The document discusses how insurgent groups operate in a decentralized manner using cellular and autonomous structures, making them difficult to defeat through traditional military means. It notes that insurgents adapt quickly and avoid decisive engagements, instead spreading their resources thinly and capitalizing on opponents' missteps through propaganda. Effective strategies against such groups involve changing their underlying ideologies, recentralizing their structures, or matching their own decentralization.

1. WE'RE NOT WINNING By Gabe Mounce

3. Fourth Generation Warfare & OODA Loop Implications of The Iraqi Insurgency By G.I. Wilson Greg Wilcox Chet Richards December 2004 - Find the full brief here ORIENT OBSERVE ACT DECIDE

5. Machines don't fight wars. People do, and they use their minds. - Col John R. Boyd Military action is important to the nation—it is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction, so it is imperative to examine it. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War INTRODUCTION

6. Boyd’s OODA “Loop” INTRODUCTION Orient Observe Act Decide

7. Orientation is the Fulcrum of Boyd’s OODA “Loop” Orientation is the fulcrum of Boyd’s OODA Loop. It shapes the way we interact with the environment—hence the way we observe it, the way we decide, the way we act. Orientation shapes the character of present observe-orient-decide-act loops—while these present loops shape the character of the future orientation. Source: Col John Boyd’s Organic Design from “Patterns of Conflict” Orient Observe Act Decide

12. “ The absence of structure, leadership, and formal organization, once considered a weakness, has become a major asset. Seemingly chaotic groups have challenged and defeated established institutions.”

13. “ The Rules of the Game have Changed.”

21. ORIENT Identifying and destroying insurgent infrastructure/organization is problematic. Iraqi insurgents do not have western-like command and control . Instead insurgent C2 is often very cellular, autonomous, diffuse, and self-adapting . Perhaps this is what distinguishes it in a large part from other insurgencies. Insurgents have an intuitive sense of the effects their actions will achieve in the cultural and religious environment in which they operate. We often misread their culture and misjudge the effects.

26. “Where are the weaknesses of the blitz?” 103

27. ORIENT Remember, “They” Network, Too! You tell Sam Who works with Joe Who’s a distant cousin of Dangerous Dawoud

28. ORIENT Networks and Nonlinearity ( Chaos )

32. Commonality Ideology – Glue that holds decentralized orgs together Ruled by Norms Instigated by Catalyst