It's the voids, stupid!

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I'd like to summarise what I wrote about skirmishing, delay, pursuit, force densities, shaping ops, armoured recce and so on over the course of the years:*

The best practice in future conventional (government vs. government, gloves off) land warfare will be to seek superiority in the voids between the few concentrations of forces.

There will be battalion battlegroups and (small) brigades that don't disperse much and can be treated as classic manoeuvre elements. Yet the spacing between them will be dozens of kilometres (maybe 100+ km in some scenarios, see Ukraine), and what happens in these "voids" is what decides the campaign. For it's what decides about ammunition supply for the manoeuvre elements, decides about their practical mobility (how impeded it is), deters them from advancing or not, blinds or enlightens their commanders and potentially denies army aviation operations.

The major manoeuvre elements (battlegroups, brigades) could execute their classic manoeuvres well if and only if the events in the voids permit it. Clashes between brigades would have a predetermined result because the shaping ops that happened in the voids delivered the real decision. The few classic battle-like clashes of massed forces would shatter already-doomed forces that didn't escape in time, akin to the elimination of pockets in WW2.

The void spaces would be devoid of united and massed forces larger than companies, but those independently-manoeuvering armoured-recce and long range scout-like forces in platoon and company or even only squad (LRS) size would dominate the voids, supported by long-range assets (artillery, electronic long-range surveillance and nighttime helo medevac mostly).

Their campaign - the scouting, skirmishing and observation campaign detached from larger forces - would be the decisive one. The army that's superior in this facet of land warfare would be as dominant as back in WW2 the armies that better mastered rapid operations with tank-heavy formations.

The better main battle tank may thus be of little consequence compared to the better armoured recce car and the better ability to call in responsive long-range artillery fires.

That's the real departure from classic land warfare as Carl von Clausewitz  and other thinkers wrote about: They saw the decision in what mobile concentrations of great power would do, whereas in the future when a single sniper pair may doom a tank battalion with a radio call or two such concentrations of power should merely seal a deal that was already negotiated by the skirmishing forces.

Modern field manuals still follow the orthodox, classic patterns. They're either about the (small) unit level with little consideration for what their actions cause in the greater picture or they are about how to commit the force concentrations. They're not about (small) units shaping the battlefield with merely over-the-horizon support from force concentrations. The closest thing to this are probably the Jagdkampf tactic and Raumverteidigung doctrines. I'd rather emphasize this in the context of armoured reconnaissance forces, for well-armed combat-capable (instead of observation-focused) armoured recce is the closest to the needed skirmisher force for the voids.

The brigades meanwhile would be 'fleets in being' that contribute to the deterrence of opposing forces advances and serve as long-range support nodes to the skirmishers until committed to breaking an opposing peer formation (preferably in a pincer manoeuvre). They wouldn't need so much "Panzer" troops dash, but rather patience and long range arty. The highest demands would not be placed on the leaders of tank forces, but on the skirmishing armoured recce platoon and company leaders. That's what the 'best and brightest' officers should be assigned to. Meanwhile, nations with a rather cumbersome mechanised forces culture would merely need to improve on their evasion skills in order to avoid decisive engagements of their brigades until the shaping ops provided the right setting.

 

Nothing of this would prevent that actual generals would send actual brigades to clash with opposing brigades ASAP in a future conflict. Just as insights in the role of firepower didn't prevent the French army's suicidal offensive tactics in 1914, after all. I'm merely pointing out what I think will be best practices. It's not a prediction of actual future campaigns.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: I'm too lazy to look up all the links. Simply click on the "Military theory" tag on the left if you want to look the stuff up.

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