Manhunt doctrine inverts the failed Pershing-Villa offensive into targeted strikes

Evidence

The contemporary doctrine of hunting warfare breaks with the model of conventional warfare based on concepts of fronts and opposed battle lines facing up to each other. In 1916, General John J. Pershing launched a vast military offensive in Mexico in an unsuccessful attempt to lay hands on the revolutionary Pancho Villa. For American strategists who cite this historical precedent as a counterexample, it was a matter of reversing polarity: faced with the “asymmetrical threats” posed by small mobile groups of “nonstate actors,” they should use small, flexible units, either human or—preferably—remotely controlled, in a pattern of targeted attacks. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 170