Recent statements of Gen Bipin Rawat, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, YSM, SM, VSM, ADC Chief of Defence Staff to have IBG to defend "Chicken Neck' has raised an issue in the Indian Defence circles think
There are adequate sources on the general theoretical background on the theory of mobile and mechanised warfare. The most important of them are the works dealing with the philosophy behind the concept of mobility, and the studies and books describing the ideas of the theoreticians of mechanised warfare as well as the thinking of those military leaders who have applied these concepts. Several translated versions of Sun Tzu's Art of War (1963, 1987, 1993) provide sufficient proof of the longterm tendency of armies towards mobility. In the 20thcentury, thoughts of combining mobility with the military technology of mechanised armies arose. The concepts of the early phases of mechanised warfare in the 1920s and 1930s can be seen in the contemporaneous works of the British military analyst Major General John Fredrick Charles Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War (1926) and Armored Warfare: An Annotated Edition of Lectures on F. S. R. 111 (1943), and in the works of Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, with the most significant of them being Strategy (1954, 1967, 1991) and Memoirs (1965). On a limited scale, the writings of the Soviet theoreticians Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky and Vladimir Kiriakoviz Triandafillov can also be included. In addition, information on the evolution of mechanised warfare can be found in the memoirs of several WW II commanders, the most important of them being German General Heinz Guderian's Panzer Leader (1952) and Erinnerungen Eines Soldaten (1956), and in the biography of British FieldMarshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Monty (1981), written by Nigel Hamilton.
Although the theory of manoeuvre warfare is an invention of the 1970s, philosophically it can be seen as a combination of the concepts of "indirect approach" and "deep battle". William S. Lind, an American military analyst, presents the birth of manoeuvre warfare theory in his book Maneuver Warfare Handbook (1985). This work, furnished with endnotes, gives a short overview of the history of warfare and of the problems of mobility, but mainly concentrates on the problems of mobility in the Unites States Armed Forces. Christopher Bellamy's The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice (1990) and Richard Simpkin's Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare (1985) can be included in this category. These works represent the views of European officers on the concept of manoeuvre warfare and are mostly along the lines of the Americans. Clayton R. Newell's The Framework of Operational Warfare (1991) illustrates the theoretical background of manoeuvre warfare. Newell also tries to explain a method of researching operational art. This part of the book remains opaque because it is difficult to read but it provides, however, some ideas on perceiving the complexity of operational art. Finally, Robert Leonhard's book The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLandBattle (1991) combines studies of manoeuvre warfare theory.
According to Professor Yoav Gelber, the art of war is not an art but the ability to organise, prepare and wage war. Generals Shomron and Adan support this view. In Israel, military art has been less about theory and more about the means to organise forces prior to battle, and their use in battle. However, it is important to note that until quite recently, India's war policy - or strategy in today's terms — has been quite restricted. The emphasis has merely been on military aspects, i.e., on the operational level of warfare which might be a derivative of the dominance of the practical aspect in Indian military thinking. Within this framework, the Indian;s have greatly invested in winning battles.
The most quoted and traditional definition of the art of war is the one presented by Clausewitz. Simplifying, Clausewitz described the art of war with the term "the conduct of war", which consists of the planning and conduct of fighting. According to him, the art of war is "the art of using given means in combat". In a wider sense the art of war also includes the creation of fighting forces: their raising, armament, equipment and training. In order to separate planning and fighting, Clausewitz divided the art of war into two levels: tactics and strategy. Tactics in his concept consists of "the use of armed forces in an engagement", which can be defined as a greater or lesser number of individual fighting acts. Strategy in Clausewitz's vocabulary means "the use of engagements for the object of the war" [Howard, Michael & Paret, Peter: Carl von Clausewitz. On War, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1984, pp. 127 — 128]
For centuries this dichotomy was regarded as satisfactory. Wars consisted of tactical battles and strategic manoeuvres aimed at seeking the most favourable circumstances for an engagement. Christopher Bellamy gives an illuminating view of the development of these definitions in the military art in his book The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice. After the adoption of national conscription in Napoleon's Army, the mere growth of armed forces inflated individual battles to series of battles; i.e., to operations. This lead to a recognition of grand tactics, originally Jomini's definition. In this analogy, grand tactics, the third level of the art of war between strategy and tactics, was, according to Bellamy, "the art of posting troops upon the battlefield according to the accidents of the ground, of bringing them into action, and the art of fighting upon a map." Grand tactics decide the manner of execution and the employment of troops. Strategy was "the art of making war upon the map and comprehending the whole theatre of operations." It decided where to act, but grand tactics lead to the destruction of the enemy. Today grand tactics are commonly called the operational level of war or the operational art.
In the latter half of the 19thcentury, Helmut von Moltke the Elder, a Prussian and German Field-Marshal, began to use the term operations to describe activities between tactics and strategy. However, it was only after WW I that the concept of the operational level was adopted in the German military art: as was also the case in the Soviet Union.
The term doctrine describes how an army fights. India's doctrine can be divided into two levels. into two levels: a national-strategic level and an operationalmilitary level. The former can be interpreted as the grand strategic level and the latter as the operational level. According to Gissin, the national-strategic level of doctrine incorporates the military means and constraints used to formulate and prescribe the likely courses of action open to a nation in pursuit of its policy."
As late as after WW II, the British divided the military art, according to British General Peter Young, a former deputy commander of the Arab Legion of Jordan and instructor at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst, into four levels: grand strategy, strategy at lower level, grand tactics and tactics. In this construct, grand strategy covered war policy, strategy at lower level or campaign level was the battle between two military plans, and grand tactics consisted of the broad movements of formations - divisions and brigades — upon the battlefield. Indian Army continued to follow British Constructs.
Doctrine
The term doctrine describes how an army fights. According to Gissin, the national-strategic level of doctrine incorporates the military means and constraints used to formulate and prescribe the likely courses of action open to a nation in pursuit of its policy." At this level, doctrine encompasses the whole spectrum of the threat or actual use of force, including the use or the threat of nuclear weapons for the purpose of deterrence as the ultimate guarantee. At the operationalmilitary level, "doctrine provides the basic principles that govern the employment of combat forces of a given military organisation." At this level, doctrine includes components of force structure, tactics and certain rules of engagement. [Gissin, Raanan: Command, Control, and Communications Technology: Changing patterns of Leadership in Combat Organizations, Ph.D dissertation, Graduate School of Syracuse University, U.M.I., Dissertation Information Service, Michigan 1988, p. 4 and Handel, p. 553.]
Tactics
Generally speaking, the term tactics is understood in the same way both in the Western countries and in the former Soviet Union and Russia. Tactics is "the art and science of employing available means — especially mental, environmental and battle-technical ones — to win battles and engagements." At the tactical level of war, battles and engagements are planned and executed to accomplish military objectives assigned to tactical units or task forces. These victories, put together, achieve operational results. Engagements are "small conflicts or skirmishes, usually between opposing forces, and they are normally short in duration." A battle consists of "a series of related engagements; it lasts longer than an engagement, involves larger forces, and can affect the course of the campaign." A campaign is "a connected series of military operations that form a distinct phase of war. It is waged to accomplish a long-range major strategic objective." According to this view, battles can also be controlled at the operational level, as the Indian's have done in Kargil.
Usually tactics have also been related to the size of forces; an engagement is fought at division level or lower. These engagements may or may not develop into a battle. Battles occur when a division, corps, or an army fights for significant objectives. They may be short and fought in relatively small areas or they last several weeks and cover large areas. In small armies, like in the Older Forum, this interpretation has been proportioned to the size of the forces, i.e., even brigades can be operational, if their objectives are at that level.
Clayton R. Newell provides the simplest definition of operational art. It is the variety of measures how military commanders conducting war from the operational perspective balance the ends, ways, and means of war."[Newell, Clayton R: The Framework of Operational Warfare, Routledge, London 1991, p. 38 and 79]
Mobility
The term mobility is linked to operational art because it is seen as the essence of conducting war from the operational perspective. Mobility can be defined as "a quality or capability of military forces which permits them to move from place to place while retaining the ability to fulfil their primary mission." By extension mobile warfare, also known as warfare of movement, occurs when "opposing sides seek to seize and hold the initiative by the use of manoeuvre, organisation of fire and use of terrain." These definitions coincide with the terms manoeuvre and manoeuvre warfare, which are the current terms for mobile warfare. Today, attrition or attrition warfare is generally seen as the opposite of manoeuvre. Attrition can be defined as the reduction of the effectiveness of a force caused by the loss of personnel or equipment to enemy fire."
The word manoeuvre according to Fuller, a "grand tactician does not think of physical destruction but of mental destruction of the enemy. Instead, when the mind of the enemy's command can be attacked only through the bodies of his men, it is a question of minor tactics, which though related, is a different expression of force." In this concept, manoeuvre means the battle between two plans energised by two wills, and not so much the struggle between two or more military forces. The operational commander designs a campaign to attain the grand strategic goals, so that when the tactical forces fight their battles, they will concentrate against their opponent's weaknesses rather than pitting strength against strength.
There are still two principles that are central to the concept of mobility. They are force dichotomy; i.e., the division of forces, and the command and control system. Liddell Hart recognised that it might be necessary for an attacking unit to also directly engage a defender's forces to effect a breakthrough. To explain this idea, he offered a concept called the "Man-in-the-Dark Theory'. In his example, two unarmed men are fighting in the dark. In its basic form, this means that each man tries to locate his opponent with one arm outstretched, but each also tries to cover himself. Once a man touches his enemy, he tries to keep his opponent stationary with his outstretched hand while delivering the main blow with the other hand. In this example, Liddell Hart claimed that modern armies used the same pattern on the battlefield.
Center of Gravity
Finally, the concept of the centre of gravity (COG) is key to all operational design. It derives from the fact that an armed combatant is a complex organism whose effective operation depends on the performance of each of its component parts and on the smoothness with which they implement the will of the commander. In India the revealing of the enemy's COG has been central at all levels of warfare. In addition, this way of thinking is central in manoeuvre warfare. As with any complex organism, some components are more vital than others to the smooth and reliable operation of the whole. If these are damaged or destroyed, their loss unbalances the entire structure, producing a cascading deterioration of cohesion and effectiveness, which may result in complete failure and will invariably leave the force vulnerable to further damage. The COG of an armed force refers to the sources of strength or balance. It is that characteristic, capability, or locality from which the force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. Clausewitz defined it as the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends." Its attack is — or should be — the focus of all operations.
IBG
The definitions of combined arms and of joint (activities) are also linked to the operational level of warfare. The generalisations below are made on the basis of the American definitions. They are also useful in the Indian context. Universally, integrated battle groups refers to the "synchronised use of two or more separate units of different type of weapons systems. Thus, the aim of integrted battle group tactics is to create a multiplier effect where the capacity of the integrated arms team is greater than the sum of the units operating independently." The term joint (activities) is an extension of the previous term. Joint (activities) means "activities, operations, organisations, etc., in which elements of more than one service of the same nation participate." In many cases, combined arms and joint (activities) can be defined in a similar manner. The difference between combined arms actions and joint (activities) is that combined arms actions can only consist of elements of one service. Sometimes the level at which decisions are made has also been decisive in the definitions
Before the 1950s this undefined operational entity can be seen in the Indian manner of defining tasks for their combat formations. In India the different levels of warfare have not only been measured by the scale of the forces involved but, exactly as von Moltke had said, in terms of aims. This is apparent in the overall tasks assigned to Indian brigades/ divisions. In general, a brigade was seen as a tactical echelon engaged mainly in one task at a time. This means that it had the capability of carrying out the majority of tasks on the battlefield independently and for a defined period of time, usually a few days. By doing so, the Indian's measured — in a matter of fact way — operative goals in terms of their tactical formations. Apparently the lack of the term operational modified the practice. Although a brigade was defined as a tactical formation, the definition primary force gave it grand tactical goals, only an exact term for this didn't exist. Therefore, the overall task of a brigade was not defined rather freely, but mentally the definition of the primary force can be linked to the operational level of warfare. In addition, before the introduction of a divisional echelon of command the brigades were the only formations to implement operational tasks.
To sum up the IBG the central principle
The first is pre-emption, which means offensive action to neutralise or destroy the enemy before the fighting has really begun.
The second is positional or functional dislocation. This means rendering the enemy's strength irrelevant. A typical dislocation-type action is deception aimed at covering one's own centre of gravity by dispersion and concentration of forces, like Epaminondas at the battle of Leuctra.
The third is disruption. This is a concrete strike against the enemy centre of gravity, which in this context means his "Achilles' heel"; for example, a lack of depth in the defence, not the strong points of his forces. The action is indirect. The aim of disruption is to avoid having to physically destroy the entire physical structure of the enemy force with a direct strike, and instead to attack his vulnerable, but essential objectives to paralyse him at a small cost.
Finally, there are psychological means. Their purpose is to influence the enemy's mind and his will to fight. These means can be mental, but they also can be quite concrete like taking advantage of enemy fears like fear of encirclement or fear of the dark.
Why IBG then?
Objectives are generally defined in terms of terrain. Set piece frontal attacks are the norm and both sides usually suffer high casualties.https://www.strategicfront.org/forums/#_edn1 The side with the most resources has the best chance to win. Since more is better, this form of operations usually requires mass armies which Peoples Republic of China possess. Maneuver is used to position firepower so it can better inflict casualties. The defeat mechanism of this form is simply erosion of the enemy's combat power.[ii] The bottom line, as military theorist Richard Simpkin states, is that "attrition theory... is about fighting and primarily about casualties."
A classic example of firepower-attrition at the operational level is the German campaign at Verdun in 1916. German Field Marshal Erich von Falkenhayn's stated purpose was "to bleed France white." He used the terrain objective of Verdun to attract French reserves and attempted to destroy them with superior firepower. He ultimately failed to beat the French because the Germans did not have sufficiently superior resources and they suffered almost as many casualties as the French.[iii]
In contrast to this approach, manoeuvre warfare seeks to defeat the enemy by destroying his moral cohesion not his physical assets. The focus is at the operational level since individual tactical battles have no meaning except in the context of the operation. Deployments tend to be in depth and forces are concentrated against enemy weaknesses. Objectives are almost always force oriented. Battles are fluid and the side that successfully employs manoeuvre generally suffers substantially fewer casualties than the enemy. Since manoeuvre warfare is more difficult to execute, the best manoeuvre armies tend to be smaller and more professional. Firepower is used to create openings and provide more opportunities for manoeuvre. While bypassed enemy forces are sometimes annihilated with fires, the key defeat mechanism is the collapse of the enemy's cohesion by moving and acting more rapidly than he can react.[iv]
A classic example of manoeuvre warfare is the German invasion of France in 1940. The Germans concentrated their small, elite panzer troops at a weak point in the French defence. They almost immediately began operating inside the enemy's decision cycle and destroyed the cohesion of the French defenders. The operational objective of the campaign was clearly force oriented and they achieved their purpose by annihilating the Allied armies through encirclement.
Peter Cary, in “The fight to change how America fights," U.S. News & World Report, 6 May 1991, p. 31. This article attributes the development of manoeuvre theory in the U.S. to the need to defeat the numerically superior Soviet threat. "Commanders were seeking ways to counter the larger Warsaw Pact conventional forces in Europe." Theorist Richard Simpkin explained this phenomenon with the analogy of "leverage." The striking value of the smaller force can be increased if it is swung at the end of a lever arm against the enemy's flank or rear.[v] This admittedly simplistic model neatly summarizes the effect manoeuvre can have. Theory leads us to expect forces facing enemies with equal or superior resources to adopt manoeuvre warfare techniques.
If we keep the limits of theory in mind, it can help us understand complex problems. Neither firepower-attrition nor manoeuvre-" exist In pure form. Lieutenant Colonel Huba Was de Czege chastised those who do not recognize this when he wrote: "The critics have created two uniformly unreal, but academically convenient, polar cases. The real world lies between."[vi] While theory has its limitations, it gives us a logical structure for analysing.
This is what must have made Gen Rawat to speak of integrated Battle Group to be employed in mountains where a force with larger resources must be contested. The war thus fought will be combination of attrition on adversary at the watershed or boundaries and the integrated battle groups with mobility to destroy the adversary if it penetrates the defences.
https://www.strategicfront.org/forums/#_ednref1 . William S. Lind, (1984) The Case for Maneuver Doctrine," The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis. Ed. Asa A. Clark IV, et al. (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 89
[ii] Richard E. Simpkin, (1985) Race to the Swift: Thoughts on TwentyFirst Century Warfare Vol. 1 of Future Warfare Series, 3 vols. (London: Brassey's Defence Publishers), p. 20
[iii] James L Stokesbury, (1981) A Short History of World War I (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc,), pp. 142, 145, 147-48.
[iv] William S. Lind, (1984) The Case for Maneuver Doctrine," The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis. Ed. Asa A. Clark IV, et al. (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 89-90.
[v] Richard E. Simpkin, (1985) Race to the Swift: Thoughts on TwentyFirst Century Warfare Vol. 1 of Future Warfare Series, 3 vols. (London: Brassey's Defence Publishers), pp. 95-96, 114-15.
[vi] 1 Huba Wass de Czege, "Army Doctrinal Reform." The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis. Ed. Asa A. Clark IV, et al. (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 103.
There are adequate sources on the general theoretical background on the theory of mobile and mechanised warfare. The most important of them are the works dealing with the philosophy behind the concept of mobility, and the studies and books describing the ideas of the theoreticians of mechanised warfare as well as the thinking of those military leaders who have applied these concepts. Several translated versions of Sun Tzu's Art of War (1963, 1987, 1993) provide sufficient proof of the longterm tendency of armies towards mobility. In the 20thcentury, thoughts of combining mobility with the military technology of mechanised armies arose. The concepts of the early phases of mechanised warfare in the 1920s and 1930s can be seen in the contemporaneous works of the British military analyst Major General John Fredrick Charles Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War (1926) and Armored Warfare: An Annotated Edition of Lectures on F. S. R. 111 (1943), and in the works of Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, with the most significant of them being Strategy (1954, 1967, 1991) and Memoirs (1965). On a limited scale, the writings of the Soviet theoreticians Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky and Vladimir Kiriakoviz Triandafillov can also be included. In addition, information on the evolution of mechanised warfare can be found in the memoirs of several WW II commanders, the most important of them being German General Heinz Guderian's Panzer Leader (1952) and Erinnerungen Eines Soldaten (1956), and in the biography of British FieldMarshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Monty (1981), written by Nigel Hamilton.
Although the theory of manoeuvre warfare is an invention of the 1970s, philosophically it can be seen as a combination of the concepts of "indirect approach" and "deep battle". William S. Lind, an American military analyst, presents the birth of manoeuvre warfare theory in his book Maneuver Warfare Handbook (1985). This work, furnished with endnotes, gives a short overview of the history of warfare and of the problems of mobility, but mainly concentrates on the problems of mobility in the Unites States Armed Forces. Christopher Bellamy's The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice (1990) and Richard Simpkin's Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare (1985) can be included in this category. These works represent the views of European officers on the concept of manoeuvre warfare and are mostly along the lines of the Americans. Clayton R. Newell's The Framework of Operational Warfare (1991) illustrates the theoretical background of manoeuvre warfare. Newell also tries to explain a method of researching operational art. This part of the book remains opaque because it is difficult to read but it provides, however, some ideas on perceiving the complexity of operational art. Finally, Robert Leonhard's book The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLandBattle (1991) combines studies of manoeuvre warfare theory.
According to Professor Yoav Gelber, the art of war is not an art but the ability to organise, prepare and wage war. Generals Shomron and Adan support this view. In Israel, military art has been less about theory and more about the means to organise forces prior to battle, and their use in battle. However, it is important to note that until quite recently, India's war policy - or strategy in today's terms — has been quite restricted. The emphasis has merely been on military aspects, i.e., on the operational level of warfare which might be a derivative of the dominance of the practical aspect in Indian military thinking. Within this framework, the Indian;s have greatly invested in winning battles.
The most quoted and traditional definition of the art of war is the one presented by Clausewitz. Simplifying, Clausewitz described the art of war with the term "the conduct of war", which consists of the planning and conduct of fighting. According to him, the art of war is "the art of using given means in combat". In a wider sense the art of war also includes the creation of fighting forces: their raising, armament, equipment and training. In order to separate planning and fighting, Clausewitz divided the art of war into two levels: tactics and strategy. Tactics in his concept consists of "the use of armed forces in an engagement", which can be defined as a greater or lesser number of individual fighting acts. Strategy in Clausewitz's vocabulary means "the use of engagements for the object of the war" [Howard, Michael & Paret, Peter: Carl von Clausewitz. On War, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1984, pp. 127 — 128]
For centuries this dichotomy was regarded as satisfactory. Wars consisted of tactical battles and strategic manoeuvres aimed at seeking the most favourable circumstances for an engagement. Christopher Bellamy gives an illuminating view of the development of these definitions in the military art in his book The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice. After the adoption of national conscription in Napoleon's Army, the mere growth of armed forces inflated individual battles to series of battles; i.e., to operations. This lead to a recognition of grand tactics, originally Jomini's definition. In this analogy, grand tactics, the third level of the art of war between strategy and tactics, was, according to Bellamy, "the art of posting troops upon the battlefield according to the accidents of the ground, of bringing them into action, and the art of fighting upon a map." Grand tactics decide the manner of execution and the employment of troops. Strategy was "the art of making war upon the map and comprehending the whole theatre of operations." It decided where to act, but grand tactics lead to the destruction of the enemy. Today grand tactics are commonly called the operational level of war or the operational art.
In the latter half of the 19thcentury, Helmut von Moltke the Elder, a Prussian and German Field-Marshal, began to use the term operations to describe activities between tactics and strategy. However, it was only after WW I that the concept of the operational level was adopted in the German military art: as was also the case in the Soviet Union.
The term doctrine describes how an army fights. India's doctrine can be divided into two levels. into two levels: a national-strategic level and an operationalmilitary level. The former can be interpreted as the grand strategic level and the latter as the operational level. According to Gissin, the national-strategic level of doctrine incorporates the military means and constraints used to formulate and prescribe the likely courses of action open to a nation in pursuit of its policy."
As late as after WW II, the British divided the military art, according to British General Peter Young, a former deputy commander of the Arab Legion of Jordan and instructor at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst, into four levels: grand strategy, strategy at lower level, grand tactics and tactics. In this construct, grand strategy covered war policy, strategy at lower level or campaign level was the battle between two military plans, and grand tactics consisted of the broad movements of formations - divisions and brigades — upon the battlefield. Indian Army continued to follow British Constructs.
Doctrine
The term doctrine describes how an army fights. According to Gissin, the national-strategic level of doctrine incorporates the military means and constraints used to formulate and prescribe the likely courses of action open to a nation in pursuit of its policy." At this level, doctrine encompasses the whole spectrum of the threat or actual use of force, including the use or the threat of nuclear weapons for the purpose of deterrence as the ultimate guarantee. At the operationalmilitary level, "doctrine provides the basic principles that govern the employment of combat forces of a given military organisation." At this level, doctrine includes components of force structure, tactics and certain rules of engagement. [Gissin, Raanan: Command, Control, and Communications Technology: Changing patterns of Leadership in Combat Organizations, Ph.D dissertation, Graduate School of Syracuse University, U.M.I., Dissertation Information Service, Michigan 1988, p. 4 and Handel, p. 553.]
Tactics
Generally speaking, the term tactics is understood in the same way both in the Western countries and in the former Soviet Union and Russia. Tactics is "the art and science of employing available means — especially mental, environmental and battle-technical ones — to win battles and engagements." At the tactical level of war, battles and engagements are planned and executed to accomplish military objectives assigned to tactical units or task forces. These victories, put together, achieve operational results. Engagements are "small conflicts or skirmishes, usually between opposing forces, and they are normally short in duration." A battle consists of "a series of related engagements; it lasts longer than an engagement, involves larger forces, and can affect the course of the campaign." A campaign is "a connected series of military operations that form a distinct phase of war. It is waged to accomplish a long-range major strategic objective." According to this view, battles can also be controlled at the operational level, as the Indian's have done in Kargil.
Usually tactics have also been related to the size of forces; an engagement is fought at division level or lower. These engagements may or may not develop into a battle. Battles occur when a division, corps, or an army fights for significant objectives. They may be short and fought in relatively small areas or they last several weeks and cover large areas. In small armies, like in the Older Forum, this interpretation has been proportioned to the size of the forces, i.e., even brigades can be operational, if their objectives are at that level.
Clayton R. Newell provides the simplest definition of operational art. It is the variety of measures how military commanders conducting war from the operational perspective balance the ends, ways, and means of war."[Newell, Clayton R: The Framework of Operational Warfare, Routledge, London 1991, p. 38 and 79]
Mobility
The term mobility is linked to operational art because it is seen as the essence of conducting war from the operational perspective. Mobility can be defined as "a quality or capability of military forces which permits them to move from place to place while retaining the ability to fulfil their primary mission." By extension mobile warfare, also known as warfare of movement, occurs when "opposing sides seek to seize and hold the initiative by the use of manoeuvre, organisation of fire and use of terrain." These definitions coincide with the terms manoeuvre and manoeuvre warfare, which are the current terms for mobile warfare. Today, attrition or attrition warfare is generally seen as the opposite of manoeuvre. Attrition can be defined as the reduction of the effectiveness of a force caused by the loss of personnel or equipment to enemy fire."
The word manoeuvre according to Fuller, a "grand tactician does not think of physical destruction but of mental destruction of the enemy. Instead, when the mind of the enemy's command can be attacked only through the bodies of his men, it is a question of minor tactics, which though related, is a different expression of force." In this concept, manoeuvre means the battle between two plans energised by two wills, and not so much the struggle between two or more military forces. The operational commander designs a campaign to attain the grand strategic goals, so that when the tactical forces fight their battles, they will concentrate against their opponent's weaknesses rather than pitting strength against strength.
There are still two principles that are central to the concept of mobility. They are force dichotomy; i.e., the division of forces, and the command and control system. Liddell Hart recognised that it might be necessary for an attacking unit to also directly engage a defender's forces to effect a breakthrough. To explain this idea, he offered a concept called the "Man-in-the-Dark Theory'. In his example, two unarmed men are fighting in the dark. In its basic form, this means that each man tries to locate his opponent with one arm outstretched, but each also tries to cover himself. Once a man touches his enemy, he tries to keep his opponent stationary with his outstretched hand while delivering the main blow with the other hand. In this example, Liddell Hart claimed that modern armies used the same pattern on the battlefield.
Center of Gravity
Finally, the concept of the centre of gravity (COG) is key to all operational design. It derives from the fact that an armed combatant is a complex organism whose effective operation depends on the performance of each of its component parts and on the smoothness with which they implement the will of the commander. In India the revealing of the enemy's COG has been central at all levels of warfare. In addition, this way of thinking is central in manoeuvre warfare. As with any complex organism, some components are more vital than others to the smooth and reliable operation of the whole. If these are damaged or destroyed, their loss unbalances the entire structure, producing a cascading deterioration of cohesion and effectiveness, which may result in complete failure and will invariably leave the force vulnerable to further damage. The COG of an armed force refers to the sources of strength or balance. It is that characteristic, capability, or locality from which the force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. Clausewitz defined it as the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends." Its attack is — or should be — the focus of all operations.
IBG
The definitions of combined arms and of joint (activities) are also linked to the operational level of warfare. The generalisations below are made on the basis of the American definitions. They are also useful in the Indian context. Universally, integrated battle groups refers to the "synchronised use of two or more separate units of different type of weapons systems. Thus, the aim of integrted battle group tactics is to create a multiplier effect where the capacity of the integrated arms team is greater than the sum of the units operating independently." The term joint (activities) is an extension of the previous term. Joint (activities) means "activities, operations, organisations, etc., in which elements of more than one service of the same nation participate." In many cases, combined arms and joint (activities) can be defined in a similar manner. The difference between combined arms actions and joint (activities) is that combined arms actions can only consist of elements of one service. Sometimes the level at which decisions are made has also been decisive in the definitions
Before the 1950s this undefined operational entity can be seen in the Indian manner of defining tasks for their combat formations. In India the different levels of warfare have not only been measured by the scale of the forces involved but, exactly as von Moltke had said, in terms of aims. This is apparent in the overall tasks assigned to Indian brigades/ divisions. In general, a brigade was seen as a tactical echelon engaged mainly in one task at a time. This means that it had the capability of carrying out the majority of tasks on the battlefield independently and for a defined period of time, usually a few days. By doing so, the Indian's measured — in a matter of fact way — operative goals in terms of their tactical formations. Apparently the lack of the term operational modified the practice. Although a brigade was defined as a tactical formation, the definition primary force gave it grand tactical goals, only an exact term for this didn't exist. Therefore, the overall task of a brigade was not defined rather freely, but mentally the definition of the primary force can be linked to the operational level of warfare. In addition, before the introduction of a divisional echelon of command the brigades were the only formations to implement operational tasks.
To sum up the IBG the central principle
The first is pre-emption, which means offensive action to neutralise or destroy the enemy before the fighting has really begun.
The second is positional or functional dislocation. This means rendering the enemy's strength irrelevant. A typical dislocation-type action is deception aimed at covering one's own centre of gravity by dispersion and concentration of forces, like Epaminondas at the battle of Leuctra.
The third is disruption. This is a concrete strike against the enemy centre of gravity, which in this context means his "Achilles' heel"; for example, a lack of depth in the defence, not the strong points of his forces. The action is indirect. The aim of disruption is to avoid having to physically destroy the entire physical structure of the enemy force with a direct strike, and instead to attack his vulnerable, but essential objectives to paralyse him at a small cost.
Finally, there are psychological means. Their purpose is to influence the enemy's mind and his will to fight. These means can be mental, but they also can be quite concrete like taking advantage of enemy fears like fear of encirclement or fear of the dark.
Why IBG then?
Objectives are generally defined in terms of terrain. Set piece frontal attacks are the norm and both sides usually suffer high casualties.https://www.strategicfront.org/forums/#_edn1 The side with the most resources has the best chance to win. Since more is better, this form of operations usually requires mass armies which Peoples Republic of China possess. Maneuver is used to position firepower so it can better inflict casualties. The defeat mechanism of this form is simply erosion of the enemy's combat power.[ii] The bottom line, as military theorist Richard Simpkin states, is that "attrition theory... is about fighting and primarily about casualties."
A classic example of firepower-attrition at the operational level is the German campaign at Verdun in 1916. German Field Marshal Erich von Falkenhayn's stated purpose was "to bleed France white." He used the terrain objective of Verdun to attract French reserves and attempted to destroy them with superior firepower. He ultimately failed to beat the French because the Germans did not have sufficiently superior resources and they suffered almost as many casualties as the French.[iii]
In contrast to this approach, manoeuvre warfare seeks to defeat the enemy by destroying his moral cohesion not his physical assets. The focus is at the operational level since individual tactical battles have no meaning except in the context of the operation. Deployments tend to be in depth and forces are concentrated against enemy weaknesses. Objectives are almost always force oriented. Battles are fluid and the side that successfully employs manoeuvre generally suffers substantially fewer casualties than the enemy. Since manoeuvre warfare is more difficult to execute, the best manoeuvre armies tend to be smaller and more professional. Firepower is used to create openings and provide more opportunities for manoeuvre. While bypassed enemy forces are sometimes annihilated with fires, the key defeat mechanism is the collapse of the enemy's cohesion by moving and acting more rapidly than he can react.[iv]
A classic example of manoeuvre warfare is the German invasion of France in 1940. The Germans concentrated their small, elite panzer troops at a weak point in the French defence. They almost immediately began operating inside the enemy's decision cycle and destroyed the cohesion of the French defenders. The operational objective of the campaign was clearly force oriented and they achieved their purpose by annihilating the Allied armies through encirclement.
Peter Cary, in “The fight to change how America fights," U.S. News & World Report, 6 May 1991, p. 31. This article attributes the development of manoeuvre theory in the U.S. to the need to defeat the numerically superior Soviet threat. "Commanders were seeking ways to counter the larger Warsaw Pact conventional forces in Europe." Theorist Richard Simpkin explained this phenomenon with the analogy of "leverage." The striking value of the smaller force can be increased if it is swung at the end of a lever arm against the enemy's flank or rear.[v] This admittedly simplistic model neatly summarizes the effect manoeuvre can have. Theory leads us to expect forces facing enemies with equal or superior resources to adopt manoeuvre warfare techniques.
If we keep the limits of theory in mind, it can help us understand complex problems. Neither firepower-attrition nor manoeuvre-" exist In pure form. Lieutenant Colonel Huba Was de Czege chastised those who do not recognize this when he wrote: "The critics have created two uniformly unreal, but academically convenient, polar cases. The real world lies between."[vi] While theory has its limitations, it gives us a logical structure for analysing.
This is what must have made Gen Rawat to speak of integrated Battle Group to be employed in mountains where a force with larger resources must be contested. The war thus fought will be combination of attrition on adversary at the watershed or boundaries and the integrated battle groups with mobility to destroy the adversary if it penetrates the defences.
https://www.strategicfront.org/forums/#_ednref1 . William S. Lind, (1984) The Case for Maneuver Doctrine," The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis. Ed. Asa A. Clark IV, et al. (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 89
[ii] Richard E. Simpkin, (1985) Race to the Swift: Thoughts on TwentyFirst Century Warfare Vol. 1 of Future Warfare Series, 3 vols. (London: Brassey's Defence Publishers), p. 20
[iii] James L Stokesbury, (1981) A Short History of World War I (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc,), pp. 142, 145, 147-48.
[iv] William S. Lind, (1984) The Case for Maneuver Doctrine," The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis. Ed. Asa A. Clark IV, et al. (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 89-90.
[v] Richard E. Simpkin, (1985) Race to the Swift: Thoughts on TwentyFirst Century Warfare Vol. 1 of Future Warfare Series, 3 vols. (London: Brassey's Defence Publishers), pp. 95-96, 114-15.
[vi] 1 Huba Wass de Czege, "Army Doctrinal Reform." The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis. Ed. Asa A. Clark IV, et al. (Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 103.
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