In most forms of conflict, adaptive responses to prior innovation usually determine the outcome.

Following up on the prior posting, here's a great summary of the Battle of Crecy, which determined the control of much of France in the late medieval period.

http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_battle_crecy.html

There were three key innovations demonstrated by the victorious English at Crecy. Note, as well, that innovation clearly determined the outcome as the English were outmanned somewhere between 3-1 and 6-1; their army was exhausted and fighting on its opponents turf; and the French opponent bore the apparent advantage of a previously dominant technology -- the mounted (cf. stirrups) knight, drawn from the noble caste.

The French were annihilated. The English cut them down with their longbows (innovation 1); they defended their ground-bound troops with pits, in which the mounted knights could not fight (innovation 2); and last, they deployed a confident peasant and yeoman caste who had sufficient cause to fight (stirrings of the winning cultural attributes of every conflict since the Greeks) (innovation 3).

In present conflict we need to understand what the pre-eminent tools of war and other illicit behavior are, and respond accordingly. The primary weapons delivery platform in asymmetric conflict today is the electronically joined, hiding-in-plain sight, illicit network. Remove it and its inhabitants are so many noblemen, unhorsed and alone -- surrounded. Lucid uniquely identifies the illicit network. Our war will end when we are able to identify, and constrain or kill these amorphous cells of terrorist and/or criminal actors. This war may be won, as the English won, at Crecy.