The purpose of post was thinking something unconventional/unorthodox because this battle arena is new.
My entire strategy revolves around draining the enemy moral. will and capacity to fight. Of course all can be achieved by lethal force but that is not the point. Some factors I give importance more, are:
1. Give them escape
route. Not necessarily in form of safe exit but; better leverages if they surrender, negotiate their political agenda, keeping their family separate from the issue, etc.
2.A well fortified and less equipped enemy means they will fight till death as they already know that fighting a stronger enemy is equivalent to
suicide
3.
Win people on your side. This is essential as it will reduce
future recruitment and help building you
intelligence network.
4. The
bigger is the enemy the easier to break them into factions on racial, political, ethnic, etc. lines. So large number of enemy is their strength as well as
weakness. Hence, cutting their supply will seriously affect their will and operation capability.
Now regarding using military actions:
As I am not military expert as well, so remain limited here
1. We need a one/two front engagement with minor/QRF operations (open front of your choice to keep them running).
2. Accuracy and lethality are more important instead of blunt force.
3. Take out high value target, energy lines and all things which make them unrest, unwilling and frustrated.e.g. keep them awake all night by bombardment.
4. Continue to engage them to ration them out from fuel, arsenal, food etc. Its actually never to stop fight and to do dialogue.
5. But the main thing in my mind was use of less lethal
biological element. I think it is some kind of flu. Spread the virus through water, food, air, etc. Flu massively deteriorates physical ability to fight, it is viral so it spreads widely and rapidly etc. Give your soldier antidote before entering the city for final assault.
For every action you take, one must think of future and world reaction. So no massive killing and lethal nuclear, biological or chemical weaponry.
@Nihonjin1051 @SipahSalar @C130 @jhungary @asad71 @Penguin @Color_Less_Sky @ahmadnawaz22 @Pangu
Well, your plan is very ideological, but would never work...
In a city siege with resident support, you are focusing too much on HUMINT, population support and trying to convert your population. But I can tell you this, what you said is a lot easier to say then for you to do it.
The key to fighting an insurgency is not the insurgency part itself, but rather the "fight" part, alas, how do you make them stop fighting, rather than focus on how do you stop them from becoming an insurgency force. Also, you suggesting implying that it would be an easy task to separate who is willing combatant, and who is not. The very first requirement of HUMINT is that you had to have an trusted/established source, which a factor that you do not specified, and it take months, if not years, to create a trusted source.
1. Give them escape route. Not necessarily in form of safe exit but; better leverages if they surrender, negotiate their political agenda, keeping their family separate from the issue, etc.
A simple question, what if they lied?? It's easy to say you undertake an oath or a pledge not to fight the invader, but you cannot control whether or not if they will keep that oath
Exit route of any kind will jeopardise either the security phase and pacification phase, if you allow free (or not free) movement in an out of the controlled area, then you allow people to influx your AO with weapons, ideas and most important of all, news. If you need to capture that city, and pacify the population, you cannot allow news from the outside world to be brought in or news from the inside to get out.
The only way populace can "exit" that AO would be under confinement
2.A well fortified and less equipped enemy means they will fight till death as they already know that fighting a stronger enemy is equivalent to suicide
In most case, not all, the defender would not care if they are suicidal to stand up for the invader, do remember insurgency is also kind of resistance, you still do get killed if you participate in an active insurgency, for insurgent, they choose not to fight in a convention manner does not equate to they scare of dying. Just they prefer a better chance to keep fighting in a tactical point of view (You ceased to fight once you die, hence it is utmost importance to stay alive)
3. Win people on your side. This is essential as it will reduce future recruitment and help building you intelligence network.
This is what I am talking about you say people, the question is,
WHOM.
The key of insurgency is that you have resistance tug inside a normal population, unless there are someone who can stand out and point to people and say "This is an insurgent fighter, and this one is not" and he have to be trusted, otherwise you cannot build your HUMINT network like that.
The premises is, you have to know who you need to win, before winning them, time and again, counter-insurgency failed because the "Authority" trusted the wrong people.
4. The bigger is the enemy the easier to break them into factions on racial, political, ethnic, etc. lines. So large number of enemy is their strength as well as weakness. Hence, cutting their supply will seriously affect their will and operation capability.
Again, how?? You need to know who to cut off supplies from, and in most case, racial, political, ethnical and religious factors will stir up some trouble, but not enough to break the insurgency, look at China in WW2, Arabs in Israeli War and also look at Iraqi war in 2003 for an example.
1. We need a one/two front engagement with minor/QRF operations (open front of your choice to keep them running).
You need to secure the area first, if all you do is a QRF and SF attacks, then the insurgent will try to defeat you with conventional war, and then take control of your population. look at what ISIS did to Iraq as a prime example.
The correct way is to launch a general attack to secure the area and immediate, then send out SF/QRF to support your Civil Affair/Relation troop.
2. Accuracy and lethality are more important instead of blunt force.
Really depends, if the insurgent mount an organised attack (ala Tet-offensive) Brunt force are still needed.
3. Take out high value target, energy lines and all things which make them unrest, unwilling and frustrated.e.g. keep them awake all night by bombardment.
But then you will also piss off the population....
4. Continue to engage them to ration them out from fuel, arsenal, food etc. Its actually never to stop fight and to do dialogue.
Keep the pressure on is good, but bear in mind constant fighting in general will bring down the morale in local population. Fight should be isolated, and also have it own value and merit
5. But the main thing in my mind was use of less lethal biological element. I think it is some kind of flu. Spread the virus through water, food, air, etc. Flu massively deteriorates physical ability to fight, it is viral so it spreads widely and rapidly etc. Give your soldier antidote before entering the city for final assault.
Again, this only works unless you know who you want to target, otherwise it would be a city wide, non-discriminatory attacks, but then if you do, you will only strain your resource as you need to win hearts and minds by heal the sick. and then those insurgent would come back again at you. Or you means the city dies on their own??
