The U.S. Army risks cognitive failure with its emphasis on creating “dilemmas” for the adversary in armed conflict. So warns Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analysis and an adjunct senior fellow at Center for New American Security, in a March 31 article posted on the website of the Modern War Institute, hosted by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (which included the usual caveat that the opinion expressed is solely that of the author and not that of the U.S. Army). In this article, Kofman takes aim at the Army’s land warfare doctrine released in 2019, entitled “Unified Land Operations,” which, Kofman reports, states that “creating dilemmas for opponents” will impose “multiple and compounding dilemmas on the adversary.” The adversary, presumably overwhelmed by simultaneous action in all domains, will become paralyzed, unable to orient or act, given the simultaneity and complexity of the assault. The hope is for U.S. forces to generate “overmatch,” and attain advantage through integration of operations, where it does not exist in material terms.
“Unfortunately, this evolution of cognitive ‘shock and awe’ is unlikely to prove effective against great power adversaries, and is a largely imaginary offset for not having actual material advantage in quantity or quality,” Kofman writes. “The likely outcome from this artful combination of so-called dilemmas is best analogized to the famous market scene from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ in which a swordsman skillfully flourishes his scimitar to present multiple complex dilemmas, before being unceremoniously shot by Indiana Jones.”
