This a third part in series of articles reflecting some ideas on history of military tactics. The series will consider the following viewpoints to tactical history:

Introduction to military history at tactical level
Generations of warfare
Tactical tenets and principles through the history
Individual, society, culture and warfare in history
Tactical level Command and Control in military history
Contemporary warfare
Future of combat reflected from the history

The aim of this series is to analyse the history and reflect some lessons from it for the junior officers preparing for today's conflicts.

3. Tactical tenets and principles through the history

“The process of tactics includes the art of selecting from among your techniques (and procedures) those which create a unique approach for the enemy, time, and place. Education is the basis for doing that – education not in what to do, but in how to think.”

William Lind (Lind, 1985)

Tactician is given a mission. That mission may be enemy-oriented (e.g. ambush, attack by fire, or block), terrain-oriented (e.g. seize, hold, or secure), or friendly-oriented (e.g. support, cover, or screen). Tactician must confront an enemy that will attempt to prevent the accomplishment of that mission. To accomplish the mission, tactician has to defeat the enemy in some manner. Tactics (i.e. arrangement in Greek) is the arrangement of military forces in such a manner to defeat the enemy.

Defeat does not mean destruction but as Clausewitz defines it “put the enemy in such a condition that they can no longer carry the fight.” (Clausewitz, 1984) Every unit has its breaking point. The moral cohesion (i.e. duty, patriotism, training, shared experience, comradeship, privation) keeps the unit in fight. The goal for tactician in victory is to shatter the enemy morale cohesion while preserving the cohesion of own troops.

Tactician seeks variable means and ways at physical, mental, and moral planes of battle. (Fuller, 1992)

Along these three planes, tactician may use the following general (Friedman, 2017) military behaviours:

Plane of battle

Tactical Tenet

Examples

Moral

Moral cohesion of tactical is the most important factor in their ability to fight and win.

“In war there are two factors – human beings and weapons. Ultimately, though, human beings are the decisive factor.” General Vo Nguyen Giap

The volunteer soldier who is motivated to fight is superior to the soldier forced to fight (Machiavelli, 1965):

· Greece vs. Persia

· Romans vs. tribes

· Confederates vs. Union

· Finland vs. Soviet Union

· Wehrmacht vs. Allied

· Gandhi’s India vs. British Government

The moral cohesion of tactical units is the most important factor in their ability to fight and win.

· Soldiers in combat fight for their compatriots.

· Soldiers fight for a purpose higher than themselves (ideology, religion, homeland)

· Soldiers fight for Commanders they trust, respect and who are leading them to victories. (Gray, 1999)

o Alexander the Great[1]

o Joan of Arc[2]

o Mustafa Kemal[3]

· Soldiers who think they are fighting for a just and ethical purpose have higher morale.

· Soldiers do not fight with empty bellies, fuel tanks or without ammunition. Troops welfare comes before its mission.

· Tactician needs to realise that war crimes, overly harsh tactics or targeting civilians usually hurt his ability to succeed in battle. (Frederick, 2011)

· “Enemy is defeated when he believes he is beaten.” (Storr, 2011)

Musashi: Grasp the rhythm of your opponent’s collapse and haste your offensive so they cannot escape that moment. (Musashi, 2012)

Mental

Deception is the manipulation of the enemy’s understanding of the situation in order to achieve an advantageous situation.

“All warfare is deception.” Sun Tzu (Gagliardi, 2005)

The mental effect of deception is achieved through the physical tactic of mass:

· Russian Maskirovka in Ukraine[4]:

1. Russia sent "humanitarian" convoys to Donbass; the first, of military trucks painted white, attracted much media attention.

2. The area was quietly occupied by so-called little green men, armed men in military trucks who came at night, with no insignia.[5]

3. Their obscure origins made them seem more menacing and harder to deal with. (Vowell, n.d.)

4. Regular Russian troops were captured by Ukraine numerous times but Russian kept denying the presence of their Armed Forces

· Desert Storm 1991 included three deceptive moves[6] when the main attack enveloped the main defence and attacked from right and behind of the Iraqi formations:

1. Marines amphibious attack fabrication bound Iraqi troops to defence the shore.

2. Division size feint from the obvious direction of attack

3. Breach of defence lines and drive towards Kuwait City, an obvious target.

Electronic deception: (Wright, n.d.)

In Desert Storm 1991, The coalition forces fielded a twelve-person deception cell which had deployed to Saudi Arabia with camouflage decoys, communication emulators, and other equipment. Each of the four divisions in the corps had their own deception teams and equipment. On 13 February, 300 Soldiers, including the deception teams, PSYOPS teams, a signal company, an engineer platoon, a smoke platoon, and an infantry platoon, moved into what were called “deception tactical assembly areas” near the Kuwaiti border. These forces communicated and conducted operations that emulated major XVIII Airborne Corps units.

Information operation deception:

· In Desert Storm 1991, CENTCOM allowed the media to cover the Marines as they rehearsed amphibious operations and broadcast stories about those preparations. General Schwarzkopf also made very public visits to Marine Amphibious units on 15 February, a move designed to keep Iraqi attention on the Persian Gulf.

Musashi: When opponent attacks you stay completely unruffled but show a weak appearance. (Musashi, 2012)

Surprise in combat is the act of presenting your enemy with a situation or capability for which he is mentally unprepared.

Achieving surprise may create same success rate as having a 2000:1 numerical superiority over an opponent (Storr, 2011).

· Taliban sniper surprising coalition patrol in Afghanistan. [7]

“The desire to surprise the enemy by our plans and disposition. (Clausewitz, 1984)”

· Taliban surprise attack to NATO base.[8]

· Japan’s surprise attack to Pearl Harbour[9]

Musashi: Detect you opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, understand hot to take him by surprise, know well the scale of this rhythm along with the rhythm of his space and time and take initiative. (Musashi, 2012)

Confusion in combat is a state of mental overload or disarray that makes it difficult both to react to events and understand the situation.

Operational security (OPSEC) and information assurance (IA)

· US led coalition captured Laptops and USB sticks during heavy fighting around the Syrian town of Manbij in the past few weeks amounted to more than 4,500 gigabytes of computer memory, the officials said. More than 10,000 paper documents were recovered. (Coghlan, 2016)

C2 warfare:

· In the 2^nd battle of Fallujah November 2004, coalition attacked insurgent prepared urban defence. Besides the diversion attack, the coalition also took out the command and communications nodes before launching the main attack. (West & West, 2006) Taking out the enemy communications nodes causes confusion in their lines of command.

Habituation:

· Israel used “jumping barrage” artillery fire to confuse Egyptian defence by concentrating all fire to a single target at time, then transferring fire to another target. They continued returning to the old targets so Egyptians were passively waiting in their shelters when IDF troops surrounded them. (Gudmundsson, 1993)

Musashi: Keep the mind in the exact centre, not allowing it to become preoccupied; let it sway peacefully, not allowing it to stop doing so for even a moment. (Musashi, 2012)

Shock effect is a state of psychological overload caused by the sudden, unexpected, or successive action of the enemy.

· Janissaries as elite shock troops[10]

· Stormtroopers developed during I WW[11]

· ISIS fighters deployed to hard strike and in progress, they also detonated themselves to shock the perimeter defence. (Padilla, 2015)

· “Shock and Awe” [12]operation in 2003 Coalition used 1800 aircraft to strike at 20 000 targets in Iraq. Of those targets, 15 800 were Iraqi army, 1800 Iraqi government, 1400 Iraqi air force, and 800 other key installations. (Correll, 2003)

Musashi: Position yourself in a way that you can deter the enemy strike and hit him back before he is able to consider next movement. (Musashi, 2012)

Physical

Manoeuvre is gaining an asymmetric advantage by attacking the enemy from a position of comparative advantage.

Frontal attack[13]

· In battle of 73 Easting, coalition force of 36 M1A1 tanks defeated two Iraqi brigades.[14]

Flanking attack[15]

· Chechens deployed antitank hunter-killer teams that flanked Soviet armoured columns in Grozny.[16] Teams fired from sides and top the tanks on the street. Russia lost 80% of their troops in 72 hours. (Poole, 2004)

· Mujahideen used US provided Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to hit Soviet helicopters from a high mountain positions.[17]

Envelopment, flanking, pincer movement[18]

· A-6 Intruders[19] blocked the head and tail of the Iraq forces column on Highway 80 and set traffic jam and fixing the column for continuous air bombardment. For example, AC-130 Gunships were used to fire at the kill zone.[20]

Turning movement[21]

· Sherman’s March from Atlanta to Savannah in US civil war strike deep into Confederate rear.[22]

Infiltration[23]

· Palestinians are digging tunnels under the isolating structures in Gaza and infiltrate fighters to attack sensitive targets (i.e. tourism, busses transporting military, fuel farms) on Israeli side. (Poole, 2004)

Swarming[24]

· Al-Qaeda uses small cells to attack same target in coordinated but not continuously controlled manner.[25]

· A fleet of manned or unmanned small boats cripple a larger vessel.[26] [27]

· Somali National Army[28] uses mounted squads (on Toyota 4Runner with a machine gun) move widely dispersed so when they engage an enemy, some of the squads will attack from flank or rear.

Mass[29] is an advantageous (i.e. superiority at decisive point) concentration of combat power[30] in space and or time.

Asymmetry in mass:

· British broke though the Afrika Korps defence by concentrating artillery fires, then heavy armour in the head followed by motorised troops (Liddell-hart, 1953). See Battle of El Alamein.

· In Operation Vigilant Resolve in Fallujah April 2004[31], the U.S. Marines won all physical engagements, but they lost the battle at information level since adversary was using local, regional and international media to impact the perception of decision makers. (Metz, GArret, Hutton, & Bush, 2006)

Massing of effects

· Applied by LTC Deptula in planning the day-by-day air operations during Desert Storm campaign 1991, when he used Wardens system model to direct air attacks for effects to gain ends rather than force-on-force.[32]

Massing over time to constrain enemy options

· Modern mortar systems fire several ammunitions at same target with different trajectory, so they all hit the target at same time.[33]

Concentration of power over geography

· Close Air Support was designed by Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht to provide fire support to advancing armoured troops as their artillery was moving slow.[34]

Distributed lethality (Rowden, Gumataotao, & Fanta, 2015)

· US Marines distribute their forces on several smaller ships rather than concentrate them on carrier groups, which are more vulnerable to Chinese anti-ship missiles.[35]

Firepower[36] is the ability to apply ranged weapons at an advantage against enemy forces.

Tacticians constantly adapt to use of firepower:

· Armoured knight against longbow 1415 in Agincourt[37]

· Fortification against artillery in 1914 when Germans used 420 mm howitzer to pulverize Belgian forts[38].

· Speed against fire: Mechanised troops to avoid massive artillery fire concentrations[39]

· Cover against fire: Using civilian population to escape the fire in Iraq. (Karnis, 2006)

Firepower is rarely effective by itself:

· Fixing the enemy with fire and then outmanoeuvring it

· Fire in Navy fleet engagements is optimised when flank of one fleet engages the point of enemy column.[40]

· Aircraft in airbases needs to be distributed and sheltered[41] to sustain their operations.[42]

Dispersal:

· Insurgents and terrorists use dispersed cells to concentrate their effort on targets. Battle of Wanat 2008, over 200 Taliban fighters attacked position manned by 70 ISAF soldiers. Attackers were successful until indirect firepower and close air support drove them away.

· Swarming vehicles need to be dispersed to avoid destruction before delivering the impact[43]

Combined arms[44] fire:

· An effective anti-aircraft warfare requires a controlled combination of ground based high-altitude to short range missiles, ship-based mid-range missiles; a grid of sensors based on satellite, aircraft, ship, and ground; and a command system.[45]

· In 2009, Taliban was able to overcome ISAF post in Kamdesh despite the combined fires available from mortars, helicopters, artillery, and air-strikes. The main problem was slowness in chain of command.[46]

Musashi: Do not make any distinctions of preferences with your weapons. Use what is appropriate to you without imitating others. (Musashi, 2012)

Tempo is the ability to control the pace of combat to your advantage and the disadvantage of the enemy.

Observe-Orient-Decide-Act -loop:

· The aerial dogfight pilots ability to grasp the situation quickly and choose the optimum countermove were emphasised by John Boyd in the Korean War (Boyd, 1960) and he developed the OODA-loop.[47]

· The idea is to run one’s loop faster than the enemy, i.e. having a higher tempo

Finite vs infinite perception of time:[48]

· Infinite - the guerrilla wins if he does not lose, i.e. exhaustion strategy. (Kissinger, 1969)

o North Vietnamese tactics of quick strikes – one slow, four quick (Friedman, 2017)

1. Careful planning

2. Dispersed infiltration

3. Sudden concentration

4. Fast massed attack

5. Withdrawal with ambushes

· Finite - the conventional army loses if it does not win, i.e. annihilation strategy.

Musashi: Victory is knowing the rhythm of your opponent and using a rhythm your opponent will be unable to grasp. (Musashi, 2012)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyjAyIyXOeM