Second Generation Warfare was based on massed firepower. Tactics relied on fire and movement, with heavy reliance on indirect fire from artillery. It was different, but still essentially linear.

Third Generation Warfare was based on maneuver and real time communications. It was best exemplified by World War II's "Blitzkrieg". The attack relied on infiltration to bypass, cut off and collapse the enemy's main combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them.

Fourth Generation Warfare is based on dispersion and communications that remove the battle front entirely. Attackers rely on cultural/media attack and coordinated violent actions to and paralyze or collapse the enemy's political will, rather than seeking decisive combat.

A 1989 Marine Corps Gazette article describes each generation and the shifts involved in more detail. For the best overall collection I've yet seen on the subject, D-N-I.NET has an excellent definition, introduction and archive.

A Strange Kind of War

The authors of one of the first papers on this subject captured some of 4GW's strangeness when they predicted:

"The distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction between 'civilian' and 'military' may disappear."

Al-Qaeda is an obvious example.

FARC in Colombia is another: a social infrastructure, an economic network based on drugs, and a terrorist organization all in one. FARC and its ilk have effectively carved out an unrecognized "Narcoland" quasi-state crossing several borders, with revenues and armed forces larger than many of the surrounding governments. The challenge of their activities reaches directly into societies like the USA and UK (via FARC's close IRA connections as well as its drugs) as well as Colombia and Venezuela.

Dealing with them is not a military problem of the same type as, say, disposing of Iraq's Saddam Hussein - and future 4GW scenarios could be stranger still.

Getting Our Attention

Nasty problems, granted, but hardly life-threatening. So why are we paying so much attention?

The obvious answer is 9/11. Those events also woke people up to an uncomfortable realization: if there are truly no limits to the scale of 4GW actions, and nuclear, biological, or (most likely) chemical weapons are getting easier to build or obtain... then the future's logic is very clear. This totally changes the stakes. As George W. Bush noted the other day in his West Point speech:

"Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies."

That certainly ups the stakes.

Principles and Components of 4GW

The core feature of 4th Generation Warfare is that it's really about people, more a battle of minds than of steel. The USA has become a technology power, and its ability to use new technologies as part of the 4GW modernization process will be fascinating. Still, don't be fooled into thinking that it's all about technology.

Indeed, the fundamental principle and touchstone of 4GW conflict is Colonel John Boyd's very human Observe-Orient-Act-Decide loop, or OODA loop. Getting inside your enemy's loop is pivotal in any contest of war or even business, but the nature of 4th Generation Warfare raises the improtance on the enemy's decision loop even as it multiplies both the number of related targets and the possible strategies for attacking them.

These concepts are present in 3rd Generation Warfare as well, just as some elements of maeuver were present in 2nd Generation Warfare. Future generations of warfare simply find that one can achieve similar ends by using new capabilities to create a substitute for the old standard (firepower for manpower, maneuver for massed firepower, dispersed but precise and coordinated attacks with no battlefront as unlimited maneuver, etc.), which shifts the central principles for success and therefore the tactics, strategies, and resources required.

For those new to 4GW, I concur with D-N-I and recommend "The Evolution of War: The Fourth Generation," by LtCol Thomas X. Hammes, USMC. LtCol Hammes observes that "generations" of warfare are not defined primarily by the technology employed since, each "generation" can use any available technology. Rather, generations of warfare are better categorized by political, social, and economic factors. Case studies provide further illustration.

Tomorrow, Winds of Change will discuss one more unsettling thing about 4GW: it can be used deliberately with the aim of triggering more conventinal wars between nation states. Indeed, the situation in Kashmir combines stateless, transnational actors, weapons of mass destruction, and "war trigger judo" all in one nasty witch's brew. Understanding 4GW will help you understand Al-Qaeda's strategy, and therefore the potential future of the Indian subcontinent.

UPDATE: Welcome, Tech Central Station readers!

(last modifications made Aug 21, 2004)