Author: Cody Zoschak

Summer Essay Campaign #11: “Know Your Enemy”

To Answer Question #1: “What is the difference between a terrorist and an insurgent?”

By Cody Zoschak

In modern warfare, a commander must know much more than the strength and armament of his enemy. Units often must suppress an insurgency, dismantle terrorist cells, or defeat a hybrid group with state-like capabilities within the same battlespace. The basic skills of fire and maneuver are still the core competencies of the soldiers fighting the battle, but the commanders of these units must also develop an understanding of the enemy to best utilize the skills of the warfighter.

            Ideally every commander would deploy with full knowledge of all enemy groups operating in or near his battlespace, but even under the best conditions this is essentially impossible. In the absence of this information, broad approximations of the enemy must be made too allow for strategic planning. In the past decade-plus of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military units have become highly proficient at killing HVTs, but they are often ineffective in actually destroying the enemy organization.

Understanding the Enemy:

            What needs to be developed is knowledge of the different types of enemies on the battlefield. If the commander understands the enemy, they can develop a strategic approach to defeating the enemy. Kill/capture missions are not strategy, nor are vehicle checkpoints. These are tactical operations, and must be part of a larger approach to defeating the enemy. To inform this approach, the commander must understand the enemy’s center of gravity and the resources (whether physical, abstract, human or terrain-based) on which he relies. While innumerable variations of each type can emerge, there are three broad categories of enemy type: irregular, insurgent, and state-like. These categories are established using composition-based definitions rather than tactical definitions, and while minor adjustments must be made for the specific groups, each category dictates a basic strategy for the commander to prosecute. These terms were chosen carefully in order to generically describe the enemy type, without categorically excluding any relevant groups. For example, cellular groups are often described as terrorist groups, yet this is a tactically determined moniker. The characteristics and composition of a group are the keys to defeating it, not the methods by which they carry out their attacks. Furthermore, the term hybrid is often thrown around, often simply as a buzzword. In this model, the phrase “state-like” is used. The purpose of this is twofold: it more accurately describes the organization, and serves to encompass actual state actors in the enemy type.