an attack that could bring about the very conflict that his organization was founded to prevent: Armed conflict between East and West.
Quoting Sir Roger L’Estrange’s translation of Aesop’s fable, A Wolf and a Fox:
‘Tis with Sharpers as ‘tis with Pikes, they prey upon their own kind; and ‘tis a pleasant Scene enough, when Thieves fall out among themselves, to see the cutting of one Diamond with another.”
Pleasant scene? When carried out on a global scale, it’s anything but. We were fortunate that in this particular falling out General Sir Michael Jackson had intestinal fortitude enough to tell Wesley Clark to go to hell; our luck continued to hold when Jackson’s superiors backed him up.
But as any gambler can tell you, good luck eventually runs out.
May 28, 2001
www.elkins.org
October 23, 2005
Posted in Strategy at 17:25 by Graham King
Political violence, terrorism, military operations other than war (MOOTW), low-intensity conflict, people’s war, revolutionary warfare, war of national liberation, guerrilla war, partisan war, warfare in the enemy’s rear, imperial policing or small wars. Whatever it is called, the principal difference between irregular and conventional war is that the latter involves adversaries more or less symmetric in equipment, training and doctrine. In an irregular war, the adversaries are asymmetric in capabilities and the weaker side, usually a sub-state group, attempts to bring about political change by organizing and fighting more effectively than its stronger adversary.
Terrorism is sometimes distinguished from irregular warfare in that irregular warfare is an attempt to bring about political change by force of arms. Terrorism does not result in political change on its own, but is undertaken to provoke a response. Terrorism differs from other forms of violence in that the acts committed are coloured by their political nature. Hijacking, remote bombing and assassination are criminal acts in a civil society, but when conducted in the name of a political cause which generates domestic or international sympathy their legal status generates more debate.
Irregular warfare is characterized by the mobilization of a significant proportion or the population to support the insurgent movement. Coups, by contrast, are not a form or irregular warfare because they are revolutions conducted by a small elite against the government.
Subverting the system
In the words of Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1937, better known as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’): Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain. An irregular warfare campaign achieves success by gaining an advantage over its adversaries in the four dimensions of time, space, legitimacy, and support.
Time is the most important element required for the successful conclusion of an insurgent or terrorist campaign. In almost every successful case, campaigns are measured in decades not years. The Tamil Tiger of Eelam have been fighting for political autonomy within Sri Lanka for over 28 years. The Cuban revolution (1957-9) is notable for how fast it achieved success; few states however are as corrupt, inept, and fragile as the Batista regime was in the late 1950s.
Endless struggle without an obvious victory eventually leads to the exhaustion, collapse or withdrawal of the enemy. Time is required for an insurgent force to demonstrate its legitimacy to the local population, which builds internal and external support. Wider popular support allows the insurgents to raise a superior army.
Space allows irregulars to decide where and when to fight. Defenders against sedition cannot be everywhere at once without spreading their forces too thinly and inviting attack from locally superior guerilla forces. An advantage in space (particularly the presence of difficult terrain) will provide insurgents with safe areas and bases from which to consolidate and expand their efforts.
Insurgents can use terrain which favors the lightly armed and mobile against the heavy, slow moving and often road-bound government forces. The Afghan Mujahaddin guerrillas used mountainous terrain against Soviet forces (and are presumably doing the same against American forces at the time I write this). The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces used jungle and swamp areas to shelter them from US and South Vietnamese overwhelming firepower. Chechen guerrillas used buildings and narrow roads in Grozny against Russian forces.
Support: Few insurgent or terrorist campaigns succeed without some form of support. There is only so much equipment they can manufacture or capture. They must look after their casualties and replenish their supplies. They must constantly update their intelligence on the whereabouts and activities of government forces. They have to train new recruits. Support can come from domestic (internal) and international (external) sympathizers.
Internal support is essential to the survival of an uprising. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (1928-1967) failed to ferment revolt in Bolivia (a struggle in which led him to his death) mainly because the local communist party was hostile to outside interference and the peasants were indifferent to his message. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) described the guerilla as the ‘fish’ that swam in the ‘sea’ of popular support. Without the sea the fish will die.
External support can be material, in the form of money, weapons, training or cross-border sanctuaries. External support can also be moral, in the form of political recognition and lobbying. States usually harbor or support terrorist groups for reasons of political expediency and to suit policy goals, as opposed to genuine sympathy for the cause espoused by the insurgents. External states will support insurgents if they seem them as fighting a proxy war on their behalf; the United States and the Soviet Union fought each other in Afghanistan and Vietnam with one side supporting a proxy. Supporting irregulars allows two powerful states to wage a limited war for limited purposes without the risk of nuclear war or conventional escalation.
Legitimacy: The moral superiority of the guerrillas is a cornerstone of all irregular and terrorist theory. Insurgents derive supports from the people and they often cultivate their relationship with them. Mao outlined a ‘code of conduct’ for the guerrillas. Che Guevara insisted that the peasants understand that the guerrillas were as much social reformers as they were protectors of the people.
Peasants who co-operate with insurgents often face harsh retaliation from the government, but this often drives people into the arms of the insurgents by legitimizing their cause. Government brutality also allows insurgents to act as the avengers of the people. Insurgents themselves often behave like government troops towards elements of the local population displaying an unwillingness to help; Mao remarked that acts of terror may be necessary to convince the population of the occupational hazards of working for the government and to show that the government no longer protects them.
The most powerful method of legitimizing a struggle is to link military operations with a justifiable political end. Causes vary but self-determination has been the most pervasive and successful. The UN Charter and the UN High Commission for Human Rights both affirm peoples right of self-determination, which made it difficult for nations such as Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal to retain possession of their overseas colonies in the face of native insurgents claiming the right to self-governance.
Protecting the system
The three dimensions of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism are location, isolation and eradication.
Location: The most important part of any counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism campaign is recognizing that the threat exists. The earlier the government detects and reacts to an insurgency the greater its chance of success. The problem is distinguishing between lawful and unlawful forms of discontent, and reacting at exactly the right time. Restricting guaranteed rights and freedoms every time a bomb is detonated will undermine the legitimacy of the government. Waiting too long to uphold the rule of law, however, will give the insurgents or terrorists the time to build a robust organizational infrastructure that will be much harder to defeat.
Upholding the rule of law is crucial if states are to preserve the legitimacy of their cause and maintain the moral high ground over insurgents or terrorists. Methods to gather intelligence and counter terrorism must be as unobtrusive as possible.
Once an irregular threat has been identified various civil and military agencies must localize the it while co-ordinating their efforts. The must identify safe houses, group members, and sources of supply. This can be a daunting task given the small size, stealth and secrecy of subversive organizations.
Isolation: Once identified insurgents and terrorists must be isolated from their bases of support. They must be isolated physically from internal support by either moving local population into easier to defend areas (‘strategic hamlets’ in the Vietnam conflict), or more usually by curfews, prohibited areas, aggressive patrolling and ‘cordon and search’ operations. These measure seek to limit the mobility and range of the insurgents. They must also be isolated from their external sources of supply by a combination of diplomatic pressure and military measures (wire barriers, guard houses and patrols were used in the Algeria 1954-62 conflict).
Equally important as physical isolation, the most powerful asset of the insurgents, their political message, must be defused. Widely held grievances that foster a potent source of recruitment and support must be mitigated by the government. The onus if on representatives of the state to prove that they are morally superior to the guerrillas and terrorists and will provide for the needs of their citizens, including responding to the sources of disgruntlement that led to armed insurrection in the first place. The local population’s ‘hearts and minds’ must be won and citizens convinced that the state’s fight is their fight.
Eradication: Eradication involves the physical destruction of the insurgents or terrorists. The priority here is destroying the insurgents safe havens. The necessary ratio of government forces to irregulars is often cited as 10:1, with particular emphasis on the use of specialized units such as special forces units (which are the closest military unit to an insurgent force, a role in which they often operate behind enemy lines).
Passive ways to eradicate insurgents include promises of amnesty (the South Vietnam ‘Open Arms’ program), cash incentives for weapons and information, and engaging and supporting the moderate factions of the insurgency in an attempt to convince them to start talking and stop fighting.
Strong political will on the part of a government is require to defeat an insurgency. It is a gradual process of attrition that takes a significant investment in time and resources. If the underlying causes of discontent are not also resolved the struggle often resurfaces later in a different form.
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