Team of Teams

When General Stanley Mc'Chrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. Creating order out of chaos, Our military must be able to defeat adaptive enemies. To win, we have to be as nimble as they are. That doesn’t mean we have to become more like them— it means we have to do what they do: confuse our enemy by turning their strengths into weaknesses.