Today I was investigating 5th Generation Warfare, and the various thoughts about the concept. I first started out with some stuff written by Colonel T.X. Hammes(thanks to scott for that article), and eventually ended up on these blogs through my searches. I’m a blogger, so I guess I would naturally gravitate towards the blogging community to learn. And low and behold, I stumbled upon these little gems.
They are called Dreaming 5 GW and Purple Slog(although not a specific 5GW blog), and there are some heavy duty concepts being laid down by the various authors of each. Especially the use of OODA and the references to Boyd, and how 5 GW enters into the mix. I will let the reader explore for themselves. Although I have to give you guys a taste of the kind of snowmobiles they are building.
The author of Purple Slog developed some interesting 5 GW attack models, and the ones I got a kick out of was the Frog Boiling* and the Black Swan** method of 5GW. And what makes all of this interesting, is that blogs are what allow these individuals to network and exchange ideas about 5 GW. A network about networks. In essence, these thoughts about 5GW is slowly ‘boiling the frog’ of what conventional thoughts there are about 5GW. And blogs are representations of individuals that are constantly learning and commenting about their subject, always evolving and always hammering away at the concepts like a blacksmith to steel. Here you go, and enjoy.-Head Jundi
*The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out.
**An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict. This term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor and former wallstreet trader.
——————————————————————
A 5GWer will either take the path of Frog Boiling [4] or the path of Black Swan Hatching [5].
A Frog Boiling 5GW aims to make many small effects which lead to success. The planning will be iterative [6] and future actions will depend on lessons learned from the results achieved from the prior actions. By going slow, using many small actions, and relying upon N-order effects, the Frog Boiling 5GW hopes to get a successful end result without exposure to adversarial forces or without other perhaps even knowing a 5GW has taken place.
A Black Swan Hatching 5GW is designed using the waterfall method [7] to effect a Black Swan event [8] (or at least a major Systems Perturbation). This 5GW achieves its goals from either the Black Swan event itself or from reactions to the Black Swan event [9]. Secrecy is achieved by the tight knit, closed, top-down model of planning and control. The hope is that even if the 5GW effort is discovered, it will be after it is too late[10].
Evolution and Timeline of 5GW