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Quality, not quantity – The new paradigm of Warfare?

Juha Ravanti

Finnish Defence Forces

Juhana Skyttä

Finnish Defence Forces

Sakari Ahvenainen

Finnish Defence Forces (ret.)

Abstract

In this article we look at military quality and quantity through general military history, Quincy Wright’s evolutionary theory of warfare, Lancaster Square Law and technology. Basic question is that is there a paradigm change happening in their relationship? Our research showed that military quality is a hard and a wide notion. So is the question of quality versus quantity. The key result of our research was that it is not the question of quality versus quantity. It is a question about an Entity, first of your security environment and then inside it.

Keywords

Quality, qunatitym Quincy Wright

1. Introduction

Technology seems to have played a vital role in the recent evolution of warfare. We see the effect of mobile, high-technology-equipped forces in the television every day. Forces become smaller and more effective all the time just like in the other parts of the society; all the time evolving computers are replacing human beings and saving human lives in the battlefield. “Quality matters, not quantity” is the phrase we hear every day in several different contexts. In this point of view we could say quality has become a new paradigm of warfare. But is technology the driving force in this process or is it still a tool?

However, the history shows us that the meaning of the word quality is not self-evident; especially not in a military context. History shows us as well, that the transformation of armed forces structures from quantitatively big forces to qualitatively big, but numerable small forces is not a new idea either. There can be seen a cyclic movement between great number of troops and small, better equipped troops. “Every war is a product of its own era”; could we say that every armed force is a product of its own era as well?

Finally, what is a paradigm? Thomas Kuhn has evolved a theory of scientific evolution. In his approach the term of paradigm is one of the key notions of the science. He defines the term as follows: “ A paradigm is a common commitment of a scientific society. It defines the ways in solving scientific problems and to create and use theories and methods. A paradigm is a guideline for new members of the society and it does not only guide in methods but it gives the members a definition through which they view the world ” (Kuhn 1970).

In this article the key words are Quality, Quantity, Paradigm, History of War and armed forces. The focus of this article is to show that in the context of quality and quantity every armed force is a product of its own era and that the role of technology is to work as a tool, not as a driving force. Finally, the authors try to define the meaning of word “Quality” in a military context.

2. Quality, quantity, technology and their history

2.1 How has the relation of quality and quantity changed throughout the history?

Almost the whole known human history is also history of war and the quality versus quantity is not a new issue either. Throughout the history there has been changes and evolution in the relation of quantity and quality. One of the ultimate developments of warfare was made during the Iron Age. During that time almost every aspect of war was developed to modern scale. Armies increased in size and in their destructive power. This huge development was possible through the military co-operating with host society. Also the technological revolution made this, almost exponential development, possible by providing armies ever increasing killing capability. This Iron Age period was almost constant war and the most dynamic period of military development, even compared to today (Gabriel and Metz 1992).

After the collapse of the Roman Empire Europe divided in many smaller royal houses witch fought against each others. Armies were smaller, but well equipped. Warfare itself was actually not so efficient. Especially in the fifteenth century the equipment of the knightly troops were made more to protect than to be effective. In that time there was not need for larger armies, and equipping such a large army would have been too costly for royal houses. The end of the knight time came with crossbows and finally with handguns in the sixteenth century. A new technology had been developed. (Keegan 1994)

The next phase came with the social change. During the wars of the France Revolution in the end of nineteenth century society was ready for voluntary or citizen-soldiers. Even the quality and training were important, also when using the firearms, this quantity of Napoleon’s army was too much for others and it took decades to win his army. Also in American Civil war the quantity was important factor. Both sides mobilized about ten percent of the population (north 2,000,000 and south 1,000,000) (Keegan 1994).

During the Second World War the quantities in armies reached the top figures. Also the technology enabled a kind of destructive power never seen before. Paradoxically, not even the development of nuclear weapons did reduce the quantity of the ordinary forces in Europe. The number and also the quality of troops were high until the collapse of Soviet Union. Since the technological development was not the main factor in reducing the troops, it has still affected much in modern war. First of all, their abilities in target acquisition and destroying these have been developed dramatically; secondly, the manner of war has been fought has also changed much. The tempo is much faster in modern combat and circumstances are not stable. Dispersed troops will fight independently due to the lethal weapon systems (Gabriel and Metz 1992).

2.2 Some approaches to the evolution of warfare

Quincy Wright advanced a four tier model of the evolution of war. Each tier he associated with a stage in human evolution, with a primary driving force behind war and with a scholarly discipline. He believes that the transitions from one stage to the next were caused by changes in communication: speech, writing and printing respectively (Roland 1997). However, Roland criticizes Wright’s assertion that changes in communication drove the transition from stage to another; Roland thinks they seem to have based more on conceptual neatness than solid evidence (Roland 1997). Even though he thinks that Wright may have a point in “information revolution” causing the “revolution in military affairs”.

Stage / Causation agent / Explanatory discipline
Animal warfare / Indistinct / Psychology
Primitive warfare / Society / Sociology
Civilized warfare / International systems / International law
Modern warfare / Technology / Science

Many other scholars, like James Rosenau, see technology as a global force just like Wright does. For example historian Leo Marx suggests that “technology may be the truly distinctive feature of modernity”. The recent scholarship comes close to Wright’s theories and sees technology often playing a prominent role but seldom as an independent variable (Levy 1989).

The role of the technological development is really significant according to an American Alex Roland. He even develops the theory of Quincy Wright. Political scientist Wright did more than a half-century ago advance the thesis, that technology has shaped war in modern times. Professor Roland develops the idea further, showing how nuclear weapons, have led to a fall in war-related deaths since the close of World War II. According to Roland, World War II was the first time when quality really counted more than quantity. The development of military technology was much faster than ever before. The qualitative arms race had really started. (Roland 1997)

In his article Roland presents that because of the tremendous power of the modern weapon systems, it is ever more difficult to imagine the circumstances in which great powers will risk horrible punishment of wars with other states similarly armed forces. The spread of high-tech weapons increases the lethality of war while also lowering the incidence of conventional war among advanced states. (Roland 1997)

This kind of lack of the threat focuses the development of the armed forces even more towards quality. Expeditionary style of warfare is not effective with low quality troops and equipment. According to Anthony Cordesman more quality troops are needed in Iraq. These troops should be able to use the whole efficiency of the advanced technology to hit the asymmetric threat. But still training and skills are essential. (Cordesman 2003)

Engineers refer to the fact that processing and memory capacity double every 18 months as Moore’s Law (Moore 1965). Moore’s Law predicts this exponential growth will continue for at least the next 20 years.

One more thing slowing the users to reach the technology is the fact that all the benefits of the technological advances cannot be immediately utilized into capability, specially not military one. The next figure will prove that. However, the utilization of technological advances follows an accelerating curve.

The accelerating curve is indicative of advances in the microelectronics industry from memory capacity to processing speed. The transistor was invented in the late 1950s but did not achieve substantial growth until the mid- 1970s. This nonlinear growth also applies to lasers and other advanced technologies. Similarly, today’s new technologies will show little advancement in the next 10 to 20 years (points 1 and 2), but will experience explosive growth in the third decade (point 3). The following table depicts technological progress of today compared to projections for 2010 and beyond (Miller et al 1996).

3. Quality and quantity in military perspective

3.1. Quality and warfare

Before we can ask ourselves what is quality in a military perspective, we must focus a little on war itself. It will be shown that every war is a product of its own era; like famous Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz has said, “war is a chameleon that slightly adapts its characteristics to the given case”. If a war adapts that well to the changes of era its components must be very adaptable as well. v. Clausewitz has also stated that the nature of war is to achieve relative advance versus the adversary (von Clausewitz, 1998). The word “relative” is very important in this context because it indicates that one’s armed force do not have to be the strongest to be stronger than someone else’s. Due to that fact there are many ways to achieve the advance. One can get it by massive amount of troops, one by maximizing the mobility of his forces and one by utilizing information superiority.

What is quality? If we look at a definition, it is totality of the properties that enable a product or service to satisfy expectations ( A product or service can be subject to self-evident requirements or specific quality requirements which have to be stated separately)(SFS ISO 8402).

Where do the requirements for military quality come from? Every nation has to ask itself the following questions before it can define the term “quality”:

·  What do we want our armed forces to do?

·  Where do we want our forces to operate?

·  What is the best way to structure the defense force?

·  What is the best way to spend the defense budget (Watters 2000)?

To highlight the complexity of defining the term “quality” one has to make choices. These choices can be for example:

·  Alliance vs. self-reliance

·  Independent action vs. coalition operations

·  Defending homeland vs. regional commitments

·  Quality vs. quantity. Current capability vs. future capability

The goal should be to achieve the combination of military capabilities that give a nation the widest range of military options to support its strategic interests at affordable cost (Watters 2000). A military perspective to the relation of quality and quantity should be understood as a result of capabilities where one must ask “how much is enough”; minimum military capability to fulfill nation’s military needs must exist all the time. (Brown 2002)

A nation must ask itself “in which areas do we defer capabilities?”. In Browns essay he defines quantity as power sufficient to win rapidly against any combination of opponents with available forces. He defines quality as having fewer forces but greater capabilities. Should the term quality be viewed through required capabilities? For a fictive nation located on the top of Himalayas there is no need to have a navy but it may – and probably will- need helicopter-transferable infantry. Vice versa, according to Brown, quantity can also been seen as “enough quality” e.g. quantity can include active standing forces across all battlefield operating systems that are immediately available to fight and win simultaneously in multiple theaters. That must, how ever, be a national decision to the question “how much is enough?”.

Looking at these qualities it can be said that the competition is not between quality and quantity, it is between technological quality often irrelevant to combat and tactical quality with quantity (Lind 1983). Lt Gen James M. Dubik (U.S. Army) is in the same line; he writes in his essay “Has warfare changed? Sorting Apples from the Oranges” that although technology is a very important element in determining how the conduct of war changes, it is never the overwhelmingly dominant factor. Rather, the ability to use the technology better than one’s opponent is dominant. He refers to Christopher Bellamy, who writes in the “Evolution of modern land warfare” that four key elements with the conduct of war are technology and the ability to use it, organization and size of an armed force, tactics and strategy and methods of command and control. (Dubik 2002)