Conventional warfare is a direct confrontation between two states where the goal is to influence the enemy's government by defeating his military. Attempts are also made in order to keep the population out of the conflict and minimize civilian interference.

Unconventional Warfare (UW) is not the opposite of conventional warfare but rather a specific military operation. UW is also an integral part of irregular warfare (IW)

UW can be employed against either state or nonstate actors. The directness or indirectness of UW varies according to the situation, the level of warfare, and over time. Although it usually seeks to destroy or weaken an opponent’s war-making capability, this effort may or may not involve direct military confrontation. A fundamental military objective in UW is the deliberate involvement and leveraging of civilian interference in the unconventional warfare operational area.

UW is a component and method of prosecuting IW, but UW and IW are each distinct. Both IW and UW focus on influencing relevant populations. However, whereas IW does not necessarily require operations with irregular forces, UW is always conducted by, with, or through irregular forces. UW may be a central effort in a holistic IW campaign in which conventional military operations are not used, or it may be conducted as an IW element in support of what is predominantly a conventional military operation.

Doctrinal Terms and Definitions

Conventional or traditional warfare: A form of warfare between states that employs direct military confrontation to defeat an adversary’s armed forces, destroy an adversary’s war-making capacity, or seize or retain territory in order to force a change in an adversary’s government or policies. The focus of conventional military operations is normally an adversary’s armed forces with the objective of influencing the adversary’s government. It generally assumes that the indigenous populations within the operational area are nonbelligerent’s and will accept whatever political outcome the belligerent governments impose, arbitrate, or negotiate. A fundamental military objective in conventional military operations is to minimize civilian interference in those operations. (IW JOC, V1.0)

Irregular warfare: A violent struggle among state and nonstate actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. (JP 1, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States)

Unconventional warfare: Operations conducted by, with, or through irregular forces in support of a resistance movement, an insurgency, or conventional military operations. (FM 3-05.201)

Foreign internal defense: Participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government or other designated organization to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency. (JP 1-02; FM 3-05.137, Army Special Operations Forces Foreign Internal Defense)

Counterinsurgency: Those political, economic, military, paramilitary, psychological, and civil actions taken by a government to defeat an insurgency. (JP 1-02; FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency)

People kill me sometimes....I suppose experience counts for nothing these days...

What do you mean by experience?

Whatever the definition, there is some people who think that the military war effort have to stick to traditional conventions and wage war on other state military forces using the same conventions.

These conventions were made to limit the destruction, because when state armies are involved the scale of destruction is just huge.

We should let the forces using unconventional tactics, like terrorism, hostage taking etc to the proper authorities, like the police... Using highly specialized units, trained and equipped to intervene in such situations with accurate intelligence and a working justice system behind them...

We just dont want to see the military do this kind of job, because their tools are expensive, because they are not trained and equipped to do a police job, because they are supposed to be an aggressive force etc etc...

Now, the soldiers arent happy, because we are asking them to do a police job with enemies who play dirty...
But if we start to allow them to forget the conventions, a lot of evil **** will happen...

Abu Ghraib? Iraq falling under Al-Quaeda's control? Guantamo bay? Huge series of collateral damage "incidents"? Expensive and endless wars etc etc...

Stick to the conventions... And if you have to lose some battles... Then it's for the greater good. If the leadership is dumb enough to send soldiers to do police work... Then it's the price to pay.*

edit:
Took the time to look for famous quotes, enjoy:
I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win than win in a cause that will some day lose.
Woodrow T. Wilson
(28th president of the United States)

Another one:
"Sometimes, by losing a battle, you find a new way to win the war."
Donald Trump

I can't believe the naive pollyana BS you keep spewing.
How soldiers should or should not conduct themselves.....

UW is a specific situation requiring other than regular or conventional troops and tactics.

I Went thru SFTG in 1966. The focus at that time was entirely UW.

It concerned working with partisans or guerillas in their own areas with missions specific to that environment.

Eastern Europe, Africa, SA, or in my case, an A Team on the Cambodian border working and living with indigenous irregulars.

Everything we did was in response to local situations.
The regular army took care of large maneuvers and operations.
UW also consisted of educating and medically treating locals in remote areas on a continuing basis. Winning hearts and mines real time.

In Afghanistan, there is a tribal society that only responds to UW guys who imbed themselves in the culture and local day to day.
Those bearded SF guys were not comic book characters.

Great damage was done to the original SF presence by introducing conventional door kicking tactics-it offended and enraged the locals no end.

The Marines got kicked out over it and we hav returned to the UW mode which is successful with these folks.

McChrystal had no team time and a conventional or at least Ranger mentality. A lot of this crept into SF in the 80s and is now being worked out.

@LeMask

I don’t think you quite understand what the concept of Unconventional Warfare is about.

Few modern conflicts are as clear-cut as historical wars, leading to a much more widespread need for SOF who can use unconventional tactics. Especially in cases where the enemy is a nebulous and unclear entity, because conventional tactics are inadequate for the task.

When we now are on quotes:

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
John Stuart Mill

@MikeP

There has through time always, in the military hierarchy, been little understanding of the units dealing with non conventional tactics. For many commanders it has often been seen as mumbo-jumbo. But it is good to hear that it is changing.

And sorry guys, but I started reading a lot these last weeks... A little quote from Sun Tzu:
(in this part of the book, he is warning the general from a few kinds of threats he should keep an eye on)
- The second (threat) is to value too much its own life.
We think that we are necessary to the whole army (war effort). We do then everything to not expose ourselves to harm. For this reason, we dont dare to use enemy supplies; everything is scary, everything is then dangerous. We cant take decisions. We wait for a better opportunity.
But the enemy, who is watching everything, will use this caution to his own advantage. He will surround him (the general), and then he will cut him from his supplies and will destroy him by using his love for his own life.
(sorry for the translation)

This part made me think... A lot actually.

I see that the enemy, the Taliban, or the insurgency... Isnt giving up. They are ready to sacrifice many people to kill one enemy soldier. And I dont think that our professional soldiers are ready to sacrifice one soldier for 50 insurgents/Taliban...

Why is that? Valor? Military discipline making the soldiers live to fight another day? But what if it was some kind of superiority complex?

The enemy is poor, poorly equipped, poorly trained, from a poor destroyed country, with no future, no hope of victory... backward thinking, following an inferior version of a hated religion... etc etc...

It's like asking lions to hunt rats... But it's true that there is a huge huge gap between our civilizations. One is extremely rich, developed and using a powerful and expensive technology to wage war... And the other have... Nothing... Absolutely nothing.

Why are they even fighting? We dont really care about the people we are supposed to be helping... Honestly... We wont sacrifice much for their lives. And they know it.

And to fight them, we have to be on the ground... On the same ground. Are we on the same ground as our enemies?
I know no one in the Western world who would share the same ground as the Taliban or as the insurgency in Iraq... We live in different worlds.

How can we make them join our world if we dont want them in our world and if we dont to share their world?

It's a battle to the death... We dont want to change them, we cant afford that. And we dont want to bring them to us, and we dont want to join them... We want to silence them.

And violence is noisy... Even silenced weapons provoke noise... Screams, suffering people, crying widows and sometimes noisy manifestations in our streets...

Do you think that unconventional tactics will solve the problem? that being best at killing people will give us better results...

We didnt even try conventional warfare... We ignored the price of war. We sent things that have no value to our eyes... Like tons of money and a few soldiers' lives... Nothing we really possess or care about...

And then, we ask why it's not working out...

We need minds to win the war. Right now, our methods to count success are just not adapted to the wars we are fighting.

Our enemies are fighting us on the moral ground...

And we are in the financial ground. We are disconnected from the reality.

We are counting like idiots while our enemies are raping us on the moral ground, pushing us to do mistakes.
They are at the very bottom, they have nothing to lose, they are god damned terrorists...
And we, on the other side, are losing a lot. Because the master-dumb-minds who rule us and control the war effort as asking about results we can count, like statistics... Less dead soldiers, more dead enemies, less money spent, more people voting in the elections for some puppet government... etc...

And I know what you call unconventional warfare... Special forces types, more like black ops... They are here, but they are not there. Assassination squads, torture units, kidnapping units, no military justice, no civilian justice, attacks on families, hiring local thugs to do the nasty work etc etc...

Yeah yeah... Way to go... The problem is that you are not in a game where the winner is the guy who kills more than the enemy...

LeMask
I think there is something you don´t understand.

Tell me, do you understand conventional war as a war being fought between two parties where both respect the laws of war and an unconventional war as one where one or both parties fail to comply with the laws of war?

Well, I do... I understand that pretty well. This is why the Coalition is treating its prisoners like animals, because they are not "officially" soldiers recognized by a recognized authority/nation/government...

The media wrote a lot about that since Guantanamo bay...

What's the point? An enemy is an enemy, not?

Shut up LeMask! Educate yourself and then stfu YOU IDIOT.

Originally Posted by LeMask

Well, I do... I understand that pretty well. This is why the Coalition is treating its prisoners like animals, because they are not "officially" soldiers recognized by a recognized authority/nation/government...

The media wrote a lot about that since Guantanamo bay...

What's the point? An enemy is an enemy, not?

Like animals? Hardly. In a harsh and spartan manner yes.

The reason they are treated so harshly because they are extremely dangerous individuals (as those members here who have actually fought them in combat can testify to.) I would also point out the prisoners in the SUPERMAXs (that US Federal prison for the most dangerous of convicts) are also treated in a similar manner. The reason for this is the same, they are simply too dangerous to allow liberties other prisoners might enjoy.

While there have been some mistakes made by US authorities about who was a terrorist and who wasnt, most of the prisoners now are in this situation due to their own making. Nobody put them into this situation other than themselves.