Inventor Of ‘Shock & Awe’ Explains How It Might Work In Ukraine

Harlan K. Ullman, now senior adviser to the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., introduced the term “Shock & Awe” in a 1996 book that looked back at the 1991 Desert Storm campaign to liberate Kuwait. Shock & Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance asked how a future conflict might be waged far more rapidly, at far less cost in blood and treasure, and still achieve the same overwhelming results as Desert Storm.  

This 1996 study could be the playbook for a 2022 Russian campaign against Ukraine. But first the term needs to be properly understood.

“The term Shock and Awe was greatly misused during and since the second Gulf War as a slogan and not as a strategy,” says Ullman.

Ullman doesn’t believe a Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely. He says that Western powers are properly concentrating on negotiation — but without acknowledging or understanding the motivations and rationale driving Russian President Vladimir Putin. While many analysts tend to take Putin’s stance of being threatened by NATO expansion as posturing, Ullman thinks we would be well-advised to take his grievances seriously and examine his “treaty demands” to determine any advantages of returning to the pre-1997 situation in Europe that in the current form are unacceptable.

He suggests that the volatile situation could lead to a war starting by accident, whatever Putin’s current intentions.

In Desert Storm, a force led by the U.S. took on a large but hopeless Iraqi army. After a lengthy air campaign that eviscerated Iraqi defenses, in a “100-hour” campaign, the U.S.-coalition led forces routed Iraq’s army from Kuwait in a one-sided military contest. Unlike his son a dozen years later, President George H.W. Bush choose not to pursue the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s army into Kuwait.

In Eastern Ukraine, an invading Russian force will face a large, determined but less well-equipped Ukrainian army and will be able to quickly control the air and cyber domains. Some analysts expect that if an attack comes, Putin’s goal may be only to seize territory in the flat eastern part of the country, to avoid the difficulties of occupying an entire country — as the Soviet Union and NATO learned in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq after 2003.  They might achieve this goal with the aid of Shock & Awe.

Shock & Awe does not simply refer to massive application of firepower, which was how the media in particular endlessly applied the term during the 2003 campaign. The real battleground is the opponent’s mind, and the doctrine suggests using a whole range of measures besides bombs to secure psychological victory.

“The goal of Rapid Dominance will be to destroy or so confound the will to resist that an adversary will have no alternative except to accept our strategic aims and military objectives,” according to the book. [My emphasis]. Shock & Awe accomplishes this by affecting, influencing and controlling will and perception in order to get the adversary to do what the attacker wants.

In a sense this is nothing new — military thinkers from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz have stressed the importance of demoralizing the enemy rather than physically destroying them. What makes Ullman’s book different is that it foresaw the use of modern technology, in particular the growth of cyberwarfare and information warfare:

We need to be able to shut down key electronic communications to, from, and within a country (or within a specific subgroup or faction). We also need the ability to control radio and television within a country. It is important in all cases, however, to be able to deny an adversary’s ability to communicate and to have our own means of reaching the population with appropriate messages.

During Desert Storm there was only one rolling 24-hour news channel, CNN. This proved to be tremendously influential, and the term ‘CNN effect’ was coined to cover the impact of such immediate news coverage. This worked to the advantage of the coalition thanks to carefully orchestrated press briefings and the selective release of videos of lethal precision bombing. Research in the U.S. showed that the more TV news coverage of the conflict people watched, the less they knew about it, showing how crucial it is to control the media. This might even mean targeting television stations as in the 1999 campaign against Serbia.

Confusion must be imposed on the adversary by supplying only information which will shape the adversary’s perceptions and help break his will.

Rolling TV coverage is now less important that the internet and social media, making the key to a successful Shock & Awe operation, as Ullman explains.

“Two words can make this case: Cambridge Analytica, a data processing firm few knew once existed,” Ullman tells me. “CA ultimately gathered some 5,000 pieces of data on 30-70 million people and used that data in the U.K. Brexit Referendum to allow Leave to win. It also interfered in the 2016 and possibly 2020 election to help Trump.”

Ullman believes that precisely targeted communications could be the online equivalent of smart bombs, achieving far greater impact than the crude carpet bombing of cable television.

“Russia should have at least that amount of data on Ukrainians and target them directly on social media. If Russia had not done that I would have been surprised, and we would have been remiss and derelict in not dealing with Russia’s ‘active measures,’” says Ullman.

Shock & Awe could not be carried out entirely online. A stream of images of Russian forces destroying Ukrainian targets, of burning Ukrainian tanks, and point-of-view video from bombs and missiles striking with deadly accuracy needs some substance behind it to be credible.

“Some kinetic force will still be needed. You can’t fully shock and awe with information operations,” says Ullman.

The point of such kinetic operations is not destruction on a large scale, but to give the impression that the Russians could destroy any target at will and that resistance is futile, or as the book puts it:

It would be vitally important to give the appearance that there are no safe havens from attack, and that any target may be attacked at any time with impunity and force.

“You want to put an enemy in a position of complete despair and hopelessness, so field commanders conclude ‘I have no way out except to quit,’“ says Ullman. “You want them to feel like the French at the start of Dien Bien Phu realizing the alternatives are suicide or surrender.”

The aim is to make every field commander feel as though their own position is hopeless. Russia may deploy electronic warfare gear to simulate the radio and radar activity of a combat units, as well as stealthy communications to mask the real location of active forces. Satellite images show us the build-up of Russian forces near the border, but the Russians are past masters at using decoys and deployed an ‘inflatable army’ to help deceive Western observers in 2014. This sort of deception could enable Russian forces to appear to be everywhere and unstoppable.

The military requirements for Shock & Awe include an adequate supply of precision weapons. Only 9% of the bombs dropped in Desert Storm were laser-guided, but these accounted for 75% of strategic targets destroyed. Thirty years on, the Russians have an abundance of precision munitions, and aircraft to deliver them. Shock & Awe also calls for advanced electronic warfare and cyberattack capabilities, which Russia has also steadily built up.

Shock & Awe may also be supplemented by dramatic use of new technologies or old technologies used differently. The book cites the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs as forcing an otherwise fanatically determined Japan to surrender, not because these two atom bombs were more destructive than thousand-bomber raids but because the Japanese could not comprehend that such devastation could come from a single weapon. In essence the high command was shocked and awed into doing what was previously deemed dishonorable and unthinkable — surrendering. The book suggests developing a few classified ‘silver bullet’ weapons, mentioning the possibility of non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons which can instantly knock out electronics over a significant area, leaving those affected effectively blinded and cut off from contact.

The book also suggests the deployment of robotic combat systems – like Russia’s Uran-9 uncrewed tanks and their growing fleet of attack drones – for their shock value.

While Russian military doctrine does not specifically include Shock & Awe, their military authors often talk about “Reflexive Control.” This refers to compelling the adversary to act in specific ways by specific military actions. A key aspect is understanding that adversary’s mindset and knowing what, for example, will force them to retreat. Reflexive Control might include Shock & Awe to compel immediate surrender.

“Deception in military operations comes more naturally to the Russians, because it’s always been part of their military doctrine, “says Ullman. “For someone like Putin with his KGB background, it’s in his blood. And while our generals and admirals understand deception, it is less central — the U.S. has always been more of a firepower offensive military.”

Ullman maintains that a Russian military offensive is unlikely. But the application of extreme psychological pressure might still be relevant.

“Using Shock & Awe or active measures, Russia could perhaps choose to target the most influential person in this case and coerce, cajole or convince President Zelensky to defer NATO membership for an extended period in exchange for certain concessions,” says Ullman. “For example a free referendum in Crimea and bringing in peacekeepers in Donbas to ensure some form of armistice or agreement.”

Russia might, for example, feed Zelensky information about their military strength or likely outcomes. Zelensky – whose political platform is based on settling the conflict on Eastern Ukraine without further bloodshed, and whose approval rating has plummeted since his election in 2019 – is not in a strong position and may be forced to believe he has no choice but to comply.

“The appropriate balance of Shock and Awe must cause the perception and anticipation of certain defeat,” as the book puts it.

These factors, the perception and anticipation, are far more important than the actual forces deployed or the number of videos of tanks being blown up or reports of units fleeing in terror. And if not countered they might hand Russia a quick win.

What Putin does in Ukraine remains to be seen. Ullman asks why the West has not tried to use a bit of “Shock and Awe” on Putin to affect, influence and possibly to control some of his thinking with more unconventional and cleverer uses of diplomacy and, to borrow a Russian phrase “other means,” — a very interesting question.