Shock and awe, technically termed rapid dominance, is a military strategy based on overwhelming, spectacular displays of force intended to paralyze an adversary's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight, explained by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in 1996 and developed for US military application by the National Defense University. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Disputed
Core ClaimOverwhelming, spectacular displays of force can paralyze an adversary's perception and will to fight before its own forces are ever engaged in detail. 1 Connections
Associated With
Iraq War, Wars Shock and Awe (rapid dominance) named the intensive opening air campaign of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Shock and Awe
Wikipedialead paragraph
Shock and awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight.
lead/history section
explained by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in 1996 and was developed specifically for application by the US military by the National Defense University of the United States
October 2003 House Armed Services Committee testimony section
The speed of the coalition's actions ("rapidity"), they said, did not affect Iraqi morale.
View the Source Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Core Claim
Army War College staff who studied the 2003 Baghdad campaign argued the rapid coalition victory owed more to technological superiority and the collapse of Iraqi resistance than to the psychological shock-and-awe effect the doctrine predicts: they found the speed of coalition operations did not itself break Iraqi morale, and that organized resistance ended only after direct, close combat inside cities. This challenges the plain reading of this entity's core-claim, which credits the doctrine's rapid, overwhelming application of force with producing the psychological paralysis it is designed to induce.
A dissenting reading, from Staff of the United States Army War College, October 2003 testimony to the House Committee on Armed ServicesWikipedia: Shock and Awe, Wikipedia
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