Talk:Shock and awe

Sony, and a few other companies have applied for a trade mark on the term "shock and awe"

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/5618653.htm

If approved, will this affect the inclusion of this term in the wikipedia? user: black bag

this page is suffering from a classic wikipedia sin. check the first sentence: ""Shock and Awe" is the popular phrase used to describe the strategic doctrine being threatened by the United States in its invasion of Iraq." This is an encyclopaedia. This article will be read in a year's time, and hopefully in a hundred years' time, when all this is ancient history. This article needs to be a lot less specific to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and when it discusses that it shouldn't do so in such a time-sensitive way. --AW

agree. should add some stuff; reference to Shekinah, and maybe the Yiddish meshugganah provide a cognitive assonance that turns out quite enlightening on this topic.

Patients grasshopper. The current war is our main source of info on how this strategy is being applied. I'm sure the United States will give us other opportunities to add more content to this topic in the future. --mav

Regardless of your speculation on future events involving the US, the term originated from a concept developed at the National Defense University in 1996 an was later popularized by news media in 2003 to describe US plans for war in Iraq. This article should cover the concept of "shock and awe" and then refer to the popularization of the term in the context of the 2003 war in Iraq. Imagine if an article existed for "shock and awe" pre-2003. Then, consider the recent popularization of the term as an update to an already pre-existing article. --unregistered user

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This page fails to discuss the possible legal implications of this policy in that it may possibly encourage or permit actions in violation of the law of war. --Daniel C. Boyer

Don't worry, the US will win and the Bush Administration will make sure retroactively that whatever they did was perfectly legal. --mav

Rhetorical question for mav: Why would one make legal after the fact that which was legal before the fact? -º¡º

Comparisons with Blitkrieg How does this differ from blitzkrieg? -- Zoe

Blitzkrieg = other side. Bad. Shock and awe = our side. Good. (And I ain't joking, Zoe. That's the entire extent of the difference, so far as I can tell. In a little while I'll read the article again and see if I can find any other distinction, but don't hold your breath.) Tannin

Blitzkrieg does not have the negative connotations you speak of - at least not for me. Shock and awe does look to be different in that the focus is on rendering the leadership of a foe ineffective through a variety of means whereas blitzkrieg is more or less moving your troops into enemy areas so fast that you overwhelm them in a physical sense. Shock and awe also wants to overwhelm them in a mental sense. Also, unlike a blitz there is great care not to destroy civilian targets. So the two concepts are similar but not the same. --mav

That's a very, very fine line to try to draw. The leadership disctinction doesn't really apply, as that was an aim of blitkrieg too (or, for that mattter, of Napoleonic tactics - the terms change but the tactic is almost as old as war itself). The "care not to destroy civilian targets" is just splitting hairs. Care for non-combatants is also as old as war itself. Tannin

Blitzkrieg is based on a specific set of _ground_ based tactical rules, namely the concentration of all available mobile units at a single point, breaking though the front line with this local superiority, and then racing to the rear in order to cut off the front lines. Air support in blitzkrieg is used primarily as mobile artillery, not strategically. This is why the Luftwaffe had no strategic bombers, they didn't consider it worthwhile.

Shack and Awe is based on a different principle, bombing the command and control centers, communications and other targets at "strategic distances" - hundreds of kilometers from the front lines - in order to stop the flow of information. It attempts to do in a single bombing raid what the motion of a blitzkrieg does, cut off the front lie troops from comminications with the rear.

So the aims are certainly similar, as they always have been, but the methods are distinct. One strategy targets command and control from the air at long distances, the other other front line troops at short distances on the ground. This is not a fine line to draw! The only similarity is "win war", but a definition that loose is a tautology, and therefor useless. Sorry Tannin, your comment is simply wrong. -- User:Maury Markowitz

This is a simple question. Inducing a state of "Shock and Awe" in the enemy is a *goal*. This goal can be approached through several methods, and blitzkrieg warfare is only *one* such method. Perhaps you could say "blitzkrieg" is to "shock and awe" as "advertising" is to "consumer behavior". -º¡º

Sounds reasonable to me. There is also the matter usage of the two - i.e., the current fad for saying "shock & awe" because it would not be PC to say "blitkrieg". cf terms like "colatieral damage" (sp!). We (all nations) are always making up new words to make things sound nicer. Tannin

"Shock and awe" has been misinterpreted as a massive and spectacular wave of destruction. An optimum shock and awe campaign would hit as few targets as possible to achieve the desired phsycholigical effect. Blitzkrieg, on the other hand, is defined as a massive campaign. --unregistered user

This is certainly not true, in fact, it's pretty much the opposite of the blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg was accepted in Germany specfically because it allowed their numerically smaller forces take on the much larger French/British and Soviet forces, and do so as quickly as possible. Hitler wanted the war to consist basically of two quick battles. Contratry to claims here, attacking the leadership was NOT part of the plan, nor was any sort of "regrime change". They wanted to win the war, period. -- User:Maury Markowitz

Removed text:

This is not substantially different that the concept of Blitzkrieg.

Please read the above thread. In short Blitzkrieg is one way to accomplish "Shock and Awe." --mav

Then why doesnt this article note the similiarty? The Germans in WWII said they were agaisnt causing civilian casulaties. The Germans in WWII were very interested in taking out the enemy leadership. Shock and Awe is a PC way of hiding the influence of the German military on modern American military doctrine. Much of our military is directly patterned after German WWII doctrine. The US attack on Iraq is following the doctrine of blitzkrieg, that is bypassing enemy fortifications and leaving them for follow-up troops. Blitzkrieg is not merely one way to accomplish Shock and Awe, Shock and Awe is blitzkrieg.

• Blitzkrieg=Rapid Dominance

Dietary Fiber

Then explain the the difference and similarities in the article. But we cannot, per our NPOV policy, just state the "It is so that Shock and Awe and Blitzkrieg are the same thing." Also the statement that Blitzkrieg has some type of negative connotation is bizarre ; that military concept has been doctrine for half a century and at least in the US the term does not carry a lot of baggage. But it is still incorrect to say that Shock and awe and Blitzkrieg are the same thing. --mav

Changed this to hopefully NPOV "Some people believe that the doctrine "Rapid Dominance" is a technologically updated version of Blitzkrieg."

I have now refactored this article, to try to place the three major threads under their own subheadings.

2nd-order refactoring of historical comparisons section now done: can someone please copyedit this article?

The page has improved a lot! The Blitzkrieg comparison is obviously required, but it needs care. Consider the following quote from the current Blitzkrieg entry:

Although trumpeted as a truly modern style of war, Blitzkrieg's theoretical basis was almost as old as war itself. Similar strategies were employed by Alexander the Great in classical times; Napoleon was a master of them; and they were used on a smaller scale by both sides in the closing stages of World War I.

Obviously that isn't something that should drop straight into the S&A entry, but a proper historical perspective (as hinted at by the above) is required. Tannin

PS: By the way, 213, why don't you make yourself a handle? It takes 30 seconds, it's free, and you don't have to use your real name if you don't want to. I can see that you are obviously cut out to be a Wikiholic. You might as well relax and accept it ;) Tannin

Comparisons with WW2 Japan

I once wathced a documentary that suggested that, contrary to popular history, the Japanese government knew they were losing the war and were in fact considering, maybe even already negotiating, peace when American detonated their nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagosaki. Anyone know where we might find furhter information no this matteri? -- Axon

Ive heard this as well. Dietary Fiber

Richard B Frank's Downfall: the end of the Imperial Japanese Empire, Random, 1999, ISBN 067941424 is a towering work on this question, Axon, Detailed, comprehensive, balanced, meticulously researched.

Frank shows that the answer to your question is undoubtedly "yes", and that there were a number of factors at work in the Japanese surrender. The bombs were significant, but so were the previous fire raids, the strangulation of Japanese industry by the destruction of the merchant marine (aircraft and submarines), the conquest of Manchuria & Korea by the Red Army, and so on.

Would the Japanese have surendered without the nukes? Undoubtedly. Would they have surrendered when they did without the nukes? Quote probably not. Would the surrender (without the nukes) still have been reasonably prompt? Maybe. Would the Japanese have been able to hold out much longer? In the conquered territories, no: the Soviets in particular were capable of crushing anything and everything they met. (We Westerners tend to think that we won the war against Hitler and the Soviets helped out too; actually the Red Army took on 4/5ths of the German land forces and still got to Berlin first.) In the home islands, it was a different matter: the Japanese preperations to meet invasion were truly formidable. Franks demonstrates—conclusively to my mind—that the nukes saved more lives than they took, and even more conclusively that on the information available to him at the time, Truman made the right decision.

In summary, there are two simplistic positions: (a) that America dropped the nukes and that made the Japanese surrender, (b) that the Japanese were going to surrender anyway and the nukes were simply gratuitous murder: neither is justifiable by the facts, and the true answer is much more complex than either. Tannin

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This is far fewer than the thousands of deaths that critics of this strategy claimed would occur.

Nitpick, but wasn't the use of the "shock and awe" strategy announced quite late in the debate over war on Iraq? I know that people have predicted deaths in the thousands as a result of the Iraq war, but I wasn't aware of any specific predictions regarding the deaths due to the "shock and awe" strategy. Most criticisms of shock and awe have centered around it being untried, or questioning whether it will be as effective as its supporters claim. Martin

It is strange to predict "thousands of deaths" when one of the specific goals of Shock and Awe is to produce fewer casualites then alternative approaches. Perhaps the time is coming to be bold. -º¡º

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Making several changes:

Removed: In theory the action can be so swift as to compel the enemy forces to surrender en-mass.

This may be true, but isn't the main goal of Rapid Dominance and doesn't belong in the first paragraph. The goal isn't always to force a surrender, and surrender isn't compelled purely through speed.

Removed: It was first applied as the basis of a war doctrine by the United States in its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Added: There are indications that it was first applied systemically as a war doctrine by the United States in its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

You do not know this, and if you did you wouldn't be allowed to tell us. All war is deception, and even if The President and the Secretary of Defense stood in front of a television camera and said this was our doctrine, that could merely be a deception. Only after the war is over will we be able to say whether or not this was the overriding doctrine of the war.

As of the fifth day of the war the outcome of the war remained uncertain, but it appeared that the doctrine had failed in its objective of causing a rapid collapse of the Iraqi military and avoiding the need for attritional warfare.

Who said the "objective of the doctrine" was to cause a collapse of the military?

(other changes not commented) -º¡º

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Should the line about leaving civilian infrastructure be deleted, or at least edited, now that missiles are being targetted at (amongst others) the TV stations and telephone exchanges?

The problem here is that the 'civilian' structures targeted could, arguably, be used for military purposes. Perhaps a link to an article about the blurring of civilians and combatants might be useful. - User:Erzengel - 3 Apr 2003 1330 UTC

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• Blitzkrieg is based on the idea of massing the entirety of an army's mobile forces at a single point in front of the enemy, breaking through due to the local superiority, and then running to the rear areas to cut off the front lines. Executed properly, a blitzkrieg will happen so fast that the enemy will have little idea what is going on. Attempts to set up a coherent defense or counterattack are difficult to organize, by the time one is ready the battle is already behind you.

• Rapid Dominance, on the other hand, is based on a direct and furious attack on the command headquarters, both at the armed forces central commands, as well as the unit headquarters closer to the front. The aim is to cut off the troops from information and command, as opposed to supplies.

• • The flaw with the above excerpt is that blitzkrieg's primary goal is NOT to cut off supplies (as indicated in paragraph #2) but rather the primary goal is to attack command headquarters and communications. This article seems to argue that rapid dominance may appear similar to blitzkrieg, but is fundamentally different; however, such a notion is incorrect.

• Rapid Dominance is the modern American term for Blitzkrieg. Pizza Puzzle