1. Sun Tzŭ said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armour, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
Blowtorch said: The cost of the Joes’ army is $778,000,000,000 a year. The cost of the forces that defeated it in Afghanistan is the price of sandals and a kalashnikov.
Blowtorch said: Many economies in the world are linked now, and even if the nation’s weapons can be produced within itself, basic necessities of the civilian population are still reliant on international dependencies. So, even a small army like Cobra can leverage great influence on a larger army’s operational capacity, and even land a heavy strategic blow. In many cases a general that can leverage this can win without fighting.
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
Blowtorch said: Every war that has lasted longer than 5 years since the 20th century has ended in strategic defeat for the operational victor.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
Blowtorch said: If a nation is part of the globally linked economy, the general must be given authority to leverage his economic power. With economies linked, trade can be used not just to preserve combat power, but as an offensive weapon.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
Blowtorch said: Today’s cybernetic armies are capable of planning attacks in detail and scale never before seen, in a matter of moments. When the adversary attacks such an army outside the scope of its own paradigm, the cybernetic army is dislocated. Therefore, a victorious general understands the balance of cybernetic process and operational art in his own forces and that of the enemy, and employs his army as such.
Blowtorch said: Business and linked economies themselves provide a cybernetic warfighting capability.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
Blowtorch said: The long delays of the modern era are known as deterrence.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.
8. The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.
9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.
Blowtorch said: The expeditionary army must understand the scope of its influence and the cost of projecting power. In a world that is linked through the internet, through economy, and through moral law, there are costly vectors for attack and there are cheap ones. A general who wishes to project power beyond those nations that border his own is most vulnerable to disruption of the movement of his forces.
10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.
11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people’s substance to be drained away.
12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.
13, 14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their incomes will be dissipated; while Government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantlets, draught-oxen and heavy waggons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.
Blowtorch said: These calculations are part of what form an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) zone. This concept varies from country to country based on constant factors of Earth, Heaven, and Moral Law relative to both adversaries.
15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one’s own store.
Blowtorch said: When a cybernetic oriented army fights, its soldiers become the weapon itself, and its actions are propelled by feeding the resources it requires to operate and it is reliant on the production of the nation. So, to leverage an economic disruption against a cybernetic army is more effective than to do so against the army of an already impoverished nation.
16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.
17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy, and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.
18. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment one’s own strength.
19. In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
Blowtorch said: Today, armies are always in contact, to the extent that they are connected. Therefore, using an escalation of violence model from peace, to crisis, to conflict is a fallacy, an expression of desire to leverage moral law by imposing a framework of allowed events. The cybernetic army is particularly vulnerable to this as its immense strength is found in lining up resources to feed a system of operational fires attacks that its adversary cannot match. Lining up such resources creates an easily recognizable signature, and the inhuman speed at which it attacks sacrifices agility to react to warfare outside the narrow scope of its paradigm.
20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people’s fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.
Blowtorch said: The general must be allowed to fight the total scope of war, or face defeat.
Yo Joe!