JOURNAL: More on Tactical Innovation

It's clear from the Mumbai attack that terrorist organizations are inexorably moving closer to the global guerrilla model of warfare (it was an evolutionary improvement over the example the PCC set in the 2006 Sao Paulo attacks). Extremely small teams, operating autonomously, that rapidly move to attack a flexible set of objectives to achieve a leveraged and synergistic effect. Generic improvements (that can apply to a variety of motives) in technique that we can expect to see in the near future include:

• Better use of infrastructure disruption. While panicked crowds and other forms of localized disruption of transportation hubs are effective, a strategic approach to disruption that includes strikes on communications, transportation and energy hubs would prolong the impact and slow the government response. The key point here is that attacks on strategic systempunkts can impact tactical environments at a distance (akin to the Parthian shot that distracts and depletes an enemy).
  
• A focus on corporations and commercial elites. Less heavily protected than government targets and more important to the economic viability of the city. Easily "taxed" through assault in order to force a shift in operations and departures. This will run in parallel, but not replace, a bevy of attacks on foreign businesspeople (which heightens media response but has less long term impact on the city's viability).
  
• Fear management. The combination of rapid movement and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians did achieve a high level of panic. However, in order to create panic induced casualties and prolong the psychological impact, there will be an increasing focus on channeling crowds along "fear vectors."
  
• Media spamming to co-opt information flows. At a minimum, several Web sites and mass e-mailings that launch in parallel to the attack. It could also include multi-channel radio/TV transmissions. In either case, rather than claims of responsibility or justification (a legacy approach), the content of the messaging will be seemingly real-time information on the attack configured to maximize fear/panic, disinformation, and confusion.

Comments

[Pascal Venier]

A fascinating post.

I was wondering whether there would not be some merit, in perhaps thinking of the issues you are analysing in such an insightful was as "strategic innovation" rather than "tactical innovation".

I would be very tempted to argue that from the perspective of the practitioner of assymetric warfare, such an operation would be the campaign as a whole and each of the issue analysed in this post would be at a strategic rather than tactical level?

I cannot help but note, how whilst in a sense, 911 was some a form of asymmetric air-strike, Mumbai can be seen as a form of asymmetric amphibious operation, both having been conceived as suicide missions.

[David Meyer]

In the Columbine kind of assault we just witnessed, the whole point seemed to be avoiding infrastructure targets. They didn't want the bother....this were hunter killers and not trained to make discernments about what to take and hold -- if you have iliterate suicide warriors, how much infrastructure are you going to teach them? If they capture Con Ed, what the fuck would they do with it?

Also, that presumes they want urban paralysis, which I don't think they do. They want to make a class/religious statement and so, it seems to me, would not inconvenience an entire city of like-class/like-culture. That would not be a propoganda coup. Swarming a luxury hotel and kiling off rich folks is....they would rather see the Taj burn than the power plants. The Twin towers were good targets precisely because they were so friggin' big a rookiie pliot could not miss them. Ditto the Taj - the maids knew the hotel better than the cops...

His kind of thinking led to the fantasy that the Taj killers were sorting out Brit/US passports; that implied a kind of tactical overview that guys like Robb need to make the enemy more complex than he is....they said: go machine gun the lobby and go through the hotel, killiing everyone you see..that is a mighty simple assignment...so they taught them some scoot 'n shoot, basic tactics, and gave them site-training in the layout of the joint, but what's so complex about that? This strikes me as rather low-tech. What mattered most is the want-to of the assailants..

[Jay@Soob]

David Meyer,

What makes you believe that they weren't after both the symbolic sectarian/ethnic wedge (re: re igniting Pakistan vs India) and systemic collapse? It would appear that to a degree they've accomplished both.

[djysrv]

With regard to the "media spamming" and communications angle, social media such as Twitter could easily be compromised from anywhere in the world during such an attack.

How would the mainstream media, which closely followed events in Mumbiai via Twitter, differentiate between legitimate posts from on-scene observers sending from mobile devices and people bent on spreading disinformation?

Does this raise the issue of "authentication" for social media?

[WarLord]

Greetings

Re; bad guys gaming twitter

Is there any chance that posters of real messages would recognize and point out the planted ones? Would the many be able to see the few...

[Sarah Brand]

Maybe not, WarLord. If I were living through an attack on my city, fact-checking other people's tweets would be pretty far down on my to-do list, to be honest.

Remember how, just recently, a blogger posing as a McCain adviser (I think) started the rumor that Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent? It took several days to clear that one up. In the middle of an attack, any well-timed disinformation that fits into the media's preconceptions has a good chance of being reported as fact.

[gmoke]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/30/212221/38/249/667930

Balagangadhara: The Terrorist Multinational Business Model

[DKS]

analysed here

[captainjohann]

Hi,
They targetted the Jewish Prayer house. Why?One team of two was given this target as much importance as Taj luxury hotel.
The ZAKA team is blaming Indian commandoes for not saving the Jews and also for not negotiating with terrorists?do you agree?

[clintonismo]

twitter is a great target for disinformation. panic/fear quickly goes viral. reports indicate the mumbai guerrillas used blackberries to communicate- possibly snoop on media coverage during the attack.

[Benkay]

We've read on this blog about how every complex system has it's *punkts*. Terrorists are moving towards exploiting concentrated points of social power that function as systempunkts in the social world, as opposed to the physical.

[Chris Albert]

I am in agreement with the comments of M. Venier in that the attack on Mumbai was strategic, in the sense of "systempunkt", or 'a critical (global) infrastructure node"; yet tactically executed internal to Mubai, as a classic Blizkreig "Schwerpunkt".
Consider the following text from the wikipedia article on bliztkrieg:
"These tactics required sheer speed, specialized support vehicles, new methods of communication, new tactics, and an effective decentralized command structure..."
I think that the dialectic between strategic aims and tactical finesse is well at play here.

[g48]

As for media spam and its equivalents:

Look no further than the 9/11 attacks, which coincided with a major military anti-terrorism exercise. The attackers gained an advantage from the initial confusion of participants in the exercise: "Is this real or is this part of the drill?"

I happen to believe that the coincidence of the attack and the exercise was probably the result of a leak about the exercise. What I think happened was that some idiot in the Administration bragged to someone associated with Ahmed Chalabi, and thereby the information about the drill made its way into the Middle Eastern regional market for such things, and thereby eventually to Bin Laden, who chose his date for the attack to maximize "fog of battle" confusion.

As for badguys gaming Twitter and other social sites, that just underlines the need for the general public to be properly informed on how to evaluate the credibility of information sources. There was a time when we were all taught, in elementary school, that in a fire or other disaster you follow the instructions of recognized officials, not "anyone who happens to shout loudly." In WW2 citizens were routinely taught to not spread rumors, because rumors are a tool of the enemy.

There are legitimate blogs and other online sources of information that have stable user communities. Stable communities tend to have feedback mechanisms that discourage or shut down "trolls" and other abusers. Those kinds of sites can be valuable as counterpoint to mainstream media.

The bottom line is that people need to *think* before they act on information or spread it further. In darwinian times, using your head is a survival advantage.

[Brent Emery Pieczynski]

All of those people involved with security, will need employment which will create a group of people, which can both generate the threat and get paid to protect people from it. These people which preserve the agreements of the past through studying traditions are critical, to the preservation of a society. Those material items such as buildings also preserve a cultural-identity. That preventing of a large and corrupted group of security experts, will be the enforcement of raising minimal-competency levels.

[http://ebdaa.yoo7.com]

thanks ..