The Decision Curve and Combat Mission

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

I just love it when people make sweeping statements like "the Soviets weren't good at high op tempos". How the heck do you know? The Soviets, and Russians since then, lost 2 small wars and both of them were protracted guerrilla conficts. Nobody ever beat them by having a higher op tempo. That doesn't mean the statement is false, and that nobody could have. Just that nobody did. So nobody knows a darned thing about it.

Incidentally, this idea of getting inside the enemy's cycle has several different meanings that are all squished together by the phrasing chosen. You can get inside the enemy's *head*. That applies to all strategies - "all warfare is based on deception" and the enemy's plans are a fine "target".

You can get inside his ability to maneuver fast enough, which is not his "decision cycle" in the cognitive sense, but is his "maneuver cycle" if you like. That is the maneuver idea in a nutshell. And as a third, you can just make moves faster than he does, to the point where he stands still, which is not quite the same as the previous two (e.g. it can be an effect of a difference in physical mobility, or superior communications).

But the effects sometimes claimed from such processes can be wildly exaggerated. Some people seem to expect the enemy to just get dizzy, throw up, and thrown down his arms. Has this ever happened? Sure, with poor commanders. I think of Mack at Ulm, of whom it was once said "he has so far today conceived and put into execution, in sequence, three entirely contradictory strategic plans."

But often a properly deployed enemy just cooly says "right face" or something similar easy adaptation, and nothing whatever is decided. The disciples of the "Grand Maison" school of "attack a l'outrance" in the French army before WW I, expected "the initiative" and "the attack" and forcing the enemy to react, and confusion "carried into his ranks", and other such gung-ho magical rabbit's feet, to decide everything in their favor. The Germans just stopped, deployed, fired machineguns, magazine rifles and, above all, their heavier artillery until the French had evaporated, then marched on.

The offensive is not all it is cracked up to be, by the cracked heads of the disciples of gung-ho. (Which incidentally, means "work together" in polynesian anyway - LOL). The principle reason is that adapations of deployments to enemy movements are often extremely simple and rapid, but fully effective. "Keep it simply stupid" often trumps the supposed confusion enemy initiative is touted as causing. Clever deployments are not narrowly tailored to one enemy threat picture; instead they adapt smoothly to just about anything he tries.

I have personally seen more than one maneuverist attacker in CM and other strategy games, penetrate an enemy defensive system, and then see his attack collapse in confusion simply because he had expected this to have more of an impact on the enemy, than it actually did. I even have a quip reserved for these occasions - "*now* what are you going to do - bleed on me?" A surprising number of maneuverists make plans that do not promise truly decisive results even if the initial phase succeeds.

They are especially discomfitted by defenders who do not "think linearly" at all, refuse to react as the attacker's formulaic doctrines expect, and sometimes flat refuse to react to the attacker's actions, practically. If you play chess you know the type. He takes the gambit pawn, ignores the attack and the next two proffered sacrifices, then exchanges off everything and wins.

I am reminded of a line from one of the founders of La Maison, who called defeat "mostly a psychological phenomenon", having based this on examination of ancient and Napoleonic case histories. Well, names and atmosphere and supposed dizziness, just don't "hurt" some defenders very much. It sorta leaves it up to them, and if they just decide they haven't lost anything then they often haven't.

Incidentally, someone also made the passing comment that there is nothing defensive in air to air combat. There certainly is, although aggressiveness usually pays high dividends in such fights. The defensive aspects are caused by such considerations as the limited lethal zones in front of an behind aircraft, and the general point that being on an enemy's tail also means letting him decide where you go. A tailing plane can then e.g. be dragged in front of a wingman's guns.

As this example shows, there is a certain ireducible predictability involved in any kind of effective attack, which can sometimes be exploited. So it is not so simple, even in the air.

As for RTS itself, that is another story altogether. The problem with RTS is that it is not real, or time, or strategy. No one person has to give commands to a brigade at all levels in a single minute. There are whole hierarchies of trained officers precisely to break the task into amounts managable in the time available.

And it isn't time, because battles actually lasted for months, and RTS battles are always over in minutes. The point, after all, is to give the player a "rush", rather than to reflect the often excruciatingly boring tempo of war. Air combat is about the only place where the two line up well, in the few minutes of combat that punctuate the hours of straight-line flying and the days and weeks of mission prep and base life.

And it isn't strategy, because strategy is when the matched wits of two artificial commanders, with full knowledge of the relevant system variables and processes, determine the outcome by their mutual choices. Which is incidentally a requirement for a good game and not a requirement of realism. In real life, there aren't only two commanders and many factors outside of their control and knowledge have huge impacts on the outcome, often swamping the effects of the commander's choices.

But the RTS games that exist do not have this characteristic either, because their depth of game play is so incredibly shallow. There are essentially only three processes known to RTS game designers - come-into-being, pass-away, and move from A to B. Each of these is kept simply enough to be understood by an elementary school student.

Most often, the first heavily dominates the eventual outcome, leading to the "sorceror's apprentice" plot-line, aka build some endless mongo-unit fountains and point the resulting spray in the general direction of the enemy.

Occasionally the others matter, but in a heavily linear fashion (as in, 3 whatsits meet 2 do-dahs, result 1 whatsits marching on). There are generally single optimums for force types or mixes, with numerous "types" included for "variety" that are completely pointless in game-play terms, etc. They got their combat systems from "risk" or a box of cracker jacks, in other words.

In fact, the whole RTS tendency, in my opinion, has set back strategy game design at least a decade. The move to computers set it back another decade, but "paid for it" in return by increasing playability by an order of magnitude.

But there is nothing like the design of game systems that existed in the late 70s and early 80s, when SPI was putting out scores of games a year with innovative systems every month, with titles like Squad Leader (we all know), Terrible Swift Sword (basis of the Battleground series), Panzergruppe Guderian (V4V series more or less), War in the Pacific and CV and Fast Carriers (PacWar), Wooden Ships and Iron Men - to say nothing of overlooked innovations like John Butterfield's "Stalingrad" (not the old AH one, the one about the fight for the city).

At their absolute best, computer strategy games have taken successful designs and move them to the computer, altering the designs to match better what the interface could and could not handle, and which resources were truly scarce, and thereby achieving greater playability with equal depth of play to the old genre. That is at best. The more common result and the uniform result in RTS in my experience, is gutted gameplay for the sake of eye candy and "immersion". The general result is game designers who have forgotten their job description (which is not, incidentally, "realism engineer" nor "historian", but *game designer*) to pretend they are the movie directors instead.

If I want to watch cartoon movies, I'll rent one. When I want a strategy game, it has moves.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

No, the defender does not have to defend the position. That is up to him. Including whether, how much, where, when, and all the rest of it. He chooses to do so when doing so helps him. That is quite completely all.

[Bimmer]

I just love it when people make sweeping statements like "the Soviets weren't good at high op tempos". How the heck do you know? The Soviets, and Russians since then, lost 2 small wars and both of them were protracted guerrilla conficts. Nobody ever beat them by having a higher op tempo. That doesn't mean the statement is false, and that

nobody could have. Just that nobody did. So nobody knows a darned thing about it.

I stand by that statement. The Soviets were beaten tactically and operationally time and time again during Operation Barbarossa by a force that was specifically designed to operate at high op tempos. The Soviets (from STAVKA on down) were frequently in the position of trying to order formations that had already been rendered combat ineffective. This, to me, seems to indicate that op tempo was an important factor.

Post-war NATO planning on both the operational and strategic levels conceded the initiative at the outset of hostilities (presuming a Warsaw Pact initiation) and placed great value on regaining that initiative by exploiting accepted weaknesses in Soviet communications and logistics systems, the very systems that are so important to maintaining op tempo. These weaknesses, while not tested in the classic Central European thrust envisioned, were shown to be even more fragile than anticipated in Afganistan.

While my initial statement may have been rather broad given its brevity, I do not think it was in any way so outlandish as to warrant the dismissive (and equally broad) reply.

[Simon Fox]

In his peptalks to junior officers Monty always emphasised the importance of "making the enemy dance to your tune".

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"Stand to your glasses steady,

This world is a world of lies,

Here's a toast to the dead already,

And here's to the next man to die."

-hymn of the "Double Reds"

[X-00]

Many are missing the point about the OODA loop. The key variable in the OODA loop is time. If you you Observer, Orient, Decide and Act faster than your opponent he is doomed. Over time, the opponenets decisions loop is degraded to the point where they are meaningless to the situation actually at hand.

In CM, with 1 minute pauses, hence identical OODA loop cycles, it is very difficult to apply a time dependent model.

On Defense, ask any military professional what mission he or she would rather have defense or offense. The vast majority would take the offense for key three reasons. The attacker choses where, when and with what to attack.

And finally. Jason, the phrase "Gung-Ho" does indeed mean "work together", the origins of the word however are Chinese not Polyneasian.

[X-00]

P.S.

On that sweeping generalization that the Russians weren't capable of conducting high tempo ops I would site Operation Bagration.

Bagration (The destruction of Army Group Center), launched on 22 June 1944, tore a gap in German lines 250 miles wide and a 100 deep in two weeks. A sure indication of the high tempo of the attack is the number of prisoners taken (400k).

Yes the Soviets had a crushing superiority in tanks and artillery, but that shouldn't discount the rapidity of the attack, nor it's depth. The Soviet Generals and their staff had the skill to keep that mass moving from Smolensk to Warsaw in about 8 weeks.

[von Lucke]

This discussion is as old as warfare itself, and has usually been boiled down to "achieving and then maintaining the initiative".

[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by Bimmer:

Mass is fine, but the problem with the Soviet interpretation of mass is that they looked to sheer weight to overcome weaknesses in their tactical system, not to complement strengths. You can have lots of mass, but if it isn't where you need it when you need it, it doesn't do you much good. Modern US doctrine tends to do a better job of combining massed fires and maneuverability to form a flexible tactical system. The Soviets were not very good at high op-tempo, and susceptible to losing their balance if caught off-guard - precisely what OODA is aupposed to do.

Hmm, somehow the impression I got from Soviet operations post 1943 does not sit very well with this statement. The Soviets managed what the Germans never really did - rapid deep operations, charaterised by repeated encirclements of large units with the almost total destruction of the encircled forces to achieve a catastrophic effect on the opposing force, during Bagration (as was pointed out here), followed by Lvov-Sandomierz and then the destruction of Army Group South Ukraine. They launched high speed deep operations that were true Blitzkrieg. All these were conducted within a short space of each other from late June to autumn 1944, and all of them were resounding successes.

To say that the Soviets needed mass to overcome tactical weakness is a bit funny. They were on the attack, they wanted to get rid of the invader for sure, and it was not a contest to see who had the better tactics. They used mass and concentration to make sure that my grandfather and his comrades disappeared from their country, once and for all. And they succeeded.

*Sarcasm mode on* As opposed to the amazing Wehrmacht generals with their truly great understanding of deep ops who unfortunately did not have a clue about relating that to the inadequacy of their logistics. *Sarcasm mode off*

One thing I have learned recently is that the myth of the Soviets using human wave attacks/mass to overcome tactical ineptitude is just that - a myth.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Bimmer]

Note that I did not say the Soviets were incapable of deep operations, or of conducting high op tempo actions - I said it was not the strength of their system.

Bagration was a deep operation that did indeed move faster than the Germans could at that time. Mass played at least as important a role in this as tempo - once the Soviets started to roll forward they were indeed very hard to stop, and that momentum in no small part allowed them to continue their advance and forcing the Germans back on their heels.

However, after the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets were spent offensively. They had a manpower shortage of substantial proportions, and they were in enough disarray to prevent them from continuing to exploit their success. They lost the initiative.

I really have no desire to turn this into a rehash of the old arguments, and I certainly do not want it to become a pissing contest. I have my views and you have yours (respectively). As long as it seems productive, I'll continue to participate.

[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by Bimmer:

However, after the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets were spent offensively. They had a manpower shortage of substantial proportions, and they were in enough disarray to prevent them from continuing to exploit their success. They lost the initiative.

After the destruction of Army Group Centre, they went on to destroy Army Group South Ukrain, kick Finland and Romania out of the war, and undertake the Lvov Sandomierz operation. I don't think that qualifies as 'spent offensively' or 'lost the initiative' - anyway, to whom? It is not like the German army did do anything but retreat from then on, and they certainly were not displaying a tactical superiority either.

Yes the Red Army was in disarray logistically, and they had taken substantial losses (but still had more men and equipment than before the operations in total). But the important thing is to look at it comparatively. If the German army had undertaken such an offensive, would they have been able to undertake another serious operation immediately in a different sector of the front. The answer is no - e.g the Germans could only focus on one sector even in 1942. If the Western Allies had undertaken such an offensive, would they have been able to do that? The answer is again no, as the August/September operations in France and Belgium showed. The Western Allies could only undertake either a stab at the Westwall or Market Garden, but not both. But they were not in disarray at an operational level, they were simply at the end of their logistical tether. As was the Red Army at the end of 1944. So to single out the Red Army and say they were not very good at deep ops (compared to who?) is not only unfair (by your definition, the Western Allies and the Wehrmacht were as well), it is also not quite correct. You may want to portray that as a matter of opinion, but I for one am convinced it is a matter of looking at the facts.

Edited for misquoting Bimmer.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 03-09-2001).]

[Bimmer]

By all means, it is a matter of looking at facts - the difference comes in the interpretation of those facts.

While earlier analysis of Soviet tactical prowess tended to be entirely too monolithic and gave them little if any credit, I do not feel the underlying point was wrong: the Soviet military relied on mass, properly employed, rather than tactical finesse and maneuver. The ability to conduct deep operations does not really indicate maneuver over mass or a high level of tactical finesse - deep operations may be conducted in different ways. Certainly the German and Soviet methods of breakthrough and exploitation were quite different.

To bring this back to my original point, high op tempo is a tool, not an end in and of itself. If it can be employed effectively, it can assist the force using it to compel the enemy to react rather than act. AS A GENERAL RULE, I do not believe, based on my reading of the facts, that the Soviets were terribly proficient at utilizing high op tempo to good effect. They were, again IMO, much better at employing mass, and to some degree this compensated for their other weaknesses.

This is the end of my participation in this thread, as I have said all I have to say. Revisionism is in vogue now - I do not happen to subscribe to the revisionist POV in this particular case. The adversarial tone employed here when someone does not subscribe verbatim to the current conventional wisdom rivals that of the doctoral program in history at an Ivy League university (with which I have first-hand experience). You should be proud.

[Terence]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

I have personally seen more than one maneuverist attacker in CM and other strategy games, penetrate an enemy defensive system, and then see his attack collapse in confusion simply because he had expected this to have more of an impact on the enemy, than it actually did. I even have a quip reserved for these occasions - "*now* what are you going to do - bleed on me?" A surprising number of maneuverists make plans that do not promise truly decisive results even if the initial phase succeeds.

You know, this exact thing happened to me.

I can't say if my attack was truly "maneuverist", but I was playing a QB in moderate hilly territory, small map. I had a company of Panzergrenadiers in HTs, 3 Panthers, two platoons of pioneers dismounted, and some heavy artillery.

the battle went well at first. the pioneers skittered forward and drew some fire but remained mostly intact, they were able to observe where a great many of the Canadian positions were. I called in some heavy artillery on the main Canadian position, and then some smoke to mask my advance.

The Panthers rolled out first to provide covering fire for the HTs, and took out sherman two tanks that were on a nearby hill.

The HTS made all the way to the Canadian lines and the troops unassed and charged in.

At this point, the enemy AT guns (cunningly positioned behind the lines) started taking out my Panthers, and the Canadian troops (surprisingly frisky after my heavy 150 mm artillery barrage) put up a good fight, calling in their own arty as well. .

The result was a draw, and although I did have posession of all the flags, I must admit that an undertrength platoon of half-cooked mice could probably have pushed my battered, tankless troops out of there with little effort.

So I don't know if this supports or undermines any of your points, Jason, but to me, it appeared that my opponent "got inside my decision curve" before turn one, when he put his at guns in places where they would protect his forces from tanks and HTs that had come right close up to his front lines.

[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by Bimmer:

This is the end of my participation in this thread, as I have said all I have to say. Revisionism is in vogue now - I do not happen to subscribe to the revisionist POV in this particular case. The adversarial tone employed here when someone does not subscribe verbatim to the current conventional wisdom rivals that of the doctoral program in history at an Ivy League university (with which I have first-hand experience). You should be proud.

Well, I guess that says it all - if disagreement with your initial sweeping statement is adversarial and that bothers you, then you may be well advised to not make sweeping statements in the first place. While I respect your opinion, I also tthink it is wrong. I have not called you names or anything, I have simply disagreed with you.

I still think you have not addressed the fundamental point, and I feel you are now employing a time-honoured tactic:

a) claim the person you are debating with is getting personal

bug out because you can not defend the statement you made in the first place

c) claim that the view disagreeing with you is 'en vogue' and you are a sort of rebel for standing up to it.

All these are quite wrong. Please tell me where any army other than the Red Army was able to undertake deep penetrations as those of Bagration and the two later operations I mentioned not only with equal success but also still with the capability to continue after them. Unless you can do so, your statement that the Red Army was not proficient at it is not particularly convincing.

Another point, this 'revisionism' may just have started to come about because we are now getting fact-based research in English that simply was not available during the Cold War. It may therefore not be revisionism, but a very necessary re-evaluation of Red Army performance.

And yes, they employed mass, but IMO they did so to achieve the massive rupture in the German frontlines that then allowed them to conduct deep ops. It was a tool adequate to the task. Fancy maneuvering would presumably have carried a much higher risk and negated the fundamental advantage of the Red Army, which was numbers and the possibility to concentrate without notice. How does this differ from what the Allies did during COBRA? Why does this employment of mass at the point of breakthrough in any way negate the amazing achievement of the deep ops that followed them?

But you have said you will no longer participate, and I think that is a shame. There is a lot I do not know about this topic, and a lot that a debate could bring out.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Guest Germanboy]

For the record - your comment about Ivy League is not far off. I am a (by now part-time) PhD student at the number 2 or 3 (depending who you believe) Business School in the UK, at Warwick. While some of the people I debate with may tend to describe my debating style as adversarial, I think of it as 'direct'. I am surely equal to taking this as good as I give, but I am a bit at a loss as to how I should portray my disagreement with you in a way that is not 'adversarial'.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Guest Andrew Hedges]

I was going to add to Andreas' post, but then I realized that he had pretty much said everything that needed to be said. Facts are good. Making completely unsupported arguments is not ideal, but making broad ad hominem attacks on people who refute fact-free arguments with fact-based arguments is simply despicable.

[Bimmer]

I am not going to say anything here about the topic, as I said I wouldn't.

You (each of you reading/participating) in this thread have your own opinion, informed or otherwise. I still hold mine, as I sure you respectively do yours. The fact of the matter is that I do this for fun, and getting into a heated argument by typing back and forth in a public forum is not within the parameters I have set for enjoyment. Personally, I lack the enthusiasm and motivation necessary to continue this way. If this is interpreted as backing down by some of you, that's your perogative.

Andreas, maybe the next time I'm in the UK we can meet and talk about this over a pint - a far more agreeable setting for this sort of thing. I probably won't agree with you, but then that's the way it is.

[Terence]

Originally posted by Bimmer:

I am not going to say anything here about the topic, as I said I wouldn't.

Well, that's a pity. Honestly speaking, I was enjoying your posts, and was learning from the exchange. Oh well.

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

...by the cracked heads of the disciples of gung-ho. (Which incidentally, means "work together" in polynesian anyway - LOL).

It means something close to "strive for harmony" in Chinese. The term, as used in the Corps, was adopted by Col. Carlson (of raider fame) from his experiences with the China.

As for RTS itself, that is another story altogether...

Your comments about RTS are dead on. Anyone who has actually led men in the field [i have] can voach for what you said.

[This message has been edited by Berlichtingen (edited 03-09-2001).]

[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by Bimmer:

[bAndreas, maybe the next time I'm in the UK we can meet and talk about this over a pint - a far more agreeable setting for this sort of thing. I probably won't agree with you, but then that's the way it is.

Fair enough Bimmer - you have got my email, and can contact me next time you get here. Other than that, I have to say I agree with Terence, I think it would have been a good way to learn (I learn through dicussing, not through reading).

I certainly was not looking for a fight,

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[StellarRat]

Originally posted by Berlichtingen:

Ok, your logic excapes me on this one. the defender has the advantage of position.

Not true in the broad sense. As the defender, you have to defend your position (however that is defined)... the attacker is not required to attack your entire front, giving him the ability to gain numerical superiority at the point of attack. The attacker always begins with the initiative advantage. It is the defender's job to take that advantage away. The timing of the attack and the point of attack are decided by the attacker.

I was thinking in terms of CM where the attacker pretty much has to attack a defended position to win. In the broader sense, yes, there certain advantages to attacking. However, a competent defense that is willing to give up ground is going to require less resources than offensive both in men and material and has a good chance of bleeding the attacker dry then it's time for a counter-attack.