Transcription
[Music] This brief is an introduction to a broad concept: the idea of maneuver. Maneuver is central to everything the military does. It should shape our plans, the way we are organized, the way we communicate, and especially the way we educate ourselves.
The purpose of this brief is to provide you with a different way of thinking. It is not my intention to show you how to do anything. Others can and will attempt to teach you how to do things; this is all well and good in certain circumstances. Being a better thinker, though, will make you a much more valuable asset to your respective organization.
As you view this, it is important to always keep in mind the underlying concepts I present. I illustrate points using examples, both historical and fictional. These are not prescriptive, however; there are always many different courses of action available to an innovative commander. The examples are used only to reinforce the concepts they represent.
Let's start with a little game. What shape do you see? A square? A triangle? A square with two intersecting lines? If you said any of these, you are wrong. I was showing you a pyramid. This was the way John Boyd would begin his presentations. He used this as an illustration of perspectives and symmetry. He read and studied widely over the course of his life; he examined everything he studied from many angles. He was trying to find the points which remain the same throughout, no matter the angle. These “goddamn gems,” as he called them, are the pearls of knowledge and wisdom we all strive to learn in our lives. The gems he discovered were compiled into several briefs he created; the most famous was called *Patterns of Conflict*.
I am not a Boyd or maneuver expert. In fact, much like him, I refuse to consider myself an expert on anything, because if you consider yourself an expert, you believe you already know everything and cannot learn anything new. That being said, I’ve studied maneuver quite extensively over the past several years. This class is intended to organize the basics of what I’ve learned up to this point and explain maneuver in a more comprehensive manner.
These are the main references I’ve used while preparing this class. Many of them already are included in the professional reading program; the rest should be included in your individual course of study as you continue your own professional development. As you delve into this subject in greater depth, you will see these concepts emerge with more clarity. This is the most important book of all for a military professional. Sun Tzu had a greater understanding of human conflict than just about any other philosopher in history. I know many of you have already read this; after sitting through this class, I challenge you to go back and read it again, if for no other reason than to check my work.
This brief is not intended to make anyone a maneuver warfare expert. My goal is to explain the concept in a more comprehensive manner by presenting it in a different way than most of you have probably seen before. I only hope to spark a renewed interest in the concept and inspire you to learn more on your own. Ultimately, with better understanding, you will be able to apply this concept in practical situations.
I created this presentation because I believe we have lost our way with regards to maneuver. Why is that? Well, the answer is quite simple. I’m not going to be able to teach you everything you need to know about maneuver here today. It is not something which fits neatly on a handout, clearly on a single PowerPoint slide, or succinctly explained in a single sentence dictionary entry.
I emerged from the basic school with the same understanding of maneuver everyone else did. I could tell you the four elements of the Boyd cycle and say it is important to get inside the other guy’s loop. Like my classmates, I sat through the classes with the goal of passing the next written exam. So when I learned the OODA loop, I paid as much attention as I did machine gun employment and then moved on to the next thing. I had no idea at the time that OODA was the most important thing taught at TBS, but as I now know, TBS did not either. Once I graduated, I largely put it out of my mind. As a tank officer, I focused on fire commands, tank platoon formations, and how to operate in Iraq.
So what is maneuver? In short, it is a mindset. Grant Hammond described maneuver warfare theory as a way of thinking about how to contend with an adversary. I’ve developed my own definition: at its most basic form, maneuver warfare is seeking the enemy’s moral and mental collapse through the most efficient means possible.
The theory of maneuver is the basis of our doctrine, but unless everyone thoroughly understands it, it does not work. Unlike an attrition-based doctrine, maneuver requires intelligent and educated leaders at all levels for successful implementation; or, as Mr. Hammond explains, “a maneuver-oriented military places a strong emphasis on the quality, trust, and independence of thought and action within its officer corps.” Our senior leaders must trust us to understand what they are trying to accomplish; if they cannot do that, they have no choice but to fall back on the formulated plans which are, by their very nature, attrition. So we must make sure we all start with the same mindset.
I like this quote a great deal: “Time spent studying theory may seem like a waste of time to some.” Many people focus nearly all their time and effort training for very specific situations. A thorough grounding in theory empowers individuals and units how to think and develop their own ways to solve problems which are much less predictable for the enemy, thus increasing his confusion. In other words, it is the essence of getting inside his OODA loop.
We’ll begin by framing the issue properly. A quick comparison between the two styles of warfare is a good place to start. Attrition warfare occurs when one belligerent attempts to wear down the other by the application of relentless and steady brute force until he is physically unable to continue the fight. A boxing metaphor works well for illustration: imagine two boxers standing in the ring, trading punches until one of them falls over, physically exhausted and unable to continue the match. The two combatants meet on generally equal terms; both approach the fight with similar concepts of how events will unfold. This is attrition. Anyone who watched the movie *Troy* saw an excellent example of maneuver. In this early scene, Boagrius, the great Thessalonian warrior, believed he was going to clash swords with an opponent of the same mindset. Boagrius expected his opponent to fight in the accepted manner, but Achilles had another plan. He recognized the size and strength mismatch and decided the best way to win was to negate Boagrius’ advantages through speed. This is known as functional dislocation, an idea I will discuss in greater detail shortly, but in overall terms, this is an example of maneuver.
Another way to understand the difference between the two is to consider the way in which you quantify success in each. By this, I mean physically counting something on the battlefield following the fight. In attrition warfare, success is quantified with a body count or enemy KIAs. It is simply crushing the enemy through brute strength and mass. The goal is to try to cause more physical damage to the enemy than he does to you. When one side absorbs more casualties and destruction than it can take, the battle is over.
Since the object in maneuver is not the outright physical destruction of the enemy, what could you count to quantify your success in maneuver warfare? I believe a good method is to count the number of enemy PSIs. I will explain this in more detail later, but quite simply, the maneuver seeks to cause so much confusion within the enemy ranks that the commander can no longer maintain the cohesion of his forces. When individual soldiers are no longer being effectively commanded and don’t know what to do, most will simply give up in confusion.
The central difference between attrition and maneuver is the relevant tactical task involved. Simply put, the tactical task for attrition is *destroy*, and the tactical task for maneuver is *defeat*. Obviously, this is a generalization, but at the core of the matter, this is absolutely true. These two terms are often used interchangeably, but in reality, they are very different. Understanding that difference is central to a real understanding of maneuver. Destruction exists in the physical realm: to destroy an enemy unit, you must kill his people and break his equipment. In the US military, we consider an enemy unit destroyed when it has lost 30% of its combat strength. Once that milestone is reached, the unit is believed to be no longer combat effective.
Defeat, on the other hand, belongs to the psychological realm. The official definition is a tactical task to either disrupt or nullify the enemy force commander’s plan and subdue his will to fight, so that he is unwilling or unable to further pursue his adopted course of action and yields to the will of his opponent. You will note this definition refers to plans and will—all matters of the mind. It says nothing about physical loss. Attrition is all about destruction, while maneuver is about defeat.
If you pay careful attention, you will notice that nearly all of our planning and training is focused on the destruction of the enemy’s main force in a climactic battle. The majority of effort is directed at the decisive point. The decisive point concept is extremely important, being the point when reached when the enemy is no longer able to resist our will. This is currently manifested in our plans and training by how we destroy the enemy on the designated objective in the offense or within the engagement area in the defense. More often than not in training, once this occurs, INDEX is called and the after-action reviews are conducted. This is done very much in the manner of a nutritionist, but for the maneuver, the decisive point is where the real fight begins. The goal is to arrive at the decisive point largely through means other than direct combat against the enemy’s main force. Set another way, you should reach this point through maneuver. The idea is to set conditions to induce the enemy to break and run, and then attack him while he flees. So we must seek ways to defeat the enemy without directly fighting his main body and cause him to flee. History proves the majority of battlefield casualties occur during an unorganized retreat in training. Rather than calling INDEX once the decisive point is achieved, the exercise should continue and move forward to achieve a final decision.
This graphic represents a simplified version of the typical operational framework in the offense. The commander starts by conducting shaping operations. Shaping operations involve any activity designed to set conditions for the success of the decisive operation. These can include deep fires, deception, economy of force, as well as a number of other actions. This is typically followed by the main effort attack. In training, this usually takes the form of a combined arms attack on the enemy’s main force on a fixed objective. Once the enemy is destroyed on the objective, the survivors withdraw and friendly forces pursue to destroy them now in the enemy’s rear area. It is possible to exploit the success and make permanent the gains already achieved. This sequence of events is the typical attrition model, but the maneuver will seek a different way.
Within the framework of maneuver, the climactic decisive battle is to be avoided. Therefore, the commander seeks a way to shape the battlefield and the enemy in such a way as to induce him to break and run without a decisive battle. By such means, the attack is avoided, and friendly forces move directly to the pursuit and exploitation phases. This maintains economy of force and maximizes the destruction of the enemy. It is important to remember that destruction of the enemy is not the primary goal, but the destruction inflicted will generate an enormous amount of confusion and hasten his defeat, which is the primary goal.
This brings us to the first misconception of maneuver. You will often hear people refer to anyone speaking of crushing the enemy and killing vast numbers of soldiers as an attritionist. This stems from the belief that maneuver is somehow a less bloody form of warfare. The mistake is understandable in that the object is not to grind the enemy into submission as part of a Maoist numbers game. Warfare is inherently bloody, rife with death and destruction in any form. In this regard, maneuver is no different than attrition. What is different is the way to go about inflicting those casualties. Rather than meeting the enemy on equal terms and fighting the battle in a more or less straightforward manner—say, facing one another across an open field, reminiscent of the early Civil War battles—the maneuver will bypass the initial clash and proceed straight to the route. In such a manner, the maneuver will be able to inflict enormous casualties upon the enemy without first suffering massive casualties of his own during the decisive phase.
To better illustrate the point, let’s compare and contrast two examples from military history. History conveniently provides us with an example of attrition and maneuver fought with the same end-state in mind across the same ground, but with dramatically different results. We’ll start with the Western Front in World War I. This is a perfect example of the horrors of attrition; it is an example of armies attempting to overwhelm each other with mass. No one on either side of the conflict wanted to fight the way they did. Generals in those days knew about maneuvering to an advantageous position from which to destroy an enemy army. Generals on both sides attempted to outrace one another to conduct an attack on the flanks. This was a symptom of their belief in the decisive battle, but the technology of the day made it impossible for them to outflank the other. Both sides raced to do so, but in short order, the lines extended from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier. The frontal assaults to break through the other side’s lines were intended to be penetrations, just on a larger scale. Industrial Age technology had progressed far enough to produce the mass casualties of the war, but not far enough for either side to break through and crush the enemy. In the end, the attrition war which was fought was inevitable for the time. By November 1918, everyone was simply exhausted and wanted nothing more than for the fighting to stop. The armistice which did end the war was not really a victory, and no true resolution was affected. In the end, more than 13.5 million casualties were incurred on both sides of the trench lines, with no real decision reached.
Now we will skip ahead a few decades to the beginning of World War II. The Battle of France in 1940 is often cited for the German use of modern weaponry and tactics. The Allied defeat is generally attributed to its failure to anticipate Blitzkrieg. While this is true, not many people consider why Blitzkrieg was so effective. This battle is widely recognized as one of the best examples of maneuver warfare; it was often cited by John Boyd, Bill Lind, and the other developers of our doctrine. Let’s set the stage properly. Officially, according to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was defeated in World War I, but the French knew otherwise. French leaders knew they would have to fight Germany again. In the manner of most military planners, the French operated under the assumption the next war would be fought just like the last one. Senior French commanders learned the wrong lessons from their Great War experiences; they firmly believed in the supremacy of the defense. They thought if they built a strong enough defensive line, they would be able to delay a German advance and cut off and destroy any breach with their reserves. Their failure was in their lack of appreciation for the value of the tank and the ways it would change combat forever. France’s solution to deal with the Germans was to build a heavy line of fortifications along the frontier, essentially creating a more permanent version of the World War I trenches. The Maginot Line was created for many reasons besides that, including mobilization schedules and the proximity of French industrial centers to the German border, but doctrine and culture were the biggest reasons the fortifications were built. Over the span of 9 years, beginning in 1930 and costing roughly 3 billion francs, when war came, the German general staff failed to oblige the French by rejecting their premise. German military thinkers developed the concept of maneuver during World War I. By the end of that war, German storm troop infiltration tactics were the norm, but the Germans were unable to fully realize the concept on a large enough scale because technology did not develop as quickly as doctrine. This problem was rectified during the interwar period.
The German Wehrmacht invaded France through the Low Countries, beginning on the 10th of May 1940, completely bypassing the Maginot Line. On the operational level, they followed the rule that when you encounter an obstacle, you first seek a bypass. Utilizing Blitzkrieg, the German army overwhelmed the combined armies, including French, British, Dutch, Canadian, Polish, Czechoslovakian, and Luxembourg forces. The Allies were caught unaware and never had an opportunity to catch up with a constantly deteriorating situation. Within 6 weeks, the entire Allied military system collapsed. The Allies were simply unable to deal with the multiple thrusts and speed of the German advance. The Allied forces suffered 2.3 million casualties during those 6 weeks. That certainly sounds like a lot, but the raw numbers only tell part of the story. Out of that vast number, 2 million were captured as prisoners. And why is that? Well, the maneuver seeks to collapse the enemy’s military system. The idea is to render him ineffective as a cohesive force, thus incapable of resisting your will. This is a more artful way of war. It requires a firm understanding of the situation, flexibility to exploit fleeting opportunities, and the ability to outthink the enemy. The attrition simply wants to grind the enemy into submission. There is generally nothing artful about this method; it relies solely on strength, numbers, and weapons. It is usually very linear, destroying each enemy position in sequence until he is physically unable to continue the battle. The maneuver will often bypass whole formations to go straight for the most vulnerable point. This will throw the enemy into confusion, rendering him mentally and morally unable to continue. At its highest form, a maneuver will be able to defeat the enemy without even firing a shot.
You have already heard me use the word “system” several times, so more detail is in order. General Systems Theory is a complicated and wide-ranging subject; most of it is beyond the scope of this discussion, so I will only focus on the basics. At its core, Systems Theory is the study of wholeness. Nearly everyone has heard the expression “miss the forest for the trees.” Whoever coined that phrase was speaking of Systems Theory, probably without realizing it. Systems Theory is the consideration of the forest rather than just the individual trees. Everything can be viewed in terms of systems, from the very big, like our solar system, to the very small, like a water molecule. Systems all share three basic characteristics: structure, behavior, and interconnectivity. If you disrupt any characteristic of the system, it becomes degraded and will no longer function properly. Degrade the system enough, and it will cease to function at all and collapse.
Consider an individual soldier: the human being and his rifle combined to create a combat system. It has structure, behavior, and interconnectivity. He and his rifle are connected at his shoulder, his left hand, and his right trigger finger. Now let’s say you shoot him. Obviously, if you put a round into his forehead and kill him, the system comes to a very quick end. But let’s say you shoot off his trigger finger. That disruption would degrade the system, would it not? What about shooting off his right arm? This would degrade the system even further, and so on. Now let’s consider a tank platoon. How might we go about disrupting a tank platoon as a system? Shooting the tracks off of one of the tanks, spiking a gun, or killing the platoon commander; any one of these actions would degrade the unit as a system. But how might we disrupt the system without even coming into contact with the tanks? What is not pictured here is the logistics element supporting the platoon. If you were to prevent the platoon from refueling or rearming, that would severely disrupt the system’s functionality. That form of interconnectivity, not physical in nature, should never be forgotten.
To really break this idea down, consider this: anyone who has played Angry Birds already understands the concept of systems without even realizing it. The object of the game is to kill the pigs. The blocks and planks comprise a defensive system protecting the pigs. You kill the pigs by collapsing the structure around them. The better player you are, the fewer Angry Birds it takes to collapse the system. The best players can collapse the system with one Angry Bird focused at the one critical point—the center of gravity, perhaps. While this seems childish, it serves as an excellent example of the main point.
The logical question after all this is: how do we go about collapsing systems? As I’ve said before, maneuver is a difficult concept to explain; it certainly does not lend itself to being boiled down to an execution checklist or a list of principles. That being said, though, there are three general approaches which can help solidify the concept and orient leaders in their thinking. Much of the credit for this part of maneuver warfare theory goes to Robert Leonard, author of *The Art of Maneuver*.
The first concept to consider is preemption. This word can be confusing, as it conjures images of a sudden, unjustified attack. Many people will think of the 2003 Iraq invasion. For the purposes of this discussion, we are dealing with something slightly different. For simplicity’s sake, I will confine this explanation to the tactical level of warfare, but the concept can be extrapolated out to the higher levels. Another difficulty to face, especially to an American audience, is how distasteful this is culturally. We are an inherently fair-minded people; we like rules and a fair fight. If you doubt me, how mad would you be if you were watching a boxing match and the boxer who just knocked down his opponent refused to return to a neutral corner and instead continued throwing punches to the boxer on the mat? To fully appreciate this concept, it is important to remember that the only fair fight is the one you lose. At the tactical level of warfare, a preemptive attack emphasizes speed rather than caution. It also requires the commander to reject convention, much as Achilles did against Boagrius in the example cited earlier. You are attempting to snatch a victory unfairly before the battle has been properly started. To better illustrate the point and to take advantage of our love of charts and graphs, we’ll consider the life of a tank battalion. This is a gross generalization of how time is spent within a tank battalion, but please bear with me. Even under the best circumstances, a battalion is fully prepared to fight approximately 10% of the time; the rest of the time it is conducting any number of activities, from conducting maintenance to issuing orders. Have you ever noticed how our training scenarios always involve us attacking the enemy at the 10% ready position? That is attrition. Our focus should be somewhere else—in the other 90% of the life cycle. This is where we stand the best chance of collapsing the enemy system most economically. To strike somewhere in this portion of the life cycle is to preempt the enemy.
Disruption is the practice of defeating the enemy by striking directly at his center of gravity. The aim of disruption is to avoid physically destroying the enemy incrementally by direct attack. This form of maneuver takes advantage of war’s intangibles: psychology, morale, surprise, and fear. Always remember, war is a human endeavor. A good example of this can be found in the Bible, in the story of David and Goliath. According to 1 Samuel, David at first wore his father’s armor and sword. When he realized it was too heavy for him, he took it off and chose five smooth stones from a nearby brook. At the beginning of the fight, David went after the giant psychologically by calmly telling Goliath that he would strike him down and cut off his head. When Goliath drew near, David, the boy, ran quickly towards Goliath and slung a stone which sunk deep into his forehead. Goliath fell face first to the ground without ever swinging his sword. When the other Philistines saw what had happened, they quickly turned and fled. The Israelites then set upon them, killing many.
Now is the proper time to introduce the King and Queen theories of warfare. Chess is often used as a metaphor in the military, but this one is central to understanding maneuver. Many less experienced players will work very hard to protect their Queen piece because it is the most powerful piece on the board. They instinctively place the most value upon it; they will use her to strike at the other player’s pieces to clear the board before cornering the king. They lose sight of the fact that the king is the center of gravity; the king is the only path to victory. So Queen Theory represents attrition. Let’s extrapolate that kind of thinking out to an army. The enemy tank division would be the Queen piece; it would top the list of an attack guidance matrix, be EFST number one, and would likely be the primary objective for the ground scheme of maneuver. This is basic Queen Theory thinking, also known as attrition. Expert chess players reject such thinking; they focus solely on the enemy’s King. They will happily sacrifice their own Queen piece on the first move if they could use a pawn to checkmate their opponent on the second. To return to the previous example, the tank division would still be the most powerful force on the battlefield, but to a believer in King Theory, the physical destruction of the tank division would not be a primary objective. He would find a way to defeat the total force without fighting the tanks; he would find a way to destroy the command element or attack the logistics element, therefore neutralizing the threat from the actual tanks. Ultimately, he will act independently of the enemy’s Queen piece whenever possible to go straight for the King. King Theory, therefore, represents maneuver.
The final concept is that of dislocation. With dislocation, we are essentially refusing to accept the enemy’s premise of the battle. Under such a construct, you are seeking to deny the enemy his ability to bring his strength to bear. This concept is further broken down into two methods. The first is positional dislocation. I’ll frame this discussion in terms of an enemy in a prepared defensive position. For argument’s sake, if the enemy has prepared a battle position he wants to fight there, he has had time to survey and prepare the ground; he has likely rehearsed battle drills in his positions and staged supplies to facilitate rapid sustainment. So why give him the satisfaction of playing into his plans? Executing an action to positionally dislocate the enemy requires cunning and deception. It could be accomplished with a feint to draw away his reserves; it could also be affected with a demonstration to hold him in his battle position while the main effort bypasses and falls upon the enemy’s rear area. Such a turning movement would cause the main enemy force to leave his prepared positions and fight in a direction for which he is not prepared. At its core, the object is to physically remove the enemy from a position which favors him and fight in one that favors us, and done in such a way largely without having to destroy him in place first. This can be referred to as the Alaeus principle. According to Greek mythology, Alaeus was a giant; he was born wearing full armor and carrying a spear. He was also immortal so long as he remained in his homeland. In battle, Heracles felled him with an arrow, but Alaeus rose again with fresh vigor as soon as he touched the ground of his birthplace. Heracles did finally kill him, but only after he knocked him down again and dragged him by his hair to a different country. It was only then Alaeus died. I realize this is a rather obscure example, but it is a useful memory tool: do not try to fight the giant on his own turf. To do so is to accept battle on the enemy’s terms. Seek a way to pull him away from where he wants to fight; find a way to force him to accept battle on your terms.
The second type of dislocation is functional dislocation. This is a little more difficult to explain, but the idea behind it remains the same: rendering an enemy strength irrelevant. Rather than attempting to lure the enemy force from a position which favors him to one which favors us, we use tactics or technology to make the enemy strength irrelevant. An example would be to attack enemy tanks with a close infantry attack. A tank is primarily designed to destroy other tanks at a distance; at close range, a tank’s effectiveness is limited; hence the need for close infantry support. Think back to the ambush scene at the end of *Saving Private Ryan*. This is a demonstration of both aspects of dislocation. The Americans positionally dislocate the enemy tanks by luring them down the street; they then functionally dislocate the panzers by running right up to them and placing the sticky bombs. The German tanks do not have the ability to see the approaching infantrymen or the…
Ability to depress their guns low enough to fire upon them in such a manner the explosives are placed and the tanks have their tracks destroyed, rendering the tanks largely useless. Another example would be to close the distance with an enemy force should they begin firing artillery upon you; doing so would cause the enemy to cease direct fires or risk killing their own frontline troops. This brings us to the next historical example: Desert Storm. The air campaign destroyed the air defense assets first and then targeted command and control facilities; the idea being to limit the Iraqi high-command's ability to effectively resist the coming invasion. After the air campaign had generated the proper effects, the land battle began. A demonstration force crossed the border into Kuwait just as the Iraqis expected. What they didn't expect was the giant left hook which trapped them. This unexpected maneuver caught an already degraded enemy by surprise and left him incapable of effectively dealing with it.
The masses of surrendering troops did not drop their weapons simply because they were starving or as a result of an information operations campaign, as was widely reported at the time. The real reason for the mass surrenders was because the soldiers did not know what to do anymore. The Iraqi military system had collapsed under the unexpected onslaught from multiple directions. The individual soldier was told the enemy would come from one direction; he fought when that happened, but when the enemy attacked from an unexpected direction and no one could tell him what to do, he surrendered. General Charles Krulac explained it best when he wrote, "Budgeoned from the air nearly around the clock for 6 weeks. Paralyzed by the speed and ferocity of the attack, the Iraqi Army collapsed morally and intellectually under the onslaught of American and Coalition forces."
To really understand maneuver warfare, it is necessary to know about the work of a few key individuals. I could teach entire classes on the work of many individuals who have contributed to maneuver warfare theory, but I will limit myself to brief introductions for the moment. John Boyd, the best fighter pilot this country has ever produced, is also one of the most important military theorists of all time. His contributions cannot be overstated. His major contribution to maneuver is the scientific background as to why it works. He delved deeply into this area and used history to back up his theories. He is, of course, best remembered today for the OODA loop, or Boyd cycle. It is essentially the decision-making process all laid out in an orderly pattern. Many people believe OODA loops only exist in one man's head; I know that is what I was taught as a young lieutenant at the basic school. While this process does occur in individuals, the concept is in fact much broader. The truth is this diagram hardly represents the full measure of John Boyd's vision of the OODA loop. This is closer. This is a diagram put together by Chad Richards, one of John Boyd's acolytes or associates, whose professional life was shaped by his relationship with Colonel Boyd. It shows, in very generic terms, the different elements believed were involved in the process. Each step feeds into the others and loops back onto itself. It is a chaotic process which is constantly changing. Colonel Boyd believed orientation was the most important step in this process. It is also the step which you can best condition in yourself right now. The previous experience aspect includes not merely practical experience but also your education; learning as much as you can about military history, your enemy, the current political situation, etc. In short, learning everything you can will provide you with a better orientation at the decisive moment. When we talk about getting inside his loop, this is what we are talking about: having the ability to go through this process faster than the enemy. Boyd attempted to explain the complex in a simple way. This is actually the true mark of a genius. Any smart person can take and understand something complicated, but it takes a genius to take something complicated and have the ability to explain it and make it understandable to all. That is what he did with the OODA loop. He set out to understand thinking, and he was eventually able to take something of vast complexity and break it down to a simple formula. Getting beyond the misconception of the Boyd cycle as a process only in the mind of a single man is a challenge. The truth is the Boyd cycle is a process which occurs within any military system.
For example, let us consider an infantry platoon conducting a patrol. They are in a standard patrol formation with the security element out front, the command element in the center, and the assault element in trace. The fire team providing flank security to the right makes contact with the enemy. They observe the threat. This information is communicated to the platoon commander. He absorbs this new input. It is incorporated into what he knows of the terrain, what he has learned in training, the probable tactics of the threatening force, the weather, available support, and a myriad of other factors to complete his orientation. He makes a decision on the best course of action based on his orientation. This he communicates to his squad leaders, who then communicate to their fire team leaders. They then put this plan into action. All of this takes time to accomplish. With a well-trained platoon and a decisive, well-rounded platoon commander, this should all happen very quickly, but you see how the entire unit has a large Boyd cycle of its own. It incorporates many individual Boyd cycles. The initial fire team in contact goes through its own cycle, as does its squad. This also gets expanded upwards as well. The platoon commander will undoubtedly report contact to his company, which will have a cycle of its own, and so on. To bring this back to the original point, while the Boyd cycle is something which happens inside the mind of a man, the concept is not limited there. To fully understand it, you must appreciate how each unit in the chain, or sub-system, of the overall system is going through a series of Boyd cycles simultaneously.
Many of you have probably seen this one already. This chart has been distributed widely over the past few years, mostly in an ironic manner to demonstrate the incomprehensible nature of operations in Afghanistan. I'm not going to speak to the accuracy of the chart, but I saw something in this most other people seem to have missed. I immediately recognized it as a graphical depiction of Afghanistan's Boyd cycle. Not to belabor the point, but the entire world is made up of systems. Afghanistan, as a state and as a theater of operations, is no different. The way all these factors interact and feedback upon themselves contribute to the orientation of the decision-makers and direct actions. While I appreciate the humor in this, I also see it as a great visual depiction of a Boyd cycle at the macro level.
Bill Lind provided the historical framework of maneuver for the military reformers in the 1970s and 1980s. It was Mr. Lind who actually put Colonel Boyd in contact with the Marine Corps and thus launched our doctrinal revolution. His work defining the four generations of warfare has left a lasting legacy by accurately predicting the nature of the conflicts we deal with today. Whereas Colonel Boyd's major contributions were in the scientific realm of maneuver theory, Mr. Lind's had focused primarily on the historical aspects. A brilliant historian, he recognized patterns throughout military history which led him to conclude a doctrine of maneuver was the proper direction for the post-Vietnam military. These thoughts were captured first in an article he published in Military Review in 1977. This was actually the opening salvo in what is now known as the military reform movement. In this piece, he challenged the basic premises of contemporary Army thinking, including "fight outnumbered and win" and "win the first battle." Mr. Lind brought up the inescapable point that the Soviets were focused on winning the second battle. His suggestion the United States needed to veer away from the firepower attrition model was truly revolutionary. Mr. Lind, Colonel Boyd, and several other key individuals labored for a number of years to convince senior military leaders of the necessity of revising doctrine to reflect their discoveries. Their efforts were eventually recognized as the proper direction. The distilled essence of their work is the core of our warfighting philosophy as written in our capstone doctrinal publication, MCDP 1. This monumental piece of military literature was actually drafted by one of the captains who listened to John Boyd brief patterns of conflict, Captain John Schmidt. Most of you have read this document at least once. You can see right here in the book's definition: "shatter the enemy's cohesion," a theme I've already hit upon a number of times. But here's another quote from MCDP 1: "Rather than wearing down an enemy's defenses, maneuver warfare attempts to bypass these defenses in order to penetrate the enemy system and tear it apart. The aim is to render the enemy incapable of resisting effectively by shattering his moral, mental, and physical cohesion, his ability to fight as an effective coordinated whole, rather than to destroy him physically through the incremental attrition of each of his components, which is generally more costly and time-consuming." Here is the clearest explanation of maneuver from Patterns of Conflict: "Exploit operations and weapons to generate a rapidly changing environment and inhibit the adversary's capacity to adapt to such an environment. The idea is to simultaneously compress your own timeline and stretch out the adversary's time to generate a favorable mismatch in time and ability to adapt to the changes."
In summation, Colonel Boyd described maneuver in these words: "I am sure everyone is sick of being bombarded by quotes from dead German guys. They are just about obligatory, though, for any sort of military class, generally because they serve to make the instructor look a whole lot smarter than he probably is. But when you really look at our warfighting philosophy, you will conclude we should see a great deal more quotes from Sun Tzu than Clausewitz." Please don't get me wrong; I think we have a great deal to learn from Clausewitz. His ideas about the importance of military genius and strength of the defense deserve a great deal of attention, but his view of friction and the need to reduce it to the greatest degree possible is misguided and totally incompatible with maneuver. There is actually a funny story about the night John Boyd figured out Clausewitz. He spent hours pouring over his copy of On War. This is a picture I took of Boyd's personal copy of Clausewitz. You can go to the archives in Quantico and flip through it to see how he absolutely tore the book apart. It is actually quite interesting to read his notes. One of his friends said John Boyd wrote more in On War than Clausewitz did. But one night while pouring over the text, Colonel Boyd had an epiphany. This quote is the cleaned-up version of his real insight. He described it this way to his friend Chuck Spinney in a late-night phone call: "Sun Tzu tried to drive his adversary bananas while Clausewitz tried to keep himself from being driven bananas." John Boyd used this Sun Tzu quote in Patterns of Conflict. Boyd realized how important psychology is in warfare, as Sun Tzu advocated. Maneuver scholar Robert Leonard put it best when writing of Sun Tzu's theories: "He made it clear to the student of warfare that defeat is essentially a psychological phenomenon rather than a quantifiable body count."
So how do we best apply maneuver on the battlefield? Perhaps a little quiz will help illustrate the point. These graphics are from the Army's tactics manual, FM 3-90. As I show you each, I want you to consider whether the tactic shown is an example of maneuver or attrition. So, is this an example of maneuver: fixing the enemy in position using direct and indirect fires while a maneuvering force conducts a penetration to envelop the enemy in its current position? Is this an example of maneuver: fixing the enemy in position using direct and indirect fires while two maneuvering forces conduct simultaneous penetrations to envelop the enemy in its current position? Or is this an example of maneuver: the frontal attack when an attacking force seeks to destroy a weaker enemy force or fix a larger enemy force in place over a broad front? The answer: they all are. Remember, maneuver is a mindset. It is not about specific ground tactical movements. There are some TTPs which are more likely to produce the desired effects, but as long as your goal is first and foremost to break the enemy's mind and then break his body, you are practicing maneuver. We seek the enemy's collapse and maneuver by destroying his mental, moral, and physical cohesiveness. By being unpredictable, it becomes possible to cause panic through the ranks of the enemy. This is the most desirable outcome of an engagement. The vast majority of battlefield casualties throughout history have been caused during a disorganized and panicked retreat. We need to do everything possible to cause that panic so it becomes possible to destroy the enemy when he's helpless to resist. It is not possible to point to specific tactics and say this one is maneuver and that is attrition. Some mistake fire and movement for maneuver warfare. Fire and movement were used in World War I in an overall strategy of attrition. It is actually possible to point to frontal assaults in many maneuver campaigns. Again, history has made my task easy by providing me two examples from different times across the same ground. In this case, both battles were excellent examples of maneuver, but the two operational plans look very different from one another. I'm speaking about Operation Desert Storm and the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom. You will recall my earlier explanation of the ground operations of Desert Storm. The ground scheme of maneuver in Operation Desert Storm involved a giant envelopment of the Iraqi forces in Kuwait. This is generally the idea most people have when they think of maneuver. In this, the Coalition did physically maneuver into a position of advantage to defeat the enemy, but as I said before, this plan defeated the enemy morally because it was completely unexpected.
Let's jump ahead 12 years and look at another campaign fought across the same ground but with a very different battle plan. But even though the actual ground movements were different, it is another excellent example of maneuver. The battle plan for the initial invasion in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was pretty much straight up the middle. Coalition forces were told to go, and they went. It was essentially a cannonball run to Baghdad. The Iraqis and the rest of the world expected another prolonged air campaign before a short ground war. No one expected to see massive columns breaching the Iraqi Southern defenses and then driving straight on to the capital. The audacity of the strategy overwhelmed the Iraqi's ability to effectively resist. Ultimately, the momentum fed on itself, and the Iraqi military system collapsed. You will notice at this level of the operation the enemy was not physically outmaneuvered as in 1991. Here, General Franks outmaneuvered his enemy mentally. This was very much like Achilles against Boagrius, just on a much larger scale.
Some of you are no doubt wondering why I'm using the British spelling of the word "manoeuvre." If you have thought about it, you may have already figured out it is my attempt to differentiate between maneuver warfare as a philosophy and tactical maneuver as a mere technique. I believe a great deal of the confusion and the lack of understanding is the use of this word. Words obviously have multiple meanings; "manoeuvre" is no different. The problem is the alternate meanings in this case are so closely related to a key aspect of what we do; the differentiation has been lost to a great extent. It would certainly be simpler if we had a completely separate word to use, but we don't. I do not have a better word to offer as an alternative. My suggestion is when writing about maneuver warfare to capitalize, italicize, and use the British spelling. I admit this is a bit gimmicky, but it should help to instill the proper mindset. We must never forget war is a human endeavor. All the high technology and precision-guided weapons in the world cannot win a battle by themselves. The human beings applying those weapons at the right place and, more importantly, at the right time will always be the deciding factor. Again, from G.R. Hammond: "Wars are planned and fought first in the minds of human beings." In peacetime, what we do between the conflicts, during ostensible periods of peace, is critical to what we will do and how well we will fare in the next conflict. This central theme is what makes the study of maneuver so important. When I say maneuver has nothing to do with specific ground tactical movements, I'm referring to this: Wars are first fought by people with their minds. Your first goal should always be to break the enemy's mind. That is what makes you a maneuverist.