The Rise and Fall of Fourth Generation Warfare

In 1989, a group of military theorists (including the famed William Lind) penned an article for the Marine Corps Gazette titled The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation. Over the next 30 years, this “Fourth Generation” would shape American and NATO’s entire philosophy toward warfare. There was just one problem, it was disastrously wrong.

Though 4GW’s buzzwords never quite became mainstream (I doubt a typical American Army soldier, or even a lieutenant, could tell you what 4GW is or who William Lind is). However, the American military and all of its appendages and allies, to include the NATO bloc, have adapted 4GW lock, stock and barrel.

4GW’s real world application, like any other battlefield doctrine, is about “us and them.” It’s a threat that we have to build an effective defense against, but also a weapon we can use ourselves against enemies. We failed on both counts. All of our wars against “4GW” enemies have failed to meet previously stated expectations (like Iraq) or ended in humiliating, costly failure (like Afghanistan).

Worse still, our attempts to use 4GW against perceived enemies have ended in failure too. Our proxy armies, namely ISIS and Ukraine, were built on the 4GW model, and have so far entirely failed to destroy the nation states they were aimed against. Think about how frustrating this must be for the Pentagon.

In this post I will summarize what 4GW is, how NATO implemented 4GW, and explanations for why it so disastrously failed.

William Lind’s Initial Theory

Lind and his cohorts categorized the history of modern (western) warfare into three generations.

First Generation War (17^th-19^th Century): wars fought by concentrations of manpower. Armies fight in massed lines and columns to maximize the destructive effect of inaccurate and slow-firing smoothbore muskets. Drills evolve to  turn lightly trained conscripts into effective formations of soldiers who can deliver and receive punishment without breaking.

Second Generation War (World War I): Armies have grown larger to the point that the battle line is no longer confined to a single field, or even the same locality. In the “race to the sea,” competing armies continually stretched to outflank each other until a front stretched from one end of the continent to the other. After it was no longer possible to outflank each other, WWI battles became defined by concentrations of firepower.

Third Generation War (World War II): In 1918, the Germans faced ruin and defeat at the hands of a numerically and economically superior enemy, and struggled to invent a gamechanger. That gamechanger was Blitzkrieg, which saw its first application in their 1918 Spring offensive. Using stormtrooper infiltration and maneuver tactics, German forces shattered allied lines and plunged deep into enemy territory. However, they eventually outran their own supply lines and exhausted their soldiers and animals, and the offensive collapsed. Fast forward to World War II. Now armed with superior mechanization and logistics, German blitzkriegs became realistically feasible, and brought Hitler astonishing successes, at first.

From these observations, Lind made a hypothesis. War is a combination of people, technology, and ideas (doctrine and ideology). As these three factors evolve over time, wars become more dispersed and decentralized.

Take, for example a single kilometer stretch of field. In the 17^th Century a whole Spanish tercio could fill that space, a solid mass of 5,000 soldiers, mostly pikemen with a “sleeve” of arquebusiers. These early firearms were still inadequate to stand on their own and required pikes to protect them, and the pikes relied on deep formations of men to be effective.  

By the 17^th Century, the pikes were gone, and with them the need for deep formations. Now a single battalion of 700-1,200 men could fill the space the tercio once had, which makes sense for a unit in which only the first three or four ranks can fire and everyone else is just a target. By WWI, that field would be dug up into a trench and manned by a single company of 100 men. In the 20^th Century there would be so many other weapons that could be pointed at that field, the individual rifle would matter a lot less, so in a modern battle you might see as few men as a platoon or even a squad defending the ground that those 5,000 swashbucklers once stood on.

All fine and good, so Lind made a prediction about what the fourth generation of war would look like. A fourth generation of four general features. From the article:

Earlier generational shifts, especially the shift from the second to the third generation, were marked by growing emphasis on several central ideas. Four of these seem likely to carry over into the fourth generation, and indeed to expand their influence.

The first is mission orders. Each generational change has been marked by greater dispersion on the battlefield. The fourth generation battlefield is likely to include the whole of the enemy’s society. Such dispersion, coupled with what seems likely to be increased importance for actions by very small groups of combatants, will require even the lowest level to operate flexibly on the basis of the commander’s intent.

Second is decreasing dependence on centralized logistics. Dispersion, coupled with increased value placed on tempo, will require a high degree of ability to live off the land and the enemy.

Third is more emphasis on maneuver. Mass, of men or fire power, will no longer be an overwhelming factor. In fact, mass may become a disadvantage as it will be easy to target. Small, highly maneuverable, agile forces will tend to dominate.

Fourth is a goal of collapsing the enemy internally rather than physically destroying him. Targets will include such things as the population’s support for the war and the enemy’s culture. Correct identification of enemy strategic centers of gravity will be highly important.

In broad terms, fourth generation warfare seems likely to be widely dispersed and largely undefined; 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. Actions will occur concurrently throughout all participants’ depth, including their society as a cultural, not just a physical, entity. Major military facilities, such as airfields, fixed communications sites, and large headquarters will become rarities because of their vulnerability; the same may be true of civilian equivalents, such as seats of government, power plants, and industrial sites (including knowledge as well as manufacturing industries). Success will depend heavily on effectiveness in joint operations as lines between responsibility and mission become very blurred. Again, all these elements are present in third generation warfare; fourth generation will merely accentuate them.

Over the following years hypothesis became theory. In 1991, Prof. Martin van Creveld published his book Transformation of War which presented a coherent model of history that the 4GW community quickly picked up and ran with.

Here’s the narrative of history in a nutshell. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War, dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, and (sort of) gave European nation states a monopoly on waging war. Over the centuries, these nation states consolidated their power and strengthened the monopoly on war. A major factor in this development was that war simply became too expensive a project for anyone besides a nation state. No one else, not even the Pope, could afford to raise an army anywhere close to a match to what a monarch could put on the field.

After the sheer enormous human cost and destruction of WWI, European nation states began to weaken and lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The “appeasement of Hitler” and France’s failure to stand up to the German invasion of 1940 are commonly cited proofs of this decline.

As summarized by retired US Marine Crops Lt. Col. John Sayen:

Although even in 1989 its originators believed that profound changes in how wars were fought were taking place it was only with the 1991 publication of Martin van Creveld’s Transformation of War that 4GW began to take on a concrete form. Van Creveld pointed out that the nation states that ruled Europe since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and later came to rule most of the world are in decline. The nation state was a corporate entity established to give its subjects stability and protection from attack. In return the subjects gave the state loyalty (and taxes). Wars not waged by states lost their legitimacy and non-state entities that waged them were treated as criminals. This system began to decline after the world wars and this decline greatly accelerated after the end of the Cold War removed most of the threats to nation states from other nation states. The world wars had exacted a price in blood and treasure that many began to believe too high for the stability and security that states could provide. The advent of the atomic bomb initiated a form of attack that no state or state-sponsored conventional military could defend against.

Before 1648 the nation was not the sole legitimate war-making entity. Tribes, clans, families, cities, trade associations, religious organizations and mercenary bands waged war. The chaos this produced was profoundly felt in the Thirty Years War and the 1648 treaty that ended it sought to ensure future stability by setting forth principles for the emerging German states to abide by. The treaty’s key principles, which in essence gave states the sole right to wage lawful war, quickly spread throughout Europe and, through European colonization, the rest of the world. A state’s ability to amass far greater resources than any non-state entity made the latter an “endangered species” and most were soon crushed, though this process did not end in the so-called “Third World” until the late 19th Century.

Today, the pre-1648 status quo is re-emerging throughout the world. The breakdown of the nation state system is most obvious in the so-called “Third World” where the state system was never firmly established in the first place. However, the breakdown is beginning to spread to Europe and even North America as Third World immigrants move into these nations, do not assimilate and retain their connections to their former lives, loyalties and cultures. Some of these acquire no loyalty to the state they have moved to and, in Europe at least, are quite willing to fight against or undermine it.

Besides the presence of nuclear weapons, certain technical advances like cell phones and the Internet have made it easier for “armies” of non-state entities, small and lightly equipped though they be, to tie down much larger and better equipped state forces for extended periods of time. While these non-state forces have not yet been able to win conventional battles they can and do wear out the state sponsored armies and police forces that oppose them with sustained campaigns of raids, ambushes and sabotage that the state forces have been unable to stop. The non-staters’ very weakness increases their power by turning their struggle into a David and Goliath contest, and who roots for Goliath? Conventional militaries are fantastically expensive and few states can still afford to maintain them on any scale. Still less can they afford the costs of actually using them. Chechen rebels, for example, have capitalized on low morale in the cash-strapped Russian Army by buying modern anti-armor weapons from Russian soldiers. Former Iraqi soldiers who would not fight for Saddam Hussein are now taking on state sponsored opponents of theoretically overwhelming strength on behalf of the tribes, families and religion.

The fact that nearly all the wars that have been fought in the last 15 years or so have had states involved on no more than one side (frequently the losing side) changes everything. Big ticket items like warships or fighter jets become, if not altogether irrelevant, much less useful against the highly dispersed and decentralized opponents that have been characterizing 4GW conflicts, making it much harder to justify their cost. Armies geared for conventional combat tend to have difficulty with unconventional. The latter requires a completely new mindset. However, even if non-state entities acquired and used weapons like tanks or jet fighters (at least one drug gang actually did manage to acquire a submarine and Chechen militias even used a few tanks) they would still be engaging in 4GW because what really distinguishes 4GW from earlier generations is not the equipment or tactics but the identity and motivations of the people who fight it.

Or as I would summarize this theory: nation states are no longer able to inspire their people with sufficient will to fight in the face of new primal threats, and the danger is further compounded by the proliferation by modern weapons and networks. Even an irregular army with cell phones and obsolete firearms can inspire people to fight harder and better than even a well-equipped professional army fielded by a nation state.

A quote from Transformation of War:

 “Here we are concerned with a situation where the relationship between strength and weakness is skewed; in other words, where one belligerent is much stronger than the other. Under such circumstances the conduct of war can become problematic even as a matter of definition. Imagine a grown man who purposely kills a small child, even such a one as came at him knife in hand; such a man is almost certain to stand trial and be convicted, if not of murder than of some lesser crime. Not be accident is the word bellum itself said to come from due-lum, a combat of two… The very fact that fighting takes place almost always implies a degree of equality, real or perceived, between the forces available to both sides. Where no such equality exists war itself becomes ultimately impossible.

A war waged by the weak against the strong is dangerous by definition. Therefore, so long as the differential in forces is not such as to render the situation altogether hopeless, it presents few difficulties beyond the tactical question, namely how to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the enemy without exposing oneself in open fighting. By contrast, a war waged by the strong against the weak is problematic for that very reason. Given time, the fighting itself will cause the two sides to become more like each other, even to the point where opposites converge, merge, and change places. Weakness turns into strength, strength turns into weakness. The principal reason behind the phenomenon is that war represents perhaps the most imitative activity known to man. The whole secret of victory consists of trying to understand the enemy in order to outwit him. A mutual learning process ensues. Even as the struggle proceeds, both sides adapt their tactical methods, the means that they employ, and—most important of all—their morale to fit the opponent. Doing so, sooner or later the point will come where they are no longer distinguishable.

A small, weak force confronting a large, strong one will need very high fighting spirit to make up for its deficiencies in other fields. Still, since survival itself counts as no mean feat, that fighting spirit will feed on every victory, however minor. Conversely, a strong force fighting a weak one for any length of time is almost certain to suffer from a drop in morale; the reason being that nothing is more futile than a series of victories endlessly repeated… Over the long run… fighting the weak demeans those who engage in it and, therefore, undermines its own purpose. He who loses out to the weak loses; he who triumphs over the weak also loses. In such an enterprise there can be neither profit nor honor…

Another very important reason why, over time, the strong and the weak will come to resemble each other even to the point of changing places is rooted in the different ethical circumstances under which they operate. Necessity known no bounds; hence, he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, unnecessary and, therefore, cruel…

A good war, like a good game, almost by definition is one fought against forces that are at least as strong as, or preferably stronger than, oneself. Troops who do not believe their cause to be good will end up by refusing to fight. Since fighting the weak is sordid by definition, over time the effect of such a struggle is to put the strong into an intolerable position. Constantly provoked, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Should they fail to respond to persistent provocation, their morale will probably break down, passive waiting being the most difficult game of all to play. Should they hit back, then the opponent’s very weakness means that they will descend into cruelty and, since most people are not cut out to be sadists for very long, end up by hating themselves…

Since the very act of fighting the weak invites excess, in fact, is excess, it obliges the strong to impose controls in the form of laws, regulations, and rules of engagement. The net effect of such regulations is to demoralize the troops who are prevented from operating freely and using their initiative. They are contrary to sound command practice if they are observed and subversive of discipline if they are not. Hence the truth of Clausewitz’s dictum, plainly observable in every low-intensity conflict fought since World War II, that regular troops combating a Volkskrieg [people’s war] are like robots to men.”

The hypothesis of 4GW was had seemingly come true with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the following escalation of violence around the world. But there’s one last hurdle that a credible theory needs to get across: correctly predicting the future. That last element seemed to fall into place with the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and the so-called War on Terror. From Sayen:

Now we, the West, find ourselves increasingly under siege, no longer the world’s master, merely one contender among many—one sinking down as others rise. Chinese culture, the West’s most successful competitor over time, may face us only with a peaceful challenge. China has never desired to rule over non-Han peoples, beyond a few border buffer states.

The most immediate challenger is Islam, and here the challenge is not likely to be peaceful. Islam is today expanding outward in every direction from its traditional heartland: south into black Africa, east into Southeast Asia and the Philippines, north into Europe. And also West: the fastest-growing religion in the United States is Islam.

Islam’s thrust northward into Europe, the heartland of Western culture, is worth a closer look. Islamic immigration into France has been so massive as to reverse the verdict of the battle of Tours; southern France now has more mosques than churches. North African immigrants are now pouring similarly into Spain. In the Balkans, Moslem aid, including weapons and fighters, is flowing into Bosnia. Islamic states realize, as we do not, that the Bosnian Moslems are strategically on the offensive, beginning a new Islamic thrust toward the Danube. Most disastrous for the West is the situation in the former Soviet Union. There, our entire flank from the Black Sea to Vladivostok is collapsing under Moslem (and further east, Chinese) pressure.

Mmm.

This did not age well.

Critique

In 2005 retired Lt. Col. Antulio J. Echevarria II wrote a rebuttal of 4GW that now seems near prophetic:

In an era of broad and perhaps profound change, new theories and concepts are to be welcomed rather than shunned. However, before they are fully embraced, they need to be tested rigorously, for the cost of implementing a false theory and developing operational and strategic concepts around it can be greater than remaining wedded to an older, but sounder one. The theory of Fourth Generation War (4GW) is a perfect example. Were we to embrace this theory, a loose collection of ideas that does not hold up to close scrutiny, the price we might pay in a future conflict could be high indeed [emphasis mine]…

Fourth Generation War (4GW) emerged in the late 1980s, but has become popular due to recent twists in the war in Iraq and terrorist attacks worldwide. Despite reinventing itself several times, the theory has several fundamental flaws that need to be exposed before they can cause harm to U.S. operational and strategic thinking…

Over the decade-and-a-half or so of the theory’s existence, 4GW has reinvented itself several times, taking advantage of the latest developments in technology or tactics, and whatever ideas or theories happened to be in vogue…

To be sure, the concept rightly takes issue with the networkcentric vision of future warfare for being too focused on technology and for overlooking the countermeasures an intelligent, adaptive enemy might employ.2 However, the model of 4GW has serious problems of its own: it is based on poor history and only obscures what other historians, theorists, and analysts already have worked long and hard to clarify…

In its earliest stages, 4GW amounted to an accumulation of speculative rhapsodies that blended a maneuver-theorist’s misunderstanding of the nature of terrorism with a futurist’s infatuation with “high technology.” The kind of terrorists that 4GW theorists described, for instance, behaved more like German storm troopers of 1918, or Robert Heinlein’s starship troopers of the distant future. Highly intelligent and capable of fighting individually or in small groups, these future terrorists would first seek to infiltrate a society and then attempt to collapse it from within by means of an ill-defined psychocultural “judo throw” of sorts.

Instead of this fanciful approach, what terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and (to a lesser extent) Al Qaeda actually have done is integrated themselves into the social and political fabric of Muslim societies worldwide. Hamas and Hezbollah, especially, have established themselves as organizations capable of addressing the everyday problems of their constituencies: setting up day cares, kindergartens, schools, medical clinics, youth and women’s centers, sports clubs, social welfare, programs for free meals, and health care.6 Each has also become a powerful political party within their respective governments. In other words, rather than collapsing from within the societies of which they are a part, Hamas and Hezbollah have turned their constituencies into effective weapons by creating strong social, political, and religious ties with them; in short, they have become communal activists for their constituencies, which have, in turn, facilitated the construction and maintenance of substantial financial and logistical networks and safe houses.7 This support then aids in the regeneration of the terrorist groups.

4GW theorists also failed to account for the fact that many 21st century wars, such as those that unfolded in Rwanda and the Sudan, would be characterized by wholesale butchery with “old-fashioned” weapons such as assault rifles and machetes wreaking a terrible toll in lives. Even in the socalled information age, the use of brute force remains an effective tactic in many parts of the world.

The theory’s proponents also speculated that the super-terrorists of the future might not have a “traditional” national base or identity, but rather a “non-national or transnational one, such as an ideology or a religion.”10 However, from an historical standpoint, this condition has been the norm rather than the exception. Indeed, it characterizes many, if not most, of the conventional conflicts of the past, such as World War II, which was fought along ideological lines and within a transnational framework of opposing global alliances, rather than a simple nation-state structure as is commonly supposed. While states were clearly advancing their own interests, they tended to do so by forming alliances along ideological lines…

To be sure, out-of-the-box thinking is to be applauded; militaries do not do enough of it, for a variety of reasons, some legitimate, some not. However, its value diminishes when that thinking hardens into a box of its own, and when its architects become enamored of it.

Building a 4GW army: a recipe

The US DOD and NATO never fully embraced 4GW buzzwords, instead using copyright-friendly euphemisms for the same thing like Counter Insurgency (COIN), but has swallowed the whole concept and incorporated it into every single theater of operations.

Here’s how the vision goes. An elite force like Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers or Falkenberg’s Legion, superb light infantry that is the 4GW theorist’s wet dream. A completely decentralized command structure with “strategic corporals” armed with super weapons (switchblade drones, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, etc). This army could presumably use high-precision weapons to devastate high priority targets (like generals and communication hubs) until the enemy occupation army collapses.

In fact, that’s exactly what we have fighting for the empire in Ukraine right now. From pro-NATO “expert” Tom Cooper:

Contrary to the impression created in the US media in particular, in actual life they are ‘far away and issuing orders’, but what then happens on the battlefield is an entirely different pair of shoes. Even more so in such a heavily — indeed: ‘fiercely’ — de-centralised military system like that in Ukraine. This is de-centralised to the level where not even officers, but what is called ‘non-commissioned officers’ (NCOs; see: corporals and sergeants) are making decisions. What a surprise then, especially US-volunteers in Ukraine are complaining, ‘nobody is in control’ — while reckless characters like Putin, Dvornikov etc. can’t defeat that army, no matter with what cynical disregard and how mercilessly are they pushing their own.

Reassessing 4GW

In January, one of 4GW’s chief architects, Martin van Creveld, predicted a full-scale “invasion” of Ukraine, which I was dismissive of at the time. He was right, well, sort of. He stated that Ukraine would wage a devastating guerrilla campaign (those Starship Troopers again). Now, he has actually reassessed the situation, and is leaning more toward a Russian victory. From his blog:

Like almost all other Westerners, at the time the Russian-Ukrainian War broke out in February 2022 I was convinced that the Russians would fail to reach their objectives and lose the war. Putting the details aside, this prediction was based on the following main three pillars.

First, the numerous failures, after 1945, of modern, state-run armed forces to cope with uprisings, insurgencies, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, asymmetrical warfare, and any number of similar forms of armed conflict. Think of Malaysia—yes, Malaysia, so often falsely claimed by the British as a victory. Think of Algeria, think of Vietnam, think of Iraq, think of dozens of similar conflicts throughout Asia and Africa. Almost without exception, it was the occupiers who lost and the occupied who won.

Second, the size of Ukraine’s territory and population made me and others think that Russia had tried to bite off more than it could swallow. The outcome would be a prolonged, very bloody and very destructive, conflict that would be decided not so much on the battlefield but by demoralization both among Russia’s troops and among its civilian population. As, indeed, happened in 1981-1988 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, only to get involved in a lengthy counter-insurgency campaign that ended not just in military defeat on the ground but in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This line of reasoning was supported by the extreme difficulty the Russians faced before they finally succeeded in bringing Chechnya, a much smaller country, to heel.

Third, plain wishful thinking—something I shared with most Western observers. Including heads of state, ministers, armed forces, intelligence services, and the media.

Since then four very eventful months have passed. As they went on, the following factors have forced me to take another look at the situation.

First, the Ukrainians are not fighting a guerrilla war. Instead, as the list of weapons they have asked the West to provide them with shows, they have been trying to wage a conventional one: tank against tank, artillery barrel against artillery barrel, and aircraft against aircraft. All, apparently, in the hope of not only halting the Russian forces but of expelling them. Given that the Russians can fire ten rounds for every Ukrainian one, such a strategy can only be a sure recipe for defeat…

One of the points Creveld raises specifically is the economic one:

Western military technology, especially anti-aircraft weapons, anti-tank weapons, and drones may be excellent. However, limited numbers, the result of years and years of parsimony and the belief that war in Europe had become impossible, plus the need to retrain the relevant Ukrainian personnel, means that it has been slow to arrive in the places where it is most needed. 

See this Business Insider article from 2018(!):

The Army’s proposed fiscal 2019 budget calls for purchasing an eye-popping 148,297 155mm shells, including 1,189 GPS-guided Excalibur rounds designed for use in danger-close situations, officials told reporters on Tuesday. The order reflects a 825% increase from the 16,573 155mm shells the Army planned on purchasing this fiscal year.

“We are training to fight a decisive-action conflict,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Chamberlain, the Army’s budget director.

Artillery rounds and other munitions expire after a certain period of time and must be regularly replaced, said Jack Daniels, Deputy Assistant Army Secretary for Plans, Programs and Resources. Soldiers also use munitions during training, he said.

“Most of the units in theater for the last 15 years have been operating in a COIN [counterinsurgency] environment [emphasis mine] — not a lot of call for heavy munitions,” Daniels told reporters at a media roundtable.

Previously I quoted Alex Vershinin’s article for War on the Rocks about the prospects of a war with Russia (see my post here). He has chimed in again with a pretty gloomy article about the prospects of winning the logistics fight.

In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

The US is not the only country facing this challenge. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days…

The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption. Many ‘dumb’ indirect fire systems are achieving a great deal of precision without precision guidance, and still the overall ammunition consumption is massive. Part of the issue is that the digitisation of global maps, combined with a massive proliferation of drones, allows geolocation and targeting with increased precision, with video evidence demonstrating the ability to score first strike hits by indirect fires.

The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will. This mode of thinking was imported from the business sector and has spread through US government culture. In the civilian sector, customers can increase or decrease their orders. The producer may be hurt by a drop in orders but rarely is that drop catastrophic because usually there are multiple consumers and losses can be spread among consumers. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from. This is especially challenging because many older armament production systems are labour intensive to the point where they are practically built by hand, and it takes a long time to train a new workforce. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country.

Summary of Failures

TLDR: here’s my synopsis of the failure of 4GW, or at least the way it was implemented, and the incorrect assumptions behind those failures:

As exhaustively stated already, the Starship Troopers meme of a handful of elite fighters with super weapons has crippled our ability to wage industrial-scale warfare. I provided quotations about munitions specifically, but this applies to everything, including soldiers. Even the UK’s pledge to train 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers is laughable. That’s roughly a brigade, what is one brigade going to do in a war being fought at this scale? How long would that unit even last in heavy fighting without being rotated back to the rear? Two weeks? A month? If they were going to train 100,000 soldiers I might find that noteworthy, but I don’t think that’s even possible. Aside from the enormous cost, it would require millions upon millions of small arms cartridges, and I don’t think NATO has it.

Another crucial part of the 4GW myth is the “Darwinian Ratchet” – which funny enough I actually wrote about a long time ago. Armies need to train and prepare in peacetime. After a war starts, it’s too late, and it’s definitely too late to start from scratch. In my first article after the special operation started, I emphasized the danger of foreign mercenaries. The Russians apparently also recognized the particular danger of foreign thugs with no regard for local culture or civilian casualties, so went to great length to kill those mercenaries first.

Martin van Creveld lamented that Ukraine is trying to fight a conventional war instead of a guerrilla one. Well, judging from Tom Cooper’s statements about the “decentralized” Ukrainian army, plus all the other chatter I’ve heard (including Alex Vershinin), I think it’s a fair assumption that NATO was planning a guerrilla war. Unfortunately, Russia didn’t play along. They eliminated the option for guerrilla war

“Super weapons” also turned out to be a myth. Russian super weapons like the Kalibr missile didn’t instantly win the war. Real war is a slow, bloody, grind and even 2,000+ missile strikes isn’t enough to cripple an opponent who doesn’t want to give up. The reverse is even more true. 12 HIMARS, even 100 HIMARS (we don’t have 100 spare HIMARS to give, incidentally), wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide.

The second phase of the special operation will, presumably, come to an end when the last Ukrainian conscripts are pushed out of the DPR. But that won’t mean the end of the war, and NATO shipments of long-range weapons seem to be specifically intended to prevent a pause in the fighting. Ukrainian forces can retreat to a new forward line of troops and continue shelling civilian targets, leaving Russia with no choice but to keep grinding forward.

But will the third and fourth phases of the operation be more of the same, or will there be escalation? I have literally no idea what the Russian MoD has in mind, but if they do decide to open new fronts, I’m not convinced NATO allies will be able to strain their economies to increase the aid shipments to the extent needed.  

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