Military Effectiveness, Components of Combat Power, and the Specific Nature of War

Abstract

The issue of military effectiveness and the demand to make it measurable plays an important role in Anglo-Saxon, especially American military thinking. Approaching war as an instrument, understanding it as a tool has resulted that Westerners see international security challenges and problems in quantitative terms that can be solved by technology. This is expressed in the obsession with numbers, which is often seen as reality instead as a means to analyse reality. Numbers and metrix are seen as hard facts that serve as first tools of control and management. It is a commonplace that war and operations cannot be
controlled. This is true for measuring military effectiveness and the difficult-to-grasp factors of combat power.