Be wary of the 'precision strike paradox'
2025-12-23
With the accelerated evolution of modern warfare forms, precision strikes, with their efficient and accurate characteristics, have become a widely concerned means at the tactical level. However, when this approach is excessively promoted as the core basis for battlefield decision-making, it gradually reveals a thought-provoking paradox: precise execution of strikes may become a catalyst for strategic imbalance, loss of control of the situation, and fixed thinking, causing the war effect to deviate from the macro strategic intention. In the face of this situation, we must analyze its manifestations and generation logic from multiple dimensions, striving to avoid the paradox of precise strikes and truly serve the realization of strategic goals through military actions. Be wary of the paradox that the more precise the tactics, the more unfocused the strategy. In the implementation of precision strike tactical operations, if there is an excessive focus on the technical ability to accurately destroy targets, the enthusiasm for short-term results may replace the emphasis on clear strategic goals, causing a false sense of progress and even falling into a trap of strategic drift without realizing it. The root of this phenomenon lies in the fact that the essential nature of war is obscured by the halo of technology. Clausewitz once pointed out that war is not an independent existence, but a continuation of politics through another means. In other words, political objectives are the fundamental logic of war, and all military actions are only means to achieve this logic. Precise strikes, based on their quantitative evaluation of combat results such as the number of destroyed targets and the percentage of damage, can easily trigger blind attention or even superstition towards technology, causing decision-makers to unconsciously shift their focus from abstract and complex political goals to concrete and controllable technological execution. For example, in the Afghanistan War, the US military won almost every exchange of fire at the tactical level, but due to the "mission creep" caused by its constantly wavering goals, it ultimately failed to achieve its long-term political objectives. The root cause lies in the imbalance between the primary and secondary contradictions. When the means of military action overpower its political objectives, decision-makers become obsessed with precise control of tactical details while neglecting the dynamic grasp of strategic goals, which may lead to the misconception of "local for local" and ultimately result in a deviation from the overall strategic intent. This reminds us that the application of the method of contradiction analysis must be integrated throughout the entire process of combat decision-making. Firstly, a reverse mechanism of "strategic traction technology" should be established, and decision-makers should repeatedly ask a core question: "Can what we are doing bring us closer to the ultimate strategic goal?" The purpose of precise strikes should be strictly limited to the framework of serving macro strategic goals. Secondly, a strategic evaluation module should be embedded in tactical operations to test whether the strike behavior deviates from the strategic "main course" through a multidimensional indicator system. Finally, it is necessary to strengthen the training of commanders' systematic thinking, so that they can not only pursue tactical accuracy, but also jump out of technical details, examine the value of actions from multiple perspectives such as politics, economy, and society, and avoid falling into the cognitive trap of "tactical success is strategic victory". Be wary of the paradox that the more controllable the crackdown, the more out of control the situation becomes. One of the purposes of precision strike is to reduce non target damage, limiting the combat effectiveness to a predictable and controllable range. However, in practice, there is sometimes a reverse correlation between "precision strike" and "system damage", leading to confusion and unpredictable collapse of the overall strategy. The contradiction between micro precision and macro disorder is essentially a collision between technological rationality and the complexity of war, just like the "butterfly effect" revealed by complexity science. A seemingly precise strike action may evolve into an unpredictable global disturbance through the nonlinear correlation of multiple nodes within the system. This global disorder caused by precise local control is a manifestation of the "frictional force of war" in the information age, but its source has shifted from physical obstacles to the inherent complexity of the system. The solution lies in shifting from goal centered linear thinking to system centered networked thinking. On the one hand, it is necessary to develop a multi spectral strike effectiveness evaluation system that integrates traditional damage assessment with non military dimensions such as social psychology, economy, and livelihood indicators. Commanders should not view the enemy as a target list, but rather as an interdependent and dynamically evolving life system, in order to identify key nodes, dependency relationships, and potential positive and negative feedback loops, and explore the systemic chain reactions that may occur after removing a certain node. On the other hand, in the weapon design phase, the digital twin technology is used to predict the systematic chain reaction that may be caused by the strike behavior, establish a dynamic closed-loop mechanism of "strike feedback correction", turn the regulation of collateral damage control into pre avoidance, and use real-time data acquisition and intelligent algorithm optimization to achieve the dynamic balance between the strike accuracy and system stability. Be wary of the paradox that the more transparent the information, the more rigid the thinking. The high-definition videos and real-time data continuously transmitted by the precision strike platform seem to be able to dispel the "fog of war" and provide unprecedented battlefield transparency for commanders. However, from another perspective, this information overload not only fails to bring true clarity, but also gives rise to a more covert 'digital fog'. The massive and seemingly objective data creates an illusion of omniscience and omnipotence, which easily amplifies the inherent thinking in the commander's mind. This phenomenon is closely related to the "confirmation bias" in psychology, where people tend to search, interpret, and recall information that can confirm their existing beliefs. When a commander approves a strike operation, they unconsciously prioritize direct evidence that proves the success of the operation, such as target damage assessment, while ignoring or belittling indirect intelligence that contradicts it, such as changes in enemy propaganda strategies, subtle changes in public opinion, etc. This cognitive closed loop constructed by technology makes strategic assumptions extremely difficult to falsify. In the end, although decision-makers have access to massive amounts of data, they turn a blind eye to key non-material factors such as the enemy's true intentions, adaptive strategies, and mental state, creating a situation of "rich data but poor insights", which lays a huge hidden danger for strategic misjudgment. To break this dangerous thinking loop, the "adversarial" thinking mechanism can be introduced into the decision-making process, actively seeking and facing different perspectives. Through cross validation of multi-source heterogeneous information in information system design, the cognitive monopoly of a single information channel can be broken, and an "information entropy" evaluation model can be established to quantify the certainty and uncertainty of battlefield information, providing decision-makers with clearer cognitive coordinates. At the same time, targeted training should be conducted to cultivate the critical thinking ability of commanders towards technical information, enabling them to establish a dynamic verification mechanism between algorithm output and actual battlefield situations. This training should include evaluating the credibility of information sources, reverse analyzing algorithm logic, and other content to ensure that commanders' judgment criteria always come from reality and serve the overall situation. The true strategic effectiveness does not come from a perfect targeting image, but from cultivating profound strategic wisdom - a deep understanding of unpredictable factors in politics, history, culture, and human conflicts. We need to recognize that the ultimate 'winning weapon' is not a missile, but a cautious commander's mind, who not only knows' how to strike ', but also knows' whether to strike' and 'why to fight' in complex situations. (New Society)
Edit:QuanYi Responsible editor:Wang Xiaoxiao
Source:www.81cn
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