Patterns of Conflict
Parts 1 & 2 · slide sources

• Point of departure
• Historical snapshots
• Categories of conflict
• Synthesis
• Application
• Wrap-up
• Epilogue
• Sources

Mission

• To make manifest the nature of moral-mental-physical conflict
• To discern a pattern for successful operations
• To help generalize tactics and strategy
• To find a basis for grand strategy

Need fighter that can both lose energy and gain energy more quickly while out-turning an adversary.

Idea of fast transients suggests that, in order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries—or, better yet, get inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or loop.

• Blitzkrieg vs. Maginot Line mentality 1940
• F-86 vs. MiG-15 1951–53
• Israeli raid 1976

Goal

Survive, survive on own terms, or improve our capacity for independent action.

The competition for limited resources to satisfy these desires may force one to:

Diminish adversary’s capacity for independent action, or deny him the opportunity to survive on his own terms, or make it impossible for him to survive at all.

In addressing any questions about conflict, survival, and conquest one is naturally led to the

since both treat conflict, survival, and conquest in a very fundamental way. In this regard, many sources (a few on natural selection and many on war) are reviewed; many points of view are exposed.

In examining these many points of view one is bombarded with the notion that:

• It is advantageous to possess a variety of responses that can be applied rapidly to gain sustenance, avoid danger, and diminish adversary’s capacity for independent action.
• The simpler organisms—those that make-up man as well as man working with other men in a higher level context—must cooperate or, better yet, harmonize their activities in their endeavors to survive as an organic synthesis.
• To shape and adapt to change one cannot be passive; instead one must take the initiative.

With this impression in mind together with our notion of getting inside an adversary’s O-O-D-A loop we will proceed in our historical investigation.