Tactics, Anyone?

I have seen a couple of threads, here and in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Forum, that make me wonder if a single thread on the fundamentals of military tactics might be useful. I envision something of a clearing-house thread where folks could ask and answer questions on battlefield tactics, use and effects (and feasibility) of various weapons systems, and the like. I am no expert, but I would be willing to share my experience to start and contribute to such a thread.

As to my credentials for offering this: I spent twelve years as an Infantry officer with the U.S. Army, including a tour of duty in Iraq, and so have some first-hand knowledge of small-unit tactics in practice. My degrees have little to do with history (foreign area studies and business), but I have studied military history my entire adult life. Not to mention there are plenty of others on this board who can contribute to such a thread.

Would such a thread be useful? Let me know. My access to the boards will be limited for a few days (going to New York for a conference), but if there is interest, I can start as soon as I get back. Until then, start posting your questions!

Thanks
HN

Realistic Training

Sokal said:

My only direct military experience is as a consultant with the US Navy and Marines on safety (radiation, drugs, chemical exposure, doctrine, training, command responsibilities) long ago.

So I'd like to know: how dangerous does training really need to be? What is the payoff of realistic training and how do you tailor training regimes in the field? Or do you? We never worried enough, I don't think, about what kind of training people do once they are deployed into a combat area. Though from some reports over the years, one advantage of being in a combat zone is that people are more careful about checking up on each other so that when you are "just training" you might let a pilot who has just taken a lot of cold medicine into a jet, but you might not even let him out of bed in a combat zone.

Click to expand...

Good to hear from you, Sokal.

Bear in mind, my comments come from an infantry perspective rather than from a flight perspective, so my experience differs from yours. We always planned training based not on how dangerous it was, but on how realistic--how close we could bring the training to actual combat conditions without putting soldiers' lives, limbs, eyesight, etc at risk. Of course, danger is inherent in any military operation; as many of us were fond of saying, we work with machines that are designed to kill people, and they don't care who they kill.

The trick, really, is to anticipate and mitigate the inherent risk as much as possible. If you're going into a live-fire exercise, for example, you want to evaluate your troops' abilities and condition: how familiar are they with the weapons systems they will be operating? How well-trained are they in their current jobs? How hard have they been training the last few days? How much rest have they had?

One way we mitigate the risks and make sure the guys are trained up in their tasks is to make the training progressive. If you want to put an infantry platoon through a platoon live-fire, for example, you might start by making sure every man is qualified on his assigned weapon, whether it is a rifle, grenade launcher, or machine gun. Next you would work buddy teams (2 men) on a straight lane with a single target, running through first with no ammo, then blanks, then live rounds. Then you move to Fire Team (4-5 guys) and do the same thing--dry, blanks, live. Then squad (two fire teams). Finally you can put the platoon (three or four squads) together and move them through the same kind of crawl, walk, run progression, culminating with an evaluated live-fire run that includes maneuver, pyrotechnics, and as many combat elements as you can provide without hurting someone. Bottom line is you want every soldier to be aware of the risk, and do as much as possible to minimize what risks there are.

As to how risk management translates from training to combat, my experience was we took more risks in combat, not fewer. We found information dissemination was one of the most important things--every soldier knew, for every convoy, where it was going, how many trucks were in it, and what the threat level was. Our guys would run 2-3 convoys a week, anywhere from 8 to 20 hours on the road (one way). We didn't have much choice; the supplies had to go north, which meant the convoys had to roll, which meant they had to have gun trucks for escort. So our guys would roll in in the morning, sleep a few hours, do maintenance on their trucks, and be back in the saddle that night. If a man was sick or too fatigued, we would find a replacement, but those guys were close enough that most of them would rather roll with their squads than make somebody else give up their rest. They had a job to do, and they knew their buddies would watch their backs, so they went. We lost one guy the entire year, in the dead of night to an IED nobody could have seen, so I guess we did something right.

I assume it was pretty much the same among the aviators. Did anybody else have a different experience?

I'll post more on tactics in a little while. I hope this has been helpful.
HN

Principles of War

The following are the basic principles of war as agreed upon by historians and tacticians. These principles accomplish a variety of tasks to aid us in our study of tactics:

1) They give us a framework for the study and execution of battlefield tactics, breaking a vast range of historical, and possible, tactical situations into nine more-or-less bite-sized components.
2) They provide a common language, a set of terms everyone understands by which we can describe an infinite variety of situations.
3) They simplify our study. By describing tactical situations in terms of the principles below, we can begin to analyze them more systematically than we could otherwise.

We can use the acronym MOSS MOUSE to help remember the nine principles:

MASS: Concentrate your forces so you have the advantage at the decisive point (the point on the battlefield where it makes the most difference). In the words of Confederate cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, "Get there first with the most men."

OFFENSIVE: The offense is the decisive form of battle. Battles have been won by defense, but they are few compared to those won by offense--and even those few are usually decided by a counterattack after the attacker has exhausted himself, rather than the defender simply holding out until the attacker gives up. Consider the scenario of two armies facing each other across a field, out of range of each other's weapons systems. There is no battle until one of them moves. Advantage often lies with the antagonist who has, or can assume, the offensive.

SURPRISE: Go where your adversary thinks you aren't, do things he thinks you can't, and hit him where he is unprepared.

SECURITY: Know at all times what is going on around you through the use of scouts and the local population; keep part of your force alert at night or during periods of rest to warn of approaching enemy; in short, don't get surprised.

MANEUVER: Move your forces to gain an advantage over your adversary. Standing in one place and shooting at him imparts no advantage in most situations; you have to move your forces to exploit the terrain and/or weather, to simultaneously maximize his weaknesses and your strengths.

OBJECTIVE: Any military operation has to have a goal or objective, whether it is a piece of ground (take that hill or defend this line), a timetable (hold your position for x hours), part or all of the enemy force (destroy the command post, or more rarely destroy the entire enemy force). As many of your troops as possible should know what the objective is, so in the inevitable confusion of the fight they can continue to work toward it.

UNITY OF COMMAND: Somebody has to be in charge to enable the unit to act decisively. In the thick of the fight, two commanders arguing over the appropriate course of action can lead to hesitation and disaster.

SIMPLICITY: Make your plan as easy for your subordinates to understand as possible, with as few moving parts as you can manage. The simpler the plan, the more likely everyone will remember what he is supposed to do. I used to tell my lieutenants to make plans their most junior soldiers could understand at 3:00 AM when they hadn't slept in two days.

ECONOMY OF FORCE: Use the least force necessary to accomplish the desired effect. This leaves your other forces free either to exploit the success of your earlier move or to try something else if it fails. Note this does not mean not to apply overwhelming force at the decisive point; rather, it means if you can do so without committing everything you have, you should. If overwhelming force requires everything you have--and you have a reasonable expectation of victory by applying it--you throw everything in there.

Note that all these principles work together to, hopefully, achieve victory. None is more important than the others, indeed no one can know ahead of time which will be most important in any given situation. If we could, we could remove the guesswork from battle and develop a force that wins every time.

But we can't, for a few important reasons:

1) People and machines are fallible.
2) Luck always plays a part; even the smartest commander with the best staff cannot anticipate and mitigate every possible contingency.
3) The enemy is using the same principles to defeat you.

I hope this is helpful as you write your battle scenes. I'll be back with another lesson tomorrow.

Have a good one!
HN

Forms of Maneuver

Maneuver, as we discussed yesterday, is the movement of forces to gain an advantage over the enemy. There are five basic Forms of Maneuver. These forms describe movement in contact with or in close proximity to the enemy. As a rule, their purpose is to move forces into positions where they can either make contact with the enemy or threaten him directly.

You will note these forms are all offensive in nature; this is because, also as we discussed yesterday, the offensive is the decisive form of warfare. By definition, if you are maneuvering your forces, you are conducting offensive operations, not defensive.

The five forms are:

FRONTAL ATTACK: This is the basic form of attack as seen in movies like Braveheart, Gladiator, or The Return of the King, in which the attacking force attacks all along or at several points along the enemy's front simultaneously. I think the reason we see it so often in movies is because it is the easiest form to depict visually; one vast army surges toward the other, and the two lines clash in the middle with a great noise and everything degenerates into chaos. This form is useful if the defending force is much smaller or weaker than the attacker and may be overwhelmed quickly. When that is not the case, it is usually indecisive and costly, and is best used in conjunction with one of the other forms. In such cases, the frontal attack is generally to hold the enemy in place and distract him while another part of the attacking force conducts the other form of maneuver.
Advantages: the simplest form of maneuver, requiring the least amount of coordination between units. Gives the attacking commander the most direct control over his units. Useful if the attacking troops are numerous and training is poor or non-uniform.
Disadvantages: the least advantageous form of maneuver. A frontal attack hits the enemy where he is strongest, and leaves the attacker's own flanks open to envelopment unless anchored on difficult terrain like hills or water (more on anchoring when we discuss formations and disposition).

ENVELOPMENT: Rather than attack the enemy from the front, envelopment seeks to hit him in his less-protected sides (flanks) or his rear. This is the other form you see most often in the movies, the old standby: one of us draws his attention from the front while the other rides around to hit him in his flank or rear. This is the most common form to be used in conjunction with the frontal attack; one force attacks to hold the enemy's attention along his front and keep him from maneuvering against the main attack, which seeks to move unopposed to attack the flank or rear.
Advantages: directs the attacker's strength against the enemy's weakness. Forces the enemy to fight in two directions at once. Useful whether the attacking force is larger or smaller than the enemy.
Disadvantages: requires coordination and communication between units. Often requires physical separation between units, opening them to defeat in detail, in which the enemy defeats one force, then turns his full strength on the other. If the separate elements do not have a ready method of identifying each other, this could open them to fratricide, in which elements of the same side mistakenly identify each other as enemy and attack each other.

TURNING MOVEMENT: An indirect attack similar to an envelopment, but rather than seeking to attack the enemy's flank, a turning movement seeks to attack or threaten an objective of value to him behind his formation, forcing him to abandon his current position and maneuver against the attacker. Turning movements are more often conducted by large units, such as divisions or corps, than by small. Examples include bypassing a strong enemy to attack his supply trains or headquarters, or moving to seize a key river crossing or logistics base in his rear.
Advantages: may force an enemy in a strong position to abandon it in order to protect critical assets in his rear, making him vulnerable to attack. May isolate an enemy force in hostile (to him) territory or cut his lines of supply, forcing him to surrender without making direct contact. Useful for a smaller, more mobile force operating against a larger, less mobile one.
Disadvantages: exposes the attacker to defeat in detail, like the envelopment. Requires the attacker to move quickly to reach the objective before the enemy can get there to defend it, as he is generally closer to it than the attacker. Requires strong communications between separate units.

PENETRATION: A strong attack on a limited portion of the enemy's front, designed to puncture his line so follow-on attackers can get into the middle of his formation, or better, into his rear. The Nazi attack through the Ardennes Forest that began the Battle of the Bulge is an example of a penetration.
Advantages: breaks the cohesion of the enemy's lines, complicating communications between adjacent units and increasing confusion. Forces the enemy to divert resources to react to an unexpected threat in his rear. Can have a dramatic affect on enemy morale. A successful penetration can open an avenue for follow-on forces to defeat the enemy in detail.
Disadvantages: leaves the penetrating force's flanks open to envelopment. Against a well-trained enemy who can recover quickly, it exposes the attacker to encirclement and defeat in detail. The penetration is often very costly for the unit executing it, making a strong follow-on force imperative if the attacker is to exploit the successful penetration.

INFILTRATION: Similar to a penetration, except the attacker seeks to get into the enemy's rear by stealth rather than force and attack from within. Infiltration is usually accomplished by irregulars or special ops-type forces, who rally behind the enemy's formation and attack command posts or logistics assets.
Advantages: allows attackers to bypass the enemy's strongest points and hit more vulnerable targets, increasing confusion and fear among rear echelon troops. Extremely effective against an enemy with a highly centralized command structure, or who depends on extended logistics trains.
Disadvantages: infiltrating forces are highly vulnerable to counterattack. Infiltrators usually cannot carry heavy weapons because of the requirements for stealth and rapid movement. Requires detailed coordination and communication, first for the infiltrating forces to rally behind enemy lines, then to coordinate their attacks with those of the main force, then to avoid fratricide as the main force approaches friendly infiltrators as the battle progresses.

Of course, there are methods of movement not included in these five forms, but those methods are not strictly maneuver as they do not necessarily seek to make or threaten contact with the enemy. For example, troops moving by foot or wagon or rail or spaceship to get close to the enemy is not maneuver; not until they deploy into combat formations in anticipation of making contact can they be said to be maneuvering. Delaying or retrograde actions, even though the troops performing them may be in contact with the enemy, are not maneuver--they are designed to buy time and preserve forces, not gain advantage. Of course, the force moving to envelop the enemy force being delayed is maneuvering. Is anybody confused yet?

Please post your questions. I would love to know if these are helpful.

Have a good one!
HN

The Offense

"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!"
"Audacity, audacity, always audacity!"
--Frederick II (Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, 1712-1786

This simple quote from Frederick the Great captures the spirit of the offense in four words. Audacity, a simple plan executed boldly, can be more useful on the battlefield than technology or training.

The offense, as I have said in previous posts, is how battles and wars are decided. Defense does not win wars, although it can set conditions for later offensive operations. Only by offensive operations, by seeking and attacking the enemy's center of gravity (his army, a leader, his population, a source of resources, etc), can your characters hope to win wars.

The purpose of the offense, then, is simple: to defeat the enemy. The successful offense seizes and retains the initiative, acting decisively and forcefully to keep the enemy reacting instead of planning his next move. At the tactical level, the offense is aimed at killing the enemy, breaking his toys, and taking ground.

Note: In the case of more recent wars, we can occasionally replace killing with marginalizing, rendering his actions irrelevant to the result so maybe he'll give up and go home. In that sense, nonviolent, even nonmilitary, activities become offensive as we seek to convince populations that their lot will improve if they do what we want. These days, even infantrymen play a big part in such offensives. But those considerations are beyond the scope of this piece. If a man points a rifle or RPG at you, you don't marginalize him. You kill him.

Successful offense depends on good intelligence and situational awareness. You have to know where your enemy is in order to hit him. You have to know his numbers and capabilities in order to know how hard you have to hit him. You have to know the terrain, and the weather, and your own troops' condition, and more importantly you have to know how those factors affect you and the enemy. And you have to keep him from learning the same things about you.

Characteristics of the offense:

Surprise: Go where the enemy thinks you can't. Hit him when he is not ready. Attack him with methods and in manners for which he is not prepared. Do what he does not expect, and do it before he thinks you can.
With modern methods of surveillance, surprise is often difficult to achieve for modern forces; it should be even more so if your characters are operating in the future, unless their enemies have a significantly lower technological level. In such cases, surprise becomes a matter of masking intentions more than masking movements, making preparations for one thing look like preparations for something else.

Concentration: bring your forces together at the right time and place to achieve overwhelming effects where they will do the most damage to the enemy. Timing is critical to maximize the effects of your concentration; bring your forces together too early, and the entire force is exposed to unexpected actions by the enemy (in the case of modern forces, you're a really big target for long-range fires and/or aerial attack); too late, and you expose your forces to defeat in detail.

Tempo: act faster than the enemy can, and--the key component--don't let up. Force him to react to your moves rather than planning his own. You may have heard generals on TV talking about "getting inside the enemy's decision cycle." This is what they are talking about: keep him off balance by acting and reacting faster than he can.

Audacity: see the quote from Frederick the Great above. Audacity is nothing but developing a bold plan and executing boldly, throwing your enemy off balance for wondering what you will do next. Frederick was a master of audacity. He often fought outnumbered and threatened from more than one side, and so rather than wait for his enemies to concentrate their forces against him, he would move quickly, hitting one and then the other, elevating defeat in detail nearly to an art form.

Types of Offensive Operations:

There are four types of offensive operations: Movement to Contact, Attack, Exploitation, and Pursuit. These are usually, but not always, done sequentially: movement to contact leads to attack leads to exploitation leads to pursuit. But a successful attack followed by a limited exploitation may allow the enemy to escape, necessitating a movement to contact to regain contact with him. Or an enemy force may regroup during a pursuit, in which case your characters may have to attack to break them up again. In sequence or out, this is where tempo comes in. Maintain contact and keep pushing. Hit first, hit hard, and hit often.

Movement to Contact: the purpose of a movement to contact is just what it sounds like: to make contact with the enemy. You may not know his exact location or disposition, but you have a general idea where to find him, so you move in that direction. Security is paramount in a movement to contact; since you don't know exactly where he is, you need to disperse your forces so as to make contact with the smallest possible element. This gives you maximum flexibility to maneuver your other forces when you do make contact.
Movement to contact comes in three varieties:
1) Approach march. Usually used when you know where the enemy is, but are still some distance away. Movement during an approach march is faster than during an attack, both to allow you to close the distance quickly and to limit your vulnerability to observation and long-range fires.
2) Search and attack. Just what it sounds like. You don't know where the enemy is, but you have an idea, and you want to find and attack him.
3) Meeting engagement. Two forces on the move blunder into each other. This can get messy very quickly as both commanders maneuver their troops to develop the situation.

Attack: close with and defeat the enemy using one of the five forms of maneuver we discussed yesterday. Any time a force makes contact with the enemy on its own initiative, it could be called an attack at some level.
The forms of attack vary in purpose and level of preparation:
1) Hasty attack. A commander sees an opportunity and exploits it, attacking without the benefits of thorough preparation in order to maximize audacity and tempo. Not generally used against a prepared enemy position unless the attacker has a way to gain overwhelming superiority (although a hasty attack may be an excellent way to disrupt an enemy in the process of preparing his defense).
2) Deliberate attack. An attack conducted after detailed planning, preparation, and reconnaissance. Usually used against fortified enemy positions where mass and maneuver are more important than surprise.
3) Special Purpose attacks. There are several types of special purpose attack, each designed to achieve a specific goal:
a. Spoiling attack. Usually conducted from a defense. Designed to disrupt an enemy's preparations to attack, giving you more time to prepare your defense or transition to the offense.
b. Counterattack. Usually conducted from a defense. An attack intended to retake ground lost to an attacking enemy, or to seize the initiative from an enemy weakened by an unsuccessful attack, allowing your forces to transition to the offense.
c. Raid. Usually a small-scale attack on an objective within enemy territory or behind his lines. The purpose of a raid is not to seize ground; instead, it is to inflict casualties, capture key personnel or equipment, or destroy infrastructure. Unlike other attacks, the raiding force hits its target and gets out; it does not seek to hold ground.
d. Ambush. A surprise attack against a moving force. Maximizes the principle of surprise. Ambushes are generally focused on inflicting casualties on or destroying the enemy force, rather than seizing ground.
e. Feint. A limited attack designed to get the enemy's attention and divert resources to defeating it, setting the conditions for the main attack to succeed. Feints can also be used to gain information about enemy dispositions and capabilities. A feint that runs into very light resistance or has unexpected success may find itself redesignated the main attack, especially if the original main attack is progressing more slowly than expected.
f. Demonstration. Similar to a feint, and with the same basic purpose, except the demonstration does not seek to make direct contact with the enemy. Instead demonstrations are usually used for deception, to make the enemy think your forces are somewhere they are not.

Exploitation: usually follows a successful attack. An exploitation seeks to disrupt and disorganize enemy forces through the depth of their formations, keeping them from reorganizing and giving them no opportunity to reconstitute their defense. A successful exploitation gives the enemy three choices: surrender, flee, or die.

Pursuit: a successful exploitation will often turn into a pursuit as the surviving enemy forces try to flee the battle area. The purpose of a pursuit is to maintain pressure of the retreating enemy, capture or kill his troops, and keep him from reorganizing to form a defense. Tempo and audacity are important components to a pursuit.

I think that will about do it for today.

Have a good one!
HN

The Defense

I have said over and over that the offense is the decisive form of war, that you cannot win a war from the defensive. I hope I have explained it well enough for you to accept it as true--just as in football, you can't win unless you are moving forward.

That said, there are times when the right course of action is for an army to defend rather than attack, to offer a target and give the enemy a chance to exhaust himself before assuming or resuming the offense. You may do this if you have just conducted a successful offensive, but fallen short of complete victory and need time to consolidate your gains and bring up fresh forces to continue the attack. You may have just seized a piece of key terrain and expect the enemy to counterattack to take it back. Or you may be trying to regain the initiative after a successful enemy offensive. Or you may be protecting your last refuge, or your home, or your capital city from an enemy attack. Etc, etc. You get the picture. The bottom line is that in most cases, defense is a temporary measure, a chance for the defender to get his feet back under him so he can start moving forward again.

Note: there are examples from history, especially from the middle ages and the early modern period (1500s-1600s), of attacking forces lifting their attacks without the defenders taking offensive action. In most cases, this is due to outside influences (disease or famine among the attackers' ranks, or attacks by third parties against the attackers or sites of importance to them) or to unilateral action on the attackers' part (impressed by the defenders' valor and bound by the code of ethics of the day, the attackers decide to let them live and go home). Do not mistake these for decisive victories on the part of the defenders--they cannot, strictly speaking, be said to have won the battle, only survived it. Any "victory" in which one side chooses to leave the field on his own initiative, other than under imminent threat of destruction or defeat, cannot be called decisive.

Do not be fooled into thinking the defense will give your characters a chance to rest, either. The defense is "restful" only in comparison with the offense, and only because your soldiers get to stay in one place for a little while. Preparing a successful defense is difficult; it requires hard labor, intricate planning and reconnaissance, and constant alertness. It will leave your characters exhausted, and apprehensive, especially if they are preparing their defense under direct or indirect enemy pressure. And when it comes to the fight, any competent defending commander will be biting his nails because he knows where he is weak and is praying the enemy does not find the seams in his defense. There is never enough time to do everything.

Nor is the defense a passive activity. You cannot just sit in your strong position and wait for your enemy to come to you; you must aggressively seek to disrupt his offense, with obstacles or spoiling attacks or long-range weapons, and you must take active measures to ensure he hits you where you want him to, rather than allowing him to pick the site of his attack. And as with the attack, intelligence is critical: not only must you know where he is and how he plans to come at you, you must stop him from learning your exact positions and dispositions.

Characteristics of the Defense:

Preparation: Preparation is constant and unrelenting. The defender is always improving his position, right up to the point he makes contact with the enemy or leaves the position. Even while one part of the defense is in contact with the enemy, another part can be continuing its preparations.
Preparation for the defense includes selecting and improving the ground you mean to fight on, using natural and pre-existing obstacles and supplementing them with earthworks, walls, barricades, tree trunks, barbed wire, mines, asteroids--whatever your characters have at their disposal based on their situation and technological level. It includes familiarizing yourself with every inch of the terrain you mean to fight on, determining how your enemy can approach you and what you can do to thwart him before he gets to you. And it includes making every defender familiar with your obstacles through terrain walks, rehearsals, and sighting in weapons systems if appropriate. If your defenders are using ranged weapons, they should know the distances to various points on the ground, either by using natural landmarks or manmade markers. If their defense will require resupply at some point, they must prepare and secure safe routes for the supply vehicles to come up from the rear.

Security: As we discussed above, intelligence is critical: know where your enemy is, what he has, and how he must come at you. Other security considerations include false positions or blocking positions to make the enemy think you mean to defend somewhere other than your actual position, and perhaps even feints or demonstrations to deceive him as to your strength and purpose.

Disruption: Part of defeating an enemy's attack is not allowing him to execute his plan. You can disrupt his attack with spoiling attacks, ambushes, obstacles, deceptive movements, long-range weapons, and any other measures that may occur to you. Defeating his reconnaissance--blinding him, so to speak, so he has to feel his way to your position--is an excellent way to disrupt his tempo.

Massing Effects: You want your enemy to go where it is easiest for you to kill him. Use the terrain and your obstacles to channel him into areas free of cover that you can reach with multiple weapons systems or hidden forces, in which he has no place to hide. Anywhere the terrain is constricted--a bridge, a canyon, a mountain pass--is ideal for this purpose. For pre-gunpowder armies, a castle wall is an excellent example: as attackers try to climb or breach the wall, defenders can attack them with arrows, spears, stones, hot liquids, and fire.

Flexibility: Even if you take every precaution, there is no guarantee the enemy will go where you want him to go or do what you want him to do. You must be able to adjust your plan to meet his attack as it develops, not as you think it will develop. After all, he has read yesterday's post and he knows to try to hit your weaknesses with his strengths. If your position is strong enough, he may even try to avoid it altogether.

Types of Defensive Operations:

Mobile Defense: A mobile defense maximizes the defender's flexibility and, if successful, can make the transition to the offense almost seamless. This is the defensive version of the frontal attack-envelopment combination we discussed two days ago; a small defending force occupies a strong position, with another (usually larger) counterattack force hidden nearby. When the enemy commits his attack against the defensive position, the counterattack force hits him on the flank or rear. Obviously, this form of defense requires a high degree of coordination between the two forces, as well as excellent mobility on the part of the counterattack force. The mobile defense is usually not feasible for small units, but for large formations it is potentially the most destructive form of defense--a strong counterattack can achieve a decisive victory for the defender.

Area Defense: This is what most people think of when they think of a defense. An area defense focuses most of the defenders' strength on holding a piece of ground; it is a trade of "bodies for land," as a commander of mine used to say. Again, this need not be a static defense in one place; maximize disruption and massing effects in order to foil the enemy's attack and inflict casualties before he reaches your defensive position, and remain flexible so you can counterattack at the opportune moment.

Retrograde: If area defense trades bodies for land, a retrograde trades land for bodies. The retrograde force is moving backward, away from the enemy, either in contact or out of contact. Its function is either to put space between itself (or another force) and the enemy, or to slow his advance so other forces can prepare their defenses. There are three types of retrograde operation:
1) Withdrawal. A withdrawing force attempts to disengage from contact with the enemy, either to allow another force to assume its mission or to occupy another position to its rear.
2) Delay. A delaying force moves away from the enemy, but maintains contact. As the name suggest, its mission is to slow the enemy, either to draw him into an area where other friendly forces can counterattack or to allow forces behind to prepare their defenses, or both.
3) Retirement. A retirement occurs when a force not in contact with the enemy leaves its position and moves to the rear, either to occupy another defensive position or to allow another unit to assume its mission.

A final note on the defense: gravity is your friend. Unless, of course, you are defending a planet and establish a ring of asteroids to use as obstacles, which your enemy then proceeds to dislodge from orbit and rain down on your planet. Then gravity is decidedly not your friend.

That should do it for today. I should be able to post more next week.

Thanks!
HN

Doug Johnson said:

What about "the long march?" Arguably, the NVA lost ever major offensive they ever launched. They still won the war.

Click to expand...

Excellent questions, Doug. I only have a few minutes to respond, so please come back if you need more.

The Long March was unquestionably a military defeat for Mao Tse-Tung (Zedong, I think it's often spelled these days). Not only was he forced to flee into the mountains, but he lost greater than 90% of his force doing it. But it gave him an opportunity to gain the support of the people in the areas through which he passed. He used the next decade or so to build on that support, then after World War II returned to the offensive much stronger--and just as importantly, the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party (Unity of Command, anyone?). So his military defeat became a critical information and civil victory--elements every bit as important, especially today, as bullets and tanks and bombs. I will probably address these points in a future post.

As to the NVA (and the Viet Cong), not only did we kick the **** out of them in every offensive they undertook, but also pretty much every time they stood and fought in the defense as well. I don't think there is any way to claim the Vietnam War was a military victory for North Vietnam--but as you point out, we left Vietnam and conceded the victory to them. I think in that case it was, again, an information victory; it was the antiwar effort here at home, rather than Communist Vietnam's strength of arms, that ultimately sent our boys packing.

I hope this answers your question. Please let me know if it does not.
HN

Decisive Victory vs. Avoidance of Defeat

Kentuk said:

In regard to the defense and victory.
The odds are stacked against the defense today but it was not always so.

Castles were built for a reason. There are seiges that failed and more that never really got going because the offense didn't have the supply train to keep a large army fed. Basically before Napoleon once an army stopped moving it started starving.

When defending a place and the enemy has to pack up and leave it is a decisive victory.

Click to expand...

Welcome, Kentuk.

Excellent point, but I disagree on both counts.

With respect to the odds being stacked against the defender: actually, the defender has many significant advantages over the attacker. When I was in the Army, we tried to set conditions so that we would have a three-to-one numerical advantage before attacking. Basically, unless you have, or can create, an overwhelming advantage, attacking a prepared position ain't smart.

With respect to calling an abandoned siege a decisive victory: if your enemy chooses on his own initiative to leave the battlefield (absent what I would call "Checkmate" conditions, such as Lee faced before leaving the field at Gettysburg), you have not achieved decisive victory; you have merely avoided defeat.

Certainly the residents of the castle would call it victory, attributing it to God's wrath directed at their enemy, or mercy toward them, and take it as evidence He was on their side. But the fact is the adversary still has an army out there, and still has freedom of maneuver. And if the attacker's ranks have been thinned by disease and famine to the point he cannot continue his attack, chances are pretty good the defenders are in little better shape.

Even more importantly, the defenders have not crushed the attackers' will. A charismatic leader can chalk the debacle up to witchcraft, reconstitute his army, and return the next year or the year after. And this time, perhaps he'll hit them in the spring before they can lay aside provisions to withstand a siege. Now the crops they planted, if the siege lasts into the fall, become the attacker's assets.

The only exception I can think of is Napoleon's Russian campaign, in which the Russians clearly achieved a decisive strategic victory in spite of never defeating the Grande Armee decisively on the field of battle. The key, I think, is Napoleon was in a "Checkmate" situation--his choices were to withdraw or be annihilated. Even so, he was able to retreat and reform, holding on to power for another year and a half before being exiled to Elba.

Just as in chess, a draw is not checkmate. If one side withdraws when the opponent has no power to destroy it, the opponent has avoided defeat, not achieved decisive victory.

Sorry I've been lax in my posting this week. Lots going on--I'm busy at work, and an editor has requested a full so I'm scrambling to get that together. I'll be back with battlefield arms (infantry, cavalry, artillery, etc) in a few days.

HN

I Concede the Point

Doug -

Your point is well made, and phrasing my earlier post as an absolute was something of a misstatement. There are no absolutes in war. To represent otherwise is to ignore reality, not to mention marginalize the efforts of millions of soldiers who, throughout history, have shown over and over that the impossible really isn't. So I grant you the point that wars can be, and have been, won without tactical victory.

That said, one of Murphy's Laws goes something like this: "The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." The strategy you describe is called a strategy of exhaustion, and it's risky at the best of times--more a plan to avoid defeat than to achieve victory. Basically, you are gambling your cause on the enemy deciding he's sick and tired of fighting you, taking his toys and going home before you run out of a) men willing to fight, b) materiel and supplies, or c) room to maneuver. It worked for the NVA in 1972-75; it did not work for the Army of Northern Virginia in 1864-65, or for the German army in 1916-18.

As a general rule, exhaustion only works if your enemy perceives the stakes to be lower than you do. If he is committed enough to keep pouring men and materiel into the fight, as in the American Civil War, he will eventually overwhelm you with his greater resources. Or he will fight you to a standstill and exhaust you, as in World War I.

And it's bad for morale, certainly one of the most important components of victory. Soldiers who find themselves retreating from battle after battle, or perceive they are doing nothing but running every time the enemy gets close, will eventually grow tired of it, put down their weapons and leave. Some of them may even surrender to the enemy, especially if they are hungry. When your army begins to disintegrate around you, you have pretty much lost your war of exhaustion.

As I mentioned above, the strategy of exhaustion is one of avoiding defeat, rather than seeking victory. As such, you cannot point to a single battle or campaign afterwards and describe it as decisive. A decisive action, as the term suggests, determines the outcome of a battle, campaign, or war. A campaign of exhaustion is designed specifically to avoid decisive action, because the weaker combatant knows he cannot hope to win such a fight.

So yes, it is possible to win a war without tactical victory. No, you cannot term such a victory decisive because neither side has forced the other to capitulate. And I will try to avoid speaking in absolutes in the future.

Hope this is helpful.
HN

Evaine said:

There was a castle during the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign in England that was besieged for twenty years! Obviously not very successfully, as they managed to get enough supplies in to keep going for that long.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Evaine! That sounds like an interesting story. I would bet you have some interesting interpersonal dynamics develop in such a situation, such as friendships and probably even romantic relationships developing across the lines. I wonder what you would teach the children of such a union?

There must be a book in there somewhere. Note to self: look up twenty year siege....

HN

Well--I try not to pretend I have the monopoly on right answers.... I've known too many people who were more interested in winning the argument than in being right.

Besides, my retreat left me room to maneuver. Are you exhausted yet?

HN

I'm planning to discuss technology and weapons in a future post. I don't have a spiel--er, essay--developed as yet. The long and short is that technology has expanded the battlefield, made it larger, more complex and more three-dimensional by making weapons more accurate and destructive. Other than that, the fundamentals I talked about last week are as valid for James T. Kirk as they were for Caesar.

Did you have some specific issues you wanted to address?

HN

On Technology, Tactics and Star Trek

As a general rule, improvements in weapons technology give the weapons greater accuracy, range, and/or destructive power. Improvements in protective tech make armor or other countermeasures stronger and lighter. Improvements in surveillance and detection tech make it easier to see or otherwise detect your opponent. Improvements in communication make comms longer-range, more reliable, and more secure. Improvements in transportation allow you to move farther, faster, and in greater safety. Et cetera.

So the challenge for the technologically superior force is to take advantage of the strengths its new toys give it. Longer-range weapons give you what is called "standoff range," or the ability to hit your enemy before he can hit you. Thermal or microwave imaging takes away his hiding places, enabling you to see him in darkness, through smoke or fog, even through walls or other barriers. And stealth technology enables you to get close enough to hit him with your long-range precision weaponry before he even knows you're there. So your tactics evolve to put more emphasis on intelligence, on putting your eyes far enough out in front of you that your shooters know where to go to hit the enemy. The frontal attack becomes a platoon of Bradleys using their thermals and machine guns to keep the terrorist headquarters occupied while another platoon air-assaults nearby to envelop it.

The challenge for the lower-tech force, then, is to fight in such a way the enemy cannot use his high-tech strengths against you. If he can see in the dark, you learn how to camouflage yourself and your equipment so he can't tell what he's looking at. If he can shoot you from far away, you figure out how to get your short-range weapons closer to him.

In Iraq, the insurgents use IEDs to get around that issue. The arms race has gone something like this: at first, they wait by the roadside and ambush us as we go by. We start moving at night, when our night-vision capability gives us an advantage. They start hiding off the road and detonating IEDs as we roll by. We start recognizing the IEDs and hiding places and learn how to kill the guy who's supposed to set them off. They camouflage the IEDs so it's hard for thermals to see them, and start using radio transmitters to move the guy farther from the road. We start using jamming equipment to render the IEDs safe or detonate them before we get close. They start using old fashioned pressure plates and tripwires. We armor our vehicles so the shrapnel won't penetrate. They start using more sophisticated devices that can penetrate our armor. And so on.

[Sorry--I can't get much more specific than that on Iraq.]

A couple more historical examples:

--Faced with armored opponents riding horses, the Swiss invented the halberd, essentially a combination axe and spear and hook on a long pole--the spear gives an infantryman a reach advantage, while the hook can catch an armored man out of his saddle and render him momentarily helpless, and the axe gives him enough leverage (because of the long handle) to cut through the armor.

--Fighting with broadswords and outdated muskets against Redcoats with better muskets and bayonets, the Scots highlanders in the 1600s adopted a tactic of single volley followed up with a broadsword charge; they would fire a volley, wait for the English to return it, then drop their muskets and charge with their broadswords as the Redcoats were reloading. The English responded by firing by ranks (this was one of several conflicts that inspired that move, I think) and using their bayonets in an oblique manner: each man would use his bayonet to attack not the man directly opposite him, but the one to that man's left so the bayonet came up under the sword-arm from an unexpected direction.

--Japanese fighting British tanks in Southeast Asia in World War II used spider-holes and suicide troops. A man would dig a hole in the middle of a trail, climb into it with an artillery shell and a rock, and cover himself. When a tank crossed over him, he would use the rock to detonate the shell.

--Of course, there is the good old-fashioned "overwhelm him with numbers" method, in which a more numerous opponent might try to put his technologically-superior adversary in the unenviable position of having more bad guys than bullets. The Zulu used this tactic against the British at the turn of the twentieth century, as did the Chinese and North Koreans in the Korean War.

As to how to deal with a cloaked enemy who can come within weapons range undetected and fire on you before you know he's there? A few solutions occur to me:

--Develop your own cloaking device. The Federation outlawed this option, as I recall.

--Figure out how to detect a cloaked ship. Even if we accept the absurdity that they emit no form of radiation (they have to communicate with their buddies, after all), there is still the slight distortion of the background stars that tells the TV audience it's there. If you can detect it, you can shoot it--and they can't raise their shields while they are cloaked.

--If you can't detect a cloaked ship, figure out how to detect the signature of a ship decloaking. Then you can have the computer, depending on the level of hostility at the moment, adopt a "yellow" posture--raise shields automatically when it detects a decloaking ship--or a "red" posture--raise shields and fire all available weapons systems at the decloaking ship (absent a state of war, of course, the Federation might have a problem with the red thing. Of course, the Federation might have a problem with it even if a state of war exists).

This post came out a little longer than I expected it to. Time to stop now.

HN