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'Unconventional warfare' (UW) is the opposite of conventional warfare. Where conventional warfare seeks to reduce an opponent's military capability, unconventional warfare is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. On the surface, UW contrasts with conventional warfare in that: forces or objectives are covert or not well-defined, tactics and weapons intensify environments of subversion or intimidation, and the general or long-term goals are coercive or subversive to a political body.

Contents

Objectives

Methods

Government Definitions

See also

External links

Objectives

Unconventional warfare seeks to instill a belief that peace and security are not possible without compromise or concession. Objectives include inducement of weariness, curtailment of civilian standards of living and civil liberties associated with greater security demands, economic hardship linked to the costs of war; hopelessness to defend against assaults, fear, depression, and disintegration of morale. The ultimate goal of this type of warfare is to motivate an enemy to stop attacking or resisting even if it has the ''ability'' to continue. Failing this, a secondary objective can be to emasculate the enemy before a conventional invasion.

Methods

Limited conventional warfare tactics can be used unconventionally to demonstrate might and power, rather than to substantially reduce the enemy's ability to fight. In addition to the coercive use of traditional weapons, armaments that primarily target civilians can be used: atomic weapons, urban incendiary devices, white phosphorus or other such weapons. Special forces, inserted behind an enemy's front line, can be used unconventionally to spread subversion and propaganda, to aid native resistance fighters, and to ultimately build environments of fear and confusion. Tactics of destroying non-military infrastructure and blockading civilian staples are used to decrease the morale of civilians and, when applicable, also the soldiers in the field through concern for their families.

Government Definitions

UW is one of the nine core missions of U.S. Army Special Forces. The United States Department of Defense defines UW as a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes, but is not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery. Also called UW.

See also

★ Asymmetric warfare

★ Unrestricted Warfare (book)

★ Low-intensity operations

★ Terrorism

★ Fourth generation warfare

★ Special forces

★ Coercion

★ Gladio

★ Conventional warfare

★ Psychological warfare

★ Operation Phantom Fury

★ A seminal work on unconventional stay-behind warfare is Major Hans von Dach's ''Der Totale Widerstand (Total Resistance)''.

External links

★ Allied war terminology (File #5a)

★ goarmy.com/special_forces/unconventional_warfare

★ Unconventional Warfare: Definitions from 1950 to the Present

★ Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990

★ Pentagon plans cyber-insect army