Effects on the Operational Level of War: Fighting Power and the Problem of Military Effectiveness

Abstract

War as a complex adaptive system indicates that effects can have both systematic and accidental causes. In war there are identifiable cause-and-effect relationships, and phenomena we cannot explain based on analytical rationality. Assumptions regarding military effectiveness are as much permissive as they are deterministic/heuristic. Thus, measures of military effectiveness often reflect the sum of individual aggregates rather than collective characteristics. Whatever the conceptualisation, the ability to learn and adapt expressed as military effectiveness appears an important attribute and refers to a certain gap in operational capabilities over time. In this article the author suggests to examine it on the operational level where military effectiveness can be expressed by the concept of fighting power, as in most cases winning wars comes as a result of winning battles.

Keywords

• Effects
• complex adaptive system
• effectiveness
• fighting power
• technology.