I found it very interesting while reading it to compare the different frameworks. It seemed to me that the Waves framework very efectively explained the role that society and technology play in the progression of warfare that is sometimes missing from XGW and Boyd’s frameworks which are geared more to address the theory behind warfare.

Welcome to the tdaxp community. Your comment is most useful if you criticize someone’s ideas, rather than him personally.

Aherring & Purpleslog,

Interesting comments!

Adrian,

My point is, that while whatever happened might have been important, it is not a war because wars are indeed big loud obnoxious things full of death and destruction.

By this definition, volacnoes are wars, but late-stage counterinsurgencies are not.

A better criticism against 5GW being “war’ at all is that wars are bargaining situations, but in 5GW only one side is aware it is bargaining. Perhaps, but certainly violentlly running through Boyd’s PISRR stages [1] would constitute a war as we understand if, if not necessarily bargaining.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/02/13/ooda-pisrr-part-i-the-social-cognition-loop.html

37, I did not mean to imply that if your opponent doesn’t notice something, it means that nothing important happened. My point is, that while whatever happened might have been important, it is not a war because wars are indeed big loud obnoxious things full of death and destruction.

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I haven’t read that book in a long (very pre-5GW for me).

Let me give you an answer from a different direction and from a different framework than The generations of modern warfare or XGW, specifically the Toffler’s Waves framework.

5GW fits very nicely into the aspect of Third Wave warfare known as ‘anti-war’. In that context, 5GW is basically an expression of highly indirect knowledge-based competition, yet still as far as the Toffler’s are concerned part of the Third Wave’s version of warfare.

It definitely shows the manipulation part of 5GW. Crown is a SEI of a sort to.

“If one side ‘never knew’ there was a war, they’re probably right!”

First of all, if you actually parse this grammatically, the sentence doesn’t work.

But he’s implying that if you run a successful 5GW campaign and your opponent never notices, then you didn’t do anything signifigant. This is a great example of what Robert Anton Wilson was talking about in Quantum Psychology: when a Moslem and a Baptist discuss God, they’re both right.

This is a perfect example of why OODA loops are a tricky concept. I have had to re-think Boyd about 8 times in the past year since I discovered him, he’s very subtle, but fortunately also very precise.

Adrian, you seem to have a mental definition of “warfare” that’s set upon being public, obvious, loud, violent, and involve casualties. The problem is not with this blog post, but with your mind.

At least, that’s how it appears to my mind.

Cheers.

I still don’t see any distinction between 5GW and covert action or publicity campaigns.

Covert action might be considered a tactical 5GW, but as long as the sponsoring actor was recognizedas a bargaining partner by the target, then it would not be a 5GW.

How do you consider publicity campaigns to be like 5GW?

If one side ‘never knew’ there was a war, they’re probably right!

Why?