U.S. Military Doctrine After the Long War (World Politics Review Special Reports)

This presents the United States with a dilemma. Does the United States violate international understandings about the sanctity of borders, or does it suffer the slings and arrows that come from letting your enemy have secure bases to attack you? Pakistan has proven to be a particularly difficult case. They require a substantial, patient, and prudent international effort to bring stability and foster reconstruction, especially in the wake of weak, corrupt, or failed states. These exercises in armed nation-building are complex, uncertain, and, with the passing of time, increasingly unpopular in the United States.

The alternative is kinetic success followed by political chaos.

There was an option not to invade Afghanistan or Iraq. There was never an option to leave Afghanistan or Iraq right after the conclusion of the initial phase of major combat operations. In associated areas, such as development and reconstruction, State and USAID have more assets, but far fewer than these contingencies required. Sadly, as noted in Linda Robinson et al. There needs to be a national discussion on these critical issues. The RAND study reviewed here also emphasizes the need to improve pre-conflict shaping operations to prevent conflicts. Outside of its special operations forces, the United States is not well organized to accomplish this mission.

Two possibilities commend themselves: There are doubtless dozens of other high-level, strategic lessons that one should learn from the long war. I invite the readers of Small Wars Journal to relate their key, strategic lessons, either as comments to this article, or in an email to the author at josephcollins22 gmail. Collins a retired Army Colonel and a former Deputy Asst.

He and his colleagues are currently studying the strategic lessons of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The opinions in this review essay are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of his colleagues, NDU, the Department of Defense, or any other government agency. Memoirs of a Secretary at War New York: Public Affairs, ; and One Hundred Victories: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. University of Chicago Press, Collins, a retired Army Colonel and a former Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defense, directed the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University, where he has been on the faculty since So far, the West--so to speak--has fallen into every trap: The blogger Pundita has been talking about the early and uncertain science of the effects of the internet on the brain.

What are we training ourselves to become? I am talking here about even public officials tweeting, and so on, and so reinforcing the action-reaction paradigm, being reactionary and ADD, instead of calm and careful. More and more, I am beginning to think that language is a key problem, beyond even jargon or buzzwords:. You do it with unconventional capabilities. What was needed after December was a greater emphasis on U. The failure to adjust U. More recent books and studies have questioned whether the initial destruction of the Taliban was quite so complete, so the question of jointness versus what type of warfare should dominate is a key question.

Counterinsurgency, counter-unconventional warfare, does it matter what you call it? From an intellectual point of view, not necessarily, as long as you have a correct understanding about motivation and what you are seeing on the ground. The biggest and initial mistake in the Afghan campaign, falling into the "Pashtun" trap and seeing the world through the eyes of the Pakistani security state, even as also empowered groups associated with the old Northern Alliance.

Yet, armies need organizing principles to steal a phrase from HIllary Clinton and doctrine is the organizing principle. If you call it A, then B happens, if you call it C, then D happens, and so on.

The Long War: Four Views | Small Wars Journal

We fell into a trap early on, I believe, in not understanding how concerns of Pashtun integration and the Taliban would be used by the Pakistani military leadership to create a sense that their narrative and their concerns should be paramount. As I've said many times before, this happened in Kashmir as well where Indian-occupied Kashmir became synonymous with all of Kashmir and the genuine concerns of a localized Muslim population in the Valley became a larger religious rallying cry for various groups, whether Pakistani, Saudi Arabia, Iranian, or various diaspora living in the West.

For all the talk of types of warfare and what is needed, the biggest problem seems to be understanding what is really happening, what kind of conflict we are in. This is made nearly impossible because of the way in which the American system looks at the world, through the needs of its various ideologies and ideologues, as well as those of vested interests.

The initial planning period of the Afghan campaign with its creation of an emotional connection--or intensifying, really--between Centcom and Islamabad remains an area ripe for further study. I find it so strange to continue to focus on the battle of American military ideology versus looking at the world and trying to understand what might be needed.

This seems to be a problem for those invested in forever relationships and alliances, a problem exacerbating our policy in Iraq today. The domestic American system is changing, however. Is the successful and enduring transformation -- more along modern western political, economic and social lines -- of outlying states and their societies. The present "Long War" much as was the case with the previous long war, to wit: To be understood as the conflict between those entities who are -- and those entities who are not and do not desire to be but we feel must be -- organized, organized and ordered more along modern western political, economic and social lines.

Per your suggestion, I listened to their podcast and found little of value. Early on it became clear the "offset strategy" is a PR attempt to rename AirSea Battle to avoid its controversies. Someone else stated jokingly that AirSea Battle was not a strategy to penetrate China but rather a strategy to penetrate Congress.

Why is the "offset strategy" any different? Someone openly admitted that the traditional "thirds" allocation of the defense budget is not "strategic allocation. LTG McMaster was mentioned claiming he sets up a false dichotomy between human and tech centric warfare. To some degree that is true because humans can and do use tech weapons to move, shoot, and communicate during warfare. As mentioned by the forum, the ground domain also has proven itself highly capable of defeating large ground forces using superior tech in both Desert Storm and OIF.

In contrast, many proposed "offset strategy" weapons would require a high degree of autonomy that avoids humans in-the-loop. In a decade of recent wars that proved the need to avoid human casualties, why would any think tank ignore that autonomous targeting could not begin to apply accurate judgment in the near future on whether attacking a mobile missile or package truck surrounded by civilians. Speculation about where and when the next war will be fought at best involves no more than informed guesses. Conjecture about the unknowable time of an unknowable war is equally problematic.

We have a poor record in predicting war, yet our ability to deter large wars has been much better. We cannot know with certainty what deterred wars never fought. Others point to precision deep attack weapons of the late 70s and 80s, while maneuver arms ask what about close combat? Paying for these systems could require diversion of traditional land component and whole of government resources. Yet China struggles to design and build efficient, reliable jet engines, modern cars, or other products that are not counterfeits or stolen copies.

Why claim China now is an innovator able to match the West? Meanwhile, our abilities to disrupt such technologies across numerous kill chain areas are minimized by think tanks and threat-exaggerators. In addition, missile inertial navigation accuracy decreases with distance. Without satellite navigation updates or with U. Likewise, near peers and even terrorists could potentially disrupt our navigation making proposed U. Survival of both satellites and their surrogates are less than guaranteed.

Excessive reliance on conceptual undeveloped autonomous targeting techniques are a nightmare of potential collateral damage and fratricide. To assume we can build autonomous sensors that see under the ground and through buildings and trees to find tunnels and mobile vehicles from medium altitude through smog and clutter is foolhardy. It is as unlikely as many assumptions about Comanche, Future Combat Systems, and a variety of other failures where realistic near term technology did not match expectations. Yet that is the very thing many think tanks are asking us to accept. They ask us to trust that research and development can solve the problem rapidly if only we divert funding from proven air, land, and sea systems with a human element.

Navigation menu

Reductions in Fs to finance "offset strategies" such as a high end UCLASS would be eliminating the bird in hand for highly-speculative and costly "better" autonomous birds in the bush. Rather than losing cost advantages inherent in larger Fs production buys by ourselves and coalition partners, consider creating an optionally-manned version during later block buys. Add jettisonable conformal auxiliary fuel and we have every manned aircraft advantage and most unmanned capabilities.

Proven data links, radars, and infrared sensors would permit manned-unmanned interfaces that keep a man in the loop while looking for and engaging targets. What can be hit can be killed. In contrast, an MQ-X and Naval UCLASS surrounded by nothing but medium altitude air lacks all aspect stealth because it remains visually visible as are satellites helping them navigate and employ weapons. Greater autonomy would require low-cost GPS-navigation alternatives, foolproof artificial intelligence, stealth, and weapons systems able to survive J, J, and T shoot-downs over China and Russia.

Decisions about future strategies require realistic expectations that include the land component and whole of government investments. Thanks, I hadn't been aware of that resource. I thought I'd scoured the entire Internet for every last scrap on the conflict while writing my dissertation, but a number of sources have come out in the last year or two, and some greative search strings have revealed a number of items that I didn't see while I was writing initially.

I spotted your reference to the Dhofar Rebellion as below , hopefully you area ware of the SW Forum thread on the Oman Campaign, in particular the post on a new resource on the OMANI contribution; most accounts I have read concentrate on the British role. If you're interested in discussing these items more, let me know and I'd be pleased to engage with you offline'. They are doing a great job of teaching strategy at the National War College, I hope. All the best, jjc.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your analysis of these four works. I have a few observations, many of which I've discussed elsewhere at SWJ, but will now attempt to truncate as a solicited response to your request for feedback on these issues. There are a lot of relevant lessons and observations to be reaped from the last decade and a half, really two or three decades, of the Long War, so these are some of the "wave tops" in which I've taken the most interest.

Military doctrine

Having read your treatment, I shall update my previous criticism of his book by noting that if the length of his book exceeds four hundred pages, then it's not even useful for leveling a table. LTG Bolger seems to not even understand the strategic justification behind the invasion of Iraq.

• ;
• .
• A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200-479 BCE (Blackwell History of the Ancient World)?
• Body Language for Management in a Week: Teach Yourself (TYW).

However, I'm rather confident that LTG Bolger is not competent to be discussing the issues on which he is trying to opine as a subject matter expert. Some here at SWJ would opine that COIN doctrine has been tested and found wanting; I maintain that it was not tested at all, at least not in Afghanistan and Iraq between and the present day.

As Colonel Outzen rightly asserts, there is no such thing as area expertise without language expertise, and by the end of I hope to submit an article to SWJ outlining a plan to train every recruit in a foreign language. It's a force multiplier, a key to building security relationships in both regular and irregular conflicts, with both allies and host nation personnel, and it would save the DoD billions annually by eliminating the need to lease language proficiency from contractors whose skills do not result in persistent capabilities once their contracts expire.

I would give them a solid B grade in this respect. I am more concerned the U. Army and Marine Corps will abandon the doctrine, training and education wrapped up in preparing for counterinsurgency and stability operations. Much of my research was based upon the instructor-provided topic of one a project on which I collaborated with a former SOF-supporting intelligence officer from another NATO nation. Our topic was something to the effect of "assess the requirements for success in modern counterinsurgency". In my dissertation, I expanded upon our initial six requirements, and found it useful to divide these requirements into three categories: My goal, probably to begin later this year or this time in , is to use this rubric to expand my dissertation into a comprehensive discussion of the COIN and grand strategic lessons of the Dhofar Rebellion, with comparisons to mistakes and successes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you're interested in discussing these items more, let me know and I'd be pleased to engage with you offline. On occasion, you'll hear one officer or another discussing the link between political objectives and the use of force, but most officers seem echo LTG Bolger's flawed vision of "strategy", which is actually campaign planning. This was further demonstrated by the revelation of just how flimsy the requirements for Senator Walsh's "master's degree" in Strategic Studies actually were; while I've used plenty of Army War College and Naval Postgraduate School theses as sources in my own research, the idea that Senator Walsh's plagiarism or the low standard for graduation that allowed him to receive a degree were in anyway unique strikes me as entirely naive.

These problems are compounded by Washington's "strategic planning process", which produces the Quadrennial Defense Review, the National Security Strategy, the National Military Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and very occasionally a Nuclear Posture Review in the UK, if memory serves, this is accomplished by a single Strategic Defence and Security Review which isn't appreciably better than the American versions.

None of these are comprehensible, especially in the context of its peer documents; none of them are particularly strategic; and all of them do a regrettable job of synchronizing means, ways, and ends. The bottom line, though, is that American strategic success in the long remainder of the twenty-first century will be contingent upon Washington understanding, composing, and implementing actual strategies aimed at actual strategic e. This, in turn, will be contingent upon streamlining the current process into something that actually synchronizes ways, means, and political ends.

Absent this, I fear that America will continue to find itself engaged in a series of conflicts potentially even conventional ones in which American troops win battles, only for senior military and civilian leaders to fail to consolidate them in order to accomplish actual strategic goals. Land swaps could be organized to relocate ethnicities to new territories from refugee camps.

Barriers could divide disputed cities ala Berlin for decades. Perhaps it will take years of failed operations against ISIS and Syria to convince Joint leaders that a heavy ground footprint remains essential as part of most Joint efforts. Otherwise we will see repeat performances a few years later. The sole recent examples that brought lasting decades without open conflict were the Cold War in Europe and Korea using heavy coalition forces for deterrence and border separations to let each side choose their own path even if misguided. Airpower leaders correctly cite a need for multi-mission aircraft to justify other fighters used in CAS.

However, they appear to change their tune when applied to bombers. Build 50 full stealth, and 50 multi-mission LRS. That simply requires adaptable bomber pilots just as fighter pilots adapt to a number of different missions. Army aircraft temporarily would employ these and other ships as lily pads vs.

Temporary AFS-MLP employment as en route lily pads would allow larger numbers of Army aircraft to get from point A to B without permanently tying up limited space on these ships or risking cargo planes too close to short-range missile threats. The lines of effort are similar for all three.

FID works when existing militaries and quality governments are present. An early surge could transition sooner while simultaneously clearing and holding terrain. Only 35, ANSF were trained by despite four years of a light coalition footprint in Afghanistan. Should we expect infantrymen to be diplomats? In addition, the Abbottabad raid and RPA attacks against the Haqqanis likely would have faced failure launched from the distant sea.

Deployment frequency clearly indicates which services have too little manpower. Frequency and duration of deployment probably lead to mental health and family problems, as well. A shorter war with an upfront surge can limit repeat deployments, family disruptions, and expedite the transition and exit strategy.

It also would limit PTSD and brain injury exposure. Other services proved able to perform CAS with many types of units and aircraft. Again this depended on Pakistan, Afghan, and Iraqi airspace access and airbases vs. Cruise missiles did not work in nor will they work in the future against enemies that do not readily present themselves as targets. In effect, they created mini-warlords that worked for the government in theory only. Even if cooperative, without funding and supply of such small militias, their viability is limited and competition resulted with local national police and security forces for resources and territorial control.

These may not be locally available or supportable over a wide area with a light footprint. Why do Marines require a man squad? Is that a potential joint active duty billpayer? Could Marine reservists fill in one of the fire teams? Active Marines are being cut far less proportionally than active Soldiers. However, given the success of a single heavy BCT in OIF, do future threats truly dictate a balanced combine arms battalion particularly when adding a third battalion to the armored BCTs? Tanks are fuel intensive and deployment challenges, tear up roads, and require hefty bridges.

Why not one armor company per battalion with 17 tanks and 3-tank platoons. That is still 51 tanks in the future armored BCT vs. That retains the HHC and one tank company to offer armor officer command opportunities equaling the two infantry companies, plus a reconnaissance troop or two in the BCT. Give armor control of unmanned ground and air vehicles controlled by the tank loader. A proven winner in these wars. The aviation restructuring initiative is sensible given planned reductions in active combat aviation brigades from 13 to In the future, satellite data links will be increasingly vulnerable and MQ-1C offers lower cost non-satellite data link alternatives.

Recent articles describe using Apaches for overwater Pacific duties, and Europe obviously requires additional rotating attack helicopter units to deter Russian armor. Yet except for some expensive Excalibur and G-MLRS rounds, our own capabilities despite larger defense budgets than adversaries are still rather limited due to cost. Something must defend U. BCTs require more engineers. Did line charges and flailing chain robots for dismounts work? We need more realism about the quality of information provided by civilians speaking a different language telling tales of unknown veracity.

Just as police understand that eye-witness testimony is often unreliable Ferguson, etc , Soldier recall similarly is flawed and limited to areas briefly visible at ground level at low dismount speed. Adversaries often disappear or blend in as our patrols near and reappear later limiting the value of presence patrols.

• .
• ?
• The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese.
• Marcus Marius Cornelius;
• The Vietnam War: 5 things you might not know - CNN;
• Betrayed (Web Grange detective Book 8)?

This increases IED and ambush risk that also effect locals. Greater prevalence of platoon and company-level unmanned ground and air vehicles, small aerostats, and telescoping and unattended sensors could provide greater persistence.

User account menu

They also would provide permanent and real time full motion video vs. What about green-on-blue attacks? How many active MPs are enough and can more be reserve police officers? Did connectivity and networks work? Were command posts too large? Given a mission command philosophy stressing greater lower echelon autonomy, are we spending too much effort and manpower on communication? Move-Shoot-Communicate implies that it retains a key place. Non-satellite communication on-the-move must improve or large command posts and their antenna farms risk becoming vulnerable to indirect fires and loss of satellites.

This has proven to be a major host nation security force limitation. Reaching Syrian Kurds for instance from the sea is proving difficult. Light footprints of U. Some host nations also have trouble maintaining equipment and still require parts and expertise access not prevalent with light footprints. Brain injuries and PTSD require extensive attention as do suicide other mental health issues. The fact that so many of the suffering are ground service members may indicate a link between numbers and length of deployments which is inexorably tied to numbers of active and reserve component units.

Air ambulances in particular are not readily available to most host nations and large areas may limit ground vehicle evacuation due to distance from aid stations. Will service members employ service-issued smart phones for individual and other training? Only artillery appears to have had problems retaining targeting skills when given other duties and prevented from firing in many cases. Combat Training Centers have been effective training tools but the heavy deployment burden of units often meant that brief time stateside between combat tours was spent preparing for and attending weeks of CTC training.

Will the Decisive Action Training Environment change now that these wars will deploy smaller elements? This has been an aviation mainstay for years. Embedded training involving simulation appears to have great potential if it can be added to current and future vehicles and potentially aircraft. VBS3 and other tools can be used for individual, crew, and collective training and integrated with live training.

This is only as effective as command pressure to use the tools. Similarly, outstanding IMI made available to units has not always been employed or emphasized in training. These updates are not easily accomplished. Marine replacements for the AAV could be smaller if their squads were smaller. Strykers also were too wide with slat armor and too heavy for C transport with double V-hull. Can unmanned ground vehicles and unattended sensors replace infantry dismounts for night patrols?

This could be an opportunity to test the concept of a common prime mover vehicle for infantry and armor with a separate rear module for either infantry or armor. By keeping prime mover and rear module weight each at 39, lbs, both could be separately transported by C and joined in theater by PLS truck hydraulic upload. That does not bode well for a smaller tilt rotor for FVL. The high MV cost per flying hour also could be problematic. Systems like Switchblade loitering lethal UAS are possible alternatives to guided mortar rounds.

Israel maintains a heightened state of readiness, advanced early warning systems, and a robust military intelligence capability to ensure attackers cannot take advantage of Israel's lack of strategic depth. Israel's emphasis on operational offense was espoused by its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion , as early as during Israel's war of Independence:. If [the Arabs] attack us as they did this time, we shall transfer the war to the gates of their country. We do not intend to conduct If they attack us again, in the future, we want the war to be waged not in our country, but in the enemy's country, and we want to be not on the defensive but on the attack.

The basic philosophy of Israel was not to initiate war, unless an act of war was carried out against us. We then lived within the lines prior to the Six-Day War, lines that gave no depth to Israel—and therefore, Israel was in a need, whenever there would be a war, to go immediately on the offensive —to carry the war to the enemy's land. IDF command has been decentralized since the early days of the state, with junior commanders receiving broad authority within the context of mission-type orders.

The Soviet meaning of military doctrine was very different from U. Soviet Minister of Defence Marshal Grechko defined it in as "a system of views on the nature of war and methods of waging it, and on the preparation of the country and army for war, officially adopted in a given state and its armed forces. In Soviet times, theorists emphasised both the political and "military-technical" sides of military doctrine, while from the Soviet point of view, Westerners ignored the political side.

However, the political side of Soviet military doctrine, Western commentators Harriet F Scott and William Scott said, "best explained Soviet moves in the international arena". Soviet and contemporary Russian doctrine emphasizes combined-arms warfare as well as operational warfare. It emphasizes the initiation of military hostilities at a time, date, and location of its choosing on terms of its choosing and the extensive preparation of the battlespace for operations.

The Soviet response to problems of nuclear strategy began with classified publications. However, by , with the publication in the Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Sokolovsky 's volume, Military Strategy , the Soviets laid out their officially endorsed thoughts on the matter, and their ideas on how to cope with nuclear conflict. In the s and early s, the Moderate Party —led governments transformed the Swedish Armed Forces from a Cold War posture of defence to one of participation in international operations. The assumption was that Sweden's homeland would face minimal external threats.

For some years the British Army achieved considerable success without having any formal 'Military Doctrine', although a huge number of publications dealing with tactics, operations and administration had been produced. NATO underpins the defence of the UK and its Allies, while also providing deployable expeditionary capabilities to support and defend UK interests further afield. However, the British Army had formal publications for a long time, and these amounted to its doctrine. They required each arm and service to produce their own specific publications to give effect to FSR.

After the Second World War FSR were replaced by various series of manuals, again with specific training pamphlets for each arm and service.

These deal with operational and tactical matters. The current capstone publication for the army is Army Doctrine Publication Operations alongside maritime and air-power equivalents and joint warfare publications all under the umbrella of BDD. The four layers constituting "land doctrine" are summarised as:. BDD is divided into two parts: Defence Context deals with two matters.

First, the relationship between Defence policy and military strategy, and—while highlighting the utility of force — emphasizes the importance of addressing security issues through a comprehensive, rather than an exclusively military, approach. Second it expounds the Nature of and the Principles of War , the three Levels of Warfare Strategic, Operational and Tactical and its evolving character. The part deals with three matters. First it describes the likely employment of the British Armed Forces in pursuit of Defence policy aims and objectives.

Next it explains the three components of fighting power conceptual, physical and moral components and the criticality of the operating context to its effective application. Finally it describes the British approach to the conduct of military operations—"the British way of war". This includes mission command, the manoeuvrist approach and a warfighting ethos that requires accepting risks.

The Vietnam War: 5 things you might not know

The United States Constitution invests Congress with the powers to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States and to raise and support armies. Title 10 of the United States Code states what Congress expects the Army, in conjunction with the other Services, to accomplish.

1. The Hundred Books.
2. Military doctrine - Wikipedia.
3. !
4. Lifes Lessons from Mom.

Preserve the peace and security and provide for the defense of the United States, its territories and possessions, and any areas it occupies; Support national policies; Implement national objectives; Overcome any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States. Most modern US doctrine is based around the concept of full spectrum operations , which combine offensive, defensive, and stability or civil support operations simultaneously as part of an interdependent joint or combined force to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.

They employ synchronized action—lethal and nonlethal—proportional to the mission and informed by a thorough understanding of all dimensions of the operational environment. Offensive operations defeat and destroy enemy forces, and seize terrain, resources, and population centers. They impose the commander's will on the enemy. Defensive operations defeat an enemy attack, gain time, economize forces, and develop conditions favorable for offensive or stability operations. Stability operations encompass various military missions, tasks, and activities conducted abroad to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.

Civil support operations are support tasks and missions to homeland civil authorities for domestic emergencies, and for designated law enforcement and other activities. This includes operations dealing with the consequences of natural or manmade disasters, accidents, and incidents within the homeland. Under President Lyndon Johnson it was stated that the US armed forces should be able to fight two —at one point, two-and-a-half—wars at the same time. This was defined to mean a war in Europe against the Soviet Union, a war in Asia against China or North Korea, and a "half-war" as well—in other words, a "small" war in the Third World.

When Richard Nixon took office in , he altered the formula to state that the United States should be able to fight one-and-a-half wars simultaneously. This doctrine remained in place until —90, when President George H. Bush ordered the "Base Force" study which forecast a substantial cut in the military budget, an end to the Soviet Union's global threat, and the possible beginning of new regional threats.

In , President Bill Clinton ordered a "Bottom-Up Review," based on which a strategy called "win-hold-win" was declared—enough forces to win one war while holding off the enemy in another conflict, then moving on to win it after the first war is over. The final draft was changed to read that the United States must be able to win two "major regional conflicts" simultaneously. The first 1 refers to defending the US homeland. The 4 refers to deterring hostilities in four key regions of the world.

The 2 means the US armed forces must have the strength to win swiftly in two near-simultaneous conflicts in those regions. The final 1 means that the US forces must win one of those conflicts "decisively". The general policy objectives are to 1 assure allies and friends; 2 dissuade future military competition, 3 deter threats and coercion against U. The Department of Defense publishes Joint Publications which state all-services doctrine. Currently the basic Air Force doctrinal documents are the series of Air Force publications. Currently the basic unclassified naval doctrinal documents are Naval Doctrine Publications 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6.

It was inspired by the Yugoslav People's Liberation War against the fascist occupiers and their collaborators in the Second World War , and was designed to allow Yugoslavia to maintain or eventually reestablish its independent and non-aligned status should an invasion occur. According to it, any citizen who resists an aggressor is a member of the armed forces , thus the whole population could be turned into a monolithic resistance army.

Starting from the elementary school education, over high schools , universities , organizations and companies, the authorities prepared the entire population to contest an eventual occupation of the country and finally to liberate it. For this purpose, the Territorial Defense Forces TO would be formed to mobilize the population in case of an aggression. The combat readiness of the TO meant that the steps of organization and training could be bypassed after the start of hostilities.

The TO would supplement the regular Yugoslav People's Army , giving it greater defensive depth and an armed local population ready to support combat actions. Large numbers of armed civilians would increase the cost of an invasion to a potential aggressor. In such a situation, Yugoslavia would remain non-aligned, and it would not accept foreign troops of either alliance on its territory.

The doctrine recognized the likelihood that one side or the other might try to seize Yugoslav territory as a forward staging area , to ensure lines of communication or simply to deny the territory to enemy forces. Such action would be considered aggression and would be resisted. Regardless of ideology, the occupiers would be considered Yugoslavia's enemy. They chad able-bodied civilian males and females. Between 1 and 3 million Yugoslavs between the ages of 15 and 65 would fight under TO command as irregular or guerrilla forces in wartime.

In peacetime, however, about , TO troops were involved in military training and other activities. The TO concept focused on small, lightly armed infantry units fighting defensive actions on a familiar local terrain. A typical unit was a company -sized detachment. More than communes, factories, and other enterprises organized such units, which would fight in their home areas, maintaining local defense production essential to the overall war effort. The TO also included some larger, more heavily equipped units with wider operational responsibilities.

The TO battalions and regiments operated in regional areas with artillery and antiaircraft guns and some armoured vehicles. Using their mobility and tactical initiative, these units would attempt to alleviate the pressure of enemy armored columns and air strikes on smaller TO units. In the coastal regions, TO units had naval missions. They operated some gunboats in support of navy operations. They were organized to defend strategic coastal areas and naval facilities against enemy amphibious landings and raids. They also trained some divers for use in sabotage and other special operations.

The TO was helped by the fact that most of its citizen- soldiers were one-time JNA conscripts who had completed their term of compulsory military service. However, TO recruitment was somewhat limited by the army's desire to include as many recently released conscripts as possible in its own military reserve.