Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The science of war: strategies, tactics, and logistics / edited by Robert Curley. 2011017599 On the cover: As part of their advanced individual training, Air and Missile Defense crew trainees practice on the Joint Fires Multipurpose Turret, a $3.5 million combat simulator.
INTRODUCTION
S TRATEGY
Strategy is the science or art of using all the military, economic, political and other resources of a country to achieve the objectives of war. The strategoi were primarily military leaders with combined political and military authority, which is the essence of strategy. Because strategy is about the relationship between means and ends, the term has applications far beyond war: it has been used in reference to business, the theory of games, and politics.
FUNDAMENTALS OF STRATEGY
In his classic strategic treatise, On War (1832), Clausewitz emphasizes the uncertainty under which all generals and statesmen labor (known as the "fog of war") and the tendency for any plan, however simple, to go awry (known). as "friction"). Moreover, Clausewitz's view of war is much more radical than a superficial reading of his dictum might suggest. Although consistent with Clausewitz's ideas, The Art of War takes a very different argument in other respects.
Placing much greater faith in the ability of a wise general to know himself and his enemy, the Art of War relies more on the virtuosity of a skilled commander in the field who can, and indeed must, ignore a ruler's orders to achieve a war objective. As mentioned earlier, The Art of War was written during the turmoil of the Warring States period.
C AESAR C ONQUERS G AUL—AND W INS R OME
Caesar, wearing the blood-red cloak he usually wore "as his battle badge." Vercingetorix used guerrilla warfare to harass Caesar's supply lines and shrewdly offered to engage Caesar's forces on terrain that was not favorable to the Romans. Vercingetorix was taken to Rome in chains, exhibited at Caesar's triumph, and executed six years later.
Thus he violated the law (Lex Cornelia Majestatis) that forbade a general to command an army outside the province to which he was assigned. His act amounted to a declaration of war against the Roman Senate and resulted in a three-year civil war that left Caesar the ruler of the Roman world.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
How will the nature of the two regimes - the volatility and enterprising spirit of democratic Athens, the conservatism of highly militarized Sparta - change. For a time, the invention of gunpowder and the development of a new centralized state seemed to break the dominance of defenses: medieval castles could not withstand the artillery blows of the late 15th or early 16th centuries. The techniques of the French army under the revolutionary government and later the Directory (1795-99) and Napoleon were apparently the techniques of the ancien régime - the "old order" - the political and social system of France before the French Revolution.
His masterpiece, On War, described an approach to strategy that, with modifications, would endure at least through the middle of the 20th century. As previously mentioned, Clausewitz combined the rationalism of the Enlightenment with a deep understanding of the turbulent and uncontrollable forces.
L INCOLN’S A NACONDA P LAN
T ACTICS
Tactics is the art and science of fighting battles on land, at sea and in the air. The word tactics comes from the Greek taxa, meaning order, arrangement, or disposition—including the kind of disposition in which armed formations used to enter and fight battles. From this, the Greek historian Xenophon derived the term tactica, the art of drawing soldiers in line.
Similarly, Tactica, an early 10th-century handbook said to have been written under the supervision of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise, dealt with formations as well as weapons and ways to fight with them. Tactics" was used by the English encyclopedist John Harris to mean "the art of disposing any number of men in a proposed form of combat." Further development took place towards the end of the 18th century. Until then, writers had considered combat to be almost the sum of war; now, however, it began to be regarded as a mere part of war.
The art of fighting itself continued to be called tactics, while the art of having the fight take place under the most favorable conditions and then exploiting it was given a new name: strategy. Attempts have also been made to distinguish between minor tactics, the art of fighting against individuals or small units, and major tactics, a term coined around 1780 by the French military author Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, to describe it describe the course of major battles. However, this distinction seems to have been lost in recent times and the concept of grand tactics has been replaced by the concept of the so-called operational level of war.
This may be because, as we will discuss, battle in the classical sense—that is, a random encounter between the main forces of warring parties—is rare in the modern era.
FUNDAMENTALS OF TACTICS
L OGISTICS
FUNDAMENTALS OF LOGISTICS
The word, he said, derives from the title of the major general (or maréchal) des logis in the French 18th-century armies, who, like his Prussian counterpart, the Quartiermeister, had originally been responsible for administrative arrangements for marches and encampments. , and troop quarters (logis). Union armies usually had half as many animals as soldiers during the American Civil War. However, since World War II, some armies have drastically reduced combat loads.
In many parts of the world, motor transport has still not replaced human and animal carriers in the flow of military supplies. During the long reign of sailing ships, the absence of the need for fuel was a major factor in the greater mobility of fleets over armies. Over time, the maritime states established networks of coaling stations, which became part of the empire in the late 19th century.
When mechanized transport replaced the animals, one of the great continuities of military history was broken. On the hardened ice of last year's autumn, both the soldiers and the animals slid and became stranded in the fresh snow. In the world wars of the twentieth century, the great powers mobilized millions of armed forces.
But with the exception of northern states during the American Civil War, the wars of the 19th century barely scratched the surface of existing war potential. For the preliminary bombardment (which lasted a week) at the First Battle of the Somme in 1916, the British. The logistics of the North African desert campaigns in World War II virtually eliminated local supply and intermediate bases and.
M ULBERRY
Throughout the vast administrative zones behind combat areas and in the national base, armies of civilian workers and specialists manned depots, arsenals, factories, communications centers, ports, and the other apparatuses of a modern society at war. Mulberry A, was built off Saint-Laurent at Omaha Beach in the American sector, and the other, Mulberry B, was built off Arromanches at Gold Beach in the British sector. Because of the strength of these defenses, the Allies had to consider other means of pushing large quantities of provisions across the beaches in the early stages of an invasion.
It involved only a partial or "creeping" economic mobilization in the United States and a modest mobilization of reserves. Advances in supply and movement technology after 1945 were not commensurate with advances in weaponry. In the most modern systems, a significant amount of motor traffic could cross shallow water barriers.
In the field of air movement, there was a spectacular growth in the range and payload of transport aircraft. C-5As played a critical role in the US airlift to Israel during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Very large cargo helicopters were also developed, particularly in the Soviet Union, as new. cargo packing and dropping techniques.
In the tightly controlled power politics of the period, each of these countries needed the ability to quickly deploy military force. The United States has developed strong and versatile intervention capabilities, with large fleets deployed in the distant Pacific and the Mediterranean; a global network of bases and alliances; major ground and air forces in Europe, Korea and Southeast Asia; and, in the 1960s, a mobile strategic reserve of several divisions with long-range sea-lift and airlift capabilities. The Soviet Union, Great Britain and France had more limited capabilities, although in the late 1960s the Soviet Union began to deploy strong naval and air forces in the eastern Mediterranean and also.
D IEGO G ARCIA
The United Kingdom purchased the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, then a British Crown Colony, in November 1965. Diego Garcia's militarization was the result of three successive bilateral treaties between the United Kingdom and the United States between 1966 and 1976. The logistics of strategic mobility were complex and decisively influenced by changing technology of movement, particularly by air and sea.
In the 1950s, proponents of naval and land-based air forces debated the relative cost and effectiveness of naval carrier forces and fixed air bases as emergency response tools. Studies seem to have shown that permanent bases are cheaper when all associated costs are considered, with naval ships having the advantage of mobility and flexibility. In the 1970s, the increasing range and capabilities of transport aircraft provided an increasingly effective tool for long-range intervention and were a major factor in the reduction of American and British overseas basing systems.
Both during and after World War II, the United States operated the largest and most advanced logistical system in the world. One result was the reorganization of logistics activities in the three military services, generally along functional lines, with major logistics commands operating under functional staff supervision. In each service, however, each major weapon system was centrally managed by a separate project officer, and that was central inventory control.
In 1961, a new Defense Supply Agency was established to manage, on a wholesale basis, the acquisition, storage and distribution of general military supplies and the administration of certain general services.
