Attrition

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

In another thread, people are going on about maneuver warfare. Some of them mean combined arms warfare. Some of them mean being brilliant. Some of them mean the Tao of Pooh. Some of them are simply insulting, others are degrading, many majored in "annoying", and "vague" has broken out in highly virulent form.

Manuever warfare doubtless exists, but not on that thread. The opponents there are engaged in a bloody struggle of attrition - LOL. I herewith produce a manuever, resulting in new thread. I lay hold of "manuever warfare" by its backside, by discussing attrition warfare instead.

I have come not to bury attrition, but to praise it. Attrition is often used as a synonym for "dumb". It refers to all that is inglorious in the common conception of the art of war. All that is mud, all that is mere numbers, all that is straight ahead, all that is wasteful and cruel and inhuman and dumb, just like war itself.

Everybody hates attrition and wants to be a military genius, and some use "manuever" in no other sense than the recommendation "be a genius". A few of these are deluded enough they think making the recommendation makes themselves a pack of geniuses, but that is another story.

But I begin my plan of campaign with one claim and a challenge. The claim is that the only major war won by other than attrition strategies since 1700 was the six-day war in 1967 between Israel and the Arabs. I acknowledge some "overdetermined" cases that were so lopsided the actually decisive strategies cannot be fully seperated out, as possible additions - Panama a decade ago as an example. With that claim and proviso, I herewith challenge all detractors against the idiocy of attrition warfare strategies to produce their additional examples. But note, I require not a campaign nor a battle nor a firefight, but an entire major war, between serious combatants (no "El Salvador vs. Guatamala" cases, please).

Everybody hates attrition strategies because everyone hates the waste and stupidity of war. But attrition strategies win wars - real ones, made out of not cardboard or pixels or plastic army-men, but mud and blood and nations - and manuever warfare does not, with any regularity.

Everyone recognizes the military genius of Napoleon, and his mastery of the arts of operational manuever. Many of its techniques and principles have remained essentially unchanged in the state he left them. Clausewitz and a bevy of military historians after him have tried to encapsulate his abilities into systems.

Others, by the way, have Taoistically maintained that any systematized version would be entirely inadequate, because it is a primary theorem of Lao Tsu that a rule is dead while the master of an art is alive. I happen to think Lao Tsu had a point there, but I apply it to people who cite him too - LOL.

But two facts are overlooked in this first round of quest for manuever and genuis in warfare. The first is that Napoleon's method essentially were systematized, and made into a machine that in practice operated more smoothly than he ever did - the general staff system. And the second is that *he lost*.

"Oh well, sure, he faced superior numbers, but his military art was superior in itself (an-sich, you see), and that is why it took superior numbers to..." Napoleon was a national sovereign, not a general. The entire strategy set, including decisions about war or peace, was under his command. Talleyrand said "you cannot make war on everyone". Napoleon did not believe in attrition (above the tactical level, where I contend by the way that he *did*), but in manuever. He fought everyone. He lost.

Talleyrand was a mere diplomat, and couldn't general his way out of a paper bag, but he understood that attrition is the dominant military fact in real war. Being right is more important than being smart. Sometimes being smart helps you be right, and then it is an aid. Sometimes being smart makes you throw out the rule-book and get away with it, and centuries on some faithful flock will still notice and whisper "genius". But sometimes you throw out the wrong part of the rule-book, and being smart makes you wrong instead of right, and then you do something boneheaded like fight everyone, and you *lose*.

Being right is more important than being smart. And pride gets in the way of being right, because pride is a weakness, exactly like putting your eyes out. And "genius" can do that too.

Now, what is this attrition warfare? Attrition warfare is the phrase used by people who disagree with the doctrine, to slight those who believe the fundamental goal and essential process of warfare is destroying the enemy wherever he stands. Specifically, the doctrine is, that the enemy armed forces are the target. Not terrain. Not an "objective". Not a mission. Destroy the enemy, period. And try to lose less men doing it, but above all destroy the enemy.

Now, this is actually not as common sense as it sounds, and it is not obvious that it is right. It is not a constructed straw man, nor does it set up the other side as a constructed straw man. There are many situatons in which, of course, any commander will focus on destroying the enemy e.g. that is in his way as he manuevers. And no one is disputing that all forms of warfare are attempting to defeat the enemy army overall. That is not the point.

There are very real alternatives presented in mobile warfare in particular, at the operational level in particular, where there is a stark and clear choice of differing objectives. I go for that objective in the enemy rear, or I turn aside and trap and kill these enemy forces I am in the process of bypassing. No one, again, is arguing about whether it is useful to surround an enemy or cut his supply lines - of course it is.

The question is - kill the German army in France inside the Falaise pocket, or race for the Rhine? Kill the Russian army inside the Kiev pocket, or race for Moscow? Grind forward through the mud of the Lorraine, or gamble on Operation Market-Garden?

These are entirely real alternatives, not wishy-washy, not abstract, they do not claim to be the ultimate truth of the nature of warfare. It is possible for such a decision to be *wrong*.

That is an essential requirement of an issue of doctrine being realistic and interesting. If you can't explain why and how your doctrine would lead to a bone-headed move in situation X, then you have cotton fluff of rhetoric pretending to always be right, not a doctrine. Doctrines make real choices, about real trade-offs, or they are vacuous piffle.

Before I get to some of these issues in CM, I want first to discuss some of the issues involved in the history of WW II, because the different lessons that can be, and have been, drawn from that history, are constantly distorted and mischaracterized by other parties debating the whole subject, in their long attrition struggle.

The first issue that must be clear seperated out, is the issue of *combined arms doctrine*. The Germans created the first true combined arms forces with their early war Panzer divisions, as actually employed. Other powers mixed up the doctrinal issues of tank-infantry and tank-artillery cooperation, especially. They go them wrong, and they conflated them with other issues.

By the conclusion of the war or not long after, this was no longer the case. Everyone involved now recognizes the importance of combined arms doctrine. One or another position on combined arms doctrine, or one or another lesson learned about it, should not be confused and conflated with attrition vs. manuever warfare issues.

Yes, historically those issues *were* confused by the historical participants, and that was a big part of the reason for delay in learning correct combined arms doctrines. But that is old hat, and not what is being debated anymore. Nobody gets "credit" for anything everyone now agrees on. So seperate those issues, off.

Another important principle that was developed to a high art during WW II, was the principle of concentrating armor-heavy combined arms forces at the operational level, both on the attack, and used as a reserve on defense. Stressing, in the latter case, the importance of the operational flexibility of such reserves, from their mobility as much as their combat power characteristics.

These ideas are often conflated with "manuever" principles, and they are certainly *related* ideas. Manueverists make much of these things. Attritionists do not deny their usefulness as principles, but do not ascribe the same weight to them as decisive matters. Attritionists tend to see such effects as perfectly real, but once both sides are using similar approaches, AT weapons are effective, and total armor in the forces is high enough, they think such considerations cease to be decisive.

They may be wrong about that. It is a perfectly reasonable debate. The term for this sector of the squabble is "mobile warfare". Not "manuever" - that is one side's arguments and theses about the subject. Briefly, attritionists believe a proper use of mobile armored reserves and a flexible, retreat-allowed forward or line defense, will effectively neutralize any *decisive* chances from concentrated manuever of armor-heavy mobile forces, alone.

Why do they think this? They are thinking about cases like Kursk and the Battle of the Bulge. More obscurely and debatably, another example might be the Kharkov counterattack of February 1943.

In these cases, their diagnosis is that adequate reserves (or forces not needed to defend other sectors of the front, that were rapidly re-deployable, in the case of the Bulge) employed in proper combined arms teams to stop and counterattack an operational, mass employment of attacking armor, were entirely successful. Even a modest overall odds ratio against an operational attacker, when combined with those practices, seems to have been adequate to prevent any decisive result for the less numerous side simply by massing and manuevering the massed force.

This diagnosis might be wrong; it is perfectly possible the reasons for those failures were different (e.g. no surprise at Kursk, enemy air supremacy in the Bulge, just to pick possible alternative explanations out of the air).

If manuverists are right, then they should have definite statements to make about alternate courses of action that might have worked in such cases (let's hear those, not Taoist recitals or exhortations to genius, please).

Or if they think in those cases there weren't any such alternatives available, then they should explain why, what part of the requirements of their doctrinal theories were not met in those cases, and what theory they fall back to in cases where they acknowledge there weren't alternatives (anymore, perhaps), and how rare or common they think such distinct cases are.

E.g. does any manueverist think a proper handling of German armor would have won the war for the Germans if acted upon between February and May of 1945? Presumably not, raving cases aside. So there are limits, which their own doctrine needs. That is fine, but just what are those limits exactly?

Call all of the above the "mobile warfare" debate. In addition to the mobile warfare debate, which is largely an operational-level matter, there are also obvious applications of the different ideas at smaller unit scales, and here we start to draw within sight of CM issues.

As I understand it, one version of tactical manueverist doctrine is not Sun Tsu like at all. It is based on a somewhat more attrition-minded idea than "the ideal general defeats his enemy without a battle", but still deserves the name of "manuever".

The idea is simply to fight many battles in sequence at lopsided odds, instead of one or two at near-even odds. The way this is done is not a matter of abstractions at all; it can be stated with a brutal clarity that attritioners can "grok". You concentrate a powerful force into a spear-point, and then move this spearpoint around inside the enemy positions (body) vigorously.

40 tanks fight first 2 enemy anti-tank guns, then an infantry company, then an artillery battery, then a tank platoon, and on and on. By the end of the day, the 40 tanks have fought a force equal to their own combat power. But they fought them in every case at ~10:1 local odds or more, and therefore the aftermath is 35 operational tanks, and a force of equal power on the defender's side completely annihilated.

This is indeed a principle of manuever. How much this is the thing that matters is the decisive question on a typical modern, mobile, combined arms battlefield, is very much the question in debate between attritionists and manueverists, at the tactical level. (Naturally, some individuals will switch camps at different levels and sometimes back again, yadda yadda).

Call this the spearhead idea. It is certainly the sort of manuever-level thinking that can actually apply, as a practical matter, on CM-scale battlefields. Ways to achieve the local odds ratios besides teh physical concentration of the group (which is still a big factor and more effective than some people seem to think) include - hitting a line formation of defenders from its "thin" end, recon successes against spread defenders, central positions and then choice of seperated target, isolating individual positions from reinforcement by others by interdiction fire or use of LOS differences, etc, etc.

The rival idea the attritionists think comes in, is the question of "force to space" ratios, and a somewhat related issue of the degree of "defense dominance". No one disagrees that lopsided 10-1 battles result in lower casualties for the attacker than 3-1 battles. But it may be that those 10-1 odds wind up being, in practice, 3-1 on the pointy end and 7 more strung out along the road behind with no room to deploy.

Why can't deployments get arbitrarily tight? Different reasons at different scales. At lower scales, indirect fires are the biggest issue. During the period from WW II until about the 1980s, this issue alone wasn't decisive for heavy armor, but as already mentioned the importance of combined arms is understood by everybody. Before WW II, the armor did not exist (in practical form) to live through artillery barrages even bunched up. In recent years, smarter, larger-area, and more AT capable indirect fire weapons have removed or reduced the relative invunerability to indirect fires that tanks once had. (Ask an Iraqi whose battalion bunched up under an MLRS strike, if you can find a live one).

In addition to indirect fires, there was supply, logistics, and movement limits on practical unit densities. Basically this comes down to road space when marching, and the same issue for the logistical tail as well as the combat units for longer time scales and bigger units.

Defense dominance comes in, as the question of how big an edge being hidden and not moving or otherwise prepared with TRPs and fail-back positions and shoot-n-scoot ambush sites, really winds up being for the defender.

This changes with the lethality of the weapons and the types of supporting fire available. In the Boer war, magazine rifles were enough to create strong "defense dominance". Artillery mitigated the defense dominance of MGs from trenches in WW I, but the defender still had a definite edge. In WW II, school solutions called for 3-1 odds in attacks to expect success, but attacks were certainly carried out, and regularly with forces closer to even. (Not, however, with great "success" - more like a bloody mess on both sides).

To recap, I think there is certainly a reasonable debate about attrition vs. manuever at different scales. At the strategic scale, I myself am a convinced attritionist. It is not pretty, but it works. Blucher and Tsar Alexander were not Napoleon, but they won; Grant is not Lee, but he won; Foch was not von Schielffen, but he won; Eisenhower and Zhukov were not Guderian, but they won, etc.

On the operational scale, I am open to persuasion, but I lean toward the attritionists. At the tactical level only, I think the manueverists have more of a case, but I understand "manuever" at such scales in a much more "kill the enemy", attritionist way, than they might.

I also think fire vs. shock is a meaningful distinction at such scales, by fire meaning area effect weapons that have greatest effect on the most "packed" side, and by shock meaning fighting that gets less bloody for the more "packed" side. I think when proper combined arms forces are available and aware of this "tight-shock, spread-fire" trade off is understood, that manuever ideas like the "spearhead" idea are less decisive than I think many manueverists hope or expect. But that is a reasonable debate.

You can see I believe in throwing tons and tons of junk at the "opposition" - LOL. Is that as pretty and elegant as a maxim out of Sun Tsu? No. But trying to be exhaustive and systematic often gets done what "genius", especially merely pretended or exhorted "genius", does not.

"Quantity has a quality all its own." - Zhukov

[Michael Dorosh]

Is EVERYONE drunk tonight?

I'm going to bed.

I dont' think "attrition" is a concept you can apply at the battalion level - not for long, anyway.

John Ellis wrote a really good book called Brute Force. He reasons that the Allies won WW II through brute force, ie attrition. He made a good case.

I don't see how it applies to a battalion in combat, though. Then again, I didn't have the will to read your entire post. Maybe in the morning. Ta!

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

How does attrition apply at the company or battalion level? That is a fine and fair question. The most obvious single point is a reserve, which I will come back to. It might be even more effective to answer it in CM terms. I will first discuss it in the easiest case, where it applies most directly - for the mission attacker.

You don't buy the sexiest vehicles, but you make sure you have plenty of infantry. You make sure you have plenty of artillery, and the common or vanilla types that have all the ammo. You do not build the force around uber-units like a crack panther and 2 veteran panzergrenadier platoons. Take two serviceable tanks (or TDs), not one expensive one, when you have the choice.

Did I mention that you take plenty of infantry? No, that is enough. Don't buy enough, buy more than enough. Buy plenty.

Look at the clock. You probably have more time than you think. It rarely takes even 5 minutes to truly come to grips with the enemy in all but the largest CM games. Maybe not all of your forces, but many of them. Turn off all flags and concentrate only on the "enemy" portion of your intel briefing. Forget about your mission, because I just gave you a new one. Kill these youknowwhatters. Everything else will take care of itself later.

Take five minutes off each end of the clock (to engage, and to mop up respectively). The rest is the length of the actual combat you should expect and plan for. You want to "go the distance", in boxing terms, not look for the 2nd round knock-out.

Do not launch all your infantry at the enemy. Instead, keep at least a platoon, preferably two, in reserve. Do not burn all the ammo from your FOs early on in the fight. Save a good long fire mission for the bottom third of the clock - like at least 50 81mm mortar rounds.

When you find the enemy, do not ask how his presence there is preventing you from moving ahead across this or that piece of ground. Instead, look at all the places you can fire at him from, where not many of his friends can fire at you. Sit down opposite him and shoot him, that one dinky little unit. Once you see his head in the dirt, send somebody up to finish him off. Now you don't even have to think about "what ground he covers", because he isn't there.

Nimble at the exterior of the defenders, for the first third of the game is fine. Keep moving if you take arty fire, that's the only thing to be truly careful about. In the meantime, you should manage to find the main enemy forces, more or less.

Do not call down arty on any position until you verify that someone is there. Take the fire he has to dish out, them call the mission to neutralize him. It is more important to make sure your arty rounds kill, than to avoid his little fire-traps hitting your "point" or something.

In the middle half of the game, you expect and want a large-scale firefight with a majority of the defending force. If he keeps "feeding" you littles, just pick up the pace a bit, but he probably won't. He will get sick of that and try to hit your main force with the fire of his main force.

You are not going to change any of that with fancing footwork. You are just going to try to ensure the ground where it happens is not truly awful, that most of your men besides your reserve can participate in one way or another, and that you have plenty of arty to dump all over while it is happening.

Do not press too hard for ground. Learn the technique of moving into an area of cover, and then stopping and shooting it out with all the defenders you can see, before pressing on (this is often just a matter of 2-3 minutes). If you see an incoming spotting round, move, but otherwise stay and shoot until you have cleared out the immediately visible defenders.

In the last third of the battle, you want to pick any location where you see defenders cowering, heads down, and send in your reserve. Use your remaining arty rounds on the attacked location just before the reserve attacks. When the reserve attacks, do not play games, but charge right into the defended locations, where you see men cowering, and you just finished hitting them with artillery.

Other units around them that are reasonable fresh can join in. Leave the MGs and tired out or shot-up units, and vehicles, to provide covering fire during the attack.

Once you get through all of this, if you are not repulsed in that charge you will know things have gone well, if you didn't already. In the last 5 minutes, chase any cowering units, but at a "move", marching-fire pace. And move men onto the objectives, from wherever they are on the field. Settle for the ones you've already got if you encounter any stiff resistence at the end, that you can't immediately out-shoot.

If you apply the above program and really bought enough infantry, enough that you have 2:1 in total infantry manpower on the attack, the defender will have a very hard time holding out. If he pulls off successful razzle-dazzle stuff with his AFVs, or gets very lucky with his artillery, mebe. But most of the time, he will find himself running out of unbroken men before your reserve attack. Broken or cowering troops are practically defenseless against fresh infantry at point-blank range.

In all of the above, the focus is not on the objectives. The focus is not on the terrain (though of course you want to move from cover to cover). The focus is on finding the defenders and just shooting it out with them.

"Europe has many fine generals, many fine officers, but these officers all see too many things. Whereas I, I only see one thing, the main body of the enemy army. This I crush, confident that secondary matters will take care of themselves." - Napoleon

[Michael Dorosh]

Why do i get the feeling this is my initiation (see the other thread on initiations.....)

[Guest Wildman]

Couple of quick questions.

Note that these are based off of Col John Warden's work.

Attritionist basically means then that whoever has the most toys, on the strategic level, wins. Your observation is particularly based in WWII OOBs and production levels. Russian and US outproduced Germany therefore Germany couldn't keep up and was therefore doomed to defeat. In modern times that may not be accurate, and I'll cover that later.

At the WWII level, several non-attrition factors affected that outcome. John Warden calls them Centers-of-Gravity and the five-ring theory. With the inner ring national Command and Control, next is vital production centers, next is logitics centers, next is transportation net, last is fielded military forces. (Ppretty close to description of the rings, its been awhile since I read the book.) In WWII production levels were affected by long-range bombings into the Second ring. Ball-bearing factories, oil refinerys, etc. Damage to these installations is debateable, however, no one can deny that production increases were slowed down by the bombing. Second, would be attacks on the forth ring of Transportation net. Overlord only went ahead after the 8th and 9th AF spent a month destroying the "Maneuver" ability of the Wehrmacht. Destroying railroad marshalling yards, bridges, rail lines, etc.

Your attrition theory is predicated on the premise that you can "Maneuver" a local superiority that will allow you to "attrit" enemy forces at levels that minimize your own losses. Question is, if you cannot maneuver those forces and your opponent can, then you will lose that battle of attrition.

Now let's look at a more modern time frame, 1980s and the Fulda Gap scenario. Now USSR had more toys to break and a guaranteed local superiority at the point of entry. Now based on the attrition theory there would be no way NATO could stop the thrust because their defence was not entirely at the point of entry (Fulda Gap), and as defenses were rushed to plug holes, then they too would be subjected to local superiorities and quickly defeated. If this theory holds true then why not risk a Conventional war. Admittedly this doesn't look at the Nuclear trump card, so in some way cannot be entirly accurate.

"Maneuver" vs "Attritition" in CM. Jason if you could destroy the platoon leader of every platoon without touching the squads themselves would that not accomplish your goal. The remaineder of the infantry's command pause increases and its moral decreases reduceing their overall effectiveness and pretty much ensuring your victory. That is the essence of maneuver warfare. Place your forces into position to destroy KEY targets, generally command and control and support functions. If you can kill a divisions entire supply train then, you have effectively removed that division from the fight with little or no losses. That kind of maneuver is definately on the Operational level. Strategic is harder to point out given the amorphous nature at that level. While it would be easy to look at numbers only an example does stand out.

In the Gulf War, the marine Expeditionary Task Force and Naval TF sat in the gulf preparing an assault into Quawit. This forced a Strategic decsision to heavily defend the beaches allowing the now famous "left hook."

The basic point is this. If you can deny your enemy the ability to maneuver his forces then the battle and war is one. Given all modern examples from WWII and up, everyone who has contol of the skies and a good transportation net has won. IE. IF you can move then you win. Attrition is great at the local level, and is a by-product of a good Maneuver which placed superior numbers at the point of attack.

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[Michael Dorosh]

With regards to German production levels - figured regarding them are misleading. They actually increased production in some areas at the same time the bombing campaign intensified.

This was, IIRC, mostly because Germany did not have a war economy unti 1943; in fact the word "krieg" (war) was not used until then, instead it was a "national emergency". In 1943 there were 1 million women employed in Germany as hairdressers instead of working in factories.

Germany's production was also very much a cottage type industry - when the Germans realized that Ford parts could fit in Chrysler engines, they were dumbstruck. Look at the difference between a Porsche and a Henschel turret (I hope I got that right, I'm no expert on German armour). That too had ramifications.

Having got that off my chest, Jason, I think you give some good advice; I have been doing some of what you discuss intuitively in my PBEM games; time will tell if it works for me or not. Wild Bill makes some interesting points as well.

I wonder if you guys could dig up some real life WW II examples to further illustrate?

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http://wargames.freehosting.net/cmbits.htm

[PeterNZer]

if you could destroy the platoon leader of every platoon without touching the squads themselves, would that not accomplish your goal? The remainder of the infantry's command pause increases and its moral decreases reduceing their overall effectiveness and pretty much ensuring your victory. That is the essence of maneuver warfare

Maneuver warfare is a truism based on an imposibility? It is impossible to kill every leader and effect this kind of result, so I don't see how it can be applied to real-world practice. In the end you need to kill stuff to win wars.

I think this is the key fact we forget, war is about one side killing the enemy, not fancy-pantsing around. The Author of "An Intimate History of Killing" makes a persuasive case for this.

I firmly believe that some objectives HAVE to be taken, no matter how superior you are in combined arms. Generals like Guderian knew this, so why do the Man. War. fanatacists seem to deny it, or at least, reduce its importance when compared to racing panzers? The Wars in Poland and France weren't won only by armored columns streaming across the planes in big encircling maneuvers, it ws also won by hard-fought attacks across rivers to capture bridges and bunkers, by viscious mopping up battles through cities (which left unguarded could have been a problem for a stretched army) and by battles for key road and rail junctions.

Maneuver warfare is not some amazing tool we all need to learn to win, it's an extension of other military strategy. Like these it still relys on supply, reinforcement and replacement, c&c etc etc. These common army functions need ground to be captured. They need cities with roads, rivers, bridges, commanding hills, and these do have to be taken.

Simply surrounding problem areas isn't enough. Unless you want your entire army to be a prison guard for strongholds you eventually have to go in and get 'em.

On a CM scale I really don't believe you can employ Manuever warfare. It is impossible to bypass the enemy to 'win'. I can't ignore his tanks, I have to try and kill them. In the end, that's the plan. I think I work like Jason and when i meet the enemy plan on how best to quickly and effectively turn it into red moosh, not specifically how I can apply maneuver techniques to defeat it.

In the process of killing the enemy I might use some kind of maneuvering strategy, but the maneuver is subservient to the plan of actually killing the enemy, not a goal in itself.

not sure all that makes sense, but anyway.. nice article Jason

PeterNZ

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"Patriotism is the virtue of the viscious" - Oscar Wilde

"Don't F*CK with Johnny Cash!" - Chupacabra

[Henri]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

As I understand it, one version of tactical manueverist doctrine is not Sun Tsu like at all. It is based on a somewhat more attrition-minded idea than "the ideal general defeats his enemy without a battle", but still deserves the name of "manuever".

LOL. Interesting post, Jason, but it was Sun Tzu himself who made that statement

Henri

[Doodlebug]

This is one of the best threads I've seen in a while. I've got to say I had to read much of it twice to make sure I'd got the gist of it correctly.

I am a confirmed attritionist. Whether you achieve that by manoeuvring to engage key or isolated enemy elements, the utilisation of a technical superiority or the simple application of overwhelming and irresistible force or numbers the ultimate objective of combat is to maximise the enemy's losses and minimise your own.

Manoeuvre as a concept does not and cannot stand alone. If my opponent is in a bunker bristling with weaponry then he's not overly mobile. I can swiftly outmanouvre him with my troop of girl guides but..... I'm still going to have a job beating him. Manoeuvre (and military intelligence) can magnify the application of force. What it cannot do is replace it. Manoeuvre war as a concept is more applicable at the operational level. In the reference frame of CM then attrition rules. In all it's guises it is the bedrock of all other decisions.

[Valamir]

I'd have to say that at this point I'm an attrition general by default...I'm simply not good enough yet to have figured out this maneuver stuff.

The closest thing I get to maneuver is pulling a platoon out from under an arty barrage or rolling up the flank while an enemy force is being pinned down by MGs

But even attrition warfare is not easy. The parts I'm still struggling with are:

1)The best use for allied tanks. Right now I'm using them primarily as close infantry support/mobile machine gun platforms which makes them fodder for most german armor.

2)How to tell when the right time is to rush an enemy position to finally break him and when doing that will get you cut to ribbons (I assume this has always been a historical "learn by experience" kind of decision.

3) The proper use for arty. Right now I generally use even my 105s primarily for smoke because I've only once actually got HE rounds to fall on an enemy when I needed them too. Too often by the time the HE begins to fall I've already broken the enemy with MG and rifle fire...which tells me a) I'm calling the fire mission far too late or I'm picking the wrong targets. Built into this is my apparent lack of ability to pick good locations for my spotters. Either my "perfect position" fails to get LOS on the location I need or else its so exposed as to get killed in short order.

Its been a fascinating learning process for someone whose never played at the tactical level before.

[Guest Wildman]

I'm sorry, I was not trying to equate killing platoon leaders with maneuver warfare. It did look like that was what I was saying.

Those principles outline are from an Air Force Colonel who laid the groundwork for the Air Campaign in the Gulf War. His theory is this, to counter the arguement that you have to kill the enemy's soldiers to win the war.

By attacking the inner rings you can effectively eliminate the threat of the armed forces. For example, You destroy the corp commander, his staff, and communications center. For several hours or more Battalions, divisions and companies are not going to receive orders that would place them in a position to stop a breakthrough or exploit an opening in the enemy lines. Or my previous example of destroying the supply trains. When that happens the ability of the armed forces to sustain the conflict is removed, thereby removing the threat of the armed forces.

As I look at the arguement I see one fundamental flaw. I think I am comparing apples to oranges. Warden's view is predicated on avoiding the standing army to strike at centers of gravity that would accomplish the national objective, be that removal of the enemy goverement, take his land, etc. Both maneuver and attrition based warfare are extentions of fighting a standing army. With Warden's idea you would avoid actual combatants for as long as possible. His ideas are very much a throwback to earlier air power advocates that suggest a war can be won only from the air.

Warden's ideas should be taken much as maneuver warfare should be, in my opinion. That is a force multiplier at the operational and tactical level. Both airpower and maneuver doctrine are both extentions of placing maximum firepower against minimal defences and then exploiting the resulting breakthrough.

Gives my food for thought!

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[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Doodlebug:

Manoeuvre as a concept does not and cannot stand alone. If my opponent is in a bunker bristling with weaponry then he's not overly mobile. I can swiftly outmanouvre him with my troop of girl guides but..... I'm still going to have a job beating him.

Why beat him? Why not just leave him there - if he is not on your objective, why risk the lives of your men and waste ammo trying to kill him? Bypass and move on. Unless you're Captain John Miller, 2nd Rangers....

I wonder if as CM players we don't feel obligated all too often to engage enemy tanks, for example, in cases where there is no need to do so.

Is it really necessary, in the framework of a CM scenario, to engage and destroy all enemy units you see?

[Jarmo]

The two types are so closely tied together there's no easy way of telling them apart.

A few easy examples excluded.

For example, surrounding an enemy force (on larger scale), cutting them off.

A case of maneuver warfare. But if it's left at that, you've only accomplished in allowing

an enemy force behind you, a bad situation to be in.

So you pretty much have to take them out. A case for attrition.

But, the attrition warfare against a cut off enemy is so much easier.

No supply, no staying power.

To succeed in an attrition operation, you first have to be able to manoever into a good position.

You don't want an attrition fight against a stronger opposing force.

To succeed in a manoever operation, you have to have enough staying power to exploit

the opprotunities provided.

IMHO, in a very large and very small scale, it comes down to attrition.

Manoever exists somewhere in between.

But there's still room for both in operation of any given size.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Um, when I say "a somewhat more attrition-minded idea than "ABC" but ... and ABC is a direct quote, you might guess that I sorta know who said it. When one quotes a man and cites his name in the same sentence, it is usually a pretty good indication one understands that he said that. It might help if people read the things they react to, sometime, or perhaps learned to exercise the principle of charity in argument (meaning, unless someone who disagrees with you has definitely demonstrated his ignorance of some point of information, do not assume he doesn't know it).

As for the statement that attrition is the idea that the guy with the most toys wins, um, no. Any more than "manuever" is the idea that you can win a war by running a 100 yard dash in less than 10 seconds. I can easily explain the much more extensive difference by an analogy from chess. In chess, manuever warfare corresponds to attempting a mid-game mating attack, "sacking" whatever is needed to get it. Whereas attrition is trying to win material (capture more, or more valuable pieces than your opponent captures of yours), and then winning in the endgame because of that material edge.

A manueverist thinks in terms of initiative, forks, tempos, open lines, development of pieces. An attritionist thinks in terms of winning an exchange (rook for piece e.g.), grabbing pawns, blockade, undermining weak pawn structures, and overpowering single points, exchanging off material to amplify the effect of a small edge already secured. Nimzovich played "attrition" style chess, Fischer played "manuever" style chess.

Of course, if somebody doesn't play chess, he has no idea what I am talking about - LOL.

It is much more than just the number of toys. Attrition-style battles tend to be won by the guy with the last intact reserve. Sure, having more men overall makes it easier to be the guy left with an intact reserve. But so does a general stinginess, an unwillingness to throw everything at the enemy at once, a proper sense of pacing for the battle, reliefs and rotations of units in heavy action, and dozens of other principles of attrition style warfare.

Not all of these apply at the tactical level, or in the WW II era. But many of them do. E.g. save an artillery HE mission for late in the battle. Keep a reserve for the same reason. Pace yourself, not pushing the men too hard but keeping them in action. Keep most of your men's guns on some kind of target and don't worry too much about taking terrain. Aim for the main body of the enemy and kill it. Avoid diversion of effort to secondary objectives. All of those follow almost automatically once you have picked the attrition approach, and understand the whole vision of a succesful engagement, from start to finish, that it involves.

See, from the standpoint of decisive manuever, it is a kind of tactical crime to leave any formation stationary, or once there is firing somewhere, in a place where its guns do not bear, because the idea (in the tactical, spear-point idea anyway) is to maximum forcextime in contact with the smallest possible subdivisions of the enemy.

I mean, the spearhead ideal of "combat" is the entire task-force blasting one squad every two minutes and running through 20 of them in succession to win the battle. The last thing he wants is only half his force doing that, since the local odds ratio is the whole point.

But in attrition, the commander first sees to it that a decent portion of his force is engaged, and fully expects it to engage most of the enemy, in a low-odds, stand-up firefight. And the effect of such low-odds firefights is predictable enough - those participating in it, for very long anyway, get killed, broken, or at best attrited and pinned. On both sides. The front is a meat grinder. Don't feed in all your meat at once; that way your grinder will keep working longer than his grinder. An attritionist approach wants to *outlast* the enemy force. A reserve is absolutely essential, and when to use it is the key variable.

These principles are truly alternatives. You can't obey the precepts of one approach and those of the other simultaneously. Either approach, understood and applied consistently, is more likely to accomplish its goals than random flailing around, obviously. (Either will, for instance, trash the AI in CM, in my experience anyway).

Another reply to a fellow with more detailed questions, next...

[Guest Michael emrys]

Thank you, Jason. In your posts here you have pretty well described how I play CM, but was feeling a little guilty about it.

I do have a slight quibble about this, though:

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

Now, what is this attrition warfare? Attrition warfare is the phrase used by people who disagree with the doctrine, to slight those who believe the fundamental goal and essential process of warfare is destroying the enemy wherever he stands. Specifically, the doctrine is, that the enemy armed forces are the target. Not terrain. Not an "objective". Not a mission. Destroy the enemy, period. And try to lose less men doing it, but above all destroy the enemy.

I think this is broadly true, indeed almost unescapable. But it should be noted that if the thing the army is protecting can be captured and held, or destroyed, the army has been defeated even if no shots have been fired at it. As you know, this is called the Indirect Approach.

I think it is one of those things a commander should be looking for whether attacking or defending, and at whatever level of command he occupies. But then, this is easier to define in principle than to practice in gritty reality. Often, a battle of maneuver can occur only after a long and successful campaign of attrition has so exhausted the enemy that he can no longer respond effectively to your moves, as was the case of the Alllies against the Third Reich in April, 1945.

An example of a less than successful attempt to use maneuver warfare was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany. It's advocates believed, or at least hoped, that by taking the war directly to the heart of the Reich, its cities and factories, they would obviate the kind of bloodshed that was seen in the First World War. After all, if the German army cannot fulfill its duty to protect the homeland, of what use is it?

But that line of attack failed. The strategic bombing did not, and in all probably could not, all by itself force the capitulation of the Reich. It then got drawn into a prolonged, bloody, but ultimately successful attrition campaign that eventually wore down the Luftwaffe (and in other ways weakened the German army) which permitted the Allied armies to operate with much greater freedom than they might have otherwise enjoyed.

Maneuver warfare worked brilliantly for the Germans (although they had to do plenty of attrition fighting too) in Poland and in France 1940 largely due to the psychological dimension that I mentioned over in the Maneuver Warfare thread. There, and also in Yugoslavia, they had an opponent that was simply unaccustomed to the tempo of modern mechanized warfare. The French command structure, for instance, was always 24-48 hours late in responding to German initiatives. Also, their troops often surrendered en mass as soon as they were surrounded.

It's interesting to note that as soon as it came up against a savvy and resolute commander, the Blitzkrieg began to peter out. E.g., Auchinleck's firm stand against Rommel's Dash to the Wire during Operation Crusader. Rommel was performing a nearly pure form of maneuver warfare...and it failed. He lost control of the the Sidi Rezegh landing ground and its surrounding escarpments. He also lost control of his army, and ended up having to retreat back to el Agheila.

Sooooo...there is a time and a place for everything. Sometimes it is useful to go swanning off into the blue, but most of the time you just have to close with the enemy and slug it out in the hope that you got there "Fustest with the mostest." The great trick is knowing which to do and when.

Michael

[CavScout]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Maneuver warfare worked brilliantly for the Germans (although they had to do plenty of attrition fighting too) in Poland and in France 1940 largely due to the psychological dimension that I mentioned over in the Maneuver Warfare thread. There, and also in Yugoslavia, they had an opponent that was simply unaccustomed to the tempo of modern mechanized warfare. The French command structure, for instance, was always 24-48 hours late in responding to German initiatives. Also, their troops often surrendered en mass as soon as they were surrounded.

France is probably the only "large" scale use of maneuver warefare. Poland, on the other, was much the same old cauldron style of battle. Surround him and attrit the force inside. The Germans even returned to this style in Russia.

[The Commissar]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Why beat him? Why not just leave him there - if he is not on your objective, why risk the lives of your men and waste ammo trying to kill him? Bypass and move on. Unless you're Captain John Miller, 2nd Rangers....

I wonder if as CM players we don't feel obligated all too often to engage enemy tanks, for example, in cases where there is no need to do so.

Is it really necessary, in the framework of a CM scenario, to engage and destroy all enemy units you see?

Just throwing my views on the use of such warfare in CM, based on my own thoughts and the excellent essays written here by some of you...

In CM, maneuver warfare is largely impossible to do. CM is the tactical scale. It is assumed that once the combatants clash, the maneuver has already been performed.

It is not possible to win a CM battle by not engaging enemies. You will have to capture objectives to win, yes, but those objectives will be held by the enemy. CM is attrition warfare, even if you do use maneuver in your tactics.

Now, if say, the battle is taking place on a town map, and the enemy has decided to not hold the town itself, but rather face your forces outside the town, then you can maneuver around the enemy positions, capture the VL's, and hold them against the enemy. A sort of maneuver warfare.

In most situations, this is not really possible. The enemy is usually smart enough to hold the positions and while in real life you could speed past him and into his rear if he chose to hold them, in CM you cannot.

Just my thoughts.

------------------

"...Every position, every meter of Soviet soil must be defended to the last drop of blood..."

- Segment from Order 227 "Not a step back"

[Guest Wildman]

Jason,

Sorry that you thought I was attacking your quote. I agree that "the one with the most toys wins" is an oversimplification.

However, that would be the premise used in a attrition mindset, wouldn't you agree.

One question for you. You say that keeping a reserve to committ to the frontline after the battle has started is attrition in nature, how? Wouldn't the committment of reserves at a specific point, preferable a weak spot in the enemy's plan, be a good definition for maneuver warfare?

I'm really starting to believe that there can really be no seperation of the two philosphies. You "maneuver" to place your forces in the best possible position, then your "attrit" the enemy because in the CM scope you have to, to make the enemy leave the ground your fighting for.

I agree with Michael, sometimes we do become focused on killing specific units, especially tanks. Given the nature of CM and the close ranges, it would seem a requirement. However, if you pinned a Stug behind a house and if it comes out either way, your Sherman will have a flank shot then the Stug would be an effective kill and removed from the battle. Perhaps it is an indiviudal style. It surely is something I will look at in my own play from now on.

---

[Michael Dorosh]

Thanks, Commisar. I was thinking of a situation like you describe. A better example is the impulsive desire to conduct tank vs. tank battles that have nothing to do with getting your infantry forward onto their objectives. I'm playing a PBEM game where the enemy has two tanks firing down at my infantry, and my first impulsive thought was to send the armour running hell for leather to take on the tanks - but then I thought "why"? My infantry will be out of the LOS and LOF of the tanks in one more turn and coming to grips with their infantry. I realize his tanks have the potential to do damage to my guys in the future, but once the furrball starts around the objectives, he has to move his armour in close to get at my infantry (leaving him open to my LATW) or else stand off where he can't do any good. Sending my Shermans in to get knocked out will only provide him a distraction for a turn or so (three if he is laughing REALLY hard).

Maybe what I'm talking about is engaging RIGHT NOW as opposed to doing things in the proper order?

So in a combined arms battle, how concerned should one be with locating, identifying, and destroying enemy armour - assume we're talking about a meeting engagement.

[PeterNZer]

Thanks for the clarification Wildman.

Could be argued tho that, in the end, maneuver warfare failed in Iraq and they simply returned to tried-and-true carpet bombing followed by invasion to win

I really think it's silly to devote oneself to one philosophy or the other, I'm sure everyone would agree. In diferent scales, situation, conditions etc you can use both ideas exclusively or simultaneously in my mind.

PeterNZ

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Valamir raised some excellent tactical issues. I will discuss them on the assumption that we are talking about U.S. forces on the attack, here. Other cases may have differences, but from his examples (allied tanks, 105s, etc) I took that to be the immediate context.

First was use of Allied tanks, particularly the tendency to use them just for infantry fire support and thn seeing the German armor kill them. There is nothing wrong with using Allied tanks to support infantry by fire; they are very good at it. But not after they are dead, obviously.

The anti-armor effort is going to be the key constraint on using the tanks. And the key to tackling German armor with the thinner-skinned Allied tanks, is to use teamwork, in pairs, and cooperating with the infantry. The help has to go both ways, in other words.

But first, think about the goal you want. You want the German tanks dead and at least one of yours left alive. Then you can use it for it very effective infantry support role, with high safety and just about anywhere. "Easier said than done" - LOL. Well, I didn't say all of his dead and all of yours alive, did I? So it isn't setting the high-bar up on the moon.

The help infantry provides to tanks is two-fold. One is obvious and most people get it easily enough - clearing out those panzerfaust-bearing German infantrymen before the tanks go through location X. The other is less obvious, but more important for keeping the tanks alive (since just staying far away can often accomplish the previous). This is to provide extra *eyes* for the tanks.

An effective allied tank team needs a pair of tanks and some infantry operating somewhat ahead of them. Seperate the tanks, but put them on sides of terrain obstacles looking "inward", toward each other. E.g. one goes up the west edge of an eastern body of woods, and another goes up the east side of a western body of woods, with both looking over the open ground between those two woods. You want to "bracket" a German defending AFV; starting out you won't know such things, obviously, but that is the goal.

Notice I've got the tanks hugging terrain obstacles. Tanks need cover too (thin skinned variety, enemy tanks and AT guns not yet dead, especially), they just use it a bit differently than infantry does. They use it to reduce the LOS "footprint" that can see and thus shoot at them. Beside or behind a building, or woods, or behind a crest, the effect is the same - the whole map can't see you, and you can rapidly change which parts of it can, by e.g. pulling back from the crest or around the side of a building.

While the tanks go behind or beside the cover, the infantry goes through it, and somewhat farther ahead. From the inside or forward side of a piece of cover, the infantry can see the locations that will be able to see the tank pull around that LOS block. Sometimes, in the best case, the infantry will therefore spot the German tanks first, before they can see your own tanks.

See, infantry goes into an LOS block and gets the first peek beyond it. If they see no tanks, then they send their point squad to the next piece of cover, while your tank team pulls around the LOS block. Where it can now see what only the infantry could before - including, BTW, the cover the point is not headed to, so they can still support that key kind of move with their fire.

If the infantry spots a tank (the best case), then you tackle it with the pair. It might be distracted beforehand by a point squad moving in its LOS. But either way, your two tanks pop into its LOS on "hunt" orders at the same time, from two different angles. One of your tanks should have a side shot. If you are lucky, you bag it first. Very often, it will kill the tank closest to its front facing, then the "wingman" will bag it in revenge. If you lost one and didn't get it, check its facing before deciding to stay for a second minute. German tanks traverse to a new target pretty slowly, so you might still have time. But if it is already facing you or close to it, reverse out of LOS instead, so you only lose one tank not two. If it is a type you can kill from the front (StuG or Pz IV e.g.), it will all be easier - you are much more likely to kill it for no loss or one tank, quickly.

It will also happen that the infantry fails to spot the tank (e.g. because it is waiting to pop up behind a crest they can't see over), and the first you learn of it is when it bags on of your pair. But often the other member of the pair will still be in position to reply and get it. Same sort of idea as above.

Will such teamwork always work as planned? No, of course not. The terrain may be bad, or the spot where the enemy tank is may see only one location and none even near the other. There are plenty of things that can go wrong. But this gives you a sense of how they can go right, and a system to work with to try to get good anti-tank results from the Allied tanks.

Next, timing a rush at the enemy positions. Yeah, this one does come from experience and is an inexact thing anyway. But there are some tricks or signs you can be aware of.

One is whether you have a shooter for every identified enemy location, firing at them. Rushes work, when they work, because the defenders are suppressed. If there are one or two exceptions at longer range, or with "broken" LOS (e.g. during part of the run, a building will be between the enemy MG and the rushing group) and you've got half-a-dozen rushers, then it can still work. Leave MGs, mortars (if they have ammo), vehicles, and also any of your squads that are badly shot up - ! symbols, or "cautious" or worse morale state - to provide covering fire, to keep the defenders pinned down.

Small units you can rush pretty much as soon as you see them "hit the dirt", and if you have 2 squads to rush one. But larger enemy positions you have to wait longer. You are not going to beat local enemy reserves to the punch. The firefight has to have lasted several minutes, and it is best if it has lasted 2-3 minutes since the last new enemy shooter appeared.

You can also look to see his men hitting the dirt. You can see a unit "duck" when it is fired upon - that is "taking cover". If they get right back up and fire, they aren't ready yet. If they stay "down" longer after a shot at them, chances are they are suppressed. Watch the volume of return fire, and also watch for times when your shooters stop firing at some target. Those can tell you when some defenders are so pinned or panicked they aren't firing, aren't seen as a threat by your own men. Also, when you see eliminated full squads, and some units high-tailing it for the rear, you can be sure pretty sure the guys remaining have had a boatload too.

Finally, one reason you may be having trouble with this one has to do with your last question. The best time to rush is right after an HE fire mission "lifts" off of the target. Late in a fight, when you see a lot of cowering or running or eliminated units, it is not essential. At more like the midpoint of the battle, it is usually suicidal to rush an enemy-held piece of cover (several units, not one I am talking) without such artillery help. Artillery does a great job of suppressing infantry in everything but stone buildings, and often men under a barrage will not be recovered enough to shoot at all before your charge reaches them.

OK, the last question was about using HE artillery effectively. First, lose the smoke habit, especially with the 105mm (occasionally from 81mm mortars it makes sense), if you are going to fight in an attrition style. Powerful artillery rounds not fired as HE on known enemy positions, are a sort of tactical crime in attrition tactics, akin to remaining stationary in manuever tactics - LOL.

First, any position of a single enemy unit is not a target for HE, unless it is an anti-tank gun or something similar. You want a place with two or more sighted enemy. Second, if you can outshoot that enemy in 2-3 minutes with rifles and MGs, it isn't a proper arty target either.

You want to think in terms of areas of cover - typically some body of woods - from which you are encountering serious resistence, not a lone shooter. Incidentally, while arty at light buildings will be somewhat effective, tank HE is even more effective at those locations. When possible, have the artillery "do woods" while the tanks "do buildings".

The reason is sighting and accuracy. It is hard to see in woods but easy to see a building. But buildings are much better protection against a near-miss, outside. Tanks easily hit things they see but nothing else; artillery misses everything by a little.

It is important to understand the interplay of mass for your infantry and artillery fire. It ought to be the case that your infantry can outshoot anybody in front of them that is too spread out, simply because infantry firepower rises so rapidly as the range drops, and because suppressed enemies protect shooters and thus make local firepower "snowball". That means a platoon, all within 50-100 yards of a squad, will annihilate it in short order.

But an enemy platoon position would be able to shoot up your own platoon badly, trying to get that close. Well, if he is deployed tight in platoons, then the arty hits him. If he isn't but stays spread out, then the manuever platoons hit him, close.

How do you get missions where you want them? It sounds like you are trying to do this with all observed missions. That is a fine starter but it is too demanding. Call for fire on locations you can see, yes. But be willing to shift it to locations you can't see, if you know that is where it is needed. The missions take a little longer and are a little less accurate, but better that than wasting missions on single squads, or using 105mms for smoke.

Learn to use anticipate and then use "lifts". What does that mean? You know your infantry are going for piece of cover A, soon. Fine, look ahead. What pieces of cover are next after A, that might contain defenders? Get an LOS to one of them and call for HE, area fire. Rush the objective, A. Well, did anyone open up on you from your targeted piece of cover? Then dump on him. From another nearby? Then change the targeted location - the delay time will go up some, but not all the way back to full if the new target is close. Quiet as a church? Cancel the fire mission, or "lift" again to the "next plus one" covered location, while the infantry heads for the previous target.

See the idea? You want the guns "trained" more or less on the next piece of cover your infantry is going to head for, if everything goes to plan. That is, after all, one place you expect opposition from - otherwise the attack would be a cakewalk, no defenders on the path you plan to take, right? You don't have to plaster every empty piece of woods to do this; just shift targets on the fly when you are wrong about a guess.

Once a fire mission is in progress, you can cancel it of course to save ammo. You can also reposition it, with some delay. That results in a turn in which less than the full number of shells come down, a sort of "half rate of fire" fire mission. You can even walk such half-shots right through a thinner enemy deployment, with your infantry close behind the barrage.

Save one full blast worth of HE for late in the fight, though. You will get into a firefight the rifles and MG can't win in 2-3 minutes soon enough. (If not, you'll just have won easy, so take that to the bank and don't complain - LOL). Then use full fire missions and do not monkey around with lift games anymore.

As for the position of the FO, you do not want him getting shot at, certainly. He does not belong in open ground. He can either move with the infantry but trail behind them ~100 yards or so (e.g. with a company HQ and some sort of reserve), or he can remain with a firebase (like, 60mm mortar position, or a 50 cal).

Leave him in cover, and use "sneak" orders to move him toward the front side of cover. Do not go all the way to the edge of those, either, since you make it much easier to hit him when he moves that way (he stays in LOS longer, since LOS extends *into* the cover).

When he can't see a target location, see if he can see it in about a minute by moving somewhere else. Call in the mission, and he'll be in position to adjust the rounds soon enough. If he isn't going to get to a spot that can see the target in one move, then fire it blind, or call it "area fire" on the nearest prominent piece of terrain he can see (e.g. the top of a two-level building, or a hill - nearest to the taret not the FO, obviously), then shift it the following turn to the actual target.

So it is a little less accurate. When 25 105mm firecrackers go off, close counts, just like in horseshoes - LOL.

I hope this helps.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

No, they are not the same. No, "most toys" is not what attrition is all about, and BTW having more toys helps either style of fighting, as everyone knows. Yes, reserves exist in higher level manuever warfare, but their use and principles are entirely different.

The time to commit an attacker's reserve in manuever style fighting is as soon as a thin part of the enemy front has been identified, and the sooner the better. The only reason to have one at all is limited battlefield info. Even with the reserve you want to maximize time engaged in manuever warfare.

In manuever fighting, the whole idea is that forces x time engaged equals combat power, and moving is used to keep *down* the time engaged for large portions of the enemy force (death does that too), and to keep it high for your own force. Forces are thought of as entirely resilient in battle until killed by local odds; there is no "overdoing it" about the length of fighting you expect from one formation.

But not in attrition style. The assumption that is dropped is that any given unit can fight as many times as you need it to, all day. Instead, each formation is thought of as "brittle", or as having limited "wind", and expected to give way and break if too much is asked of it by keeping it in hot action for too long.

These different assumptions are not just hypotheses about how men actually behave in combat. They result from the odds ratios the two styles expect to be the rule in the fighting. If you *do* get local odds of 10:1 for 2 minutes, then you *don't* have to worry too much about your men breaking apart because you asked them to do it for the eighth time. But if the local odds in all their fights are 3:2 or worse, in continuous intense firefight, then you cannot remotely expect them to "go the distance" for 15-20 minutes, without many of them falling apart.

The "weak point" to exploit for an attritionist is not a location in physical space, to manuever against, because there aren't enough defenders there. It is a "weak point" in battle-time, late in an engagement when the enemy reserves are gone and the men on the firing line are exhausted and breaking.

"Well, I'd still call that manuever". Then you think WW I epitomized battlefield manuever. No, you do not still call that manuever, not when talking about the cases when it was actually done.

It is silly to play semantic games with terms to try to cram everything about warfare, or everything possibly sensible about warfare, into a single term or notion. It obliterates distinctions which are real, not fanciful.

In WW II, there is a huge difference between turning Guderian south to close the Kiev pocket (to kill troops), and racing him to Moscow (to seize ground), in the fall of 1941.

There is a huge difference in WW I between planning on killing the German infantry in their trenches with massive artillery attacks, infantry mopping up afterward, and trying to achieve a "breakthrough" with a "big push" at e.g. Cambrai (where massed tanks tried, and even cavalry divisions with horses were waiting to "exploit").

They are not the same thing at all.

[The Commissar]

Wildman,

Originally posted by Wildman:

Jason,

One question for you. You say that keeping a reserve to committ to the frontline after the battle has started is attrition in nature, how? Wouldn't the committment of reserves at a specific point, preferable a weak spot in the enemy's plan, be a good definition for maneuver warfare?

Not exactly. Maneuver warfare would be to use the reserve while the battle is progressing to get in behind the enemy force and cut off his lines of retreat/communication/supply. These days, the later two (comm and supply) really cannot be cut in most cases, due to radios and air transport via helicopter. Lines of retreat, however, are always present and should be accounted for if you wish to achieve a total instead of simply decisive victory over a given enemy force.

Yet better, dont engage the enemy at all, but use your force to capture his factories, towns, and supply routes to starve his army and demoralize his people. I believe this is what Sun Tzu meant when he said to win without fighting is the mark of a great general. You should take steps to damage the enemy without actual battle between your forces.

Originally posted by Wildman:

I'm really starting to believe that there can really be no seperation of the two philosphies. You "maneuver" to place your forces in the best possible position, then your "attrit" the enemy because in the CM scope you have to, to make the enemy leave the ground your fighting for.

I agree with Michael, sometimes we do become focused on killing specific units, especially tanks. Given the nature of CM and the close ranges, it would seem a requirement. However, if you pinned a Stug behind a house and if it comes out either way, your Sherman will have a flank shot then the Stug would be an effective kill and removed from the battle. Perhaps it is an indiviudal style. It surely is something I will look at in my own play from now on.

---

All you say is completely true in CM's scope. However, as Ive said in the above responce, true maneuver warfare performed to perfection, would involve you destroying the enemy's will/ability to fight by maneuvering around his fighting forces and into his soft and (hopefully) unprotected underbelly.

A single CM battle really cannot do justice to this.

------------------

"...Every position, every meter of Soviet soil must be defended to the last drop of blood..."

- Segment from Order 227 "Not a step back"

[Guest wwb_99]

As it is expressed above, all warfare in CMs scale ultimiately revolves around killing the enemy. I contend that having manuver warfare has a definite place within this world.

But it is also quite true that in CM an opponent could be outmanuvered. If an attacker persuades a defender to commit his reserve at the wrong place, then waltzes in behind him it is as much a victory by manuver as a victory by attrition. Attrition would be enhanced, by the firepower enhancing effects of attacking from an unexpected quarter.

Manuvering more mass to the critical point enhances your ability to attrit the opponent, and this is the very essence of manuver warfare. To get more of your force to the right place at the right time allows one to take a tremendous advantage in attrition for one has temporarily gained the numerical advantage. An advantage which can be turned into a more permenant and tangiable advantage in kill count.

WWB

------------------

Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Well, it has been a couple of days, and the manueverists are still yacking away merrily. But no one has answered a single one of my challenges.

To review, I am still waiting for a single example of a major war won by the successful application of a manuever strategy, as opposed to an attrition strategy, at any time since 1700, besides the 6-day war in 1967. No manueverist guru has come forward with a single example. A won war, not a campaign, battle, or firefight.

In addition, I have also challenged the manueverist gurus to explain exactly how brilliant manuevers they are to supply and explain in detail, would have won the Battle of Kursk, or the Battle of the Bulge, for the Germans.

I have also asked for a direct statement from manueverist gurus as to whether, in their opinion, brilliant manuevers could have won the war for Germany in February, 1945. And if they think not, I would like them to explain exactly why, in terms of their own theory of warfare. And to delimit exactly when, in their opinion, their theory *does* apply, as decisive or determinative of victory.

I've had an earful, and I am sure everyone has by now, about how everything brilliant and clever and true in the art of war is entirely summed up in the word "manuever", and you can prove it too, from ancient chinese secrets to the ever-glorious Corps. But until you address my little niggling, unimportant points - which should be a piece of cake - you will not have convinced this skeptical realist of anything, except that talk is cheap.

The silence is deafening, oh wise gurus. Instruct my presumptuous ignorance.