Strategic Analysis of Irregular Warfare

Abstract : The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) states: Irregular warfare has emerged as the dominant form of warfare confronting the United States. Terrorism and insurgency, and counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, are all subsets of irregular warfare. Conventional warfare models are often used at the strategic level to inform programmatic decisions. The modeling and dynamics of irregular warfare are not well established. An attempt to model an irregular warfare scenario took place in 2007 to 2009 within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This process, however, failed to produce insights that could inform program decisions. As a result, the Secretary of Defense is making programmatic decisions without a cogent modeling paradigm for terrorism and insurgency. As the focus of warfare changes from conventional to irregular so must the warfare models and the resulting strategic analysis. This paper reviews the theory and doctrine, and proposes a new computational model to replicate the dynamics of irregular warfare.