Swarming (military)

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Swarming is a battlefield tactic designed to maximize target saturation, and thereby overwhelm or saturate the defences of the principal target or objective. Defenders can overcome attempts at swarming by launching counter-swarming measures that are designed to neutralize or otherwise repel such attacks.

Military swarming is often encountered in asymmetric warfare where opposing forces are not of the same size, or capacity. In such situations, swarming involves the use of a decentralized force against an opponent, in a manner that emphasizes mobility, communication, unit autonomy and coordination or synchronization.^[1] Historically military forces have used the principles of swarming without really examining them explicitly, but there is now active research in consciously examining military doctrines that draw ideas from swarming. In nature and nonmilitary situations, there are other various forms of swarming. Biologically driven forms are often complex adaptive systems, but have no central planning, simple individual rules, and nondeterministic behavior that may or may not evolve with the situation.^[2]

Current military explorations into swarming address the spectrum of military operations, from strategic through tactical. An expert group evaluated swarming's role in the "revolution in military affairs" or force transformation.^[3] They observed that military swarming is primarily tactical, sometimes operational and rarely strategic, and is a complement to other efforts rather than a replacement for them. Swarming is a logical extension of network-centric warfare. At present, the networking for swarming is only available in specific contexts.