Maneuver Warfare Handbook

William S Lind

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429978692
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

Maneuver warfare, often controversial and requiring operational and tactical innovation, poses perhaps the most important doctrinal questions currently facing the conventional military forces of the U.S. Its purpose is to defeat the enemy by disrupting the opponent's ability to react, rather than by physical destruction of forces. This book develops and explains the theory of maneuver warfare and offers specific tactical, operational, and organizational recommendations for improving ground combat forces. The authors translate concepts too often vaguely stated by manuever warfare advocates into concrete doctrine. Although the book uses the Marine Corps as a model, the concepts, tactics, and doctrine discussed apply to any ground combat force.

1
The Theory of Maneuver Warfare

Maneuver warfare is not new. It probably dates from the first time a caveman surprised an enemy from behind instead of meeting him club-to-club. The first clear case in recorded history was the battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. The Thebans won that battle, thanks to a surprise strike against the right flank of the rigid Spartan phalanx. Hannibal's defeat of the Romans at Cannae in 216 B.C., one of the most decisive tactical victories of all time, was an example of maneuver warfare. Modern history offers many examples: Rosecranz at Chattanooga, Grant at Vicksburg, and Jackson's Valley Campaign in the American Civil War; German infiltration tactics in the offensive of 1918; the World War II Blitzkrieg; and General Sharon's attack across the Suez Canal in 1973.

Why are all these cases of "maneuver warfare"? What is "maneuver"? Sometimes the word maneuver is used as a synonym for movement, such as in references to "fire and maneuver" in small-unit tactics. A traditional definition is offered by Soviet Colonel F. D. Sverdlov in a recent study, Tactical Maneuver. "Maneuver...is organized movement of troops (forces) during combat operations to a new axis (line) and region for the purpose of taking an advantageous position relative to the enemy in order to deliver a decisive strike."¹

But when used in the phrase "maneuver warfare," maneuver means much more. It is what all these cases--Leuctra, Cannae, Vicksburg, the German 1918 offensive, the Suez Canal crossing and many, many others--have in common. The theory of maneuver warfare must answer the question: What was the essence of success in all of these cases?

Only recently has someone suggested a convincing answer. The man is a retired Air Force colonel and fighter pilot named John Boyd. Colonel Boyd's development of the theory of maneuver warfare began, not with ground battles, but with a study of some mock air-to-air combat exercises (conducted at Nellis Air Force Base in 1974) that led him back to the study of air-to-air combat during the Korean war. American aviators were very successful in that conflict. They achieved a 10:1 kill ratio over their North Korean and Chinese opponents. Colonel Boyd began his study with the question: "How and why did we do so well?"

He noted that in several traditional measures of aircraft performance, the principal Communist fighter, the MiG-15, was superior to the American F-86. It could climb and accelerate faster, and it had a better sustained turn rate. But in two less obvious measures of aircraft performance, the F-86 was much superior to the MiG. First, the pilot could see out much better. The F-86's bubble canopy gave its pilot very good outward vision, while the MiG's faired canopy made it difficult to see out. Second, the F-86 had high-powered and highly effective hydraulic controls and the MiG did not. This meant that while the MiG could do many individual actions--including turn, climb, and accelerate--better than the F-86, the F-86 could transition from one action to another much more quickly than the MiG.

Using these two superiorities, the American pilots developed a tactical approach that forced the MiG into a series of actions. Each time the action changed, the F-86 gained a time advantage, because the F-86 pilot could see more quickly how the situation had changed and he could also make his aircraft shift more quickly to a new action. With each change, the MiG's actions became more inappropriate, until they were so inappropriate that the MiG gave the F-86 a good firing opportunity. Often, it appeared the MiG pilot realized what was happening to him and panicked, which made the American pilot's job all the easier.

Later Colonel Boyd began studying ground combat to see if there were situations similar to that he had found in the air war over Korea. He found that in battles, campaigns and wars like Leuctra, Vicksburg and France in 1940, a similar thing seemed to have happened. One side had presented the other with a sudden, unexpected change or a series of such changes to which it could not adjust in a timely manner. As a result, it was defeated, and it was generally defeated at small cost to the victor. Often, the losing side had been physically stronger than the winner. And often, the same sort of panic and paralysis the North Korean and Chinese pilots had shown seemed to occur.

Colonel Boyd asked himself, what did all these cases have in common? His answer was what is now called the Boyd Theory, which is the theory of maneuver warfare. The briefing Colonel Boyd gives to explain his theory, "Patterns of Conflict," takes over five hours. But, at the cost of missing some of the subtleties and the supporting historical evidence in the briefing, it can be summarized as follows.

Conflict can be seen as time-competitive observation-orientation-decision-action cycles. Each party to a conflict begins by observing. He observes himself, his physical surroundings and his enemy. On the basis of his observation, he orients, that is to say, he makes a mental image or "snapshot" of his situation. On the basis of this orientation, he makes a decision. He puts the decision into effect, i.e., he acts. Then, because he assumes his action has changed the situation, he observes again, and starts the process anew. His actions follow this cycle, sometimes called the "Boyd Cycle" or "OODA Loop."

If one side in a conflict can consistently go through the Boyd Cycle faster than the other, it gains a tremendous advantage. By the time the slower side acts, the faster side is doing something different from what he observed, and his action is inappropriate. With each cycle, the slower party's action is inappropriate by a larger time margin. Even though he desperately strives to do something that will work, each action is less useful than its predecessor; he falls farther and farther behind. Ultimately, he ceases to be effective.

This is what happened to the Spartans at Leuctra, the Romans at Cannae, the French in 1940 and the Communist fighter pilots over Korea. Sometimes, a single action was enough, as in the Thebans' oblique attack at Leuctra. Sometimes, as in the Blitzkrieg or air combat over Korea, a series of 00DA Loops was required. But whether it was through a single action or a large number, the essence of what happened was the same.

The Boyd Theory defines what is meant by the word "maneuver" in the term "maneuver warfare." Maneuver means Boyd Cycling the enemy, being consistently faster through however many 00DA Loops it takes until the enemy loses his cohesion-- until he can no longer fight as an effective, organized force.

Sometimes, a Boyd Cycled enemy panics or becomes passive. This is an ideal outcome for the victor, because a panicked or passive enemy can be annihilated or captured at the lowest cost in friendly casualties. At other times, the outmaneuvered enemy may continue to fight as individuals or small units. But because he can no longer act effectively as a force, he is comparatively easy to destroy. A good example of a panicked enemy can be seen in Rommel's success at the battle of Caporetto in World War I, where with a force of about a battalion he took more than 10,000 Italian prisoners. At Cannae, the Romans continued to fight as individuals. But in both situations, the basis of victory was the same: one side Boyd Cycled the other.

If the object in maneuver warfare is to move through 00DA Loops faster than the enemy, what do you need to do? How can you be consistently faster? Much of the rest of this book is an effort to address that question. But in terms of general theory, the following points are worth thinking about:

1. Only a decentralized military can have a fast 00DA Loop. If the observations must be passed up a chain of command, the orientation made and the decision taken at a high level, and the command for action then transmitted back down the chain, the 00DA Loop is going to be slow. As the Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld has observed:

From Plato to NATO, the history of command in war consists of an endless quest for certainty. Certainty concerning the state and intentions of the enemy's forces; certainty concerning the manifold factors which together constitute the environment, from the weather and the terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and, last but definitely not least, certainty concerning the state and activities of one's own forces... historical commanders have always faced the choice between two basic ways of coping with uncertainty. One was to construct an army of automatons following the orders of a single man, allowed to do only that which could be controlled; the other, to design organizations and operations in such a way as to enable the former to carry out the latter without the need for continuous control. ...the second of these methods has, by and large, proved more successful than the first; and...the ongoing revolution in the technology of command notwithstanding, this is likely to remain so in the future and indeed so long as war itself exists.²

2. Maneuver warfare means you will not only accept confusion and disorder and operate successfully within it, through decentralization, you will also generate confusion and disorder. The "reconnaissance pull" (see Chapters II and III) tactics of the German Blitzkrieg were inherently disorderly. Higher headquarters could neither direct nor predict the exact path of the advance. But the multitude of German reconnaissance thrusts generated massive confusion among the French in 1940. Each was reported as a new attack. The Germans seemed to be everywhere, and the French, whose system demanded certainty before making any decisions, were paralyzed.

3. All patterns, recipes and formulas are to be avoided. The enemy must not be able to predict your actions. If your tactics follow predictable patterns, the enemy can easily cut inside your 00DA Loop. If he can predict what you will do, he will be waiting for you.

This is why it is so hard to tell someone how to do maneuver warfare. There is no formula you can learn. When someone says, "Cut all the bull about theory; just tell me what to do," you can't. You can talk about how to think, and about some useful techniques. But you can't give new formulas to replace the ones currently taught at Marine Corps schools.

Instead of a checklist or a cookbook, maneuver warfare requires commanders who can sense more than they can see, who understand the opponent's strengths and weaknesses and their own, and who can find the enemy's critical weaknesses in a specific situation (which is seldom easy). They must be able to create multiple threats and keep the enemy uncertain as to which is real. They must be able to see their options in the situation before them, constantly create new options, and shift rapidly among options as the situation develops. General Hermann Balck, one of the most successful practitioners of maneuver warfare, said:

I'm against the school approach that says, "In accordance with the ideas of the General Staff, in this situation you must do thus and such." On the contrary, you must proceed as dictated by the personalities involved and the particulars of the situation. For instance, you are attacking at 7 o'clock in the morning and you have given clear tasks to each of your divisions: this one takes this objective, the next one grabs this, the third does nothing except to protect the left flank. At the next attack opportunity you may have an almost identical situation, but everything must be changed completely because your most competent division commander has been killed in the meanwhile.

Therefore, one of the first principles has to be: There can be no fixed schemes. Every scheme, every pattern is wrong. No two situations are identical. That is why the study of military history can be extremely dangerous.

Another principle that follows from this is: Never do the same thing twice. Even if something works well for you once, by the second time the enemy will have adapted. So you have to think up something new.

No one thinks of becoming a great painter simply by imitating Michaelangelo. Similarly, you can't become a great military leader just by imitating so and so. It has to come from within. In the last analysis, military command is an art: one man can do it and most will never learn. After all, the world is not full of Raphaels either.³

2
Tactics and Operations

If maneuver warfare cannot be done by formulas and recipes, how can it be done? To help answer this question, you might want to look at some pictures of maneuver warfare.

Picture #1: The expanding torrent. B. H. Liddell Hart, the famous British military historian and theorist, drew an analogy between a maneuver warfare attack and flowing water. He wrote:

If we watch a torrent bearing down on each successive bank or earthen dam in its path, we see that it first beats against the obstacle, feeling and testing it at all points.

Eventually, it finds a small crack at some point. Through this crack pour the first driblets of water and rush straight on.

The pent-up water on each side is drawn towards the breach. It swirls through and around the flanks of the breach, wearing away the earth on each side and so widening the gap.

Simultaneously the water behind pours straight through the breach between the side eddies which are wearing away the flanks. Directly it has passed through it expands to widen once more the onrush of the torrent. Thus as the water pours through in ever-increasing volume the onrush of the torrent swells to its original proportions, leaving in turn each crumbling obstacle behind it.

Thus Nature's forces carry out the ideal attack, automatically maintaining the speed, the breadth, and the continuity of the attack.¹

Picture #2: German defensive tactics in 1917. During the winter of 1916-17, the Germans abandoned what we think of as the classic First World War defense, where men were closely packed into trenches and fought to hold every inch of ground. Instead, they adopted an elastic defense in depth, a defense that reflected maneuver warfare. Captain Timothy Lupfer discusses it in his excellent study, The Dynamics of Doctrine:

The trenches were necessary for daily living, but once detected they were lathered with preparatory fire and barrages. Deep dugouts in forward areas were also impractical, for soldiers remained in them too long after the enemy barrage lifted and were often captured. Therefore, under heavy fire, the forward German soldiers evacuated their trenches and shifted from shell hole to shell hole, avoiding concentrations of fire and escaping the detection of aerial artillery spotters.

The Allied advance would first encounter resistance from pockets of German survivors in shell holes. Having been concealed from aerial observation, units positioned on the reverse slope would then open fire unexpectedly. The Allies would also encounter fortified strongpoints... built to provide for all-around defense and they engaged the attackers, whenever possible, with devastating enfilade fire. The strongpoints would remain fighting even if cut off by the enemy advance.

The ideal scenario was:

A fragmented, exhausted Allied attack force reaches the battle zone. They hope that their thorough artillery preparation has killed all the Germans, but they encounter several Germans firing at them from shell holes in the torn ground. Sudden fire from the German main line of resistance has slowed the Allies and their scheduled artillery barrage has crept forward without them, according to a timed sequence of fire they cannot modify. They feel helpless without artillery support. The Allies finally have taken the main line of resistance at great cost, but now they are in unfamiliar ground, under fire from concealed enemy machine gunners and riflemen. German artillery, which the Allies expected to destroy in the preparatory fires, now appears very active. The Germans concentrate their artillery fire behind the Allied advanced units, cutting them off from reinforcements and supplies. For the next few minutes, the Allies have a tenuous hold on a few acres of ground, but by advancing into the battle zone, the Allies are most vulnerable, and have exposed themselves to the counterattack, the soul of the German defense. The immediate counterattack, well coordinated with accurate artillery fire, destroys, captures or ejects the Allied unit before it can consolidate its gains. The coherence of the German defense is restored...

In Its most developed form, the defense had designated counterattack forces throughout the zones. In the outpost zone, local commanders designated counterattack squads. In the battle zone, commanders designated counterattack compani...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 The Theory of Maneuver Warfare
• 2 Tactics and Operations
• 3 Techniques and Organization
• 4 Amphibious Operations
• 5 Education and Training
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Annotated Bibliography
• Appendix: Fundamentals of Tactics