Swarming and the Future of Conflict

Swarming is a seemingly amorphous, but deliberately structured, coordinated, strategic way to perform military strikes from all directions. It employs a sustainable pulsing of force and/or fire that is directed from both close-in and stand-off positions. It will work best--perhaps it will only work--if it is designed mainly around the deployment of myriad, small, dispersed, networked maneuver units. This calls for an organizational redesign--involving the creation of platoon-like "pods" joined in company-like "clusters"--that would keep but retool the most basic military unit structures. It is similar to the corporate redesign principle of "flattening," which often removes or redesigns middle layers of management. This has proven successful in the ongoing revolution in business affairs and may prove equally useful in the military realm. From command and control of line units to logistics, profound shifts will have to occur to nurture this new "way of war." This study examines the benefits--and also the costs and risks--of engaging in such serious doctrinal change. The emergence of a military doctrine based on swarming pods and clusters requires that defense policymakers develop new approaches to connectivity and control and achieve a new balance between the two. Far more than traditional approaches to battle, swarming clearly depends upon robust information flows. Securing these flows, therefore, can be seen as a necessary condition for successful swarming.John Arquilla is the author of 'Swarming and the Future of Conflict', published 2000 under ISBN 9780833028853 and ISBN 0833028855.