A recent discussion of the growing domestic activist conflict that has been part of Hamas’ greater lawfare and PR blitz among western liberals. Groups like Neturei Karta, JVP, and SJP, are pushing a number of points of argument that somehow the Israelis should simply forgive and forget the atrocities of 10/7.

There also seems to have been an explosion lately of people online demanding an embrace of gay and trans issues. If we are to take the group alignments at face value, this is the QED of the Iron Law of Religion.

Eventually, every religion will create factions of itself, that oppose the religion on religious grounds

To borrow from Nietzsche “God is dead, and we have killed him”.

On Oct 7, 2023 Hamas launched one of those very significant terrorist raids against Israel, that will likely be memorialized as being definitional nightmare scenarios we have seen a few of in the last 25 years (9/11, Madrid, Bataclan, Mumbai, etc). These types of raids are typified by their absolute ruthlessness and the opportunism of the attackers. As sensational as this attack was, it is not new, it maybe represents some new TTPs, some novelty when it comes to insertion, and strong coordination between units. But it’s not new.

In the west, to those who pay attention to the radical political petri dishes our left-wing inner cities, and college campuses, there has been the growth of movements such as BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) which encourage those actions to be taken against Israeli interests, as a means of supporting the Palestinian cause. Confusingly, BDS and other movements are generally non-specific about support of the Palestinian cause, or the desire for mid-east peace, and increasingly BDS and other movements populated mostly by the over-socialized college students and their busy-body professors have largely dropped any pretense of being anything but anti-Israel, and very often anti-Jew.

Movements like BLM (Black Lives Matter), antifa, gay, trans, groups frequently cross pollinate, as such there tends not to be a lot of variation in ideology and beliefs amongst these groups, also, some of these groups share not just ideas, but membership. The cross-over with BDS, and pro-Palestinian groups with these other groups, means international events in the middle east, can easily turn into civil unrest in the US, and many large cities in Europe.

Since Oct 7, there have been a number of pro-Palestine rallies, most have been peaceful and rather unremarkable. However, a number have resulted in differing levels of violence, including exchanging gunfire. One event that stood out, was on Oct 22, in Minneapolis, MN. A major street was blockaded, and some retiree weaved his way through the crowd, got maced, chased, his car pounded on. The level of organization was rather impressive, vehicles were driven in to blockade the street, drones were flying overhead, and there were essentially roving QRFs (Quick Reaction Forces) on motorbikes and quad bikes. (I will not link the video, but search on youtube). The display was at the very least iterative, of tactics seen at previous protests where bicycles would be used to control access of the police to areas where “direct actions” were happening.

Not all marches have resulted in kinetic street take-overs in the same way everywhere. A number of very large rallies and marches have taken place in Paris, London, and many cities in the US. However, it seems generally that western support is tepid in the face of so much at home opposition. The alignment of so many affinity groups, the slick media releases, has certainly made Hamas’ jihad the cause celeb.

There have been a number of reports, and warnings repeated by the media that there remain the possibilities of attacks in the US on specific days approximately every two weeks. No attacks have yet materialized, but certainly more reports and notices are sure to follow.

Pro-Palestine protests, marches, and rallies, in the west should be taken as a show of force by Hamas, Iran, and their allies. Backlit against the recurrent threat of terrorist attacks in the US and elsewhere put out by the government show that the threat is being taken seriously however, it does not rise to a level where action can be taken.

“War is politics by other means” – Carl von Clausewitz

A lot has been written about the nature of war, Sun Tzu penned his tome 6 centuries before Jesus walked the earth. Man has been fighting man since the beginning and a lot of selection pressure has been expended making sure those who are good at war, (or good at avoiding it) have more children. The Generational Warfare Model was discussed in an earlier re-posting of a Marine Corps Gazette article The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation.

Wars are only fought for two reasons: to impose one’s will on another, or to preserve one’s ability to exercise his will. The scale at which any of these happen can be changed, the motivations, and even some rather complex plays of will and exercise, but the distilled essence is this, everything else is abstraction.

5th Generation Warfare (5GW) has been presented as a new doctrine for non-kinetic war, where the battlefield leans on “information and perception” as a means of shaping behavior. While this is a novel concept, information warfare, propaganda, subterfuge, and deception have been the bread and butter of conventional forces for centuries. The major limitation of any 5GW theory is the at times willful ignorance towards the previous generations and it’s ability to define itself as being distinct.

During WW2 leading up to the D-Day landings, the allied militaries had engaged in a task of convincing the German leadership that a major offensive was coming up, with large amounts of men and materiel, lead by a legendary commander, and would be preceded by a smaller attack in a different place to draw away important resources. While Allied Command spoon fed the information to the Germans, they did so in a way that the German Command ignored their perceptions long enough that a decisive advantage was gained. This was a decidedly kinetic movement, decidedly within the realm of a third generation war, and it was devastating. Under a 5GW approach, would the goal be to just keep the Nazis occupied preparing for an assault that would never come? Continuing to ratchet up the tension?

War will always be kinetic, things will always be damaged. Manipulating the available information, and feeding in other information may shape perception, however the most effective way to do this, is to feed information the confirms existing biases and feeds into the existing perception of the opponent. That Clausewitz quote was a tell.

As a matter of custom, articles on this blog tend to be kept as short as possible. in some ways this hampers the exploration of deeper topics. Alas, there are only so many minutes in the day, and only so much time that can be committed to writing and reading. Brevity is sometimes a lost art form.
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Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) is sometimes brought up as a framework to understand how a less powerful combatant will win over a numerically, technologically, logistically, and financially superior opponent as some soft of fait acompli and triumph of the will. 4GW needs to be put into it’s own context, and understood as distinct from insurgent, partisan, and revolutionary warfare in the conventional sense.

A quick examination of the attributes of a 4th Generation Actor: (doctrinally) Lack of Hierarchy, Lack of Formal Structure, Patience and Flexibility. Contrary to the original assertions of the theory, the current 4GW combatant can be a state actor. This was proven out in the early part of the Ukrainian war in Donetsk and Lughansk, the Russian “LGMs” (little green men), a conventional third-generation military, were removing their insignia and fighting against the Ukrainian military in a protracted conflict for the region. While the Russian LGMs likely were not working under a normal hierarchy, or formal structure, and were likely given wide latitude to conduct operations.

What is interesting about the 4GW combatant enlarges the battle space from simple military conflict to a much broader set of domains: economical, political, the media, military, and civilian. Perhaps what differs most when it comes to 4GW, is the ability to dial up the amount of force used. In many cases, few people look at Lawfare, and Economic warfare in the same context as armed conflict and may often see even basic subterfuge, sabotage, and espionage in law enforcement terms rather than seeing these efforts as the military actions they really are. The use of the courts, the media, as a means of achieving a desired result without having to resort to violence is a key difference between a 4th generation fight and an insurgency.

Because of the perceived overlap between 4GW, insurgency, it’s necessary to take a quick look at some of the thinking about insurgency, but from a counter-insurgency perspective. (There are not enough well defined sources to have such a crystal clear doctrine from the insurgent side) The counterpoint to the 4GW narrative, here are three quotes taken from the summary of “How Insurgencies End” by Ben Connable and Martin C. Libicki published by the RAND institute:

Insurgency Is Suited to Hierarchies and Rural Terrain – Unified hierarchies do better at insurgency than do fragmented networks. Most insurgencies consist of a hybrid of these two models, but urban insurgencies tend to be more networked than their rural counterparts. This finding is closely linked to the finding that insurgencies rarely succeed in middle-income and urbanized countries. Insurgency is an endeavor best practiced in rural, or a mix of rural and urban, terrain.

There is a pattern in the field of armed conflict, in that victory always favors the organized. The 4GW actor may still have a hierarchy, but it may be hidden under other layers, perhaps doctrine, tribal ties, or simple culture. These are well defined attributes of the major Muslim terror groups Al Queda and ISIS. Even when their leadership catches N Hellfire missiles, they have N+1 leaders.

Weak Insurgents Can Win – Insurgents do not need to be militarily strong to win, and, in fact, military strength can backfire if the threat of insurgent military victory galvanizes government security forces. In cases of long-running insurgencies, like those in Colombia and Sri Lanka, the government was able to reinvigorate COIN efforts even in the face of powerful insurgent cadre (in this case, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] and the Tamil Tigers of Eelam).

The counter example of this would be the American Civil Rights movement. The use of the media, lawfare, to achieve their political goals.

Sanctuary Is Vital to Insurgencies – Availability of sanctuary directly correlates with an improved likelihood of insurgent victory, but only if it is provided voluntarily. Insurgencies rarely survive or succeed without some kind of sanctuary. Internal sanctuary is also very valuable, perhaps as valuable as voluntary, external sanctuary.

All combatants at some level depend on having their own support infrastructure, and usually having the support infrastructure in a place that isn’t normally bombed, raided, arrested, sued, or in some way harassed is an absolutely critical feature. The Taliban kept the tribal areas of Pakistan as a summer home when things got too hot, LGMs could move back and forth relatively freely between Russia and Ukraine. The FARC had the jungles of Columbia, and the support of friendly elements in Venezuela. By comparison, the 4th Generation Al Qaeda can evaporate and reform somewhere else. There are new threats on the horizon, and new examples of 4GW to be seen.

While insurgencies and 4GW can sometimes mimic each others behavior, they tend to be distinct. 4GW is viable and effective well below the conflict level most would even consider an armed conflict, in part, because it doesn’t waste it’s time waiting for certain thresholds to be met before it engages parts of it’s apparatus in the fight. While the idea has been well applied elsewhere, insurgency tends to treat violence like a light switch: on or off. A 4GW actor uses a dimmer switch. Whether it’s using NGOs or proxies to engage in Lawfare, tying an adversary up in the court, bullying organizations to go after their adversaries, or simple influencing media organizations to change narratives to their liking, a 4GW adversary might be working against you without you even knowing it.

This article was geared towards the would-be users. In the near future it must be revisited as an adversarial example. This is likely to be much more controversial, and may not be published here.

This morning I was treated to a YouTube video showing off another radio, it was much like other radios but had a new and important feature. What feature was that you ask? I don’t know, I got bored about 30 seconds into the video switched to a music video. But this diversion at least gave me some inspiration for today’s topic.

There are four features that I consider desirable in a handheld radio, and there’s also a hierarchy of importance to them. Obviously, there are compromises to each, but this is my list of essential features (in order of importance).

• Battery Life – There are a lot of great radios out there that have absolutely terrible battery life, and there are two important things about battery life: what is the standby time, and how long does it take to recharge. A radio with a relatively small battery that can be fully recharged in 10-20 minutes would be amazing, but that never happens. Most ham radios will have a 5-5-90 duty cycle, meaning transmitting 5% of the time, listening 5%, and doing nothing 90%, and are designed to have an 8 hour life. What is unfortunate is spare batteries may be expensive or unavailable, and recharging may take 8-16 hours.

• Form Factor – This is a little harder to describe. Generally, a taller, flatter and narrower radio is the desired form factor. There are a number of radio manufacturers who have made radios that are effectively cubes (looking at you yaesu), that are roughly as wide as tall and don’t fit well in pouches in the least.

• Weather Resistance – Weather resistance or waterproofness is an important characteristic for any piece of field gear, not having to baby it, or worry about it being damaged is a quality of life consideration. It’s desirable, but sometimes has trade-offs in terms of audio quality and proprietary connectors.

• Wide Band Rx/Multiple Bands – Generally a dual band (2m/440mhz) radio has enough band coverage to allow communication in the widest set of circumstances. However, there are radios out there that can receive a broad set of frequencies. In some cases from the AM band to nearly 1ghz. Some radios might have different band splits like 6m/2m, or 6m/440mhz. While 6m is a fantastic band and is very useful for longer range communication, because it tends to be rather uncommon on handhelds it’s not that useful. That said a 6m/2m/440mhz tri-band radio is very useful.

Those are the four features that if balanced properly make a really good radio. It is my opinion that having a large battery is the most important feature. Being able to standby for days, or being able to pick up the radio and find it still has enough charge to use for a few hours before needing to be charged adds greatly to the utility of the radio. I’ve had radios that it seemed like every time I picked it up, it had a dead battery (again, looking at you yaesu).

In closing, I want to hit on a few features I don’t consider positives.

• Flash Lights – This is mostly a Baofeng/Chinese radio thing. I can imagine that having a high powered strobe on the radio might be a beneficial thing in some safety applications, and I have used the flashlight once or twice when i didn’t have a real flashlight handy. It is generally a multi-useless feature.

• High Power – A few years ago radios started coming out offering 6-10w of transmitter power (more is better right?) and generally these radios commanded a much higher price. I’m talking about more than Baofeng here, Yaesu and Icom both offered higher powered models. Most 3-5W radios do an ample job of hitting repeaters and talking longer distances. There’s a diminishing return when it comes to higher power, and the major downsides, your radio gets hot, your battery doesn’t last as long, and your radio may overheat more easily.

These rules are mine, they are not by any means set in stone, but they are my idea of what makes a perfect radio. To the chagrin and derision of many, I still carry a Baofeng BF-F8+ (UV-5R) with an extended battery and a stubby antenna. I talk on it a few times a week, I listen regularly, and I charge it maybe every few weeks. It fits nicely in radio and magazine pouches, but it lacks a large memory, it can’t handle channel banks. scanning sucks. But it cost $25 and I can talk on it all day.