Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 20

Do We Fight a Simulated
Enemy, or Merely Simulacra of
Ourselves?
Consider the enemy we describe within our
training doctrine and what it is supposed to represent. The new “hybrid threat” is a complex blend
of guerrilla, insurgent, criminal, and near-peer
conventional actors “woven into one dynamic
environment.”14 While the past decade of counterinsurgency scenarios at Army national training centers
focused exclusively on scenario-specific irregular
threats reflecting the various factions within each
theater, the recent shift to “decisive action training
environment” focuses on a hybrid enemy threat
with a blend of conventional forces, criminal actors,
and irregular insurgent forces. On the surface, our
opposing forces (OPFOR) are highly capable at
making a visual replication of these myriad threats,
whether conventional nation-state forces, irregulars, terrorists, or criminals.15 However, a deeper
investigation will illustrate a significant case of
simulacra in our opposing force application. We do
not train to fight our enemies as much as we train
to fight ourselves.
Our opposing forces operate entirely as a conventional U.S. Army element once one moves beyond
the symbolic costumes, antagonistic mission objectives, and enemy equipment.16 Our OPFOR don
enemy symbols to create the illusion within our
training whereas their motives and methodologies
remain the same. Their leadership functions within
the same organizational patterns as any other Army
unit, with a hierarchical chain of command that
employs the same military decision-making process
to produce operational orders and plans that are
identical to conventional Army forces.17 Despite
having the props and key phrases that present an
enemy force, there is little difference between
opposing force and friendly conventional planning
products or plans other than antagonistic mission
statements and objectives. They forge their plans
in precisely the same manner. Do our actual rivals
operate identically to our own methodologies, or are
we casting a reflection of ourselves in our training
draped in symbols we associate with our enemies?18
From the small unit tactics to many of the
simulated weapon systems and communication
processes, the opposing forces imitation of the
enemy is merely skin-deep. Under the costumes
18

and props, conventional U.S. trained forces use the
same language, planning methodology, values, and
motives to fight the friendly force in the training
scenario—thus we end up fighting a mirror image of
ourselves yet pretend that we are fighting a realistic
representation of our enemy. This is simulacra, and
we as a military prefer to dine on imaginary steak
instead of a real meal that tastes less enjoyable.19
Again, I do not direct criticism at our opposing
forces, rather at our overarching training philosophy that tolerates simulacra and rewards units with
succeeding against a mirror image force of itself
in training. We are not successful against realistic
rivals; rather we succeed in beating ourselves. As a
military force, we live within the fantasy and perpetuate it continuously, potentially to our detriment
when actual enemies demonstrate entirely different
actions and adaptations than our opposing forces.
Does this prepare us for success, or are we perhaps
training to fail?

We are not successful
against realistic rivals; rather
we succeed in beating ourselves.

The Soviet model, still prevalent in many rival
nations that developed under the influence of Moscow
during the Cold War, remains dominant in today’s
myriad hostile or potentially hostile forces across the
world. Centralized and highly dependent upon key
leader decisions, they do not use a military decisionmaking methodology like ours.20 The Chinese share
similarities with Soviet approaches, yet they also
consider many non-Western perspectives and fuse
Eastern thought with a decidedly non-Western style
of planning and execution that remains distrustful
of an over-reliance on technology.21 Although some
rivals do use elements of our military methodology
because we likely trained them in the past, their
unique cultures, values, and worldviews transform
January-February 2014 MILITARY REVIEW