Category: Strategy

The United States Armed Forces use the following nine principles of war in training their officers:

* Objective – Direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective. The ultimate military purpose of war is the destruction of the enemy’s ability to fight and will to fight.

* Offensive – Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. Offensive action is the most effective and decisive way to attain a clearly defined common objective. Offensive operations are the means by which a military force seizes and holds the initiative while maintaining freedom of action and achieving decisive results. This is fundamentally true across all levels of war.

* Mass – Mass the effects of overwhelming combat power at the decisive place and time. Synchronizing all the elements of combat power where they will have decisive effect on an enemy force in a short period of time is to achieve mass. Massing effects, rather than concentrating forces, can enable numerically inferior forces to achieve decisive results, while limiting exposure to enemy fire.

* Economy of Force – Employ all combat power available in the most effective way possible; allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts. Economy of force is the judicious employment and distribution of forces. No part of the force should ever be left without purpose. The allocation of available combat power to such tasks as limited attacks, defense, delays, deception, or even retrograde operations is measured in order to achieve mass elsewhere at the decisive point and time on the battlefield.

* Maneuver – Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power. Maneuver is the movement of forces in relation to the enemy to gain positional advantage. Effective maneuver keeps the enemy off balance and protects the force. It is used to exploit successes, to preserve freedom of action, and to reduce vulnerability. It continually poses new problems for the enemy by rendering his actions ineffective, eventually leading to defeat.

* Unity of Command – For every objective, seek unity of command and unity of effort. At all levels of war, employment of military forces in a manner that masses combat power toward a common objective requires unity of command and unity of effort. Unity of command means that all the forces are under one responsible commander. It requires a single commander with the requisite authority to direct all forces in pursuit of a unified purpose.

* Security – Never permit the enemy to acquire unexpected advantage. Security enhances freedom of action by reducing vulnerability to hostile acts, influence, or surprise. Security results from the measures taken by a commander to protect his forces. Knowledge and understanding of enemy strategy, tactics, doctrine, and staff planning improve the detailed planning of adequate security measures.

* Surprise – Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared. Surprise can decisively shift the balance of combat power. By seeking surprise, forces can achieve success well out of proportion to the effort expended. Surprise can be in tempo, size of force, direction or location of main effort, and timing. Deception can aid the probability of achieving surprise. …

* Simple – Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and concise orders to ensure thorough understanding. Everything in war is very simple, but the simple thing is difficult. To the uninitiated, military operations are not difficult. Simplicity contributes to successful operations. Simple plans and clear, concise orders minimize misunderstanding and confusion. Other factors being equal, parsimony is to be preferred.

Officers in the U.S. Military sometimes use the acronyms “MOSS COMES”, “MOSS MOUSE”, “MOOSE MUSS”, “MOUSE MOSS”, “MOM USE SOS”, or “SUMO MOSES” to remember the first letters of these nine principles.

(US Army Field Manual FM 3-0)

A defense readiness condition (DEFCON) is an alert posture used by the United States armed forces. The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and unified and specified combatant commands. It prescribes five graduated levels of readiness (or states of alert) for the U.S. military, and increase in severity from DEFCON 5 (least severe) to DEFCON 1 (most severe) to match varying military situations.

DEFCONs are a subsystem of a series of Alert Conditions, or LERTCONs, that also includes Emergency Conditions (EMERGCONs). DEFCONs should not be confused with similar systems used by the U.S. military, such as Force Protection Conditions (FPCONS) and Watch Conditions (WATCHCONS), or the Homeland Security Advisory System used by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

The preparations that take place under the five DEFCONs are difficult to describe because they vary between many commands, they have changed over time as new weapon systems were deployed, and the precise details remain classified. Additionally, during tests, exercises, or drills, the United States Department of Defense uses exercise terms when referring to the DEFCONs. This is to preclude the possibility of confusing exercise commands with actual operational commands. The current exercise terms have been used since at least 1960, when they were used in a North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) exercise.

The five DEFCONs, their exercise terms, and their general descriptions are shown below.

Defense condition Exercise term Description Readiness

DEFCON 5 FADE OUT Lowest state of readiness Normal readiness

DEFCON 4 DOUBLE TAKE Increased intelligence watch and strengthened security measures

DEFCON 3 ROUND HOUSE Increase in force readiness above that required for normal readiness

DEFCON 2 FAST PACE Further increase in force readiness, but less than maximum readiness

DEFCON 1 COCKED PISTOL War is imminent. Maximum readiness

The OODA loop (for observe, orient, decide, and act) is a concept originally applied to the combat operations process, often at the strategic level in both the military operations. It is now also often applied to understand commercial operations and learning processes. The concept was developed by military strategist and USAF Colonel John Boyd.

Here’s a funny TED video by Richard St. John on the 8 drivers of
success in life. Remember CRAP – criticism, rejection, assholes and
pressure.

http://www.ted.com/
http://www.richardstjohn.com/

“Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”
~ Sun Tzu

A “Black Operation” or “Black Op” is a covert operation typically involving activities that are highly secret due to questionable ethics and legality. The term itself is often used in political, military, intelligence and business circles. Agents or persons who specialise or are involved in a black operation are typically referred to as a “Black Operator” or “Black Operative.”

Black Ops missions often fall into the deniability category, where no government will claim responsibility for the action, or where responsibility is shifted to another actor in the case of a “false flag” operation.

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own.

Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is of ultimate importance, the most important pursuit. The name derives from the Greek word for “delight”

The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that is good for a person. This is often used as a justification for evaluating actions in terms of how much pleasure and how little pain (i.e. suffering) they produce. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximise this total pleasure (pleasure minus pain).

John Stuart Mill believed that there can be different levels of pleasure – higher quality pleasure is better than lower quality pleasure. Mill also argues that simpler beings (he often references pigs) have an easier access to the simpler pleasures; since they do not see other aspects of life, they can simply indulge in their pleasures. The more elaborate beings tend to spend more thought on other matters and hence lessen the time for simple pleasure. It is therefore more difficult for them to indulge in such “simple pleasures” in the same manner.

Ayn Rand, one of the biggest modern proponents of Egoism, rejected hedonism in a literal sense as a comprehensive ethical system:

To take “whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one’s emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition. . . . This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism–in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. “Happiness” can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness. To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that “the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure” is to declare that “the proper value is whatever you happen to value”–which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.