Archives: Gazette Magazines

by Maj Gary W. Anderson

In the past decade the maneuver–attrition debate has forced the Marine Corps to examine and reevaluate some of its doctrinal concepts. One major element in the debate is the use of the term “maneuver warfare” and its corresponding association with the Wehrmacht. Unfortunately, use of German terms offends older officers who remember the “krauts” only as twotime losers. Even worse, the maneuver label has a whole bunch of lieutenants looking for tanks and armored personnel carriers that the Marine Corps doesn’t own, can’t afford, and couldn’t get to an objective area on time. Word has it that the uniform shop at Quantico has run short of Rommel glasses.

Maneuver warfare, as I understand the term, has a lot less to do with maneuver than it does with exploiting the mental and physical weakness of one’s opponents. Maneuverists stress that the secret of victory is in the process of helping the enemy to lose battles and campaigns. This is really what novelist Gordon Dickson calls the “Tactics of Mistake.” Quite simply, most of history’s battles have been lost rather than won. This article attempts to take the concepts of tactical and operational employment away from the Hegelian extremes of maneuver and firepower attrition. It will explore the art of finding the enemy’s weak links and exploiting them by helping him to beat himself. It is not a rejection of maneuver, but seeks to examine the tactical and operational realm from another angle.

The term “Schwerpunkt,” or focus of effort, conveys the idea that there is an actual physical point where any enemy should be attacked. Maneuverists would admit that this point can be mental as well as physical, but this idea isn’t communicated well enough. The tactics of mistake can be applied defensively as well as offensively. George Patton realized that they are best applied offensively, but even he knew that there are other ways to get inside the enemy’s “turning circle.”

History is replete with examples of battles being won through simple tactical error rather than initiative and tactical flair. At Crecy, and later at Agincourt, English leaders found sound defensive positions and dug in for an attritional battle. Their order of battle combined the longbow, wielded by sturdy English yeomen, with armored knights. The decisive factor in the battle hinged not on the range of the longbows, but rather on the illdiscipline of the French noblemen, who persisted in launching a series of uncoordinated attacks on English positions where they were slaughtered piecemeal.

At Hastings, the battle turned not on William the Conqueror’s audacious, daring leadership, but on the excessive zeal of the Saxon’s right wing, which broke ranks at the moment of perceived victory to pursue the withdrawing Normans and was subsequently routed. William may not have fought Hastings brilliantly, but he took advantage of that single Saxon mistake to gain an empire. Douglas MacArthur emulated William on a grand scale in 1950 when he identified the North Korean weakness to be a supply line that was vulnerable from the sea. His decision to land at Inchon exploited this weakness to the fullest.

The ability to see the enemy’s weakness and exploit it is emphasized by Col John Boyd, USAF(Ret), in his theory of the observation-orientation-decision-action (OODA) cycle, but Boyd does not effectively cover the whole potential of the tactics of mistake. Some enemies simply don’t have OODA loops that are complicated and efficient enough to disrupt. For instance, the Soviets have launched numerous combined arms campaigns designed to paralyze the command, control, and communications of the Afghan resistance, but the Afghans simply don’t have a system that is susceptible to conventionaltype attack. Some observers point out that the Soviets, realizing this, have adjusted their tactics accordingly. Hence, they are now attempting to remove the local population so the guerrillas won’t have any “sea of people” to swim in. Further, these observers believe that the current Soviet terror campaign is a calculated attempt to drive the population out of vital areas in order to repopulate them with Russians or other “safe” Soviet citizens. This ruthless method of dealing with a hostile population worked in the Baltic states following World War II. It is an example of Liddell Hart’s indirect approach in a most brutal form.

The ability to exploit the weakness and mistakes of an enemy is the mark of true military genius. Alexander the Great possessed it at the tactical and operational levels. On the tactical level at Arbela in 331 B.C. he spotted a break in the Persian lines that allowed him to lead a brilliant cavalry charge that disrupted his opponent’s command group, throwing the numerically superior Persians into confusion. Operationally, Alexander had already beaten the superior Persian Navy by marching over land and destroying its seaports with his army. Denied its ports, the Persian Navy died before the Persian Army could react to support it. In both cases Alexander had the foresight to see his enemy’s weakness and react to it before the enemy force could learn from its own mistakes.

In early 1945 George Patton was continually frustrated by Gen Eisenhower’s attempts to construct a theater reserve following the Bulge offensive in December 1944. Patton instinctively knew that the Germans had exhausted themselves in the Bulge campaign. He opted for attack everywhere with all available forces. He could see the weakness of the enemy and wanted to exploit it while the time was ripe.

Despite these examples of successful maneuver, there are numerous examples in military history of ill-conceived maneuver that led to disaster. In 1876, LtCol George Armstrong Custer divided his small command of the 7th Cavalry in order to surprise an Indian encampment on the Little Big Horn River. In other circumstances Sitting Bull and company might have retreated as had other Indian forces, but the desperate Plains Indians were fighting for their lives when they attacked Custer’s small party, and in all likelihood they would have attacked any U.S. force of even greater size out of sheer desperation.

In the heat of battle Custer made a decision that a good maneuverist would approve of; he issued a mission-oriented order to Capt Fred Benteen, one of two subunit commanders detailed to carry out Custer’s plan. The order, dispatched by Custer’s trumpeter, read as follows: “Benteen-Come on. Big village bring packs. P.S. bring pacs.” (Spelling incorrection Custer’s own.) Benteen and Capt Marcus Reno didn’t respond to that order in timely fashion. There are any number of speculations as to why the order wasn’t followed, and there is good evidence that the result wouldn’t have been much different had Custer’s order been obeyed. Despite this, it is obvious that Benteen and Reno had no idea of their commander’s intent.

Custer used a clearly maneuverist reconnaissance pull approach in a situation where the tactics of mistake would indicate that an attritionist method of deliberate pursuit with a far larger force would have been more appropriate. Custer and the Indians both fought a bad battle, but Custer ran out of troops before Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse ran out of Indians. One could score this as an example of firepower attrition over maneuver, but it would more appropriately be chalked up to the tactics of mistake.

The difference between Custer in 1876 and Patton in 1945 was that Patton had correctly identified the enemy’s weakness. Patton knew his enemy, and he updated his knowledge continuously. Custer used a formula that had worked before, but he didn’t update it to meet the existing situation. This is a superb example of a maneuverist being defeated by allowing his own weakness to be exploited.

Gen U. S. Grant is much maligned as an attritionist, but many historians forget his brilliant Vicksburg campaign that, as J. F. C. Fuller points out, was a splendid example of maneuver. When faced with a tactically superior Gen Robert E. Lee, Grant applied the tactics of mistake. Grant knew that Lee had two great weaknesses-a paucity of replacement soldiers and a vulnerable southern supply system. By using Sherman to disrupt the supply system, Grant solved the greatest strategic problem. Grant’s operational plan of fighting Lee anywhere he could be engaged may have been mediocre, but it addressed Lee’s other great weakness. Again, the tactics of mistake transcended the attrition–maneuver arena and compensated for the relatively less competent Union personnel.

The maneuverists have been accused of overemphasizing blitzkrieg tactics, but in reality that’s not the case. One of their favorite historical examples is the early Israeli-Arab conflict, where the Israelis learned that Arab forces wouldn’t stand against a bayonet attack. This seemingly un-Israeli frontal assault tactic had a “breaking glass” effect along the entire front, having an effect all out of proportion to the actual attacks. This condition was repeated in the Falklands where the threat of the Gurkhas was far more effective than their actual physical presence.

The failure of Japanese cold steel in the Pacific from 1942-1945 and the ineffectiveness of the Gurkhas in Afghanistan in the 18th century are other examples of the situational nature of the tactics of mistake. Disciplined troops and religious fanatics are usually immune to panic at the appearance of bayonets.

The real key to the tactics of mistake is to create an atmosphere of confusion among your enemies. Once this atmosphere has been created, timely exploitation should follow. The following paragraphs expand on this theme:

Knowing One’s Enemy

George S. Patton, Jr., often observed that the only way to truly learn about one’s opponent is to fight him in a real battle. This experience must be updated constantly, even in the heat of battle. This concept is inextricably tied to the principle of mission-oriented orders and the ability to learn from experience. Let’s take a scenario: In a mideast campaign our best estimate of the prebattle situation tells us that the enemy will not stand up to sustained firepower. In actuality he moves smartly through all our suppressive fire and uses his own firepower effectively to suppress ours. However, we discover that he slows and stops when he runs low on ammunition. The obvious reaction to this is to find a way to go after his ammunition supply or to make him outrun it. What can easily get lost in the analysis is the ability to recognize this as an enemy weakness at the high command level in the first place. This is only possible if a “real time” lessons-learned communications link exists from the platoon level to the highest echelons of command. Some Marine Corps units do this instinctively, others never get the hang of it. We must institutionalize this art.

Wargaming in peacetime can help systematize this link if it is properly employed. First, it can help to develop a true team approach in rapidly identifying an enemy’s mistakes and weaknesses. Second, it can show us how to quickly disseminate those lessons back down to all elements of the command. Finally, and most important, wargaming can encourage us to develop a mission-oriented approach to making the enemy’s weak points the real objectives of our operations. Wargaming lets us learn about the enemy in an effective way.

The Danger of Reconnaissance Pull

The maneuverists make a good point that warfare shouldn’t be a function of checklists, but even the very progressive 2d Marine Division has an element on its Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation (MCCRE) checklist that reads, “Did they use recon-pull tactics?” Reconnaissance pull has caused its users as many defeats as victories, if not more. Custer at the Little Big Horn, Varus at the Teutoberg Forest, and Samsonov at Tannenberg were all using a variation of this form when each met his respective demise. Reconnaissance is only one element of intelligence, and it shouldn’t be used in the absence of a feel for the character of the enemy. In the hands of Alexander against Darius III at Arbela, reconnaissance pull was masterful. In the case of Custer against the desperate Plains Indians, it was disastrous. Reconnaissance pull can be a brilliant exploitation or a disastrous ambush-such are the tactics of mistake.

Cohesiveness or Groupthink; A Fine Line

Adm Nelson’s “band of brothers” concept was one of the first articulations of the concept of mission-oriented orders, but there is a dark side to the concept. The phenomenon of “groupthink” can develop where a team becomes so cohesive that it cannot accept ideas contrary to its preconceived notions. Irving Janis identified this as one of the contributing factors to the debacles at Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. A military force that cannot update its perceptions to accept changes in the external environment is more than half beaten before it becomes decisively engaged.

Nothing dies harder than a preconceived notion. In any large military organization, hundreds of rice bowls get knocked over when an element of doctrine fails to live up to expectations, but true military tactical greatness is the ability to recognize these failures early and change them. Erich F. W. von Ludendorff, our own H. M. Smith, Erwin Rommel, and George Patton were masters at this. Each in his own way was a genius at recognizing the strengths and limitations of his own forces as well as those of the enemy. All of those great commanders could translate these lessons into effective battlefield action. The crux of these skills lies first in the recognition of the enemy’s true weakness and the second in the ability to exploit that weakness in a timely manner. Let’s take a look at a theoretical example:

In an attempt to break out of the force beachhead line (Figure 1), a Marine amphibious brigade (MAB) commander encounters heavy resistance from enemy dug in a series of villages (A). Intelligence reports indicate that a reinforced Soviet-equipped motorized rifle battalion (MRB) is moving southeast toward the road junction (B). The MAB commander orders a reinforced rifle company from the MAB reserve to conduct a helicopterborne assault to seize (B) and delay the enemy MRB until (A) can be reduced. While flying over the brush country (C), the helicopters come under severe surprise attack from a squadron of Mi-24 Hind helicopters covered by jet fighters. Three CH-46s and two Cobras are lost; the attacking force turns back. In a hurried debrief, the surviving helicopter pilots and infantry officers confirm there was no ground fire or sightings of ground troops along the entire axis of (C). They also report numerous trails that didn’t show up on the maps. Reconnaissance teams inserted into the area confirm that it is free of enemy troops except for patrols; they further report that the woods are trafficable for armored and wheeled vehicles.

The MAB commander concludes that the opposing force is covering its flanks with airpower alone. Accordingly, he adjusts his main effort. Figure 2 shows the adjusted scheme of maneuver. The MAB commander knows that the enemy is surprised and is launching his counterattacks piecemeal; the MAB commander had identified the enemy’s counterattack force as the main area of weakness to be exploited through the medium of a two battalion attack through the woods at (B). This opens the Soviet force to the possibility of attack from the flank (Figure 2) or the rear (Figure 3) depending on the relative progress of the MRB making the counterattack. By employing a two-battalion flank attack, the MAB commander has changed the focus of his effort from a frontal attack to the flank in order to exploit the enemy weakness.

This quick identification of the source of enemy vulnerability is the real key to the concept of the tactics of mistake. In this case the combatants quickly reported the break on the MAB’s right flank, and the commander reacted to their observations in a timely fashion. This is much more easily written than accomplished. Despite what you choose to call it, maneuver warfare or the tactics of mistake, the success of such an operation depends upon early recognition of the enemy’s vulnerability, followed by the timely exploitation of that weakness.

Exploiting the tactics of mistake requires a true team effort. German buzzwords aside, a commander needs to keep asking one question . . . “How can these guys best be beat?” The key to victory resides in finding the answer to that simple question in a timely manner.

Bill Lind is correct when he points out that we can look backward for inspiration. In World War II up to the battle of Peleliu, Marines were able to use the Japanese banzai charge against the Japanese by inviting such forays over ground chosen by Marine commanders. These charges were generally considered to be the backbreaking climax of the battle because they drained the Japanese of their manpower. These defensive Marine Corps tactics didn’t celebrate firepower attrition any more than they rejected maneuver. By exploiting the Japanese tendency to play into the hands of our superior firepower, Marine planners validated the tactics of mistake . . . there is a lesson in that for us all.

The maneuverists have a lot of good ideas, but a position that ultimately rejects either firepower attrition or maneuver would be a step down the road to perdition. By thinking in terms of the tactics of mistake, we can start to develop a frame of reference that will help the enemy beat himself while allowing us to use our forces most effectively. The truly great organizations of military history have developed a corporate feel for the destruction of the enemy. Today’s training environment with assets such as the multiple integrated laser engagement system, modern wargaming, and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms can come close to giving the Marine Corps that capability before the first shot is fired. If we don’t maximize those assets, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Quote to Ponder:

The “Information War”

“The improvements in sensing, electronic warfare, and command, control, and communications bring the “information war” to the forefront. The attempt to gain an information advantage by observing the other side’s forces and activities while denying them such information about one’s own forces becomes a primary rather than an ancillary part of direct conflict.”

-Seymour J. Deitchman

in “Weapons, Platforms, and the New Armed Services,”

Issues In Science and Techology, spring 1985.

by Maj A. C. Bevilacqua, USMC(Ret)

This astute observation on the employment of maneuver to achieve a decisive advantage could be considered as a capsule discourse on maneuver warfare in general. While at first glance it might appear to be an extract from the sudden plethora of contemporary writings on mobile operations and the indirect approach, it is in fact one of the maxims of an American of an earlier time-LtGen Thomas Jonathan Jackson, CSA. Known to history as “Stonewall,” and to his devoted soldiers as “Old Jack,” Jackson, who never ceased seeking to employ this dictum on the battlefield, comes down through the years as one of America’s premier practitioners of the art of maneuver. His Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and his last, greatest success at Chancellorsville the following year are still accepted as classic applications of maneuver in order to, “. . . hurl your entire force against only a part, and that the weakest part, of the enemy and crush it.”

This was Jackson’s appreciation of applying the maximum force at the critical time and placemaneuver not merely to dazzle the enemy but to create the opportunity to utterly and absolutely smash him. Far better than many of his day and ours, Jackson understood maneuver not as an end in itself but as the means to an end. That end being the exercise of tactical initiative in dictating the terms of battle.

A century and more have come and gone since Jackson sent his grey-coated infantry, “Howling,” in the words of one Union officer, “like all the demons from the pit set loose,” against the exposed flank of Gen Oliver O. Howard’s hapless XI Corps in the tangled woodlands below the Rappahannock. The intervening years have witnessed astounding changes in the technology of warfare. Today’s battlefields bear but a faint resemblance to those that Jackson knew so well. Still, the modern commander seeking to utilize maneuver to destroy an enemy remains faced with the same requirement that confronted Jackson as he sat in his last council of war with Lee in the lengthening shadows of a spring evening in 1863. Before the weakest link in the enemy chain can be smashed, it must first be identified and located.

Implications For Combat Intelligence

Thereby hangs the thread that inextricably weaves combat intelligence into the fabric of tactical operations in general and maneuver operations in particular. Perhaps more so than any other form of the military art, maneuver warfare poignantly illustrates that combat intelligence is decidedly not a combat support function. Instead, maneuver warfare provides solid evidence that combat intelligence is an integral component of combat, an element of combat power, and the prime means by which the commander can effectively apply that power at the decisive time and place. The critical areas of maneuver warfare, based upon the terrain to be negotiated and the enemy who must be destroyed, are without exception combat intelligence-dependent. Bereft of combat intelligence in these vital areas, the commander’s decisionmaking is reduced to haphazard guesswork, and maneuver becomes a minuet of the blind.

Yet it may justifiably be argued that these observations are not confined to a maneuver environment but are applicable to all forms of combat. Regardless of the specific form of combat, the commander is universally faced with the need for crucial information concerning the enemy and the environment. Command decisionmaking is a process of analyzing and evaluating risk. In this process, the objective of all combat intelligence is to eliminate or reduce the commander’s unknown risks.

Why, then, should there be any peculiar actions required of the intelligence structure in a maneuver environment if it creates no new or unique decisionmaking concerns for the commander? The answer lies in two distinct areas. First is the tendency of maneuver operations to encourage rnisperceptions of the purposes and procedures of combat intelligence. Second is that maneuver operations can change certain elements of the commander’s decisionmaking process.

Misperceprions and the Altered Combat Environment

Can a simple misperception of the purposes of combat intelligence be a near guarantee of failure? If this misperception exists on the part of the commander who directs the intelligence effort, the intelligence structure could go rocketing off in the wrong direction.

What misperceptions should the commander, or the intelligence officer himself for that matter, be on guard against? There are two such errors, and each is representative of an erroneous assumption of fact. First among these is the idea that the mission of the intelligence structure is to tell the commander what the enemy is doing, rather than what the enemy will be doing in the future. The second misperception can arise from regarding the enemy as a mere target array and considering the mission of the intelligence structure as designating an endless supply of targets for supporting arms.

What is quickly discernible is that in neither case is the command provided combat intelligence that will help resolve his unknown risks in the decisionmaking process. In the midst of an engagement in progress, the enemy situation is a known factor, derived from many battlefield reports. To rivet the efforts of the intelligence structure on this known element means that future enemy situations will remain unknown. Likewise, concentrating the intelligence effort on the acquisition of targets deprives the commander of vital decision-oriented intelligence. This latter condition encourages the enemy to be seen as nothing more than a passive, inert display of targets rather than a dynamic combat entity capable of the free exercise of will.

The potential for further aggravating these conditions is present in the very nature of maneuver operations, which, by their urgency and immediacy, tend to center command and staff attention on the engagement in progress. While this is a natural reaction to known events, it prevents the intelligence structure from looking at the future engagement that may take place this afternoon, tomorrow morning, or the day after. The mission of the intelligence structure in a maneuver environment remains unchanged: to provide the commander with decision-oriented combat intelligence of what the enemy will do at a given time in the future. Combat intelligence, then, is predictive, not reactive, in nature. This observation is especially valid in a maneuver environment where the commander must rapidly shift his thoughts to new missions and objectives.

In evaluating how maneuver operations alter the commander’s decisionmaking process, it is necessary to understand how maneuver operations alter the combat environment itself. In brief, maneuver operations dramatically alter the elements of time and space with which the commander must think, plan, and act.

The conduct of high speed, high intensity tactical operations reduces the time available for the commander’s decisionmaking process on a battlefield, where friendly and enemy forces are separated not only by space but also by time. Fast moving, highly mobile forces can rapidly traverse long distances and quickly shrink the time in which the commander may think, decide, plan, and act. Despite this, the requirement for the commander to arrive at timely, sound decisions remains unchanged.

Along with a reduced dimension of time, maneuver operations simultaneously expand the dimension of space in the employment of combat power and logistical support. The same mobile forces that are capable of such rapid movement can also operate over far larger distances, presenting the commander with much greater areas of influence and interest.

These same alterations to the combat environment that so markedly affect the commander’s decisionmaking process are transmitted directly to the intelligence structure. Simply stated, the intelligence structure will have less time in which to perform the same functions and produce the same material. Time, that most precious and most finite of battlefield commodities, will assume an even greater importance in the conduct of combat intelligence operations.

The increased dimension of space is also immediately transmitted to the intelligence structure. The vastly expanded areas of influence and interest facing the commander will confront the intelligence structure, requiring that the command intelligence effort encompass a far larger geographic area. First, the intelligence structure will be faced with collecting an increased amount of intelligence information from more widely scattered locations. For example, while a static tactical environment may present requirements for intelligence information collection no more than 30 miles forward of friendly forces, in a maneuver operation the collection of intelligence information could be undertaken as much as 300 miles or more in advance of the friendly force.

Operating in an Altered Environment

How does the intelligence structure perform in less time, and how does it produce intelligence of a greater geographic area with no increase in assets? This is the quandary facing the intelligence officer in a maneuver environment. Despite its seeming complexity, the problem is not insoluble.

Quite the contrary, the dilemma of attempting to do more in a shorter time with the same resources can be solved by applying one condition to the other. Specifically, the intelligence officer must use the increased dimension of space to offset the decreased dimension of time. The only way the intelligence structure can offset its reduced time is to extend the range of the intelligence effort in spacewhich automatically extends the commander’s available time.

To find the key in applying space to time, it is necessary to appreciate one of the most basic precepts of combat intelligence-namely, that all combat intelligence is derived from raw intelligence information, and that the resultant combat intelligence will be only as good as the intelligence information on which it is based.

Fundamental to this axiom is the requirement that all intelligence information collection be undertaken only as a planned effort. To fail in this requirement is to run afoul of the incontestable fact that intelligence information exists in staggering quantity and widely disparate quality. The unplanned, random collection of intelligence information in response to vague generalities will invariably result in paralysis due to information overload. Moreover, much of this information may be neither necessary, appropriate, nor accurate, and may or may not address command intelligence objectives and the commander’s unknown risks. Planning for the acquisition of intelligence information, an elementary task in all combat intelligence operations, is the critical element of combat intelligence in a maneuver environment.

With this in mind, it may be seen as necessary that each potential combat mission be analyzed by the commander, the operations officer, and the intelligence officer. This introduction of the intelligence officer into what is essentially the second step in the sequence of command and staff action may seem mildly surprising on face value. However, while it is readily understood that all missions generate tactical objectives, it is not as well appreciated that intelligence objectives are also generated. If these intelligence objectives are to in fact be the intelligence objectives of the command, the intelligence officer should be party to the decisionmaking process from the outset.

The need for the intelligence officer to participate in the analysis of the combat mission is doubly important, since all intelligence objectives are part and parcel of tactical objectives; the two are inseparable, each dependent upon the other. If such a procedure is followed, the intelligence objectives will appear as concise statements of the commander’s unknown risks-determining information requirements, which is the third step in the sequence of command and staff action. Following this process, the intelligence officer has laid down the needed groundwork for future efforts in applying the dimension of space to the dimension of time.

In compensating space for time, think of the commander who constantly evaluates situations in terms of time and space necessary to overcome an enemy force before it can be withdrawn or reinforced. He requires an accurate determination of how far away the enemy is in distance and how long it will take the enemy to make contact. In neither instance will a simple map location suffice. For each enemy force capable of influencing the mission, there must be a careful calculation of distance, which in turn must be converted into an element of time. Given, for instance, a friendly axis and rate of advance, how long will it be before the enemy force will be encountered? Or, given the present location of an enemy unit, how long will it take that unit to reach a position that might impact on the friendly course of action?

To ensure that this element of decisionmaking is available to the commander in time to allow him to act, the collection of intelligence information must be undertaken at far greater range and depth. The intelligence structure must extend its reach beyond the engagement in progress and obtain the information needed for combat intelligence bearing upon the next battle. If the intelligence structure is successful in extending the distance of its operations, it has automatically increased the dimension of time in which to function. Provided that the information thereby collected satisfies the identified intelligence objectives of the command, it will in almost every instance be possible to present the commander with decisionoriented combat intelligence in terms of hours . . . or yes, even days-instead of minutes.

It must be noted, however, that adequately extending the reach of the intelligence structure to overcome the compression of time is dependent upon the available means. Both the range and mobility of information collection agencies are important factors. Presently, aerial multisensor imagery, aerial electronic reconnaissance, and certain national-level overhead systems provide the most practicable means of realizing this requirement. These aerial information collection systems can project the collection effort hundreds of miles forward, shift from one area to another, and subject large areas to scrutiny. These systems represent the best means of stretching the range of the collection effort, and by so doing, expanding the dimension of time.

On the other hand, ground reconnaissance units and other ground-based information collection means are generally lacking in range and mobility. While the advent of the light armored vehicle (LAV) may open new possibilities in the employment of ground-based collection agencies, it must be recognized that, at present, these kinds of collection agencies are constrained to predominantly static roles. The employment of groundbased information collection agencies in depth will offer the best method of offsetting their inherent lack of mobility and range. In this fashion, amoving enemy force no longer within range of one collection element may be picked up by another and surveillance maintained.

It becomes apparent that the careful planning of the intelligence effort, with special emphasis on the collection of intelligence information, is the only guarantee of success. This requirement is fundamental to intelligence operations in any environment. But then, so much of all combat is basics, isn’t it? Regardless, if these fundamentals are provided for, the resulting collection effort will be able to trade space for time in a manner not usually associated with that term.

The Need for Conclusions

Eventually, as in all forms of combat, but particularly in a maneuver environment, the intelligence structure must present the commander with decision-oriented combat intelligence in the form of conclusions. These conclusions must state with reasonable accuracy what the enemy will do at a given time in the future.

However, the necessity for conclusions runs headlong into one of the most enduring arguments of the intelligence profession: should conclusions be strictly confined to enemy capabilities or should there be an appraisal of intentions in addition?

Or is it possible that there is an alternative consideration? Namely, that the argument is predominantly one of semantics.

The point has already been made that the enemy is an independent being with a will of his own. Further, the enemy is free to exercise his will and is not confined to one course of action. Of those capabilities available to the enemy, the one that will eventually be executed will be the one favored by time, space, terrain, and the situation. To identify this action, it is once again necessary to view the enemy situation as it will exist in the future, since it is for the future, not the present, that the commander must plan.

Can this be done? Provided that the proper steps have been taken to collect the intelligence information needed, the answer is always, yes. The enemy situation as it existed yesterday and as it exists now-the engagement in progress, expanded by the latest intelligence information collected in depthbecomes the basis for projecting the future enemy situation. In predicting future courses of action, the key lies in recognizing that the enemy will almost invariably undertake that course of action for which he has prepared. The constant question-and the central theme of the intelligence effort is this: What tactical activity is the enemy making preparations for?

What will the enemy do in the future? He will do what he is preparing for in the present. No military activity occurs spontaneously from a vacuum. Every tactical action requires certain logical, predictable, and identifiable preparations. If enemy preparations can be identified, the capability to be executed will be identified accordingly. Provided with an identification of the enemy’s future tactical actions, the commander can successfully compare his own future course of action with that of the enemy in reaching a combat decision.

It would seem that the argument of capabilities and intentions may very well be more one of semantics than substance. A carefully planned and properly conducted intelligence effort can unfailingly provide the commander with sound conclusions concerning the future enemy situation. In a maneuver environment such an effort is a precondition to success. Without it, the commander must be willing to accept an alternative spelling of maneuver-m-u-d-d-l-e.

by 1stLt John J. Tharp

In “Thinking Beyond the Beachhead” (MCG, Jan83), LtCol Michael D. Wyly cited the amphibious assault at Anzio as an example of what fate awaits an amphibious invasion force that fails to move forward rapidly. Anzio does indeed provide an excellent example of amphibious disaster that, when analyzed in the light of modern battlefield conditions, offers many insights into today’s amphibious operations. In fact, Anzio can offer as much to us today as Gallipoli did to the architects of our World War II amphibious doctrine.

It is somewhat ironic that Anzio and Gallipoli should both serve as paradigms of amphibious disaster, for both were primarily the product of Winston Churchill’s reluctance to leave military strategy to the military. It is also ironic that it was the Italian surrender, after the fall of Sicily, that made Churchill’s Italian campaign necessary. The surrender terms called for the occupation of Italy by Allied forces in order to prevent annexation by Germany. This meant that an Italian campaign would have to be fought.

German defenses of Italy consisted of a series of fortified lines running across the center of the peninsula. After the Salerno landing on 9 September 1943, the United States Fifth Army and British Eighth Army (from Messina) advanced slowly up the peninsula, fighting German rearguard units while the main body of German forces withdrew to the first and most strongly fortified of their positions, the Gustav line. This line traversed the peninsula south of Rome from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic, along the best natural line of defense. By late October, the Allied advance came to a standstill as the German forces dug in along the line. It was at this point that an amphibious assault at Anzio was first considered. The invasion force was to secure the Alban Hills, which dominated the southern approaches to Rome, in order to interrupt the German supply lines to the Gustav line. Upon securing the Alban Hills, the assault force would then link up with the advancing main body from the south and march to Rome. With D-day set for 20 December, the landing force, comprised of a single division, was to link up with the main armies breaking through the Gustav line in a matter of days. However, by the end of November, the Allied advance had stalled so completely that the early link up between assault forces and main army would be impossible, and the Anzio landing was temporarily scrapped.

At the Tehran Conference (28-30 November 1943), Churchill had convinced Roosevelt and Stalin of the need to widen the Italian campaign, pushing his “soft underbelly” thesis as the only viable option available to the Allies before the Normandy campaign could be mounted. The leaders had already agreed to postpone the Normandy invasion, Operation OVERLORD, until 1 June 1944 and so agreed that operations in Italy be given new life. The postponement of OVERLORD meant that more landing and assault craft could remain in the Mediterranean. British Gen Sir Harold Alexander, who had succeeded Gen Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean (SACMED), suggested to Churchill that strengthening the Anzio assault force to two divisions plus armor would enable it to operate independently of the Fifth Army long enough to allow the Fifth Army to break through the Gustav line. Thus, on 28 December Anzio was born again.

Dubbed Operation SHINGLE, the planning for the Anzio assault began immediately. The basic problem in conducting an amphibious assault along the west coast of Italy was noted by Gen Eisenhower when he stated: “If we landed a small force, it would be quickly eliminated, while a force large enough to sustain itself cannot possibly be mounted for a considerable period. . . .” The first mistake of Anzio was expecting too much of a small assault force. As Samuel E. Morison noted in his book Sicily-Salerno-Anzio: History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, “either it was a job for a full army, or it was no job at all; to attempt it with only two divisions was to send a boy on a man’s errand.” The Germans were believed to have the equivalent of four divisions available to defend Anzio, three of which could have been put into action within a week. How the Allied planners thought they could seize a sizable beachhead, cut vital enemy supply lines, seize strategic positions in the Alban Hills 25 miles inland, while protecting their own supply lines back to a beachhead, all in the face of superior enemy forces, was a mystery to MajGen John Lucas, VI Corps commander, who led the assault. Lucas saw no way to seize the Alban Hills without being cut off from the beachhead. Consequently, he made the establishment of a secure beachhead his first priority. LtGen Mark Clark, commander of the Fifth Army, to which VI Corps belonged, concurred with Lucas’ evaluation of the situation and framed his orders to Lucas accordingly. Both men had fears of another Salerno, where the German defenders nearly split the beachhead. Clark told Lucas before the Anzio landings not to “stick your neck out the way I did at Salerno.”

The availability of landing craft dictated the timing of the landing. OVERLORD would begin to draw landing craft away from the Mediterranean by the end of February. Thus, SHINGLE would have to begin at least a month before, in late January. Lunar and hydrographic considerations determined the exact date, 22 January. A night landing was decided upon in order to maximize surprise and to enable the landing forces to seize as large an initial beachhead as possible. With less than a month to plan the assault, there was barely enough time for a rehearsal. Gen Lucas insisted on one but it did little to raise his expectations for the operation’s success-it was an unmitigated disaster. However, there was no time for another.

SHINGLE was to be preceded by a renewed offensive along the main front, which began on 12 January and reached its peak on the 20th. The Fifth Army made little progress, but did force Gen Albert Kesselring, commander of the German forces in Italy, to commit two divisions of reserves from the Anzio vicinity. This meant little, however, because Kesselring, expecting an amphibious landing somewhere along the coast, had designed his defenses, with the exception of the frontline units, as one large mobile reserve. When the Allied assault began, the reserves would move rapidly to surround the beachhead, and as soon as enough troops had been massed, they would drive the invaders back into the sea. Thus Kesselring had only tripwire defenses along the coast, and Anzio and nearby Nettuno were garrisoned by only three engineer companies. Most of these were captured in their sleep by the Ranger force that took the port.

Though neither Clark nor Lucas expected it, total surprise was achieved because Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes could not reach the area after the successful bombing of the airfield at Perugia, and the Allies had gone to great pains to create a diversionary attack at Civitavecchia, north of Rome. The landing itself went like clockwork, despite the horrendous rehearsal. Rockets showered the beaches minutes before the landing craft roared in. The British landing at Peter Beach, six miles northwest of Anzio, encountered no opposition other than the sandbars and soft sand of the beach. On X-Ray Beach, four miles southeast of Anzio, the 3d Division (U.S.) landed with similar ease. By 0800 the Rangers reported the port secure, and by noon the British and American units had linked up, establishing the beachhead’s perimeter. By midnight, 90 percent of the assault convoy had been unloaded, including 36,000 men and over 3,000 vehicles, and a beachhead 15 miles wide and 7 miles deep was established, all at a cost of only 14 killed. Gen Lucas’ first priority was defense of the beachhead and port, however, and he went on the defensive almost immediately, expecting an imminent German counterattack.

Although the landing was virtually unopposed, Kesselring took little time to begin his defense. He gave the codeword for an assault on Anzio, “Case Richard,” sometime during the morning of the 22d. German intelligence knew that the Allied assault was only a two-division force and was nothing to cause a hasty withdrawal of forces from along the main front. Kesselring brought down Fourteenth Army headquarters from Rome, under Gen Eberhard von Mackensen, to coordinate the fight against the Anzio landing.

Gen von Mackensen’s first step in containing the invasion was to ring the beachhead with antiaircraft units from Rome using them as antitank batteries. Units were then fed into this perimeter as they arrived on the scene. By the morning of the 23d the flak batteries had arrived, along with elements of the 3d Panzer Grenadier Division and a regiment from the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division. By the 26th Gen von Mackensen had assembled six divisions around the beachhead. Allied patrols met initial resistance on 23 January. On the 25th the British took the agricultural center of Aprilia (known as “the Factory”) and 3d Division controlled the Mussolini Canal, but the weak patrols could gain no further ground against the rapidly building German defenses. Allied patrols were never able to reach the towns of Campoleone or Cisterna, which were considered intermediate objectives in the “advance” on the Alban Hills.

On 25 January Gen Alexander suggested to Gen Clark that an attack against Velletri be made, since the 45th Division (U.S.) was soon to be landed at Anzio in reserve. Gen Lucas agreed to go on the offensive on 30 January when the 45th Division was due to land. Gen von Mackensen was also waiting for enough troops to go on the offensive, which he was planning for 1 February. Both generals planned the same attack-along the Albano road that linked Anzio with the Alban Hills, running through the Factory and Campoleone.

Lucas managed to attack first. The British 1st Division’s advance up the Albano road began favorably, but the rugged terrain and soggy ground bogged down the tanks of the 1st Armored Division (U.S.). Without armor the British could not crack the German defenses at Campoleone and halted late in the afternoon of the 31st, occupying a salient south of the Campoleone station some 7,000 yards deep and 3,500 yards wide. The 3d Division, attacking Cisterna at the same time, depended on a successful infiltration by three Ranger battalions. The Germans ambushed the Rangers and blew the bridges across Cisterna Creek, however, and 3d Division was unable to advance beyond the Mussolini Canal. Gen Alexander, under great pressure from Churchill to maintain the offensive, did not like the situation. A German counterattack seemed imminent, however, so he and Clark acquiesced in Lucas’ request to go on the defensive.

Gen von Mackensen wasted little time switching over to the offensive. On 2 February he began attacking the flanks of the British salient. The typical German attack was a thrust at the flank of a British unit. The terrain and night fighting were well suited to the German tactics of infiltration and isolation and the frontlines along the salient became extremely fluid. By 4 February the British were being forced to conduct a fighting withdrawal, finding their positions infested by German units. Counterattacks by the 1st Armored Division could not stem the German advance. The 5th of February was perhaps the nadir of the Anzio campaign as lines were being pushed back rapidly. Gen Lucas, in his obsession to hold the beachhead, ordered intermediate and final beachhead defenses prepared. Construction of these lines took every available man from behind the lines and many more from the front where they were badly needed.

The British managed to hold their line intact during their withdrawal and, with the help of intensive artillery action, stopped the German advance about a mile north of the Factory. Gen von Mackensen switched the attack to the Cisterna front during the morning of 5 February and nearly broke through to the intermediate line of defense. MajGen Lucius K. Truscott, commanding 3d Division, decided that a strong forward defense was the only way to hold off the Germans. Gen Truscott counterattacked, regaining his original positions, and set to work restoring his frontline units to full strength and leaving the preparation of other defensive lines to the clerks and cooks in the rear.

After Gen Truscott’s successful counterattack, Gen von Mackensen switched the offensive back to the 1st Division. At 2100 on 7 February the Germans opened up an attack all along the 1st Division’s front. They were most successful on the left flank where they succeeded in pushing the British from their positions along Buon Riposo Ridge. Elsewhere the British defenses fell back slowly but intact. The Factory was overrun by noon of the 9th. The German advance was stopped here as Lucas brought up the 45th Division from reserve. A two-pronged counterattack against the Factory nearly dislodged the Germans, but it proved too small and was repulsed.

Phase one of the German offensive ended with the capture of the Factory. For the next three days fighting was limited to active patrolling as Gen von Mackensen marshaled all his forces for the drive through the beachhead. The Allies dug in feverishly. German prisoners captured in the first offensive informed the Allies that the major drive of the German offensive would be launched on 16 February, and true to their word German artillery opened up along the Albano road on the morning of the 16th. Against six German divisions, Lucas had the 45th Division astride the Albano road, 3d Division and Special Service Force on the right flank (along the Mussolini Canal), the British 56th Division on the left flank (the Molleta River), and 1st Division (British), and 1st Armored Division (U.S.), considerably weakened, in reserve.

By that evening, the Germans had driven a gap between regiments of the 45th Division in the center of the line. The next day Gen von Mackensen poured everything he had into the gap, and by the morning of the 18th he had driven the Allies back to the final defense line of the beachhead. The weakened 1st Armored Division was brought up from reserve to help man the line and every piece of available artillery bombarded the German wedge. The Germans continued to press forward, however, until the afternoon of the 19th, when their advance abruptly stalled. Gen von Mackensen had run out of reserves to hurl against the Allied line. Counterattacks later that day recaptured some of the ground lost to the Germans.

Despite their heroic stand, the Allied forces were extremely discouraged. The Germans had pinned them in for a month. The weather was miserable, there was not a dry place on the entire beachhead, and Lucas’ defense-mindedness had been debilitating to morale. The soldiers at the front were not the only ones dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Churchill had been pressing Alexander to remove Lucas since the early days of the operation. Complained Churchill, “I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.” By this time both Gens Alexander and Clark were inclined to agree that Lucas’ caution was excessive and replaced him on 23 February with Gen Truscott, who had been appointed deputy corps commander a week earlier as a prelude to the change.

Adolf Hitler was enraged by the failure of the Fourteenth Army to cut out the “abscess” at Anzio, and ordered another offensive, this time against the Cisterna sector. While the bulk of the German forces had tried to penetrate 1st Division’s lines, 3d Division, along the Cisterna front, had plenty of opportunity to solidify its defenses and was ready when the Germans attacked on 29 February. After four days of futile and halfhearted efforts to crack 3d Division’s lines, Gen von Mackensen ended the offensive and ordered his troops to dig in.

In March and April a stalemate settled over the beachhead as both armies sought to regroup and resupply. This was becoming increasingly difficult for both. The German supply lines were battered constantly by the Allied Air Force’s Operation STRANGLEHOLD, and VI Corps faced supply problems due to preparations for Operation OVERLORD. Action during these months was limited to active patrolling and artillery duels. By this time Allied forces numbered 6 divisions and 90,000 men facing a comparable number of Germans.

During the lull, Gen Truscott prepared plans for the breakout. He presented Clark and Alexander with four options. Clark favored Operation TURTLE, an advance on Rome via the Alban Hills, but Alexander approved only Operation BUFFALO, a drive through Cisterna, up through the Lepini Mountains into Cori and to cut Highway 6 at Valmontone. Clark suspected Alexander of directing the American divisions away from Rome in order to allow the British to enter the capital first, and told Truscott to keep Operation TURTLE ready in reserve. In fairness to Clark, TURTLE was not without tactical merit, but his obsession with being the first to enter Rome was undoubtedly the primary reason he favored the plan, as later events indicated.

None of Truscott’s plans could go into effect until the main offensive in the south began. Finally, on 11 May the decisive battle for the Gustav line began. On 14 May the French Expeditionary Corps made the first breakthrough. By the 16th, the British Eighth Army had crossed into the Liri Valley, and on the 17th Monte Cassino, stronghold of the line, fell.

Alexander ordered the breakout from Anzio for 23 May. The 3d Division and 1st Armored Division were to take Cisterna. The 36th Division was then to pass through and cross the valley below Velletri. The 36th and 3d Divisions would then advance together to Valmontone. The assault on Cisterna was a two-pronged attack that surrounded the town on 24 May and stormed it on the 25th. Gen von Mackensen, believing that the breakout attempt would be directed up the Albano road to Campoleone, kept his main forces opposite the 45th Division, which did its best to make the Germans feel that they were absorbing the brunt of the Allied offensive. On the 25th Anzio ceased to be a beachhead as elements of the 1st Armored Division ran into patrols from the II Corps, Fifth Army near Borga Grappa.

Truscott’s successful advance toward Valmontone was interrupted on 25 May by Clark, who ordered VI Corps to shift its attack to the northwest and Rome. Campoleone fell on 30 May after hard fighting in the Alban Hills, and Lanuvio fell on 3 June. The Germans were being pushed back along the entire front, and late in the afternoon of 4 June tanks from the 1st Armored Division rumbled into Rome. Clark had managed to add his name to the select list of conquerors of the eternal city.

In the end, Anzio was of great strategic value to the Allies for, along with the main front, it helped occupy more than 20 German divisions that might otherwise have been sent to Normandy or Russia. More important to us today, however, are the tactical lessons learned from Anzio and their relevance to modern amphibious warfare.

Anzio’s greatest lesson is its reemphasis of Nathan B. Forrest’s recipe for success on the battlefield: “to get there first with the most men.” After the initial landings at Anzio, Allied forces were neither. The assault force of two divisions proved entirely too small, and Lucas’ determination to secure the beachhead cost him the opportunity to exploit the extremely successful landing by seizing objectives inland.

Being first necessitates being fast. Mobility has become increasingly important on the modern battlefield with the trend toward mechanization, the development of the helicopter, and the exponential growth in electronic warfare capability. Maneuver warfare has now become the buzzword among tacticians. The concept of maneuver warfare has been expressed in the Boyd theory of conflict. William S. Lind explained the Boyd theory in a 1980 GAZETTE article like this:

. . . in any conflict situation all parties go through repeated cycles of observation-decisionaction. The potentially victorious party is the one with an observation-decision-action cycle consistently quicker than his opponents (including the time required to transition from one cycle to another).

The advent of modern battlefield information systems makes it even more important to be the first side comprehending the battlefield situation. Once this is accomplished, true maneuver warfare is made possible. Successful maneuver warfare forces the enemy into a maelstrom of problems, threats, challenges, and changing situations so rapidly that the enemy cannot adequately respond. Gen Lucas failed to grasp the essence of maneuver warfare at Anzio by being unaware of the local situation. A patrol sent to Rome would have discovered that the city was undefended and the rear of the Gustav line lay exposed. Virtually any offensive action immediately after the landing would have kept the Germans off-balance, disrupted their supply lines, and prevented them from threatening the beachhead by taking the battle elsewhere. Gen Lucas failed to adequately consider the options in between the extremes of a mad dash to the Alban Hills or an excessively cautious defense of the beachhead. He could have challenged the Germans by fortifying any number of objectives en route to the Alban Hills. Cisterna and Campoleone certainly could have been taken on the first or second day of the landing. Lucas’ expectation of a violent German counterattack at the beachhead became a self-fulfilling prophecy: by holing up at the beachhead he gave the Germans no choice but to attack him there.

Today, it is likely that an amphibious assault will encounter defenses superior in weaponry, manpower, or both. The goal of an amphibious assault is to land where the enemy is not, but even if this goal is achieved, as it was at Anzio, it is still likely that the assault force will quickly have to face large concentrations of enemy forces, as VI Corps did at Anzio. Tactics must then be formulated to keep the enemy off balance with rapidly changing, fluid battlefield situations that will prevent the kind of bottling up of the landing achieved by Gen von Mackensen at Anzio.

The presumed superiority of the defense has led some to regard the amphibious assault as an anachronism. The development of the doctrine of vertical envelopment with its use of helicopter assaults to the rear of the objective area was a partial response to these doubts. It breathed new life into amphibious doctrine and, in fact, divided modern amphibious warfare from that of World War II.

Helicopters bring the flexibility and mobility required to realize the principles of maneuver warfare to the battlefield. But, it would be a mistake for the Marine Corps to put too much emphasis on the helicopterborne portion of the amphibious assault. Anzio vividly demonstrated the need not only for mobility, but also of the need for muscle. Vertical envelopment’s critical weakness is the limited payload of helicopters. Any landing force larger than a Marine amphibious unit necessitates a surface assault of some sort. Since helicopters cannot supply a large landing force with either the artillery, armor, ammunition, or food necessary to conduct sustained combat operations, helicopterborne forces cannot operate independently for prolonged periods of time. Moreover, once the helicopters depart, these forces lose their tactical mobility. The original doctrine of vertical envelopment as developed by the Hogaboom Board called for approximately a 70/30 ratio between surface and helicopterborne forces in an amphibious operation. However, several new factors must be figured into the equation that may require a rethinking of certain aspects of the amphibious assault.

Vertical envelopment creates difficulties for the enemy’s defense against amphibious invasion, but if it is relied on too heavily, the enemy’s tasks will be made easier. The proliferation of very capable air-defense weapons will greatly complicate helicopterborne portions of the assault and helicopter attrition could be quite high in a mid- to high-intensity air defense environment. The Marine Corps needs to recognize this threat and formulate either a hardware or doctrinal response.

There are other weaknesses that need to be addressed. For example, there is a need for a greater ability to resupply and build up the beachhead. The decline of the United States’ amphibious lift capability has long concerned the Marine Corps. Today the Navy could not land or support a force even the size of the original Anzio force-two divisions. The American Merchant Marine will be of some help, but its decline has exceeded that of the Navy. The ability to provide naval gunfire has also declined, though the recommissioning of New Jersey, Iowa, and Missouri should help. The Navy is also deficient in minesweepers. With only 25 minesweepers in service, any assault force faces a serious danger from mines, which are a cheap, effective defensive measure. They were a continual hazard at Anzio, where they sank at least four ships.

Part of “the most” that never arrived at Anzio was close air support. The vast majority of sorties flown by the Allied air forces during the four month campaign were part of Operation STRANGLEHOLD, a strategic bombing campaign designed to cut the German supply lines and to isolate the battlefield. STRANGLEHOLD did do a great deal to hamper the German resupply efforts, but it failed to isolate the battlefield, as evidenced by Gen Mackensen’s rapid buildup of forces around the beachhead. Close air support (as we know it today) during the initial phases of the assault might have helped Lucas expand the beachhead much more rapidly. Fortunately, the validity of the Marine Corps’ concept of air power in direct support of ground operations has been accepted in the United States Armed Forces, and current amphibious doctrine places great emphasis on receiving such close air support. Again, however, it may be unwise to place too much emphasis on this facet of the assault.

As noted by Capt J.D. Williams, Canadian Armed Forces, in his article, “Role of the Fighter Aircraft on the Modern Battlefield, (MCG, May84, p.86) fighter aircraft could enter as many as nine surface-to-air missile (SAM) engagement envelopes en route to the battlefield. Granted this is a “high intensity” European-Warsaw Pact scenario, but the worldwide proliferation of these weapons will force the Marine Corps to deal with a SAM threat in many possible theaters of operation. Connected to this, as Capt Williams points out, will be the devastating psychological impact of losing aircraft in close air support missions. At Anzio it was artillery, not aviation, that provided VI Corps with its most effective fire support. Close air support is no substitute for firepower organic to the ground units. In many ways it is much less effective and can only complement and not replace artillery and armor.

As previously noted, Lucas’ major mistake was failing to seize the initiative and exploit his initial tactical advantage. His caution serves to highlight two other facets of the amphibious assault that have not received enough consideration, reconnaissance and leadership. Counterreconnaissance and countersurveillance are the keys to thwarting counterattacks against an amphibious landing. They would certainly have helped VI Corps. More aggressive patrols would have been able to report to Lucas just how weak the enemy forces were during the first days of the assault. Reconnaissance-in-force can help gather intelligence, foil enemy intelligence, and guard the flanks of the main forces.

Gen Lucas can hardly be blamed for failing to dash to the Alban Hills. His orders were unclear, his tasks extremely difficult, and his superiors uncritical. Lucas was a conservative soldier, and given the uncertainties and difficulties he faced, he chose conservative tactics. Some of the blame should lie with Lucas’ superior, Gen Clark, who chose the wrong man for the job. With the growing need for mobility and the emphasis on maneuver warfare, amphibious operations will require audacious, daring officers who are willing to take the initiative and think creatively. There are serious questions about whether the current officer evaluation system, with its emphasis on a clean slate rather than on quality of performance is capable of producing such officers. Unfortunately, many of our best potential combat leaders cannot survive the “paper bullets” of peacetime. Perhaps the Marine Corps should look at ways to restructure the officer selection system to ensure that leadership in the United States military continues to be as superior to that of the Soviet Union as we claim-and hope-that it is.

Gen Lucas might have been less cautious had he been given enough troops to accomplish his mission. The Anzio planners did a poor job in analyzing the operation’s requirements based on what we now call METT-mission, enemy, terrain, troops and fire support. There were different interpretations of VI Corps’ mission; the enemy’s defensive capabilities were underestimated; the problems posed by the various terrain of central Italy and the Italian winter were not considered adequately, and the forces and supporting materiel available to VI Corps were in high demand elsewhere and so were only available for a limited period. Careful consideration of METT has become even more crucial to success in today’s high-technology combat environment, where the increased accuracy and lethality of modern conventional weapons greatly reduce the time available to react and adapt to unanticipated battlefield situations.

A final tactical lesson from Anzio lies in the fact that most of the battles took place at night. German tactics of night infiltration and maneuver greatly disrupted Allied operations throughout the Anzio battle. In that connection, the Marine Corps must prepare its forces to fight offensively and defensively at night in order to maximize the effectiveness of its maneuver and counterintelligence tactics. Given the capabilities of modern defensive weapons, an invading force may well have to operate at night. The Marine Corps will have to be better prepared and equipped for night combat than were the troops at Anzio.

Much of the Marine Corps’ institutional life since the end of World War II has been spent defending its raison d’etre-the amphibious assault-against critics who claim that such operations are no longer possible. The Marine Corps has given such critics more attention than they deserve, for the question of the feasibility of amphibious operations is largely irrelevant-the Nation must be able to assault successfully by sea in order to guarantee its security. Tomes have been written on the simple fact that the United States is a maritime nation; it always has been and it always will be. The capability to conduct amphibious operations is an indispensable facet of the seapower upon which the economic and political security of our Nation rests. The Marine Corps must therefore continue to improve and adapt its amphibious doctrine in accordance with historical performance and analysis of the realities of modern warfare.

Most of the historical analysis of Anzio centers around the question of which was more important, establishing the beachhead or driving forward to the Alban Hills. In answering this question, the Marine Corps should remember the painful lessons of Operation SHINGLE. It stands to remind us of the fundamental importance of offense, maneuverability, and mass. Had SHINGLE’S planners emphasized these principles from the outset, the Anzio campaign might have been much more successful.

The concept of maneuver warfare offers promise with its emphasis on both mass and mobility. The realization of such a concept of fighting, however, is not without problems. For instance, the logistical necessitities of maneuver warfare require (among other things) a beachhead secure and large enough to handle the logistics operations as well as an amphibious capability large enough to support the invasion force. However, the Corps can and must overcome these constraints, and in conducting a forcible entry, it must avoid the same mistakes made by Gen Lucas at Anzio. A secure beachhead operation is not an end unto itself; it is a means of accomplishing the mission-to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy.

Quote to Ponder:

Teaching

“Instead of blaming people, mistakes should be an occasion for careful examination of work habits. A Marine is not necessarily a bad or inferior person because he or she makes mistakes. He may be doing things the wrong way because no one has taken the trouble to teach him better.”

-SgtMaj Melvin Bray

Henderson Hall News

by Maj R.J. Brown, USMCR

Maneuver Warfare is a term that only recently entered the Marine Corps lexicon. As result, its meaning is often misunderstood by Marines. Younger officers frequently conjure up Rommelesque visions of massive armored clashes across vast green steppes or khaki-colored deserts. On the other hand, conservative Marine “purists” are turned off by the unfamiliar, foreign sounding titles used by maneuver enthusiasts to press home their arguments. In this semantic confusion, the major thrust of maneuver warfare is frequently lost. Maneuver warfare is not a new panacea to replace older, well-proven methods of warfare; rather it is a style of warfare that uses unique application of these well-proven methods to enhance the commander’s chances for success on the battlefields of today and tomorrow. One need not rely on foreign examples to see how the concepts of maneuver warfare have been applied in the past. A Marine assault carried out 40 years ago in the central Pacific provides us with an excellent example of the principles of maneuver warfare. The practitioners of this art were none other than LtGen Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, Col Evans F. Carlson, and MajGen Clifton B. Cates; familiar names that will warm the heart of any loyal Marine. The seizure of Tinian is a classic example of Marine maneuver warfare at its best.

The island of Tinian lies just off the southern tip of Saipan in the Mariana Islands. Its capture as a followup to the Saipan invasion of 1944 was obvious to both the Japanese and Americans. The problem was not “if or “when,” but only “how” to capture the island. The way this problem was solved marks the seizure of Tinian as one of the most noteworthy operations in Marine Corps history.

In 1944 Tinian presented a formidable obstacle. Over 9,000 Japanese defenders were preparing to defend the island, and the American capture of Saipan gave them ample warning of what was ahead. The Japanese force comprised the battle hardened 50th Infantry Regiment, a battalion of the 135th Infantry Regiment, the 56th Naval Guard Force, and assorted combat support units. This force was commanded by Col Keishi Ogata. The island’s interior was relatively flat, dotted with numerous sugarcane fields, and its coastline was characterized by steep coral cliffs. The only urban area on the island was built up around the sugar refinery and called Tinian Town. Reconnaissance of the island showed only three potential landing areas: one at Tinian Town, one at Asiga Bay, and one in the northwest corner near Ushi Point. The most favorable landing area, in terms of terrain, was the beach at Tinian Town. The beach at Asiga Bay was considered marginal because of tide conditions and coral reefs. Two beaches were spotted in the area near Ushi Point, but both were extremely narrow and coral reefs or small cliffs blocked portions of the approach lanes.

This was the situation as the date for the assault approached. After an in-depth review of several possible actions, Col Carlson, the man who made the Chinese phrase “Gung Ho” synonymous with Marine esprit de corps, urged a startling scheme of maneuver. He proposed that the 2d Marine Division fake a landing at Tinian Town to keep the Japanese busy, while the 4th Marine Division sneaked in the “back door” by landing across the miniscule beaches to the north. LtGen H.M. Smith listened and agreed that this “indirect approach” was best. By using this scheme, a shore-to-shore landing could be conducted under the protection of American artillery fire. A convincing demonstration at Tinian Town would tie up Japanese reserves during the crucial early hours of the landing and avoid the heavy concrete teeth Col Ogata had planted on the Tinian Town beaches. As was expected, some more conservative officers rejected this plan as too daring and controversial. It took the vociferous Gen H.M. Smith to convince them to accept the inherent risks and adopt the plan.

Once the plan of attack was worked out, the preparation for the invasion began. First, V Amphibious Corps (VAC) was task organized to perform the mission it was assigned. The two artillery regiments of the 2d and 4th Marine Divisions were radically realined. The five battalions of 105mm howitzers (two from each of the divisions and one from VAC) were united to form a provisional group under Col Raphael Griffin, the commanding officer of the 10th Marines. These guns were then placed under the command of BGen Arthur M. Harper’s XXIV Corps Artillery (U.S. Army). The remaining four 75mm pack howitzer battalions were united under Col Louis G. DeHaven (14th Marines) to form an assault artillery regiment. All of the available LVT armored amphibious tractors and DUKW unarmored amphibious trucks were placed at the disposal of Gen Cates, commanding general, 4th Marine Division. The remaining combat support units, shore party teams, tank battalions, engineer units, etc. were also attached to the 4th Division. One additional regimental combat team, RCT-8, was attached for the opening assault. Some LVTs were specially modified to emplace bridging equipment on the cliffs to allow the following waves to scale them easily. This task organization provided the Marines the tools needed to accomplish their goal.

The preparatory bombardment of Tinian was the most effective in the Pacific war. Each target was carefully selected and then struck by various supporting arms over an extended period. The island was divided into special fire support sectors and specific targets were located after careful reconnaissance. Three battleships, 3 cruisers, and 24 destroyers were used to provide naval gunfire. The 155mm “Long Tom” guns of Gen Harper’s artillery ranged the length and width of the island, and 105mm howitzers pummeled the northern portion. Daily air strikes and a new aerial weapon called “napalm” were also used to destroy enemy positions.

The landing was made on the morning of 24 July 1944 after a furious artillery, naval, and air bombardment. During the previous weeks, great care had been taken to ensure that preparatory fires would not betray the intended landing area, and the area near Tinian Town had received the lion’s share of the naval gunfire before J-day or “Jig” day (so named to avoid confusion with Saipan’s D-day and Guam’s W-day). An ominous portent of what might have happened had the landing been made at Tinian Town took place when Japanese coastal guns disabled several U.S. Navy ships supporting the demonstration force. To the north, however, all was well. The Marines flooded ashore and moved inland rapidly against only light opposition. Soon the combat support units crossed the beaches. The beachhead was quickly secured with very little cost to the attacking force.

At 1630 that afternoon the combat teams received orders to halt even though the first objective, the 0-1 line, was not yet captured. Gen Cates, a shrewd veteran of Guadalcanal, wisely decided to halt in place and dig in for night defense. While this move was contrary to the established Marine Corps amphibious doctrine that called for the landing force to move inland at all costs, this decision put Gen Cates inside the enemy’s “Boyd (observation-orientation-decision-action) Cycle.” By attacking that first night, Col Ogata’s forces played into American hands; rather than forcing the action, they reacted in the expected manner. The enemy struck in three columns. Each attack was crushed by the well-prepared Marines. Ogata merely wasted his finest troops in a futile effort that was doomed to fail because it lacked the necessary element of surprise. Gen Cates felt the Japanese “broke their backs” in these attacks and actually made the later conquest of Tinian much easier.

On 25 July the 2d Marine Division (MajGen Thomas E. Watson), having completed the demonstration off Tinian Town, came ashore over the northwest beaches, seized Ushi Airfield, and swung south with a zone of action covering the eastern half of the island.

On J-day plus 2, the second phase of the operation began. The two Marine divisions began “elbowing” their way south to Tinian Town. Each division alternated, tearing off huge chunks of real estate by operating in tank-infantry teams behind a rolling artillery barrage that was furnished by the bulk of the direct support artillery. This symbiotic relationship between men and machines worked well; the tanks crushed the cane stalks and tropical vegetation that barred the infantry’s way, while the Marines on foot provided close-in protection against antitank weapons and spotted targets for the 75mm tank guns. The main problem during this phase was keeping up with the fast-moving attack. These assault groups moved with astounding swiftness. On 27 July they burst ahead 1,800 yards. The next day they covered 6,000 yards over a 5,000-yard front. These were amazing advances when one considers the pace set during other operations in the Pacific. Tinian Town fell on 31 July, well ahead of schedule.

The capture of Tinian Town marked the beginning of the final phase of the attack. Col Ogata was killed the next morning when the Japanese struck the Marines with another banzai attack. The last days of fighting were tough ones because the Japanese were holed up in the cliffs at Marpo Point on the island’s extreme southern tip. Fighting became a deadly duel between small assault groups of Marines and the suicidal Japanese defenders. It became a battle in which neither side asked for quarter. Eventually, the Marines wore down the last pockets of defense, and the island was declared “secured” on 1 August 1944.

The battle for Tinian took only nine days. The Marines inflicted 6,050 casualties on the Japanese defenders, captured 250 Japanese soldiers, and interned 13,662 civilians. Marine losses were 290 killed, 1,515 wounded, and 24 missing in action. The Marine kill ratio (20 to 1) was the best of any major operation in the Pacific. Based on mileage per day, Tinian was also the fastest moving Marine operation during the war and a strategic victory of the greatest magnitude. Its flat fields soon sprouted numerous airfields big enough to support the lumbering Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers that bombed Japan around the clock. On 6 August 1945 the B-29 Enola Gay left Tinian for Hiroshima where it dropped its atomic payload and brought the world into the nuclear age. For their fine performance in the Marianas, the Marine divisions were each awarded a Presidential Unit Citation. The ultimate tribute came when Gen H.M. Smith called Tinian the “perfect amphibious operation.”

What lessons can this battle fought four decades ago present to a commander using modern weaponry? The answer is many. Although the weapons and tactics have changed in the intervening years, the principles behind the victory at Tinian are as meaningful today as they were in 1944. The first and most important concept in maneuver warfare was the proper use of Basil Liddell Hart’s concept of the “indirect approach,” advocated most forcefully in his book Strategy. The indirect approach does not mean using an off-the-wall scheme of maneuver, hoping to catch the enemy off guard. It is a method of entering the enemy’s “Boyd Cycle” and throwing him off balance. Properly applied, it achieves such surprise that the enemy is put into a psychological and physical state from which he cannot recover. The attacking (or surprising) force gains the upper hand and forces the enemy to react at the wrong time and to the wrong stimuli. In the words of Sun Tzu, “Appear at places the enemy must hasten to defend, march swiftly to places where you are not expected.” This concept was properly applied at Tinian. The feint of the 2d Marine Division was meaningful because the enemy believed Tinian Town would be attacked and drew his forces away from the actual landing area. Feints were used several other times in the Pacific, but most encountered little success because they did not present a believable scheme of attack. A second example of sound fundamental tactical judgment was Gen Cates’ decision to stop short of the 0-1 line and dig in. He anticipated the Japanese attack; he enticed the Japanese to make it; and he decimated them along the barbed wire that ringed the Marine lines.

Another fundamental principle of maneuver warfare carefully observed at Tinian was exploitation of the situation and methods at hand to accomplish the task. The decision to land at the White Beaches was not a rash gamble, but rather a calculated risk. The enemy’s plans, preparations, and “mind set” were carefully studied. The risk was weighed against the potential gain. It was decided that if the enemy did fall for the ruse and was surprised by the Marine landings, he would be demoralized and placed at a physical and psychological disadvantage. These advantages were carefully weighed against the more conservative, but surely more costly, landings at Tinian Town. Each factor was carefully considered: the available fire support, the logistical burden, the terrain, and the weakened condition of the assault force that was tired from the Saipan campaign and had not been reinforced by sufficient replacements. In the end, the “back door” was judged the best possible scheme of maneuver for the forces available because it was within the capabilities and exploited their strengths.

The area that showed the most originality was that of task organization. The task organization of artillery for Tinian was truly unique and clearly showed the concern of the commanders for the principles of war. The availability of shore-based artillery support during the entire landing phase was the deciding factor in the task organization. By placing all the “stay behind” artillery under a single commander, the principle of unity of command was observed; and the massed fires of the 156 artillery pieces left on Saipan utilized the principles of mass and economy of force. These stationary guns, firing from near their supply points lobbed accurate, continuous observed fire on to the Japanese from well before J-day until well after the assault artillery was ashore. At the same time, landing the 75mm pack howitzers with the assault troops guaranteed responsive direct support for the maneuver force. The common pooling of the other combat support units was consistent with the principle of economy of force. The tank-infantry operations on Tinian were the smoothest of any in the Pacific Campaign. All in all, the task organization at Tinian was an excellent model for future operations.

As in any attack, a well-constructed fire support plan is mandatory if the indirect approach is to succeed. Only a fool will neglect his fire support. A good commander will use a scheme of maneuver that will maximize the effectiveness of all available supporting arms and at the same time use an unexpected avenue of approach. At Tinian, use of the most modern weapons, such as napalm, coupled with tactical flexibility produced a successful operation. The careful preparatory fires using close air support, naval gunfire, and shore-based artillery were a hallmark of integrated arms. The fire support plan used at Tinian was original and well-thought-out. Each of the available combined arms was used to its fullest capability. The planners assigned the tasks to be done, placed one person (or agency) in charge, and left the detailed execution of fire support to the experts. (It is interesting to note that a U.S. Army general was placed in command of the artillery, despite the infamous “Smith vs. Smith” controversy that erupted at Saipan, causing untold inter-Service strife.* The smooth coordination of the artillery at Tinian should be used as an example of interService cooperation that destroyed the myth that the Army and the Marines could not work together.) The fire support at Tinian was a tribute to the concept of combined arms and is a prime example of what a good fire support plan should be.

The final area was logistics. Logistics is a dirty word to some commanders, yet no other phase of an operation may be more important. Many great tacticians of the past have been undone by logistics, and the great commanders of this time-Erwin Rommel, George Patton, and Bernard Montgomery-were all victims of poor logistical planning. It is a fact of life that the scheme of maneuver will be dependent on logistical support. If the “beans, bullets, and band-aids” don’t make it to the maneuver units, they will quickly become “lack of maneuver” units. Tinian was a good example of the principle of adapting logistics to the scheme of maneuver. At Tinian a reinforced corps was landed over a difficult reef and across 2 beaches of less than 200 yards. In nine days of heavy combat not a single pound of supplies was handled in the normal shore party manner, yet, at no time did the landing force suffer any crucial supply shortages. The use of special LVTs to scale the small cliffs in the landing area and specially made landing docks were examples of innovative solutions for specific problems. The decision to use the wheels and tracks of the amphibious vehicles to provide the bulk of the logistic support and move directly inland was sound and imaginative. Modern commanders must pay particular heed to the logistics burden because modern weapons use up gas and ammunition at staggering rates.

Wise commanders have always looked to the past in order to plan for the future. The modern helicopters that make vertical envelopment possible, the amphibious assault vehicles and tanks that mesh to form mechanized combined arms task forces, the light armored vehicles designed to increase Marine mobility, the air-cushioned landing craft of the future-each is only a tool for the modern commander. As tools they cannot and, indeed, are not intended to replace the principles of war. In fact, if not used properly, these state of the art tools may only push our logistical assets beyond the breaking point. A smart commander will keep this in mind while he applies the well-proven principles, the same principles applied so soundly by Gen H.M. Smith, Col Carlson, and Gen Cates at Tinian; a plan of attack that is within the capabilities of the combat team and uses an “indirect approach” when possible, a solid fire support plan with all arms operating in concert, a flexible task organization that fits the plan of attack, and a realistic logistics plan that can keep abreast of the attack. These few principles have been the keys to victory countless times in the past and will continue to unlock the door to victory on the battlefields of the future. These lessons are the heritage of Tinian, one of the most successful amphibious operations in history.

by Capt S.A. Raub

Command, control, and communications countermeasures is a term for a concept based on several established elements of warfare. It emphasizes that the commander must integrate all of his capabilities to fight effectively and win on today’s battlefield.

In recent years there has been increasing discussion within the military establishment on how to “fight smarter.” The emphasis has been on the thought process of the commander and his perspective of the battlefield. The concept of “maneuver warfare” has had a significant impact on the Marine Corps and has generated a great deal of healthy debate on tactics and different ways of fighting.

Another widely used term within the Services during recent years has been command, control, and communications countermeasures or C^sup 3^CM. Although prevalent in the other Services and especially in electronic warfare (EW) circles, the term C^sup 3^CM may be unfamiliar to many Marines. The Marine Corps has generally been wary of accepting the precepts of C^sup 3^CM because of uncertainty about how the concept will be coordinated and employed within the Marine Corps and also how it will be implemented in joint commands. Some also ask if C^sup 3^CM is a new strategy that adds to our ability to fight more effectively or is it simply a reshuffling of already accepted principles? Do we have sufficient intelligence resources, weapon systems, and electronic warfare equipment to fully implement a C^sup 3^CM strategy?

This article will describe the concept of C^sup 3^CM as presented in Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) policy statements, outline its significant aspects, attempt to dispel some of the misinterpretations of the term, and discuss how C^sup 3^CM might influence Marine Corps combat operations.

Before beginning this discussion it is necessary to look at command, control, and communications (C^sup 3^), since without an understanding of it, C^sup 3^CM cannot be intelligently addressed. The JCS has defined C^sup 3^ as:

The process of and the means for the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned forces in the accomplishment of the commander’s mission . . . C^sup 3^ capabilities will include resources to:

(1) Obtain, report, communicate, process, analyze, synthesize, disseminate information to support command planning and decision-making.

(2) Formulate alternative courses of action.

(3) Make decisions.

(4) Communicate orders to subordinates and receive the results of actions and the status of forces.

While this definition is formally accepted by the Services, the actual application differs widely in each Service due to differences in combat environments, and doctrine. Contrasting the Marine Corps’ view of C^sup 3^ in a Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) with combat organizations in the other Services can give us a better perspective of our own attributes. It also gives us an opportunity to look at the attitudes of the Army, Navy, and Air Force with whom we inevitably will be working m future wars.

Combat Environment

The dramatic differences in approach to C^sup 3^ can best be illustrated by contrasting the span of control at the two-star command level of the MAGTF with the other Services. An Army division commander has under his control approximately 18,000 troops who occupy a frontage of 16 kilometers and a depth of 40 kilometers. His orders are communicated through several layers of subordinate commands, and consequently, their execution is somewhat delayed. The division employs a wide array of weapons firing bullets, ATGMs, artillery shells, and rockets. The spatial orientation of the commander is mostly two dimensional since his forces are primarily ground troops and his helicopters generally operate at tree-top level within the battle area. Compare this to a rear admiral commanding a Navy battle group, who directs a force of approximately 8,500 and mans some 9 surface combatants, a submarine, and 80 aircraft. His area of influence may extend in a 400-nautical-mile radius. He knows the exact positions of his subordinate units at all times-an advantage no ground commander would ever have-and his ships and aircraft can respond to his orders very rapidly. The guided missile, be it air, surface, or subsurface launched, is the naval commander’s primary offensive weapon and also the greatest threat to his own forces. The nearest Air Force equivalent command level is a lieutenant general commanding a numbered Air Force. He may have 10 wings under him, each commanded by a colonel, with each wing comprising approximately 72 aircraft. He can communicate almost immediately with any of his subordinate units including those airborne. The primary threat to his units is also an air or surface launched missile.

When we examine the combat environment of the commanding general of a Marine amphibious force (MAF), we find he faces a unique C^sup 3^ situation. He must operate in all three combat environments since he commands air and ground forces and will coordinate with the Navy amphibious task force in his role as commander landing force (CLF). The MAF commander is at a tremendous advantage with respect to C^sup 3^ because he controls both the ground and the airspace above it in his battle area. As LtGen Trainor noted many years ago (MCG, Dec80), “A good C^sup 3^ system has but one purpose, to ensure that everyone and everything is doing the will of the commander,” and the will of the commander must extend to every aspect of the battlefield. When all of the planning and coordination is done in one headquarters, the C^sup 3^ problem is greatly simplified. The Navy and Air Force are much more centralized in their command structure, while the Army and Marine Corps emphasize decentralization by delegating more authority to subordinate commanders. The average rank of the commanders in the chain of command declines rather rapidly from the Navy down to the Army. The admiral’s movable subordinates are confined to ship’s captains and aircraft pilots while the Army commander’s movable subordinates include thousands of individuals down to the lowest enlisted grades. The Marine and Army forces are similar in this respect. When we compare communications environments, the ground forces are operating amid the manmade and natural clutter of earth’s surface and use predominantly VHF radios. Their communications systems tend to be transportable, which creates certain inherent difficulties with regard to C^sup 3^. The air units of the four Services operate in a three-dimensional air mass using primarily the UHF band and obviously have much better line-of-sight communications than do the “ground pounders.” Naval forces must communicate over the vast distances of the oceans; and not only their surface but also the air above and the water below. The Navy relies generally on UHF frequencies and uses HF to a lesser extent.

Clearly, each commander has a view of his mission, the threat to his forces, and his role in directing the battle that differs greatly from his counterparts in the other Services.

When we compare combat environments we must also see that each force anticipates a different type of engagement. The Navy in carrying out its mission of sea control engages the enemy to protect sea lanes and provides secure operating areas for the conduct of air strikes and amphibious operations. It expects to meet opposing forces in major naval engagements only a few times during a war. Battles will last for many hours, perhaps days, and will be decisive and far-reaching in impact. The Air Force fights a war for air control and battlefield support. Operations are governed by daily air tasking orders detailing the next day’s mission, which lead to brief engagements with the enemy, followed by return to home base and receipt of tomorrow’s frag orders. Contrastingly, Army and Marine ground forces fight in constant contact with the enemy. The FEBA never goes away and battles of prolonged duration occur frequently.

With such different perspectives on C^sup 3^ the Services then understandably have divergent attitudes toward C^sup 3^CM. Having laid this background, what exactly is C^sup 3^CM?

What is C^sup 3^CM?

The Department of Defense defined C^sup 3^CM in DOD Directive 4600.4, issued, 27 August 1979 as:

The integrated use of operations security, military deception, jamming and physical destruction, supported by intelligence, to deny information, influence, degrade, or destroy adversary C^sup 3^ capabilities and to protect friendly C^sup 3^ against such actions.

JCS policy goes on to state the goal of C^sup 3^CM is “to deny enemy commanders effective command and control of their own forces and to maintain effective command and control of U.S. and allied forces.” (Figure 1)

It is apparent that the components of C3CM are not new. They have long been accepted as measures aggressively applied by every skilled commander. The term C^sup 3^CM was coined to emphasize the incorporation of these principles into one strategy. C^sup 3^CM integrates all the capabilities of the resources available to the commander, both lethal (direct assault, close air support, artillery) and nonlethal (jamming, deception, OPSEC) into a set of options to help him achieve the best mix to support his scheme of maneuver. It also recognizes the very serious vulnerability of our own C^sup 3^ capabilities to a Soviet-type threat; therefore, there is a defensive as well as an offensive aspect to the concept. The defensive aspect is called “C^sup 3^ protection” and is defined as those measures taken to maintain the effectiveness of friendly C^sup 3^ capabilities from actual or potential enemy efforts. The offensive aspect is labeled as “counter-C^sup 3^” and defined as those measures taken to deny enemy decisionmakers the ability to effectively command and control their forces.

One underlying assumption of the concept is that in certain situations greater effect can be gained by focusing an attack on a force’s command, control, and communications structure than on his weapons systems. If the C^sup 3^ systems of a military organization-its central nervous system-are paralyzed for a period of time or partially destroyed, the rest of the organization will become uncoordinated and vulnerable and lose its impetus. The more centralized the enemy, the less initiative he normally gives to lower echelons, the more successful the strategy is apt to be.

C^sup 3^ Critical Node Analysis

An important aspect of the intelligence support for C^sup 3^CM is “C^sup 3^ critical node analysis.” A critical node is defined as an element, position, or communications entity whose disruption or destruction immediately degrades the ability of a force to command, control, or effectively conduct combat operations. If we can identify C^sup 3^ “bottlenecks” or “chokepoints,” we can achieve a significant tactical effect by knocking them out. An example of a C^sup 3^ node is the armored command vehicle of a motorized rifle division commander, a forward air controller, or a telephone switching center. Suppression or neutralization of a crucial node at a critical point of the battle may serve our purpose as well as would the more difficult goal of physical destruction. Thus, the combination of identifying the critical C^sup 3^ node, determining the time when its disruption would have the greatest impact on the enemy force, and selecting the weapon which can most effectively engage the target are essential elements of C^sup 3^CM.

In order to implement the C^sup 3^CM strategy, a list of C^sup 3^ critical nodes must be developed. This is where the intelligence support to C^sup 3^CM comes in. Certainly, C^sup 3^ systems are always on the target lists of the operations officer and are prioritized in relation to other targets, such as gun positions, armored penetrations, staging areas, logistics areas, runways, etc. The priorities assigned to the categories of targets depend on the commander’s estimate of the situation.

A great deal of work has been done by Service intelligence agencies to develop data bases with all pertinent details about the threat forces. There is discussion of creating a separate C^sup 3^CM data base, and particular information on these nodes, to aid targeting. Such a data base would be of tremendous benefit to the MAGTF’s G-2, target intelligence officer, radio battalion, and VMAQ-2 detachment, however, there is a lot of work to be done before such a data base can be tailored and integrated into our present intelligence system. Those interested in a good discussion of critical nodes may want to locate a copy of the TAC/ TRADOC Pamphlet entitled Joint Operational Concepts Of C^sup 3^CM(U).

Counter-C^sup 3^

A central theme of C^sup 3^CM is the combining of jamming, military deception, and OPSEC with physical destruction for offensive actions. This can be described as a ”blending of lethal and nonlethal” weapons. For example, in a given situation is it more effective to jam the enemy’s command radio net than to use artillery or CAS to suppress or neutralize the target? In seeking an answer, the commander’s considerations include:

* Artillery and CAS require an accurate target location (to at least 100 meters) for destruction, while jamming requires only an accurate frequency identification and a general direction to the receiver.

* Use of jamming resources assists in reducing the number of targets our weapons systems must attack by fire.

* Jamming requires less logistical support.

On the other hand, the commander and his staff must also consider the fact that jamming could lead to enemy artillery fires being brought on our jamming unit. Also, jamming is suppressive, i.e., temporary, as opposed to the more extended effects of neutralization or destruction by supporting arms. Thus, electronic countermeasures (ECM) can be considered an offensive weapon along with other weapons, and one that has its own inherent capabilities and limitations. Similar considerations exist for using deception also. The point is that the commander and his staff need to consider these options in their planning process and to employ the best combination for the situation.

Radio Electronic Combat

Having focused on the offensive aspects of C^sup 3^CM, we know it is well to keep in mind that the Soviets also recognize the value of this concept and plan to employ it against us. Consequently, we have to consider C^sup 3^ protection. The Soviets have a very well-developed doctrine, similar to C^sup 3^CM, known as radio electronic combat (REC). LtGen J.A. Williams, USA, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has described REC as:

the combining of all forms of intelligence, direction findings, intensive jamming, deception and suppressive fire from ground, air and seaborne platforms to attack enemy organizations and systems through their electronic means of control.

Its objective is the disruption, delay, or destruction of our C^sup 3^ systems at critical times during the battle. Characteristically, the Soviets will come to the battle with not only a preponderance of tanks, artillery, and aircraft but also of electronic warfare equipment. They fully intend to jam or destroy at least half of our C^sup 3^ electronic systems, and if they are successful they will have gone a long way toward winning the battle. In comparison, REC, in and of itself, is limited to actions in the electromagnetic spectrum while C^sup 3^CM is extended to all forms of military deception, jamming, OPSEC, and physical destruction. REC will be employed in conjunction with physical destruction means to achieve counter-C^sup 3^. Both C^sup 3^CM and REC include measures taken to protect friendly C^sup 3^ from hostile actions. An excellent unclassified description of REC is contained in the Marine Corps’ Operational Handbook 3-4, Electronic Warfare Operations Handbook.

EW and C^sup 3^CM

One significant obstacle to a clear understanding of C^sup 3^CM is that as a strategy, it is often confused with electronic warfare. Elements of EW are included in C^sup 3^CM-jamming and electronic deception (Figure 2)-however, EW is a discipline in its own right, just as communications, logistics, and intelligence are separate disciplines. C^sup 3^CM is not a separate discipline; it is a strategy that the commander uses to integrate the uses of various techniques and weapons. This is an extremely important distinction to make because too often the terms are blended together and become synonymous. This leads to misleading terms such as “C^sup 3^CM hardware,” “EW/C^sup 3^CM,” “C^sup 3^CM officer,” “C^sup 3^CM conditions,” and “hostile C^sup 3^CM environment.” C^sup 3^CM hardware could be artillery, iron bombs, jammers, direction finders, or practically anything else including a bayonet, depending upon how the equipment is being used at the time. Consequently, it’s really a meaningless phrase. EW/C^sup 3^CM is a term used extensively by those in the electronic warfare community and, in fact, this group has been the main proponent of C^sup 3^CM. They recognize our increasing dependence on electronics for communications, information sorting, acquisition of targets, and for guidance systems. To quote Gen Trainor again, “Astute use of electronics in all its forms in conjunction with superior intelligence and operational security can practically deliver the enemy into the commander’s hands for the death blow.” Electronics is utilized in all the aspects of C^sup 3^ and is an important element of our intelligence systems that are required to support C^sup 3^CM. However, to try to turn C^sup 3^CM into a separate discipline ignores the fact that it involves every functional area of military operations.

Generally, when “C^sup 3^CM” is used as an adjective it tends to obscure the meaning of the phrase rather than clarify it. Should the commander have a new special staff officer in charge of C^sup 3^CM; a C^sup 3^CMO? I don’t think so. JCS policy states that a staff component should be designated to be the point of contact for C^sup 3^CM activities. Some have taken this to mean that a new special staff officer in charge of C^sup 3^CM should be designated to handle all C^sup 3^CM activities. C^sup 3^CM involves functions that are difficult to direct and coordinate in themselves because they cross functional staff areas. For instance, operations security is the responsibility of every subordinate commander, every staff officer from operations to supply, and indeed every member of the unit. Military deception may involve both maneuver elements and fire support elements, will be based on intensive intelligence analysis, and requires special OPSEC measures. Consequently, all elements of the organization may become involved. Taking these things into account, to create a separate staff function to integrate all OPSEC, deception, jamming, and destruction would be highly disruptive to proper staff functioning. A much more reasonable method to obtain the necessary coordination is through the normal staff functioning to achieve mutually supporting actions. Thus, no separate C^sup 3^CM officer need be designated, but all members of the staff will utilize a C^sup 3^CM strategy as the commander directs. The only C^sup 3^CM officer is the commander himself who will employ the strategy as he chooses to best suit his concept of operations. The point of contact for coordinating C^sup 3^CM activities is the operations officer, since he is already tasked with the tactical employment of units, has cognizance over electronic warfare and fire support coordination, coordinates with the communications-electronics officer, and has responsibility for putting together deception plans, when appropriate.

C^sup 2^ and C^sup 3^

One very important aspect of C^sup 3^CM concerns the relationship of the third “C”-communications-to command and control. In the broadest sense all command and control involves some form of communications, whether it be electronic, visual, or audio signals. A reconnaissance patrol’s report transmitted by radio will influence the decisionmaking process of the commander. Likewise, a call for fire from a forward observer, the radio link between a tactical air controller (airborne) and close air support aircraft, or an air support radar team net all relate to command and control. But does an antiship missile represent the physical destruction aspect of C^sup 3^CM? Does jamming the search radar of a SAM site constitute C^sup 3^CM or just ECM? Trying to draw a line between command communications and other communications is very touchy, but to take C^sup 3^ in its widest possible sense results in making C^sup 3^CM a synonym for all combat. After all, every action of coordination and direction between units at every level involves communications.

This seems to be the way in which many proponents of C^sup 3^CM use the term and this “painting of the battlefield with a C^sup 3^CM paintbrush” is one of the reasons the term has been rejected by quite a number in the Marine Corps. For instance, what is excluded from C^sup 3^ in this definition from Under Secretary of Defense Dr. De Lauer (DOD Working Group on C^sup 3^CM, Final Report, 30 Jan 1980)?

C^sup 3^ is defined to include the origination of information at the sensor, the flow of information through various levels of data handling, the necessary processing of data, decision-making, the issuing of execution orders to an engagement system, and control until a weapon is no longer guided. C^sup 3^CM actions can take place at any stage in this process.

This definition seems to assume the sensor might be an acquisition radar and the weapon radar controlled. But the sensor could also be a combat patrol and the weapon an M16. How do we then decide how narrowly or widely we will define and then apply C^sup 3^CM?

LtCol G.J. Friedman, USAF, in the Air Land Bulletin, No. 82-1, 1 Feb 82, attempts to clarify the problem this way:

The third C was added to reflect the necessity for effective communications as an adjunct to command and control in today’s modern, fast-moving, complex style of war. However, there was no intent to displace the real objective of denying command and control with the more superficial one of communications countermeasures. . .the name of the game is still “C^sup 2^” warfare.

The emphasis is properly placed on command rather than on communications; or to put it another way the third “C” refers to communications that allow the commander to control his forces.

C^sup 3^CM and Maneuver Warfare

Since C^sup 3^CM is a concept that emphasizes a perspective of the battlefield, some might want to compare it to maneuver warfare. C^sup 3^CM does not compete with or contradict the concept of maneuver warfare, which is a broader concept focusing on the attack of the enemy commander’s mental cohesion. To quote the 2d Marine Division’s Maneuver Warfare Handbook, the idea of maneuver warfare is:

To present the enemy commander with so many rapidly changing situations that his circuits become overloaded, he becomes confused, and he loses his confidence in his ability to read the battlefield and influence the action. When this occurs, command paralysis sets in and the enemy’s subordinate units can be defeated in detail. . . .

The C^sup 3^CM strategy can be used to support and complement a maneuver style of warfare. Each of the components of C^sup 3^CM-jamming, deception, OPSEC, and physical destruction with their intelligence support – if employed properly has a significant impact on the mind of the commander and his ability to control his forces. The commander cannot maneuver and coordinate his forces if his command nets are being jammed unless he resorts to much slower means of communications. A good deception operation, whether it be a feint by a maneuver unit or manipulative electronic deception, can stymie an enemy, preventing him from reacting in time to the real situation. Operations security prevents the enemy from “seeing” our side of the battlefield and hinders his intelligence efforts.

Physical destruction of critical C^sup 3^ nodes, such as a CP or a communications center, is obviously going to cause a significant problem for the enemy commander. Each of these C^sup 3^CM actions not only has an immediate direct effect, but will also increase the stress and confusion in the mind of the commander, decreasing his ability to command his forces. Thus, C^sup 3^CM can be used to support maneuver warfare; however, it is a narrower concept since it does not address the movement of units on the battlefield.

The common thread running through the two concepts is that a greater effect can be achieved by our combat power when we shift our focus from the total enemy force and its weapons to the command of that force. It is a matter of emphasis and perspective.

Application of C^sup 3^CM

I submit that the C^sup 3^CM strategy can be useful to Marine commanders if it is understood as a thought process helping them and their staffs to properly analyze and select options for the employment of all MAGTF resources to attack the enemy and to protect their own forces. Also, we should recognize that C^sup 3^CM can only be fully employed at the MAGTF command level in the Marine Corps. Below this level there is not sufficient capability of integrating OPSEC, jamming, military deception, and physical destruction although a unit subordinate to the MAGTF may be involved in carrying out a part of the C^sup 3^CM strategy. The unit commander will certainly place a priority on attacking enemy C^sup 3^ systems as the situation presents itself since their destruction or neutralization will be a significant benefit to him. A fighter pilot would choose to attack a Soviet AWACS if the opportunity presented itself since its destruction may provide us with air superiority over the battlefield until that C^sup 3^ system can be replaced. This could be labeled C^sup 3^ targeting. But for the exercise of the full range of options of C^sup 3^CM, we have to go to the MAGTF or to the joint task force headquarters, if the MAGTF is a component of a joint force. At these levels, all the intelligence sources can be analyzed to identify the C^sup 3^ nodes, all of the air and ground weapons systems are available to the commander, deception can be fully exploited, and there is a radio battalion and VMAQ squadron (or detachment of them) available to provide the ECM and signals intelligence support.

Conclusion

To summarize then, C^sup 3^CM is a strategy integrating all of the resources available to the commander to allow him to achieve the best application of his assets. The components of the strategy are accepted functions of warfare, but their synthesis into one concept provides a distinctive perspective of the modern battlefield emphasizing the vulnerability of C^sup 3^ nodes, both ours and our enemy’s. C^sup 3^CM is not a separate discipline, it is not synonymous with EW, nor is it an adjective to be sprinkled around on words like a seasoning sprinkled on food. It’s a strategy to be understood by the commander and his staff through their professional education process and not confined to one or two specialities. C^sup 3^CM can be a useful tool for the MAGTF, but only if it is properly understood.

Quote to Ponder:

A True Force-Multiplier

“A thoroughly planned and coordinate campaign against the enemy’s entire C^sup 3^ system will patently produce results several orders of magnitude greater . . . .”

-LtCol Charles F. Smith, Army Communicator Spring ’83

by 1stLt D.H. Berger

As the Fleet Marine Force begins to put into practice the concepts of maneuver warfare that have been emphasized over the past several years, infantry unit commanders have found that many of the traditional concepts, such as the use of general purpose (GP) and command post (CP) tents and infrequent displacements of CPs, are becoming obsolete. At the regimental and battalion levels in particular, a totally new approach toward CP configuration and requisite logistical support establishments is being taken. The 3d Battalion, 7th Marines has experimented with several different CP configurations, and the one they chose to use was recently tested at a division command post exercise (CPX) at Twentynine Palms. What follows is an analysis of this particular configuration, based on observations made during a recent division-level CPX.

Important strides are now being taken toward the development of a completely mobile command post system. At both the battalion and company levels, the emphasis is on rapid displacements and reduced set-up and teardown times. With the adoption of the newer radar scattering camouflage nets and their support systems, it became evident that task organization of personnel within the CP group is a necessity. Responsibility for this normally rests with the headquarters commandant.

For the battalion command configuration, both a tactical CP and an administrative CP were established. The tactical CP functions during displacements or whenever the battalion commander intends to move forward from the combat operations center (COC) and retain tactical control of the maneuver elements. The tactical CP includes only those personnel required to retain such control: the battalion commander, S-2, S-3, fire support coordinator (FSC), air officer (AO), and artillery liaison officer (Arty LnO). Also included in the tactical CP group are the headquarters commandant for future CP site selection and the communications officer (CommO). Vehicles used by the tactical CP group are MRC-109, MRC-110, and MRC-138 jeeps.

The administrative CP does not travel forward with the tactical CP during displacement, but rather remains stationary until the tactical CP reaches and establishes a new CP site; once this has been accomplished, the administrative CP joins the tactical CP at the new site.

To meet the need for rapid displacement of the entire command element, however, it was decided that the COC should be established in a covered 2 ½-ton truck with trailer in tow. Another 2 ½-ton truck with water trailer in tow carries the remainder of the essential battalion CP group. Inside the COC is where the bulk of the changes have been made (see diagram). Staff members sit facing inboard, facilitating the passage of message traffic while permitting face-to-face communication among staff members. The value of this arrangement cannot be overstated. Two field desks occupy the center aisle. One is utilized by the battalion commander/ S-3, the other is for the FSC and his supporting arms representatives. Both are stocked with pertinent reference materials and office supplies. Due to the confined space, the only journal clerk utilized is the S-3 clerk, and the AO employs the only radio operator (due to the number of nets required for the control of air assets). This means that principal staff members must act as their own radio operators and maintain their respective journals; this, however, has not seemed to hamper the internal functioning of the COC. Based on the premise that operations can be expected to continue over a period of several days, and in some cases much longer, a 24-hour watch system should be arranged by each staff section to ensure continuous functional operation.

The size and composition of the S-1, S-4, and battalion aid station sections varies according to the extent of their involvement in the particular exercise being conducted, but these sections are generally organized and employed in one of three manners: all three sections collocated with the COC, operating out of either a separate 2 ½-ton truck or towed trailer; each section operating independently from organic vehicles (M151 jeeps, etc.); or all three sections functioning as part of a separate logistics train with representatives located with the COC. As stated, the particular method or combination of methods employed is a function of the extent of S-1, S-4, and BAS involvement, as well as the length of duration of the exercise.

Communications requirements for the battalion remain the same; however, the manner in which they are fulfilled has changed, and there are several notable modifications. The number of nets monitored in the COC is a function of task organization; however, there are certain nets which will always be required: regimental tactical net #1, battalion tactical net #1, regimental FSC, artillery conduct of fire (COF), 81mm COF, tactical air control party CTACP) local, tactical air request (TAR), and an antimechanized (Dragon) net. Additional nets (i.e., tactical air direction, shore fire control party, naval gunfire ground spot), are employed as required.

Inside the COC, AN/GRA-39s, commonly referred to as remotes, have been strap-mounted to the sides of the truck. A quick-couple cable is run from the COC to “radio hill,” where the radios themselves are positioned. The distance between the COC and radio hill must be maximized (not less than 1,000 meters), in order to ensure that any incoming indirect fire resulting from enemy direction-finding (DF) operations will be targeted on radio hill and not on the COC itself. The communications officer is responsible for task organizing his platoon in order to fulfill these requirements.

Overall control of CP displacement remains the primary task of the headquarters commandant, and close, continuous supervision is the key to an expeditious, orderly displacement. With some experimentation and much practice, a complete tear-down of the CP can be accomplished in less than 15 minutes, with the tactical CP en route to the new CP site. Set-up can take approximately 20-25 minutes, with all tactical nets up and functioning. These times, of course, are dependent upon terrain and the number of available personnel; however, they still represent a dramatic improvement over previous displacement evolutions.

This command post configuration concept is also used as a basis for the organization of the fire direction center (FDC) of the 81mm mortar platoon. Replacing the CP tent is a Gamma Goat with internally mounted AN/GRA-39s. Radios are remoted in a fashion similar to the arrangement for the COC, and mobility has increased considerably. All of the lessons learned from experimentation with the COC have been applied to the FDC, since the principles of command, control, and communications remain the same. This facet of the battalion structure must not be overlooked, since the overall mobility of any unit must be gauged by its slowest unit, and the supporting arms element of any combat organization is most often the least mobile.

The concepts developed by the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines are relatively new and are certainly not the final solution to the problems encountered in a high speed maneuver warfare environment. They do, however, represent the building blocks for future development.