Jim Storr - The Human Face of War

THE HUMAN FACE OF WAR

OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Militarised Landscapes

British Army in Battle and Its Image 191418

Red Coat, Green Machine

Jim Storr has a portfolio career in the defence sector. His expertise lies in the linkage of military concepts, doctrine, history, technology and human behaviour. His main areas of work are consultancy, teaching, writing and research. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences.

Dr Storr was an army officer for 25 years. He served in Britain, Germany, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Canada. He wrote the British Armys current high-level tactical doctrine, and its analyses of warfighting operations in Iraq in 2003 and in Northern Ireland since 1969.

He holds a PhD, a masters degree in defence technology, and a first degree in civil engineering. He is a visiting fellow of Cranfield and Birmingham Universities.

Series Editor: Gary Sheffield, Professor of War Studies, University of Birmingham.

Series Associate Editor: Dan Todman, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary, University of London.

Jim Storr

BIRMINGHAM WAR STUDIES SERIES
Series edited by Professor Gary Sheffield
and Dr Don Todman

Contents

Figures

To
Private Thomas Atkins
No 6 Troop, 6th Dragoons
and others like him

This is a book about warfare; the conduct of war. It is neither a comfortable subject nor a comfortable read. Its author continually challenges some of the assumptions which surrounded him for almost 25 years of soldiering. He is remorseless in his slaughter of loose thought, unsubstantiated argument and ill-defined belief, and suggests that part of the doctrine with which he was closely involved in the latter stages of his career is characterized by lack of intellectual rigour and sloppy use of English. For instance, he says of the Boyd Cycle the process of ObservationOrientationDecisionAction sometimes called the OODA loop that to generalize about formation-level C2 from aircraft design is tenuous, to say the least. He warns us that we should expect more from military thought than a jumble of poorly described phenomena shot though by apparent paradox, and stresses that, whatever the virtues of classical theorists like Carl von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu, we need to understand them better if we can hope to assess their contemporary relevance. In which other discipline so vital to mans existence, he wonders, would we grant almost divine reverence to one long-dead German? His clear thought was much admired by his colleagues, though his determination to apply the humane killer to the occasional sacred cow led to one senior officer to describe him as about as popular as an Old Testament prophet.

One of the authors many strengths is his ability to place warfare in a wider intellectual context, with frequent references to engineering, medicine and General Systems Theory. His experience urges him to strike practical warnings: so it may be true, he tells us, and it might appear simple. That does not make it easy. Many of the truths he identifies are indeed fundamental. He reminds us that we should attack the enemys will with speed and surprise, but points out that, paradoxically, the process of making decisions and issuing orders from large and complex modern headquarters has actually slowed their pace of activity. Plans which are inherently successive rather than simultaneous, tend, even when they succeed, to be slower and more costly for the victor than schemes which generate genuinely simultaneous activity. He emphasizes the importance of the prompt focusing of combat power, and points to the close relationship between military structures and their ability to generate this power on the battlefield. Tactical decisions must be made quickly, and need to be about right: good-ish decisions made speedily tend to beat perfect decisions made late.

Jim Storr agrees with Sir Michael Howard that doctrine is often a poor guide to the opening clashes of major conflicts: what counts is the ability to transform it in a timely and effective manner. The British Army has a patchy track-record in its selection of senior commanders at the beginning of big wars, and thus finds itself needing to change both doctrine and its leadership at a time of urgent crisis. I yield to no one in my admiration for the army, but share the authors suspicion that its culture may not yet have evolved to the point where his concerns about the performance of its leaders in conflict are simply a matter of benevolent historical reflection.