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Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy which
attempts to defeat the enemy by incapacitating their decision-making through
shock and disruption.
Background:
Methods of war have to be chosen between maneuver and attrition warfare. The
latter focuses on achieving victory through killing or capturing the enemy;
maneuver warfare advocates the recognition that all warfare involves both
maneuver and attrition. Historically, maneuver warfare was stressed by small
militaries, the more cohesive, better trained, or more technically able needed]
than attrition warfare counterparts. The term "tactical maneuver" is
used by maneuver warfare theorists to refer to movement by forces to gain
"advantageous position relative to the enemy" as opposed to its use
in the phrase "maneuver warfare". The idea of using rapid movement to
keep an enemy off balance is as old as war itself. However, advanced
technology, such as the development of cavalry and mechanized vehicles, has led
to increased interest in the concepts of maneuver warfare and its role on
modern battlefields.
Concepts :
Conservative militaries believe that, with some exceptions, most battles
between established armies have historically been fought based on attrition
warfare strategies. Closer examination, however, reveals that the type of
strategy is not universally agreed to, and many military doctrines and cultures
are based on replete historical examples of maneuver warfare. The view on
attrition warfare involves moving masses of men and materiel against enemy
strongpoints, with the emphasis on the destruction of the enemy's physical
assets, success as measured by enemy combatants killed, equipment and
infrastructure destroyed, and territory taken or occupied.
Attrition warfare tends to use rigidly centralized command structures that
require little or no creativity or initiative from lower-level leadership (also
called top-down or "command push" tactics). Maneuver warfare doctrine
looks at styles of warfare as a spectrum with attrition warfare and maneuver
warfare on opposite ends. In attrition warfare, the enemy is seen as a
collection of targets to be found and destroyed. It exploits maneuver to bring
to bear firepower to destroy enemy forces.
Maneuver warfare, on the other hand, exploits firepower and attrition on key
elements of opposing forces. Maneuver warfare suggest that strategic movement
can bring the defeat of an opposing force more efficiently than simply
contacting and destroying enemy forces until they can no longer fight. Instead,
in maneuver warfare, the destruction of certain enemy targets, such as command
and control centers, logistical bases, or fire support assets, is combined with
isolation of enemy forces and the exploitation by movement of enemy weaknesses.
Bypassing and cutting off enemy strongpoints often results in the collapse of
that strongpoint even where the physical damage is minimal, such as the Maginot
Line.
Firepower, primarily used to destroy as many enemy forces possible in attrition
warfare, is used to suppress or destroy enemy positions at breakthrough points
during maneuver warfare. Infiltration tactics, conventionally or with special
forces, may be used extensively to cause chaos and confusion behind enemy
lines. Leonhard summarizes maneuver warfare theory as preempt, dislocate, and
disrupt the enemy as alternatives to destruction of enemy mass through
attrition warfare. Since tempo and initiative are so critical to the success of
maneuver warfare, command structures tend to be more decentralized with more
tactical freedom given to lower-level unit leaders. Decentralized command
structures allows "on the ground" unit leaders while still working
within the guidelines of the commander's overall vision, to exploit enemy
weaknesses as they become evident, also called "recon-pull" tactics
or directive control).
War theorist Martin van Creveld identifies six main elements of maneuver
warfare:
Tempo: as illustrated by John Boyd's OODA loop. Schwerpunkt (focal point): the
center of effort, or striking the enemy at the right place at the right time.
According to van Creveld, ideally, a spot that is both vital and weakly
defended.
Surprise: based on deception.
Combined arms Flexibility: a military must be well rounded, self-contained and
redundant.
Decentralized command: rapidly changing situations may outpace communications.
Lower levels must understand overall intent.
History:
Early examples of maneuver :
For most of history, armies were slower than a marching soldier, making it
possible for opposing armies to march around each other as long as they wished.
Supply conditions often decided where and when the battle would finally start.
Prehistorically, that began to change with the domestication of the horse, the
invention of chariots, and increasing military use of cavalry. It had two major
uses: to attack and use its momentum to break infantry formations and using the
advantage of speed to cut communications and isolate formations for later
defeat in detail. One of the most famous early maneuver tactics was the double
envelopment. It was used by Hannibal, against the Romans, at the Battle of
Cannae in 216 BC; and by Khalid ibn al-Walid, against the Persian Empire at the
Battle of Walaja in 633 AD. The retreat of the center of the Athenian and
Platean citizen-soldiers (Hoplites) at the battle of Marathon against the
forces of Datis in 490 BC, and subsequent pincer movements by Athenian forces
on the flanks, used a similar tactic. The intention was to bring the Persian
core forces forward—Persian and Saka axemen. The Hoplite flanks would then
drive off their opposite numbers and enveloped the Persian center. Before the
battle, Datis had re-embarked his cavalry—to which the hoplite formations
had little real defense—which substantially weakened his position.
Khalid's invasion of Roman Syria in July 634—by invading Syria from an
unexpected direction, the Syrian desert—is another example of taking enemy
defenses by surprise. While the Byzantine army held the Muslim forces in
southern Syria and had expected reinforcement from the conventional
Syria-Arabia road in the south, Khalid, who was in Iraq, marched through the
Syrian desert and entered northern Syria, completely taking the Byzantines by
surprise and cutting off their communications with northern Syria.
Mongol use of maneuver warfare:
The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan used a military system of maneuver warfare that
focused on rapid, decisive maneuver, utilizing the skill and endurance of his
Mongol horsemen. He used operational maneuver, command and control, deception,
and precise battlefield tactics which were vastly superior to those of his
opponents in China, Russia, Persia, and Eastern Europe and was able to defeat
virtually every enemy army he faced. An example of his usage of maneuver
warfare was the defeat and annexation of the Khwarazmian Empire between 1219 to
1221 CE, which wielded an army nearly three times the Mongol army, in just a
few months of fighting. The Mongol army's constant movement and maneuvering
tied down the Khwarazmian forces, denying them the ability to gain the
initiative as well as shocked and demoralized the Khwarazmian Shah Ala ad-Din
Muhammad as well as his army, thus ending the campaign before the Shah could
bring to bear his much larger numbers.
Napoleon's use of maneuver:
Similar strategies are also possible using suitably trained infantry. Napoleon
I used preemptive movements of cavalry and fast infantry to interrupt the
initial deployment of enemy forces. This allowed his forces to attack where and
when he wanted, enabling force concentration, possibly in combination with
advantage of terrain. It disabled effective coordination of enemy forces, even
when they were superior in numbers. This was effective tactically and
strategically. During his time as a general, and indeed his power base to
become the head of France, Napoleon's reputation was based on a powerful and
fluent campaign in northern Italy, opposing the numerically superior Austrians.
He cited Frederick the Great as one major source of his strategy. He trained a
normal if rather undisciplined French Army of Italy to be able to move faster
than most thought possible. This was partially because his army lived off the
land and had no big logistical "tail". His ability to move huge
armies to give battle where he wanted, and the style of his choice to become
legendary, he was seen as undefeatable, even against larger and superior
forces. Napoleon also arranged his forces into what would be known in the
present as "battle groups" of combined arms formations to allow
faster reaction time to enemy action. This strategy is an important quality in
supporting the effectiveness of maneuver warfare; the strategy was used again
by von Clausewitz.
Napoleon's principal strategy was to move fast to engage before the enemy had
time to organize, engage lightly while moving to turn the flank that defended
the main resupply route, to envelop and deploy blocking forces to prevent
reinforcement and to defeat those contained in the envelopment in detail. All
of those activities imply faster movement than the enemy as well as faster
reaction times to enemy activities. His use of fast mass marches to gain
strategic advantage, cavalry probes and screens to hide his movements, and
deliberate movement to gain psychological advantage by isolating forces from
each other, and their headquarters are all hallmarks of maneuver warfare. One
of his major concerns was the relatively slow speed of infantry movement
relative to the cavalry. It was this and subsequent defeats that caused a major
doctrinal reevaluation by the Prussians under Carl von Clausewitz of the
revealed power of maneuver warfare. The results of this review were seen in the
Franco-Prussian War.
Mechanization of maneuver:
In the mid-19th century, various forms of mechanized transport were introduced,
starting with the steam powered trains. This resulted in significant logistic
improvements. Opposing armies were no longer limited in speed by the pace of
march. Some train-borne maneuvering took place during the American Civil War in
the 1860s, but the sizes of the armies involved meant the system could provide
only limited support. Armored trains were among the first armored fighting
vehicles employed by mankind.
In the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussian Army, knowing France was capable of
fielding an army larger than theirs, made a plan that required speed by
surrounding the French strongpoints and [also] destroying or bypassing
them—the Kesselschlacht or "cauldron battle"; the remainder of
the army advanced unopposed to take important objectives. If war was declared,
it could quickly mobilize, then invade and destroy French field forces; it
would be a victory before the French army could fully react.
That tactic was used to devastating effect in 1870; Prussian forces were able
to surround and defeat French forces, capturing Napoleon III and besieging
Paris. The German battle plans for World War I were similar. They attempted to
repeat the "knock-out blow" against the French armies in the
Schlieffen Plan. However, technology evolved significantly in the preceding
four decades; the machine gun and more powerful artillery resulted in the
balance of power in favor of the defense. All combatants were desperate to get
the front moving again, but it is now proven to be difficult. Germany
introduced new tactics with infiltration and stormtrooper "shock
troops", toward the end of World War I, which bypasses resistance.
Russian general Aleksei Brusilov used similar tactics in 1916 on the Eastern
Front during the Brusilov Offensive. The introduction of the tanks, in a series
of increasingly successful operations, pointed the way out of the deadlock of
attrition and trench warfare, but World War I ended before the British would
field thousands of tanks to be put in a large-scale offense. Fuller had
proposed Plan 1919 which would use tanks to break through the lines and then
wreak havoc on the German lines of supply and communication.
In the interwar period, the British developed ideas for fully mechanized
all-arms warfare with the Experimental Mechanized Force. The Germans reviewed
their doctrine and revised their approach, expanding on the infiltration
tactics and amplifying them with motor transport. Heinz Guderian was a leading
proponent of armored combat. The German military stressed several key elements:
versatile tanks combined with mobile infantry and artillery, close air support,
rapid movement and concentration of forces (Schwerpunkt), and aggressive
independent local initiative. These were all strictly coordinated by radio, and
it contributed to new tactics during the Battle of France in 1940. Theories in
Germany about armoured warfare have some similarities with interwar theories of
British officers J.F.C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart, which the British army
failed to embrace and understand fully. There are similarities between
blitzkrieg and the Soviet concept of "Deep Battle", which the Soviets
used to great effect in 1944 and continued to use as a doctrine through the
Cold War.
U.S. Marine Corps doctrine of maneuver:
According to the United States Marine Corps, one key concept of maneuver
warfare is that maneuver is traditionally thought of as a spatial concept, the
use of maneuver to gain positional advantage. The US Marine concept of
maneuver, however, is a "warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the
enemy's cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions
which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the
enemy cannot cope." The U.S. Marine manual goes on to say: "This is
not to imply that firepower is unimportant. On the contrary, firepower is
central to maneuver warfare. Nor do we mean to imply that we will pass up the
opportunity to physically destroy the enemy. We will concentrate fires and
forces at decisive points to destroy enemy elements when the opportunity
presents itself and when it fits our larger purposes." The possibility of
a massive Soviet offensive in Western Europe led to the creation of the United
States Army's AirLand battle doctrine. Though far from focusing on maneuver, it
emphasized using combined arms to disrupt an enemy's plan by striking through
their depth; it was seen as moving towards maneuver warfare in comparison to
the earlier Active Defense concept.
The AirLand doctrine was seen by Martin van Creveld as "arguably a half
way house between maneuver and attrition."
Soviet Deep Battle:
In the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, the concept of "Deep
Battle" was developed and integrated into the Red Army field regulations
doctrine by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskiy. This led to the creation of Cavalry
Mechanised Groups during World War II and Operational maneuver groups during
the Cold War.
Limitations of maneuver in a modern context:
A key requirement for success in maneuver warfare is up-to-date accurate
intelligence on the disposition of key enemy command, support, and combat
units. In operations whose intelligence is either inaccurate, unavailable, or
unreliable, the successful implementation of strategies based on maneuver
warfare can become problematic. When faced with a maneuverable opponent capable
of redeploying key forces quickly and discreetly or when tempered, the capacity
of maneuver warfare strategies to deliver victory becomes more challenging.
The 2006 Lebanon War example where such shortcomings have been exposed. Despite
overwhelming firepower and complete air superiority, Israeli forces were unable
to deliver a decisive blow to the command structure of Hezbollah or degrade its
effective capacity to operate. Although inflicting heavy damage, Israeli was
unable to locate and destroy Hezbollah's diluted force dispositions or
neutralize key command centers. Therefore, it did not meet its war aims. The
insurgency in Iraq also demonstrates that a military victory over an opponent's
conventional forces does not automatically translate into a political victory.
Some military theorists such as William Lind and Colonel Thomas X. Hammes
propose to overcome the shortcomings of maneuver warfare with the concept of
what they call fourth generation warfare. For example, Lieutenant-Colonel S.P.
Myers writes that "maneuver is more a philosophical approach to campaign
design and execution than an arrangement of tactical engagements". Myers
goes on to write that maneuver warfare can evolve and that "maneuverist
approach in campaign design and execution remains relevant and effective as a
counter-insurgency strategy at the operational level in contemporary
operations".
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