Swarming

Swarming occurs when the dispersed nodes of a network of small (and perhaps some large) forces can converge on a target from multiple directions. The overall aim is sustainable pulsing - swarm networks must be able to coalesce rapidly and stealthily on a target, then dissever and redisperse, immediately ready to recombine for a new pulse. The capacity for a "stealthy approach" suggests that, in netwar, attacks are more likely to occur in "swarms" than in more traditional "waves."< Swarming may be most effective, and difficult to defend against, where a set of netwar actors do not have to "mass" their forces but can engage in "packetization" (for want of a better term). This means, for example, that drug smugglers can break large loads into many small packets for simultaneous surreptitious transport across a border, or that NGO activists, as in the case of the Zapatista move-ment, have enough diversity in their ranks to go after any discrete issue area that arises_ human rights, democracy, the environment, rural development, and so forth.