operational concepts

There are three components of military power: the moral, which motivates soldiers and makes them fight; the physical, the way they are armed and supplied; and the conceptual. The conceptual component of military power is the cheapest, in terms of financial investment, but acts as a powerful ‘force multiplier’ to the other two.

During the 20th century a number of broad operational concepts have shaped the way armed forces are designed for battle and the way campaigns have been conducted. They relate to both the strategic purpose they strive to achieve and the tactics that make them up. Some of the first ideas which could be described as ‘operational concepts’ were part of naval strategy, ‘open’ and ‘close’ blockade, for example, and even such abstract concepts as ‘the fleet in being’ or ‘command of the sea’, although in modern terms these were strategic rather than operational. Air power has also come up with operational concepts, for example the ‘big wing’ advocated by AM Leigh-Mallory during the battle of Britain.

If there was an ‘operational concept’ at work in armies at the outbreak of WW I, it was the doctrine of the offensive. The paralysing effect of modern artillery, rifle, and machine-gun fire, recognized in the Second Boer War and Russo-Japanese war, and the ‘softness’ of modern youth, which was not expected to bear privations as stoically and self-sacrificingly as its forefathers, led to a reaction. The French school was led by Col Louis de Grandmaison (1861-1915), the Director of Operations, who put forward his views in two lectures in 1911. ‘It is more important’, he said, ‘to develop a conquering state of mind than to cavil about tactics.’ Two years later he drew up the Regulations for the Conduct of Major Formations of October 1913, which declared ‘the French army, returning to its traditions, recognizes no law save that of the offensive’.

In Germany there was a similar reaction against cautious tactics and by 1903 regulations emphasized the offensive. The Schlieffen plan gave operational/strategic form to these tactics, although it was assailed by Gen Friedrich von Bernhardi, who preferred breakthrough to envelopment as an operational concept. In Britain Gen Sir Ian Hamilton, a highly sensitive and intelligent man, also dismissed the belief expounded by Jan Bloch in his book Future War, that armies would be paralysed by fire. ‘The best defence to a country’, wrote Hamilton, ‘is an army formed, trained, inspired by the idea of attack.’

The primacy of the offensive had universal appeal, whether to professional soldiers, who believed it to be the preserve of dedicated professional armies, or the radical left, who saw it as a product of popular will. It also fitted nicely with the views of Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, and those of Nietzsche and even of Darwin. In terms of the three components of military power, it represented a massive reliance on the moral, with far less emphasis on the necessary physical and very little on the conceptual.

In 1914 all the armies went on the offensive. However, it would be a mistake to link the terrible casualties of WW I too closely with the doctrine of the offensive. Given the mismatch between firepower and the means of mobility, huge casualties were inevitable. After the initial casualties British, French, and Germans all worked hard to minimize their own casualties by meticulous preparation and the use of new technology.

As the WW I armies chewed away at each other, unable to encircle one another in a single bite, images of eating or nibbling became popular. The emergence of the operational level of war, under circumstances where a single battle could not be decisive but formed a stepping stone to a greater end, provided the ground in which modern operational concepts began to emerge.

The first concept that springs to mind— blitzkrieg—was never formulated as an operational concept. It was not even a German military term but appears to have been invented by a US journalist after the 1939 Polish campaign. One school of thought sees the initial German successes in 1939-41 as the result of a coherent blitzkrieg strategy or operational concept. The theory goes that in order to maintain consumer production at a high level Hitler planned a series of short, mobile campaigns by tanks and aircraft (themselves to a large extent spin-offs from the civilian tractor and aircraft industries), with pauses between to replenish stockpiles. But, as Williamson Murray has argued, ‘a closer examination of the evidence … points to an uncertain and unclear grand strategy in which the Germans put the military pieces together at the last moment, with serious doubts and in considerable haste’.

The first panzer division was improvised in the summer of 1935. The Germans' striking success at the start of WW II was therefore probably the product of a very transitory set of advantages. They had produced suitable equipment in the mid-1930s so it was well tried and tested and the troops well trained when war came; they had a primitive but effective system of close air support, tested in the Spanish civil war, and a command and control network which was tailored to coping with more rapid manoeuvre than any opponent could reasonably expect to achieve (see also manoeuvre warfare).

Whereas the German approach was therefore ad hoc, the Soviet approach was highly conceptual. Following on from work on ‘deep battle’, in the late 1920s, designed to break through the tactical crust of a WW I-style army, the Soviets began to develop the idea of the deep operation in the 1930s, probably the first true ‘operational concept’ and the origin of others since. It was the brainchild of Triandafillov, Tukhachevskiy, and Marshal Aleksandr Yegorov (1883-1939). The deep operation aimed to accomplish ‘simultaneous destruction of the enemy through the entire depth of his deployment’, by smashing through the tactical zone (12 miles (20 km) deep) and then introducing a ‘breakthrough development echelon’ comprising army and front mobile groups and airborne forces. In the mid-1930s a deep operation was envisaged as that of a shock army or Front (army group). There would be an attack echelon (EA), a breakthrough exploitation echelon (ERP), reserves, air forces, and paratroops. The attack echelon comprised rifle corps with tanks and artillery, in order to break through the tactical zone. The exploitation echelon, comprising mobile groups formed from mechanized or cavalry corps, would then break out and convert tactical success into operational. A shock army would attack on a 31-50 mile (50-80 km) wide front, and penetrate to a depth of 43-62 miles (70-100 km).

The Red Army's Field Service Regulations for 1936 (PU-36) only include provisions for deep battle but by the early 1940s Soviet military theorists had concluded that the larger deep operation might be conducted, not by one Front, but by several, and bring in naval forces. Such an operation might reach to a depth of 124 or 186 miles (200 or 300 km). These ideas were modelled on paper and by exercises in the Kiev (1935), Moscow, Belorussian, and Odessa (1936) military districts, and also practised, on a smaller scale in the operations at Lake Khasan (1938) and Khalkhin-Gol.

By the end of WW II a Front deep operation could involve a 373 mile (600 km) advance in twelve days, a six-day pause, and then another 600 km in twelve days, which remained the Soviet pattern of operation for the Cold War. By the 1980s Soviet planners were envisaging a single, 22-day Theatre Strategic Operation (TSO) to cover 746 miles (1, 200 km).

The prospect of a massive Soviet invasion, probably trying to avoid the use of nuclear weapons and to overrun NATO before it could take the political decision to use its own, led to a resurgence of conventional operational concepts in the 1970s. It is still unclear which came first: the renewed Soviet emphasis on so-called Operational Manoeuvre Groups (OMGs) or NATO's concept of Follow-On Forces' Attack (FOFA). In order to stop a massive Warsaw Pact offensive, it was necessary to tear away at forces far behind the forward troops, slowing and thinning them to the point where NATO's front line could engage them successfully. The OMG was a variant of the WW II forward detachment and mobile group, and comprised a resilient, fast-moving formation which would be inserted into a gap in the NATO deployment and run amok deep behind NATO forward positions. Its missions might be to destroy, disrupt, or capture nuclear weapons, airfields, command, control and communications, logistic support, and the lateral communications needed to move NATO troops to counter a Warsaw Pact breakthrough. It might also prevent NATO withdrawal and seize or isolate key political or economic objectives. Because OMGs and NATO forces would be mixed up, this might also discourage NATO from using nuclear weapons. When the OMG was first publicized in an open western journal in October 1982, the Soviets linked it with remarks the previous week by Gen Bernard Rogers, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, about FOFA. This interacted profoundly with the OMG concept since the OMG might actually remove the follow-on forces that FOFA hoped to attack.

Another concept, which evolved in response to the Warsaw Pact threat, was the US doctrine known by the fused syllables of ‘AirLand battle’. The 1976 edition of the US FM 100-5 field manual Operations had taken to heart the lessons of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and stressed the increased tempo of the modern battlefield. In 1977 Gen Donn A. Starry took over command of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and began a series of initiatives which led to the evolution of AirLand battle. A study called Division 86 (later Army 86) began to explore the idea of a deeper battlefield or, from 1980, ‘extended battlefield’. This involved the use of air power and helicopters. It was summarized in the phrase ‘AirLand battle’, formally announced in 1981 and embodied in the September 1981 draft of the new FM 100-5 field manual published in 1982. FM 100-5 provided for three types of battle: the deep battle (against enemy follow-on forces), the close-in battle, and the battle in one's own rear area against special forces (Spetsnaz).

FM 100-5 enunciated US army AirLand battle doctrine. It should not be confused with the futuristic study Air Land Battle 2000, a quite different document, although it often was. Whereas FM 100-5 field manual dealt with contemporary conditions, Air Land Battle 2000 endeavoured to look 20 years ahead. A subsequent study called Focus-21 developed the air-land battle theme further and was then combined with Air Land Battle 2000 to produce a new concept of future operations called Army-21.

AirLand battle took a ‘nonlinear view of battle’. It enlarged the battlefield area, stressing unified ground and air operations throughout the theatre. The war the USA and its Allies fought in the Gulf in 1991 was AirLand battle, in particular the use of XVIII Airborne Corps with its assault by 300 attack helicopters of the US 101st Airborne Division. It is debatable whether AirLand battle would have worked in the crowded, wooded counterpane of Europe, for which it was originally intended. It did succeed in the broad vastness of the desert, which provided ideal conditions. FM 100-5 did include a substantial section on desert operations, but AirLand battle and the equipment designed to fit in with this concept—Abrams tanks, Bradley MICVs and Apache helicopters—had originally been designed to fight the USSR, not Iraq, although the latter opponent obligingly used Soviet equipment and some Soviet tactics.

Since the Gulf war, information technology has multiplied and the latest US operational concept, Army After Next (AAN), looking to 2020, envisages a war in which the US enjoys total vision of the ‘battlespace’. The armoured divisions of the Gulf war contained about 100, 000 tons of equipment each and needed another 100, 000 to keep them supplied. The average speed was little faster than that in WW II—20 mph (32 km/ph). AAN aims to cut the weight of a division to a quarter of this, which its authors believe is possible because total information dominance will permit precise strikes on enemy targets. Vehicles could also be less heavily armoured as they should be able to avoid hostile forces. AAN also aims to increase a new-style division's speed tenfold to 200 mph (322 kmph) —a true AirLand force. But this will be enormously expensive and the USA may only be able to afford one division of this type. Furthermore, who will be the USA's allies? It is unlikely that any other country will be able to field a similar force. The wars of the 21st century are likely to be asymmetric and dirty, with a lot of old-fashioned equipment and belligerents who may not be impressed by information dominance and are adept at operating without it. Operational concepts may be a valuable force multiplier, but there has to be force—physical and moral—to multiply.

Bibliography

• Bellamy, Christopher, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare (London, 1990).
• —— Expert Witness (London, 1993).
• Howard, Michael, ‘The Doctrine of the Offensive’, in Makers of Modern Strategy (Oxford, 1990).
• Murray, Williamson, ‘Forces Strategy, Blitzkrieg Strategy and the Economic Difficulties’, RUSI (Mar. 1983).
• Simpkin, Richard, Race to the Swift (London, 1985).
• —— Deep Battle (London, 1987)

— Christopher Bellamy