"Freie Operationen" - a review

.

The German Army (Heer) experienced a reform during the mid- to late-90's when Helmut Willmann reformed as Inspector of the army. An important episode was the Generalstagung (general's conference) in 1998 when he pressed for a reform of the German operational art (usually associated with the title 'Freie Operationen').

The unclassified key document about this reform on that internal conference was "Gedanken zur Operationsführung im Deutschen Heer", which was published by the army to give its its officer corps a coherent and almost comprehensive doctrinal base. You can read mostly the same in English in "Operational Art of the German Army: Freie Operationen" by Oberst (Col.) Werner Kullack (1999).

I think the time is due for a review of that concept. Did it stand the test of time and does it withstand a military theory critique?

- - - - -

The background of that reform was quite dire. Decades of sitting in wait for the red hordes under NATO command and quenched into NATO doctrine for Central Europe had atrophied many important operational and tactical skills. Even the armour brigade HQs were quite accustomed to think about ground war as a war with a continuous front, and about tank battalions as great defensive (anti-tank) forces that held their sector.

It hadn't always been like that - the Wehrmacht's mobile warfare skills had been recovered during the 50's.
The dominance of nuclear battlefield firepower and equipment that was mostly unsuitable for ideal tactics (such as very short-legged tanks) had apparently killed off most of the daring mobile warfare style sometime during the 60's in theory and 70's in practice.

During the 60's even some WW2 veteran officers behaved as if ground war was about provoking an enemy concentration just to break contact quickly and destroy that concentration with a nuclear strike.

Conventional war planning of the 70's and 80's wasn't about encirclement and other basic tactics and operational art; it was in great part about defensive lines and a grind of force vs. force, material vs. material - till nuke fire missions would eventually ruin conventional warfare anyway.

The attritionist/nuke attitude still prevailed till the mid-90's despite the vastly changed environment. The Western German Bundeswehr had absorbed the Eastern German NVA (well, parts of it) and begun to shrink to distribute the peace dividend. This kept the leadership quite busy for years.

That's roughly the setting into which the reform came to pass.

- - - - -

Let me quickly summarize (most) key components of the 'Freie Operationen' reform; it's a quick keyword collection because it was really more a repair effort than an effort to innovate. Most components are well-known and easily summed up:

emphasis on large mechanised formations / initiative / rhythm of battle / counter-concentration / indirect approach / rapid change of combat type (defensive/offensive) / leadership art / information superiority / operations in depth / unity of command / deep fires / trilingual / joint / combined / force protection / less forces in larger space / stick to decisions / deconfliction / shorter leadership processes / digitization / air mechanization / armoured raid as last choice for deep operations / capable mission support and logistics / multinational corps / exploitation of space

The reform of operational art was mostly about conventional warfare, but other reforms of that time were in great part about the provision of available and ready forces for rapid reaction and peace-keeping missions. That fitted well into the security policy trend of the 90's in Europe.

- - - - -

A real, full review of the reform would easily exceed even a year's blog volume. I'll therefore restrict my comments on points of disagreement (and disappointment) in regard to conventional warfare.
Most of the reform was quite good if not outright necessary. The state of the German army in the mid-90's was 'suboptimal'.

The principle of counter-concentration

This was a NATO-level principle. Whenever a crisis would arrive somewhere on the frontiers of NATO, the allies were supposed to send their readily available forces to counter-concentrate against a threat.

That's nice in principle, but I consider it as too optimistic to assume that this would be happen. A counter-concentration would be akin to the mobilizations that pre-dated the First World War. It's a risky (escalating) and large step - and a reversal would be very risky. A careful or peace-optimistic political leadership could easily miss the last possible date for a timely counter-concentration.

The operational art reform assumed a counter-concentration as given and didn't exactly care much about the scenario of a lacking counter-concentration. I think that was a shortcoming.

Deep fires

The deep fires part (this is no actual translation, but I think English readers would call the set of ideas like this) was very reminiscent of the 80's Air-Land Battle concept. The key idea was to partially wear down enemy forces before they enter battle. The damage taken in the process would mean a desirable unfair disadvantage for OPFOR.

That was nice in theory, but a problem in practice. The German army had no long-range munitions for this, and it didn't procure the necessary munitions (as for example ATACMS rockets).

The occupation of corps and division staffs with affairs very far ahead of them leads to an increase of demands on these staffs just as it happened with comparable U.S. staffs. The area of interest became much greater, and thus the amount of needed information and the effort to process and understand the information. Planning becomes more laborious if you add deep fires jobs to field units. In the end, the deep fires idea was working against other ideas in the reform, such as quicker decision-making and bold manoeuvring of heavy forces.

The deep fires job was probably ill-suited to the army in general - it should at that time exclusively have burdened the air force (Luftwaffe), which had been in the interdiction business for decades (at least bridge and depot busting, not as much the destruction of marching units). The army simple had no and still has no suitable equipment for fire effects at more than ~80 km (then ~35 km) depth. A depth of ~ 35 km was roughly equivalent to 2-4 hours time for the attrition of the OPFOR reserves during march and marshalling. It would be quite optimistic to expect much of such a short exposure time behind the battlefield.

Rhythm and Initiative

The concept emphasized this a lot, and native English speakers with military theory knowledge might think of 'OODA' at this point. The leader was expected to choose the right time and place for the ground combat and not to allow the enemy to make and execute his own choices to his advantage.

The fuzzy idea of "initiative" (cherished in some armies, but nevertheless questionable as principle because it's a symptom and because of its inferior importance in comparison with many other factors) was a poor description for this intent. "Rhythm", a term that suggests some regularity of action - was an outright dysfunctional choice of a word.

The real intent behind these keywords was quite simple and self-evident. Or it should have been so.

Stick to a decision if possible

The concept stressed that a commander was expected to stick to his plan even in face of a flank threat if possible. This was actually meant as an expression of the Schwerpunkt idea (don't get distracted by nuisances, keep most of your force concentrated for a decisive blow), but I would be hard-pressed to find a worse wording (than used in the German original) for it.

The decision between sticking with a plan and adapting your action to a new situation is a classical and tricky challenge. A simple standard answer ignores the complexity of the battlefield; it cannot be right in general.

Fix the enemy

This was omitted. It's not always necessary to completely fix an enemy, holding efforts are nevertheless very helpful. Shaping ops can occupy enemy reserves and holding forces can fix OPFOR forward elements or at least force them to keep up a delaying effort.

The difference between the own main effort forces' tempo (executing flank attack, for example) and the enemy's tempo is critical in mobile battles. Shaping ops and holding forces are important tools to influence that ratio (as well as the general disposition of forces) favourably.. The operational art concept of "Freie Operationen" neglected this aspect in favour of simplistic fixing the enemy.

To be fair; the reform was about changes and additions. Maybe the neglect of established brigade to corps tactics was intentional.

Indirect approach / Basil Liddell Hart

Liddell Hart was in my opinion not "der große strategische Denker" (the great strategic thinker) that Willmann seems to have seen in him. I found the references to Liddell Hart rather odd; Liddell Hart and Clausewitz were (if I remember correctly) the only art of war theorists who were pushed as examples in the reform's published papers.

That may have been an odd symptom of political correctness. It's not smart to supply ammo to your opponents if you push for reform, after all (a green-social democrat government was coming and nobody knew what the supposedly pacifist greens would have done with a general who used Wehrmacht, Reichswehr or imperial period generals as reference).

Deconfliction

Deconfliction is just another job for staffs that slows down and restricts the actions of indirect fire and aerial assets. A strong requirement for deconfliction is in conflict with the intent to have very high tempo staffs. I wrote about deconfliction before.

Information superiority

Counter-reconnaissance was mentioned indirectly, but the strong emphasis was on sensors. This was typical for the late 90's and early 00's and is still going strong in procurement and lobbying. Corporations can sell thermal and radar sensors, but they won't make profit on the tactical training of ground forces for counter-reconnaissance.

Information superiority is difficult to achieve if you allow OPFOR to do its own recce job. The German army's ability to interdict enemy armoured reconnaissance vehicles is much too limited in my opinion. The new reconnaissance vehicles have a rather limited ability to defeat enemy reconnaissance vehicles, for example.

Costs

The budget and costs problem was not ranking highly during the development of that reform, that's for sure. The costs for sensors and digitization of communication and control was recognized, but the cost efficiency of assets such as army helicopters was badly neglected as a factor.

Air mechanization

The costs problem leads to the concept of air mechanization. The most ambitious part of this was a tactic to use combat and transport helicopters (the latter were meant to be mostly carrying a reconnaissance module, a SEAD module or troops) far ahead of own ground forces. They were meant to really operate over hostile or contested territory.

The high cost of the high-tech helicopters NH90TTH and UHU Tiger should have made obvious that this tactic was only feasible on a very small, and thereby not very influential scale. The tactic was even more risky in light of the need for these helicopters in more classic missions.

U.S. combat experiences over Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001-2003 clearly demonstrated their vulnerability to relatively crude air defences when flying over anything else but friendly terrain. Partially-armoured helicopters are simply not well-suited for that kind of mission in conventional warfare.

The aggressive facets of air mechanization were dropped by at the latest 2005, but we stuck to the expensive helicopter procurement. We are either wasting money on a too large helicopter force (the size is likely OK) or the procurement plans were completely inadequate for the 90's air mechanization ideas. The latter is quite obvious and also points out the utter lack of affordability of ambitious air mechanization concepts to date.

This doesn't mean that the concept is finished for good; air mechanization concepts have been popping up in the German army since the 60's and both the Russians and Americans showed have put much effort in the exploitation of the helicopter's theoretical mobility (which is almost regardless of terrain) on the battlefield (and behind).

Information for quicker ops

Willmann promoted the strange idea that better information would accelerate operations on the ground - especially their planning.
That's odd because it should have been anticipated that they weren't so much about to get better information as they were about to get more information. More information slows down staffs and decision-making.

This is one of several conflicts for which the reformers did not settle on a trade off (compromise) and preferred to strive for the best of all worlds at once instead.

Infantry?

The reform emphasized mobile warfare and mostly ignored the contribution of closed ('tank-unfriendly') terrain and infantry. It's as if the world had turned into prairie land, not much unlike the Lüneberger Heide training area.

Exploitation

There was extremely little attention paid to exploiting success. It sounded as if they assumed that an OPFOR division would disappear once beaten.

Sorry, but that's not how things usually look like. An OPFOR division may have lost only 40% of its combat power, maybe 20% of its troops at the moment of its defeat. That's a typical point at which it's likely to become disorderly and to attempt a retreat.

That in turn is the moment for exploitation; get rid of the remaining 2/3 at vastly improved combat value odds. How should this be done with few troops in a large area, with a dense road network, a reluctance to commit ground forces on deep offensive movements (pursuit) and with the expectation that your involved troops should be ready for the next action ASAP?

The operational art of "Freie Operationen" did not seem to give any answer to this question. It is/was about wearing down and defeating the enemy, not about finishing the job tactically.

Lack of economy of force units for low force density areas

That's probably my pet topic. Counter-reconnaissance, exploitation, low force density, economy of force; Freie Operationen simply did not cover it adequately. The focus was clearly on large formations (Brigades, Divisions), fires, sensors, command and a bit classic armoured recce.

- - - - -

The Willmann/'Freie Operationen' reform of the operational art of the Heer was a large and mostly necessary repair job which provided a useful screen to other revival and repair efforts. It fell short of really meeting the state of the art of military theory, though. Its own innovations were rather mixed, some (the most ambitious part of air mechanization) were preventable foolishness.

The Heer got busy since the mid 90's with ever more peacekeeping and nation-building missions, the adaption for these missions and the actual time spent on these missions have improved related small war and non-combat skills.

The need for improvements of conventional warfare skills on the operational and tactical levels of war is never-ending, though. The Willmann reform should be considered as a mere starting point for improvements. We're not in immediate danger of getting entangled in a major conventional war; a great situation for ambitious experiments to further advance the tactical and operational arts. Just stay clear of excessively expensive concepts such as air mechanisation.

S O

P.S.:
Feel free to add insights on the topic in the comments if you had an inside look at what was going on. I received hints that there was more going on than my research indicated. I did obviously neglect the practical and personal side of the topic.
To all others: This review is superficial, but at least it exists. I am not aware of any other published after-action review about this topic.
I didn't comment on the HVK/KRK issue because I think that one is a separate topic.
.

Blog statistic graph since January 2008 (page loads)

.

It's always nice to see that you have more readers with a blog than with a diary. ;-)

Even more pleasant are the exchanges with people who know the blog and finding references to this blog on other sites.

Sven

.

Planning vs. competence

.

There's a publication, "Alien: How operational art devoured strategy", which helped me to see some things more clear.

The German approach to warfare was therefore based on careful preparation of the individual with the understanding that, faced with situations of great novelty and fearsome prospect, only the man on the spot could hope to take actions that were actually appropriate. This is the origin of auftragstaktik [sic!], which the Anglophone world has taken up as “Mission Command” or “Directive Control” and which is aimed at creating sufficient scope for commanders at all levels to take actions based on their understanding of how their guiding purpose may be attained in the face of existing circumstances.

This helped me to understand my aversion against planning.

Some planning is fine, but planning should be a tool for periods of low stress. Planning on a battlefield for the next day seems ludicrous to me. The wartime experience against ponderous opposing forces such as the Iraqi ones has already proved that the planning circles of peacetime manoeuvres are way too long. In fact, there's a new situation every few hours - and planning as advocated by peacetime forces simply cannot catch up, much less justify its effort with performance.

I never got into the anglophone love for planning - planning on theatre level, on corps level, on division level, on brigade level, on battalion level - even on company level and platoon level. There are even people who call should-be-simple-checklist-in-memory tasks of squad leaders as "planning".

Certainly, the love for planning slows down most if not all Western formations and creates a misguided self-perception of excellence.

The ability to decide on the spot quickly and to give meaningful orders without some elaborate decision-making process, probably without a staff at all, is what counts very often. Even corps-level veterans of WW2 stressed the importance of quick reactions.

Anglophone military literature almost fell in love with the OODA loop, maybe exactly due to the fact that the planning has become too ponderous. The effect seems to be negligible. In fact, OODA still appears to be too negligent and optimistic; there's rarely time to observe the effect of one's decisions before the next decision. The "observe" thing is riddled by mistakes anyway and the expectation for a commander's "orientation" on the situation should be set rather low due to the fog of war in its widest sense.

Leaders need to be able to decide with poor and misleading observations, little orientation, very little time for decision-making and their actions should be quick, too (KISS orders).

Military theory should focus on adding to the tactical and operational repertoire and leave the commander alone with his then huge repertoire and his training, knowledge and experience. No step-by-step recipes and no complex schemes.

Old German military literature had always a "Kein Schema!" (no schematic!) on graphics in order to remind the reader that it's just one way, not the way how to do something. This intelligent custom was lost decades ago.

I work on an operational concept in the background, showing off only tiny bits on this blog (most is saved for a book that will hopefully materialize sometime in this decade). My approach includes very few "this is how to do it" recipes, but many additions to the repertoire, many conclusions how to prepare for the exploitation of these different tactics. It's mostly about additional tactics for the creation of unfair advantages before the major combat actions.

The actual formation-level tactics are secondary and left to commanders. Military history and military training provide a large enough repertoire for this. Even the small actions which shall create advantages need to be guarded against restrictive planning, though. An army could strangle itself with planning, deconfliction and the attempt to synchronize. An exaggerating idea of force protection may be part of the reason why this happens all too often.

One of my answers to the urge to plan for synchronization is horizontal cooperation; cooperation between equals, such as between two brigade commanders or two battalion commanders. There's no need to "synchronize" their attack at the same time. The situation might be fluid, with a moving target - pre-planning the time and location of attack is often impractical and irrelevant. Instead, they could simply be tasked to do something and then they stay in contact with each other until they are both able to do it - and then they do it without waiting for some specified moment.

A leadership culture of horizontal cooperation can also enrich the repertoire for resource utilization, as mentioned in a 2008 text on indirect fires of mine.

Planner thinking prevents such horizontal cooperation almost entirely, of course.

It's ironic that the arch-capitalistic anglophone countries could have armies which cherish most extreme versions of the military equivalent of the soviet planning economy.

I will likely never become a fan of planning much.

S O
.

Military innovation

.

... a fighter [...] must be free to propose improvements [in tactics] or he will get himself killed.

Commander Randy "Duke" Cunningham, USN

The omission? It was "fighter pilot" in the original quote.

I quoted this because I've heard all-too often a specific opinion, to paraphrase it: 'We'll do it as we always did, as is taught on the Führungsakademie (war college)'.

Excuses like "we did it always like this" are infamous obstacles to innovation. Innovation has several systemic disadvantages against whatever is already established.

The systemic disadvantages include

* the innovator is usually not at the top of the hierarchy and his success embarrasses superiors

* technological lock-in

* change has obvious risks, whereas conservativeness has hidden risks.

The latter fits to what happened in France during May 1940: The Germans had risked much and were lucky enough to have had a good enough operational innovation, they succeeded. The risks were immense and there was much opposition to Guderian and Manstein before the success. Blitzkrieg was not established doctrine before May 1940. It was a risky experiment. Its proponents were driven by the need to prove that they were right.

France on the other hand had been conservative, not risked much if anything - except its very existence, of course. The risk of keeping an old doctrine was gigantic, but it wasn't as obvious as were the risks of adopting an unproven doctrine.

Innovations can obviously fail as well. They actually did so quite often.

Both conservativeness and innovation have risks, but the risk of failing with an innovation is more obvious than the risk of becoming obsolete with already proven recipes.

My point is that it's important to be neutral and to not underestimate the risk of conservative behaviour. Attitudes like the paraphrased one are dangerous.

It is fashionable to criticize the Soviet armed forces for [~inability to innovate], and certainly there is ample tactical evidence to support this contention. But before considering whether the Western superiority implicit in the criticism is justified, one should remember this true scenario:

* A Russian four-star admiral disparaged the value of the aircraft carrier;
* within twelve months, a Russian two-star admiral publicly challenged his commander in chief;
* and the four-star retracted, while the two-star was promoted, as was another junior  two-star who equally publicly questioned the judgment of his newly promoted superior.

When did we last see a British or American four-star officer's military judgment being publicly questioned by his subordinates, let alone see these subordinates subsequently being promoted?

 Air Vice-Marshal R.A.Mason

It's acceptable to be against risky innovations if the present situation (imbalance of power) is favourable and no possible opponent is innovative.

It's not acceptable to dismiss innovation if the present situation is disadvantageous or a possible opponent is innovative.

Finally, it's a stupid choice to be conservative and dismiss innovation if alternatively the innovation would affect a non-critical part of your overall (alliance's) power. Such a situation is lucky enough for effectively neutralizing most of the risk of innovation, at least on an experimental level. 
NATO, for example, could easily have one corps' strength of experimental forces and have the best of both worlds; innovation and no real risk.

Sven Ortmann

P.S.: I mean military innovation, not the attachment of ever more electronic gadgets to troops and vehicles.

.

Public / private economy

.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/28/privatized-prisons-i.html

Land of the free (corporations).

One more trap to avoid in favour of preserving freedom.

This is tangent to the question:
What shall a state do and what not?

The answer to this question is in my opinion surprisingly simple - surprising because there happen to be serious, agitated discussions about this in some countries.

The "small state" vs. "big state" discussion is rather rare in Germany and as far as I can tell in Europe in general, but appears to be central in the U.S..

OK, what should be the division line between state and economy?

This takes a small excursion.

Our wealth and technological advance was only possible because of specialization. We would probably not have reached semiconductor technology in a million years all our families were farmer families who supply themselves (farming, fishing, hunting, gathering). It took agricultural surpluses to enable the specialized work of craftsmen and traders - trades who do not depend on their own farm for survival.

The step towards civilization is usually defined as the rise of towns, but it's also characterized by the rise of specialized trades which were not able to offer easily sell-able services or goods. A judge for example should better not work on the basis of fees, for this degenerates quickly into corruption.

There were interim solutions such as in Rome where many public offices had no salary and were thus honorary work for those who had inherited wealth. Other specializations were treated as hobbies, or to generate reputation for other trades (such as philosophers earning the reputation for a good job as teacher).

In the end, it became obvious that a central collection of money (taxes) in order to pay salaries to certain service-providers was a systematically superior solution. This approach enabled the growth to modern states.

So what should a state do and what should it not do? It should provide those cost-efficient services which do not allow an economic (service for payment) mode of self-sustainment without too much disadvantage (such as corruption).

This leads to an anecdote which made many people shake their heads in disgust a few weeks a go; a fire-fighter department which operated on a subscription base refused to fight a fire in a house of a non-subscriber:

Was that OK? Certainly not, it was a failure to render assistance that earned them very much a substantial social and political harassment.

The proper way would probably be to combine a subscription service with an emergency fee. We Germans handle this issue differently, though; fire-fighting is largely a volunteer hobby in Germany, the state employs very few professional fire-fighters and pays almost only for hardware.

- - - - -

Now let's apply this to mercenaries in order to excuse this text in light of the blog theme: Mercenaries proved that they can substitute for state-paid standing troops, but both kinds are still paid with tax money. The question about use of mercenaries or not is not so much a state or not state question as it is a question about standing army only or not. And most importantly, it's a question about how tight the state's control of troops should be. A mercenary outfit led by regular officers and under military jurisdiction (such as the Légion étrangère) is a very, very different thing than the out-of-control PMC outfits who bullied civilians and at times even shot at friendly regular troops.

S O

.

Self organization; online gamer clans and Germanic warbands

.

Again and again I've read in history books that the ancient Germans had no clear hierarchy as known from the medieval age, but very often rather informal warbands.

The story goes usually like this; a famed warrior gains followers and they march to raid something.

There's usually if not always the assertion that it was the leader's skill as an individual warrior (perhaps aided by superior equipment) that destined him to become a leader. Well, that or simply inherited reputation.

My observation of modern-time self organization raised some doubt about this.

The closest equivalent to ancient warbands are today gangs and gamer clans. The latter - online multiplayer gaming clans - are more easily accessible for observation. There are likely ten thousands of multiplayer gaming clans in the world, I've probably seen hundreds of them (at least superficially).

Not one of them was built on a "a great individual player becomes warband leader because of his greatness" model.

Instead, the typical creation of such a clan looks like this:

One to four guys decide they want to found a clan instead of being in another one. They provide essential services such as voice communication server (such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo), a forum (for communication and creating cohesion), a website (mostly for representation and recruiting), they decide on a clan name and clan tag, probably invent some clan rules and a clan motto and finally they launch the recruiting. The decisive characteristic in this first phase was to be ready to organize a clan out of thin air, not individual skill or success in the game itself.

Players join and the second phase begins; now it's sometimes necessary to improve on the services in order to keep members satisfied, but most importantly the founder team has now to prove leadership and management capabilities. Founders are almost never removed from leadership positions against their will. We live in democratic societies, but this doesn't seem to affect clan management much. Instead, members vote with their feet. They simply leave the clan and join another one if they're not satisfied. The voting is on clans (warbands), not on the leader(s).

The decisive characteristic in this second phase was to be able and willing (time!!!) to lead satisfactorily.

First logistics, then leadership. These two factors are typically (actually without an exception to my knowledge) decisive for (amateur) gamer clans - not the leader's skill as an individual gamer.

There are very few clans for ~top5% players only which have top players as leaders, but they work along the same lines as far as I know.

These leadership dynamics are today so dominant over possible alternatives (100% dominance afaik) that they appear to be strongly rooted in human (young male human?) psychology.

The model with the best individual warrior being the leader is furthermore inherently inferior to a model which requires the leader to be a good leader. It's reasonable to assume that some evolutionary selection mechanism is at work in the realm of raiding warbands. This raises additional doubts about the standard description of ancient Germanic warbands.

Maybe the thing about Germanic warbands should be re-thought.

Modern-time warbands don't seem to be built by the best marksmen or fittest warriors either. Instead, they seem to be generated by those with experiences, radios, the ability to sustain the warband and probably some charisma.

S O

Disclosure: I do almost never play shooter games and didn't spend a significant amount of time in MMORPGs for years. My experiences are thus mostly a bit dated.

.

World War hate propaganda

.

A German high speed train was towed through the English Channel tunnel for certification purposes - and certain people write about Huns in response. There was also some writing about Huns in the context of Merkel's recent speech about Turks in Germany.

This doesn't make sense? That's exactly my opinion.

"Hun" was a derogatory word for Germans introduced in the Great War (now known as First World War) in order to add irrational hatred against Germans to the British and later U.S. American population's motivation to keep up the effort for that completely idiotic war.

Meanwhile Germans used the harmless "Tommies" for British soldiers in both world wars as far as I know.

92 years after the end of World War One, 65 years after the end of World War Two, after 55 years of formal alliance between Germany and the United Kingdom and after 37 years of close cooperation in the European Community/European Union there are still some idiots around who use this old hate-mongering "Hun" for "Germans".

It was quite embarrassing to fall for such primitive propaganda a century ago,  what does it take to still cling to it!?

Just in case one of those who are still confused about "Huns" might see this:

(I have a higher opinion of almost all of my readers)

This is a Hun:

S O

.

Find, Fix, Strike

.

"Find, Fix Strike" is a set of "core functions" of army forces, originating apparently in the UK. I've been ill for many days, but nevertheless I'll finally do what I had intended for months; have a closer look at these three Fs. Is "Find, Fix, Strike" a "useful shorthand or high-level guide"?

I'll use the description from Jim Storr's "The Human Face of War":

The enemy will conceal himself, to resist the effects of our weapons and conceal his plans, so he must be found. He will resist destruction, and attempt to damage or defeat us, so must be fixed. Finally he must be struck to inflict damage that both reduces his ability to damage us, and grants us freedom to achieve our aims.

First of all, what should be called "core functions"? It must be something really, really important by the sound of it and by the fact that it's limited to only three. The expectations wouldn't be high if it was a list of fifty things, but you better hit the nail perfectly if you assert only three "core functions"!

I feel it's fair to expose these three so-called "core functions" to a critical analysis. The "pro" faction is obviously represented by those who use these "core functions" in writing, so I think it's fine if I limit this to the "contra" element.

My first doubts are about the "Find" part:

You do not "Find" an enemy when you're attempting to ambush him. He finds you. This should obviously be included.

"Find" may also be misleading in another regard; finding the enemy isn't all that difficult, nor is it sufficient. Identification friend/foe/neutral and even battle damage assessment are extremely important as well.

Then again, Storr separates "core functions" from "functions in combat", the core functions are apparently meant to be applied at the operational level only. Maybe they should be called "operational core functions", for I've seen them applied to tactical problems.

The previous criticism was on the tactical level. Is anything wrong with "Find" on the operational level? Well, not much, except that it's probably too self-evident to be helpful. We could as well call "breathe" a core function. By Storr's description of it, "Find" is probably more a "overcome the enemy's countermeasures" anyway.

My less superficial doubts are about the "Fix" part:

Fixing the enemy has at least two components, psychological and physical. The physical seems simple: if an enemy is under fire he will have difficulty in moving, as he would if he has to cross a river with no bridges. Fixing by firepower or terrain is fairly obvious and mechanical. Being fixed psychologically is less easy to describe. It can be seen as inducing the enemy to persist with something he is predisposed to do.

"Fix" is curiously almost absent in air and naval warfare theory, save for blockading the enemy in its bases. Deployed forces usually don't get "fixed" in air or naval warfare. This is no good omen because  there are most often parallels between the art of war on land, on/in the sea and in the air.

Both the psychological and the physical element look like "nice to have" to me. Neither is really necessary for defeating the enemy, but rather highly desirable because it reduces the costs of defeating the enemy. Should a "nice to have" feature be called "core function"?

Sometimes it's even advantageous to allow the enemy a fast movement, or movement at all (see the Allied rush into Northern Belgium in May 1940). Should a "not always desirable" feature be called a "core function"?

The psychological side of "Fix" is apparently not only "less easy to describe", but also poorly described. I understand it as exerting an influence on him which makes his actions more predictable and more advantageous to us (or leads to inaction on his part).

I touched on something similar in my text Musings about a military theory framework - I called it a reduction of active repertoire and it was actually central to that angle of view on warfare.

I do strongly doubt that the psychological aspect should be subsumed under "Fix". "To fix" is something physical - it's very difficult to imagine a psychological aspect. 

Finally there's the "Strike" part:

Finally he must be struck to inflict damage that both reduces his ability to damage us, and grants us freedom to achieve our aims.

OK, there's nothing wrong with this except that it's again extremely obvious, probably too obvious to teach anything to anyone (or remind someone of something). Even if I would like this level of obviousness, I would probably rephrase the second part simply into "and to discourage him". Maybe that's a bit too Clausewitzian, though?

S O

.

Digging the grave II

.

It's been more than three years since I wrote Digging the grave, about my concerns that the efforts to control foreign populations in small wars could prepare our Western states for the control of their domestic citizens.

Many techniques, laws and tools of the so-called "Global war on terror" could be mis-used for the suppression of domestic opposition. There are even first signs that this is happening.

* remote-controlled public cameras including face-recognition software which -once mature- allows a government to run such surveillance with very few loyal personnel

* databases on behaviour of citizens

* terror suspect databases full of innocents, yet incapable of stopping terrorists from boarding aircraft

* surveillance of anti-war groups as if they were potential terrorists

* empowerment of the police to stop and search people (and thus harass them)

* counter-insurgency tactics

* domestic espionage

* laws which permit the long arrest of suspects without proper procedure

* treatment of air passengers like criminals with scanners, cameras and even fingerprint sensors

* attempts of politicians (like Schäuble) to empower the military domestically

* establishment of a fourth category of people in addition to not guilty, guilty and suspect; "Gefährder" ('dangerous people'). This serves the purpose of disenfranchising them and to make their harassment more acceptable to the public.

On this background I found several users in the Small Wars Council forum (mother lode of COIN thought) who saw no problem at all in considering domestic policy as COIN.

They stepped over the Rubicon, imported COIN -a technique for suppressing violent popular resistance to a government- from small wars into domestic policy thinking in the West.

I am 100% opposed to this because the thought alone is more dangerous to us than all terrorists of the world combined. It's the crossing of the Rubicon, the import of military might application against popular resistance from a distant war into our homeland. The mere thought is a greater offence against our freedom, liberty and democracy than all those idiots with bombs could ever be.

Our state, our politicians, our population must not think of policy as the suppression or even only prevention of violent resistance. That's a by-product of good policy. Policy, the state are meant to serve the citizens and to protect them. The state itself has no interests - the people have. The state does not deserve to be protected against violent uprisings - the state must only protect freedom, liberty and democracy for the advantage of the society as a whole.

Thinking of a state which controls its citizens, which suppresses their resistance is thinking about authoritarianism. It's thinking about an end to our democracy.

We need to absorb and repeal the stupid domestic "anti-terror" legislation some time, and we need to guard against an import of COIN thought into our homeland.

Our state must not keep the citizens in check - it must serve them.

Every attempt to import COIN thinking into the domestic arena needs to face resolute and overwhelming opposition in order to keep it far, far away from what's deemed acceptable behaviour.

Sven Ortmann
.

The brain-melting effect of rotation schedules for small wars

.

The recent small wars turned out to last long, very long. Just like several Balkan peacekeeping missions. These wars are no great wars, no wars which justify to send troops into theatre till accomplished their mission (for real). Instead, troops are rotated in, rotated out, formations rebuilt & retrained and rotated in again. Rotations are a proved countermeasure against burning out troops real fast. World War Two included frequent removal of troops from the front-line for vacation and service as trainers, for example. The ratio of front duty to garrison duty seems to be reversed in the more recent cases. The wisdom of short vs. long tours shall still not be the topic here, but the effect on thinking about brigades in general:

The rotation schedules have a certain in theatre period- out of theatre period ratio, 1:4 is apparently typical. The apparent problem is that this rotation mode seems to have influenced the whole thinking about brigades in general.

Brigades used to be handy combat formations, now they're apparently the administrative unit for deployment. The rumours about the development of the new German army structure included the idea of about half a dozen mixed brigades - not any specialized formations like mountain, armor, mechanized and airborne any more.

The thought process wasn't about maximizing army strength with a given budget, but about the creation of exchangeable, rotatable units for deployment.

Well, the British are a few months ahead of us:

2.A.6 In the land environment, Future Force 2020 will be able to provide: light, specialist forces for short-duration interventions; sufficient multi-role forces to provide flexibility for larger or more complex intervention operations or to undertake enduring stabilisation operations;  [..]

2.A.7 Capabilities will include:

• five multi-role brigades [...] each comprising reconnaissance forces, tanks, and armoured, mechanised and light infantry, plus supporting units, keeping one brigade at high readiness available for an intervention operation, and four in support to ensure the ability to sustain an enduring stabilisation operation; [...]

Brigade design according to rotation schedules. 1:4. Hundreds of dead generals and field marshals of fame roll over in their graves.

Don't get me wrong; multi-role brigades can make sense as an alternative to more specialized brigades if you have the specialized components ready for attachment in order to make them suitable for different missions and environments. It just freaks me out that brigades could be believed to be rotation assets. This is not about baseball or tennis.

What would it take to bring back brains and make decision-makers think of brigades as manoeuvre units in a corps context, almost all of them to be used at once in a war of necessity?

Are Western military forces reduced to the toys of politicians or is there still some seriousness about actual defence?

S O

.