Elusive raids and ambushes

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I wrote about defence before and I wrote about infantry before, this time I'll try to elaborate on the elusive ambush and elusive raid thing.

See, combat in Afghanistan does not tell much about first-rate peer vs peer combat at all. A platoon can be fixed by a smuggler gang or a Taliban group and not dare to leave cover for hours. It still survives.

In a high-end conventional war, that same platoon would be wiped out long before the first hour ends, and the enemy infantry wouldn't even need to sweat because such a fixed target is a favourite target for support fires. A really top of the line infantry battalion would destroy such a fixed target within minutes with its mortars.

So whenever you think about what's the difference between AFG combat and combat against really capable opposition; imagine the Taliban had a bomber with a precision bomb on station, ready to strike within minutes. It's a good start.
I am, of course, fixated on really capable opposition because there's little reason to believe that forces of little competence will ever be sent to invade Germany or one of its allies. Their leaders would understand the pointlessness. Wars of choice on the other hand should be avoided.

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The aforementioned problem of survivability in contact is part of the reason why I insist so much on quick and short exposure (if possible with a well-timed burst of support efforts). A lot needs to change in tactics once you need to cut your exposure time short.

Very short combat actions still need to be worthwhile, and they still should be very advantageous for 'us'. This means it's best to combine them with other, more established drivers of military tactics.
Surprise is one such driver; surprise describes a temporary advantage created by the exploitation of a fleeting superiority in readiness for battle. To exploit this advantage is a good idea, but it's not always possible.

Damn it, doctrine and theory are still more about what to strive for than about what's inevitably going wrong sooner or later.

The offensive form that exploits surprise and is compatible with a short duration is the raid, and a fine defensive equivalent is the ambush.

Let's use some imagination to describe the point:

Imagine cats fighting for territory. I don't say they do it like this, but imagine it:

A cat sneaks through the territory, attempting to find the rival cat. Once done, it closes in and finally pounces the rival, hitting the resting and surprised rival badly. Then it vanishes into the undergrowth again in order to not be surprise-attacked itself by a third cat.

This would be (elusive) raiding.

Now imagine the cat patrolling or observing its own territory and sensing a moving rival. It sneaks or hurries into an anticipated intercept position, lurks there and finally pounces the rival when it came close. Again, a quick withdrawal follows after dealing a severe blow.

That would be (elusive) ambushing.

The cat surely has a good use for some well-selected if not prepared hideouts, but it has no use for lots of prepared defensive positions, and the whole dynamic would be entirely different if the terrain was very flat and open or even bristling with cats.

I think this is where infantry-centric defensive tactics should go, and where they are in part already (Central and North European Jagdkampf, U.S. Distributed Operations). On the surface, these tactics are very similar - but the theoretical works about them (= the ones I know) and the assumptions are deficient in my opinion. Jagdkampf lacks the organisational support for widespread intentional employment and the theory of it is rather unsuitable (too demanding) for unintentional employment in/after a crisis in battle. It's an incomplete concept that shows its lack of a real baptism of fire. DO on the other hand was/is too tech-heavy in my opinion and about too small teams. Granted, I didn't go enough into details yet to assert the superiority of my concept art all. This is rather about provoking some thoughts.

Fixed defensive positions are largely out of fashion today despite the sandbag castles seen in Bosnia and Afghanistan. What's still lacking is the appraisal of enemy fire support as a factor that requires you to break contact even while the action appears to go well (simply because it already lasted almost for too long).
To expose yourself long enough for enemy fire support is near-suicidal, but it's a traditional weakness that indirect fires effects are poorly simulated and communicated in tactical exercises. In short: They're chronically under-appreciated. Many armies know this, but the attempts to fix this problem do not appear to have lasting decisive success.

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What's remarkable about elusive raids and ambushes is the "territory" (area) thing. It's not about a line or an objective - both would restrict the tactical choices a lot and create predictability. Instead, you need to think of this as an area mission.

I'd like to call it a "skirmish area mission" on the (small) unit tactical level, while on the operational (corps) level its somewhat different cousin concept might be called a "skirmish corridor". "Skirmish area missions" of different small units may have overlapping areas - this requires horizontal cooperation.

The average area for a platoon-sized area skirmish mission would be about 100-200 square kilometres, about the same size as envisioned in Jagdkampf. It could be much smaller in an evacuated urban area (even down to less than 10 sq km).

In such a "skirmish area mission", there would be rather few modes;
(1) intruding into enemy-controlled terrain,
(2) contesting control aggressively (trying to eliminate the presence of hostiles),
(3) contesting control cautiously (trying to stay active in the area without trying hard to expulse hostiles),
(4) reacting to major enemy forces passing through (presence of a hostile skirmish element becomes secondary in this scenario) and
(5) control and withdrawal (allowing them to control the area).

The benefits would already pile up while contesting control, namely the ability to communicate from-the-ground info if major enemy forces pass through the area. It's even better if the enemy isn't present with his skirmishers, and thus causes less stress and enforces less caution. The stress of the cat vs cat game would make troops rotation an advisable feature, and that's not what you want (it drives force strength requirements up and the average knowledge about the terrain down*).

On the operational-level picture, major enemy forces passing through such an area would suffer because of the ambush and raid threat, but first and foremost because the present skirmishers could cause attrition by calling for long-range fire support (let's say 120 km range GUMLRS+ missiles, see page 24). The passing forces' movement, strength and composition would furthermore be reported and this could lead to them being outmanoeuvred, subjected to air attack or surprised on the formation level (by manoeuvre brigade(s) or battlegroup(s)). Ambush and raid would be most relevant against supply convoys and scarce yet important equipment (such as various engineer tanks, air defence and electronic warfare vehicles).

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This whole concept is NOT suitable for decisive obstacle-related missions, such as clearing a bottleneck or closing it, holding a river front, establishing or destroying a bridgehead. Some of these missions could be met by larger (than unit level) combined arms forces with a very different mindset. 

S O

* Digital ground level pictures of the area might help the replacement small unit to familiarise itself with the terrain without exposing itself much on patrols.

P.S.: Sorry, I know that illustrations and photos make it much more pleasant to read such long texts. I did simply not find any suitable ones, fr we don't really want to see photos of a cat in a bush here, right? The key problem with depicting troops with great camouflage is that the photo should really just be a landscape photo, without visible troops. That would be quite irritating, though.

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