The Science of War: Back to First Principles (The Operational Level of War)

THE SCIENCE OF WAR THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL OF WAR Edited by Michael Krause, Deputy Chief of the US Army Center for Mili...

Author: B. Holden-Reid

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THE SCIENCE OF WAR

THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL OF WAR Edited by Michael Krause, Deputy Chief of the US Army Center for Military History, and Andrew Wheatcroft

The Operational Level of War series provides for a theory of armed conflicts in the present and the immediate future. Unlike many theories, it is not rooted in abstractions but in the practice of war, both in history and the immediate past. The books in the series all contribute to the clearer understanding of the potentials and the dangers of war in the 1990s. The key contribution of the operational theory of war is to provide a link between strategy and tactics, a connection which is of unique importance in modern warfare. Titles already published in the series include: THE FRAMEWORK OF OPERATIONAL WARFARE Clayton R.Newell UNHOLY GRAIL Larry Cable THE ROLE AND CONTROL OF WEAPONS IN THE 1990s Frank Barnaby MILITARY INTERVENTION IN THE 1990s A new logic of war Richard Connaughton

THE SCIENCE OF WAR Back to first principles Edited by

Brian Holden Reid

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1993 Staff College, Camberley All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Reid, Brian Holden Science of War: Back to First Principles. I. Title 355.02 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Science of war: back to first principles/edited by Brian Holden Reid. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Great Britain—Defenses. 2. Europe—Defenses. 3. Military art and science—Great Britain. UA647.S24 1993 355′.033041–dc20 92–15504 ISBN 0-203-41031-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-71855-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-07995-0 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

vii

Notes on contributors

viii

Preface

ix

Introduction Brian Holden Reid

1

1

THE LESSONS OF THE 1920s AND MODERN EXPERIENCE Brigadier C.F.Drewry

11

2

THE CONTRIBUTION OF ORIGINALITY TO MILITARY SUCCESS Brigadier J.P.Kiszely MC

23

3

ECONOMY OF EFFORT: A PASSIVE PRINCIPLE Colonel P.P.Rawlins MBE

47

4

LIDDELL HART AND THE INDIRECT APPROACH TO STRATEGY Brigadier A.S.H.Irwin OBE

61

5

BURMA, 1943–5: WHAT LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE? Brigadier E.J.Webb-Carter OBE

79

6

INCREASING TEMPO ON THE MODERN BATTLEFIELD Colonel A.Behagg MBE

107

7

DEPTH FIREPOWER: THE VIOLENT, ENABLING ELEMENT Group Captain S.J.Coy OBE RAF

127

8

THE FUTURE OF SURPRISE ON THE TRANSPARENT BATTLEFIELD Colonel B.R.Isbell

145

vi

9

10

THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA ON THE PROSECUTION OF CONTEMPORARY WARFARE Brigadier C.L.Elliott MBE

161

A STUDY OF EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEEDS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Colonel A.M.D.Palmer

187

Index

201

ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps 1 The Japanese conquest of Burma 1942 2 The turning point in Burma 3 Operations ‘Capital’ and ‘Extended Capital’: Phase One

81 84 86

Figures 1 Command arrangements for south-east Asia 1943 2 The decision-action cycle (the OODA loop) 3 The simple combat model 4 The tempo system 5 Model to show the possible increase in tempo by the temporary elimination of headquarters 6 Model to show the possible, temporary elimination of headquarters

90 109 111 113 121 122

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Brian Holden Reid (Editor) is Senior Lecturer in War Studies, King’s College, London, and since 1987 has been Resident Historian at the British Army Staff College, Camberley (of which he is a graduate). He is the first civilian to work on the Directing Staff for over 100 years and helped set up the Higher Command and Staff Course. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Royal Geographical Society, from 1984–87 Dr Holden Reid was Editor of the RUSI Journal. He is the author of J.F.C.Fuller: Military Thinker (1987, paperback 1990). He has edited (with John White) American Studies: Essays in Honour of Marcus Cunliffe (1991) and (with Colonel Michael Dewar) Military Strategy in a Changing Europe: Towards the Twenty-First Century (1991), two volumes of HCSC papers and numerous essays in British and American history. Colonel A.Behagg MBE is Commander BATUS Main in Canada Group Captain S.J.Coy OBE RAF is Group Captain Support Operations, HQ RAF 1 Group Brigadier C.F.Drewry is Commander 24 Brigade, Catterick Brigadier C.L.Elliott MBE is Director of Studies and Deputy Commandant, Staff College, Camberley Brigadier A.S.H.Irwin OBE is Commander 39 Infantry Brigade in Northern Ireland Colonel B.R.Isbell is Chief of Staff, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Brigadier J.P.Kiszely MC is Commander 22 Armoured Brigade in Germany Colonel A.M.D.Palmer is Colonel Army Plans 2 (Programmes) in the Ministry of Defence Colonel P.P.Rawlins MBE is Chief of Staff, Director of Infantry Brigadier E.J.Webb-Carter OBE is Commander 19 Infantry Brigade in Colchester

PREFACE

This book is the third published collection of the papers of the Higher Command and Staff Course. It represents a selection, on mainly theoretical topics, drawn from the third and fourth courses. The staggering changes that have occurred in Eastern Europe (and what used to be called the Soviet Union) have clearly complicated the process of selection and have delayed the production of a third volume. The approach adopted in this book (and indeed in the structure of the Higher Command and Staff Course itself) is laid out in the Introduction. If the volume has a main theme, it is detaching the study of the operational level of war from specific threat-led scenarios. By reappraising some of the fundamental mainsprings of the operational ‘art’, the contributors are adding not only to the growing literature on this subject but they are also making a valuable contribution to doctrinal debate. This above all requires flexibility of mind. As Lieutenant General Sir Garry Johnson warned in a recent lecture at the Royal United Services Institute, ‘we must not settle back to thinking small, no matter how reduced our army is to become’. The direction of military structures should not determine, or foreclose, our thinking on certain military subjects which transcend the direction in which these structures happen to be moving. We need the adaptability to change our thinking when circumstances demand it. Our conceptual thinking must remain fertile and open-ended. Once more the editor is much obliged to a large number of people for their assistance in producing this book. Professor Sir Michael Howard, Professor Lawrence Freedman and Professor Brian Bond have placed their collective (vast) knowledge at the disposal of the Course from the first. I am also grateful to Major General R.A.Smith, DSO, OBE, QGM for guidance in a number of matters, guidance which has made itself felt most notably in the Introduction. I am also grateful to Colonel Richard Connaughton

x

for smoothing the path when finding a new publisher was an urgent necessity. Finally, Dr Richard Holmes has played a major role over the years in the evolution of the Higher Command and Staff Course. I hope that when he finishes this book he can still eat today’s sandwiches without a surging feeling of indigestion. Finally, it is important to conclude with the observation that this is not an official publication, and that the essays which follow are expressions of personal views and should not be construed as representing official opinion. Brian Holden Reid, Staff College, Camberley

INTRODUCTION Brian Holden Reid

When planning for the Higher Command and Staff Course got underway in earnest in the Spring of 1987 the main focus was on the Central Region of NATO. It was here that operational thoughts focused, and here was located the theatre of operations where future British commanders might be required to fight at the operational level. Within the space of two years (at most three) the assumptions on which this attitude rested, along with much else that had underpinned British thinking about the future of war, were undercut by the rapid disappearance of the Soviet military threat; indeed the Soviet Union was brought to the brink of dissolution itself. Rather like a mummy which had been preserved safely in a deeply-laid tomb for thousands of years, suddenly brought out into the daylight by an over-enthusiastic archaeologist, the military threat which had prompted so much writing and provoked so much anxiety disintegrated. ‘After the year 2000’, ran a common enough prediction in 1987, ‘much on the Central Region will be similar to today’. That this was demonstrably not so required a good deal of rethinking and some earnest reappraisal. Some of the factors upon which this reappraisal rested were set down in my introduction to Military Strategy in a Changing Europe: Towards the Twenty-First Century.1 The main point which emerged there was that forces did not need to have force structures and doctrines that were threat-led. Doctrine needs to be flexible to cope with a variety of problems. The operational level of war is not tied to a particular theatre of operations, or for that matter a specific projected enemy. It needs to be applied to a whole range of military questions. Consequently, the Higher Command and Staff Course itself, which has been a stimulus for doctrinal discussion within the British Army, and spawned Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine,2 began to reconsider this whole question

2 THE SCIENCE OF WAR

against a background of drastic readjustment of international relations. The most important conclusion reinforced our scepticism for the need to have doctrines inspired by a clear threat. A study of military thought and practice illuminates basic, first principles which are applicable to all kinds of greatly varying conditions. The study of Soviet doctrine, for example, has much to teach the British Army in certain areas, irrespective of whether or not it constitutes a future ‘enemy’. Consequently, the study of the operational level of war in the British Army began to detach itself from certain scenarios about the likely character and vicinity of a possible next war, and began to develop a more general, speculative, and penetrating approach, which illuminated the study of other levels of war, notably the tactical. The aim of the Higher Command and Staff Course, now pursued over five courses, is ‘To prepare selected officers for higher command of field formations and/or for senior operational staff appointments in national and international head-quarters.’ The initial courses were designed to stretch the intellectual horizons of officers beyond the confines of regimental duty, and to suggest that expedients which were successful when commanding battalions may not necessarily be so successful when applied at the higher levels of war. In pursuit of inculcating a broader understanding of the factors that operated at the higher levels, a close integration was established between military theory and historical experience. Consequently, a main aim throughout has been to lay down a theoretical grounding in the principles of the planning and conduct of war at the operational level. But such study was not tied to any particular formation. It was never intended, and nor should it ever be, that the Higher Command and Staff Course should become merely a course to impart the mechanics of formation command. Consonant with this aim was the recognition of the importance of historical study. It is perhaps not too much of a claim to suggest that the importance attached to history in the Higher Command and Staff Course—especially in analysing the successful ingredients of command and leadership—has contributed to a revival of the study of that subject within the Army. The Higher Command and Staff Course has also devoted a great deal of attention to the context within which such studies have evolved. To provide an understanding of security policy and the pressures of coalition warfare has always been central to its instruction. Allies, like the poor, will always be with us; and unlike

INTRODUCTION 3

the poor, we are thankful for their existence. The resultant defence policy of the UK, and the significance of membership of alliances, their strengths and constraints, are subjects which serve to underline the strategic and political framework within which operations are conducted. The second important contextual feature, which has enjoyed increasing scope on the Course, is air power. The air/land dimension was central to our thoughts during the initial deliberations in 1987. Some five years later, and after the experience of the air operations during the Gulf War, it is a major aim of the Course to reaffirm in the minds of future commanders that they must understand the characteristics, capabilities, and command structures of air power at the operational level. Air power is now the subject of an entire phase of the Higher Command and Staff Course. Theoretical instruction is reinforced by a substantial Royal Air Force representation in the student body. A third feature is the study of technology. For much of NATO’s history, technology has been considered in a doctrinal vacuum. New weapons or enhanced capabilities of older weapons, were rarely considered in relation to the means of fighting; often technological advancement was deemed to be a panacea. It has been a prime aim of the Higher Command and Staff Course to provide an insight into the key role of technology in the development of equipment capabilities, force structures and the conduct of operations. This includes communications, a central consideration in exercising successful command. What, then are the most important factors that determine the conduct of the operational level? Well, of course, these are numerous, but I would like to highlight seven themes, information, firepower, movement, security, logistics, command and the media. These comments should be regarded as a kind of interim assessment, a personal statement of the direction in which I would like to see the subject move, and areas for further work, rather than a summary of the chapters that follow. Given the fluidity of military studies at the moment this seems to me to be of greater interest than merely describing the various authors’ contributions. INFORMATION Information, or knowledge of the enemy, his capability and intentions, is crucial to the development of any plan. This will be processed into intelligence and these will provide targets to strike


at, and will permit movement so that the enemy cannot strike back. If communications are bad, it is the job of the commander to establish precisely what is going on and how he should influence events. This is the essence of Major General J.F.C.Fuller’s dictum that the whole art of war consists of giving blows without receiving them. But this cannot be done without information. There are three considerations here: How can I strike at the enemy? How can I prevent the enemy striking at my forces? What is the distribution of my own forces? During the American Civil War at the crisis of the Battle of Chancellorsville, when General Robert E. Lee decided to divide his army in the face of a greatly superior foe, he asked rhetorically of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson at a fateful meeting, ‘Well, General, how can we get at those people?’ His thoughts were directed towards striking at the enemy; he was not overwhelmed by what the enemy was going to do to him. When reports were received that the Federal right flank was ‘in the air’, Jackson was dispatched to confirm this and strike it. This example illustrates, too, that if information is incomplete or lacking, this in itself does not preclude action; information must be sought. Jackson did indeed find the Union flank ‘in the air’ and he struck it; only the lateness of the hour prevented this attack from thoroughly destroying the Army of the Potomac. FIREPOWER Concentrating overwhelming firepower on the enemy must be a fundamental plank of any plan. A lot of British military writing tends to neglect firepower while stressing movement. This is certainly true of the greatest British military thinkers, General Fuller and Sir Basil Liddell Hart, and perhaps less true of more recent writers, such as Brigadier Richard Simpkin in his Race to the Swift (1985).3 Recent experience would indicate that the targets at which firepower is directed determine whether the battle fought is either attritional or of the manœuvre form. Therefore, if the main targets are the enemy’s strength, the fighting is attritional; if the risk can be taken that the enemy’s strength can be ignored or just neutralized, while attacks are focused on his weaker elements, then manœuvre comes to the fore. This is clearly a matter of the commander assessing risk. The degree of risk is proportional to the accuracy and quantity of information. Hence the greater the requirement for manœuvre the greater the need for

INTRODUCTION 5

reconnaissance. But on one thing we must be crystal clear: the scope of ‘manœuvre warfare’, for this is a subject that has engendered a lot of comment in recent years. Manœuvre warfare is not just about moving across the battlefield or around the enemy. It is a means by which overwhelming fire can be brought to bear and achieve the overwhelming defeat of the enemy at the least cost. This is achieved by paralysing the enemy by speed and fire. There is, accordingly, an attritional element in manœuvre warfare, the difference between this form and attrition is only a question of degree. The two forms are not mutually exclusive independent entities. They demand, however, a variation in command styles. The more fastmoving, fluid and uncertain the battle, the more the command system should be decentralized; the more static or positional the battle, the greater the need for centralization. But whatever the command system that is decided upon, the overwhelming need is that the weapons and firepower be concentrated sufficiently rapidly to complete the mission in the shortest possible time. General Fuller once wrote, that time is of the essence: ‘its loss can seldom be made good; in face of all losses it is the most difficult to compensate’. This is as equally true of attritional as manœuvre warfare.4 MOVEMENT It is by movement that fire is concentrated and exploited, so that fire may be opened again on the enemy’s positions. The prime requirement is achieving a superior density of force at the point of decision at the correct time. This, too, is a finely balanced calculation. If the punch is unleashed too early, then the enemy might discover our intentions and move out of the way before its full impact is felt. If the punch lands too late not only will it lose its power to overwhelm but the cost to our own side would be high. A vital consideration here is the commitment of reserves at the right time. If a commander fails to make this commitment at the right time, then no matter how great the firepower deployed, then a large part of this will be wasted. At three points during the Battle of Verdun in 1916, during which stupendous quantities of firepower were directed at the French Army, the German Fifth Army failed to secure their objectives (in so far as they were clearly defined) because of a failure to maintain and commit reserves at the right


moment. Movement and firepower were not brought into a close relationship and, therefore, opportunities were not seized.5 SECURITY Put simply, this means that we should take measures to prevent the enemy inflicting on us the damage that we are inflicting on him. Continuing the example of General Lee, it is important, if we are to reduce the enemy’s power to strike at us, that we move faster and secure the initiative. Ensuring this demands a high level of accurate and timely information. This, in turn, contributes to a capacity to deceive and surprise the enemy. It does not bear repeating too frequently that surprise is not an end in itself but a means to an end.6 The opportunities for deceiving and surprising an enemy are obviously greater the larger the forces under command; but the example of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia would indicate that numerical and material superiority is certainly not a sine qua non of outwitting the enemy. None the less, well fed, trained and equipped troops can sustain this kind of activity over longer periods of time than those who have poor equipment and are half starved. The Army of the Potomac illustrates this reality in the lightning campaign which forced Lee’s surrender at Appommattox in the days immediately following the fall of Richmond in April 1865. The former pastmaster of manœuvre, now a half-starved shadow of its former self, was outmanœuvred and enveloped. The need for surprise and deception raises the question of the nature of orders, which, too, has been the subject of much comment in recent years. There is a pressing requirement for issuing orders so that subordinates understand the object, the overall situation and may adjust their methods to adapt to the velocity of war. Needless to say, this does not mean that a lack of orders is a good thing. What is required was once referred to by General Fuller as ‘intelligent obedience’: obedience to (which implies acquaintance with) the overall concept, but flexibility in carrying it out.7 LOGISTICS This is the one area of the operational level of war which we ignore at our peril, and which perhaps has been neglected during the

INTRODUCTION 7

renaissance in the British Army of thinking at this level. The recent Gulf War has indicated that logistics is fundamental to conducting war at the operational level. To support one armoured division of two armoured brigades before the liberation of Kuwait, required the deployment of 12,000 logistic troops and some 5,000 medical personnel. Thus Montgomery’s concern with what is administratively possible in military operations has been more than confirmed. The plan, he insisted, must be sound ‘and make certain that what you want to do is possible and that you have the necessary resources to do it’. He went on: ‘And do one or two things really properly; and don’t try to do five or six things all of which are starved for lack of resources—and which will probably all produce no results’.8 The Clausewitzian concept of ‘culminating point’-that point at which armies can no longer attain their objectives -is essentially logistical. As General Thompson observes of the climactic battles at Imphal-Kohima in Burma in 1944, They [the Japanese] faced the classic logistic dilemma, if they advanced they outran their supplies, and unless they could resupply themselves at their opponent’s expense, they became progressively weaker.9 If General Thompson identifies one feature which has characterized the logistical failures since 1945, it is overconfidence in predicting the future. In this area, such a sanguine attitude cannot be risked, and increased attention must be devoted to this subject in future studies. COMMAND It is surely the duty of the commander to state his plans and, whatever the path he has arrived at in drawing them up, list his priorities. This cannot, and should not, be done for him by his staff. The staff attend to the detailed planning, make subsidiary plans and carry them out. Montgomery once highlighted some very sound advice on this point. He wrote, If you want to make war on a large-scale, you must think out your general plan of operations very carefully and decide in outline how you will fight the war. If you go wrong at this stage you will always be in trouble and may never well recover.


Therefore take plenty of time, study the whole problem very carefully, don’t rush your fences, and finally make your plan. ‘No staff officer,’ he concluded, ‘can make an operational plan.’ It is not so much the plan itself which determines victory or defeat but what Montgomery called the ‘stage management’ of the battle —the way it is carried out. Any plan, no matter how sophisticated or well thought out is only a statement of intention. Hence the command system must be organized in such a way as to best carry out the plan, and take the correct decisions to facilitate its implementation. Again, Montgomery had some very sensible advice on these points. ‘lt is very important,’ he wrote in 1943, ‘to foresee your battle, to decide what is possible, and to go all out for that. You must force the battle to go the way you want by means of the pressure you exert on the various axes.’10 MEDIA This is one additional factor that even a few years ago would not have featured in a list of factors governing the conduct of war. In 1957 General Sir Charles Keightley in his report on Operation ‘Musketeer Revise’—the ill-fated Suez operation launched in 1956 —declared that public opinion (including that nebulous quantity, ‘world opinion’) was definitely a principle of war, and future military operations would have to take it into consideration. This was fully appreciated at the outset by myself and my staff’, he reported, ‘but regrettably the short notice which we had before the operation started resulted in shortcomings in Press communications and arrangements which we never managed to rectify in time.’11 Given tremendous developments in communications technology, governments can no longer maintain a monopoly over the circulation of information. Therefore dealing with television journalists (which is the source of the main concern when discussing this subject) must be considered by all commanders when carrying out military operations large and small because of the immediacy of their impact, and the graphic quality of the news medium. General Schwarzkopf’s triumph in the Gulf War was just as much a dominance of the television screens as the sway he acquired over the Iraqi skies and ground forces. It is perhaps a small consolation for today’s soldiers to learn that this concern with the media is not new. In March 1943, Montgomery complained

INTRODUCTION 9

to the CIGS, Alan Brooke ‘that…the most appalling indiscretions have appeared; the BBC news this morning talked openly of the “Eighth Army coming offensive”. I have given an order this morning that for the next few days nothing will leave this front until it has been censored by my own Intelligence Staff.’12 But an awareness of earlier precedents only accentuates contemporary difficulties because communications technology has made such enormous advances. The essays that follow are a reflection of the decoupling of the Course from the ‘threat perspective’ of the Central Region. They are attempts at confronting certain basic operational concepts—two of which, Economy of Effort and the Strategy of Indirect Approach— have been central to the British ‘philosophy’ of war. The contributions are general and reflective and are not tied to any specific future conflict. The majority of them were written before and during the Gulf War of 1991. Because sustained study of this conflict, and especially those elements which it offers up to teach us, is still in a tentative stage, the temptation to introduce detailed considerations at every turn has been resisted; some chapters mention it, but no contribution considers its implications in detail. Full studies will soon appear no doubt in great profusion. The aim of this book is to illuminate a number of general problems inherent in the conduct of war at the operational level. Liddell Hart once claimed that The influence of thought on thought is the most influential factor in history.’13 He may have exaggerated the influence of ideas on military practice but it is to be hoped that the ideas considered in this book will contribute to a debate that will run on regardless of the development of an individual threat scenario. NOTES 1 Brian Holden Reid, ‘Introduction’, in Brian Holden Reid and Michael Dewar (eds), Military Strategy in a Changing Europe: Towards the Twenty-First Century, London, Brassey’s, 1991, p. 7. 2 Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine, Army Code 71451, 1989. 3 Brigadier R.Simpkin, Race to the Swift, London, Brassey’s, 1985. 4 For a development of some of these points, see Brian Holden Reid, ‘Major General J.F.C.Fuller and the Problem of Military Movement’, Armor, C, July-August 1991, pp. 26–31.


5 See Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 2916, London, Macmillan, 1962, pp. 82, 94–5. 6 See T.J.Granville-Chapman, The Importance of Surprise: A Reappraisal’, in Major-General Jeremy Mackenzie and Brian Holden Reid (eds), The British Army and the Operational Level of War, London, Tri-Service Press, 1988, p. 54. 7 See Brian Holden Reid, J.F.C.Fuller, Military Thinker, London, Macmillan, 1987, p. 26. 8 Montgomery to Mountbatten, 22 September 1943, in Stephen Brooks (ed.), Montgomery and the Eighth Army: A Selection from the Diaries, Correspondence and other Papers of Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, August 1942 to December 1943, London, Bodley Head for the Army Records Society, 1991, p. 291. 9 Julian Thompson, The Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Conflict, London, Brassey’s, 1991, p. 89. 10 Montgomery’s notes headed Tripoli Tactical Talks, 17–19 Feb 1943’, in Brooks, Montgomery and the Eighth Army, p. 146. 11 ‘Despatch by General Sir Charles F.Keightley…. Operations in Egypt —November to December, 1956’, Supplement to the London Gazette, 10 September 1957, Tactical Doctrine Retrieval Cell Document No. 7802. 12 Montgomery to Brooke, 17 March 1943, in Brooks, Montgomery and the Eighth Army, p. 175. 13 Quoted in Richard M.Swain, ‘B.H.Liddell Hart and the Creation of a Theory of War, 1919–1933’, Armed Forces and Society, 17, Fall 1990, p. 45.

1 THE LESSONS OF THE 1920s AND MODERN EXPERIENCE Brigadier C.F.Drewry

In an exchange of correspondence with Field Marshal Sir William Robertson in the Morning Post in 1924 the CIGS, Field Marshal Lord Cavan, replied: Our great and threatening danger is that the Public see the necessity for a strong Air Force because they don’t want to be bombed, and a strong Navy to escort food and necessities of life to their shores, because they don’t want to be starved, but they don’t realise at all that neither Air Force nor Navy can operate without the protection of the Army. Consequently Governments are tempted to treat us as the unpopular sister, and we have to fight hard all the time. Thus was born the epithet of the ‘Cinderella Service’ for the 1920s Army which was to remain deprived of resources and popular support until called upon in the following decade to prepare for the least expected contingency of major war on the continent of Europe. To draw too close an analogy between the circumstances of the 1920s and the prospects for the 1990s would be to risk unduly straining credulity. We are not now suffering the aftermath of a World War which had cut down a whole generation and had left its survivors imbued with a keen sense of pacifism. Potential threats have not yet completely disappeared from the continent of Europe. Nor are we faced with the task of economic reconstruction in the face of rampant inflation and financial depression. Imperial policing is no longer a drain on our military resources. Yet in other respects there are illuminat-ing parallels which bear scrutiny for the lessons they may offer. With the ratification of the Versailles Treaty, the threat of conflict within Europe had disappeared for the foreseeable future just as the disintegration of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe in 1989

12

THE SCIENCE OF WAR

has reduced the public perception of the threat to the NATO Alliance from what once constituted the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Indeed the eventual confinement of Soviet forces to their national territory is becoming daily more of a reality. The role of NATO as a standing military organization and the roles of national forces within it could become progressively more open to question. A similar quandary led the British Cabinet to assume in 1919 that ‘the British Empire will not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years and that no Expeditionary Force is required for this purpose.’ Through political convenience and economic necessity the Ten Year Rule remained a key assumption in Defence Policy until 1932. The patent difficulties of defining a revised role for the Army should not have overridden the absolute necessity of framing one, but it was not until the publication of the Geddes Report in 1921 that the Army’s tasks were formally confined to the provision of sufficient forces to enable roulement of overseas garrisons, preparation for minor expeditions, and the provision of the necessary support to the civil power at home. The estimates for 1922–3 were simultaneously reduced by 26 per cent. On the presumption that the United Kingdom is unlikely to abrogate unilaterally its responsibilities under the Brussels Treaty or to NATO, any revision of the Army’s role and commitments in the 1990s will hinge on changes in these responsibilities reached through mutual agreement with allies. Already we hear forecasts that NATO will become more of a political rather than a military alliance, guaranteeing perhaps the integrity of national borders within Europe but suspending any specific assurances of coordinated military sanctions, should such guarantees be threatened. We have however only to look to the Locarno Treaty of 1925 and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, in which all the later participants of the Second World War except Germany and Russia agreed to resolve international disputes only ‘by pacific means’, to see how ineffectual these ‘covenants without swords’ proved to be. The inextricable link between the security of Great Britain and that of its continental neighbours was not lost on the General Staff in 1925: The true strategic frontier of Great Britain is the Rhine; her security depends entirely upon the present frontiers of France, Belgium and Holland being maintained and remaining in friendly hands.

LESSONS OF THE 1920S AND MODERN EXPERIENCE 13

Yet after 1919 the British garrison on the Rhine had declined from 45,000 to eight infantry battalions and one cavalry regiment and by 1932 had ceased to exist altogether. The traditional strategic interests stated in 1925 are of no less relevance today and, in the event of fragmentation of current alliances, would assume renewed importance. Not only do we require tangible evidence of military solidarity with European neighbours but we also need to retain a palpable demonstration of American commitment to European security as a counterbalance to residual Russian power. This points inescapably to the conclusion that the Army should maintain a commitment to continental Europe as its highest priority and that its size, shape and location need to be the subject of consultation and agreement rather than unilateral action. A forum for consensus on this issue could emerge from the arms control negotiations now underway in Vienna. Unlike the tentative and incomplete agreements reached in Washington in 1922 and London in 1930, today’s arms control proposals are specific on quantitative ceilings and zonal limits and are backed by stringent safeguards on verification and confidence-building measures. Agreement between NATO and the former Warsaw Pact may indeed be a short-term probability but a further and potentially much more difficult agreement on national quotas within both Alliances has yet to be resolved before any treaty can be signed by the twentythree sovereign states involved. Unless individual states willingly forego the option of exceeding their quota in any circumstances including local conflict and internal disorder, there can be no guarantee of the Alliances abiding by overall ceilings. Moreover national quotas will make states more dependent on their present alliances at a time when some may see advantage in adopting a more detached relationship, if not in reverting to neutrality in order best to serve their national interests. While Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) may thus have the beneficial effect of consolidating alliances and discouraging states from lapsing into confidence-sapping neutrality, it does not necessarily provide firm assurances of improved stability. For, in establishing national and alliance ceilings for treaty-limited items, it does not simultaneously establish floors. Instability could result from the understandable desire of some states to reduce their share of the defence burden to levels well below those permitted by arms control treaties. This could lead in turn to demands for

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progressively more demanding arms control agreements until the process of rational defence planning on an alliance basis becomes a practical impossibility. Indeed, planning blight and inertia were among the consequences of the inconclusive attempts to enforce disarmament before they were finally abandoned in 1934. Arms control therefore, desirable though it is in its own right, must be accompanied step by step by agreement on revised collective defence obligations and not merely on the distribution of the ‘peace dividend’. Within NATO this means that the greatest effort must be devoted to an effective and responsive force-planning process, if the Alliance is to survive in any militarily-viable form. The intransigence of some, the indecision of others, the sheer pace of change in the Eastern bloc, and the rapid concoction of new proposals and counter-proposals in the midst of the CFE negotiations are conducive of uncertainty and inertia, and will prompt some governments to wait and see before committing themselves to new defence responsibilities. Yet commitment there must be if the Alliance is to be prevented from sliding into a vicious spiral of competitive burden-shedding. Nor is procrastination the only threat to essential force planning. Insistence on fair shares in national defence reductions may yet foil the best-laid plans for harmonization of residual force levels and equipment. Optimistic revision of warning time may encourage an excessive reduction in readiness levels based on a misappreciation of the relative mobilization capacity, in both quantity and time, of Western nations which will be even more critically dependent on reinforcement across the Atlantic, and of the Eastern nations, which will continue to enjoy the benefits of operating on interior lines. Asymmetric reductions in NATO’s favour will also tend to discourage equipment modernization programmes despite the selfevident need for high quality weapons on a battlefield of lower forceto-space ratios. All of these potentially destabilizing factors need to be addressed and pre-empted in an unequivocal statement of Alliance policy for the post-CFE world. By comparison to the new commitments which should emerge from this re-evaluation of the needs of European security, the Army’s other commitments are likely to be peripheral in priority though none the less likely in terms of demand. The requirement for overseas garrisons is already set to decline but the capacity to intervene in defence of our remaining world-wide obligations will remain an unpredictable factor for the foreseeable future.


Unilateral intervention elsewhere in the world—such as the Gulf War—is not impossible though we cannot ignore the spread of increasingly sophisticated military technology and capabilities which received so much attention during that conflict. The need to intervene in conjunction with allies cannot, therefore, be ruled out. The United Nations’ record of keeping the peace rather than imposing it by force of arms looks set to be maintained, though demands for the UN’s services may increase if the break-up of major alliances leads to a higher incidence of sporadic and localized conflicts. Finally, the requirements for the defence of the UK base are likely to reduce but military assistance to the civil authorities shows no sign of decline. In these respects, the Army’s secondary roles differ little from those identified by Geddes as the sole tasks in 1921. Even so, it has to be observed that the Government was caught by surprise at having to cobble together a division to send to China in 1927 and was powerless to intervene when Italy later invaded Ethiopia. The newly formed League of Nations, widely expected to be the harbinger of universal peace, was also found wanting. Fifty-one battalions were deployed in Ireland in July 1921 for Internal Security duties of unprecedented scale in this century. Overstretch and undermanning are likewise not phenomena unique to modern times. In October 1921 the General Staff noted that ‘the British Army is already on the lowest basis compatible with the execution of the tasks entrusted to it and any further reductions are out of the question’. Underman-ning, noted the CIGS in 1923, was due to ‘uncertainty about such matters as conditions of service and the size and distribution of the Army, which have had bad effects from top to bottom’. Recruiting was proving difficult in both quantity and quality. Whereas 80 graduates were commissioned annually before 1914, this had fallen to 12 by 1924. Falling birthrates as a result of the carnage of the First World War produced a demographic trough at the start of the 1930s. By contrast today’s problems of demography is clearly soluble by a reduction of the standing commitment to the defence of Europe and by the adoption of a higher proportion of reserves or militia forces to regulars, provided that adequate conditions of service for all can be maintained. Individual reservists on the other hand would decline as an available resource in direct proportion to the reduction of the standing Regular Army. Foremost of those conditions of service must be a demonstrable belief that the Army is adequately equipped and trained to carry

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out its roles. This was certainly not the case in the 1920s. The Army Estimates were halved from £94m in 1921 to £42.5m in 1926. From 1923 to 1933 the annual allocation to the Master General of the Ordnance (MGO) and the Quartermaster General (QMG) together averaged £2m, or less than 5 per cent of total Army expenditure at its peak. The equivalent expenditure by MGO and QMG today represents about 30 per cent of the Army Grouping and this is itself some 20 per cent lower than the proportion spent by either of the other two Services on equipment. Even in a much less equipment-intensive Army of the 1920s, £2m per annum goes a long way to explain the reluctance to modernize by committing scarce resources to mechanization despite the fact that we were at the forefront of those Armies pioneering the new technology of armoured warfare. On the other hand it is equally important to avoid backing the wrong technology. Air power, and particularly the bomber, were regarded as the decisive new technology and the most cost-effective deterrent. Once the RAF had rapidly quelled a rebellion in Somaliland in 1920 by the application of some judicious bombing, the cost of £77,000 soon came to be quoted as the cheapest war in modern history and ‘air substitution’ became the byword of the decade. Air power was seen as the strategic deterrent of the era and moreover one which offered a cut-price alternative to an Expeditionary Force which would have been politically unpopular. Neville Chamberlain even went as far as to echo the popular fallacy that, whereas Air Forces were defensive instruments, Armies were offensive instruments and hence undesirable per se in the pursuit of peace. Correct interpretation of the utility of air power was confined almost exclusively to the Germans who were later to demonstrate so effectively the merits of balanced and well co-ordinated air and ground forces. In Britain misplaced faith in one particular technology therefore combined with political convenience to create a policy of ‘limited liability’ whereby Britain would undertake to develop deterrent forces in the shape of a powerful Navy and Air Force, leaving the French with their large conscript army to do whatever ground fighting might be required. Any similar faith in the ability of Britain’s strategic and sub-strategic nuclear deterrents alone to guarantee security in the 1990s, without the capacity to respond to different and lower levels of aggression, would be equally misplaced today. The outcome of all conflicts is decided ultimately on land. As the Americans


discovered to their cost in Vietnam, control of the sea and air may be a contributory factor but is not a definition of victory itself. The subsequent failure of the limited liability policy should make us wary too of pursuing a path of role specialization despite its apparent advantages in terms of economy. Not only does this path increase the risk of being overtaken by technological advance but it also leads to the probability of disproportionate sharing of the burden of collective defence. The expectation that any future NATO Alliance might rely on fighting to the last German is as unconvincing as a statement of collective will and as dangerously dependent on the whim of individual governments, as was the flawed assumption of the 1920s. If, as expected, burden-sharing continues to be an essential element of Alliance cohesion and member nations continue to be reluctant to abandon capability areas in toto, development of multinational capabilities will become a profitable avenue to explore. The NATO AWACS Force and the Allied Tactical Air Forces provide worthy examples to emulate wherever incompatibility of national equipment and logistic or linguistic difficulties do not impose insuperable operational disadvantages. To a greater extent than in the 1920s the pace of technological advance now far outstrips the rate at which new technology can be developed, deployed as battlefield systems and left in service for long enough to derive a cost-effective return on investment. Disproportionate investment in any one technology, however promising at the time, would lead to risk-laden cycles oscillating sharply between effectiveness and obsolescence. This is no argument for opting out of progressive modernization but it is becoming an ever more powerful motive for retaining balanced and overlapping forces in all capability areas in order to mitigate the escalating opportunities for technological surprise. Without such balance, we run the risk of treading the road to absurdity on which we procure ever smaller quantities of ever greater sophistication and cost, to the point where we become vulnerable to defeat by a numerically stronger but less sophisticated threat. Further evidence from the 1920s points to the dangers of role and equipment specialization in reducing the defence industrial base of nations. The run-down of the British defence industry in the 1920s caused delays and shortages when rearmament became an urgent necessity in the following decade. Armour plate and Bren guns had to be imported from Czechoslovakia, Browning machine

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guns from America, air defence guns from Sweden. The shortage of key avionics from Switzerland for Hurricanes and Spitfires was a principal reason for repeated slippage in forecasts of fighter production, whilst Cabinet minutes of the day are redolent with complaints about the shortfalls of skilled manpower for industry and Armed Forces alike. The trends of the 1990s are likely to see further mergers of defence industries into large international conglomerates and a greater reliance on foreign companies to provide any resemblance of competition in defence procurement. International collaboration, where feasible, may be given more impetus in the drive to reduce unit costs for smaller production runs but threatens at the same time to narrow the spectrum of national expertise across the wide range of defence requirements. The causes which gave rise to the ‘Cinderella Service’ of the 1920s can be avoided in the 1990s. The most damaging of these to the Army was the loss of morale. There was little incentive to join an Army which had such a low priority in the Government’s esteem. Indeed many officers of the day were motivated more by the prospect of an agreeable occupation, which offered an escape from social and technical change, than by the opportunities of a demanding and stimulating career. Rapid contraction of overall strength was not accompanied by a compensating reduction of the officer corps through compulsory redundancy with the result that too much dead wood was left in the senior ranks, promotion prospects stagnated and excessively long tours were commonplace in the absence of adequate career opportunities. For example, in 1922 200 officers, half of whom had already commanded brigades in war, were awaiting vacancies to command battalions. Wavell took 10 years to regain the rank of Brigadier after reverting to the rank of substantive Major and 359 subalterns in 1932 had over 11 years of service. Long tours, which are already promising to come back into fashion in the 1990s, were abolished by the Willingdon Committee in 1939 on the grounds that they vitiated imaginative thinking. Henceforth, all tours were to be for a maximum of 3 years but by 1939 it was too late to repair the damage of two decades of stagnation. Morale was however sustained by the regimental system which proved a source of strength in inspiring loyalty and maintaining a degree of motivation in times of government neglect. Under the principles established by the Cardwell reforms it was also an effective instrument in providing high quality manpower in the


relatively small formations required for imperial policing and minor expeditions. In the absence of a professional General Staff it did however foster a partisan rivalry between Arms and a narrow loyalty which transcended the bounds of healthy competition. The greater the contraction of the Army’s size, the greater the rivalry. Nowhere was this narrow-mindedness more apparent than in attitudes towards mechanization. Remarks in the RUSI Journal such as ‘The cavalry will never be scrapped to make room for the tanks’ are easy to ridicule now with the benefit of hindsight but reflected a not uncommon prejudice. Unsubstantiated assertions however are rarely as damning as reasoned scepticism such as from those who questioned the tank’s logistical and mechanical limitations, its vulnerability to anti-tank guns, whilst welcoming its development as a useful support weapon for the infantry. The most ardent advocates of armour on the other hand could not expect to inspire blind confidence, especially when Fuller, as one of the chief proponents, refused the opportunity of commanding the Tidworth Experimental Mechanized Brigade on the grounds that the appointment would tie him down too much to the chores of garrison administration. Pressed to develop a ‘New Model Division’ in 1928 specifically for a European war, it is unsurprising that the CIGS took the line of least resistance. Knowing that no consensus existed within the Army at large, let alone within the Army Council, he decreed the long-term development of all types of division. Tanks were to be attached piecemeal even to horsed cavalry divisions rather than create a special division of pure armour. Shortage of money was a further compelling reason for such a poor compromise and the alternative course of compensating disbandment of other units could not be contemplated while the Army was so stretched in meeting its existing commitments. Similar debates today constrain development of air mechanization, long-range precision-guided munitions, surveillance and target acquisition and command and control systems. Procedures for resolving competing claims on defence expenditure are now considerably more sophisticated and more immune to vested interest. Research and development, operational analysis and co-operation with allies have advanced to a point where it should theoretically be easier to identify the most profitable technologies to exploit in future systems. But the sceptics can still draw support from the mass of conflicting

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evidence derived from these advances in decision making and in the conviction that the greater the potential of any prospective battlefield system, the greater will be the impetus to develop an effective counter-measure. So, even if decisions on resource allocation are now conditioned by more objective means, the decisions themselves have become no easier to reach. All military thinking is further conditioned by the nature and capability of the perceived threat, which inevitably becomes the model against which to plan force structures, training and doctrine. In the 1920s, intelligence officers focused on the threat of war with Japan almost to the exclusion of other potential enemies. Over a period of ten years they developed a fixation about the one specific threat and were reluctant to redirect their attention when a different one emerged. The Defence Intelligence Staff has now spent 40 years focusing on the late Warsaw Pact, devoting the bulk of linguistic and technical effort to a threat which may no longer be the sole or even the main priority. There is therefore a clear need to adjust the targeting of intelligence as circumstances change. As an example of how other nations coped with the circumstances of the times, it is instructive to compare the British Army in the inter-war years with its German counterpart. The German Army, though defeated in 1918, was not discredited. It had enjoyed a 100-year tradition of compulsory military service, warfighting experience and above all a proud reputation for competence. Constraints on its post-war reconstruction were imposed by treaty as well as the burdens of war reparations and the catastrophic economic depression suffered by the Weimar Republic. Germany was thus forcibly deprived of any strategy for national defence save that of instigating a popular uprising against invasion which was its favoured solution in 1924. Under General Hans von Seeckt, the Army had no option but to plan for the long term and chose to lay the foundations for a new mass army. The training of the Reichswehr concentrated on the covert education of a new professional General Staff with officers receiving special instruction in engineering, armoured forces and combinedarms operations, despite the fact that the Army was to have no significant armoured or heavy artillery units before the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Officers and NCOs were trained to become the nuclei of eventual expansion. When rearmament began in


earnest in 1935, these cadres were ready to form the framework of a thirty-six division Army, based on modern thinking and equipment. Unencumbered by distractions of empire like their British counterparts, the Germans were able to focus on a single role, that of rapid and decisive battle on the continent of Europe. The German model of cadreisation in the 1920s was therefore the product of necessity and very different conditions to those pertaining in Britain either then or today. They had no requirement for a standing defence capability because they were forbidden to have one. What is remarkable about the German experience is the determination to retain expertise at the strategic and operational levels, and to inculcate in their skeleton army a quality of thinking which was largely lacking in their rivals abroad. In the British and American forces little attention was devoted to these important aspects in instruction, and the few officers who had studied such things by the outbreak of war in 1939 had largely done so through personal curiosity. In conclusion, a number of lessons need to be drawn from the experience of the 1920s ‘Cinderella Service’ if we are not to be condemned to repeat past errors. The first and most critical is to avoid strategic miscalculation when the threat of the day disappears. The European dimension contains the central challenge to the security of the nation, and non-binding agreements without military surety can never be a substitute for a standing military alliance. In the wake of arms control, NATO force structures and readiness levels need to be mutually agreed in the light of residual national obligations towards collective defence, rather than arbitrarily reduced in a competitive race to capitalize on lower spending. This calls for unequivocal policy statements on the Army’s future roles at both national and NATO levels. The Army’s other commitments, though peripheral by comparison, cannot be overlooked. The quality of the Army’s equipment and manpower will be of critical importance when force-to-space ratios have been reduced by treaty. We need to maintain balanced capabilities to avoid the impact of technological surprise and to protect the defence industrial base. Role-sharing rather than role specialization offers the best prospect of combining national and Alliance interests. We need to maintain adequate conditions of service and career opportunities and, above all, a quality of thinking at strategic, operational and tactical levels if we are to meet the new and

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unexpected challenges of the future. If all these lessons are heeded in the 1990s, we should not require the services of a Fairy Godmother to transform the Army’s fortunes and reinsure the security of Europe into the next century. But only time will tell.

2 THE CONTRIBUTION OF ORIGINALITY TO MILITARY SUCCESS Brigadier J. P. Kiszely MC

What is originality? In what ways has it influenced military success? To what extent has it contributed to British military success during this century? This essay sets out to answer these questions before attempting to assess the relevance of originality for the British Army of today and tomorrow. WHAT IS ORIGINALITY? At its simplest, originality is the quality of being original—that is to say novel, unobvious and not imitative. In its applied sense—the sense in which it is used here—originality is the ability to create original ideas or to invent an original solution to a problem. Originality is therefore the product of an original mind. From these definitions certain characteristics of originality unfold: 1 An original idea or solution will not, by definition, be an obvious one, nor will it be known in advance to the originator. It is likely therefore, to be unorthodox, and to be the product of an unusual approach: for example, the problem may be redefined in different terms or subjected to an unorthodox mental appreciation process. 2 The ideas and solutions generated by an original mind will be of varying degrees of originality and practicality; moreover, the ability to generate original ideas or solutions is not synonymous with the ability to select the best one. 3 The initiator of originality is imagination. ‘The specific role of imagination is to lead us into innovating, inventing, creating, exploring, risk-taking and adventuring.’1 Similarly, originality requries initiative if the idea is to be transferred into action.


4 Originality is an ability possessed by all human beings to a greater or lesser degree. ORIGINALITY AND MILITARY SUCCESS Some of the contributions of originality to military success are obvious and well known; others less so. Among the most dramatic have been those leading to the achievement of surprise (Fuller defined lack of surprise as doing something the enemy expects) particularly in the use of novel forces or the use of forces in novel ways: the use of elephants by Hannibal, for example, or the employment of blitzkrieg tactics by the Wehrmacht. Equally dramatic have been examples of surprise achieved through originality in the approach to battle: for example Wolfe at Quebec or MacArthur at Inchon. Those examples quoted by Liddell Hart in Strategy—The Indirect Approach are all examples of original minds at work, from Darius to Hitler.2 Indeed, originality is perhaps the only feature common to them all. Surprise through deception has also provided much scope for originaltiy. The feigned withdrawal by the Normans at Hastings, Marlborough’s march to the Rhine in 1704, and the elaborate deception measures prior to operation ‘Overlord’ are all examples of originality playing a significant role. An original mind would appear to be not merely useful for successful deception, but essential: the obvious solution is unlikely to deceive—unless some imaginative double-bluff is included. It follows, then, that the Great Commanders, few of whom did not a t some time make use of deception, were either themselves blessed with considerable originality, or employed someone who was. Surprise apart, originality’s greatest contribution on the battlefield has been to flexibility and initiative. Flexibility has been defined as ‘the capacity to adapt, to change a previously appropriate, but now inappropriate response, because of a change in environmental priorities or contingencies, or in a perceived goal’. 3 As a recent study has indicated,4 an original mind is more likely both to question whether or not the response is appropriate, and to provide an alternative which will place demands on the opponent’s flexibility, thereby gaining or retaining the initiative. This link between originality and initiative is particularly stressed by theorists of mobile warfare. Miksche in Blitzkrieg writes ‘To prevent the enemy from snatching back the initiative…he must be

ORIGINALITY AND MILITARY SUCCESS 25

constantly confronted with new faits accomplis’,5 and Simpkin in Race to the Swift defined initiative as ‘constantly creating new situations to be exploited’.6 In the contact battle, particularly in fast-moving or mobile warfare, the requirement is more for improvisation—the ability to produce original solutions on the spur of the moment—than for originality alone. S.L.A.Marshall summed up the whole art of command in terms of anticipation and improvisation: ‘60% anticipation, 40% improvisation’7 and others have pondered over whether or not the ability to improvise is intuition, instinct or just quick thinking.8 What is clear, though, is that throughout the ages, the hallmark of many great commanders has been their ability to improvise: for example, Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus, the Duke of Marlborough and Rommel. But perhaps equally significant is that such commanders have allowed their ability full scope by their choice of position on the battlefield. Alexander departed from the traditional position of a Greek commander and always positioned himself on a vantage point with good visibility, the more easily to spot opportunities and communicate his reaction; a similar innovation was made by Scipio. Of the Duke of Marlborough it was said, ‘Where there developed an opportunity for a decisive stroke the Duke was invariably to be found’,9 and of Rommel, ‘he had an uncanny faculty for appearing in the right place at the right time, so he was able to adapt plans to new situations’.10 Some commanders who have had particular confidence in their ability to improvise faster than their opponent—to get inside his decision-action cycle—have specifically sought to create conditions where this ability could flourish, and have dragged their enemy down into the arena of what Moshe Dayan called ‘organised chaos’. Napoleon did so, perhaps most notably at Austerlitz; Rommel did so at Gazala; and many Israeli commanders, not least Ariel Sharon, have done so with success on numerous occasions. Away from the heat of battle, the ability to adapt one’s weapons or tactics, and to do so with originality has often proved decisive in the evolutionary pendulum swing of weapon development (Fuller’s ‘Constant Tactical Factor’). The Roman response to Hannibal’s elephants is an interesting example. Hannibal was unfortunate to find as his opponent at Zama, Scipio, ‘the most original of Roman tacticians’:11 as the eighty elephants charged towards the Roman ranks they were met with a fanfare of trumpets, causing many to


panic and charge back into the Carthaginian ranks. The adoption of highly innovative tactics, organization and training were the foundation of Frederick the Great’s success; and among the reasons for Napoleon’s long run of victories was ‘the difficulty his opponents experienced in understanding his way of fighting and in devising effective responses’.12 It would not be true, though, to claim that originality has been a prerequisite for military success. Campaigns or battles have been fought where originality has played little or no part. Originality may have surfaced, for example, in some of the more resounding victories of the Roman legions over barbarian mobs, but more often the Romans could merely rely on their superior combat power and wait for ‘courage to shatter itself on the rocks of discipline’.13 Glorious though the battle of the Alma was, it was courage, determination and resilience, rather than originality which won the day; nor did originality play much part in the British conduct of the Battle of the Somme. Attrition often places little demand on originality. There have also been occasions when originality has been actively dysfunctional in military achievement. At the strategic and operational levels, Hitler frequently exercised originality in decision making, sometimes with spectacularly unsuccessful results: a perfect illustration of John Adair’s warning that ‘Scope for originality is also freedom to be a crackpot’.14 At the tactical level, the outcome of the English Civil War could be—and probably frequently was at the time—attributed to the originality of some of Cromwell’s tactical decisions. And although the concept of improvisation and initiative has been instrumental in many Israeli successes, there have been occasions, such as Sharon at Chinese Farm in the Yom Kippur war, when an excess of originality threatened the cohesion of the army. As Moshe Dayan had earlier observed, an emphasis on independence and improvisation without a strong controlling hand meant that ‘our capacity for misadventure was limitless’.15 What is harder, though, when seeing commanders attributed with originality, is determining whether or not a particular idea was indeed original, and if so whether it was their own, or they had recognized the originality of someone else’s idea and used it. If the result was successful they, themselves, may have been slow to correct those who assumed it was their idea. Napoleon, for example, although a highly original mind ‘was not a reformer


himself. He made use of the work of reformers that the new leaders had not completely understood or had not been able to exploit fully.’16 Rommel’s biographer, too, notes ‘If he was not a great originator…he was quick at adopting the insights of others’.17 Perhaps the ability to recognize originality in others and harness it is as much the hallmark of successful commanders as originality itself. There is one further factor to be noted at this stage: that originality invariably meets opposition. Hannibal’s announcement that he intended to take a herd of elephants with him over the Alps must have been greeted with less than total enthusiasm by some of his subordinates; and much the same reaction must have greeted Scipio’s announcement that his answer to the elephants would be the army’s musicians. Wolfe at Quebec was opposed jointly by all three of his Brigadiers, all of whom were senior to him in years, if not rank. The anti-Wolfe faction persuaded the Duke of Newcastle to tell the King that Wolfe was mad. (‘Mad is he?’ was the reply, ‘Then all I can say is I hope he bites some of my other Generals.’)18 Similarly, the Chief of the German General Staff, Halder, obstructed Rommel in Africa and branded him This soldier gone stark raving mad’.19 And in his plan for Inchon, MacArthur faced the opposition of his own staff, as well as that of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. Originality, therefore, requires force of personality to overcome opposition. In summary, although there are exceptions to the rule, originality has played a significant role in military success at all levels of warfare throughout the ages, and has been a hallmark of many great commanders. To what extent, though, has it characterized the activities of the British military in the twentieth century? THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Despite the perception of some authors that the only originality shown in the Boer War was that shown by the Boers, there is evidence to suggest that this is not entirely fair. Lord Roberts’s biographer describes him as ‘a general excelling in speedy decision, fluid tactics, avoidance of frontal assault [and with] a penchant for the unexpected’;20 and there are certainly occasions, such as his flank march to Bloemfontein, when Roberts displayed these talents


in South Africa. Kitchener, too, exhibited originality on occasions; and French carried out a ‘brilliant’ stroke at Klip Drift.21 Regimental histories record other acts of originality and flexibility. But such examples are invariably islands of originality, recorded as remarkable because they sat in a sea of unoriginality. British planning was not characterized by surprise and deception; British organizations and tactics gave little scope for flexibility; and although British doctrine adapted as a result of the reverses, it did so only very slowly. Far from adopting novel solutions to solve problems, the preferred prescription was ‘more of the same’—a policy which, admittedly, ultimately proved successful. ‘Victory was eventually gained by the overwhelming material and numerical forces that Britain put in the field’.22 During the subsequent period of peace leading up to the First World War there may have been many officers of originality in the British Army, but if there were, most of them were hiding their light under a bushel. There was, however, at least one group with a claim to originality. When Haldane became War Secretary in 1906 he gathered round him a collection of the best brains in the Army whom he described to Parliament in glowing terms: These men one comes across, the new school of young officers —entitled to the appelation of men of science just as much as engineers or chemists—were a revelation to me…. A new school of officers has arisen since the South African war, a thinking school of officers who desire to see the full efficiency which comes from new organisations and no surplus energy running to waste.23 This must have been well received by the House of Commons of 1906. But to what extent the group were originators, and to what extent merely bureaucrats, must be open to question. At the Staff College at Camberley there were certainly individuals making contributions to military thought, notably Colonel G.F.R.Henderson and Colonel J.F.Maurice, but as a recent study24 has pointed out, this was primarily in their capacity as military historians and antiquarians rather than as military scientists applying originality to the problems of the day. Elsewhere there did exist officers who wished to see reform—one author includes Roberts, Hamilton, Haig, Grierson and the Gough brothers25—but there were very few who put pen to paper, on this or any other


subject. Jay Luvaas in his ‘European Military Thought and Doctrine 1870–1914’26 finds only one work on strategy during the period with any claim to originality—Colonel Callwell’s Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice27—and he characterizes contemporary tactical literature as plodding devotion to detail. For original solutions to the military problems of the day one has to look to names such as Haldane, Brodrick, Arnold-Forster, Esher, Repington and Wilkinson—all civilians. A survey of British military originality in the First World War starts with a soldier whose originality has become legendary and upon whom historians compete to heap superlatives: T.E. Lawrence. ‘A generation ahead of his time’,28 ‘one of history’s greatest irregular warriors and perhaps the founding father of modern guerrilla warfare’,29 ‘A supreme example of the moral hero’. 30 Although he has his detractors, Lawrence’s originality as a soldier, theorist and writer are beyond doubt. That Lawrence was able to demonstrate his remarkable talents was, in part at least, due to the fact that his superior, Allenby, was also a man of originality and recognized Lawrence’s potential. Novel solutions also characterized Allenby’s operations; Wavell called him The best British general of the Great War’.31 Finding senior officers of originality on the Western Front is a harder task. Isolated original ideas or acts appear—and no doubt every biographer could point to some in his subject— but this is not the same as identifying an officer characterized by his ability to invent novel, unobvious and unimitative solutions to problems. There appears to be only one general about whom historians are unanimous as to his originality, and that is Monash, described by A.J.P.Taylor as ‘the only general of creative originality produced by the First World War’.32 Monash, however, was Australian. Interestingly, his biographer remarks on a characteristic which emerged earlier: It is misleading to use of Monash the adjective ‘creative’ for he created nothing new. The measure of his genius was that he learnt how to wring the greatest possible usefulness from every tool he was given, and this at times meant a departure from accepted practices.33 Further down the British military hierarchy original minds did exist and were at work, most notably those, like Fuller, responsible


for the development of tank tactics, but also those addressing other problems of the campaign and coming up with novel solutions. These solutions, however, rarely saw the light of day except after a tortuous struggle, and rarely in the manner envisaged by their advocates. It is worth noting, in passing, that the German army had greater success in this area, and by 1917 were introducing radical doctrinal innovations such as the elastic defence-in-depth, and infiltration, stormtrooper tactics.34 Between the World Wars the British Army could claim among its number two theorists of colossal originality: Liddell Hart and Fuller —although, admittedly, both made only part of their contribution while serving. Other soldiers, too, displayed originality of thought, particularly in connection with the development of armoured warfare—among their number, Martel, Broad, Lindsay and Hobart; other original minds addressed both this and wider issues: notably, Wavell, Pile, Wingate and Burnett-Stuart. But in an Army-wide context these were but a drop in the ocean. They certainly could not be said to be representative of the Army. Even at the Staff College there was only one short period when it became a centre for original thought, and that was during Ironside’s period as Commandant when Fuller was Chief Instructor. Again, it is worth, in passing, noting that not all armies were suffering from such a paucity of original thought. The Red Army, for example, was involved in surprisingly active debate on important doctrinal matters, with considerable originality in many of the contributions. Marshal Tuchachevski and General Triandafillov were challenging the accepted doctrine as early as 1922, and advocating mechanization, three dimensional operations and deep battle, all of which found their way into official doctrine.35 Similarly productive debate was taking place in the German army throughout the period in staff colleges, schools and the military press.36 The Second World War produced a number of notably original British commanders. Arguably the most original of these was Wingate, whose Chindit operations displayed a highly novel approach to the problems of defeating the Japanese in Burma. Like Lawrence he was fortunate to have a superior who appreciated his potential—in his case Slim—and a powerful patron in Churchill. Slim’s operations, too, were characterized by originality, not least


in tackling the immense logistic problems of the jungle. His solutions had to be original; there were no precedents. Elsewhere, Lieutenant General O’Connor’s operations in the Western Desert were also characterized by originality, although his talents there were short-lived (he was captured in 1941). Wavell and Auchinleck, too, both produced original operations in countering Rommel, many of Auchinleck’s being the product of his Acting Chief of Staff, Major General Dorman-Smith. DormanSmith was a highly original and fluent thinker at a time when ideas about how to beat Rommel were in short supply. Auchinleck recognized Dorman-Smith’s talents and used him as an ideas man. ‘To a particular problem Dorman-Smith might produce ten solutions. Out of the ten you could pick perhaps four that were practicable, and one that was a winner’.37 Other original thinkers found their way into Special Forces, notably David Stirling in the SAS. But for senior commanders, although, as in the First World War, it could be said that many exhibited flashes of originality—Montgomery for example— similarly there was an absence of those whose operations were invariably characterized by originality. The majority sought to avoid repeating the errors of the First World War by a no-nonsense approach of meticulous preparation—having things ‘properly teed up’ to use Montgomery’s phrase—rather than by dreaming up novel solutions. The German army, however, had a different approach to originality. Since 1945 there have been some notable examples of originality in British military activities, not least in some of the small wars and counter-revolutionary campaigns in which the Army has been involved. The use of protected villages in Malaya, the employment of counter-gangs in Kenya, the Special Forces contribution in Oman have all been significant. Originality, too, was required to solve many problems—particularly of logistics—in the Falklands. But whereas many of these campaigns—Northern Ireland especially —have provided excellent opportunities for leadership, particularly junior leadership, they have all, for good political and military reasons, placed strict limitations on the scope for originality— nowhere more so than in Northern Ireland. In the field of military science (in its widest sense) since 1945 significant contributions of originality from soldiers have been few, perhaps most notably from Field Marshals Carver and Bagnall, and General Kitson. Otherwise, the significant contributions have come


from civilians, not least from the burgeoning War Studies departments of universities. In retrospect, therefore, the twentieth century has seen some remarkable contributions of originality to the success of the British Army; but throughout the century these contributions have been most remarkable for their scarcity. Many things could be said to have characterized the British Army so far in the twentieth century, but an admittedly cursory survey would indicate that originality was not one of them. THE LACK OF ORIGINALITY Many factors might be advanced as to why this has been so. Dr Norman Dixon has drawn attention to, in particular, the temperamental inhibitions and psychological factors which have prevented some commanders from exercising their full potential of originality. Other authors have generalized about the alleged folly and stupidity of senior commanders. Of particular relevance is the analysis included by Sir Michael Howard in his lecture ‘Military Science in an Age of Peace’, drawing attention to the universality of the problem: The military profession is, like all other professions, also a bureaucraey, and bureaucracies accommodate themselves with great difficulty to outstanding original thinkers. Secondly, of course, the military are a hierarchy which is, for perfectly good functional reasons, exceptionally rigid, where subordination is exceptionally strict; and one where promotion depends on a good many factors other than intellectual insights and originality of concepts. Therefore the problem of encouraging and rewarding these original thinkers…presents genuine problems of a kind which laymen tend to underrate.38 The ease with which armies have reconciled these contradictions have been largely dependent on how deeply ingrained within them are the characteristics to which Sir Michael Howard refers, that is to say the degree to which they are bureaucratic, hierarchical, rigid and subordinate; and to the value they accord, in the first place, to originality. It is worth examining the British military experience in the twentieth century in this light.


For the British Army stability has played, and been perceived at the time to have played, a major role in its success, both its stability within society, and its internal stability epitomized by the regimental system. It has arguably been more stable during this period than any other army in the world. But the hallmarks of this stability—tradition and discipline—while being sources of great strength both in peace and war, have also produced innate and deeply ingrained conservatism and parochialism which have acted as a brake on change, whether change for the better or worse. This, in itself, is a notable tradition: The Duke of Wellington opposed every project for the major reforms of military administration advanced during his lifetime’39 a tradition followed, as closely as he could, by the Duke of Cambridge. A recent biographer of the Army has brought the story up to date: Historically, the Army has resisted change until its trenches have been overrun, after which it has retreated in orderly fashion, regrouping and defending its new positions. It opposed the innovations introduced by Cardwell and Haldane, but ever since has fought strongly to retain them.40 In addition, for reasons of its social origins, education, ethics and mores, the officer corps has tended to be highly conventional and conformist, accepting a strict and rigid hierarchy in which loyalty tended to be perceived as loyalty to superiors. In this atmosphere, criticism—suggestion that things are not being done as well as they could be—can be, and often has been, perceived to be tantamount to insubordination, and therefore ‘bad form’. For example, John Terraine recounts how Haig, who at the turn of the century had made something of a name for himself as a military critic, was rebuked by the Prince of Wales: The criticisms may be correct—but it does not do’.41 (A rebuke which Haig’s subsequent career would suggest had been heeded.) Criticism of any sort was particularly unwelcome when made by juniors of their seniors. As Liddell Hart wrote in his biography of Lawrence: ‘To those who were solidly buttressed by dignity and orthodoxy, the idea of a temporary Second Lieutenant indulging in military criticisms, and sitting in judgement on Generals, was revolting.’42 This attitude had the effect of suppressing originality, except in the cases of extraordinary characters such as Lawrence. The exaggerated and


undue reverence for rank, age and length of service was noted by Churchill: The firmly inculcated doctrine that an admiral’s opinion is more likely to be right than a captain’s and a captain’s than a commander’s did not hold good when questions entirely novel in character, requiring keen and bold minds, unhampered by long routine, were under debate’.43 It is not entirely coincidental that although many people have remarked on this attitude to criticism and authoritarianism, very few of those who have done so have been soldiers. One who did was the perceptive General Tuker who, as late as 1948, wrote ‘In our Army it is held as somewhat out of place to criticise’44 and went on to recognize the problem that this attitude created. This sensitivity to criticism, whether from without or within, dies hard. To what extent it is still alive today is difficult to assess, but if the British Army Review is in any sense a barometer, the establishment remained highly sensitive to criticism certainly up until the 1980s. The editorial review of ‘On the Psychology of Military Incompetence’ resorted to a personal attack on the author’s integrity and his motivation for writing the book45 (an accusation which resulted in a subsequent public editorial apology).46 And when ‘A Serving Officer’ wrote under that pseudonym to The Times in 197747 proposing greater independence of thought and expression, the Review inveighed against officers who let the side down by ‘washing dirty linen in public’ and felt sure that ‘the majority of officers have nothing but contempt for any one of their fellows who writes anonymously to the press’, not because it happened to be illegal but ‘because to do so represents a form of disloyalty to the Service which few officers find acceptable and most find unpardonable’.48 One unfortunate consequence of a reluctance to criticize, and of an exaggerated emphasis on loyalty to superiors, has been that the lessons of war have often tended to go unlearnt. For example, in the jubilation of victory in the aftermath of the Boer War no one wished to cause unpleasantness by washing dirty linen in public or suggesting that things should have been done differently. In his official history of the war, G.F. R. Henderson had started to make such suggestions but he died before completing the work and the offending chapters were expurgated before publication.49 Similarly, after the First World War the emphasis was on celebrating the victory, and led to what Correlli Barnett has called a ‘bristling complacency’ about existing doctrine and methods.50 It was not


until 1932 that the Kirke report drew attention to the deficiencies of generalship, the report being immediately censored by the CIGS. 51 This was a pity, since the report addressed some pertinent questions, such as ‘Are we going the right way about producing selfreliant commanders of initiative and imagination? The whole terrible story of these battles is a story of the lack of them’.52 Although suppression of criticism has been perhaps the major factor in the absence of originality both on and off the battlefield, a further factor has been the belief, prevalent in the British Army (in the first half of the century at least) that theoretical study had little to contribute to originality or anything else on the battlefield. Instead, faith was placed in an empirical approach, together with a belief that character rather than intellect was important in war, and ‘an ingrained British idea that continual presence with troops, chance participation in small wars and exercise in games are the best training for high command’.53 Other armies recognized that originality did not spring from this source alone. For the Soviet Army, for example, It is the man who is well versed in military art who, at critical moments in the battle, can find the necessary resources to use against the enemy. It is a deep knowledge of military art which makes creative thinking on the battlefield possible. He who thinks he can get himself out of a hole by dint of native wit or plain commonsense alone, in place of knowledge and study of military skill, will come to a sticky end on the wartime battlefield.54 The more complex, fast moving and uncertain that war has become, and the higher the level of command involved, the more this dictum has appeared to be true. In any case, in the early years of the century very few officers attended the Staff College (at the outbreak of the First World War the Army contained only 500 Staff College graduates)55 but even for those who did attend, the atmosphere there was not conducive to originality. Fuller’s attempts to inject some original thought were received by the Commandant with something less than the warm glow of approval, and Fuller’s view of the Staff College was scathing: ‘lt must not be thought…that our instructors were complete idiots; they were not. They were just part of a machine created to produce


standardised thinking’.56 It would appear that, Ironside’s tenure apart, little changed between the Wars. General Tuker wrote: the occluding clouds of 1914–18 hung over the teaching and settled damply on all original thought…this spell-binding traditionalism continued at that place well into the late twenties, and much of it held on till later. Excellent staff officers emerged, men capable of the highest efficiency exemplified by such great projects as ‘Overlord’; but inevitably there came forth astonishingly few capable commanders for a war of manœuvre.57 Both Fuller and Liddell Hart considered that this spell-binding traditionalism had bred narrow, closed and compartmentalized minds, totally inimical to originality, and summed up by the epithet ‘the military mind’. Liddell Hart wrote The only thing harder than getting a new idea into a military mind is getting an old one out’.58 For Fuller, Throughout history the soldier has lacked but one thing —he has steadfastly refused to think. And as a rider may I add he has steadfastly opposed whoever has troubled to think for him.’59 No doubt Fuller had foremost in his mind the opposition faced by the early advocates of the tank, and also the treatment accorded to those who had dared display originality in the Army in his lifetime: Lawrence had faced stubborn obstruction by the military establishment in Palestine; Wingate’s Chindit Special Force failed, it is claimed, ‘because of the obtuseness or obstruction of orthodox military commanders’;60 Dorman-Smith was the object of vindictive treatment by the military hierarchy; Fuller, himself, was pressurized out of the Army; and both he and Liddell Hart on occasion were cold-shouldered by most of the military establishment. A final heritage which impaired the development of originality was the Army’s experience in the last half of the nineteenth century. This experience had been one of small wars in far-flung corners of the Empire, where superiority of combat power had usually led to victory through attrition, with little call for originality. ‘Whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun—and they have not.’61 Under these circumstances, the prized martial virtues were not originality and initiative, but gallantry and discipline. Not unnaturally, therefore, those officers who succeeded in the Army and rose to the top of it were those with a proven record


of gallantry, discipline and physical courage; the extent to which they possessed intelligence, originality and moral courage being considered to be less important. Yet the higher in rank they rose, the less relevant became the former qualities, and the more important the latter. Combined with the conventionality and orthodoxy noted earlier, this had unfortunate consequences; for any display of originality in an atmosphere that was so unreceptive to criticism made demands on moral courage—and not infrequently demand exceeded supply. Liddell Hart observed of the First World War, ‘lt would seem that none of the army commanders ventured to press contrary views with the strength that the facts demanded. One of the lessons of the war, exemplified at Passchendaele is certainly the need of allowing more latitude in the military system for intellectual honesty and moral cour-age.’62 A.J.P.Taylor put it more bluntly, Those generals who prolonged the slaughter kept their posts and won promotion’.63 This link between originality and the force required to overcome opposition to it—moral courage—was noted earlier. Even after the First World War it influenced the reluctance to step outside recognized and accepted practice which bred a suspicion of doctrinal innovation. Rommel pointed to this as one of the main reasons for the British defeats in the desert: In their opinion, only that military thinking which followed standardized rules was acceptable. Everything outside these rules they regarded as a gamble and, if it succeeded, the results of luck and accident. This attitude of mind created prejudice, the consequence of which was incalculable.64 Tactical innovations were treated with suspicion. Instead of recognizing the potential of a man who, to any tactical problem, could produce ten solutions, four of which were practicable and one a winner, the British military establishment tended to draw the conclusion that since half his solutions were impracticable, such a man was therefore untrustworthy, tactically unsound and a menace—and would no doubt have viewed Leonardo da Vinci in much the same light. This inability to develop and innovate doctrine as fast as the opposition—the tendency merely to prescribe ‘more of the same’ or ‘the same but better’—has continually posed a problem for the


British army in the twentieth century. The German army, for example, have had greater success in coming to terms with the problem. The dramatic changes in their doctrine in the First World War did not happen by accident; they had recognized the need to reconcile the requirement for originality and initiative with that for discipline and obedience (in a treatise entitled ‘Drill Oder Erziehung’).65 At the same time that Haig was discouraging debate or dissent, Ludendorff was ‘directing the corporate effort towards the problems of tactical change…and instituted a system for turning original ideas into doctrine’.66 IntheBritish Army there were, no doubt, some officers with just as original ideas; but there was no system to encourage or co-ordinate or harness these ideas; or to learn the lessons of battle. When, on one occasion, GHQ circulated a ‘lessons learnt’ report following a battle, it warranted an entry in the official history.67 It was no coincidence, either, that original thought flourished in the German Army between the wars, or that quick, original and decisive German commanders appeared on the battlefields of the Second World War. Original thinking had become enshrined in their official doctrine. It might be opposed, but not because it was original perse. Similarly, the development of Soviet military doctrine has flourished because original thought, albeit within strict parameters, has been encouraged in military schools, staff colleges and the military press since the 1920s, continuing the tradition of the Tsarist army. That a cult of unoriginality persisted for so long in the British Army was a consequence of the fact that all hierarchies seek to reproduce themselves in their own image; and the British Army was not only a particularly strong and rigid hierarchy, but it had at its head old men, naturally resistant to change, who personified the hierarchy’s values and characteristics, one of which was unoriginality. And as John Stuart Mill observed, ‘Originality is the one thing that unoriginal minds cannot see the use of’68 (a view with which ‘left side/right side’ psychologists would concur). This pattern can be seen particularly clearly between the Wars in the succession of Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff between 1922 and 1939 who, for all their other great qualities, were, almost without exception, conventional, orthodox, authoritarian, lacking in originality and ‘absurdly sensitive to criticism’.69 Furthermore they found themselves unduly influenced by retired officers and other vested interests: ‘the great army of those who have left the service and are now entrenched in the clubs of this city’.70 General


Gort, for example, wrote in 1938 ‘We must not offend the people in the clubs’.71 To what extent the cult of unoriginality has bequeathed to us an unwelcome legacy is open to question. In 1973 Sir Michael Howard remarked that all too often the military man was ‘fundamentally hidebound; that is to say, somebody who is trapped in his environment, so soaked in his problems that he finds it intellectually and psychologically impossible to lift himself out and see them in a different kind of perspective’.72 Other traits can also still be seen today. The following of standardized rules and applying template solutions has persisted since the war, perhaps because, as the Kirke report laconically remarked, ‘unfortunately many people prefer to use their memories rather than their brains’.73 Forty-five years of peacetime soldiering in the British Army of the Rhine, often over well-known ground, often in heavily scripted and controlled displays rather than two-sided, competitive exercises have inevitably placed small demands on originality. In Northern Ireland, too, originality has played a diminishing role in the activities of all but a few soldiers. For perfectly good military, political, legal and geographic reasons emphasis is on the application of set drills and highly detailed instructions, epitomized by the yellow, blue, green, white, pink and buff cards covering every conceivable eventuality. Additionally there remains the tendency at schools and staff colleges for students to adopt orthodox and conventional solutions due to a perceived necessity to avoid the stigma of ‘tactically unsound’, although the necessity is often more apparent than real. In approaching apparently insoluble problems there is little enthusiasm for radical solutions, or what Martin van Creveld calls ‘conceptual side stepping…a rethinking not merely of tactics, but of operations and even of the goals of the conflict. It is not a question of doing the same better but of doing something altogether different.’74 It does also seem to be the case that originality continues to be stunted in Army officers due to the discouragement by the establishment of serving officers contributing to the public debate on matters affecting their profession. There are very strict rules on any such contribution to the press, particularly any hint that things could be done better or differently. There also appears to be a continuing suspicion of any serving officer who wishes to put pen to paper, a suspicion characterized by what one historian has described as ‘that tiresome process of bureaucratic interference in


the publication of the works of British Army officers which has reached such ludicrous proportions today’.75 This goes at least some way to explaining the paucity of original contributions to military science noted earlier. Nevertheless, despite these problems, it would appear that originality is making a fighting stand. Although it is impossible to prove, there certainly seem to be more unconventional, unorthodox and originally-minded young officers now than there have been in the past. And indeed it would be strange if there were not, considering the increased value that society as a whole places on these characteristics, not to mention the increased proportion of graduate officers in the Army. But equally it would appear (again, on little evidence) that proportionally more of these unconventional rebels get bored and leave, precisely because they are unconventional rebels, than do their more orthodox and conventional colleagues. This is a pity if Fuller is correct and ‘originality not conventionality is one of the pillars of generalship’.76 In retrospect it can be seen that, due to a number of readily identifiable factors—organizational, social, historical and political, as well as military—the British Army has found it particularly hard to accommodate itself to originality in its ranks in the twentieth century; so much so, that when originality has appeared on the stage and played a part, it has done so almost always in spite of the military establishment rather than because of it. It is therefore the contention that those who look at the exploits of soldiers of outstanding originality like Lawrence, Wingate, Stirling, Liddell Hart and Fuller and draw the conclusion that the British Army inherits a rich tradition characterized by originality are deluding themselves. The British Army inherits a tradition of suppressing originality, more often than not with success. THE PRESENT AND FUTURE REQUIREMENT FOR ORIGINALITY The requirement for originality in the present day Army might seem obvious, but there are a number of reasons why originality might be a particularly important quality for today’s and tomorrow’s officers.


Manœuvre warfare and directive control First, the British Army is moving towards the tactical doctrine of Manœuvre Warfare. This places great emphasis on initiative, in the sense used by Simpkin of ‘constantly creating new situations to be exploited’.77 It stresses that war is the province of uncertainty and friction, but recognizes with Clausewitz the fact that this therefore presents not so much a problem as an opportunity for ‘the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam’.78 This places a heavy premium on originality. The importance of this was underlined by General Herman Balck, one of Manœuvre Warfare’s greatest practitioners, who warned against ‘the school approach which says “In accordance with the ideas of the General Staff in this situation you must do this and such?” On the contrary, you must proceed as dictated by the personalities involved and the particulars of the situation.’79 The requirement is, therefore, the antithesis of the template solution, the populariiy of which was noted earlier. Its eradication, however, is not easy because it is a symptom rather than the disease itself. ‘lt is not enough simply to announce that school solutions are out of order. There must be forceful and continuous challenging of basic assumptions.’80 In the past, the British Army officer has not been noted for his forceful and continuous challenging of basic assumptions. In addition, the Army has acknowledged that Manœuvre Warfare is only possible with Directive Control: command by minimum orders, as opposed to the traditional British method of command by detailed orders. The success of Directive Control rests on commanders at all levels possessing independent-mindedness, flexibility and the ability to invent original solutions to problems. ‘At all levels’ deserves emphasis: it is insufficient for some commanders within a chain of command to possess these qualities but for others to lack them; if this happens the chain will break. Manœuvre Warfare and Directive Control, therefore, place emphasis on pragmatism and opportunitism rather than conservatism, on heresy rather than orthodoxy, and on originality rather than conventionality. The operational level of war The Army has now recognized (not least with the establishment of the Higher Command and Staff Course) the existence of the


operational level of war—the level linking the tactical and strategic levels—and therefore the existence of Operational Art, the application of which calls for originality. Whereas at lower levels the emphasis was on improvisation—the ability to produce original solutions on the spur of the moment-success at higher levels will depend more on originality and imagination than on the ability to make instant decisions.81 It is also worth noting one further requirement, stressed by Richard Simpkin, which recalls a previous theme: At the operational level the commander needs the moral courage to keep his judgement unclouded when forced to accept short term setbacks for the sake of long term aims, or to follow a course which he knows will cause heavy casualties among men who trust and respect him. Above all he needs moral courage to take big decisions and stick to them.82 Strategic uncertainties At the strategic level, although the past forty-five years have seen British military involvement in a large number of small conflicts around the globe, the period has also been characterized for the Army by the two superpower blocks locked into Cold War confrontation in central Europe. This familiar and unchanging picture has presented a comforting stability for strategic advisers and defence planners. Yesterday’s solutions were at least a basis for today’s and tomorrow’s problems; more often than not change was merely adjustment. Clearly this is no longer the case. The future presents strategic advisers and defence planners only with uncertainty, and places unprecedented demands on (or unlimited scope for) their imagination, originality and breath of vision. The pace of technological change Lastly, the accelerating pace of technological change offers a decisive advantage to the side which can adapt to and harness those changes and developments faster and more effectively than the opposition. Too often this is seen merely as a race of bringing new, individual weapons and equipments into service; but perhaps more important is the inherent ability to adapt organizations and doctrine to maximize the combined potential of the new


technologies. As Fuller pointed out The highest inventive genius must be sought not so much amongst those who invent new weapons as among those who devise new fighting organizations.’83 Without originality, let alone genius, the new technologies will merely be grafted on to existing organizations and doctrines in a way designed to cause the least inconvenience and least unpleasantness in peacetime. The risks of having operated on this principle in the past are as nothing to the dangers of doing so in the future. CONCLUSION Originality has historically played an important role in military success: the most successful military commanders have invariably been those of original minds or those who could recognize and harness the originality of others. Although this century has seen some highly original British soldiers in both war and peace, originality has not characterized the activities of the British Army. However, the demands of a new doctrine, an emphasis on the operational level of war, strategic uncertainties and the pace of technological change will place far greater demands on originality in future. How well the Army meets these challenges will depend to a great extent on its ability to accommodate itself to originality within its ranks rather better in the future than it has done in the past. NOTES 1 John Adair, Great Leaders, Guildford, Adair/Talbot Publishing, 1989, p. 93. 2 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy—The Indirect Approach, London, Faber & Faber, 1967. 3 R.J.Miles and A.Philpott, Flexibility in the Commander (APRE Report, 82 R001), p. 33. 4 ibid. 5 F.O.Miksche, Blitzkrieg, London, Faber & Faber, 1941, p. 122. 6 Brigadier R.Simpkin, Race to the Swift, London, Brassey’s, 1985, p. 22. 7 S.L.A.Marshall, Men Against Fire, New York, Peter Smith, 1978, p. 108. 8 W.S.G.Doughty, ‘Intuition and Decision Making’, British Army Review, No. 93, December 1989.


9 M.van Creveld, Command in War, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 54. 10 F.W.Von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles, London, Futura, 1977, p. 56. 11 Viscount Montgomery, A History of Warfare, London, Collins, 1968, pp. 327. 12 P.Paret (ed.), The Makers of Modern Strategy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 134. 13 Montgomery, A History of Warfare, p. 103. 14 Adair, Great Leaders, p. 93. 15 van Creveld, Command in War, p. 147. 16 Paret (ed.), The Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 125. 17 R.Lewin, Rommel as Military Commander, London, Batsford, 1968, p. 244. 18 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Great Captains Unveiled, Bath, Chivers Press, 1977, p. 246. 19 Lewin, Rommel as Military Commander, p. 41. 20 W.H.Hannah, Bobs: Kipling’s General, London, Leo Cooper, 1972, p. 220. 21 P.Warwick, The South African War, Harlow, Longman, 1980, p. 91. 22 C.Barnett, Britain and Her Army, London, Allen Lane, 1970, p. 347. 23 ibid., p. 353. 24 B.Holden Reid, War Studies at the Staff College 1890–1930, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, Occasional Paper No. 1. 25 A.Farrar-Hockley, ‘Allenby’, in M.Carver (ed.), The War Lords, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1976, p. 158. 26 In M.Howard (ed.), The Theory and Practice of War, London, Cassell, 1965, p. 81. 27 Colonel C.E.Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, London, War Office, 1906. Since it was subtitled ‘How to Conduct Expeditions against Savages and Semi-Civilised Races’, its readers may have found it of limited use in preparation for the First World War. 28 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, in D.L.Bulloch, Allenby’s War, London, Blandford, 1988, p. 40. 29 ibid. 30 S. Bidwell, Modern Warfare, London, Allen Lane, 1973, p. 197. 31 A.P.Wavell, Allenby: A Study in Greatness, London, Harrap, 1940, p. 254. 32 A.J.P.Taylor, The First World War, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1963, p. 179. 33 A.J.Smithers, Sir John Monash, London, Leo Cooper, 1973, p. 13. 34 See T.Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine, Leavenworth Paper No. 4, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, July 1981. 35 See M.Mackintosh, ‘Developments of Soviet Military Doctrine’, in Howard (ed), The Theory and Practice of War, pp. 249–69. 36 See R.J.O’Neill, ‘Doctrine and Training in the German Army’, in Howard (ed.), The Theory and Practice of War, pp. 145–64. 37 Lavinia Graecen, Chink: A Biography, London, Macmillan, 1989.


38 RUSI Journal, Vol. 119, No. 1, March 1974, p. 5. 39 M.Howard (ed.), Wellingtonian Studies, Aldershot, Gale & Polden, 1959, p. 89. 40 H.Stanhope, The Soldiers, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1979, p. 321. 41 J.Terraine, Haig: The Educated Soldier, London, Hutchinson, 1963, p.27. 42 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, ‘T.E.Lawrence’ in Arabia and After, London, Jonathan Cape, 1937, p. 102. 43 W.S.Churchill, The World Crisis, London, Butterworth, 1923, p. 102. 44 F.Tuker, The Pattern of War, London, Cassell, 1948; p. 4. 45 British Army Review, No. 54, December 1976, p. 74–5. 46 British Army Review, No. 55, April 1977, p. 77. 47 The Times, 31 March 1977. 48 British Army Review, No. 58, April 1978, p. 82. 49 J.Luvaas, Education of an Army, London, Cassell, 1964, p. 239. 50 Barnett, Britain and Her Army, p. 411. 51 Harold R.Winton, To Change An Army, London, Brassey’s, 1988, p. 239. 52 Luvaas, Education of an Army, p. 394. 53 General Ironside quoted in Higher Command and Staff Course Booklet II, 1989. 54 General M.Kalinin, quoted in C.Donnelly, Red Banner, Coulsden, Janes, 1989, p. 101. 55 B.Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College, London, Eyre Methuen, 1972, p. 326. 56 Quoted in Winton, To Change an Army, p. 28. 57 F.Tuker, Approach to Battle, London, Cassell, 1963, p. 144. 58 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, London, Faber & Faber, 1943, p. 115. 59 Evening Standard, 28 December 1942. 60 Bidwell, Modern Warfare, p. 211. 61 Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller, London, Edward Arnold, 1898. 62 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, History of the World War, London, Faber & Faber, 1934, p. 429. 63 Taylor, The First World War, p. 84. 64 D.Young, Rommel: Desert Fox, London, Collins, 1950, p. 242. 65 J.Luvaas, ‘European Military Thought and Doctrine’, in Howard (ed.), The Theory and Practice of War, p. 90. 66 Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine, p. 8. 67 ibid., p. 41. 68 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 3. 69 Duff Cooper of the senior generals in 1935, quoted in B.Liddell Hart, Memoirs Vol. 1, London, Cassell, 1965, p. 300. 70 Arnold-Forster, quoted in Winton, To Change an Army, p. 105. 71 Winton, To Change an Army, p. 412. 72 M.Howard, ‘Military Science in an Age of Peace’, in The Theory and Practice of War, p. 5.


73 Report of the Committee on the Lessons of the Great War, Appx II, London, HMSO, 1932, p. 36. 74 M.van Creveld, Technology in War, London, Collier Macmillan, 1989. 75 B.Holden Reid, War Studies at the Staff College 1890–1930, London, HMSO, 1992, pp. 1–23. 76 General J.F.C.Fuller, Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure, London, Military Service Publishing Co., 1936, p. 3. 77 Simpkin, Race to the Swift, p. 217. 78 Clausewitz, On War, ed. M.Howard and P.Paret, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 89. 79 Quoted in W.Lind, Manœuvre Warfare Handbook, Boulder, Col. and London, Westview, 1985, p. 7. 80 J.W.Masland and Redway, Soldiers and Scholars, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 504. 81 Doughty, ‘Intuition and Decision Making’, p. 15. 82 Simpkin, Race to the Swift, p. 217. 83 General J.F.C.Fuller, Armament and History, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1946, p. 155.

3 ECONOMY OF EFFORT: A PASSIVE PRINCIPLE Colonel P.P.Rawlins MBE

‘To the devil with history and principles. What is the problem?’ (Verny-du-Vernois at Nachod, 1866) Many might say that the quotation above has a distinctly British ring about it, and reflects very much the style of an army in which the role of the leader had traditionally been emphasized almost to the exclusion of all other factors; an army which would probably accept that war is a science only in so far that, to quote Thomas Hurley, science is ‘organised common sense’ (though it would prefer to ignore the fact that Hurley went on to describe common sense as ‘the rarest of all the senses’). When, towards the end of the nineteenth century, British military thinkers were seeking to set out rules for the conduct of war, based on their interpretations of past campaigns, they were generally much quicker to concede that there are indeed a number of basic principles of war than to commit themselves as to what these principles might be. Thus Hamley1 could say ‘History shows clearly that all successful tactical methods have been based on great fundamental principles, which are as changeless as the human nature on which they depend’, but he never followed this up with any statement of what these principles are. G.F.R.Henderson, in a lecture published after his death, having said that ‘strategical principles are neither to be rigidly adhered to nor overscrupulously respected’, concluded that: there are two great principles which are the foundation and crown of all strategic methods…defined for us by ‘Stonewall’ Jackson as:

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1 Always mystify, mislead and surprise the enemy. 2 Never give up the pursuit so long as your men have the strength to follow. To move swiftly, strike vigorously and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.2 Sound advice perhaps, but hardly worthy of the status of principles of war. Even as recently as 1914, our Field Service Regulations, having stated grandly that The fundamental principles of war are neither very numerous, nor in themselves very abstruse,’3 fails to give the reader any further hint as to the nature of these principles. To be fair though, even the great Marshal Foch, in his book entitled The Principles of War,4 lists economy of force, freedom of action, free disposal of forces, security, and then concludes the list with ‘etc.’ from which one can only conclude that he was in some doubt as to exactly how many principles there were, and what the others might be. However, by 1924 all such doubts had apparently been resolved, at any rate for the British Army. The Field Service Regulations published in that year listed the principles of war as follows; the objective, offensive, mobility, security, surprise, concentration, economy of force and co-operation,5 a list which bears a close approximation to that which is contained in the recently published British Military Doctrine. Leaving aside the addition in today’s list of flexibility and administration, one of the changes that catches the eye is the use of the term ‘economy of effort’ in place of the ‘economy of force’ of the 1924 list. This chapter will examine the meaning and applications of the principle of economy of effort with a view to identifying whether or not there is any significance in the revision of the terminology, whether or not it represents a more appropriate term than economy of force, and how it might be applied in the future. The British Military Doctrine describes the principle of economy of effort as follows: The corollary of concentration of force is economy of effort. It is impossible to be strong everywhere and if decisive strength is to be concentrated at the critical time and place, there must be no wasteful expenditure of effort where it can not significantly affect the issue. In order to gain a substantial advantage, a commander will have to take a calculated risk in

ECONOMY OF EFFORT: A PASSIVE PRINCIPLE 49

a less vital area. The application of this principle may be summed up as planning for a balanced employment combined with a prudent allocation of resources strictly related to the aim.6 This definition is amplified in the official pamphlets by two historical examples. The first is an example of the application of economy of effort at the tactical level and cites Wellington’s handling of the Allied Army at the Battle of Waterloo, concluding that ‘seldom has the principle of economy of effort been applied to such good effect’. However, in this particular case it is not easy to see in what sense Wellington’s sparing feeding in of reserves to hold the line of the ridge and the outposts in front of it, was in any sense the corollary of concentration of force. There is no suggestion that he was taking risks in his allocation of troops to the line in order to concentrate for a battle-winning stroke elsewhere. His design for battle seems to have rested on the requirement to hold the line at Waterloo for as long as it took for Blucher’s Prussians to reach the field. That he judged to a nicety the strength required to hold the various sections of the line, and that he husbanded his reserves with consummate skill is unarguable. However, it would seem that the driving factors that led him to the dispositions that he adopted were the need for security on the ridge, balanced by the need to retain effective reserves with which to react to restore penetrations of the position should any occur. If this constitutes economy of force, it raises the question whether the principle means any more than that troops should be allocated in a strength appropriate to the task required of them. The second example is at the operational level and uses von Manstein’s winter campaign of 1942–3 and the Kharkov counterstroke. In this case risks certainly were taken in the strength of the forces allocated to the task of holding the line in a very fluid situation in which considerable pressure was being exerted by the Russian winter offensive. The requirements of security, or protection, were met with the absolute minimum of force in order to enable the maximum possible strength to be concentrated for the offensive actions of the Donets and Kharkov counterstrokes. It seems reasonable to presume therefore that the thought processes involved in arriving at the deployment and manœuvre plans were based on considerations of the need to gain the initiative by offensive action, and therefore the need to limit the

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proportion of the available forces that were confined to holding the line elsewhere to the essential minimum. These were the active, or dynamic principles involved. If the result reflects economy of force, then again the implication is that the term describes that deployment which arises out of the correct application, or an appropriate application, of those dynamic principles which form the governing factors in the development of the plan. Amongst the multitude of examples quoted in military literature as illustrating the principle of economy of force, an often recurring category refers to the employment of field defences to enable a smaller proportion of the available forces to hold a line, or position, than would otherwise be the case. Indeed the construction of the Maginot Line, commonly ridiculed as reflecting an overly static and outmoded defensive concept, can be interpreted as a legitimate attempt to apply this principle. The fact that, in the event, insufficient attention was paid to the danger of the line being outflanked, and that the mobile reserves which the relatively low manning requirements of the Line made available were mishandled, cannot altogether negate the validity of the concept. Indeed, if one considers the case of the Bar-Lev Line on the Suez Canal, and the part it played in the period leading up to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, there are strong grounds for suggesting that the fortifications here did enable the Israelis to prevent incursions by the Egyptians with far smaller forces than would otherwise have been the case. In this instance a real economy of force was achieved. Furthermore, when one examines the dynamics involved, it appears that the overriding factor was the necessity to be able to maintain the integrity of the canal line with the minimum permanent commitment of resources which, in the Israeli peacetime army, are extremely scarce. Closer examination of this case however, reveals that the Bar-Lev Line was properly a peacetime expedient. The Israelis have always been at pains to point out that the line of fortified observation posts, which is how it was originally conceived, was not intended to provide security against a major assault. This is partly because, since the 1967 War, the Israelis never seriously anticipated being attacked in such a formal manner, and also partly because their entire philosophy was offensive and involved both the assumptions that they would strike first, and that they would take the fight onto enemy territory at the earliest opportunity. In other words, the Line was constructed under the pressures of a ‘peacetime’ situation and


is therefore of questionable weight in illustrating principles of war. In all those illustrations of the use of field defences to achieve economy of force which have been taken from active wartime situations, it can be shown that the dynamic factors at work, usually the requirement to form reserves or to take the offensive elsewhere, demand the balancing of a number of active principles, one of which is security. The conclusion from what has been said so far would appear to be that economy of effort, as defined in The British Military Doctrine, is an inactive concept which has no viability on its own. The principle can only be said to apply when the requirements of other, dynamic, principles have been complied with. Indeed, this interpretation seems to be born out by a close examination of the wording of the definition of economy of effort as it currently stands. This begins with the statement that it is in fact the corollary of concentration of force, implying that it may only really have its existence by relation to other principles. Secondly, it concludes by summarizing the principle as being met by a ‘balanced deployment combined with a prudent allocation of resources strictly related to the aim’.7 If this is the case, then the question arises as to whether or not economy of effort is in any material respect different from the principle of economy of force which it replaced. Economy of force is the term still used today in the United States Army, and so before examining the history of the term in British use, a current interpretation would seem to be relevant. The US Army’s FM 100–58 lists nine Principles of War as follows: objective; offensive; mass; economy of force; maneuver (sic.); unity of command; security; surprise and simplicity. Each principle is given a two or three line definition and then explained on both the national/strategic level and the operational/tactical level. ‘Allocate the minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts’ is the short definition of economy of force, which certainly implies a dynamic concept requiring direct action in its application. Like the British definition of economy of effort, it requires ‘the acceptance of prudent risks in selected areas in order to achieve superiority in the areas where the decision is sought’, but the dynamic idea is maintained by reference to ‘economy-of-force missions which may require the forces employed to attack, to defend, to delay, or to conduct deception operations’. However, it acknowledges that the principle is in effect the reciprocal of the principle of ‘mass’, which is the US Army term for concentration of force (‘concentrate combat

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power at the decisive place and time’). It is therefore necessary to see how the concept is applied in the current literature in order to come to a conclusion as to how dynamic it actually is. Examination of the implications of the long-standing quantitative superiority of the former Warsaw Pact forces over those of NATO was not infrequently cited as dictating a requirement for economy of force on our part. For example, ‘NATO’s numerical inferiority and the Pact’s ability to mass overwhelming forces on several sectors requires the Alliance to practise strict economy of force in two senses: to commit only the forces necessary for a given mission and to avoid attrition except when a favourable ratio of losses can be expected.’9 This idea received practical expression in the concept of using light infantry (Air Assault Forces) to delay Warsaw Pact armoured forces in close country in the Central Region in order to release the greater combat power of the US heavy formation for the decisive manœuvre operations.10 Whilst one would not argue with either of the two basic propositions, it is perhaps questionable whether or not they are actually derived, in any significant sense, from the principle of economy of force. There can not often have been a commander who considered himself to be in the happy position of having at his disposal more than sufficient forces to carry out the mission imposed upon him. This being the case, it is reasonable to presume that commanders will never knowingly allocate more combat power to a given task than they consider to be necessary. As far as the second proposition is concerned, no rational commander is likely to accept an adverse attrition ratio unless he either has no option or unless the objective at which he is aiming is seen to justify the cost. In neither case, it is suggested, will considerations of economy of force help him much in selecting an appropriate course of action. American concepts of limited war have made extensive application of the principle of economy of force. These vary from reference to economy-of-force missions,11 which can usually be interpreted in terms of security, flexibility and concentration, to doctrinal considerations of the nature of limited war. Thus William V. O’Brien has written, ‘Limited war emphasizes the principle of economy of force. Under limited war, the open-ended objective of doing all possible injury to the enemy is ruled out. Each application of military power must be tailored to a specific military objective based, in turn, on specific political objectives.’12 In British parlance of course, this is the principle of ‘minimum force’ as we apply it in


internal security and counter-insurgency operations. In fact, in the short term it can lead to a most uneconomical use of force in the sense that it may require a large number of men not using firearms, to achieve what a much smaller number could otherwise do. Neither can this particular application be said to come within the ambit of FM 100–5. The implications therefore seem to be that, despite a more dynamic phraseology, there is not a significant difference between the British interpretation of economy of effort and the American principle of economy of force. This begs the question as to why the British switched terminologies. The change occurred shortly after the Second World War as a result of an initiative instituted by Montgomery on his becoming CIGS. In his memoirs he wrote: The first thing was obviously to get inter-service agreement to the fundamental principles of war, and I drafted out these principles as I saw them, and got them agreed to by the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the Air Staff.’13 A point of interest here is that there was no mention of either economy of effort or economy of force in the list of ‘Principles of Modern War’ which appeared in his pamphlet High Command in War, published in June 1945.14 Whoever was actually responsible for the change from the term economy of force, the difference in the definitions of the two terms is quite marked. Field Service Regulations defined economy of force in the following terms: To economise strength while compelling a dissipation of that of the enemy must be the constant aim of every commander. This involves the correct distribution and employment of all resources in order to develop their striking power to the utmost.15 This, at any rate superficially, has a more active connotation in that it embraces the idea of forcing the enemy to dissipate his own resources, as well as the requirement to employ our own forces to the maximum advantage. These are both ideas which appear in Sir Frederick Maurice’s study, British Strategy. Quoting from Clausewitz, Maurice says:

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We look upon the constant watching over the co-operation of all forces, or in other words of keeping constantly in view that no part of them should ever be idle, as one of the characteristics of leadership. Whoever has forces where the enemy has none, does not give them sufficient employment, whoever has part of his forces on the march, that it allows them to lie dead, while the enemy’s forces are fighting, is a bad manager of his forces.16 Inherent in this statement is the idea that the maximum use must be made of all available forces at all times. That the idea merits inclusion as a principle of war stems, says Maurice, from the expansion in the eighteenth century of the size of armies: It is seen then that it is in truth far more difficult to ensure that all parts of a large army work in co-operation, and that they all exert their full effect, than is the case when armies are small.17 In this respect at least then, the idea of economy of force seems to go further than what is currently understood by economy of effort. The concept that the maximum effect should be derived from all the resources available for as much of the time as possible, is a dynamic principle which has life of its own outside the scope of the other principles. Maurice also laid great emphasis on the potential of detachments as a means of achieving economy of force. A detachment which occupies a larger force of the enemy is clearly helping towards the concentration of superior force at the decisive time and place, and this is particularly the case when the detachment can be called into the main army more quickly than the enemy’s corresponding detachment.18 Here again it seems that there is a more dynamic element in the idea that, by the detachment of a proportion of one’s forces, one can cause the enemy to detach a larger proportion of his available resources. Maurice cites the classic example of Jackson’s campaign in the Shenandoah Valley of March-June 1862 which successfully drew off the Federal reinforcements intended for McClellan’s army threatening Richmond. From the same campaign


Maurice draws a number of examples of how trench systems could be used to economize on the force required to hold lines or positions. However, as we have already seen, this particular idea is so closely related to the principles of security and concentration of force, that it is questionable whether or not it really contributes to the viability of economy of force as a principle in its own right. This impression is underlined by the fact that substantial parts of the chapter are given over to statements to the effect that any activity that results in wasted effort is contrary to the principle of economy of force. This is again hardly a very profound idea, although to illustrate it he goes into some detail concerning the Dardanelles campaign in 1915. In this case the defeat is attributed to a failure first in the selection and maintenance of the aim (the objective), and then to concentrate sufficient force for the task in hand which resulted in an inefficient distribution of resources. Thus yet again the dynamic factors in the situation derive from principles other than that which was supposed to be being illustrated. Nevertheless, clearly there were dynamic aspects in Maurice’s view of the principle of economy of force. In summarizing the chapter, he lists four main elements in the application of the principle: 1 2 3 4

The choice of a single and appropriate object. Due provision for security. A correct application of the use of detachments. A correct appreciation of the power of the defence to release forces for offence.19

The first two elements, which are principles in their own right, merely re-emphasize the degree to which the economy of force reflects the proper application of other principles. However the third and fourth elements are indicative of an active component in the principle, and to that extent perhaps reflect a more dynamic interpretation of economy of force than is to be found in the current definition of economy of effort. Having said that though, when the examples that Maurice quotes of the proper application of this principle are examined, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that economy of force is achieved when a deployment, or distribution of force, is arrived at which conforms with other dynamic principles of war.

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It is only when we take a further step back in the history of the evolution of the principles of war, as recognized in Britain, that we find a significantly different interpretation of the principle of economy of force. J.F.C.Fuller was the man responsible for the incorporation of an authoritative set of principles in the Field Service Regulations of 1920 and these were elaborated in his The Reformation of War published in 1923. The section on economy of force begins with the statement: Economy of force may be defined as the efficient use of all means: physical, moral and material, towards winning a war. Of all the principles it is the most difficult to apply, because of its close interdependence on the everchanging conditions of war.20 Immediately it is clear that Fuller had in mind a far wider interpretation of ‘force’ than that which Maurice had developed in British Strategy, though just how much wider did not become fully apparent until the publication in 1926 of his self-styled magnum opus, The Foundations of the Science of War.21 Unfortunately, ‘Fuller’s customary lucidity seemed to desert him during the composition of The Foundations, and it was poorly written.’22 The book is difficult to read and his use of philosophical and scientific vocabulary was the subject of much scorn. The following quotation illustrates both why it was generally so poorly received and the abstruse nature of his understanding of the meaning of economy of force. Truth exists only in one form, truth derives its power from economy of force, and trial and error, after endless experiment, arrive at truth by economizing force; perfect economy of force and truth are therefore synonymous.’23 However, whilst it is probably fair to say that such concepts are of little practical value to the student practitioner of warfare, it would be wrong to dismiss the rest of the book on these grounds. For a start, Fuller’s concept was dynamic in that the essential nature of mobility was central to his thinking. He recognized, like Clausewitz, that the natural state of any army was static, ‘our battle problem (sic.)’, he suggested, ‘is the maintenance of a moving organized body of men’.24 Movement required organization, and the enemy tried to prevent this not only by inflicting casualties on military formations but also by trying to disrupt their organization.


The object of movement was to deprive the enemy of the power of movement, and therefore the capacity to attack.25 Thus despite his highly philosophical interpretation of economy of force, which led him to elevate it to the status of a law transcending and embracing all the principles of war, there is a more practical aspect to his thesis: A good chronometer will not lose or gain more than a few seconds a year; its economy of force is almost perfect…. So with an army, though we can not construct a military instrument as economically as we can a watch, we can at least attempt to set its parts together in such an order that a fair degree of unity of action will result.26 In other words, even in the material sphere, the proper application of the principle of economy of force stretches far beyond mere deployments and the distribution to tasks of available forces. It includes the structure and organization of the army, as well as its moral reserves and the manner in which it is employed. The question is, of how much practical value is this postulate? In the science of war that Fuller was trying to distil, the difficulty lies not in appreciating that an army should be so organized as to permit all its components to act together in a manner that will realize the maximum potential of each; rather it is to identify what that structure and organization might be. In this area though, his ideas are only marginally less obscure than the philosophy of his basic law. The most economical military organization is the one which expresses the closest relationship to the human body.’ His elaboration of this idea, based on his understanding of the ‘Law of the Three-Fold Order’, as interpreted by P.D.Ouspensky,27 can not really be said to provide any practical guidance on the principles that should be followed. So it is this lack of clarity and ready applicability that his failure to get his all-embracing view of the law of economy of force generally accepted must be ascribed. It appears therefore, that not only is the modern interpretation of economy of force a passive concept whose validity seems to rest more on the applicability of other principles than on its own merits, but that, when given its fullest expression by its originator, it was so abstruse as to lack general intelligibility. How then has it survived?

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First of all, it has to be said that the idea of economy of force has an innate logic about it. Even without the appalling experiences of the First World War, the idea of eliminating waste, particularly if men’s lives are involved, has a powerful appeal. In the circumstances, any principle that held out the prospect of assisting future commanders to avoid what was widely seen as the profligate waste of young men’s lives in Flanders, was bound to strike a chord. This was clearly an element in Fuller’s thinking too. Having pointed out at some length the folly of pouring in reserves in the blind assumption that sooner or later numbers must tell, a mistake which originates he says ‘in failure to appreciate that concentration, in nine cases out of ten, means keeping troops out of battle, not thrusting them in’,28 he concludes his section on concentration with the following quote from Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus: Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder; that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler than I, cleverer than I, if thou have more mind, though all but no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby at last is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is all. This idea that the savagery and brutality of war could be reduced by the use of intellect, coupled with the concentration of firepower rather than men, seems to be the most plausible explanation for the very carefully prepared battles of the likes of Montgomery. Battles in which the careful application of overwhelming firepower would, it was hoped, avoid to the maximum possible extent, the need for close combat. That such battles inevitably had the reverse effect to the one desired, now seems hardly surprising, and it is this benefit of hindsight that gives the clue to perhaps another reason for the persistence of the principle of economy of effort. The principle is very easy to apply after the event, for with hindsight, it is relatively simple to decide whether or not a particular distribution of means was appropriate to the desired ends. In his article on limited war, O’Brien writes: Thus, in the case of Allied strategic bombing policies in World War II, a military critique might conclude that the allocation of resources to the air force was disproportionate to the


contribution of strategic bombing to the war effort—hence, a violation of the principle of economy of force. A normative critique might conclude that the means used to achieve the ends were, in this case, disproportionate.29 Probably few would argue with this assessment now. At the time, however, the campaign was pursued on the premise that the German nation could be bombed into submission, and, had this proved to be the case, it would now be deemed to have been an extremely economical method of achieving victory. Thus it is the conclusion of this chapter that, whilst at a superficial level there is an obvious validity in the principle of economy of force (or effort), and whilst it may be a useful tool for identifying past errors of judgement, it has little to offer by way of guidance for future actions. Whether this constitutes grounds for discrediting the principle altogether, depends on one’s views of the purpose of agreed military principles. John I. Alger has suggested that the military thinkers or theorists ‘directed their efforts towards identifying fundamental precepts that can be easily taught and that serve as guides to success in war.’30 They should, in other words, be dynamic in nature. Judged against this yardstick, there appear to be good grounds for deleting economy of effort from our list, particularly as there are several other powerful, dynamic principles which are currently not included. A strong case could readily be made for the inclusion of, for example, initiative, or manœuvre, but that is another issue. NOTES 1 Edward Bruce Hamley, The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated, 5th edn, Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1889. 2 G.F.R.Henderson, The Science of War, ed. Neil Malcolm, London, Longman, 1916. 3 Field Service Regulations, London HMSO, 1914. 4 Marshal F.Foch, The Principles of War, trans. J.de Morini, New York, H.K.Fly, 1918. 5 Field Service Regulations, London, HMSO, 1924. 6 Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine, Army Code 71451, 1989. 7 ibid. 8 US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100–5, Operations, Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1986.

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9 James M.Garrett, ‘Conventional Force Deterrence in the Pressure of Nuclear Weapons’, Armed Forces and Society, Fall 1984, pp. 59–83. 10 Captain R.B.Thieme III, ‘Air Assault Forces’, Infantry, July-August 1977, pp. 28–31. 11 Major General Don R.Pepke, ‘Economy of Force in the Central Highlands’, Military Review, November 1970, pp. 32–43. 12 William V.O’Brien, ‘Guidelines for Limited War’, Military Review, February 1979, pp. 64–72. 13 Viscount B.L.Montgomery, Memoirs, Pennsylvania, TAB Books, 1990. 14 Viscount B.L.Montgomery, High Command in War, Germany, 21 Army Group, June 1945. 15 Field Service Regulations, London, HMSO, 1923. 16 Major-General Sir F.Maurice, British Strategy, London, Constable, 1929, pp. 106–26. 17 ibid. 18 ibid. 19 ibid. 20 Major-General J.F.C.Fuller, The Reformation of War, London Hutchinson, 1923; New York, Dutton, 1923, pp. 29–46. 21 Major-General J.F.C.Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War, London, Hutchinson, 1926. 22 Brian Holden Reid, ‘Colonel J.F.C.Fuller and the Revival of Classical Military Thinking in Britain, 1918–1926’, Military Affairs, October 1985, pp. 194–6. 23 Fuller, Foundations. 24 ibid. 25 Holden Reid, ‘Colonel J.F.C.Fuller’, Military Affairs, p. 193. 26 Fuller, Foundations. 27 The Three-Fold Order and Fuller’s application of it are not susceptible to summarizing in a few lines. A succinct explanation can be found in the article by Holden Reid in ‘Colonel J.F.C.Fuller’, Military Affairs. 28 Fuller, Foundations, pp. 264–5. 29 O’Brien, ‘Guidelines for Limited War’, pp. 64–72. 30 John I.Alger, The Quest for Victory, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1982.

4 LIDDELL HART AND THE INDIRECT APPROACH TO STRATEGY Brigadier A.S.H.Irwin OBE

INTRODUCTION Liddell Hart’s Strategy of the Indirect Approach was not, as he was the first to acknowledge, original. It had been a major factor in, if not the sole cause of, the successful waging of battles, campaigns and wars long before Liddell Hart had proposed its virtues. Indeed the first examples of its employment that he cited occurred during the Græco-Persian Wars that began in 490 BC. Why then did his published work on the subject1 attract the admiring attention that it did? At least part of the explanation was that his readership was as infected as he himself was with a deep sense of horror at the appalling slaughter that had been such a notable feature of the battles on the Western Front. Indeed it was this horror that provided the most powerful spur to Liddell Hart’s search for an alternative to a war of attrition with all its inevitable blood letting. 2 The Indirect Approach seemed alluringly to offer precisely that alternative and it was seized upon with enthusiasm. So it was with emotion that the theory was developed and emotion with which it was received. This chapter seeks to explain briefly what was being said, while testing its validity as a theory. The application of the theory and its implications for the British Army on the modern battlefield will then be examined. The chapter will conclude that in its conception and its purest form of expression, the Strategy of the Indirect Approach was indeed the pursuit of a veritable will o’ the wisp.3 But nevertheless it has an important role to play in contemporary conflict; no modern soldier can afford to ignore its underlying philosophy.


THE STRATEGY OF THE INDIRECT APPROACH It is important to recognize at the outset that although the Indirect Approach is qualified by the tag ‘strategy’ Liddell Hart’s theory was intended in its final form to be applicable to all of what we now refer to as the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war.4 Regarded by some as a weakness this ensures that the theory has potential interest at all levels of command. It is also important to understand that the theory is not a blueprint for winning wars or battles, a sort of winning-by-numbers. It is much more a philosophy, an attitude of mind which, if properly absorbed, can easily be applied to the practicalities of waging modern war. The theory was based on the notion that: The perfection of strategy would…be to produce a decision— the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces through their unarming by surrender—without any fighting.5 As a second best the aim should be achieved with the minimum shedding of friendly blood. This Utopian vision could be realized by identifying the enemy’s Achilles’ heel and striking at that instead of at his main strength. Thus, for a time, Liddell Hart argued that strategic bombing was the practical manifestation of his theory. By administering a decisive blow on the enemy’s civilian and industrial base from the air, the will of the nation to continue the fight would be destroyed. This was pure Indirect Approach; there would be no clash of massed armies and therefore no carnage of the Passchendaele style (except of course for the luckless civilians on the other side). In terms of operations, he defined an army’s Achilles’ heel as, amongst other things, its communications and command centres. By avoiding the stalemate of strength against strength, mobility would be reintroduced on to the battlefield and the art of generalship (or in our terms, operational art) would be revived.6 He asserted that the direct approach, ‘along the lines of natural expectation’, usually produced negative results since this merely reinforced the enemy’s expectations and his capabilities. The lesson of history was that the: Dislocation of the enemy’s psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his

LIDDELL HART’S INDIRECT APPROACH TO STRATEGY 63

overthrow. This dislocation has been produced by a strategic indirect approach.7 History further showed that a direct attack on a firmly-established position was fundamentally unsound and that the enemy’s equilibrium: Must be upset before a real attack is or can be successfully, launched…. Mechanised forces, by their combination of speed and flexibility, offered the means of pursuing this dual action.8 The purpose of strategy is to achieve dislocation, that is: To diminish the possibility of resistance, and it seeks to fulfil this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise.9 And how, apart from the strategic Indirect Approach, is dislocation to be achieved? Liddell Hart tells us:10 In the physical, or ‘logistical’ sphere it is the result of a move which (a) upsets the enemy’s dispositions and, by compelling a sudden ‘change of front’, dislocates the distribution and organization of his forces; (b) separates his forces; (c) endangers his supplies; (d) menaces the route or routes on which he could retreat in case of need and reestablish himself in his base or homeland…. In the psychological sphere, dislocation is the result of the impression on the commander’s mind of the physical effects. The impression is strongly accentuated if his realization of his being at a disadvantage is sudden, and if he feels that he is unable to counter the enemy’s move. Psychological dislocation fundamentally springs from this sense of being trapped. Entrapment is achieved by following the ‘line of least resistance’ which, to be just that, must also be the ‘line of least expectation’. The former is the physical element (movement) while the latter is the psychological element. Only by combining the two can the Indirect Approach be correctly put into practice. One of Liddell Hart’s favourite paradigms of the practice of the Indirect Approach was the American Civil War example of Sherman’s devastating


flanking march through the Confederacy. By this bold move he unhinged both the physical means and the psychological will to continue the fight. But simple dislocation may not be enough if it is obvious to the enemy what you are doing. The enemy must therefore be distracted, ‘deprived of his freedom of action’, by being forced to consider a number of possible dangers. He should not be able to cover all of them and any one of them should lead to his undoing. Dislocation must be followed by exploitation: You cannot hit the enemy with effect unless you have first created the opportunity [by dislocation]; you cannot make that effect decisive unless you exploit the second opportunity that comes before he can recover.11 Finally, implicit in the whole theory is the essential need to achieve surprise; without it the Indirect Approach becomes the ‘line of natural expectation’. This very brief summary of Liddell Hart’s theory of the Indirect Approach gives at best a mere flavour of what he was thinking and does little, if any, justice to what was certainly one of his most influential contributions to military theory. But for the purpose of this chapter it will suffice. What he wrote captured his readers’ attention. Claims are made both by and on behalf of Liddell Hart that the Germans turned his theory into practice in the shape of Blitzkrieg; about this there are doubts.12 Undoubtedly elements of what he said can be detected in the conduct of war from 1939 to the present day but this is not to prove that Liddell Hart was the inspiration; the academic debate is not yet complete on this subject. But there are at least two examples of the unqualified recognition of his influence. Major General Dorman-Smith wrote in a letter to Liddell Hart in 194213 that: O’Connor’s operations from December 1940 to February 1941 were an outstanding example of strategical and tactical indirectness…a direct testimony of the truth analysed and expounded in your book…. There is little doubt that the true mental qualities for success are common sense, reason and obliquity; and the last quality becomes the more necessary as one ascends the scale to the plane of independent command.


The way of the indirect approach is assuredly the way to win wars. The second example is in the doctrine and practice of the Israeli Army, which openly acknowledges its espousal of the Indirect Approach. In the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967 there are numerous examples of the theory being put into practice. Perhaps the action modelled most closely on the pure theory was the pre-emptive air strike against the Arab air forces at the start of the Six Day War. This did not dispose of the need to fight on the ground but it certainly ‘diminish(ed) the possibility of resistance’.14 Professor Bond15 quotes from a letter to Liddell Hart by Colonel J.L.Wallach of the University of Tel Aviv in which he states that the War proved the Israelis to be good disciples of the Indirect Approach: And that, above all, (this was done) not in the technical concept alone, but mainly in the mental and intellectual sphere [my emphasis], by the intelligent selection of the time, direction, method and power of our moves, especially on the strategic level. The Israeli experience in the Yom Kippur war was somewhat different and for the purposes of this analysis a statement by Brigadier General Tamari16 is relevant: It appears that in the Yom Kippur War the ratio [of forces to territory] was such that the forces on both sides saturated the area. This rendered us incapable of enveloping and flanking, and as a result most of the battles were frontal and accompanied by a great deal of attrition. In the three previous wars, the ratio of forces to territory made it possible to carry out envelopment and flanking to avoid extended battles of attrition. In October 1973 it was necessary to break through the enemy’s thick formations directly and in depth in order to create freedom of manœuvre in his rear. I shall return to this relationship between the Direct and Indirect Approach later.


THE VALIDITY OF THE THEORY Critics of Liddell Hart have not been reluctant to find fault with his theory. Shelford Bidwell17 makes the point that the theory is bound up with abstraction. For example Liddell Hart wrote:18 Imagine for a moment that, of two centralized nations at war, one possesses a superior air force, the other a superior army. Bidwell himself did not cite this in support of his argument. But such a clear cut distinction between the strengths and capabilities of two protagonists may well provide the basis for a good academic exposition of the theory; it is hardly rooted in reality. Bidwell goes on to state that an indirect strategy has not succeeded in any campaign this century and to believe that it can is a dangerous fallacy. In this he echoes Fuller who deplored what he called the ‘Strategy of Evasion’;19 the enemy would not be defeated unless his main military effort was addressed. Thus, for example, he saw no alternative to the great battles on the Western Front because that is where the main body of the enemy was. And the suggestion that military considerations could ignore political realities (in this case the overbearing need to eject German forces from French territory) was quite properly dismissed. The lesson is clear; the Indirect Approach is of value only if it actually contributes to achieving the overall aim. No matter how successful the action may be of itself, if the situation at issue remains unchanged it will have been a waste of effort. In its purest form the theory seemed to ignore the need to combine dislocation with the need to fix the attention of the enemy. And it seemed to ignore the need, when there is no way round the enemy, for a preliminary breakthrough battle before the dislocating moves into the enemy’s depth could begin. Thus the contribution made by Grant’s attritional battles to the success of Sherman’s manœuvre is not acknowledged. And yet, Liddell Hart was certainly aware that the enemy’s main force could not be ignored. Long before he gave literary form to his theory he developed his ‘Man in the Dark’ concept, in which he postulated two boxers facing each other in the dark; the requirement was to find the enemy by reconnoitre, fix him in position (by seizing him by the throat), smash him with a decisive blow and finally to exploit (presumably by threatening his corner and demanding surrender). Fascinatingly for our purposes now, he went on:20


While manœuvre is the key to victory, it is the manœuvre of units of fire power and not masses of cannon fodder. We must learn to depend for success, not on the physical weight of the infantry attack, but on the skilful offensive use in combination of all available weapons, based on the principle of manœuvre. This was written in 1920! Exactly seventy years on it remains exactly appropriate. But if one recognizes that, whatever pure Indirect Approach may say, the applied theory requires to some degree the engagement of main forces, then there is nothing that Liddell Hart says that does not make sense, It is indeed common sense. And if this is so why could the Great War generals not have developed the theory for themselves? Liddell Hart himself provides an answer: Being tied to one plane of movement, compelled to move across the land, it has rarely been possible for (armies) to reach the enemy capital or other vital centres without first disposing of the enemy’s main army, which forms the shield of the opposing government and nation.21 It was of course air power, and later the superior artefacts of both amphibious and armoured warfare, that gave the Indirect Approach its feasibility in the age of massed forces. History has demonstrated that, however damaging non-nuclear aerial bombardment may be, it does not necessarily have the effect of catastrophically reducing the enemy’s will to fight. But in 1986 we were presented with a striking exception of how an assault on the very vitals of the enemy can achieve the aim. This was the US attack directed specifically against Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. Since then the previously belligerent Libyan armed forces have been noticeable for their somnolent inaction. This was classically achieved by an operation of the Indirect Approach.22 The consequences of a Direct Approach, had President Reagan opted for one, are not worth contemplating. I have referred to non-nuclear aerial bombardment; Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the scenes for the most dramatic examples of the Indirect Approach that the world has yet seen. An invasion of the Japanese mainland would have incurred an unacceptably high casualty bill of perhaps more than a million; to avoid this thousands of civilian lives were destroyed. While trusting that 1945


gave us the only such examples, it remains possible to suggest that hypothetically at least the nuclear weapon is a tool well matched to Liddell Hart’s theory. But he himself identified the extreme limitations of the nuclear weapon, notably the unpredictability of the consequences that might follow from their initial use. These might include ‘general suicide and the end of civilisation’.23 Finally it is interesting to note that the United States Army lists24 as one of its ten Imperatives of AirLand Battle’ the need to ‘concentrate power against enemy vulnerabilities’ and this is precisely what Liddell Hart had in mind. The validity of his proposals, at least in this respect, is not in doubt. APPLICABILITY TO OPERATIONS IN THE 1990s A contemporary author is faced with the difficult problem of postulating theory in a threat vacuum. Not even the most belligerent observer of the international scene can seriously suggest that the Red Army presents an immediate threat to Western Europe. In the last year of the 1980s it would have been possible to relate the use of the Indirect Approach to particular ground and enemies. To do so now, particularly in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, would be to invite the justifiable criticism that the day of the military ostrich is not yet done. What follows therefore is bound to be hypothetical and non-specific in nature. The applicability of the Indirect Approach to warfare in the 1990s can be examined, in terms of general principles, in all three categories of war (high-, mid- and low-intensity conflict)25 and at all levels (strategic, operational and tactical). If high intensity conflict involves whole nations against whole nations, whether or not in alliances, the Indirect Approach at the strategic level will aim to undermine the opposition’s will or ability to fight. We have already seen that a conventional bombing strategy historically has not produced the desired effect. But as long as Britain continues as a nuclear power we shall possess the ultimate Indirect Approach capability. Whether it is usable for this or any other purpose is a question that this chapter will leave unanswered. But in the conventional sense, technological advances have been kind to the advocates of air power. Strategic bombing failed in the 1940s because the bombers missed their targets. Now, as the BBC television reports from Baghdad so vividly showed, it is possible to be precise not only about the target to be


hit but where on the target to hit. Electricity grids, railway systems, tank factories, nuclear power stations and centres of political activity can all be attacked with the utmost precision. In this regard we must conclude that Liddell Hart was ahead of his time.26 The U-boat campaigns of the two World Wars demonstrated the possibilities of denying the enemy the ability to continue through lack of supplies; it may, for example, be possible in the future to deny access to oil by seizing or destroying wells and refineries. Precision air power will help here. The interdependence of nations in terms of military equipment may offer opportunities for shutting down sources of spare parts and of vital electronic components. Nations not self-sufficient in food and raw materials may be more easily blockaded than they could have been in the first half of this century; shipping targets are bigger and attack capabilities are greatly superior. This economic aspect of the Indirect Approach that depends on military action to achieve economic effects has arguably more potential today than ever before. But, as ever when engaged in siege or blockade, political patience is required. The Iraqis’ resilience to United Nations blockade reminded us that economic attack does not bring quick results. And if war is to be between alliances of nations, the cohesion between them represents a fine target for the Indirect Approach. Political, economic and military action will all be appropriate tools for unsticking a hostile alliance to the point that it is no longer effective. NATO has lived these last forty years under the threat of exactly this kind of assault on its own integrity. The threat has been taken seriously. The possibilities of this particular strategy were not ignored by Saddam Hussein, whose efforts to split the Americans from their Muslim allies in particular were as transparent as they were fortunately unsuccessful. At the operational level, the technical ability to strike deep with both ground- and air-based systems allows us to remove the mass that feeds the enemy’s momentum. It does not remove the need to engage directly and with vigour the leading elements. But disrupting or even destroying the mass to the rear would certainly ‘diminish the possibility of [the enemy’s] resistance’.27 An attack by long-range rocket artillery or air-delivered stand-off weapons is precisely what Liddell Hart had in mind, although he would have been pleasantly surprised at the ability to attack enemy combat strengths (as opposed to logistic and command and control systems) in this way. Technology has given us the promise of


converting the enemy’s strengths into his vulnerabilities. This is not to suggest that the enemy’s logistics and command and control are no longer worthwhile targets. Quite the opposite, but Liddell Hart emphasized these because their inherent weakness gave hope of an inexpensive victory. The reach of modern weapons of destruction allows us to add fighting troops to the target list without having to commit ourselves to a battle of mutual annihilation. Still at the operational level it seems likely that, wherever and against whoever the next high-intensity conflict is to occur, the armoured forces involved will have more room to manœuvre by reason of their relative scarcity. Space and capability will combine to make Liddell Hart’s dislocation (as discussed on p. 66) as possible for us as it was for the armies on the Eastern Front, for the Israelis in the Sinai Desert or for the Allies in Iraq. To take full advantage of the opportunities that may present themselves, forces specifically tailored to achieve dislocation in depth would be appropriate. By now the Soviet concept of the operational manœuvre group (OMG) is quite familiar. There is no particular need to create our own forces precisely in that image. But the idea depends for its success on these fundamentals. First, the forces designated for the task should be dedicated; to throw together ad hoc formations as the battle makes them available is to rely too much on luck. And second, the force must be characterized by its ability to move at speed supported by its own indirect ground and air firepower and, most problematically, logistically selfsustaining, independent of lines of communication. This is easy to state and of course much more difficult to achieve, especially the logistic aspect. But a vision suggests itself of the constituent parts of a dislocation force (cross country vehicles and helicopters), all tracked and rotored, widely dispersed behind forward divisions, moving independently like the tributaries of a river into the main axis of manœuvre until they hit the enemy with their combined force at the point of maximum dislocation—interestingly the very reverse of Liddell Hart’s ‘expanding torrent’. The advent, one hopes, of true air mobility (as opposed to the current pretence), including attack helicopters, will enormously enhance these possibilities. High- and mid-intensity wars prosecuted against some distant nation will have a different flavour to overseas adventures of the past when potential enemies could be relied upon to be poorly equipped and to lack air power. The availability of advanced


weaponry and the accompanying training and advisory teams in most of the more significant nations in the world will ensure that any future opponent will not automatically be a military walkover. Tackling the problem head-on with force ratios that are likely to be decidedly unfavourable is unlikely to succeed. Every aspect of the Strategy of the Indirect Approach will be needed. The Falklands War produced some nice examples at the tactical and operational levels, not the least of which was the choice of San Carlos for the main point of entry. The Allied plan of campaign in the Gulf had all the characteristics of the Indirect Approach; it will be studied and admired by higher-level training establishments for many years to come. Special forces have a particularly important part to play in this context. The Indirect Approach by the few will achieve success disproportionate to their numbers. Whether in either the Falklands or the Gulf there were realistic indirect options at the strategic level is an interesting question to which I offer no answer. At the tactical level, in high-and mid-intensity conflict, the Indirect Approach will be no less appropriate. Conducted by divisions and below, operations will have shallower objectives with the expectation of less permanent effects. Perhaps Indirect Approach is too grand a term in this context. We are talking about no more than achieving surprise by selecting the ‘line of least expectation’. Finally, the Indirect Approach has a role to play in counterrevolutionary warfare, or low-intensity conflict. Some would argue that this is exclusively the warfare of the future. If so Liddell Hart’s theory is not redundant. But here we are on a different plane of subtlety. This is not a question of avoiding the enemy’s main strength for this is itself a will o’ the wisp;28 indeed security forces spend most of their time actively seeking the enemy strength and striking thin air instead.29 One might go so far as to say that the role of the security forces is necessarily characterized by its directness; undercover intelligence gathering and offensive operations are in a sense indirect but their goal is the strength of the enemy. It is in the political and civil spheres that the Indirect Approach becomes most appropriate. The purpose is to undermine the revolutionary’s power base and his support, both moral and physical. In Liddell Hart’s terms the security forces seize the opposition by the throat30 while the political and civil authorities manœuvre to dislocate and exploit. This implies a singleness of purpose between all involved, with central co-ordinated direction.


It is not clear that this basic principle is being applied in Northern Ireland at the time of writing. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BRITISH ARMY As I have indicated, much if not all of the Theory of the Indirect Approach is a question of common sense. But, as just one example, the Yom Kippur war has demonstrated that not all circumstances will permit the application of the theory without compromise. Compromise and common sense require mental agility, but agility directed unswervingly at the ultimate goal. This is as much a psychological as a procedural requirement. The British Army has an instinctive preference for the familiar (battle drills by the book) and more significantly for the certainty that comes with deliberate (meaning slow as well as intentional) and detailed planning, preparation and direction. This is not helpful to the successful pursuit of the Indirect Approach, which demands action directed by circumstance and not by the manual; it demands action that is instinctive and not deliberate.31 There is a need to create, or more optimistically, to activate a sense of calculated adventure combined with spirited urgency in the minds of all commanders from high to low. How this is to be done is not the subject of this chapter but a start has been made with the recent publication of The British Military Doctrine in which much emphasis is given to manœuvre warfare. Richard Simpkin, echoing Liddell Hart’s prescient remarks32 asserts that:33 Manœuvre theory is about amplifying the force which a small mass is capable of exerting; it is synonymous with the indirect approach. Whether the two expressions are indeed synonymous is debatable but it is beyond dispute that the Indirect Approach is nothing without a strong element of manœuvre; conversely, manœuvre will invariably be characterized by ‘obliquity’, to use Dorman-Smith’s word. It would seem therefore that The British Military Doctrine implicitly accepts the value of the Indirect Approach, to which it actually refers in a narrow sense;34 indeed its list of characteristics of manœuvre35 would be instantly recognizable to Liddell Hart.


One of the less helpful aspects of the British Army (some may argue that this is a strength) is that the issue of a training manual, or in this case a doctrinal manual, provides the occasion for a debate on the merits of its contents. Regardless of what has been said the commander and commanded tend to carry on as before, unimpressed by the weight of authority behind the publication; they know better! It is therefore with some reluctance that I suggest that, if we are to take maximum profit from the potential of the Indirect Approach, we are not entirely well served by The British Military Doctrine, at least as far as the section on manœuvre is concerned. The difficulty is one of terminology and begins in the section entitled The Nature of Manœuvre and Attrition’. A definition of each is followed, quite properly, by the statement that the two are not mutually exclusive. War may have elements of both. One might add (and this is not, I think, made clear) that the two theories are not opposites either. They are in fact mutually supporting. This essential point is relegated to the sub-conscious by the magisterial statement at the end of this section that: It is therefore the characteristics of manœuvre warfare and the requirements for it which must primarily be addressed in doctrine and reflected in the British Army’s overall capability. Much of the rest of the Manual is devoted to an explanation of the nature and requirements of manœuvre and includes a complex annex on its various forms. Here the careful reader will detect that manœuvre will often depend for its success on fixing the enemy or a successful break-in battle for example. But the superficial, or forgetful, reader may be left with the impression that manœuvre is a good thing and attrition a bad thing; he may be persuaded to concentrate all his efforts, as he is encouraged to do in the Doctrine, on the moving parts of manœuvre. In his mind will be created an image of armoured formations roaming at large over the battlefield, punching here, feinting there, forever dancing with mercurial agility to the confusion of the enemy. This is not how it will be, nor does the Doctrine intend that it will. It is simply that terminology has let us down. There is a further terminological difficulty and it is that to the platoon/troop commander and perhaps even up to the battlegroup commander, manœuvre warfare sounds too grand; this is


something that generals engage in. Minor tacticians are brought up on a diet of ‘fire and manœuvre’, a concept that is well understood as a means of destroying the enemy in front of you. By using the word manœuvre in an entirely different context the Doctrine encourages the junior commander to believe that it is nothing to do with him; quite the opposite is the case. DYNAMIC WARFARE A possible solution to this perceived problem is to coin a new term that satisfies the meaning of what we are trying to achieve. The term is ‘Dynamic Warfare’; at the tactical level it might with profit be modified to ‘Dynamic Battle’. Since we belong to a defensive alliance it might even be possible to propose the ‘Doctrine of Dynamic Defence, or 3D’!36 The adjective selected explicitly announces the nature of what we are about37 and it can be applied without difficulty to all levels of command. Imagine how much easier it would be to hammer the spirit of what is intended into the souls of junior com-manders by being able to ask the question: Is your plan dynamic? The alternative (Does your plan conform to the principles of manœuvre warfare?) hardly strikes the same chord. Furthermore, Dynamic Warfare can happily include under its wing (in a way that manœuvre warfare cannot) the activities that contribute to the enemy’s defeat (manœuvre, fixing, breaking in and out (through), attrition, annihilation, holding ground, deep battle, electronic warfare). Of course, not all of these activities will be essential for success all the time but the ability to consider them and to put them into effect if necessary is fundamental, and at all levels of command. Significantly this proposal demonstrates that manœuvre, with its implications of Indirect Approach, is just one of many shots in the sling. It may perhaps be the most important, but is not the only, option and it cannot be conducted on its own. I may understandably be accused of having engaged in an argument of semantics, of academic interest perhaps but certainly not of any practical value. Worse, by offering an alternative description of the process that we are trying to achieve, I may be guilty of confusing and obscuring. But if the purpose of our new doctrine is to enthuse all ranks with the spirit of independent action aimed at a specific purpose, then we must use terms that hold no ambiguity and that have a direct meaning. In this context Brian Bond’s comments38 about the educational value of Liddell


Hart’s theory are strongly endorsed. Officers and soldiers must be encouraged to think for themselves, to identify the line of least expectation, to be willing to manœuvre to exploit the enemy’s weakness; in fact to ask: What can I do to the enemy, rather than What is he doing to me? The Indirect Approach combined with the concept of Dynamic Warfare may provide precisely what we need. CONCLUSION In its purest and emotionally based form, the Strategy of the Indirect Approach proposed that heavy fighting could somehow be avoided by striking at some part of the enemy that did not include its main fighting force. Despite the Gaddafi example and the hypothetical effect of nuclear weapons, it is clear that Liddell Hart was indeed pursuing a will o’ the wisp. He came to recognize this himself but as it was originally conceived the Strategy did not, and could not, offer the ultimate antidote to the butcher’s bill and the monuments to the dead. But is the pursuit of the Indirect Approach really the pursuit of a will o’ the wisp? Only if we close our imaginations to the possibilities of what it can achieve. As a guiding philosophy, as an encouragement to the strategist and commander to reject the obvious course and opt for the devious, the theory can only help us. It is said that the Indirect Approach as a concept is so general in nature, and so flexible as to defy attempts to define it precisely, that it can be deployed to justify more or less any action or plan.39 Those who, as a result, would prefer to deny the influence of Liddell Hart and abandon the term ‘Indirect Approach’ would subscribe to a criticism that is of little significance as long as the essential message is clear. The message in summary is this. Select an aim or objective that is within the capabilities of the resources that are available. Keeping that objective always firmly in mind, achieve surprise by approaching the enemy where he least expects it and therefore where he is least prepared. Present the enemy with a number of dangerous options while maintaining your own flexibility to deal with the unexpected. Never throw your strength against a prepared and balanced enemy and if for some reason your initial effort fails, try again somewhere else. The fundamental theme is to dislocate the enemy and his plans and to be prepared to exploit his discomfort immediately, vigorously and with concentrated force.


Seen in these terms, paraphrased from Liddell Hart’s own work, the case that the Indirect Approach is a valuable operational concept is unanswerable. If espoused wholeheartedly within the context of Dynamic Warfare, organizations and equipment requirements may have to be modified to ensure that the potential is realizable. If we get it right we will be offered unrivalled opportunities for stimulating training leading to success in battle. The training itself will have to be to the point, about which the Captain himself had much to say. It is perhaps appropriate to end with some of his own words. Only if we can honestly say that they do not apply to the British Army of the 1990s can we afford to ignore them and their author’s theory. 40

The training of armies is primarily devoted to developing efficiency in the detailed execution of the attack. This concentration on tactical technique tends to obscure the psychological element. It fosters a cult of soundness, rather than of surprise. It breeds commanders who are so intent not to do anything wrong, according to ‘the book’, that they forget the necessity of making the enemy do something wrong. The result is that their plans have no result. For, in war, it is by compelling mistakes that the scales are most often turned. Here and there a commander has eschewed the obvious, and has found in the unexpected the key to a decision—unless fortune has proved foul. For luck can never be divorced from war, since war is part of life. Hence the unexpected cannot guarantee success. But it guarantees the best chance of success.41 ‘War is part of life’. We would be foolish to believe that doctrinal debate is a matter of academic interest only. NOTES 1 See Liddell Hart, Paris or the Future War, London, 1925; The Remaking of Modern Armies, London, John Murray, 1927; When Britain Goes to War, London, Faber & Faber, 1935; Strategy—The Indirect Approach, Faber & Faber 1954 based on The Decisive Wars of History, London, Bell, 1929. 2 ‘War was hell, but mere wishing would not prevent its recurrence. Somebody had to consider how, if it did occur, it could be fought


3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25

more cleanly, more decisively, and above all more intelligently’. Michael Howard, ‘Liddell Hart’, Encounter, April 1970. Defined in Chamber’s Dictionary, inter alia, as a ‘delusive hope or plan’. For a definition of these, see Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine, Army Code 71451, 1989, p. 37. Liddell Hart, Decisive Wars of History, p. 153–4. Liddell Hart, Paris, p. 79. Liddell Hart, Memoirs, London, Cassells, 1965, vol. 1, p. 164. ibid., p. 165. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach, London, Faber & Faber, 1967 edn, pp. 194–5. ibid., p. 339. ibid., p. 349. See for example, John J.Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History, London, Brassey’s, 1988, Chapter 7. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 1967 edn, Appendix 1. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 1967 edn. And for another example see the Israeli Operation Horev in 1948 as described by Edward Luttwak, The Israeli Army, London, Allen Lane, 1975, p. 64. Brian Bond, Liddell Hart—A Study of His Military Thought, London, Cassell, 1977, p. 265. As quoted by Ben Horrin, Israel’s Strategic Doctrine, Santa Monica, Calif., Rand Corporat, 1981, p. 41. Shelford Bidwell, Modern Warfare, London, Allen Lane, 1973, Chapter 10. Liddell Hart, Paris, p. 46. J.F.C.Fuller, The Conduct of War, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961, p. 160. Liddell Hart, The Essential Principles of War’, United Service Magazine, April 1920, p. 35. Liddell Hart, Paris, p. 42. The fact that the attack was aimed directly at the sole instigator of all Libyan activities demonstrates one of the parodoxes of the Indirect Approach. Liddell Hart, Deterrent or Defence, London, Stevens, 1966, p. 22. It is interesting to note that he finally abandoned the concept of conventional strategic bombing as a valuable instrument of the Indirect Approach on moral grounds. In these terms he would have found nuclear bombing even less sustainable. US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100–5, Operations, Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1986, p. 23. One might define these as: Military operations between regular forces in which the full range of resources and weapons available could be used. (High.) Mid-intensity conflict involves military operations against mainly regular forces. The conflict normally has limited political and


26

27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

territorial objectives within restricted geographical boundaries and a selected range of available resources and weapons is used. (Mid.) Low-intensity conflict encompasses politically motivated guerrilla warfare, insurgency or rebellion, including raids and cross-border harassment, and includes military support to civil authorities under conditions of civil disturbance. (Low.) But even in the air we cannot escape the penalties of the Direct Approach because the suppression of the enemy’s air defences will be a necessary preliminary to the operations proposed. This suppression will involve head-on clashes, strength against strength, thus providing a good example of the indivisibility of attrition and the Indirect Approach. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 1967 edn. Here used in its alternative definition: ‘a person of uncertain whereabouts or appearance’. ‘Using a sledge hammer to miss a fly’, as ‘Bomber Harris’ said of Army operations in Palestine in 1936. Liddell Hart, The Essential Principles of War’, p. 35. I recognize here that this statement, while absolutely applicable at tactical levels below formation, requires considerable modification at brigade level and above, and particularly at the operational level; here instinct will certainly play a part but to work it will need to be supported by detailed co-ordinating staff work and be based on sound intelligence of the enemy. Liddell Hart, The Essential Principles of War’, p. 35. Richard Simpkin, Race to the Swift, London, Brassey’s, 1985, p. 133. The British Military Doctrine, p. 49. ibid., p. 48. Add the air dimension and the concept becomes 3D2! See Chamber’s Dictionary: ‘relating to force, relating to activity in movement, forceful, very energetic.’ Bond, Liddell Hart, p. 59. See, for example, R.A.Mason, ‘Liddell Hart and the Strategy of the Indirect Approach’, RUSI Journal, June 1970. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 1967 edn, pp. 348–9. ibid., p. 349.

5 BURMA 1943–5: WHAT LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE? Brigadier E.J.Webb-Carter OBE

General Slim’s campaign in Burma during the years 1943–5 is a treasure trove of lessons learnt at the operational level of war. This may be surprising to some since it has been more fashionable to derive modern day lessons from the Second World War campaigns of north-west Europe and the Western Desert. In those theatres the British or Allied Armies were confronting a modern, in contemporary terms, European army with all the features of a future conflict that we currently envisage. Nevertheless the study of Burma 1943–5 reveals all the relevant lessons on the operational art that concerns us today. Indeed there are some striking similarities between the conditions that confronted Slim in 1943 and those which confronted the operational commander in Operation Desert Storm. In both cases a neighbouring state has been occupied by an oriental power which is fanatically motivated and perceived to be of great strength. In response to both enemies, an alliance involving differences of culture has been formed to reconquer lost territory. Also both scenarios start with the alliance possessing air superiority although the contemporary example is of an entirely different scale. The similarities may be superficial but there is enough substance to propose that old lessons learnt remain unmistakably relevant today. The purpose, therefore, of this chapter is to analyse the lessons learnt at the operational level in Burma 1943–5 and to assess their relevance in the 1990s. This will be done by examining the purely operational issues that are highlighted; for example, the way operational command was exercised by General Slim and then the human issues of morale, training and logistics which were the linchpins of this particular campaign. But before such an examination can take place it is necessary to describe briefly the campaign in order to provide a backcloth for analysis.


LESSONS LEARNT On 15 January 1942 the Japanese invasion of Burma began. This was a strategic necessity to protect the Japanese Fifteenth Army’s right flank and rear as it undertook the conquest of Malaya and Singapore (see Map 1). The possession of the port of Rangoon and the airfields of the Kra Isthmus were the operational goals. However in due course the strategic aims were adapted to include the invasion of the whole of Burma in order to prevent the movement of troops and stores from India through Burma to China. The defence of Burma was entrusted to General Hutton’s Burma Army which was an Army in name only, consisting of little more than a division of recently raised Burmese units stiffened by two British battalions and an Indian brigade. There were only thirty-seven aircraft available. On 20 January Burma was invaded from North Thailand and by 30 January Moulmein had been captured. On 23 February the Sittang Bridge was blown leaving most of the Seventeenth Indian Division the wrong side of the bridge. This disastrous event set the scene for the rest of the campaign and Rangoon fell to the Japanese in early March. General Slim was appointed to command Burcorps on 19 March, but despite this imaginative choice both Slim’s Corps and General Stilwell’s Fifth and Sixth Chinese Armies were swept from Burma by the middle of May. The Burma road had been cut, Stilwell’s Chinese Armies had retreated into China and the Japanese Fifteenth Army was at the gates to India. As was the case elsewhere, the Allies in Burma had been completely outfought by the Japanese. Apart from losing the country, the British and Commonwealth forces alone suffered 13,500 casualties as opposed to less than 5,000 Japanese. There was, as a result, a widespread belief that the Japanese soldier was superior to his Allied counterpart. Although this 1942 campaign is not directly linked to the subject of this paper it is relevant because of the failures revealed and the lessons that General Slim learnt from the campaign, In his account General Slim exhorts defeated generals ‘to remember only the lessons to be learnt from defeat—they are more than from victory’.1 In summary Slim learnt that an army must be prepared and organized with suitable troops and airforces. He emphasized the importance of an intelligence system based on the indigenous population, but above all he learnt the importance of a properly thought-out and disseminated strategic goal from which would flow an operational aim. He identified the linkage between

BURMA 1943–5: WHAT LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE? 81

the clear purpose and morale of the troop involved. After the fall of Rangoon there was no clear strategic aim. Slim himself puts it thus:

Map 1 The Japanese conquest of Burma 1942


In the comparatively subordinate position of a Corps Commander, immersed in the hour-to-hour business of a fluctuating battle, I could not know what pressures were being exerted on the local higher command, but it was painfully obvious that the lack of a definite, realistic directive from above made it impossible for our immediate commanders to define our object with the clarity essential.2 This sentence is as worthy a proof for the need for mission orientated orders as one could possibly wish for. The last lesson that Slim took to heart was the question of training. Burcorps had been outfought tactically and it was clear that the Japanese had won themselves a reputation for invincibility which they did not entirely merit. Only training could overcome this, although limited operational success was also an essential precursor to a renewed campaign. In particular Slim focused on jungle warfare, the outflanking movement and the use of the unexpected. These and many other lessons formed the basis of Slim’s preparations for the 1943–5 campaign. In late 1942 Field Marshal Wavell as Commander-in-Chief in India ordered General Irwin to carry out an offensive in the Arakan after the monsoon was over in November. An ill conceived operation conducted by the Fourteenth Indian Division was conducted between December 1942 and May 1943 when the monsoon broke once again. Several of the lessons learnt in 1942 had been ignored. In particular the command arrangements were flawed. GOC Fourteenth Indian Division, who was at one stage commanding nine brigades, came immediately under General Irwin thereby leaving General Slim as Commander of Fifteenth Corps to deal with internal security operations in Assam. This was a grave mistake;3 the lack of an operational commander led to an unsuccessful operation which did little to restore morale in the Eastern Army. LESSONS APPLIED In October 1943 the arrival of Admiral Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia (SEAC) quickly generated a new sense of purpose in the theatre. New command arrangements were made with General Giffard as Land Force Commander, General Slim as Commander of the newly-formed Fourteenth


Army, and General Stilwell as Commander of the Chinese Army in Burma. Mountbatten’s plans for 1944 were limited by circumstance. There could be no amphibious operations as resources were diverted to Europe. Three offensives were planned; in Upper Burma Stilwell’s Chinese would advance south from Ledo directed on Myitkyina. The Fourteenth Army was to conduct a limited offensive by Fourth Corps, under Scoones, advancing to the Chindwin. In the meantime General Wingate’s Chindits were to support both Stilwell and Fourth Corps. Finally Fifteenth Corps would undertake a subsidiary operation in the Arakan. The Arakan operations began well with Fifteenth Indian Corps establishing the line Maungdaw-Buthidaung by the end of January (see Map 2). However in early February the Japanese launched their ‘Ha Go’ counter offensive and they managed to slip through the Seventeenth Indian Division in the east of the British line. Their plan was to swing west and cut Fifteenth Indian Corps off from its lines of communications, a classic Japanese tactic that had up to now led to British defeat. However, the two Indian Divisions of Fifteenth Corps held their ground and fought a co-ordinated battle around Sinzweya and the so-called ‘Admin Box’. Slim was determined that a victory should result in the Arakan so he had skilfully placed the Thirty-Sixth Indian Division in a position to reinforce Fifteenth Corps. This was a decisive move leading to the first victory by British and Indian troops against the Japanese Fifteenth Army. The secret to this success was the dogged determination to stay put and fight made possible only by the success of air resupply. Stilwell’s Chinese Armies also earned swift success by defeating the Japanese Eighteenth Division at Maingkwan and Walawbaum in March but thereafter, despite the efforts of the Chindit Brigades, momentum was lost with Myitkyina being encircled in May but not occupied until August, three months later. Slim whilst monitoring the operations on the two flanks realized that Mutaguchi, the Commander of the Japanese Fifteenth Army, was planning an offensive in the Central area. He therefore decided to concentrate Fifteenth Corps at Imphal, a location he judged that would favour the defender. This deliberate plan was a masterly stroke which merits discussion later in the chapter. Despite this Slim was surprised when on the night of 7 March the Japanese ‘U-Go’ offensive began. Throughout March the opening shots around Imphal took place but it was soon apparent that Kohima was also


Map 2 The turning point in Burma

to be an objective. By 5 April Kohima was besieged with barely an infantry battalion within, which held out for two weeks before being relieved by two brigades of the Second Infantry Division. Slim now


passed responsibility for Kohima to Thirty-Third Corps under General ‘Monty’ Stopford whilst leaving Imphal in the hands of General Scoones, Commander of Fifteenth Corps. It was fortunate that the Japanese Thirty-First Division did not press their attacks towards the fragile lines of communications at Dimapur. The battles around Imphal and Kohima lasted for two further months and it was not until 11 July that General Kawabe, the Japanese Commander in Burma, called the offensive off. Slim had won a further victory, it had been a battle of attrition but it was the turning point in the campaign. At the end of the month the monsoon broke and it proved to be an opportune time for an operational pause before the Fourteenth Army could commence its next phase of the campaign. The Second Quebec Conference approved Mountbatten’s plans to advance with the Fourteenth Army to Mandalay; this operation was called ‘Capital’ (see Map 3). Slim anticipated a battle between the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy and accordingly he planned to defeat Kimura’s Burma Army on the Irrawaddy loop by using his two corps in a shallow envelopment. The operation commenced on 3 December 1944 and by 16 December such progress was being made that it was evident that Kimura was seeking to fight a defensive battle at Mandalay not west of the Irrawaddy. It was now that Slim proved his prowess as an operational commander in a most impressive manœuvre. He decided to use Thirty-Third Corps to deceive the Japanese into thinking that Mandalay was his main objective while Fourth Corps marched to the key communications centre of Meiktila. This was a highly complex manœuvre as Fourth Corps had to cross Thirty-Third Corps’ lines of communication in order to make its discreet approach down the River Manipur. By February Mandalay was threatened by Thirty-Third Corps and Kimura was wrong-footed. On 3 March Meiktila fell to the Seventeenth Indian Division and the Japanese Thirty-Third Army was cut off. The next month was dominated by Japanese counterattacks in the Meiktila area and the Thirty-Third Corps battle for Mandalay which finally fell on 20 March. The Fourteenth Army continued its advance south but now its goal was Rangoon. Mountbatten’s plan was to co-ordinate the Fourteenth Army’s advance on Rangoon with an amphibious landing just west of the great city on 2 May. This operation was known as ‘Dracula’ and held several risks. Slim was required to advance 300 miles against the remains of the Japanese Thirty-Third Army in a month; a tall


order. Furthermore the date for the landing could not be delayed since the monsoon was expected any time in May. It was to be a

Map 3 Operations ‘Capital’ and ‘Extended Capital’: Phase One


race against the elements. By 23 April with only ten days left ThirtyThird Corps still had 200 miles to go; it did not look good, 20 miles a day would have to be achieved. Nevertheless the Twenty-Sixth Indian Division landed on 2 May and owing to the collapse of the Japanese Thirty-Third Army the link-up was achieved on 3 May; just a day late! Slim’s campaign had been highly successful. Further operations took place in Burma during July as the encircled Japanese conducted desperate break-out attempts but by 4 August it was all over; a mere 6,000 Japanese reached the east bank of the Sittang. On 6 August the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; the countdown for the end of the war had started. In concluding this brief resumé, it is worth noting the involvement of General Bill Slim. It was he who presided over the retreat in 1942 which highlighted several fundamental lessons. It is rare that Generals conducting retreats survive but in this case Slim more than survived, he was given the opportunity to apply those lessons in a campaign that tested all the principles of the operational level of war and he succeeded singularly. OPERATIONAL ISSUES Operational command It would seem that General Slim was not only the operational commander in the campaigns of 1943–5 but also in the campaign of 1942. Although Generals Hutton and Alexander were commanders of the Burma Army neither actually conducted the campaign; it was Slim as Commander of Burcorps who was in the unenviable position of planning and executing a retreat. He was, to all intents and purposes, on his own since Stilwell was allowed to operate quite separately. Slim, thus, was able to learn by experience the techniques of command at the operational level. By the time it came to the 1943–4 campaign Slim was very clearly the operational commander. Mountbatten’s arrival did much to clear the lines of responsibility although it is interesting to note the influence of personal relationships. Mountbatten as Supreme Commander had three Commanders-in-Chief for sea, land and air (see Figure 1), and General Giffard was the Land Commander-inChief commanding the Eleventh Army Group which included the Fourteenth Army and should have included Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC), but did not. General Stilwell, the commander


of NCAC, who was also the Deputy Supreme Commander SEAC, refused to receive orders from Giffard for several reasons but fundamentally because he didn’t like him. Pressed by Mountbatten (whom he later referred to as a ‘Piss Pot’4) to resolve the issue Stilwell quite unexpectedly stated ‘I am prepared to come under General Slim’s operational control until I get to Kamaing’.5 This was an extraordinary episode demonstrating the distorting influence of human relationships in command situations, particularly when it involves allies. However this complicated arrangement meant that Slim commanded all allied land forces advancing into Burma from India. In fact Slim was too tactful and wise to press the point either way and Stilwell abided by Giffard’s directives, by proxy as it were. Nevertheless Stilwell’s involvement at three different levels in the command structure caused unnecessary bad feeling, and later when Stilwell was removed each of his appointments was filled by different officers. Other than this complication the command arrangements were simple and logical. Mountbatten was concerned with strategic issues; the Commanders-in-Chief with strategic and operational matters; and Slim, as Commander of the Fourteenth Army, was the clear operational commander. Looking now at Desert Storm, such a clear division of responsibilities was not so clear cut. It seemed as if General Schwarzkopf has taken a page out of General Stilwell’s book. He would also do well to note the remark of Mountbatten at a RUSI lecture in 1946: I have no hesitation in saying that in a theatre where the land forces do not exceed the size of an Army Group it is the greatest mistake for the Supreme Allied Commander also to be the Commander of the land forces.6 It is also interesting to note the difficulties of managing operations within an alliance. General Stilwell apart, both Mountbatten and Slim had to steer a very skilful path in their dealings with the Americans and nowhere more crucial was this than in the various negotiations over air transport. Mountbatten and Slim’s successes in this sphere made all the difference when ‘Capital’ was endangered by a sudden move of US transport aircraft to China by order of the American Chiefs of Staff. The co-ordination of the Chinese Expeditionary Force in the Yunnan with both NCAC and the Fourteenth Army was no easier. Chiang Kai-Shek was not


always approachable and no decisions were made by anyone else on his staff. Furthermore, the sheer difference of culture made communication difficult. Very early on Mountbatten was trying to dissuade the Generalissimo of a certain plan and he recalls: He said, ‘I like this plan, we will carry it out’. I repeated very patiently that the plan was not possible and gave exact reasons. However he defeated one by saying, ‘Never mind, we will carry it out all the same’.7 Some co-ordination was achieved but it was never of a high order and by the time the Fourteenth Army had reached Mandalay the Chinese Armies virtually abandoned their efforts in Burma. The conduct of a campaign by allied forces is difficult enough when the partners speak the same language or share a common culture, but when both of these are vastly different there are bound to be misunderstandings with perhaps serious consequences. In Burma the Allies were probably lucky but in the Persian Gulf the requirement for co-ordination and mutual understanding was greater. Sir Michael Howard once observed that the mind boggles when considering the composition of the Allied Alliance in the Gulf. However in the event it would appear that the Allied Alliance was preserved by an exemplary demonstration of tact and diplomacy. Having looked in general terms at the command arrangements in Burma it is appropriate to look in more detail at the way General Slim exercised his operational command. In the first instance, it is interesting to see how two parts of the campaign were planned. It is probably true to say that no co-ordinated strategic planning took place until Mountbatten arrived as Supreme Commander. But this was corrected swiftly, a plan was agreed by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and Slim was able to get down to work. Slim had a methodical way of planning which differed little during the campaign. He first of all ensured that his troops were prepared in two respects, they had to be sufficiently trained and there had to be sufficient logistic resources. Both these required a great deal of time and preparation and the inactive months, usually during the monsoon, were put to good use. Slim had learnt these lessons the hard way not only in the retreat from Burma but also in the first Arakan campaign. He then applied a set of principles to his campaign planning; these were:

Figure 1 Command arrangements for south-east Asia 1943


1 The ultimate intention must be an offensive one.


2 The main idea on which the plan was based must be simple. 3 That idea must be held in view throughout and everything else must give way to it. 4 The plan must have in it an element of surprise.8 The 1944 campaign plan was derived from a very great deal of negotiation with the Allies and the result was four operations conducted in concert by Slim. In essence Slim had appreciated that it would require two years to defeat the Japanese in Burma, and as a first step it was envisaged that an advance in three directions was possible: to the Chindwin in the West, to Myitkyina in the North and in the Arakan in the South. Each advance was related to the other. Slim then believed that in 1945 an advance to Rangoon and final victory over the Japanese was the logical and sensible sequence for the campaign. An important condition in his planning was the need for a substantive early victory for morale reasons and to this end he ensured, certainly in 1944, that the correlation of forces at his point of emphasis was substantially in his favour. In the Arakan he was able to achieve what he wanted. The planning for 1945 was more involved, resources were greater, the Japanese were perceived to be weaker and the Chinese were prepared to do more in Burma. Nevertheless the strategic planning was the victim of much political compromise and it was Slim, not Mountbatten, who saw the real possibilities for the 1945 campaign. This time manœuvre was more of a possibility, and Slim’s operational plan for ‘Capital’ offered the best prospect of making the Japanese fight a battle with their main forces on ground favourable to the Fourteenth Army. It was an impressive plan involving amphibious and air operations and an aim which would test the timetable of war. The Fourteenth Army was to advance from the Chindwin to Rangoon between December and the time when the monsoon broke, perhaps May, but more likely April. Slim’s Chief of Staff referred to the plan as ‘SOB’—Sea or Bust. Slim’s planning was more ambitious than Mountbatten’s because he appreciated the need for a sequence of operations which would produce the desired end result: the defeat of the Japanese Army. Slim’s brilliance as an operational commander is best demonstrated in his ‘read’ of the battle. There are two examples both of which were significant and decisive in their own way. The first example is Slim’s appreciation of the situation on the Assam front in January 1944. Thanks to an effective but elementary


intelligence system, Slim was getting indicators that hinted at a Japanese offensive in March. Now the Fourteenth Army did not have the advantage of Ultra intelligence and so it was much more difficult to predict the enemy’s intentions. Given the information Slim had three options: anticipate and attack first; hold the Japanese where Fourth Corps was currently deployed; or concentrate the Corps in the Imphal plain. In the event he chose the last option so as to achieve the most favourable force correlation and to force the Japanese to fight on ground of his choice. It was an inspired choice and the most important decision Slim probably made in the campaign. It is also an excellent and rare example where a commander specifically chose a battle of attrition and was proved correct. The subsequent victories at Imphal and Kohima were not without their problems but the principle of concentration of force proved to be significant. The second example of Slim’s ‘read’ was a year later when he realized in December 1944 that the Japanese were intending to fight at Mandalay and not on the Schwebo plain as he had anticipated. Slim admits that he initially misread General Kimura but his flexibility of mind turned a faulty plan into one of the best examples of operational deception. Slim redirected Fourth Corps on a flanking move down the Manipur valley so as to seize Meiktila. Slim’s judgement and subsequent reaction on these two occasions encapsulate the brilliance of the man. The lessons for the present and future are self-evident. The ability to ‘read’ the battle correctly is vital if a commander is to get inside his opponent’s decision cycle. It is interesting to note that of the two examples one illustrates a battle of attrition and the other a battle of manœuvre. Aims of the campaign As already mentioned, there were divergent views amongst the allies as to the strategic aim of the campaign in south-east Asia. The Americans on the one hand regarded Assam and Burma primarily as part of the air and land line to China; the British on the other hand saw the liberation of Burma as an end in itself, and as a step on the road to Malaya and Singapore. These views, and the very incomprehensible Chinese approach to the war in Burma, condemned strategic planning to perpetual uncertainty. This uncertainty manifested itself in the distribution of scarce resources, particularly air transport and artillery ammunition. To


make matters worse SEAC was clearly at the bottom of the Chiefs of Staff priorities with the result that other resources like amphibious craft were diverted to Europe. Gloomy as this summary may be in strategic terms, the different views of American and British staffs were less significant operationally since they were, in fact, complementary and inseparable. The land line to China could not be reopened without the reconquest of the whole of North Burma, and the conquest of the whole of northern Burma was essential if air supply to China was to be adequately protected against air attack from the South. Northern Burma could not be permanently secured unless Burma were occupied as far south as Rangoon; and this in turn could not be done without a comprehensive system of air supply to the troops engaged in the overland advance. Slim therefore, as operational commander, never had any difficulty in deciding his aim. As has been discussed already, Slim had learnt from bitter experience how important it was to have a clear and concise aim. He never forgot this. Time and time again Slim emphasizes in his book, Defeat into Victory, what his aim was; it was the defeat of the Japanese Army in Burma. In February 1945 as Fourth and Thirty-Third Corps were converging on Mandalay and Meiktila, Slim says ‘lt was not Mandalay or Meiktila that we were after but the Japanese Army, and that thought had to be firmly implanted in the mind of every man of the Fourteenth Army.’9 But was he correct in this choice? The question is whether the Japanese Army itself was the ‘centre of gravity’ or was there another possible goal? The Japanese Army was an invading army and it is hard to identify a geographical point that was significant to the Japanese High Command. Rangoon as a centre of communication and capital was a possibility but judging by the hasty evacuation of that city in May 1945 it can safely be discounted. The conclusion must be that he was correct and the consequent freedom this gave subordinate commanders is clear. It gave all commanders the clear directive to manœuvre and encircle the Japanese wherever possible. The clarity of the Fourteenth Army’s aim was a major factor in their eventual success and here there is a lesson for the future. In the Gulf it was not always entirely clear what the strategic aim was but the operational aim would seem to have been the same as it was in Burma, that is to say, the defeat of the Iraqi Army in the field. There can be little doubt that this was achieved.


Land/air war The evolution of the land/air war in Burma was one of the success stories and it has seldom been repeated since. However the story began on a sad note during the 1942 campaign with few resources available to the RAF. The Japanese despatched these meagre resources very early on and retained air superiority until the summer of 1944. The Japanese Air Force held the initiative and, so long as it remained based beyond the reach of allied fighters and had a wide selection of forward airfields from which to operate, it had the freedom to choose both the time and place for its attacks. Many of these attacks penetrated Assam and towns like Imphal and Chittagong were attacked, which although not significant in themselves, were successful in dispersing civilian workforces. The establishment of SEAC in October 1943 changed the pervading trend and the first requirement was to establish a proper joint and combined air/land command chain. In December 1943 all allied air forces were integrated into the Air Command SouthEast Asia under Air Marshal Peirse with an effective strength of some 850 aircraft of which 264 were American. Most of these aircraft came under the command of Lieutenant General Stratemeyer of Eastern Air Command and were split into: 1 2 3 4

The Third Tactical Air Force. The Strategic Air Force. Troop Carrier Command. Photographic Reconnaissance Force.

However it was the Third Tactical Air Force (3rd TAF) under Air Marshal Baldwin that was alongside the Fourteenth Army. Slim describes how he incorporated the 3rd TAF headquarters into his own: In actual practice we, XIV Army, Third TAF, and Troop Carrier Command, worked to a considerable extent as a joint headquarters. We pooled intelligence resources, our planners worked together and perhaps most effective of all, the three commanders and their principal staff officers lived in the same mess…. We grew into a very close brotherhood, depending on one another, trusting one another and taking as much pride in each other’s triumphs as we did in our own.10


This is a description of what a true joint headquarters should be like. Whatever the resources that are available, and in 1943 they were still modest, joint command at the most appropriate level is fundamental provided the communications exist to sustain that level. Later in the campaign the command of air transport assets was exercised at theatre level, in order to make the most economic use of these valuable and strategically important assets. Both the Fourteenth Army and US support to the Chinese Army claimed strategic priority. Air power was used in four forms, offensive air, battlefield air interdiction (BAI), close air support (CAS), and air transport. The offensive air campaign was a comparatively easy process and its success was founded on sheer numbers and a greater strength in resources. Air superiority was considered by Mountbatten and Slim as an absolute prerequisite for the reconquest of Burma. The early arrival of Spitfires and the longer range fighters such as P47 Lightnings gave the allies the necessary overall superiority in the first half of 1944. However up to then 3rd TAF was only able to win local air superiority. This was more to do with the reach of offensive air than anything else. None the less throughout both campaigns of 1943 and 1944 both BAI and CAS were used to good effect. Owing to the shortage of artillery in the Fourteenth Army there was an increasing reliance on CAS to the extent that it was common practice for RAF officers to be forward with ground troops in order to control air assets. Important as BAI and CAS were, by far the most significant advantage that air superiority brought was unhindered air transport. Slim claims that the Fourteenth Army was the most air minded army of the war11 and in this he is probably correct. In Burma it was normal practice to air land brigades forward during operations. The deployment and subsequent maintenance by air of the Chindits (some 30,000 men and 5,000 animals) for several months is one of the most remarkable air/ land feats of the war. Later in the 1944 campaign Slim and Baldwin used air landed brigades at Meiktila and in the pursuit to Rangoon. These brigades received no special training but rather the whole of the Fourteenth Army was acquainted with the procedures required for this change in deployment. Finally, as a piece de resistance, an Indian Parachute Brigade was used in the final operations around Rangoon. But it was in the area of air transport of supplies that the greatest contribution was made and which is discussed later


in the chapter. It is clear however that the Burma campaign of 1944–5 could never have succeeded if the offensive air campaign had not succeeded during 1943 and 1944. The pervading advantage of air superiority that followed this vital phase was a battle winner. As to the lessons for the future, it is very evident that air superiority is a battle-winner but even in today’s high technology age it is interesting to note that air supremacy itself still cannot win a campaign on its own. Perhaps a lesson of more lasting importance is the high degree of land/air co-operation. After the war this feature of the Burma campaign was identified by senior RAF officers as one of the most outstanding lessons of the war.12 Conflict will bring the two services much closer together and it will be interesting to see in due course how close the co-operation in the Gulf was. THE LINCHPINS The operational issues reveal several lessons that continue to be relevant today even in the Gulf. However, the circumstances in which the Burma campaign was begun and how it evolved from defeat to victory are not matched in recent campaigns. Although they are not strictly operational matters the features that are the hallmarks of Slim’s victory are logistics, training and morale. No study of the campaigns in Burma could be complete without mention of these issues as they were the linchpins of the campaign. Logistics Martin Van Creveld said that ‘logistics make up as much as nine tenths of the business of war’13 and nowhere is that remark more appropriate than in the Fourteenth Army’s campaign. There are several factors that underline the logistic difficulties faced by SEAC and the Fourteenth Army. First there was the terrain. The axis of Burma runs from the sea in the south to the Himalayas in the north. The great River Irrawaddy and its tributaries run throughout the length of this axis. Two railway lines and the principal roads run from south to north, so the obvious way to invade the country is from the south which is precisely what the Japanese did in 1942. On the other hand any invasion from India would have to take place over mountain ranges, covered with ‘impenetrable’ jungle through which, in places, it was impossible


to advance more than three miles in twenty-four hours. The lines of communication in Assam were of a low capacity in contrast to those of the North-West Frontier. The movement of supplies was dependent upon a metre gauge railway and river barges. If this were not bad enough, there were virtually no interlinking communications between India and Burma. Before the war both countries were administered by the British but yet the ImphalTiddim road was the only communication between the two countries. The second factor was the monsoon. Even the terrible terrain might have been manageable but for the monsoon. For five months in every year (normally May-September) the monsoon bears down on the jungle in a monthly rainfall ten times that of Ireland, destroying roads and preventing air movement. The consequence of this was that operations came to an end in practical terms though Mountbatten laid down that all troops would fight as hard as possible during the monsoon. In fact no major campaign was fought during these months. Roads were damaged and the start of the monsoon was unpredictable. A third factor was the low priority accorded by the Chiefs of Staff to SEAC and this, of course, included supplies. There is no doubt, however, that during 1944 both Mountbatten and Slim influenced the situation by ensuring that there was a more efficient supply system from India. These factors all contributed to the difficulties that the Fourteenth Army and the major-general in charge of administration had to cope with. There are three key logistic lessons that can be learnt; the priority of logistics, improvization and the judgement of logistic risk. Owing to the major supply problems during the retreat through Burma, Slim was more than aware of the importance of logistics in any future campaign. The terrain and communications were so much against the conduct of an invasion from India that logistics had to assume an importance out of the normal. Slim recognized this and arranged his staff in a way which reflected this requirement. Major-General Snelling was, as the staff officer in charge of administration, the senior staff officer in the headquarters of the Fourteenth Army and was a key member of Slim’s ‘inner’ planning group. There was no question of planning an operation without Snelling’s advice and his judgement of the administrative problems involved. Indeed this close relationship was to pay dividends time and time again. In the Arakan, when the Japanese were threatening the Admin Box, Fifteenth Corps was resupplied by air and stayed put to fight rather than pull back on


its lines of communication. This had only been possible because Snelling was fully aware of Slim’s intention and plans had been made in anticipation. This sort of anticipation could only be possible if there is close co-ordination between commander and administrator at the highest level. Since Burma was such a low priority many items of equipment were not available. These may have been very small items or very large pieces of equipment such as river boats. From an early stage the administrative officers of the Fourteenth Army were required to improvise. Improvisation has long been the mark of British soldiers and Slim was not to be disappointed. The resupply of Wingate’s Eighty-First (West African) Division was dependent on parachute drops, but in January 1944, just two months before they were committed east of the Chindwin, it was revealed that there was no silk available for the manufacture of parachutes. However the administrators came up with the idea of using jute instead of silk; there was no shortage of jute in Assam. And so it was that ‘parajutes’ were used to resupply the Chindits; they were not perfect but they were adequate. Another good example of improvisation was in 1945 when Slim appreciated that the Chindwin would be an important supply line. All the Chindwin steamers had been sunk by the British or removed by the Japanese in 1942. There was therefore an urgent need to build several hundred boats. Again the administration staff set up a boatbuilding yard on the banks of the Chindwin and built these boats from the trees growing beside the river. It was a remarkable feat, but it proved essential for the resupply of the Fourteenth Army and it was an example of Slim’s adage ‘God helps those who help themselves’. It is rare that a commander will have an intimate knowledge of administration or logistics. Invariably he will have to depend upon the ‘expert’ but so often these men will provide overcautious advice. This is natural as these officers work with specific figures, but calculations can be faulty and sometimes more could have been achieved operationally. A commander who always takes the logistic advice provided may never go wrong but he will not have that brilliance that marks such men as Slim and Patton, who both took administrative risks and won. Slim in a lecture to the US Army Command and General Staff College in 1952 said the following:


I once had an argument with Field Marshal Montgomery about what the qualifications of a great commander are. We each tried not to give our own qualifications—but I said, which rather surprised him, that I thought the real test of a great commander in the field was to be a judge of administrative risk.14 This quality is important and Slim by his admission did not always get it right. In the planning for the 1944 campaign he submitted to the advice that it was not possible to squeeze one more division into the central front at Imphal. He later recalls: It was a risk, however, which I think I should have insisted upon, but I did not. Had the campaign taken place as planned we should have suffered from my failure to do so. I became a better judge of administrative risks later.15 In 1945 Slim did indeed become a better judge of that risk by deciding, despite advice to the contrary, to call forward the Fifth Indian Division to join the dash for Rangoon. Slim again recalls ‘it was a question of which risk I took—the tactical one of losing my battle through lack of troops, or the administrative risk of having troops and the battle collapsing because I was unable to supply them’. However Slim was right, there was enough transport to supply them and the Fourteenth Army reached Rangoon. The logistic lessons from Burma are applicable to all future warfare. The close co-ordination of logistic staff and the judgement of administrative risks were equally relevant in the Gulf War but there is probably less need to improvise in the modern custombuilt armies. The judgement of risk demands great generalship and that lesson can be distilled into Moltke’s slogan ‘Erst wegen, dann wagen’ (‘Look before you leap’). Training One of the main reasons for the failure of the British troops in the 1942 campaign was the unsuitability of the formations involved. They were either inadequately trained or were trained for an entirely different terrain and enemy. As David Fraser says, the Burma Army suffered from a hasty expansion on an inadequate professional base.17 The main weakness was the inability to fight


the Japanese in the Burmese jungle on equal terms. Defeat in itself played its own part in the degradation of training but it was lack of both experience and confidence which made British and Indian troops so vulnerable to Japanese tactics. One of their most successful tactics was based on the ‘hook’. Their standard action was, while holding British forces in front, to send a mobile force, mainly infantry, on a wide turning movement round the British flank through the jungle to come in on their lines of communication. The British reaction to this was invariably to turn around from the front and attempt to clear the road block behind. The Japanese then increased pressure on the front and finding it weaker were able to defeat the British force. This tactic was very simple and could be easily countered by repeating it against the Japanese but the training was not sufficient and officers and men were totally unprepared for jungle warfare. The premature deployment of the Fourteenth Indian Division in the first Arakan campaign in 1943 underlined the lesson that thorough training must precede success. Slim saw this painful lesson repeated and so when he took command of the Fourteenth Army it was one of his main points of emphasis. He set about training the Army in jungle warfare so that in future confrontations with the Japanese the jungle would be neutral. During the 1943 monsoon tactical patrolling was used to put such training into practice and to gain information on the central front in Assam. However the confidence that such operations built up in the Indian and British Divisions was significant. As Slim himself puts it: By the end of November our forward troops had gone a long way towards getting that individual feeling of superiority and that first essential in the fighting man—the desire to close with the enemy.18 In the Gulf War, Allied troops spent a great deal of energy and time in training under the conditions in which they would fight. There is little doubt that they gained that same feeling of superiority and the desire to close with the enemy. The Fourteenth Army’s methods were extended in India by Auchinleck by the establishment of Training Divisions so that when all recruits and reinforcements arrived in Burma they were trained in jungle warfare and aggressive patrolling techniques. Slim also placed great importance


on the acquisition of battle confidence through experience. He invariably sought to do so by ensuring that divisions were tried in minor battles where the correlation of forces was in their favour. Later he applied such a principle on a grander scale and the success of the second Arakan campaign is an example of this. In Burma the importance of suitable training was clear and the lesson is as applicable today as it ever was. Morale The final linchpin is morale but it is by no means the least of Slim’s achievements. The failures of 1942 and 1943 had brought the morale of the British Indian formations in Assam to a low ebb. The problems of logistics, training and utter defeat had all contributed to the malaise of troops. They all believed that they were part of a ‘Forgotten Army’. When Slim was appointed Commander of the Fourteenth Army, the restoration of morale was one of the first tasks he set himself. In his own words Slim described morale as: [A] state of mind. It is that intangible force which will move a whole group of men to give their last ounce to achieve something, without counting the cost to themselves; that makes them feel they are part of something greater than themselves. If they are to feel that, their morale must, if it is to endure—and the essence of morale is that it should endure —have certain foundations. The foundations are spiritual, intellectual and material, and that is the order of their importance. Spiritual first, because only spiritual foundations can stand real strain. Next intellectual, because men are swayed by reason as well as feeling. Material last—important, but last— because the very highest kinds of morale are often met when material conditions are lowest.19 These themes were the basis of Slim’s philosophy on morale and he set about the task of restoring it in the Fourteenth Army along these lines. Taking his spiritual foundation first which was not be taken in its strictly religious sense, Slim’s priority was to instil the purpose of his Army into all ranks. This purpose was directly related to the operational aim which has already been discussed. Slim approached this problem by a very large number of personal visits during which he did not just dwell on the spiritual theme,


but interspersed such thoughts with matters of more personal concern such as rations, pay, leave, mail and beer; and combining all these with a necessary amount of humour. These visits and those by other commanders did much to personalize the high command in Burma and restored a fundamental confidence in military leaders. Always the emphasis was on the fact that the Fourteenth Army was there not to defend India, a negative approach, but to smash the Japanese: a great and noble object. Slim had also appreciated the importance of the morale of troops operating along a long line of communication as it was in Assam, and later to be even longer. It had been these troops who had retreated in such disorder in 1942. Slim therefore altered the outlook of the rear logistic units by making them feel genuinely part of the main operation. He used the analogy of the clock where the main spring was the army commander and the small wheels were the logistic units. If one little wheel failed to work then the main spring was useless. Such an approach paid enormous dividends by the end of 1945. The spiritual foundations were well laid during 1943 but at the same time it was essential that the troops of the Fourteenth Army believed that it was possible to achieve that great and noble object. The important feature of this foundation was the emphasis on training which has been discussed. The troops had to see that the organization to which they belonged was an efficient one, and they had to have the confidence in the high command to know that their lives would not be lightly flung away. To restore such confidence was not easy and only painstaking staff work and swift action would achieve it. Slim’s acute logistical sense in 1943 led to a more efficient line of communication and the improvement of the provision of rations, arrival of mail and many small things which other armies took for granted. The material foundation in essence followed from the others without requiring special attention. The improved efficiency on the lines of communication would result in improved material conditions. One particular example of where attention was required was in the field of disease and medical welfare. Up to 1943 and before the arrival of Lord Mountbatten this area was disgracefully neglected. For every man evacuated with wounds there were 120 evacuated sick. The annual malarial rate was 84 per cent of the total strength of the Army. Such statistics indicated that, if not tended to, the Army would not be in existence in 1944 to re-invade Burma. Drastic action was required and was


energetically carried out. Few additional resources from other theatres were available although Mountbatten had been successful in bringing to south-east Asia several leading research workers in tropical medicine. However it was in forward treatment that great progress was made. The Fourteenth Army instituted Malaria Forward Treatment Units (MFTUs) which were in effect, field hospitals, tented or more often in bashas a few miles behind the Forward Edge of the Battlefield (FEBA). Such a system reduced the load on the lines of communication and meant that a soldier was away from his unit for considerably less time. It was a simple but effective measure. Other aspects such as an increase in Field Surgical Teams and air casualty evacuation contributed to the general improvements before the 1944 campaign began. But none of these measures would prove lasting unless there was a pervading sense of discipline. More than half of the battle against disease is fought, not by the doctors, but by regimental officers. It is they who can ensure that daily doses are taken and that stringent regime practices are enforced. This required considerable discipline which was emphasized from the very top. Slim’s approach to administration and training went far to solve his anxieties over morale but because he had spent time in analysing the abstract qualities of morale he knew where to concentrate his efforts. Slim worked a miracle with the Fourteenth Army and reconstituted an army from the ruins of defeat. It was a remarkable achievement, the like of which is unlikely to be repeated. Nevertheless the attention which Slim’s lectures on morale still receive is witness to the lessons that are still relevant today. Morale was not a problem during the Gulf War; clear aims, good training and first-class administration were in our favour, but how different that might have been with large numbers of casualties or tactical reverses. CONCLUSION The similarities between Slim’s campaign and Desert Storm are undoubtedly superficial, but an analysis of the operational lessons in Burma highlight the universal nature of certain operational imperatives. The conduct of war at the operational level, wherever it is, will highlight identical issues. Command arrangements and judicious divisions of responsibility between the strategic, operational and tactical levels are essential. There will always be


overlap but no one man can do it all. The ‘read’ of the battle will always prove to be a test of generalship particularly when deception is the normal tactic of the enemy. Once the general has correctly ‘read’ the battle, decisive and courageous action must follow. However, despite all these admirable qualities, if the operational aim is not clear and well understood all will fail. Slim’s performance as an operational commander is impressive, perhaps more so than the more fashionable choices from the Second World War. By his personality he was able to achieve a unity of purpose amongst the disparate parts of his command and achieve victory. By his understanding of campaign planning he set clear objectives within his operational goal, and designed a sequence of events which achieved that goal. Finally by his brilliance as a general, that is, by his display of generalship, he ‘read’ the battle correctly and used operational techniques, attrition and manœuvre, at the right time and the right place. The Burma campaign of 1943–5 provides as many good examples of the operational art as the campaign of 1942 provides bad ones. Thus Burma provides us with a miniature laboratory of war. The execution of the air/land war in Burma is a good example of a well coordinated and well planned joint operation. The relationships between the two Services and the two nations involved was of a high order, and the lessons for the present and future are obvious. Finally the Burma campaign highlights the fundamental importance of logistics, training and morale. All these come into particular focus because of the appalling standards in all three areas which existed in the Burma Army in 1942. The achievements of the logistic staffs in the following years is worthy of a study on its own, but the importance of the early inclusion of administrative staffs in operational planning, of improvisation in a country such as Burma, and the understanding of logistical risk are apparent, even from a superficial study of the campaign. The lessons in regard to training and morale are universal and longlasting, but there is always the danger, particularly in peacetime, that such lessons become forgotten or allocated a lower priority because of a scarcity of resources. NOTES 1 Field Marshal Viscount Slim, Defeat into Victory, London, Cassell, 1955, p. 121.


2 ibid., p. 119. 3 L.Allen, Burma, The Longest War, London, Dent, 1984, p. 95. 4 P.Ziegler (ed.), Personal Diary of Admiral The Lord Louis Mountbatten, London, Collins, 1988, p. 54. 5 Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 207. 6 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, The Strategy of the South East Asia Campaign’, RUSI Journal, November 1946, pp. 469–84. 7 Ziegler, Personal Diary…Mountbatten, p. 24. 8 Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 202. 9 ibid., p. 467. 10 ibid., p. 212. 11 ibid., p. 545. 12 Mountbatten, ‘Strategy’, RUSI Journal, November 1946. 13 M. van Creveld, Supplying War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 231. 14 Slim, ‘Higher Command in War’, Military Review, May 1990, p. 16. 15 Defeat into Victory, p. 215. 16 ibid., p. 438. 17 D.Fraser, And We Shall Shock Them, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1983, p. 297. 18 Slim, ‘Higher Command in War’, p. 189. 19 ibid., p. 182.

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6 INCREASING TEMPO ON THE MODERN BATTLEFIELD Colonel A.Behagg MBE

A commander must accustom his staff to a high tempo from the outset and continually keep them up to it. If he once allows himself to be satisfied with norms, or anything less than all out effort, he gives up the race from the starting post and will sooner or later be taught a bitter lesson by his faster moving enemy and be forced to jettison all his fixed ideas. (Field Marshal Erwin Rommel) In a land/air battle fought between equipment intensive, modern armies, manœuvre warfare offers the possibility of results disproportionately greater than the resources applied to the effort: in essence, the chance of victory to the side that is materially weaker. A return such as this is extremely attractive to forces operating within modern democracies and interest in this type of warfare has grown considerably in recent years. The aim of manœuvre is to apply strength in the form of firepower against weakness, in contrast to attrition where strength tends to be applied against strength. In manœuvre theory the emphasis is on the disruption and then destruction of the enemy. It depends for its success on the precise application of this force against identified points of weakness. Apart from the obvious components of firepower and mobility the most significant elements of manœuvre warfare are momentum and tempo. Momentum is a measure of the effect that a formation or unit that is moving can have and is easily compared to the physical product of the force’s size and speed, essentially the mass of the force multiplied by its velocity. Tempo however is significantly different and, in simple terms, can be defined as ‘the rate of activity of a force’. In military terms


it is a measure of the extent to which the potential speed of a formation or unit is exploited. This is not just a reflection of the mobility of the force or even its ability to move quickly across a particular type of terrain, it is more a reflection of that force’s overall ability to respond to a given set of circumstances; and more importantly to continue to respond as these circumstances change. The relevance of this is that the faster, or higher, the tempo of a formation the more quickly it can react to the actions of the enemy or more importantly, the greater the likelihood of outmanœuvring an opponent. Since manœuvre relies on the precise application of force, and often includes the application of this force at or by a specific time, it is vital that one’s own decision-action cycle is quicker than (commonly referred to as ‘within’) that of the enemy. All other things being equal, the force with the faster tempo has the advantage. Some Soviet authorities1 go so far as to state that the force with a two times faster decision cycle has the capacity to defeat an enemy force up to five times its own size. The aim of this chapter is to examine ways in which the commander of today can maintain and even increase the tempo of his operations in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of his force. Although the chapter recognizes the changed political climate of the world, the discussion will be based on a modern, corps-sized, armoured formation structured for a land war on the European mainland. THE NEED FOR TEMPO In order to fight the battle successfully the commander has to find out what is going on, decide what to do, tell someone what to do and then follow the battle. He needs to turn that informationdecision cycle in time inside the enemy’s information-decision cycle so that, instead of simply reacting to what the enemy does, he can seize the initiative. In order to win the battle, gaining and then holding this initiative is essential. This is the cornerstone of tempo. The awareness of tempo in the sense that this paper discusses it was first formally observed by Colonel J. Boyd in his studies of combat air manœuvre in Korea. In summary, conflict is seen as a continuing sequence of actions through a time competitive cycle. This cycle includes the elements of observation-orientationdecision and action and is known as the OODA loop (after the

INCREASING TEMPO ON THE MODERN BATTLEFIELD

109

Figure 2 The decision-action cycle (the OODA loop)

initials) or perhaps more appropriately as the Boyd Cycle (see Figure 2). The key point is that the side that can consistently go through the loop faster than the other gains an advantage that increases as more actions are undertaken. An alternative and perhaps better way of looking at this cycle is the simple combat model shown at Figure 3 which acknowledges other elements in the equation, not least of which is the enemy’s counter-measures, and also more importantly the time-space dimension in the loop. It is this relationship of time and action within the decision cycle that is the key to outmanœuvring the enemy. An awareness of this decision cycle and why it is important is one of the many qualities required in a successful commander. While it might not have been recognized as such, there are many examples of commanders in history understanding the values accruing from sequential advantages in time and space on the battlefield. Napoleon’s ability in his Italian campaign to fight three battles in ten days against a superior Austrian force, or ‘Stonewall’


Jackson’s Valley campaign in 1862 in which he defeated three Union forces in a similar time, could arguably be said to be an appreciation, albeit probably unwittingly made, of the need to achieve and sustain a fast tempo in order to succeed in battle. In 1940 the French and also the British armies were less effective than they might have been, not because their equipment was inferior (if anything in some key areas it was superior), but because their reactions, compared to those of the enemy, were too slow to make any impact on the battlefield. French counter-moves in particular were repeatedly thrown out of gear because their timings were not quick enough to catch up with the changing situation. The French, trained in the slow motion methods of the First World War, were mentally unfitted to cope with the new tempo of the blitzkrieg and it caused a spreading paralysis among them. It can be argued that speed of reaction in itself is not necessarily a requirement for success. What is important is that the decisionaction cycle is faster than that of the enemy. While the speed with which the French decision cycle worked in 1918 was acceptable to the requirements of attrition warfare on the Western Front, in 1940 the French army was not able to cope with the demands of manœuvre warfare as practised by the Wehrmacht. The importance of advantage in tempo is well illustrated in the attack in which the harder the side with the quicker decisionaction cycle presses, the greater becomes its advantage. In reality in France in 1940 the situation got progressively worse as the German army continued to advance. This is exactly what is supposed to happen in theory, that is, when the enemy gets inside the decision circle, each and every subsequent move by him exacerbates the deteriorating situation. In fact, although virtually impossible to measure, there is a case for stating that the advantage increases geometrically,2 as opposed to arithmetically, in this situation as the deeper the enemy penetrates, the greater the tendency for the defender to become paralysed. This situation was well recognized by the successful Allied commanders in the Second World War where the cornerstone of maintaining tempo was often seen as proportional to a force’s ability to accumulate information on the enemy. Some commanders subsequently developed quite sophisticated information-gathering organizations to gain this intelligence on enemy movements more quickly than the formal reporting chain of their formation was capable of passing it to them. Montgomery


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Figure 3 The simple combat model

used his Phantom Service and liaison officers, while Patton used a mechanized cavalry group whose forward elements reported directly to his Army headquarters. The pro cess by which the commander acquires the right information at the right time has been described by van Creveld as the ‘directed telescope’,3 and is seen as an essential component of the commander’s decisionaction cycle. Whatever the method, the critical point is that the commander should have a means of acquiring information rapidly, and that the best method of doing this has tended to be outside the normal reporting system of the chain of command. Finally it should be recognized that on the modern day battlefield there is a strong case for maintaining that the tempo of operations is in fact faster than in the past, and also that this tempo is increasing. Simpkin describes a three- to fourfold increase in the overall possible tempo since the 1940s. In a detailed analysis of the time necessary to gestate, prepare and produce the staff work for a tank army level operation he shows how this was typically fifteen days in the period 1943–5 and yet this has been reduced to some four to five days by the mid-1980s. Additionally, he points out that


in 1945 the preferred date for the insertion of a mobile force such as an operational manœuvre group (OMG) into the battle was D+4 or D+5, whereas now it would not be unreasonable to expect to insert a single echelon formation such as this on D-Day, and at front level at D+1.4 The conclusion is that an awareness of tempo and its components, as well as its relevance to success on the battlefield, should be fully understood by the commander if he is to gain victory at manœuvre warfare. THE COMPONENTS OF TEMPO The term tempo needs further qualification. To a Russian soldier it would probably loosely mean the rate of advance of a formation and his studies would be concerned with the ways that this rate of advance could be sustained. This concept is however too simplistic. Brigadier Simpkin5 goes further and describes the term more directly as a complex of seven elements which combine to determine the tempo of a formation: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

physical mobility tactical rate of advance quantity and reliability of information C3 (command, control and communications) timings times to complete moves pattern of combat support pattern of service support

Further subdivision is also possible and the same source goes on to define ‘overall tempo’,6 ‘mounting tempo’,7 and ‘execution tempo’. 8 However, while recognizing that there are several components to tempo these definitions do not address the key element of time within the decision cycle. Neither do they consider how the potential speed of a formation in terms of its tempo can either be achieved or indeed even maximized. THE SYSTEMS APPROACH TO TEMPO The elements that make up the tempo of a formation are a complex amalgam and identifying and defining them is a difficult, if not


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inexact, process. Creating a model of such a system presents many difficulties. Several writers have addressed the problem of analysing the key elements that make up this model (which at one level could be regarded as a command model). One authority9 has however gone so far as to claim that: ‘the key factors in command are men, whose behaviour in the command role defies any analysis from which usable, productive models can be derived’. Although there is undoubtedly some truth in this statement, there are equally many who would see a model, for all its faults, as a viable way of explaining and understanding a complex situation and this paper attempts to produce one. The basis for understanding the process however is that the subject cannot be approached in anything other than a systematic and holistic way. There are several important elements that directly effect tempo, any one of which on its own reacts with all the others. All must be considered as an interacting whole in what can be seen as the ‘tempo system’. Figure 4 shows such a possible model of the ‘tempo system’. It is suggested that this system consists of three basic components:

Figure 4 The tempo system


1 The technology of the formation and how this is harnessed. 2 The structure and organization of the force. 3 The culture that exists within this force. Subsystems exist within each of these components. The technology subsystem consists, not just of the command and control equipment, but all the equipment of the formation and the way it is integrated into the force. While arguably the most important element in the ‘tempo system’ is the technology of the command and control side, other factors are relevant as well. These factors include such elements as the quality of the vehicle fleet and weapons platforms, their speed of deployment and movement, their reliability and availability. All are relevant to the tempo equation and have an overall impact on the formation’s decision-action cycle performance to varying degrees. Equally the structure and organization system has in itself a further subsystem which, among other things, includes the size of a formation, its hierarchy (and hence levels of decision making), its battle procedures, its training, its logistics and the interoperability of all these elements. The culture system can also be broken down into further subsystems which could include the society in which the formation exists, and the values and beliefs of those members of the formation. The whole ‘tempo system’ itself operates within the environment of the enemy. The important point to note is that it is not possible to either concentrate on or improve any single aspect (for example, technology) without recognizing the need to improve the others, or acknowledging the knock-on effect that a change in one area can have on another. While a change to an individual factor might enhance the speed of response of a force the full potential will not be maximized unless the relationship of that change to the other components in the ‘tempo system’ is recognized. For instance it is no use improving the speed of vehicles so that they can move more quickly to battle, if the orders process by which the decision to send these vehicles to combat remains unchanged. While there might possibly be an improvement in the tempo of the force, this could not be guaranteed, and the potential of the improvement would probably not be maximized.


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Similarly, it is no use improving the information flow on the enemy if the means of handling that information is not commensurately improved; such a superficial change fails to recognize the interrelated nature of the components of tempo and to acknowledge that an improvement in one area could well create a choke point or critical path in the observationdecision-action loop in another. IMPROVING THE TEMPO It could be said that the formal recognition of the need to identify the essential elements of the ‘tempo system’ requires a radically new approach to the problems of battlefield decision making, the key to which is the ability of the commander to act faster and more effectively than the enemy. To succeed the commander’s plans ideally should not be reactive but should be proactive. However it has to be recognized that to gain an advantage over the enemy it is theoretically not necessary to maximize the tempo of one’s own force but simply to get inside the decision cycle of that enemy. Having said that, it would be an unwise commander who did not try to get his own force operating at as near to its maximum level of efficiency as possible, on the grounds that the greater the disparity of tempo between two forces, the greater the potential advantage. Within the components of the ‘tempo system’ several areas lend themselves to investigation with a view to improving the tempo of a force. Technology Superficially, perhaps the most attractive area to examine for an answer to the problem of maximizing tempo is that of technology. It could be contended that the introduction and integration of automation equipment into the command and staff organization, as an aid to effective management and decision making, will assist the commander to gain an accurate and rapid picture of the overall situation and come to a quicker decision. While acknowledging that automation neither replaces nor supplants mental creativity, supporters of the theory that more technology is the key to improved tempo will argue that it gives the human mind the opportunity to extend its range of intellect.


However the problem is not as simple as that. The more diverse a command is, the more mobile are its components. Additionally, the more sensors a commander has available to him, the greater can be the information overload. As well as this the greater the number of systems, the more these have to integrate with other arms of service, the bigger is the battlefield commander’s problem, and the harder it is to extract the right solution from the information in order to reach the correct decision. Time spent analysing and deciding inevitably increases the response time and invariably reduces the tempo of a formation. Within the narrow confines of a command and control system there are several recognized problem areas:10 a There is no theory of command and control on which to model a solution. b There is informational chaos, and more sensors increase this chaos. c The technological revolution continues and it remains important to stay abreast of it if the benefits of improved tempo are to be sustained and not overtaken by the enemy. More technology could be regarded as a possible answer to the commander’s information overload, perhaps in the form of a sophisticated battlefield management system. Artificial intelligence (A1) also possibly has the potential to improve decision making, but at the current time A1 can still be regarded as in its infancy and neither the costs nor benefits can be specified in any detail. Additionally artificial intelligence in effect applies a doctrine to a situation and suitable doctrines would have to be developed to a greater depth of understanding than currently exist. Perhaps most significantly of all as far as a technological solution is concerned is the problem of integration. This can be seen at two distinct levels. With the development of new equipment, there are both problems of interoperability of different types of systems and also difficulties of integrating new technology into existing organizations. The former is a mechanistic problem, but not a simple one despite this given the complexity and number of modern equipments. The latter problem is however perhaps the more significant in that the advantages accrued from the introduction of a new piece of command, control and communication equipment might not necessarily be maximized if that equipment is


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constrained by the limitations of a structure or hierarchy designed for a different equipment. This is addressed in more detail below. Additionally, the greater the reliance on a technological solution, the greater the risk of paralysis when the technology fails. Equally, the greater the amount of technology employed, the greater is the inevitability of failure. Having said that, the possibilities offered by the continuing electronics revolution, despite the potential limitations, should not be ignored. Hardware and software components can undoubtedly assist the commander providing they are integrated into his system of command. As far as a technological solution to improving tempo is concerned the conclusion is probably that there is no isolated stand-alone technical answer. Sophisticated electronic wizardry will not in itself suffice for the creation of a functioning command system but the ability of technology to assist as part of the overall system should not be discounted. Technology alone cannot, and indeed should not, be seen as the panacea to the conundrum of this information overload. It is how this technology is applied within and relates to the components of the ‘tempo system’ that is the key to success. Organization and structure As already mentioned above the organization and structure of a force will play an important part in the tempo of that formation. In simple terms a large organization that is rigidly hierarchical, with each level in the hierarchy influencing the passage of information either upwards or downward, will inevitably be slower to react than a smaller and independent organization. Additionally, the more layers within an organization the more remote from the decision point will be the commander. Although technology can help to overcome this to some extent, nevertheless as information passes up a hierarchy it has a tendency to be modified into a form more acceptable to the higher headquarters. This filtering or ‘sugar coating’ can, depending on the circumstances, distort the facts detrimentally. Notwithstanding this the relevant issue is that, despite improvements in information handling, with the need for information to pass up and down a hierarchy the overall reaction time of an organization is slowed down. The simple conclusion is that to operate at a fast tempo organizations should be both small


and have as few layers as possible. The natural corollary of this is to reduce the size of major formations in order that they can both react and move faster. Although this may appear a simplistic approach it has its attractions. The main point however is that the structure of a formation plays an important part in that formation’s tempo. It is already well documented11 that an organizational innovation can give a tactical advantage which can also increase the tempo of a force’s operations. (The creation of Napoleon’s corps d’armée is the classic example.) What that innovation should be, and how the formation might be reorganized, to achieve this advantage is probably beyond the scope of this chapter, although some suggestions for further investigation are outlined below. Prior to any organizational change however, common doctrine, common operational procedures and even a highly trained staff with slick battle procedures can go some way to reducing the friction within the organization and hence increasing its tempo. As well as the standard staff practices, these procedures should include mission analysis to enable formation tasks to be more readily identified, and also the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) which can assist in reducing options. None of these procedures however is a viable substitute for an organizational structure that in itself is geared to a fast tempo of operations. What such a structure should be remains the subject of much debate and speculation. Currently, a US corps undergoing a change of mission will typically take 36–48 hours to plan and issue orders, while at divisional level the figure is about 18 hours.12 A Bundeswehr division operates in roughly the same time frame (that is, 16–18 hours), while a UK division typically requires 24 hours to execute a change of mission from a cold start. As far as the British Army is concerned the practical reality of this is that an enemy travelling at only 10 kilometres in the hour can travel 120 kilometres before a typical UK division has executed one change of move. There is perhaps a case for stating that this is a vulnerability in the tempo of operations at divisional (and perhaps even corps) level that could be exploited by the enemy. This weakness is exacerbated when both corps and divisions attempt to plan further ahead. Typically, corps staff are planning some three to four days ahead, and divisions perhaps two days. Sudden changes of plans within these cycles achieve a disproportionately disruptive effect.


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One way, often advanced, of possibly increasing the tempo of a formation by changing its structure is to reduce the number of components in it, principally by eliminating a headquarters. It is believed that such a move could cut out one of the links in the chain and as a result speed up reaction time. (There is a parallel in the commercial world where the majority of large conglomerates have recognized that, in order to respond quickly to rapidly changing markets, they need to reduce the number of levels in their reporting chain. This is now the trend in all large business and industrial organizations.)13 To reduce the links in the chain it is perhaps possible to remove permanently a level of command from the orbat. In the 1970s the UK tried, albeit for different reasons, to eliminate the brigade level headquarters from its divisional structure and have divisions dealing direct with battlegroups. Currently, within the European theatre, there is some debate on eliminating larger headquarters such as that of the army group and having corps controlled by CINCENTs headquarters (Commander in Chief Central Region). Such ideas are fraught with difficulty not the least of which are the problems of extending the commander’s span of command to the point where the savings in time by the removal of a headquarters can cease to be cost effective. What the threshold for the span of command is and whether or not it can be formally expanded in order to shorten the decision-action cycle is again beyond the scope of this chapter, but is an area that might benefit from further research. This elimination of a link, however, does not necessarily have to be a permanent feature of the orbat. It is conceivable that the link could be removed temporarily for a certain length of time or for a specific operation. At a very low level this is common practise in UK armoured battlegroups. When speed is essential and formal orders not possible the commander gives radio orders. The technology of the all informed combat net radio allows the commanding officer to pass these orders to all vehicles in the battlegroup (effectively four links down the command chain to section level). Company and platoon commanders listen, and augment where appropriate. Such a system does not require the permanent elimination of headquarters, rather that at critical times in the decision-action cycle they are bypassed.


A model such as this could perhaps be seen as an extension of directive control and possibly described as ‘reverse directive control’. With directive control the junior commander is invited to put himself in the mind of the senior commander and, as the course of the battle unfolds often in a way unpredicted, the junior commander exercises his initiative and discretion in achieving the senior commander’s desired intention. In doing so the junior commander may have to exercise considerable initiative without the buffer of his immediate superior’s updated orders in the intermediate headquarters to extemporize and amplify them. A natural extension of this is for the senior commander to do the reverse. Put into a formation context (for explanation purposes only —the theory applies at any scale) this would involve the senior commander (corps) dealing direct with the junior commander (brigade or even battlegroup) missing out the intermediate commander (division). Obviously, the intermediate commander would have to be kept informed but it may be that, when the occasion demands it, the skipping of a link in the chain could shorten the decision-action cycle and increase the overall tempo of the formation. Possible models are shown in Figures 5 and 6. Obviously such a system runs the risk of being accused of having the higher headquarters overcommanding the lower one. That is not the suggestion of this paper. Rather it is the suggestion that, when and where appropriate, intermediate headquarters are bypassed at certain stages in the battle. Also to be considered in more detail with this suggestion is whether or not battle procedures and technology will allow higher formation commanders to skip individual levels of command at certain critical times in the battle, in the way that the all informed radio net and unit SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) allow the battlegroup commander to do at a lower level when appropriate. All this remains to be proved but is again an area worth further study in order to increase the tempo at formation level. Culture The third element in the ‘tempo system’ is the culture of the organization itself. This term is taken to mean the basis of the philosophy by which that army exists. In simple terms this is the total sum of the beliefs, knowledge and attitude of mind and


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Figure 5 Model to show the possible increase in tempo by the temporary elimination of headquarters

customs to which a person, be he a commander or a staff officer, is exposed during his social conditioning (that is to say, his military training and education). Through contact with a particular culture the individual learns a language and acquires values and learns habits of behaviour and thought. The culture of a society, be it a civil society or a military one, will define objects and situations for the individual, whereas other societies with other cultures may define the same situations differently. There is generally likely to be a correlation between the culture of the civil society and that of the military. Manœuvre warfare means essentially a high degree of movement which in itself means accepting a degree of confusion and disorder (almost the opposite of Montgomery’s tidy battlefield). Higher headquarters will probably not be able either to direct or predict the exact course of an operation, and in this environment much will rest on the initiative of those junior commanders closer to the point of contact. One of the successful criteria for manœuvre warfare is to go through the decision action cycle consistently faster than the enemy. There is a strong case for stating that only a decentralized military can have a fast derision-action cycle, and


Figure 6 Model to show the possible, temporary elimination of headquarters

that directive control is probably the only effective way of achieving decentralization of command. The argument follows that directive control can only really exist in a culture that encourages initiative and freedom of both thought and action. (Hence the importance of understanding the link with the civil society.) There is a strong case for stating that rigid, authoritarian cultures can lead to stifling, overcentralized military command systems and, although the Wehrmacht’s performance in the Second World War might not bear this out, the analogy is generally sustainable. In the modern world perhaps the most striking example is the innovation that American culture has encouraged compared to the lack of innovation engendered by the authoritarianism of the former Soviet regime. Only initiative encouraged by the culture of the military society, brought to maturity through a training and education system that develops freedom of thought and action (within the framework of an army’s doctrine), can ensure that the potential of directive control is fully exploited. An awareness of the importance of culture and the encouragement of a system that develops the right culture could well have other benefits, not the least of which is that an innovative culture stimulates other aspects of (military) society. It should theoretically bring more original thought and better problem-solving techniques.


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As far as this is relevant to a military formation, the important point is that a culture that encourages initiative and independence of mind and action can increase the tempo of a force. The role of the enemy As has been maintained the ‘tempo system’ exists in the environment created by the enemy. The performance of the enemy and the tempo of his system is therefore extremely relevant. Combat success lies as much with slowing or extending the time frames in which the enemy conducts critical tactical manœuvre, as it does with increasing the speed of our own decision-making process. Indeed it might be more profitable to exploit the weaknesses in the enemy’s capabilities rather than attempt to outstrip his tempo by one’s own advances. Also relevant is the fact that, in manœuvre warfare, there is an increasing advantage each time a force goes through the decisionaction cycle faster than the enemy. It would therefore be beneficial to try initially to measure the enemy’s decisionaction cycle in order to determine its quality and then, if necessary, to slow down this cycle by targeting the weak links in it. It is not the purpose of this chapter to determine in detail what the enemy decision-action weak links might be, nor indeed how they might be attacked. Notwithstanding this, key links will undoubtedly include the following: a Command, control and communications systems. b Information and intelligence-gathering systems. c Divisional, corps and army group (or equivalent) level reconnaissance organizations and facilities. Further study is necessary to ensure that the effort made in this area is both efficient and cost-effective. CONCLUSION Manœuvre warfare is an attractive method of warfare offering the potential for a smaller force to defeat a far larger one. It does however require a fast tempo of operations in order to ensure success. The speed with which a force transitions from one operation to another determines the tempo of that force, and the


commander whose force has the faster tempo has an advantage which theoretically increases as each change of action takes place. The tempo of a force is however a complex amalgam of individual components which combine together to make up the ‘tempo system’. The key components of this ‘tempo system’ are the technology, organization and structure and the culture of a formation. These three elements, together with their appropriate subsystems, are all interlinked to the extent that it is not possible to change one aspect of the system (or subsystem) without effecting all the other elements to a varying degree. While recognizing this constraint, this chapter examined the individual components of the ‘tempo system’ and suggested ways that improvements to the tempo of a force might be achieved. Possible areas for further study include first, structure and organization. The structure and organization of a formation can play a significant part in determining the tempo of a force. Changes in this structure that allow the faster passage of information and command decisions can improve tempo. Smaller organizations, with less layers between top and bottom, are faster to react than large organizations. Eliminating headquarters might be a possible way of increasing tempo, but this runs the risk of enlarging the span of command to an unmanageable level. Changes in organizational structure, however, do not necessarily have to be permanent, and it is conceivable that battle procedures could be developed to allow the temporary elimination of headquarters for specific periods in the battle or for defined operations. Such a procedure could perhaps be regarded as ‘reverse directive control’. Second, this chapter recognizes that the culture of an organization plays a very significant part in the way it operates. To succeed with manœuvre warfare a highly decentralized command system is required and this can only be achieved if the culture of that formation is compliant. A culture that encourages initiative will increase the tempo of a formation. Third, technology offers possible avenues for improving the tempo of a force, but the important point is that there is no universal technical panacea and it would be wrong to seek one without recognizing the place of technology in the ‘tempo system’. Notwithstanding this the tempo of a force operates within the inevitable friction of conflict and the fog of war, but above all this it operates within the environment of the enemy which has an influence on all aspects of the ‘tempo system’.


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This chapter offers no simple solution to the problem of improving the tempo of a force. What it has attempted to do is to identify the components of tempo and to suggest ways that the speed of reaction of a formation can be improved. Failure to react quicker than the enemy can be fatal; the rewards for reacting faster can bring victory. NOTES 1 Lecture ‘Quantity or Quality’ given by Major-General S. Cowan to HCSC, 13 February 1991 (unpublished). 2 General J.H.Polk, The Criticality of Time in Combat’, Armor, May/ June 1988. 3 M. van Creveld, Command In War, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1985. 4 Brigadier R.Simpkin, Race to the Swift, London, Brassey’s, 1985, p. 264. 5 ibid., p. 106. 6 ibid. ‘The distance from the initial line of contact to the back on the final operational objective, divided by the time from the receipt of the orders…to the accomplishment of the mission.’ 7 ibid. ‘from receipt of the orders up until the first crossing of the initial line of contact’. 8 ibid. ‘from the time of initial contact to the end of the mission’. 9 I. White, Raising Standards in Command and Control, London, HMSO, 1988. 10 I. White, ‘The Future for Command Systems’, in C.J.Harris and I.White (eds), Advances in Command, Control and Communication Systems, Stevenage, P. Perigrinus, 1987. 11 van Creveld, Command in War, p. 250. 12 Major R.F.Dees, ‘Battle Rhythm’, Military Review, April 1987, quoting General G.K.Otis, C-in-C US Army Europe on 21 December 1985. 13 T.Peters, ‘Tomorrow’s Companies’, Economist, 4 March 1989.

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7 DEPTH FIREPOWER: THE VIOLENT, ENABLING ELEMENT Group Captain S.J.Coy OBE RAF

2nd Servant: Why, then we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed balladmakers. 1st Servant: Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men. 2nd Servant: ‘Tis so: and as war, in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds. 1st Servant: Ay, and it makes men hate one another. (William Shakespeare. Coriolanus, Act IV, Scene V) Coriolanus’s servants were not alone in having difficulties in coping with an extended period of peace. Any discussion nowadays concerning the future is subject to a difficulty which clouds new concepts and ideas with uncertainty. This difficulty—like Shakespeare’s lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy and insensible— follows from the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the disappearance of the long-standing threat and its replacement with the ‘risk’ associated with the former Soviet Union’s retained capability. This will lead, the military presume, to a public reluctant to continue to support defence funding at previous levels. The military are also fearful that eventually the public will question the continued need to equip and prepare UK armed forces to intervene in Central Europe. Nevertheless, even during peace, planning for general war has to continue, and those responsible for shaping the future size and shape of the nation’s armed forces should retain sight of first principles. Only through this approach will they be able to

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maintain effective and well-balanced forces to meet the political remit of the day at a price the country is prepared to pay. In the context of first principles, the provision of firepower remains paramount. Clausewitz was clear that ‘War…is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will. Violence arms itself with the inventions of Art and Science in order to contend against violence.’1 Clausewitz makes it quite clear in this context that violence is physical force. Since 1832, when Vom Kriege was written, Art and Science have done much to refine the way in which violence is brought to bear on an enemy. Nevertheless, it is as true now as it was then: that to disarm the enemy—whatever the size of the conflict; independent of the circumstances of who is the attacker and who is the defender; whether it is an attritional conflict or a manœuvre conflict— physical force must be brought to bear. However, when the threat recedes and the case for financial support for programmes becomes increasingly difficult to put convincingly, the peace is ‘nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors and breed ballad-makers’. Today, it is particularly important to turn to first principles to seek a possible way ahead. That is why an examination of firepower into the twenty-first century is timely. Until a hundred years ago the men wielding firepower could see the object of their attack. The Simeonites with their swords (they killed 10,000 Canaanites at Bezek)2; David with his sling; archers with their arrows; the infantry with their rifles and, until about 1890, the artillery with their cannon, all had one thing in common —they were in contact with the enemy, the object of their violence. When it came, indirect fire was the most important innovation in artillery practice for 300 years and introduced a technology-led step change, even if it did take some time for armies to assimilate the importance of this new capability. Experiments with indirect fire were made by Russians using howitzers as early as the 1750s, but major technical development was not undertaken until the last decades of the nineteenth century. Although the principles of the system were well understood, it was not until the First World War that its potential was realized, and from then it has steadily developed. The development required the necessary artillery equipment and training, but also required progress in two other areas. Hitherto, the engagement of targets with direct fire had required little in the way of target acquisition or coordination. The battery commander identified the target to his gunners who

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engaged it visually. Change became necessary during the First World War when massive indirect artillery bombardment became a feature of static, attritional warfare. Nevertheless, the only target acquisition system in use during the First World War was sound ranging for counter-battery fire when a very effective system was developed. Most support, however, was fired ‘off the map’ with, occasionally, correction from the air. Fire support continued as a feature of the set piece attritional battles of the Second World War, and some was delivered through the new medium of air bombardment. Target acquisition was improved through air reconnaissance. This pattern continued in general wars conducted after the Second World War, notably Korea and Vietnam. We have seen that the application of violence is fundamental to meeting the challenge of violence, and thus is an essential element in the waging of war. Moreover, since the application of violence is dependent on the technology of the day for both its application and its effect, consideration has to be given—even in time of peace—to the consequences of future technology. The provision of massive indirect fire support in 1915 had its roots in the Industrial Revolution; the changes that are now upon us have their basis in the development of microelectronics. This, as we will see, will lead to the development of ‘smart’ and ‘brilliant’ weapons, and a range of systems that link and combine sensors to identify targets. Thus have been developed new systems of fire support which will attack targets (with conventional warheads) very precisely and at great depth. Of course, a great deal of military judgement will be needed to determine whether the product of a computer laboratory can be engineered in a sufficiently robust way to meet the military requirement for firepower. As we will see, it seems possible that it will. DOCTRINE The British Military Doctrine makes it clear that ‘The function of the Military Doctrine is to establish the framework of understanding of the approach to warfare in order to provide the foundation for its practical application.’3 However, its approach is very general and does not lead to specific factors which could be used to determine a preference for the development of one family of weapon systems rather than another. In any case, it is not the British way to establish a requirement for a system through doctrine (although

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perhaps it should be). Nevertheless, the Doctrine cites three requirements for the successful fighting of a war—exercise of command, manœuvre and firepower. It also identifies the characteristics of firepower: firepower should be synchronized with other battlefield activities; firepower should be co-ordinated at all levels; target acquisition means should be dedicated; and the necessary communications should exist to support command and control. This doctrine was not the basis of the development of the current Army depth attack and reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition system; rather these projects were developed in response to a threat and a capability gap, albeit in the case of the Multiple Launch Rocket System as a multinational development. With this somewhat general advice emerging from British Army Doctrine, it is helpful to turn to other nations’ doctrines to see if they provide more specific advice concerning the characteristics of future systems and how they should be employed. The US Army Doctrine4 describes the US Army’s approach to generating and applying combat power at the operational and tactical levels. This doctrine—the AirLand Battle Doctrine—sets different imperatives as its basic tenets: initiative, agility, depth and synchronization and these are further developed leading, inter alia into requirements for the deep battle. NATO’s strategy of flexible response (adopted in 1967), is a strategy for deterring war and, if deterrence should fail, for employing Alliance military forces in such a way as to bring the conflict to a satisfactory conclusion with a minimum of civilian and military casualties and without loss of NATO territory. It is supported by a triad of forces: strategic nuclear, theatre nuclear and conventional. Intermediate-range theatre nuclear forces are now eliminated through treaty, and the spotlight passed to short range nuclear weapons. However the use of any nuclear weapon in Europe must be seen as an element of strategy and at the operational level attention is firmly focused on conventional weapons. Hence the interest in NATO’s operational sub-concept covering the area of depth attack: Follow on Forces Attack (FOFA) approved on 9 December 1984 by the NATO defence planning committee. Nevertheless, the SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) of the day, General Bernard W.Rogers, made it clear that FOFA was not a replacement for the nuclear option, but rather a way that conventional forces could overcome their shortcomings and exploit promising technological developments.

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General Rogers also identified the differences between FOFA and the US AirLand battle doctrine as follows: 1 A clear distinction between US doctrine of integrated use of conventional and mass destruction weapons and NATO’s release procedures. 2 NATO will not engage in pre-emptive strikes. 3 NATO will not attack across our borders with ground forces, but will counter-attack to restore borders.5 Despite these differences, it is clear that the spirit of the US AirLand battle doctrine has much in common with the NATO operational concept, and both embrace the technologies of surveillance and target-acquisition systems and deep-attack weapons. NATO Force Goals between 1983 and 1988 contained commitments for, among other things, exploiting promising new technology for the purposes of FOFA. Thus the development of the key reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition system—Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS)—has its origins in a national doctrine which is compatible with the NATO operational subconcept. While the future of the project (developed at a cost of $625 million and requiring $3 billion for production of 10 USAF/US Army aircraft) depends on the future level of US defence spending being maintained which seems unlikely, the provenance of the project is doctrinally impeccable. The UK doctrine, welcome as it is, is not written in a way that could lead so clearly to the development of a specific technology. WEAPONS AND SYSTEMS The technology that forms the basis of current and future reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition systems and deep-attack systems is not the product of one particular discipline. The systems are effective because they use a combination of disciplines and techniques. There are two common factors, however, in these systems: the first is microelectronics; the second is the need for systems integration. A commonly held view6 is that it is this integration within and between their systems that is their weakness, and that the limiting factor will finally be the ability to write robust software that incorporates key characteristics of

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successful systems—the centrality of man and the importance of the commander. The equipment and technology employed in reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition systems and deep-attack systems can be considered initially under three broad categories: 1 UK systems in-service or planned. 2 US systems in-service or planned. 3 ‘Smart’ and ‘brilliant’ systems. The introduction of rocket artillery and target-acquisition equipments to the British Army which is starting now and will continue to the next century is an important event. Its value was more than upheld by the recent Gulf War. First, it goes some way towards rectifying long-standing deficiencies in the British Army’s artillery-based firepower. Second, it introduces to the Army a system for real-time battlefield reconnaissance forward of the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battlefield). The new equipments, namely Multiple Launch Rocket System and Phoenix Remotely Piloted Vehicle, replace old equipment (175mm and Midge) but in more limited quantities; these limited quantities reflect not only the inevitable budgetary pressure on the programme but, more significantly, the increased capability of the new equipments. The new equipments will be enhanced by the in-place C3I systems (command, control, communications, and intelligence) WAVELL and BATES, and there are plans to provide Phase II and Phase III enhancements to the warheads. Phase I warheads dispense several hundred M77 bomblets (anti-personnel and anti-light armour), Phase II warheads a number of German AT2/84 antiarmour mines, and Phase III warheads will dispense a number of terminallyguided sub-munitions. While the UK system described above is a considerable advance on its predecessor, it cannot be considered as an inplace depth attack system. The Multiple Launch Rocket System (with a range of about 30 kilometres), although it performed impressively in the Gulf, cannot reach into the deep battlefield, and the Phoenix Remotely Piloted Vehicle has a narrow field of view and requires cueing onto potential targets by a device capable of scanning a wider expanse of terrain. Furthermore the Phoenix has only been procured in sufficient numbers to support Multiple Launch Rocket System directly, but will inevitably be diverted to the Corps All

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Sources Cell which is also very short of real-time information further than visual range forward of the FEBA. The introduction of Counter Battery Radar (COBRA) will help Multiple Launch Rocket System in the counter-battery role, but not in depth attack. Moreover, the numbers of Multiple Launch Rocket Systems to be procured are arguably only sufficient for the counter-battery and close support tasks at division and possibly corps level. The Phoenix cueing problem is to be solved through the introduction of Airborne Stand-Off Radar (ASTOR) but this is still in development and there is, at the moment, no commitment to production. Turning to the current US situation, they have deployed in Europe the Advanced Synthetic Radar System II (ASARS) on the TR-1 high altitude tactical reconnaissance aircraft based in Europe. These systems already give SACEUR an impressive longrange wartime reconnaissance capability against stationary targets far beyond the Forward Line of our Own Troops (FLOT). The Soviets credited these systems with a precision for determining target coordinates at 3–10m at a range of between 200 and 600 kilometres. 7 The products of these, and other national means releasable to NATO, are made available to those Corps that wish to take it (on a trial basis) through the Limited Operational Capability Europe (LOCE) system. The intelligence passed down through LOCE is based on: 1 2 3 4

TR-1 ASARS. Information available through National Technical Means. Electronic information. Image-derived information.

Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) offers the same overall capability, but to a higher standard.8 In particular much of the work currently done at the ground station will in future be carried out in the air since the E-8A aircraft (a version of the Boeing 707 airliner also used for the NATO Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS)) can carry a much larger crew. The associated ground station (AN/ TSQ 132) is air-transportable and passes on information to concerned systems which will prosecute targets. Among these systems may be Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) (which will be fired from a Multiple Launch Rocket System launcher (MLRS)) and the Navy Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile Conventional (TLAM/C). Finally the information will

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be passed to the Air Force to task battlefield air interdiction and air interdiction missions for depth and deep-attack respectively. The status of ATACMS is that a 26-missile development programme was completed at the end of 1989, and the US Army procured 318 missiles in Fiscal 1991. Interestingly, Congress doubled the Fiscal 1990 production of MLRS from 24,000 to 48, 000 rockets.9 The programme is divided into two, Block 1, those fired in the Gulf War, and Block 2, a guided submunition, the production of which has yet to begin. To conclude this review of weapons, it is necessary to consider ‘smart’ and ‘brilliant’ systems. A ‘smart’ munition is one that can identify a target and attack it, while a ‘brilliant’ system can identify a target, classify it, attack at its most vulnerable point while defeating counter-measures and liaising with ‘colleagues’ so that they all do not attack the same target. While there are no ‘brilliant’ missiles in production yet, the Multiple Launch Rocket System Phase III terminally-guided submunitions falls into the ‘smart’ category as do the various anti-radiation missiles such as the High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). So, technology has produced the means of locating and classifying targets to a very great accuracy. One nation (US) has implemented such a system (TR-1 ASARS) and has demonstrated the potential of the follow-on system (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS)), while others have much more limited systems with appropriately limited objectives (UK with Multiple Launch Rocket System and Remotely Piloted Vehicle). THE CHARACTERISTICS OF DEPTH FIREPOWER Having described the ground-based systems that will be adding depth firepower to an extended battlefield, an assessment can now be made of the characteristics of these systems and the changes that this new capability might bring. The matter will be considered in the following areas: 1 How effective are the systems? Do they alter the balance of an Army? 2 How vulnerable are the systems to enemy action? 3 How brittle are the systems; can they survive the deluge of data, and withstand ‘friction’?

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4 Do these systems produce an equivalent to the mass of firepower? 5 How will they fit into command and control structures; are separate arrangements necessary? 6 How will they fit into existing or new alliances? 7 Do they provide what Simpkin has called ‘dominant firepower’10 and if they do will they create the following effects? a Disperse mass. b Transfer mass. c Polarize mobility. The effectiveness of the system There seems little doubt that the in-place TR-1-based reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition system pro vides a most detailed overview of the battlefield. The problem is that there is too much information rather than too little, and the difficulty will be in processing the information to enable the correct response to be formulated, and the number of targets will greatly exceed the number of weapons available. Procedures will have to be devised to resolve these problems, but they illustrate the effectiveness of the system, rather than its shortcomings. The information provided should reveal the enemy’s intentions, and a command and control system could be devised to use depth firepower to negate these intentions. Since this combination has the potential to defeat offensive armour long before it can join the contact battle, is it necessary to retain armour in a defensive formation? The answer is that it probably is for the following two reasons: first, the number of depthattack systems is limited, and may be insufficient to defeat armour advancing on a massive scale. Second, no army in the foreseeable future will abandon balance by immediately dispensing with armour; rather the trend will be for the balance between firepower and armour gradually to change in fire-power’s favour until a new correlation is reached. The gradual change will favour the status quo, that is armour, for the time being since the reliability of the system is not assured as a result of its perceived vulnerabilities (described below). Furthermore, in a threat-based procurement system, depth firepower will be too expensive for all but the US to embrace in a

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sufficiently wholehearted fashion to enable all armour to be replaced. Nevertheless, partial implementation would offer sufficient flexibility to counter the unexpected, and buy time for the employment of more conventional assets. A particular strength of the system is that the very high quality intelligence picture provided will enable the key enemy systems to be identified and disabled, opening the way for the operation of more conventional, and thus cheaper systems. An example of this approach is the identification and destruction of air defence systems, opening the way for Offensive Air Support (OAS) and air interdiction campaigns to be mounted against the remaining targets. The vulnerability of the system The first concern is the vulnerability of the system to enemy action: the first obvious weakness is that of the airborne sensor. This could be subject to physical attack by enemy very-long range surface to air missiles, by air-launched anti-radiation missiles, or by some form of non-nuclear electro-magnetic pulse weapon. Nevertheless this is a threat also faced by the NATO AWACS aircraft, and the protection of both these assets would be accorded such high priority by NATO air forces that a level of protection is likely to be assured that would success-fully counter the threat, albeit at considerable cost. Further protection would arise from the considerable stand-off distance at which these aircraft will be able to operate back from the FEBA, while retaining an acceptable depth of reach for target information. This protection is likely to have to be co-ordinated at Allied Tactical Air Force (ATAF) or Army Group level; aircraft providing platforms for Corps (the British Islander and the French Puma/Orchidee) are likely to be further forward, less well protected and will face the harsher environment of a SAM 5 engagement envelope. However they would also have the advantage of operating a less expensive system, and therefore would be able to provide some redundancy. Nevertheless, the advantage would seem to lie with the strategic system held further back in which all members of the alliance had an interest—the method adopted by NATO AWACS. If it was judged that aircraft were too vulnerable, then the information could be produced from a space-based system, but here the costs are likely to be such that this approach could only be contemplated by the US.

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The second difficulty is the vulnerability of the complete reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition system to enemy deception. Here it is argued it would be very much more difficult to confuse the system because the intelligence is produced from information derived from three or more sources, and it is possible that attempts to conceal will only make the target more conspicuous by giving it a unique signature. A further threat to a reconnaissance, surveillance and targetacquisition system of the complexity of JSTARS is that of data deluge and internal friction. The concern must be that no system based on software (which masks the inner workings of its own decision-making process) will survive operational use as it could never have been tested under wartime conditions. The friction of war and the overwhelming mass of information make it difficult to comprehend how information will be passed to those that actually need it. An example of these difficulties, albeit in different circumstances, is the time taken for messages to be passed during exercises using a system that works reasonably well in peacetime, but which simply becomes overloaded during exercises and contingency operations. However these problems are self-evident and have been recognized. By concentrating on specifications which can be achieved, and by benefitting from the experience of other disciplines with similar problems such as the world’s financial institutions which have a very high data rate with a low tolerance to error, the difficulties may be overcome and the problems may be not so great as once imagined. Nevertheless, there will be the fear of those close to the bottom of the hierarchy that systems originating at the highest level of command will simply not provide the tactical levels with the necessary detail in a timely way. Users must be confident in the system’s reliability, and, if it is to fail, it should do so ‘gracefully’ and be capable of operating in part as well as in whole. A more difficult problem is the provision of trunk communications to pass the mass of data and information around the system. Here lateral thinking may be necessary which may turn to very much increased use of standing commercial links which will increasingly be turning to fibre-optics as a transmission medium, and which may have the necessary capacity.

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The mass of firepower Historically, the mass of firepower has been a most important factor. Soviet doctrine sets out exactly how the weight of fire should be calculated for any given situation and the solution is always impressive. One worked example requires 36 guns firing 1,800 rounds to neutralize an occupied strongpoint of 7.2 hectares.11 However, this quantity of fire is required not only to crush the will of the enemy to fight once he has been subjected to the shock of the firepower, but also as a result of the numbers of rounds that have to be fired to achieve a kill on the point target presented by well dug-in or protected troops. ‘Smart’ weapons will be capable of achieving the same destruction, but since they will use fewer rounds the shock effect (on those who have not been killed) will not be the same. Thus the intimidating effect of firepower will be lost when precision-guided weapons are used, but arguably (and without considering Lanchester) the superior quality itself of the firepower and its precise application will produce a dominance that could not have been produced through mass alone. The versatility of these weapons—their effectiveness, their range and our increased knowledge of the enemy and his dispositions— will make them available to attack a greater number of targets than hitherto. To use them effectively a great number of factors will have to be taken into consideration. Moreover, as these weapons will cost considerably more than their predecessors, fewer will be available and this will complicate the task of the commander in deciding when and where to employ them; particularly since the reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition systems will identify far more targets than could be engaged. Command and control It will be for the commander, through his staff and the command and control system to decide how these weapons are to be used and at what level they are to be controlled. However, his decision will be influenced by the way information obtained by the reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition systems is disseminated and acted upon. We have seen that care will have to be taken to make the system robust, and one way of doing this is to ensure that only essential information is passed up and down the system, although the matter is complicated by the fact that this judgement may very often have to be made by a computer rather

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than a man. On balance, the commander may well opt to follow the current arrangements for tasking air forces. Here assets are controlled at the highest practical level so as to reap the benefits of flexibility and concentration of force. Since, using as an example the Central Region as it is structured at the moment, the NATO point of main effort will only involve one or two of the eight or nine corps involved, air forces group and task assets so that they could be used throughout the region. In practice this is achieved by having a level of command above corps and below Allied Tactical Air Force level—the Allied Tasking Operations Centre (ATOC). There are two of these in each ATAF, and they task aircraft in accordance with the priorities set by the ATAF/Army Group Commander whilst taking note of the requirements of the corps being supported, and through information provided by the corps Air Support Operations Centre (ASOC). Corps have difficulty with the lack of flexibility of these arrangements. These difficulties can be met (in part at least) by placing air units in direct support: the Harrier Force for 1 (BR) Corps for example. While not arguing that ground forces should reorganize on air force lines, the similarities between depth and deep-attack weapons supported by a strategic reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition system and today’s air forces suggest that the command and control of the former will inevitably adopt the command and control practices of the latter, with the very important proviso that the changed threat will change the scale of forces deployed which in turn may well alter the extant command and control arrangements. In summary, however, if precisionguided, deep-attack weapons12 were to be used within the extant NATO command structure, then a case could be made for controlling them at a level above corps. Future alliances There are considerable economies of scale in a fully developed reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition-system, but unfortunately, single corps systems are unlikely to be large enough to reap these benefits. The economies stem from increased effectiveness through redundancy, and lower cost through the need for only one master radar surveillance platform that could feed two or more corps.

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Clearly the perfect solution would be for NATO to adopt JSTARS in the same way as NATO AWACS. This, however, takes no account of the reduction of the threat in the Central Region and can be discounted. Since nations will pursue national systems, if they can afford them, it is unlikely that they will be compatible with each other and future alliances will not be able to exploit the economies of scale mentioned above. Dominant firepower Richard Simpkin conceived the concept of ‘dominant firepower’. He suggested, with air power in mind, that the ability of small ground units to call down ‘dominant firepower’ from external sources could lead to the defeat of much larger manœuvre forces. The consequence of this would be a less dense, attritional battlefield. He also suggested that the effect of this would be to transfer mass from the manœuvre forces to the source of the ‘dominant firepower’. If Simpkin is correct, the introduction of deep firepower to an army would result in a change of balance in favour of the artillery and at the expense of armour and infantry. He also thought that this would ‘polarise mobility’ and that manœuvre would be by helicopter. There is another reason why the helicopter might emerge as the dominant vehicle, and that is because if both sides have developed reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition systems, helicopters might be the only ‘vehicle’ with sufficient speed to manœuvre inside the systems ‘observation-orientation-decision-action’ cycle.13 Relational manœuvre Finally, depth firepower can be considered as part of Luttwak’s concept of ‘relational manœuvre’.14 Instead of seeking out the enemy’s concentration in strength, the starting point of relational manœuvre is the avoidance of the enemy’s strengths followed by the application of some selective superiority against presumed enemy weaknesses. There are several conditions, and some risks, in the application of force in this way. Nevertheless, by using the reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition system to establish a weakness, which could take the form of command and control, communications, air defence or logistic vulnerabilities, a few hundred well-placed ATACMs could then attack the weakness.

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This would open the way for the enemy’s destruction by more conventional means: for example, air power or manœuvre. The characteristics of the depth-attack systems reveal a curious blend of strength and weakness. The strengths are the system’s range, capability and effectiveness; taken overall its ‘smartness’. The weakness is its size, cost, complexity and vulnerability. However, this weakness can be overcome through development, improvement and management. This process has started; when it finishes, two very substantial benefits will remain. First, robust, real-time intelligence is available to great depth and, second, the ability to prosecute targets so located with the accuracy that only comes with ‘precision guided’ weapons. These characteristics can be used in a straightforward way to attack high-value targets, or they can be used in conjunction with a campaign strategy as a substitute for manœuvre in the ways envisaged by Simpkin and Luttwak. In these circumstances, taking account of the range of the systems involved, and of the fact that inter-corps support might involve one nation supporting another, command and control might have to be vested at a level above corps. The suggestion is that this might be done in the same way as air forces are tasked— through the establishment of an artillery cell at a level between army group and corps. All this presumes that the NATO integrated military structure remains intact, and that nations will continue to invest in the Central Region at a time of reduced risk. One advantage of the system is its flexibility; it is not tied to any area, or ground infrastructure. However, it would be very much more difficult to move a complicated, multi-national system with several layers of redundancy, whereas a simpler, national system could be used anywhere. If a nation is to retain a general war capability without necessarily assuming that it is to be fought in Central Europe, then the problems of projecting armour out of area make it particularly attractive to substitute armour with firepower. CONCLUSION Firepower, the essential, enabling force, has developed over the centuries in a series of step changes. Each change has required armies to adapt to the new circumstances through changes to their balance and function, and there is no reason to suppose that the step change brought about by the introduction of reconnaissance, surveillance and target-acquisition systems and precision-guided

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weapons will not require similar adjustments. However, the situation is complicated by an equally significant reduction in the risk of general war in the Central Region. The US doctrine of the AirLand Battle reflects the way in which this twenty-first century firepower could be used, but it is unlikely that nations other than the US will adopt it wholeheartedly in the absence of an appropriate threat. Armies are naturally conservative, and tend to avoid radical innovation in peacetime if a conservative option is available. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Change implies risk, and, in peace, risk is a luxury that can be difficult to justify. However, the future is upon us, heralded by LOCE, Phoenix and the MLRS, albeit with Phase I warheads. The introduction of these weapons will change the shape of UK forces who will acquire, in small measure, the characteristics of depth fire-power. There will be pressure to increase the level of artillery command, and the Army’s balance will swing towards artillery which will be accompanied by reductions in armour and infantry, although these trends will be masked by other, more fundamental, changes brought about by the reduction of tension. These are weapons of general war, and, at the moment, the long-term shape and employment of the armed forces in the Central Region depends more on a sustained, firm commitment to train and fight for general war than any other factor. NOTES 1 Clausewitz, On War, ed. M. Howard and P.Paret, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976, Book 1, Chapter 1. 2 Judges 1:4. 3 Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine, Army Code 71451, 1989. 4 Department of the US Army, Field Manual 100–5, Operations, Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1986. 5 General Bernard W.Rogers, ‘Follow-On Forces Attack: Myths and Realities’, NATO Review, December 1984, pp. 1–9. 6 Major-General Sam Cowan CBE, ‘System Integration—The Promised Land?’, RUSI Journal, Vol. 133, Autumn, 1988. 7 V.G.Reznichenko, quoted in ‘Tactika’, (unpublished NATO pamphlet), 1987. 8 James Blackwell, The Status of FOFA Attack Technologies’, MILTECH, October 1988. 9 Aviation Week and Space Technology, 19 March 1990, p. 23. 10 Richard Simpkin, Race to The Swift, London, Brassey’s, 1988.

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11 Christopher Donnelly, Red Banner, Coulsden, Janes, 1989, p. 263. 12 Some distinguish between ‘Depth’ and ‘Deep’. In this paper, ‘Depth’ is taken as starting at the point just beyond visual range forward of the FEBA and extends to FEBA+35 km, while ‘Deep’ is taken as starting at FEBA+35 km and extending to FEBA+ 135 km, or to the range of the system, whichever is greater. 13 William S.Lind, ‘The Boyd Loop’, Manœuvre Warfare Handbook p.5. 14 Edward N.Luttwak, Strategy, The Logic of War and Peace, Cam bridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 93.

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8 THE FUTURE OF SURPRISE ON THE TRANSPARENT BATTLEFIELD Colonel B.R.Isbell

Few nations fail to list surprise amongst their principles of war, and throughout history the military benefit of achieving surprise at strategic, operational or tactical level has almost always been high. In the last half century, for example, the impact of surprise upon the outcome of military operations has been impressive. The 1940 German blitzkrieg against France, Operation Barbarossa a year later against the Soviet Union, the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor and many more recent examples in Korea and the Middle East all attest to the value of achieving surprise. Of course, surprise alone is not an end in itself but merely a means to an end, a means of helping ensure eventual success. Some observers have even attempted to quantify the extent to which surprise enhances the combat effectiveness of attacking forces and have concluded that it does so by the order of two to five times.1 Whilst such calculations should quite properly be regarded with some suspicion, it undeniably must be the case that, at any level, surprise is a significant force multiplier.2 Despite this, in the United Kingdom at least, as relevant combat experience recedes, surprise has perhaps not been accorded the attention it warrants. The study of surprise, and of some of its main contributory components, such as deception and security, have been regarded as something of a fringe activity. Indeed surprise has been labelled the ‘neglected principle’.3 However many now argue that advances in technology have rendered surprise unachievable and therefore irrelevant on a modern battlefield. Typical amongst these is the Foundation for International Security consultancy document Common Security in Europe (Volume II: Co-operative Security in Europe)4 which argues that:


Military establishments, capabilities and activities in both East and West are now transparent to such a degree that the military situation is fundamentally different from that of the first three decades after World War II. and The transparency revolution ranks with that caused by the invention of nuclear weapons and, moreover, that, The new transparency makes it virtually certain that neither East nor the West could launch a concerted military attack against the other without the victim having extensive prior indication of attack preparations by the attacker. Surreptitious attack preparations are now very difficult; in the near future they will become virtually impossible. Whilst Windass was clearly considering strategic surprise in the context of a possible (and now most unlikely, at any rate, in its old form) East versus West conflict, others extend essentially the same argument to surprise at the operational and tactical levels in all forms of conflict. They point to the quantity and quality of space-, air- and ground-based surveillance devices which have revolutionized the capability to detect and track the activities and movements of opposing forces, and the availability of weapon systems to interdict such forces with dramatically increasing effectiveness in terms of range and accuracy. Furthermore, they argue, in the future the observation, tracking and interpreting capabilities of the two sides will almost certainly improve more quickly than the capabilities to keep what is now unobservable or obscure hidden. Although some of this improvement might be expected to come from better mechanical, electronic and optical means of sensing, the most radical advances are likely to come in the area of information processing. The capacity to collate far more information is likely to be based on technologies—including forms of artificial intelligence—which are only now emerging and which promise quantum leaps in efficiency, timeliness, and perhaps insight.

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And furthermore, the argument goes, these technologies are likely to be more broadly available than at present. The increasing capacity of additional nations to employ such informationgathering technologies which were once monopolized by only a few nations, is likely to be paralleled by greater openness by all nations with regard to exporting such technologies which are clearly scientific and non-aggressive. That such technologies are revolutionizing warfare in many ways is unquestionable, but do transparency or indeed other technological advances necessarily render surprise unachievable and irrelevant? Martin van Creveld opens his book Technology and War with what he calls: ‘one very simple premise which serves as starting point, argument and raison d’être rolled into one. It is that war is completely permeated by technology and governed by it.’5 He goes on to argue, however, that this has always been the case since war began, and that whilst certain technological advances such as the advent of gunpowder, the introduction of the telegraph, the invention of the atomic bomb and the birth of computers have changed warfare more rapidly and more significantly than other advances, technological development has been a continuous and ‘seamless’ process. Thus whilst individual developments undoubtedly appeared to be particularly revolutionary or significant at the time, with hindsight most merely form but part of a continuum. But Windass is far from being the first to make the claim that technology has spelt the end of surprise; and he is in good company too. In the early nineteenth century, no lesser figure than Antoine Henri Jomini claimed that as a result of the new technological developments ‘the surprise of any army is now next to impossible’. 6 A century late another commentator, whilst considering the impact of the new air arm, concluded: ‘With improvements in the aeroplane and the means of communication, and with the vast size of modern armies, surprise will became harder and harder to attain.’7 As with hindsight we might conclude that both Jomini and Voysey had written off surprise prematurely, so we might also conclude that Windass and others have done the same. Whilst the advances to which Windass refers are undoubtedly important there is no reason to believe that they are of such significance as to negate an important basic principle of war.


Indeed other commentators interpret the same continuum of technological developments in an entirely different way. Far from such developments reducing the likelihood of achieving surprise the advance of technology has, they argue, steadily increased the possibility. Michael Handel argues exactly this point and goes so far as to publish a graph showing the relationship between technological advance and warning time, indicating that the chance of achieving strategic surprise has increased as technology has advanced.8 The sudden and unexpected introduction of new technology itself can be the cause of surprise at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Technical surprise, as it is termed, involves the introduction of new weapons or weapon systems into service, either to the total surprise of the enemy, or significantly sooner than he expected. In practice complete and absolute surprise is seldom achieved, nor is it strictly necessary. All that is required is for the enemy to be caught off guard, to be unprepared and unable to react or counter the development rapidly. Thus examples of effective technical surprise include the Germans’ first use of poisonous gas at Ypres in 1915, the Soviet Union’s deployment of T34 tanks against Germany in 1941, and the dropping of the American atomic bombs over Japan in 1945. To be really effective however a new weapon must be employed in sufficient numbers, and wedded to a doctrine which capitalizes upon its characteristics. Churchill clearly understood this principle when having played a part in the introduction of the tank, he turned his attention to anti-tank defences and minuted: Don’t familiarize the enemy by degrees with these methods of attack. Apply them when all is ready on the largest possible scale, and with the priceless advantage of surprise.9 But to achieve technical surprise it is not always necessary to introduce entirely new weapons. Often existing weapons whose performance has been enhanced or modified in some way will achieve equally dramatic results. Thus the Japanese contributed to the surprise achieved in their attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 by secretly extending the range of their fighter aircraft, and modifying their torpedoes to run in shallow water. Very closely related to technical surprise, indeed often interwoven with it, is doctrinal surprise. The two are sometimes


indistinguishable as in order to achieve such surprise it is not always necessary to introduce entirely new weapons. Often existing weapons used in an innovative way will produce dramatic results. Thus British tanks had been used and seen before Cambrai in 1917, but the Germans had developed no counter to them and their use en masse achieved significant technical and doctrinal surprise at both the tactical and operational levels. The German 88mm antiaircraft gun was well known to the British, but its sudden and innovative use in the anti-tank role during Operation Battleaxe in 1941 was a major technical and doctrinal surprise. Similarly the novel use of glider-borne troops to capture the fortress at Eban Emael in 1940, and thus open the way into Belgium, was a technical and doctrinal surprise of operational significance. Thus, far from technology spelling the end of surprise, in itself it can be the very source of surprise. Indeed, according to at least one commentator: As a result of technological progress and the proliferation of new weapon systems, technological surprise can be expected to become a dominant feature of every future war.10 A more fundamental appraisal of the likely impact of technological progress on the achievement of surprise might follow from a consideration of the nature of surprise itself, and in particular how and why surprise can be achieved. True ‘bolts from the blue’ seldom happen. Generally ample indications of an impending action are available, albeit confused (deliberately or otherwise) and mixed with a great number of other irrelevant signals. The failing is normally in the identification, isolation and interpretation of the relevant ones. In other words the problem is not normally one of sensing but of processing. This is why the real target of all successful surprise is in the mind of the enemy’s commanders and political masters. Different authorities on the subject of surprise have analysed the human mind’s susceptibility in this regard in various ways. However, most identify a number of common failings, and cite numerous historical examples to substantiate them. Perhaps the most significant phenomenon is what Norman Dixon calls cognitive dissonance,11 or what might alternatively be described as selective assimilation of evidence to substantiate one’s preconceived ideas. The human brain much more readily accepts


information or intelligence which supports one’s preconceived ideas, rather than that which contradicts them. It is precisely this phenomenon which makes deception aimed at the commander’s mind, with a view to reinforcing what might be supposed to be his preconceived ideas, so effective. Thus during the Second World War, the German intelligence staff frequently identified British or Allied intentions correctly, only to find their arguments dismissed by Hitler who through cognitive dissonance found ample ‘evidence’ to reinforce his own preconceptions. Faced with such an inclination to dismiss non-conforming information, it is difficult to see how advances in technology would do anything but complicate the situation further. As more evidence became available through more numerous and/ or more sensitive surveillance devices, such irrational human selectivity would simply find more ‘evidence’ to substantiate the preconceived theory. A similar phenomenon to preconception is dangerous misconception, particularly when it involves an enemy’s capabilities or intentions. Again, the human brain tends to dismiss evidence which contradicts the misconception, and seize upon that which supports it. Thus as a result of their experience in previous wars, the Israelis seriously underestimated the fighting ability of the Egyptians, leading to an unpleasant surprise in the early days of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Similarly, but with less historical reason except perhaps racial prejudice, the British seriously underestimated the threat from the Japanese in Malaya, having dismissed them as short-sighted orientals incapable of offensive operations in the jungle. In such instances too, technological advances are unlikely to diminish such misconceptions or otherwise reduce the likelihood of being surprised. A similar form of preconceived misconception is the tendency to believe the enemy will think and therefore react as oneself. Thus it is assumed that an enemy would dismiss a particular course of action or option, simply because that is how we would react. Such dangerous and misguided assumptions have been the source of many unpleasant surprises. Examples of what has been termed the ‘logic of lunacy’12 include Wolfe’s ‘impossible’ manœuvre against Montcalm at Quebec; the German invasion of Norway in 1940; both German offensives through the Ardennes in 1940 and 1944; and Mac-Arthur’s amphibious landing at Inchon. Again against such mental ‘blind-spots’, improved technology is unlikely to make many inroads.


However, even without the problem of preconceived ideas, the human mind is still capable of shutting out unpalatable truths, even when faced with clear, unequivocal evidence. History provides many examples of governments being well aware of the belligerent intentions of their neighbours, yet contriving to be surprised by taking no action or acting too late. Reasons for such inactivity vary, but might include governmental misappreciation or miscalculation, the desire to allow diplomacy one more chance, or the fear of precipitating the very aggression they wish to avoid. The Soviet Union’s failure to foresee the German invasion of 1941 is the classic and most frequently quoted example of this phenomenon; Stalin ignoring numerous political, intelligence and military warnings of invasion. In his analysis of the invasion, Barton Whaley identified no less than 84 separate warnings of the impending operation.13 Other more recent examples of surprise as a result of diplomatic and governmental blindness would include the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982, and Iraq’s march into Kuwait in 1990. Closely related to what might be termed the ‘startled rabbit’ syndrome is the ‘cry wolf’ syndrome, and what Richard Betts terms the ‘allure of deferring decisions’.14 In both cases, indicators of enemy intentions are detected and noted, yet surprise is achieved as the government or commander concerned fails to take the appropriate action, or takes it too late. In the former case, also referred to as habituation, it is not unusual for the victim to became hypnotized by the repetition of events or series of events. A good example was the Egyptian operation to cross the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. For several years the Egyptians had held annual manœuvres in the vicinity of the canal, and to some extent the Israelis had become inured to it. On a number of occasions the Israeli government had reacted by ordering mobilization, an expensive and disruptive exercise for Israel. Thus, although they detected many of the indications of the Egyptians’ preparations in 1973, they had become used to such activity and were reluctant to undertake yet another expensive and unnecessary mobilization. Thus they procrastinated and did not finally react until it was too late. There had been similarly frequent false alarms at Pearl Harbor prior to the fatal Japanese attack in 1941. The same phenomenon contributed to the surprise achieved by the British against the Germans at Cambrai in 1917. Whilst the massed use of tanks undoubtedly caused technical and doctrinal


surprise, the lack of a preparatory bombardment was a significant contributory factor, as the Germans had become fully accustomed to such a preliminary to any attack. The tendency to defer a decision in the hope of receiving one final conclusive clue is another common characteristic of the human mind. The more confusing the signals, the more tempting it can be to wait for the situation to clarify itself. Such indecision has been the frequent cause of strategic and operational surprise. The surprise achieved by the German march into Czechoslovakia in 1939; the North Korean invasion of the South in 1950; and Israel’s strikes in 1956 and 1967 are all examples of the effect of this particular phenomenon. But all decision deferrals, whether deliberate to await the last piece of evidence, whether involuntary because of the ‘frozen rabbit’ syndrome, or programmed by the hypnotism of routine or habituation, are a failure of interpretation and decision making, not of information gathering. Thus technical developments, particularly in the field of transparency and data capture will not make such difficulties any less severe. Indeed the likely result of such developments is to provide the decision taker with even more data, thereby increasing the likelihood that he will defer. Whilst some advances can be expected in the fields of data fusion, artificial intelligence and computer-assisted decision making, it seems likely that they will be outstripped by advances in the field of data collection. This ‘data deluge’ seems likely to make the task of the commander and his staff increasingly difficult as they become overwhelmed with data which will inevitably be confusing and contradictory. Thus unless dramatic and rapid advances are made in the fields of data fusion, artificial intelligence and computerassisted decision making, and as long as the final decision will come from the fallible human mind, there is scope for surprise. Indeed as the pressures increase, so too does the mind’s susceptibility to the above phenomenon, and with it the likelihood of being surprised. There is, of course, nothing new in this problem, and General Marshall, the US wartime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff remarked of Magic (deciphered Japanese diplomatic communications): ‘If I am supposed to have had the final responsibility of the reading of all Magic, I would have ceased to be chief of staff in every other respect.’15 How much more severe this problem is likely to become.


A further difficulty which can result from advances in surveillance techniques might be termed technological arrogance. It is possible to become so dependent upon technology, as to dismiss its limitations and overlook the possibility of being deceived. Thus despite the overwhelming preponderance of highly technical surveillance devices available to the United States during Operation Desert Storm, it is already clear that they were deceived by some very basic Iraqi deception measures, and overestimated the enemy’s strength as a result. Thus dependence upon highly sophisticated technology can induce a form of myopia which in itself can lead to being surprised. It is precisely this dependence on technology and the development of unquestioning faith in it that can lead to airline pilots becoming totally disorientated, with fatal results. When a sophisticated enemy’s ability to interfere with and deceive one’s own surveillance and electronic devices is added to this natural phenomenon, then the scope for error, confusion, indecision and hence surprise, is significant. Another important facet of surprise is that it does not have to be absolute to be effective. All that is necessary is for the decision maker to be uncertain, or for his decision to be otherwise delayed until it is too late, as the US definition makes clear: Surprise results from going against an enemy at a time and/ or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared. It is not essential that the enemy be taken unaware, but only that he becomes aware too late to react effectively.16 Thus, what is necessary is to get within the enemy’s decisionaction cycle of identification, decision, communication and execution. Technological advances are likely to be able to reduce each link in this chain, thus reducing the decision-action time, and thereby increasing the tempo of battle and with it the likelihood of achieving surprise. Advances in surveillance and targetacquisition systems, more rapid, reliable and secure communication systems, improved mobility, range and effectiveness of direct fire weapon systems, and improved range, accuracy and effectiveness of indirect weapon systems, are all likely to contribute to the speeding up of this cycle and the achievement of surprise. Of course the same developments are available to an enemy too, but the net sum of such technological


advances is that surprise is at least as likely, and possibly more likely. It is certainly not irrelevant or unachievable. Technology itself can be considered to be neutral in as much that it is available to both sides in any dispute, and it is how technology is exploited rather than technology itself which offers any advantage there may be. It is also self-neutralizing in as much that an understanding of how a technology might be exploited normally results in an understanding of how it might be defeated. Thus research into the exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum, and electronics generally for the primary purpose, say, of enhancing one’s own command, control and communication architecture, will normally have the added benefit of identifying means of intercepting, deceiving or otherwise interfering with the enemy’s systems. Likewise advances in our own sensor technology are likely also to indicate means of blinding, confusing or even deceiving the enemy’s systems. Thus each individual advance, whilst often appearing to reduce the possibility of achieving surprise, carries with it at least the seeds of negating the loss and maintaining surprise. Furthermore, it is often the case that effective counters to any advance are technologically simpler and cheaper than the advance itself. Thus, for example, knowledge of the technology of anti-tank HEAT rounds leads to an understanding of the technology of explosive reactive armour to defeat it. And what is more, the technology of explosive reactive armour is relatively speaking much simpler and cheaper than the development of a weapon system capable of delivering a more penetrative HEAT round, Perhaps a better example in the area of transparency would be the development of satellite surveillance. Until the Second World War, and indeed beyond, the most advanced photo-reconnaissance equipments were relatively modest black and white cameras mounted in manned aeroplanes of limited endurance. Whilst such equipments were useful, they could be deceived by relatively simple wooden mock-ups with a little scrim. Today satellites quite literally cover the globe, mounting a sophisticated range of sensors including film cameras, radar images, infra-red cameras and so forth. Whilst the simple wooden mock-ups of the Second World War can no longer be expected to deceive such advanced sensing equipment, and others like it, dummies with modern infra-red reflective paints and camouflage nets, radar reflectors and heat sources can. The point is that the advance in sensor platform technology has been enormous, but can be nullified by very much


less significant and very much less expensive advances in countersurveillance techniques. Thus it is not necessarily so that technological advances, even those specifically in the area of transparency, inevitably favour the voyeur and hence prejudice surprise. The reverse is often the case. Indeed, some technological advances specifically favour the achievement of surprise. Advances in passive concealment techniques have already been discussed. Another example is the widespread development of secure trunk communication systems. Whilst by no means immune from jamming, interception or decoding, their very proliferation has acted as a defence, over and above the sophistication of their technology. Advances in vehicle mobility, and air-mechanization, aircraft ranges and precisionguided munitions, whilst, of course, available in principle to both sides and perhaps therefore neutral, at least cannot be said to contribute to the demise of surprise. But perhaps the best example of all is the development of stealth technology, the deliberate exploitation of technology to achieve surprise. Thus whilst some technological advances clearly make the achievement of surprise at any level more difficult, this is not always the case. Some advances tend to be neutral and favour neither side, others tend to favour the achievement of surprise—some overwhelmingly so. In one area, however, absolute surprise is not sought, and a modicum of transparency is positively beneficial. That is deterrence, which in addition to uncertainty, does require a potential adversary to be aware, in general terms at least, of the military power of the other side, and to be convinced of his readiness to use it. Similarly, for arms control to work, sufficient transparency to enable accurate verification and other confidencebuilding measures is required. However the armed services and government agencies no longer have the monopoly of highly technical equipment. The sophistication of the international news media’s equipment was amply demonstrated during the Gulf War, and whilst it is possible to control their activities to some extent, their ability to transmit news and opinion instantaneously around the world is of considerable concern. The threat to security, and hence surprise, is obvious. During the Falklands War, speculation about an attack on Goose Green was broadcast on the BBC World Service. There is at least circumstantial evidence to suggest that the Argentinians reinforced


the settlement as a result. And in the recent Gulf War, whilst there is no evidence to suggest that the Iraqis reacted to them, what turned out to be highly accurate graphics of the coalition attack into Kuwait and southern Iraq were published in national newspapers many days before the attack was launched. Such press interest is most unlikely to lessen, and combined with their access to highly sophisticated technology represents a serious threat to security and surprise at the tactical, operational, and even strategic levels. But as in most matters military, actual practice under combat conditions is rather more significant than any amount of theoretical discussion. Is there, therefore, any operational evidence to suggest that since the introduction of the devices and technologies to which Windass refers, surprise has been impossible to achieve? Of course many of the technologies to which Windass refers are new, or even still emerging, and are limited to a few technically advanced nations. Instances of their operational use, therefore, are scarce. However, it is clear that despite comparably advanced technologies being available to the United States and NATO, the Soviet Union did manage to achieve a significant measure of strategic and operational surprise in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1978. Similarly in Vietnam, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese managed to spring a devastating tactical, operational and strategic surprise upon the Americans during the Tet offensive in January 1968, despite their overwhelming technological inferiority. By 1973 both Israel and the Arabs were equipped with the latest US and Soviet hardware, including sophisticated tactical and strategic intelligence-gathering systems. Yet despite having the most technologically-advanced equipment together with the intellect and training to use it effectively, and even despite having access to the results of US intelligence gathering efforts, Israel was totally surprised at the strategic operational and tactical levels by the co-ordinated Egyptian-Syrian offensive. In 1982 both the Israelis and Syrians were even better provided for with up-to-date equipment, yet the Israelis managed to blind and neutralize the Syrian’s Soviet-made devices and hence achieve a significant degree of surprise. It is perhaps too soon to draw any significant conclusion from the recent Gulf War, but as has been suggested elsewhere, there


is already some anecdotal evidence to suggest that despite what was probably the most elaborate surveillance and intelligence gathering operation ever mounted, Iraq did contrive to cause some confusion and spring a few surprises on the technologically very superior coalition forces. Few areas of the globe can have been the subject of more intense intelligence and surveillance interest than the former East Germany. Every form of device from the simplest to the most complex state-of-the-art sort was directed at that relatively small country for four decades. Yet as its secrets are now slowly being uncovered, it is becoming clear that NATO in particular, and the West in general, had significantly underestimated the combat potential concealed in that country. There is surely no clearer evidence of the fallibility of even the most advanced technology, and no more damning indictment of the proposition that modern technology renders surprise obsolete. Perhaps the greatest exponents of surprise, doctrinally and practically, are in the former Soviet Union. Whilst surprise might have become the ‘neglected principle’ in the United Kingdom, or even in NATO this was certainly not the case there. They considered surprise, and their all-embracing concept for achieving it, Maskirovka, vital at every level. It remains a fundamental and integral part of a commander’s operational plan at every level, rather than a nice finishing touch as it is sometimes considered to be in the West. They studied it in great depth, and still teach it at every level, and retain special units to implement it. The Russians have not ignored the impact of technology. They are keenly aware of the problems of transparency, but have not concluded that this renders surprise unachievable. Indeed, they consider that the enormous destructive power of modern weapons has actually increased the importance of surprise. They believe that the ‘data deluge’ has increased the scope for successful deception, and that the mobility and flexibility of modern formations means that it does not have to succeed for long. They acknowledge that transparency will make it difficult fully to conceal preparations for a full-scale offensive, but concealment of the scale, direction and timing is: ‘a quite achievable task which should always occupy the centre of attention’.17 It is clear from this, and all other published formerly Soviet sources, that they do not believe that surprise is unachievable on the modern transparent battlefield.


In conclusion, there can be no doubt that technology will continue to have a significant influence upon the nature and conduct of warfare, as it has throughout history. Whilst the rate and scale of technological development will vary, so will the influence those changes have upon warfare. However, there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that such changes will render surprise unachievable. Whilst many developments, particularly in surveillance technology, make the achievement of surprise by traditional means more difficult, as many others contribute towards the achievement of surprise, or at least can be exploited so to do. There is no empirical evidence to support the contention that technological advances are stifling surprise, and the Soviets, perhaps the foremost exponents and most serious students of the principle, have certainly not concluded that it is unachievable. Indeed, they appear to have concluded that in the light of the increased destructive power of modern forces, surprise is more important than ever. The principal reason why surprise works is the fallibility of the human mind especially whilst under pressure. Whilst certain technological advances might help ease this problem, the vast majority of developments are actually adding to the diffi-culty by creating a ‘data deluge’. Therefore so long as warfare is conceived and conducted through the medium of men’s minds, surprise will continue to be a fundamental principle of war and a potent force multiplier. Despite a recent resurgence of interest, surprise undoubtedly remains something of a ‘neglected principle’ in the United Kingdom. We let it remain so at our peril. NOTES 1 Trevor N.Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab Israeli Wars 1947–1974, New York, Hero Books, 1985. 2 Barton Whaley, Strategem: Deception and Surprise in War, MIT Press, 1973. 3 Brigadier J.J.G.Mackenzie, ‘Surprise—The Neglected Principle’, British Army Review, April 1988, pp. 4–11. 4 Stan Windass, Transparency, Inspection and Surprise Attack’, in Stan Windass (ed.), Common Security in Europe, London, 1986. 5 Martin van Creveld, Technology and War, London, Brassey’s, 1991. 6 Antoine Henri, Baron Jomini, The Art of War, London, Greenhill, 1992, p. 117.


7 Lieutenant Colonel R.A.E.Voysey, An Outline of the Principles of War, Diss, England, 1934. 8 Michael I.Handel (ed.), War Strategy and Intelligence, London, Frank Cass, 1989, pp. 66 and 234. 9 Winston S.Churchill, The World Crisis, London, Butterworth, 1927, Vol. IV, Appendix 8. 10 Handel, War Strategy and Intelligence, p.133. 11 Norman Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, London, Jonathan Cape, 1976. 12 Mackenzie, ‘Surprise—The Neglected Principle’, pp. 4–11. 13 Barton Whaley, Codeword Barbarossa, MIT Press, 1969. 14 Richard Betts, Surprise Attack, Washington DC, Brookings Institution, 1982. 15 Julian Critchley, Warning and Response, London, Leo Cooper, 1978. 16 US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100–5, Operations, Washington DC, Government Printing Office, 1986, p. 177. 17 Solov’ev, VM 1/79 quoted in Soviet Views on Strategic and Operational Surprise and Deception, TDRC 8940.

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9 THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA ON THE PROSECUTION OF CONTEMPORARY WARFARE Brigadier C.L.Elliott MBE

A list of the significant changes to warfare this century might contain three items. That warfare has involved the mass of a population for the first time in recent history. That soldiers and citizens have suffered the terrible fury of new chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. That war has ceased to be a distant thing on some foreign field, but has acquired an immediate and visual urgency on the home front through the ability of the modern media to describe the battle soon after it happens, or even as it is happening. This essay is about one aspect of the last in the list, the impact of the news media on the ability of a government and its servants to go to war, and a clue to its importance is its inclusion with the other two. The argument is in four parts. First, I shall stretch a canvas by examining the style, form and method of the modern news media. A ghost of the final image will be hinted at by introducing three assertions: that the pursuit of drama precludes analysis; that the media does not tell or portray the truth, always; that an adversarial relationship inevitably develops in war between authority and the media. Second, these assertions will then be tested against three case studies—Vietnam, the Falklands and the Lebanon (with a glance at Northern Ireland and the Iran-Iraq war). These have been chosen because they illustrate the breadth of the argument and because they occurred long enough ago for calm analysis now to be made. If proven, a picture can then be completed by making certain conclusions about the impact of the media on the prosecution of modern war. A complete answer cannot be given, for warfare covers too wide a span: from the use of terrorism to subvert the state; through ‘limited’ wars where states meanwhile are able to carry on with other business; to total war where the whole energy of one or all of the belligerents is thrown into the struggle. The weapons employed


also are so very varied: from economic pressure to psychological levers to lethal machines. Two questions, in particular, will receive less attention than they should: censorship, and the impact of the media in a terrorist campaign. Finally, little is included that describes the historical development of journalism in war or the good that it has achieved (for instance, the success of Keith Murdoch in drawing attention to the incompetence of the British General Staff at Gallipoli, or, the disclosures by Januarius MacGahan of Turkish atrocities in 1877, or, the exposure by Alan Dower of the execution of women and children by the South Korean Government during the Korean War1) because the argument is about the consequences of the media’s actions, not their relative rights or wrongs. FEATURES OF THE MODERN NEWS MEDIA The media play essential roles in any democracy: as channels for information, vehicles for dissent and watch-dogs over authority.2 The news media has evolved over the years into two distinct parts: television and newspapers. Holding the centre ground is radio, which combines some of the characteristics of the other two. This evolution has been gradual, but there now exist two distinct and different forms of journalism. Television has become the primary source of reporting news. Newspapers have been forced into other areas, such as analysis or investigation, but also to the trivial. Television has achieved this preeminence in news because of the greater immediate impact of pictures over text and because television can report events as they are happening or soon after. Indeed, some major events of history are now synchronized by the schedules of television. Since war reporting is concerned mainly with news, television has taken the lead in reporting warfare. Television journalism presents news in a significantly different form to newspapers. Television has been described by Sir Robin Day3 as: a tabloid medium—a medium of shock information, emotion rather than intellect.

rather

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Television news is immediate, dramatic, but lacking in context. Dramatic because television is such a strong medium for entertainment and it is continuously drawn to do just that. Lacking in context because television pictures are both very selective (the view through a drinking straw of a wider scene) and because pictures convey images much more quickly than text can be added in support and explanation. Indeed, a picture on the screen becomes stale long before adequate explanation, or analysis, of its meaning can be made; a four-minute report on one subject is enough for most viewers (but that allows only 700 words of text in support of it, which is less than two-thirds of a column in a newspaper).4 Many television news items are shorter still, leading to the fashion for the ‘soundbite’ of only a single phrase or sentence. The result is a finished product of high drama but low understanding, that even the journalist himself may feel fails to convey the reality of the situation.5 Furthermore, the introduction of small cassette television cameras and the comprehensive coverage of the globe by satellites allows very quick transmission of news film from and to almost any country. The upshot is large amounts of unedited film, covering events that have only just occurred, over which any one nation has limited control by censorship. The temptation for a television channel to use that film before it becomes stale, with all the quirks listed above, is overwhelming. Television news has other differences to newspaper reporting. The probity and acceptance of television news is influenced by the viewer’s attitude—sympathy? hostility? boredom? interest?— towards the reporter and his/her means of delivery. Kate Adie easily generated considerable sympathy for the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 by her style of presentation. In contrast, a low-key delivery can carry a calming message to even the most awful news; recall Ian Macdonald’s dead-pan announcement as the British Government’s spokesman of the sinking of HMS Sheffield. The reverse is also true: for instance, the exaggerated sense of violence in reports from Beirut by journalists who were themselves under fire (emotion forcing the tone of delivery several octaves higher). Furthermore, news on television is usually seen only once—items are seen and are gone—whereas newspapers can be digested and reread at the reader’s leisure and items can more easily be referenced for later use (try struggling through a bank of TV tapes in a library to find a certain sequence


of news, at least using existing video technology). It must be emphasized that these aspects are driven by the techniques of television, not because television journalists are different in attitude or sympathy from their newspaper cousins, although they may be, and become more so, in time. The central role played by television in reporting ‘hot’ news has forced newspapers into different areas and emphasis: either downwards to the trivial, the superficial and the titillation of the ‘tabloid’ press read by the majority (which to some extent mimics an extreme form of television similar to that found on some US channels), or, towards the comprehensiveness of reporting and depth of analysis in the ‘serious’ newspapers—read by rather fewer. This increase in the scope and ability of the media has bought it power and influence, matched by a loss of power by others elsewhere. The ideas picked up by children from television challenge the writ of their parents within the home. No government can exercise complete control over its people when they have access to media news beamed in from outside the boundaries of the state; the ‘big lie’ can no longer be sustained.6 The military has lost some of its sovereignty on the battlefield. FEATURES OF MODERN JOURNALISM IN REPORTING WAR The nature of war journalism The miserable parent of a luckless tribe.7 Journalism in war has an unresolved contradiction. Its touchstone is the pursuit of the truth (which is why journalists defend their corner with such energy when that truth is brought into question). Yet many factors in the nature of journalism in war conspire to make the truth elusive. First, inevitably, all journalists exhibit some bias; indeed some journalists will favour the enemy. The more subtle and repressed the bias, the less transparent it is, and the more dangerous it becomes. Even journalists who see themselves as ‘honest’, ‘impartial’, ‘aloof’, ‘objective’ have already taken a stand by wearing such a coat, and that stand is often out of sympathy with authority, and with that, the prosecution of the war.


Second, all journalists are in a competition to be the first to report the news—corporately, professionally and through personal ambition. If this is tied to television news schedules, the more this is so. The result is the reporting of events as fact long before a clear picture has emerged. News may be created from rumour, speculation or even just thin air. The journalist takes a risk that his ‘nose’ or instinct is correctly leading him to where events will later happen. If he is right, his correct anticipation gives him a lead over his rivals. If he is wrong, truth is the casualty—with only some small-print retraction from the journalist concerned as correction later. Third, most journalists lack experience in the science and methods of war. Their reporting tends to be based on results that they can see, and not on the wider operational or strategic picture. 8 They use military ‘buzz-words’ inappropriately, or in a misleading way, and they may be mesmerized by the immediate carnage that they can see and be unable to judge the true course and outcome of the wider battle. In 1968, nearly all journalists reported the siege of the US Marine base at Khe Sahn in Vietnam as a defeat from the beginning, because to the ill-informed, the encirclement of the base, that is, being ‘surrounded’ by the North Vietnamese Army meant exactly that. Too loose a link was made back to the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu 14 years earlier and false comparisons made. Newsweek described it on its cover as ‘The Agony of Khe Sahn’ and TV ‘anchorman’ Walter Cronkite said that ‘Khe Sanh could well fall with terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale’ based on no military analysis whatsoever. Senator Eugene Macarthy trumped these statements by declar-ing that nuclear weapons might well have to be used to break the siege! In fact, the operation went exactly as General Westmoreland had intended it should: it brought the North Vietnam Army out in observable concentrations, onto which he could at last direct his ‘Niagara’ of available indirect firepower.9 The result was a spectacular victory for US forces in battle, at the cost of remarkably few US casualties.10 Yet on television it remained a defeat. Fourth, war journalists, especially the younger and the less experienced ones, can suffer a strong, personal, emotional reaction against the ‘normal’ violence of war. They rail at the awfulness of violence but they fail to recall what the cause of that violence might be: perhaps that a totalitarian dictatorship has set out to take territory unlawfully, or to conquer a weaker nation. Rather, they


see the war itself as evil and all its participants as misguided. This leads to a fixation on violence, instead of comment on the malign policies that have led to it. This honourable yet uncritical emotion spawns such phrases as ‘futility of war’, ‘needless violence’, ‘horror of the suffering’, and it places a burden upon those at home and in the fighting, hearing or reading it, who are asked to carry loss or discomfort in the prosecution of a war. Last, it has been said that journalists ‘fight in packs’. Mercer11 describes this as: journalists…having been denied access…will resort to their traditional craft of seeking out rumours and then swapping, dissecting or amplifying them; or end by chasing a story, not because it is intrinsically ‘newsworthy’, but because someone has broken away from the ‘pack’ to pursue a lead. Certainly, journalists are guilty of a herd instinct: the speculative story in one paper is translated into fact in another; the wisdom of one analysis (especially if the commentator is experienced, venerated or from a leading media source) sets the tone for reporting by others, without a critical judgement or reanalysis of the tenets upon which that analysis was first based. This ‘pack’ instinct is not deliberately corrupt, it is just a feature of the pressure journalists are under to produce a story against the clock and not to be left behind by others. Whilst all this is true, a balancing note of caution is struck in this quotation from a past Director of Naval Public Relations: The Media is largely a trivialising organisation…never make the mistake of thinking that journalists are trivial themselves.’12 The editorial influence Most journalism (for all the strengths and weaknesses already listed) is itself only the child of a larger media system. Once written or photographed, the work of journalists is put together for final transmission or printing by someone else, an editor. The parent media organization for whom the editor works is increasingly likely to be multi-faceted13 and multinational, and if the surface is scratched, the generation of wealth will be found to be its basic motor.14 None of this prevents a media outlet from taking a moral stand—many do—but, as with any commercial corporation, it need


not. Furthermore, multi-nationalism frees media corporations from the constraints of any one state’s national interest and, by that, support for the outcome of a war in favour of one side or the other. Media wealth is directly proportional to the quantity of advertising attracted and the circulation figures or viewer ratings achieved. The editor is the owners’ or shareholders’ agent responsible for the production of a successful (that is, profitable) newspaper or programme. The editor seeks to create a programme or newspaper with the greatest appeal to the greatest proportion of his target audience. Inevitably, this limits his freedom to make independent judgements. Whilst it does not follow that any editor deliberately distorts the truth, it does mean that editors have a stronger concern to entertain than to inform, and that can lead to misrepresentation. Likewise, an editor may not have any conscious policy of challenging authority, but the desire to entertain may lead him inexorably to do so, since it provides the more interesting story. Some of the ‘tabloid’ media—the trivial journalism—consists of nearly all entertainment, using real events as vehicles to amuse by stirring human emotions. ‘Gotcha!’15 Since dramatic events entertain better than dull ones, drama is more frequently reported than normality. Drama in war is about horror, grief, blood spilled, refugees, victory, explosions, heroism, disaster and death. The viewer sees the war as full of drama whereas the opposite is usually true, albeit coupled to fleeting hours of a very acute activity. The viewer gains the impression that drama—usually violence—is present throughout the whole region of conflict. Furthermore, ‘normality’ attracts a low priority (when and if it returns), because it lacks drama. Thus the last impression the viewer is left with of any one subject or war-zone, is usually of violence. The result, especially on television, is unbalanced reporting. A good example of this is the US public perception of the offensive by North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnamese Tet holiday in January 1968. Television news concentrated on the violence of the battles being fought in twenty towns and cities—that was the unfolding drama—rather than the lower key achievement of a successful defence throughout the rest of the country, and the security that the successful Strategic Hamlet programme achieved for the majority of rural villagers. The perspective that the viewer formed was of Vietnam in flames from end to end, and there was no balancing programme later to show that the ‘fires’ had been


contained and extinguished. The myth was established, and then perpetuated. An editor exercises judgement on journalists’ work without seeing the circumstances of their reports first-hand. As a result, some copy is amended, some is shown out of its original intended context, and some news never reaches the presses or the transmitter. Anticipating this, journalists shape their texts accordingly; the more dramatic a report can be made, the more likely it is to be shown. The conditions of editing and presenting television news also have a significant influence on its contents. All but broadcasts of the most seismic events are driven by rigid timetables of allotted television transmission times. Thus, the construction of a news story is tugged into shape by an agenda that is not necessarily connected to the natural rhythm of the unfolding story. This leads to speculation in the absence of fact-in-time, and the wrong emphasis is given to the natural order of events. And sometimes over-emphasis is given to the trivial and the momentous is missed or downgraded in importance. Again there may be no intention to deceive on the part of journalists and editors, but circumstances conspire to make that a strong possibility, especially when reporting something as dramatic, but unpredictable and uncertain, as war. To its pre-eminence in reporting news, television has attempted to add analysis, in the form of documentaries, news cominentaries and discussion programmes. This analysis is seldom balanced— nor can it be, given the constraints of time and the distortions that are normal in the use of visual images taken out of context. Furthermore, as Mercer16 explains, ‘the nature of the medium inevitably encourages visually strong incidents and discourages exploration of undercurrents which, by definition, cannot be seen’. Television analysis can usefully be divided into four different styles: open, closed, tight and loose.17 None of these styles is unbiased; they all set out to achieve some predetermined result. Open analysis contests the core assumptions of the official perspective; closed analysis operates in broad sympathy with the official line. A tight presentation of facts leads the viewer towards a preferred interpretation, whereas a loose format generates ‘ambiguities, contradictions and loose ends…which are never fully resolved, leaving the viewer with a choice of interpretations’. These divisions are recognizable in most television documentaries. Unfortunately, all styles lead to some degree of distortion—even the


seemingly fair, ‘loose’, format—because the viewer’s judgement of the case is entirely dependent on only the material that the presenter has chosen to include, and the viewer has little chance with his own research to follow up and resolve ambiguities that may have have been created in his mind. As Philip Knightley has said ‘although in most cases the camera does not lie directly, it can lie brilliantly by omission’.18 Where the producer deliberately sets out to be unbalanced, the scope for mischief, wrapped up in respectability, is considerable. Television producers employ skilled presenters to tie documentary and analysis together. These people are chosen for their articulate delivery (especially under pressure), their discursive ability and their visual appeal. Whilst a wide general knowledge or the skill to learn the background to a particular issue is found in the best, ‘anchormen’ are seldom experts in the fields that they analyse, although they can easily assume the patina of one. Moreover, when taking on in discussion the true expert—the presenter all at ease in his own stable; the expert ‘blinking in the arc-lights’—they can appear to win an argument of fact, when they have merely won an argument of style and debate. The example of Walter Cronkite judging, wrongly, the outcome of the siege of Khe Sanh is quoted above. President Johnson is alleged to have said ‘If I have lost Walter Cronkite… I have lost the war’. The result is investigative journalism ‘that asserts that the authorities should be exposed, not trusted’ and analytical journalism ‘that seeks to explain what has happened and anticipate what may happen’,19 conducted by less-than-expert witnesses. A good example of this is provided by the following approving critique (which appeared in Variety, the US national show business weekly), commenting on a television news show that occurred during the Vietnam War:20 with methodical precision anchorman McGhee set up the Administration leaders, then bowled them over like ninepins. Opening footage showed President Johnson, Defence Secretary McNamara and General Westmoreland expressing their specific optimism of recent months. Then, with fire footage, maps and interviews, the Administration’s leaders’ assurances were shrapneled. Just how far this show was prepared to go (in the pursuit of truth) was pointed up in the…footage of the execution (of a suspected Vietcong officer by Saigon’s Police Chief). When the


sequence first appeared…the producer…ordered an upcut (in the next showing)… because the victim’s head was seen to bleed slightly as it hit the pavement. On the McGhee hour, viewers saw the entire take with an enormous pool of blood forming as the officer lay dying in the street…. Tuckner noted that the executioner was still Chief of Police. McGhee…closing words…‘the time is at hand when we must decide whether it’s futile to destroy Vietnam in the effort to save it.’21 Laying aside any argument about the show’s subjectivity, it must be assessed as responsible, fair and authoritative. The almost irresistible urge of television to entertain appears again and again in these programmes in the use of dramatic, darkened sets and in the deliberate antagonizing of interview subjects, in the hope that they will make some dramatic gesture such as walking out or show some other sign of distress. Finally, and of great importance, all the journalism described so far can only exist in, and is a privilege of, a free society. Journalism in closed societies is little more than a deelaration of official policy, since by definition totalitarian regimes exercise complete control over their domestic media. THREE ASSERTIONS It is time to return to the assertions made in the opening paragraphs. The first assertion—that the media seeks drama in reporting news and places an undue emphasis upon it—has been considered in some detail. The media, driven by profit or editorial ambition, seeks to hold the attention of the widest audience. Journalists are obsessed by ‘flames’ and neglect the pastoral. The result is unbalanced reporting, with a particular emphasis on the plight of casualties. The second assertion is that the media does not tell the truth, always. I make no case for intention to deceive, for it is the result not the motive that is important here. Hannah,22 a journalist reporting the 1982 war in the Lebanon, was convinced that the lack of informed reporting (the damage to the truth) usually derived from ‘the character of the journalists and the nature of the technology that they used’. The pack or herd instinct, the pressure to meet a deadline, the separation of pictures and text, the need to


squeeze too much into too short a time (with analysis and explanation being dropped from a programme long before pictureswithout-context), the short memory of television with no return to correct a previous wrong statement or misrepresented image, the absolute power of the editor to decide what facts should be included and what facts should be left out in assembling an argument. All this leads to unbalanced reporting and, when this happens, it is not a fair representation of what has actually taken place. And yet it convincingly seems to be. My third assertion is that a breakdown between authority—the government, the military, the civil service—and the media is inevitable in every conflict. The ITN news journalist, Alastair Burnet, summed this up in 1970 and the RUSI Seminar on the Media by stating that: I come from a school of journalists that believes that it is natural that there should be a conflict between the armed services and journalism or the media…it is natural that a state of war exists between us. Whilst it is sensible to try to achieve good working relations from the beginning, it is only a matter of time before schism occurs, and the longer the conflict goes on, the greater that schism becomes. There are good reasons for this. The military seeks security or secrecy in order to enhance its operations and to protect its soldiers’ lives,23 whilst the media wants to expose the military’s plans in response to public interest and to generate stories. The result is a deep conflict of interest. This is well illustrated by this telling summary of relations during the Falklands War: All parties were dissatisfied with the flow of information; it was for the media too little, too late, and too obscure; for the military it was too much and too detailed; for the government it was too often wrung too reluctantly from the military.24 The media, for its part, develops an irritation and frustration with the obsession for secrecy by the military. They begin to sense drama where none exists and official denial or equivocation only amplifies that suspicion. If the military resorts to disinformation— to the journalist a rape, a misuse of himself—the break becomes


permanent and all the prejudices hardly kept in check before flow to the surface. The result is a breakdown of both trust and understanding between the media and the authorities. Since the media knows that its probity is the life blood of its existence, it energetically and loudly defends itself against charges of bias or misrepresentation, 25 further expanding the hostility felt. The military and the government decide that they can never trust the media to give them a fair hearing, although they may often get one nevertheless. Caution breeds suspicion, which leads to lack of confidence and the scope for further misunderstanding. The result can be unreasonable exclusion of information by the authorities, ratcheting downwards further the climate of mistrust. TRUE OR FALSE? How do these assertions stand up to examination in respect of recent wars? To answer that three case studies will be held up to the light. The first study is the US involvement in the war in Vietnam. It is a good subject because it is sufficiently long ago to be well documented and seriously analysed, yet most of the techniques of modern television news reporting were present. The turning point of that war—the Tet Offensive -will be examined in the most detail. Vietnam US involvement in support of South Vietnam started in earnest in 1962 and ended when Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975. The US had the aim of preserving the freedom of choice of government for the South Vietnamese people—a righteous aim that easily attracted and held public support at home. However, it was a limited aim; indeed the US never formally declared war and certain strategic options—such as cutting the Ho Chi Minh supply trail in Laos—were never attempted. In contrast, the Communist insurgents (supported and directed by North Vietnam) fought a total war, and waged a classic guerrilla ‘war without fronts’. The result was a hide-and-seek campaign of Goliath chasing David, with the former continually failing to be able to bring his enormous resources of fire-power to effect on the enemy, but always at a constant drain in life none the less.


The USA steadily increased its in-theatre forces until they had reached a total of 540,000 by 1968. This brought the USA very considerable military success—for several years, half the Communist forces deployed into the field were killed—but American troops were never able to bring the Communists to a decisive battle and the conflict dragged on. Victory seemed elusive and in 1967 the US government, sensing a public frustration and disillusionment with the war, felt the need to win approval for its policy by making encouraging sounds about an end to the conflict, or, ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. It was at exactly this point that the Communists came out from the shadows and attacked in strength in what became known as the Tet Offensive. The Communists lost the military battle almost as soon as it began and at enormous cost in their soldiers’ lives—45,000 Communists killed for only 5,000 Allies, of whom only 1,500 were American. But the US public had had enough and its priority thereafter became to disentangle itself from a conflict that it no longer saw as being worth the effort to win. From the very beginning the US authorities in Vietnam decided to allow free reporting on all but sensitive operational matters. The US Commander, General Westmoreland, tried to establish a rapport with the press by holding frequent and candid briefings. A combination of free access and considerable domestic interest meant that the conflict was extensively reported. The part played by television seems to have been especially important. Television was able to ‘bring the war to the fireside’ for the first time in history, almost as a form of macabre entertainment. But in doing so, it allowed parents, families and girl-friends to see the killing and maiming of young America as it was happening. A few parents even had the unspeakable distress of seeing film of their own sons dying. Richard Linley, a British television journalist working in Vietnam, said ‘Before, they were satisfied with [a picture of] a corpse; now they have to have people dying in action’.26 All the practices and prejudices of television journalism in war already described were present: an emphasis on drama to the exclusion of normality; competition to be the first to publish, leading to speculation and news ‘creation’; the narrow ‘drinking straw’ perspective of the television camera; outrageously ill-informed analysis by nonmilitary commentators; a neglect of the real issues. However, until Tet, a large part of the US media had been supportive, or at least neutral, towards the war. During the latter


part of 1967 some thread of trust or common purpose between the media and the US government broke. Thereafter, the media became hostile towards any and all official policy. It eagerly seized the chance to declare the American reaction to the Tet Offensive a failure long before any decisive point in the battle had been reached. Television reporting of Tet was particularly dramatic and lacking in balance as well as showing considerable prejudice, as this description illustrates: Essentially, Cronkite and McGhee described the Tet attacks in emotive terms characteristic of much TV Tet coverage: gunfire, destruction, vast numbers of refugees and wounded GIs—and all, as ever, matched against prior Administration claims of progress. McGhee and Cronkite did not wait for the fog to lift: the allies were not ‘victors’, they were not ‘winning’ but ‘losing’. (Ironically, Cronkite’s appraisal did not even go on the air until after Hue had been retaken and the Communists defeated.)27 The reasons for this early and wrong assessment of the outcome of Tet are complex. The media was out for blood and snatched the first chance to take it. The media lacked an ethos of critical analysis and, once it had formed an early prejudice that the Tet Offensive was a US defeat, the ‘pack’ fed upon that presumption without correction, to create a ‘truth’. The Administration failed to counter the hysteria of the media-indeed it seemed paralysed by the crisis when it broke (one commentator described Tet as producing ‘a flash flood of confusion and dismay that overwhelmed all who attempt to guide or stem it’.28 The effect of this gloomy representation of events by the media was a sapping of purpose at every level. The President came to believe the ‘facts’ displayed by the media, not the operational SITREPS of his own military staff.29 The visual impact of the violence contributed to his paralysis of decision; the suffering of US servicemen and South Vietnamese civilians was directed onto the President and it crippled him emotionally (it was not helped by having a group of peace protesters outside his office every day chanting: ‘Hey, Hey LBJ, How many young kids have you killed today’?). The President began to doubt his own policies at exactly the moment when he needed the most resolve, he ordered a


reappraisal of those policies and he failed to exercise the leadership necessary to steer the crisis. The effects spread much wider than the President. Senior military commanders had their natural compassion for casualties translated into feelings of guilt and perhaps ‘betrayal’ at allowing it all to happen in the first place. The Joint Chiefs of Staff exhibited all the same nervousness shown by the White House in a way that dismayed the High Command in Vietnam,30 who never saw the result of Tet as being in doubt and certainly in America’s favour. The soldiers at the front felt their efforts were trivialized by sensational, inaccurate, unbalanced reporting; the concentration on violence unnecessarily increased the apprehension of the soldiers at the rear. The soldiers about to go felt lukewarm about a campaign which the media said was unwinnable and which no longer appeared as a holy crusade basking in public support. The effect on the mothers and fathers at home of soldiers caught in the battles was awful. The result was a lowering of morale and purpose within the government, commanders, soldiers and (crucially) families at home. Several studies31 have placed the blame for the collapse in public support for the war at the feet of the media. More recently, another study (based on an analysis of contemporary opinion polls)32 has suggested that the erosion in support was a natural swing to disaffection that needed no assistance from the media. Certainly Tet was a failure of policy because the offensive had not been predicted, it was a failure for the Administration for every American soldier’s life lost (regardless of the enormous enemy casualties inflicted), and it was a failure because it showed that war with the Communists might go on interminably. However, if the media had not cast doubt on US purpose, legitimacy and success in Vietnam, could the war have been won? The answer is probably that the media (in pursuit of a story and with the need to entertain) singlemindedly and remorselessly exploited weaknesses that already existed, but in doing so gave those weaknesses an importance that they would not otherwise have had. Whatever, the results were spectacular, and in favour of the Communists. From Tet onwards, the USA was resolved to extract herself from the war. At the end of March 1968, after two months silence, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection, that the bombing of North Vietnam would stop, and that the USA would seek a truce leading to peace talks. The effect of the


media in triggering all of this was crucial, and its contribution towards the increasing abhorrence of, and lack of tolerance to, casualties was especially important; television giving them a new immediacy and drama. The war for the Falklands The second example is the war for the repossession of the Falkland Islands. In 1982, the Argentinian Government attacked the Falkland Islands, probably in order to divert attention from pressing economic and social problems at home. The cost of this adventure was the sovereignty of the 1,800 indigenous Falkland Islanders. Although the conflict was unexpected, the British Government had little difficulty in mobilizing domestic public opinion in support of armed action to counter it. The war that followed was short, successful and victory was achieved with relatively few casualties. Yet, to the media, the arrangements for following the war were very unsatisfactory, and lead to a formal investigation afterwards by the House of Commons Defence Committee. This was probably for two reasons. First, access to the British side of the war-zones could be controlled by the British Government in a unique way— for all practical purposes the islands were inaccessible except by using British military transport. Thus censorship was possible and was exercised. The media had little option but to comply, and felt strongly that their objectivity had been compromised thereby. They were doubly galled when considerable news was released by the Argentinians from Buenos Aires. Second, the war was unexpected, therefore unplanned, and therefore most arrangements were ad hoc right until the very end. Those for the media were no exception. These facts of life had several negative consequences. First, the arrangements for journalists to accompany the Task Force were scratched together at the last moment and little direction was given to the military authorities about how they should deal with the media. Some good relationships were achieved in the early days. However, except where a newsman had a very strong attachment to a single unit and shared their danger, both sides soon found themselves pulling in opposite directions. The media were sorely frustrated by the paucity of data links and the time it took to transmit their stories back to their editors; the military found the


presence of journalists intrusive, and processing journalists’ copy a nagging distraction to their primary concern of fighting the war. Second, although the war was ‘fought’ from Headquarters Fleet at Northwood, media statements were made from three other sources: the Ministry of Defence, No. 10 Downing Street, and in Parliament. Very often these sources were out of date with the situation known at Northwood and there was a lack of tie-up between the three sources themselves—for very practical, undevious reasons. However, when stories varied in detail or timing the media naturally sensed a conspiracy. The furore about the sinking of the Belgrano arose because two of those sources (the MOD and a minister in Parliament) disagreed in their statements over a relatively trivial detail: about whether the Belgrano was sailing towards the Task Force (a threat), or sailing away (still a threat). John Nott said the latter, in the mistaken belief that it was true33 and the controversy surrounding it rumbled on for several years afterwards. Finally, there were a few occasions where the military and the Government found it necessary to deny a story (for example, the name of the ship struck when HMS Coventry was sunk; the number of casualties on the Sir Galahad). Or, even, seek to use the media for disinformation (for example, the location of the landing beaches for the Third Commando Brigade).34 In its turn the media gave away information in the open press that could have been of considerable use to the Argentinians: the attack on Goose Green35 was announced before it took place and the fact that many ships were struck by Argentinian bombs that failed to go off (because of incorrect or faulty fusing) was published in a newspaper. In all these cases, both sides adopted extreme positions. This lack of reasonableness and compromise by the media, in particular, was described afterwards by the House of Commons Defence Committee: certain tendencies stand out starkly in the media’s submissions, most notably an exaggerated view of the importance of the media; a diminished sense of the difficulties under which the MOD were working; and a readiness to impute motives to others without properly admitting the motive—competitive bylines, circulation wars—which underlay their own attitudes…[the media] reacted to the


inconvenience and frustration that they suffered…with a striking lack of generosity.36 The result, even set against a background of a ‘righteous war’ (with mercifully few casualties), was a breakdown in trust between the Government and the media—because both parties had different and divergent aims. It was only a matter of time before the middle ground—the consensus of shared aims—was eroded. The fog of war, normal ‘cock-ups’, the complexity of war, the stringing together of everything at the last moment, all conspired to make that so. The Lebanon War 1982 The third example is ‘Operation Peace for Galilee’, which was the second attempt by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to defeat the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Lebanon. The first attempt had ended in withdrawal, and the establishment of a UN force to monitor the line of the Litani River. However, the PLO continued to harass Israeli border settlements and the Israeli Government authorized a limited incursion of 40 kilometres into the Lebanon by IDF in 1982. That authority was interpreted by the IDF as allowing it to attack and defeat the Syrian forces in the Beka’a Valley and to reach a position within sight of the main PLO bases in south Beirut. From there, the Israelis were progressively drawn into fighting in Beirut itself. The Israeli Government had long appreciated the crucial importance of public support, both inside and outside the country, for its operations. It knew that the decisive battles of the 1967 war had to be fought before US public opinion could gather enough steam to bring the war to a halt. It knew that the holding operation at the beginning of the 1973 war had to be kept going long enough until US public opinion (in the other direction this time) could be galvanized to provide replacement missiles and equipment. To achieve all this, Israel had established a sophisticated and integrated government policy on public information. It had gone somewhat awry in the early days of the 1973 war by hiding the true scale of Israeli casualties, but it got better later on. Censorship was imposed on all journalists’ reports; some journalists, however, from certain important media outlets were ‘accredited’ according to a long established and well practised procedure. They were given considerable help with briefing, orientation, access, transport and


a qualified military officer as escort to fight their case before the Government Censor, in return for agreeing to exercise selfcensorship. The secret was to make the value of accreditation greater than the gain to be had from any act of breaking the selfcensorship. However, a number of issues and some changes in media techniques conspired to make 1982 a different war from the ones that preceded it. First, a unified government position on the war or clear direction on information policy did not exist: ‘problems… stemmed from a war marked by no straight-forward political or military objective and one where the key figures (Begin, Eitan, Sharon) offered only minimum information to the media, and that often of a confused and contradictory kind.’37 Second, the war went on much longer than anyone had expected it would. Domestic Israeli opinion was not prepared for such a struggle or to support a war that appeared to be open-ended and which continued to cause casualties. In the end the Israelis withdrew, with the problem only half resolved, although the PLO were broken as a force in Beirut. What influence did the media play? In the first days there was an official policy of ‘battle-fog’, where all reporting was prevented. Unfortunately, this made even simple things appear sinister and it was, anyway, soon outflanked by the more open reporting allowed by the PLO from their side. Once reporting was allowed, journalists were still subject to censorship. Unfortunately the amount of film to be seen, the slavery to television news schedules and the diversity of outlets covering every possible time zone made thoughtful, considered censorship impossible. The result was the showing of what film did get through, however irrelevant, trivial or out of context.38 The usual negative features of television photojournalism in war were all present. The pursuit of drama for its own sake; the herd instinct; errors in reporting.39 The result was unbalanced reporting which was sometimes untruthful. The consequence of that ‘unfair’ reporting was a breakdown of relations between the media and the Government Press Office that had hitherto been so effective. Before concluding, two other conflicts are worth mentioning. The first is the recent Iran-Iraq war. Little is yet known about this because it was prosecuted by two totalitarian govern-ments, operating from within closed societies, which they both controlled with ruthlessness. Both possessed charismatic leaders, both were


fighting for the security of their immediate borders and Iran, in particular, was supercharged in its purpose by religious fundamentalism. The result was a total war in which huge casualties, some say over a million dead, were sustained and tolerated over 10 years. It would be very difficult for an open democracy to fight such an enemy who was not subject to the pressure of domestic public opinion. The second is the terrorism that comes from Northern Ireland. This is worthy of a complete study in itself, but one comment is appropriate here. There is a self-regulating aspect in the way terrorists exploit the media, for ‘terrorists seek mass publicity, not mass casualties’. Too much violence is selfdefeating, because the aim of the terrorist is to keep a conflict going until support for authority withers, not provoke a popular reaction that could destroy him. In this respect the media has a moderating effect on the level of violence. CONCLUSIONS Does it all matter? Or is this mistrust, recrimination, and misunderstanding just part of the rough and tumble of the violence and chaos of war? Recall that no attempt has been made to put the case in favour of the actions of the media—right or wrong—merely to discuss the results of those actions on the prosecution of contemporary warfare. I shall argue that it does matter and, in the case of limited war, it has such farreaching consequences that the government must have first calculated the results of media reporting before engaging in war. First, the enormous complexity of managing a war, added to the unpredictable course that most wars take, means that misunderstandings between the authorities and the media are inevitable, probably very frequent and they produce stresses that eventually lead to permanent schism. Journalists and the authorities have a fundamental conflict of interest between the need for secrecy and the pursuit of openness. As a result, many occasions arise when the co-operation between journalists and the authorities is put under severe strain and the longer that strain goes on, the more certain is the eventual collapse. The prospect of the complete collapse of relationships has to be anticipated before a war is started. Censorship is superficially attractive as a solution, indeed it is welcomed by some journalists as a device to put the


responsibility for the inevitable inaccuracies in their reporting onto the authorities, but censorship is probably impossible to achieve today. The quantity of television footage being produced, the technical means available to transmit it from the battlefield, and the chance that the enemy will make use of any allied news blackout to publish extraordinary claims that remain unrebutted, all make censorship a difficult exercise. This puts an added premium on achieving and maintaining self-censorship for as long as possible—of which allowing the media sufficient access to collect the information that they need in order for them to be able to publish consistent, credible and timely reports is the most important point. One way of preventing the early collapse of relationships would be by maintaining an official diary of events, published daily, with which all government sources agreed, in the manner of the original London Gazette. This would remove the emotion from trivial misunderstandings and would ensure a coordinated government response. Second, the nature of television and the style of journalism that it has created mean that reporting of wars is less considered, less objective, but very much more immediate, than hitherto. Furthermore, newspapers have adjusted their own styles in response to the success of television; indeed, the largest circulation newspapers have adopted a ‘tabloid’ style that is jingoistic, trivial and sensational. This leads to an emphasis on drama and a reduction in sensible analysis of the issues. This can lead to unbalanced reporting and untruthful reporting. Thus a government prosecuting a ‘just’ war must not expect to have ‘just’ reporting of that war from an unattended media. It is not sufficient for the government to tell the truth alone, and rely on a responsible media putting it over in a balanced way. Rather the government must have some positive, considered and effective mechanism towards displaying its policy and mobilizing public opinion in its favour. To achieve that, it must appoint someone with sufficient authority and ability, and with strings to the very centre of government, to co-ordinate it. If the government lacks the stomach for that, it should not have entered the war in the first place, for it will surely have to disengage as public support ebbs away. Third, the ethos of the media in attempting to be ‘objective’ often leads it into being ‘neutral’. This is an anomalous position for one of the estates of a nation at war, although it rests a little more comfortably with an outlet of a multi-national media corporation,


which unfortunately is the trend. ‘Neutrality’ inevitably leads to questioning the purpose of the war, and this adds—perhaps in innocence—to the sapping of purpose at home. Thus governments are wise not to slide into conflicts without a formal declaration of war which makes their position crystal clear, and governments should take great care to nurture domestic support whilst the war is in progress in the face of the negative influence of a ‘neutral’ media. Where misreporting by the media does occur, the government must have some system of detecting it and then of giving a strong line to counter it, otherwise its very silence gives credibility to the preposterous or absurd or untruthful stories being spread about. Fourth, the effect of casualties on the domestic opinion of Western democracies is very much greater in the era of television than it was before. The case histories prove this. In Vietnam, the issue of casualties, more than anything else, caused the end of the US involvement. A concern for casualties brought the war in the Lebanon to an unresolved end in 1982. Even in wars with few casualties, strong images are created by them: the bombing and burning of the Sir Galahad off Fitzroy; the flag-draped coffins returning from Grenada and Panama; the US President feeling obliged to be seen by the media to be there to meet them. A comparison with the public acceptance at home of the carnage suffered at Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, or by the North Vietnamese Army, the Iraqis and the Iranians is stunning. Fifth, can the very strong visual impact of pictures of death and violence be countered, neutralized or contained? Is it still possible to sustain a long, bleeding, damaging war, when the population can be kept so intimately in touch, as voyeurs, with the horror and suffering of the front line? This is not the result of a deliberate policy by the media, just a fact of life that results from very graphic out-of-context colour pictures of the suffering of war being shown so soon after they have occurred, especially when viewed from the comfort and security of a home (which emphasizes even more the harsher conditions of the front). This evokes a desire to ‘do something about it’ (because its closeness in time leads one to believe that something can be done); a guilt about viewing adversity from a position of comfort; a frustration at the apparent slowness and confusion of action that television seems to portray; and an uncertainty about the number of casualties that victory will yet require. How many Sir Galahads would the British public have


tolerated and what would have happened if the attacks against the Argentinians around Port Stanley had failed the first time? Sir Robin Day summed this up by saying: One wonders if in future a democracy which has uninhibited television coverage in every home will ever be able to fight a war, however just…the full brutality of combat will be there in close up and colour, and blood looks very red on a colour television screen.40 Sixth, the answer to these difficult and diffuse questions depends upon four other factors: how much the Nation’s very survival is threatened; how much the public itself is motivated in support of the war (which probably depends upon how much the home front is physically involved in the war); for what length of time the war has being going on; and the absolute number of casualties suffered. These factors combine together in a loose mathematical way to produce the least resolve to fight a limited war, at some distance from the home base, in which casualties are relatively high. For this reason, it is suggested that limited wars, prosecuted by societies with television and a free press, have only a finite life before the pressure to find a solution—eventually, any solution— becomes irresistible. Seventh, from now on the media will exert a much greater pressure on the military in war, which is also the time when nerves are stretched emotionally and intellectually. Already soldiers can listen to news on the BBC World Service anywhere on the globe. Within 5 to 10 years, they may be able to see the ‘world service’ on pocket televisions, beamed down from friendly and not-so-friendly satellites into their trenches; how much will this sap their nerve and consume their courage by increasing their worry of battle yet to come? What new stress does the access of reporters, with such wide powers of persuasion back at home, place on the confidence of commanders—at exactly the moment when they must find the greatest resolution of purpose, sureness of touch and strength of character? Sir Michael Howard once illustrated this with a hypothetical sketch of a Sir Robin Day lookalike in 1940 reporting the evacuation of Dunkirk for television: ‘Tell me General, I hear that you have lost 5 ships on the beaches today…is this normal?… are you worried about it?… what do you expect your losses to be tomorrow?…has this changed any of your plans?’ Should General


Westmoreland have bothered to try to establish good links with his media, when his candid briefings were ‘used in evidence against him’? The lessons here are twofold. It is important to appoint a field director of the media ‘campaign’, a man of the very highest quality in line with the fact that, by his efforts or failure, the support for the war may be maintained or lost, with all the enormous implications so cruelly shown up in Vietnam. It will also be very important to anticipate these new pressures on commanders and soldiers and go as far as possible to neuter them, by familiarity through training, and by support during the conflict itself. Last, the background to the whole discussion has been concerned with a free media, reporting news back into an open society. This is unlikely to be a symmetrical disadvantage in a future war fought by a democracy. For such a war is almost certain to be fought against a totalitarian or closed society, and such an enemy would not allow himself the same licence ‘to be shot in the foot’ by one of the estates of his own establishment. The ability of the Iraqis to manipulate Western news coverage is a germane example; though the sycophantic nature of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship often worked against it: witness the outrage when Saddam broadcast television pictures of him talking with British families (his ‘guests’) after the invasion of Kuwait, and the televised ‘confessions’ of Allied air crew during the air war. Clausewitz suggested that wars are sustained by a trinity of the will of the government, the passion of the people and the competence of the military. Where lies the modern media in this? The media alone is unlikely to end wars, even less to cause them. But the media may certainly help to bind the trinity together, or destroy the links that once achieved a common purpose. Knowing this, governments and their military should prepare accordingly. NOTES 1 Philip Knightley, The First Casualty, London, Andre Deutsche, 1975. 2 D.Mercer, G. Mungham, K. Williams, The Fog of War, London, Heinemann, 1978, p. 3. 3 Mercer et al., The Fog of War, 1978, p. 128. 4 ibid. 5 Arlen of the New Yorker said that: ‘battle scenes (on television) are made less real, diminished in part by the physical size of the television screen…which still shows me a picture of men three inches


6

7 8 9

10

11 12 13

14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

tall shooting at other men three inches tall’. Quoted in Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 412. This is surely one of the reasons for the disintegration in 1989 of the control exercised by the USSR and communism over the Eastern European nations, and in 1991 in the Soviet Union itself. Description of himself by William Russell, one of the first modern war journalists. Peter Braestrup, Big Story, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1983, Chapter 1. In fact, the marine base at Khe Sanh had a significant Achilles heel that General Westmoreland was unaware of until afterwards. The water supply for the base was obtained from a stream that the North Vietnamese could easily have cut off or polluted, but for some reason never did. The US Marine suffered 3 deaths per day over 6 weeks in a force of 6,000 marines, whereas it shattered a North Vietnamese Army of 40, 000. Mercer et al., The Fog of War, 1978, p. 401. Captain G.R. Liardet, ‘Public Relations’, The Naval Review, Vol. 173, 1985. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owns media corporations on three continents, and, in the UK alone, his subsidiary News International controls The Times (serious newspaper), the Sun (tabloid newspaper) and Sky Television (multi-channel television company beamed in by satellite). The only exceptions to this are outlets such as the BBC and the US Public Service Channel. The phrase used by the Sun newspaper to describe the sinking by the Royal Navy of the Argentinian warship the Belgrano in 1982, with very great loss of life—which led to the newspaper being described with some justification as ‘the harlot of Fleet Street’. Mercer et al., The Fog of War, 1978, p. 11. P.Schlesinger, G.Murdock, P.Elliott, Televising Terrorism, London, Comedia, 1983, p. 32. Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 15. Mercer et al., The Fog of War, Chapter 1. Braestrup, Big Story, 1977, p. 494. Note the statement in this extract about the futility of the struggle, already discussed separately above. Vincent Hannah ‘Story Masked by Censors and Cameras’, Journalist, July-August, 1982. Francis Pym, on taking over as Foreign Secretary in 1982, said: The duty of the Government is to help the services win the war. In this sense if information withheld makes it easier to win the war, it should be withheld. There is no such thing as a public right to know information that reduces the possibility of the war being waged successfully.’ Mercer et al., The Fog of War, 1978, p. 175.


25 The media often carries the day in these arguments because it controls, itself, the very levers of communication whose misuse is in dispute. 26 Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 410. 27 Braestrup, Big Story, 1977, p. 135. 28 Phillip B.Davidson, Vietnam at War, London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988. 29 ibid. 30 ibid. 31 Braestrup, Big Story, 1977. 32 Mercer et al., The Fog of War 1978, p. 242. 33 Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s Press Secretary, describes this as ‘the Le Carré syndrome’: ‘lt conditions the journalist to the conspiracy theory of life, not merely of politics, and to reject absolutely the cock-up theory of human experience.’ Sunday Times, 11 February 1990. 34 The Permanent Under Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Frank Cooper, stated that there would be landings all over the Falkland Islands at the time that the Task Force was making its final approach to one area alone at San Carlos. Quoted in Valerie Adams, The Media and the Falklands Campaign, Macmillan, 1986. 35 There were several speculative reports published regarding Goose Green; indeed Lieutenant-Colonel H. Jones commanding the Second Parachute Regiment heard such a report on the BBC World Service as he was advancing towards Goose Green. He immediately ordered his battalion to disperse and dig in to face the attack that he was sure would come, but which did not materialize—quoted from Brigadier Julian Thompson, No Picnic, revised edition, London, Leo Cooper, 1992. 36 House of Commons Defence Committee Report on the Handling of Press and Public Information During the Falklands Conflict 37 Mercer et al., The Fog of War, 1978, p. 278. 38 Such news film became known as ‘birding todays smoke’, that is: ‘Long periods would be spent shooting puffs of smoke as shells landed…[later they would] meet up with Beirut-based units who had been shooting the same puffs of smoke from different angles…all the cassettes would be pooled and transmitted [‘birded’] by satellite to London and the USA’. 39 Figures for Palestinian casualties were widely reported by foreign journalists as up to 600,000, later revised downwards to 10,000, despite the original figure being greater than the entire population of South Lebanon. 40 Knightley, The First Casualty, p. 411.

10 A STUDY OF EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEEDS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Colonel A.M.D.Palmer

This chapter addresses the question of how the security interests of the United Kingdom can best be assured in the context of a changing and uncertain international environment. It reflects a fairly pessimistic outlook on the way that events in continental Europe are likely to unfold. This is a legitimate approach for a soldier to take whose inclinations are liable to lay emphasis on capabilities rather than intentions. It is anyway likely to be balanced by a more than healthy slice of optimism from politicians and civil servants. At a time when the immediate enemy has departed from the scene, and not-withstanding recent events in the Gulf, there is a natural tendency for Governments to concentrate on other matters especially when it can be argued with legitimacy that at least part of the current problems in the former Soviet Union stem from an excessive expenditure on their armed forces. Nevertheless military advice to Government must be sufficiently objective and robust to ensure that decisions on resource allocation are taken with a full understanding of their implications expressed in terms of what can and cannot be achieved by those forces. Ultimately governments will decide on the basis of what the country can afford, but it is to be hoped that the Gulf conflict has shown, inter alia, that the ‘shop window’ needs substantial stocks in the backroom if capability is to be realistically matched to aspirations. The current suggestion that the structure of our contribution to NATO should be based on a Rapid Reaction Corps accords well with the needs of the moment to reduce our overall forces while meeting the political requirement of staying as a fully paid-up member of the Atlantic Alliance. However, before we commit ourselves to going too far down this road we should make a more objective assessment of the security needs of the UK and determine as the first part of that process two things. First, what are the current


threats to European security, and second, are these likely to be met by NATO? This chapter will also argue that the current response of European governments to these questions may achieve relatively small savings in the short term but that this may prevent really meaningful reductions in the long term. Any assessment of the security problems facing Western Europe must start with an appraisal of the residual threat posed by the former Soviet Union. In spite of the responsibility of the military to put more emphasis on capability than intention, an attack by a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, as envisaged in NATO scenarios in the last years before the unification of Germany, cannot be considered a realistic basis for discussion. That is not to say that states which once composed the Soviet Union are not a threat, merely that the threat has to be redefined. The first and main reason for this is that the former Soviet Union retains substantial nuclear and conventional forces; second, she faces enormous political, economic and social problems consequent on her attempt to establish a new order, and lastly her latent wealth and history make it impossible for her to throw off the mantle of a superpower even if she showed an inclination so to do. The response to the residual threat posed by the armed forces of the former Soviet Union must start with an assessment of the strategy of deterrence and the part played in that strategy by both nuclear and conventional forces. The Soviet Union had continued to modernize its strategic and theatre systems. To match this the USA will continue to modernize its own nuclear forces in order to maintain deterrence. At the same time the US will seek to negotiate reductions. There is no reason to suppose that this will reduce the efficacy of the American policy of ‘extended deterrence’ to Europe; for deterrence to be effective it crucially depends on its linkage with conventional forces. These must be sufficiently strong to prevent early use of nuclear weapons. The credibility of ‘extended deterrence’ currently depends on the stationing of American forces in Europe; these must be balanced by conventional forces from the European states. If the European states were to fail in the provision of adequate conventional forces then they could end up without the protection of American ‘extended deterrence’. The alternative would be the provision of a purely European deterrent, although there is little likelihood of this at present. In a recent article on the subject Francois Heisbourg concluded that:

EUROPEAN DEFENCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 189

A possibility would be to pool the existing French and British forces, with ten SSBN providing a combined theoretical strength of close to 1,100 warheads by the year 2000. But that solution presupposes the existence of a single executive authority at the head of a merged Franco-British political entity, a somewhat Utopian outlook.1 American disquiet over the unilateral reduction of armed forces of all European states in advance of the implementation of CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) treaty obligations by the old Soviet Union is temporarily stilled by the need to maintain a united front in the Gulf. The goodwill engendered by the successful termination of the Gulf War will fade all too soon, to be replaced by American insistence that European states must take on more of the European defence burden. It has been suggested that the whole concept of deterrence needs a radical reappraisal now that the short-warning scenario has disappeared. It could be argued that, while a reappraisal is timely, deterrence is still required to underpin European defence strategy. Strategic weapons are therefore likely to remain a constant of the US-Russian and therefore US-European relationship. The cost/ gains equation remains essential to the concept. Whatever the threat it is nevertheless difficult to conceive of nuclear weapons as anything other than a last resort: the corollary to this is that conventional forces are still required to demonstrate intent below the nuclear level. Under the strategy of ‘flexible response’ NATO had to rely on the first use of nuclear weapons to make up for deficiencies in both manpower and sustainability. The demise of the Warsaw Pact as a military alliance and the reductions in overall force levels allow the adoption of a strategy of ‘no first use’. In confidence-building terms this would be a major step forward. It nevertheless relies (as it always has done) on the provision of adequate conventional forces. In other words there needs to be sufficient forces dedicated to the defence of Europe to maintain deterrence while, at the same time, demonstrating a nonaggressive posture by renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons. The conclusion to be drawn therefore from a capability-led assessment of Soviet forces is that, in common with other West European states, the United Kingdom must retain an ability to fight in high-intensity operations. It must provide adequate forces to meet the requirements of extended deterrence and a no-first-use


strategy. Its armed forces must also be sufficiently equipped to retain a major say in the formation of European strategy. However care must be taken to ensure that the expense of this capability, especially if retained in Germany and at the Corps level, does not lead us to produce a force that is incapable of effective fighting due to inadequate funding. As we have seen in the past it is tempting to have everything on display in the ‘shop window’. In the future we shall not have the luxury of stripping assets from elsewhere to make up for deficiencies in our frontline capability. We must also recognize that the major threat from the Soviet Union has disappeared and has been replaced by other threats which may demand a different response both politically and militarily. The economic necessities that drove Mikhail Gorbachev to come to an accommodation with the West have had many effects; two are particularly significant. First the ending of the Cold War, and second the disintegration of the former Soviet Union’s Eastern European empire. Glasnost, as a precondition of Western assistance, raised the expectations of the people in terms of standard of living: more dangerously it has reawakened nationalist tendencies which have now riven Eastern Europe. The failure to satisfy the former will almost certainly lead to a greater desire for the latter. Whether or not Boris Yeltsin achieves his autonomous federal system, instability and uncertainty are likely to prevail. The Cold War was a period of unusual stability in Europe. As Stephen Van Evera remarks: bipolar state systems are inherently more stable than multipolar systems; the Cold War peace was caused partly by the bipolar character of the Cold War international order; and the withdrawal of US and Soviet forces will now produce a less stable multipolar system like those that spawned Europe’s centuries of war, including the two great wars of this century.2 Newly resurrected nation states with unsettled borders and with significant numbers of nationals living in other bordering countries are the major threat to a stable Europe. If long term European security is to be achieved then integration of these Eastern European countries into the economic institutions of the West is an essential, if initially costly exercise; but, at the same time arrangements must be made to ensure that stability is maintained. Without it there is little chance that the East European states will


be able to make the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Ultimately, the stability and economic well-being of the West depends on this fact. This implies some form of collective security organization that must be capable of intervention within Eastern Europe should this be necessary in order to protect minorities or to prevent one state from invading another. This is not the place to analyse likely scenarios in detail but national tensions and bloody antagonisms in Yugoslavia; the antiTurkish demonstrations in Bulgaria in January 1990; and the clashes in Transylvania between the Romanian population and the Hungarian minority in March 1990 are all portents of major problems to come. European governments ought to be devising new organizations to deal with these future problems, and at the same time appreciating that these organizations must be supported by adequate conventional troop levels to ensure that they are effective. A European peace-keeping force may well be required. Although there has been some talk of the need to reinvigorate NATO as a political institution (as though it were not one already) or resurrect the West European Union (WEU) there has been little attempt to define or even discuss the sort of conventional force levels that would be needed to support such institutions. In March 1938, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, explaining away the sell-out of Czechoslovakia at Munich, indicated that he was reluctant to send British troops to war for ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’. It is not good enough to pretend that we shall be able to adopt the same policy again unless we are prepared to accept the risk of a similar outcome. The key question is whether or not it is possible to redirect the NATO alliance to take account of the vastly changed circumstances within Europe or will it be necessary to come up with a new organization tailored to fit a new situation? A central part of this discussion will involve European decisions on the acceptability of the continuing American dominance of the Alliance. The first half of this essay might be described as favouring the status quo. It is likely to be in the interest of all governments, European and American, to stress ‘strategic business as usual’ if for no other reason than to recover after the trauma of a war. However there are reasons to suppose that in the longer term the fundamental changes that have taken place in Europe will create pressures that will, at the very least, question some long held strategic assumptions. The next part of this chapter will examine


some of the implications of these new pressures and, in so doing, will suggest some areas that defence planners might need to consider, in the medium if not the short term, if they are to develop adequate political as well as military structures for the twenty-first century. Before examining NATO as an alliance and assessing its chances of survival it is worth making a few observations on the general nature of alliances. Historically alliances have been used to ensure that one state in Europe was unable to dominate the others. One feature of this strategy was that alliances were generally in a state of ebb and flow and as a result were unpredictable. However since the end of the Second World War the nature of alliances has changed. Two new factors are central to an understanding of the significance of this: nuclear weapons and the nature of the adversary partnership of the two superpowers. Both factors have reduced the utility of force for, under the umbrella of their nuclear protection, states in both camps have been able to pursue their political objectives in the knowledge that war was unlikely to be the outcome. This situation occurred despite the massing of two great armies who faced each other across a common border. This has led to greater stability within alliances. In fact, it has been economic rather than military power that has determined relative strengths, both inside and outside alliances. The significance of the stabilizing effect of the economic factor is further emphasized now that most European countries have joined the European Monetary System, thus further restricting their opportunities for independent action. This point was well made by Sir John Nott in an article in The Times when commenting on the Falklands conflict: At least we were free, in April 1982 of the straitjacket of a fixed exchange rate or the European Monetary System; for I doubt if we could have withstood the German and DM zone neutralism of that time had we been in the EMS. In so commenting he was heavily influenced by the example of Suez in 1956 when the United Kingdom was primarily defeated by foreign exchange pressure against a fixed exchange rate. The increasing economic cohesion of the European countries is likely to influence relations with the USA. The failure of the GATT talks was just one example of the frustration felt by America against the increasing strength of the European Community. This


economic dimension is likely to translate into problems within NATO for two reasons; first the extent to which the USA is prepared to pay for defending Europe if it is, at the same time, competing with her economically, and second because the Single Market within Europe in 1992 is more likely to lead to better co-ordination of European arms procurement. In fact the first objective of the WEU, if it were to become the European pillar within NATO, might be to try and replace NATO’s Independent Programme Group as the medium for a long overdue attempt at improving interoperability. These factors as well as a possible divergence of opinion on how to react to the change in threat are likely to put increasing pressures on the solidarity of the Alliance. In trying to assess the prospects for the future of NATO under these changed circumstances, it is worth reflecting on the past record of alliances, with particular reference to those factors which have led to their formation and subsequent demise. Alliances are formed for specific reasons. These reasons have little to do with ideology and everything to do with national interest. As Churchill said when siding with Stalin after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union: ‘If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.’ It also accords well with Palmerston’s view that nations have neither permanent enemies nor permanent allies, only permanent interests. A further common feature of alliances is that the strongest member of the alliance has the greatest influence. To quote Churchill again: ‘In all wars where allies are fighting together the control of strategy usually rests in the main with whoever holds the larger forces.’3 Perhaps more appositely Henry Kissinger remarked that: ‘American policy holds that influence in the (NATO) alliance is apportioned as in a stock company: the partner with the largest number of shares is supposed to have the greatest influence.’4 Lastly, for an alliance to work effectively there must be a rough equivalence of interest between the alliance members. There are, of course many other factors that influence both the formation and the break-up of alliances but these are arguably the most important. They allow us to draw some tentative conclusions about the possible future of the NATO alliance. The original reason for the formation of NATO was the concern felt by all European countries over the imposition of Sovietcontrolled regimes in Eastern Europe. By the end of 1947 Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Rumania had


become communist states and the Soviet-occupied portion of Germany was clearly dominated by the USSR. The military weakness of Western European states, due largely to the aftereffects of the war, led them to doubt their individual ability to resist Soviet aggression. The idea of collective European security also accorded well with the American view of the post-war world, in fact it was a precondition of the Marshall Plan, and in 1948 the United States joined NATO in time for its first big test: the Soviet blockade of Berlin. Initially therefore NATO was a security alliance predicated on a highly visible and potent threat. Since that time it is arguable that the nature of the bi-polar world and the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) have combined to ensure that politicians have never had to take the prospect of war too seriously. As Field Marshal Carver has said: The strength of contributions to (NATO) has been determined essentially by political factors: by the need to main-tain the cohesion of the Alliance, the essential key to which is persuading the United States to maintain both its nuclear umbrella and the stationing of its conventional forces in Europe.5 This policy of delegation was not lost on the Americans, and Kissinger noted that: ‘the policy of the European allies has consisted essentially in influencing American decisions rather than developing conceptions of their own’. NATO is essentially an American-led alliance and although there have been attempts by European governments to influence American decision making, these have been largely unsuccessful. Acceptance of American dominance has been based on the immediacy of the Soviet threat and the inability of European governments to speak with one voice on security issues. It can be argued that the Gulf conflict is merely the first demonstration of the impossibility of ever achieving a European security policy that is capable of dealing with threats to European interests out of area. As a leading article in the Daily Telegraph (25 January 1991) remarked: The people of Europe are terminally divided when the pressure for unity, theoretically is greatest.’ What could be more damaging to unity than the position of the Belgian government and, in particular its foreign minister M.Eyskens, who one minute proposes a common European foreign policy, and the


next leads the opposition to selling the UK ammunition for use in the Gulf? It may be premature to use the Gulf crisis to assess the viability of redirecting NATO along different lines, but there is nothing like a war to make governments define their interests in a pragmatic manner. Notwithstanding all the problems associated with achieving a European view that are mentioned above one important fact stands out. A failure to achieve a European response to future security problems is to continue to accept American leadership on security policy both inside and outside Europe with little opportunity to influence this policy either before, during or after conflict. Having examined a variety of factors that go to determine the nature of alliances it is clear that there are two main problems associated with the survival of NATO in its current form. The first is the disappearance of the original and immediate threat, and the second concerns continuing American domi-nation of the Alliance at a time when there may be major differences of opinion between America and Europe over security policy. The significant difference between the previous threat and the current one is that the former was highly visible and based on a short warning scenario. This required high-intensity forces at short notice. The current threat is unpredictable, more diverse but, at least in the high-intensity area, based on a warning time that can be measured in months rather than days. This degree of warning time must call into question the need for the forward basing of troops outside their home countries. It is difficult to construct a threat scenario that needs a response by conventional forces in under sixty days. This allows adequate time for forces to deploy from home bases to wherever they are needed. Furthermore, the assumption, even accepting the argument for forward basing, that ‘forward’ in this context means Germany is open to question. With a more widely dispersed threat troops might be better located in the UK or France or anywhere within the NATO region. Alliance solidarity is not ensured by having all participating nations stationed on each others’ territory nor even having all nations stationed in Germany. It is ensured by binding agreements to fight on behalf of one another on the occasion specified in a treaty. The military argument will be that unless armed forces from different countries train together they will not be able to fight together. There is no inherent reason why they should not train together. Field exercises can be run in each


others’ countries, or the Gulf or Canada, on a planned basis that ensures that no country has to bear a disproportionate amount of disruption. One does not have to have much imagination to realize that training in Germany is in any case going to become a major issue in the future for political and environmental reasons. Keeping professional, regular forces interested and committed while serving in a country from where the threat has disappeared and where restrictions on realistic training are oppressive, is not a price we should be prepared to pay. There is certainly little military value in an RAF presence if they cannot practise low-flying. The more difficult question is that of the American presence in Europe to ensure ‘extended deterrence’, for it is highly unlikely that American forces would stay in the event that European forces returned to their own countries. The only possible use for the American strategic deterrent is in the context of a resurgent Russia: here again it would seem that warning time is a crucial factor. American involvement in a new collective security arrangement is crucial, but this does not have to mean forward basing of personnel, rather that their force structure be geared to rapid deployment. The demise of the Warsaw Pact and the consequent reduction in the threat are bound to influence perceptions in Washington in the medium term. In this regard economic factors are likely to be at least as significant as military ones. Overseas expenditure has an impact on both the federal as well as the current account deficit. The USA could save substantial amounts of money without surrendering capability if her forces returned from Germany. American forces, as now, would take part in exercises and they could retain air bases and air defence establishments in Europe. In particular they should retain their nuclearroled aircraft in the United Kingdom. The requirement, therefore, is for a new European security organization which, while continuing to take account of the residual threat posed to stability by the former Soviet Union, ensures an adequate response to likely events both inside and outside Europe. This rearrangement will have to be conducted within a climate of reduced resources which militates against radical solutions. It is not the purpose of this chapter to examine in detail the sort of organization that might either replace NATO or at least provide a more effective European voice within it. There has been much speculation on the subject recently, this has centred on existing European institutions such as the West European


Union. The major issue for Europe is to find a forum in which a common European policy can be ground out and then to match force structures to this policy. In this aim two factors need to be recognized; first, that European countries will, for the time being need to retain national forces to react to internal problems such as Northern Ireland, in the case of the United Kingdom, and second that American ‘extended deterrence’ remains a fundamental aspect of European security policy. Alliance cohesion has to be assured but it no longer requires the forward basing of forces. Before concluding with some general remarks concerning the possible contribution of UK forces to this new organization it might be useful to summarize the conclusions so far. Over recent decades the specialization of equipment and training needed to prepare a large number of units for the European commitment has taken a large proportion of the Army’s manpower and money. This has led to shortcomings in units dedicated to more likely and now increasingly important tasks elsewhere. With the ending of the short warning scenario, and its replacement by a ninety-day warning, the argument that we need forward based units in Germany can only be predicated on the need to maintain alliance cohesion, rather than to react to a threat which is no longer immediate. A continuation of this policy would further distort our defence spending which must now take into account an equally dangerous but more uncertain threat, at the same time as retaining a capability to participate in high-intensity conflict. This threat is most pronounced in two areas which currently lie outside the remit of the NATO alliance. For this reason the NATO alliance must change to reflect a European approach which will be able, inter alia, to provide an effective counter-balance to the American view. As Michael Howard comments: The fact must be faced that a structure created to meet the needs of the 1950s is in danger of becoming, after 40 years, an archaic anachronism. There is a need for bold thinking if NATO is not to be seen, both inside Germany and beyond its borders as an antiquated dinosaur, an obstacle to rather than an instrument for the remaking of Europe.6 This chapter began by suggesting that although the concept of a Rapid Reaction Corps was a good starting point for discussing the contribution that the United Kingdom might make to European


defence, it might cause a long-term distortion in our capability to respond to the complete spectrum of conflict that the uncertainty of the international situation demands. There is of course a strong argument for accepting that our economic problems make it essential to renounce an entire capability, and concentrate on doing one or two things well rather than a whole lot of things badly. The problem with this argument is that it is almost impossible to predict which capability we shall have to deploy in the event of conflict. If history is any judge it would almost certainly be the one that we had chosen to cut. Those who would deny this have not seen the comments by senior decision makers stating some two months before the start of Operation Granby that it was inconceivable that the United Kingdom might have to deploy an armoured force to the Middle East. At the present time the real problem of renouncing a capability is that we do not trust our allies to provide for us what we lack ourselves. This phenomenon exists despite the recognition that European states are very unlikely to go to war independently. It is clear therefore that there are, as ever, some hard choices to be made. By far the most disagreeable aspect of the ‘Options for Change’ exercise is that it is forcing the pace of change at a time when not only is the threat more uncertain than at any time in the last forty years, but in the wake of a war in the Middle East, the outcome of which is bound to have an, as yet, unrealized and fundamental impact on the way that both Europe and America will perceive their security interests in the years to come. The interests of the United Kingdom are increasingly bound to those of Europe; ultimately security interests can not be conceived, let alone assured, separately from economic interests. The WEU will commit us to the defence of Europe in a manner that will allow us to be seen to discharge this responsibility from our homebase. Those, and there will be many, who argue that our intent to fight in Europe can only be guaranteed by deploying forces there, are forgetting that in the past century we have twice sent troops from England to fight on the mainland. Those that argue that the presence of those troops on the continent, ab initio, would have prevented war, are failing to recognize the significance of the ninetyday warning period. The stationing of forces in Germany will continue to distort our defence effort and unbalance our ability to respond at all levels of conflict. The Rapid Reaction Corps makes sense in the short term,


but we must be very careful not to allow our past preoccupation with Germany to distort our vision of the future. What we need are balanced and flexible forces capable of reacting to a wide spectrum of conflict. Unnecessary infrastructure costs such as those associated with forward based forces must be minimized so as to preserve the maximum capability of our Armed Forces in uncertain times. NOTES 1 Francois Heisbourg, ‘The British and French Nuclear Forces’, Survival, July/August 1989. 2 Stephen Van Evera: ‘Primed for Peace: Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, Winter 1990/1991. 3 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, London, Cassell, 1948– 54, Vol. 5. 4 Henry Kissinger, The Troubled Partnership, London, Greenwood Press, 1982. 5 Field Marshal Lord Carver, ‘The Central Front in British Strategy’, in Brian Holden Reid and Michael Dewar (eds), Military Strategy in a Changing Europe, London, Brassey’s, 1991. 6 Michael Howard, ‘The Remaking of Europe’, Survival, March/April 1990.

200

INDEX

Adair, John quoted 25 Adie, Kate 81 aims, clarity of in military operations 93, 101, 103, 172, 179 Airborne Stand-Off Radar (ASTOR) 132 air power 2, 15–16, 94, 95; limitations of 96; see also strategic bombing; Royal Air Force Air Support Operations Centre (ASOC) 138 air transport 95 Alexander, Field Marshal Earl 86 Alexander the Great 24 Alger, John I., quoted 58 alliances 191, 192–9 Allied Tasking Operations Centre (ATOC) 138, 140 Arakan operations 80, 81, 89, 91, 97, 99; second Arakan campaign 100 Area Army, Thirty-Third (Japanese) 100 arms control 13 Army, British: ‘Cinderella Service’ 10, 14–15, 17; continental commitment of 11– 12; cumbersome procedures of 118– 4; deficiencies in artillery rectified 131; ‘philosophy’ of war 8, 37; see also Indirect Approach;

Design for Military Operations; doctrine; rigidity of 37–38; study of operational level and military history 1–2, 6 Army, Fifteenth (Japanese) 79 Army, Fourteenth 88, 91, 93, 94, 96; air-minded 95; morale of 100–8; supply of 96, 97–3; training of 99, 100 Army of Northern Virginia 5–6 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) 133, 140 artificial intelligence 116 Assam 91, 94, 96, 97, 99, 101 attrition 4, 103 Auchinleck, Field Marshal Sir Claude 30 Austerlitz, Battle of (1805) 24 Bagnall, Field Marshal Sir Nigel 31 Baldwin, Air Marshal Sir John 95 Bar-Lev Line 49–3 BATES 131 battlefield air interdiction (BAI) 95 ‘battle fog’ 179 Beirut 178, 179 Belgrano, sinking of (1982) 177 Bezek 127 Bidwell, Brig. Shelford, critic of Liddell Hart 65 ‘big lie’ 163 blitzkrieg 23, 24, 109–14, 143

201

202

INDEX

Blitzkrieg by F.O.Miksche (1941) 24 Blucher, Field Marshal 48 British Military Doctrine, see Design for Military Operations British Strategy by Maj. Gen. Sir Frederick Maurice (1929) 53–7 Broad, Maj. Gen. C.N. 29 Brussels Treaty (1952) 11 Burcorps 80, 86 burden-sharing 16 Burma campaign: compared with ‘Desert Storm’ 88, 89, 93, 96, 98, 100, 103; miniature laboratory of war 78, 103 Burnet, Sir Alastair 170 Buthidaung 81 Cambrai, Battle of (1917) 148, 151 Canaanites 127 capability, must be matched to aspirations 189, 197 Capital, Operation 83, 88 Carlyle, Thomas 57 casualties, Western concern with 181 Cavan, Field Marshal Lord 8 censorship, desirability appraised 180 ‘centre of gravity’ 93 Chamberlain, Neville 16, 190 Chancellorsville, Battle of (1863) 3 Chiang Kai-Shek 88 China, intervention in (1927) 14 Chindwin, River 83, 89 Chinese Farm, Battle of (1973) 25; see also Yom Kippur Chittagong 93 Churchill, Sir Winston 30, 33 Clausewitz, Gen. Karl von 40, 127; ‘culminating point’ 6; ‘centre of gravity’ 93 close air support (CAS) 95 clubs, London, influence of 38 cognitive dissonance, importance in surprise 149 command:

administrative risk 98; joint 94; and logistics, resembles clock 101; tempo 115–20, 122–8 communications 2, 3, 61 concentration: relation with economy of force 47–1, 53; with flexibility 138 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) 13, 188 corps: Fifteenth 81, 97; Fourth 85, 91, 92, 93; Thirty-Third 83, 85, 93 Counter Battery Radar (COBRA) 132 Coventry, HMS 177 Creveld, Martin van, quoted 146 criticism, military 33–6, 36 Cronkite, Walter 164, 169, 173–8 ‘culminating point’ 6; see also Clausewitz, Gen. Karl von Daily Telegraph, quoted 194 Dardannelles campaign 54 Darius I 23 Day, Sir Robin, quoted 162, 182 Dayan, Moshe 24, 26 deception see surprise Defeat into Victory by Field Marshal Viscount Slim (1955) 93 Desert Storm, Operation 78, see also Gulf War, Second; Burma campaign Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine 1 47, 50, 72, 129, 130 deterrence 16 Dimapur 83 directive control 41 disarmament 13 distribution, tactical 3 Divisions, Commonwealth: Fifth Indian 98;

INDEX 203

Fourteenth Indian 80, 99; Seventeenth Indian 79, 81, 85; Twenty-Sixth Indian 85; Thirty-Sixth Indian 81; Eighty-First (West African) 97 Divisions, Japanese: Eighteenth 83; Thirty-First 83 Dixon, Norman F., quoted 149 doctrine 27, 47–1, 72–6, 76; not threat-led x–1, 129; Soviet 1, 38, 137; surprise and 148; technology and 129–5; US 50, 52, 129, 141 Dorman-Smith, Maj. Gen. Eric 30, 36, 63–7 Dower, Alan 161 Dracula, Operation 85 Dunkirk (1940) 183 ‘Dynamic Warfare’, concept of 73– 7, 75 Economy of Effort 47; passive concept 57; reasons for persistence 57–1 Economy of Force 47, 50, 51–5, 54– 8; see also British Strategy; Maurice, Sir Frederick; Fuller, Maj. Gen. J.F.C electro-magnetic spectrum 153 Ethiopia, Italian campaign (1935– 6) 14 Evera, Stephen Van 189 Eyskens, M. 194 Falklands War, media coverage of 176–2 Field Service Regulations 47, 55 Fifth Army (German) 5 firepower: Dominant concept of 139; evolution of 127–3, 137; neglect by British 3–4; relationship with movement 6 57, 135, 142

Firepower, ‘Depth: concept of 128; weapons and systems 131–8; characteristics of 134–45, 172; importance of 140–6 Field Manual 100–5, Operations (US Army) 50, 52 Forward Line of Own Troops (FLOT) 132 Foundations of the Science of War by Maj. Gen. J.F.C Fuller (1926) 55 France, Fall of (1940) 109–14 Fraser, General Sir David, quoted 99 Frederick the Great 25 Follow-On Forces Attack (FOFA) 130 Forward Edge of the Battlefield (FEBA) 131–7, 136 Fuller, Maj. Gen. J.F.C. 3, 4, 6, 18, 23, 29, 40, 42; concept of economy of force 55– 9; The Foundations of the Science of War (1926) 55; The Reformation of War (1923) 55; see also Economy of Force Gaddafi, Colonel 66, 74 Gallipoli, Campaign (1915) 161 Gazala, Battle of (1942) 24 Geddes Report (1921) 11, 14 geographic points, as military objectives 93 German Army, during Weimar Republic 20 Giffard, Lt. Gen. George 81, 86 Goose Green, Battle of (1982) 155, 177 Gorbachev, Mikhail 189 Gort, Field Marshal Lord 38 Grant, Gen. Ulysses S. 65 Gulf War, Second (1991) 6, 8, 131, 132, 133, 156, 168, 186, 191, 194, 198;

204

INDEX

see also Burma campaign; Desert Storm ‘Ha Go’, Operation 81 Haig, Field Marshal Earl 33, 37 Halder, Gen. Franz 26 Handel, Michael I., quoted 147 Hannah, Vincent, quoted 170 Hannibal 23, 25, 26 Hastings, Battle of (1066) 23 Henderson, Col G.F.R. 34, 46–47 Higher Command and Staff Course x–1, 2; as stimulus at operational level 41 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) 133 Himalayas 96 history, related to military theory 1 Hitler, Adolf 23, 25, 149 Hobart, Maj. Gen. Sir ‘Percy’ 29 Ho Chi Minh Trail 172 ‘hook’, Japanese 99 Howard, Sir Michael 30–4, 198 Hue 174 Hutton, Lt. Gen. T.J. 79, 86 Imphal-Kohima, Battle of (1944) 6, 83 improvisation 97 Inchon Landings 23, 26 Indirect Approach: all-embracing nature of 61; line of least resistance and 62; educational value of 74 information 3 intelligence 8, 80, 136–2 Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) 118 ‘intelligent obedience’ 6 investigative journalism 169 Iran-Iraq War (1980–90) 179–4 Ironside, Field Marshal Lord 29 Irrawaddy, River 83, 85 Irwin, Lt. Gen. Noel 80 Israeli Defence Force 178

Jackson, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. (‘Stonewall’) 3, 46–47 Johnson, President Lyndon B. 169, 174, 175 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) 130, 133 Jomini, Baron Antoine Henri 146 journalists: accredited 178–3; bias of 164; competition between 164, 165, 170, 173, 174; conflict with military 171, 173, 176–2, 179; emotional reaction to war 165, 169, 174 jungle warfare 99, 100 Kamaing 86 Kawabe, Lt. Gen. M. 83 Keightley, Gen. Sir Charles, on public opinion 7 Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) 11 Kharkov Counterstroke (1942–3) 48 Khe Sahn, siege of (1968) 164–9, 169 Kimura, Lt. Gen. H. 83, 85 Kissinger, Dr Henry A. quoted 193, 194 Kitson, Gen. Sir Frank 31 Knightley, Philip, quoted 168 Kohima 83, 92 Korean War 161 Kra Isthmus 79 Laos 172 Lawrence, Col. T.E. 28, 30, 33, 36, 40 League of Nations 14 Lebanon 163, 170; media treatment of 178–4, 181 Ledo 81 Lee, Gen. Robert E. 3, 5 Liddell Hart, Capt. Sir Basil 4, 29 36, 40; ‘influence of thought on thought’ 8;

INDEX 205

‘man in the dark’ theorem 65; Strategy: The Indirect Approach 23, 60–7, 75 limited liability 16 Limited Operational Capability Europe (LOCE) 132–8 limited war, effect of media on 179, 182 Lindsay, Maj. Gen. G.M. 29 Linley, Richard, quoted 173 Litani, River 178 Locarno Treaty (1925) 11 ‘logic of lunacy’ 150 logistics 6–7 London Gazette 180 London, Treaty of (1930) 12 loyalty, confused with loyalty to seniors 33, 36–9 Ludendorff, Gen. Erich 37 MacArthur, Gen. Douglas 23, 26 McClellan, Maj. Gen. George B. 54 MacGahan, Janaurius 161 Macdonald, Ian 162–7 Maginot Line, concept defended 49 Maingkwan 83 Malarial Forward Treatment Units (MFTU) 102 Malaya 79 Mandalay 83, 85, 88, 92, 93 ‘man in the dark’ theorem 65, see also Liddell Hart, Capt. Sir Basil Manipur River 85 manœuvre warfare: and attrition, 103, 123; and decision-making 107, 121; and firepower 4; and originality 40–3; and tempo 111, 121–6, 123 Manstein, Field Marshal Erich von 48 Marlborough 1st Duke of 23, 24 Marshall, Brig. Gen. S.L. A. 24 Martel, Lt. Gen. ‘Q’ 29 Maungdaw 81

Maurice, Maj. Gen. Sir Frederick 53–8 media: editorial influence 166–4; effect on future war 182–8; frustration with secrecy 171, 177, 179, 179; importance of 159–5, 179; indiscretions of 177; need for media policy 180–6, 183; television 161–6; trivialising influence 166, 167, 175; see also journalists; television Meiktila 81, 85, 92, 93, 95 Mercer, David, quoted 165, 168 Military Strategy in a Changing Europe (eds) Brian Holden Reid and Michael Dewar (1991) x Mill, John Stewart, quoted 38 mobility, and economy of force 56 Moltke, Field Marshal, quoted 98 Monash, Gen. Sir John 29 monsoon 96 Montcalm, General 150 Montgomery, Field Marshal Viscount 6, 7, 30, 57, 98, 121 Mountbatten, Admiral Lord Louis 81, 86, 88, 89, 91, 95, 96, 102 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) 131, 132, 133, 134 Munich Agreement (1938) 190 Murdoch, Keith 161 Mutaguchi, Lt. Gen. R. 83 Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) 193 Myitkyina 81, 83, 89 Napoleon 24, 25, 26 ‘New Model Division’ (1928) 19 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) x, 2, 11, 12, 13, 16, 21, 130, 138–4, 141; American dominance of 130, 194;

206

INDEX

and deterrence 129, 188–5, 194– 2; future of 187, 192, 193, 195, 196–3; as political institution 190, 193; Rapid Reaction Corps 186–3, 197–4 Northern Combat Area Command 39, 86, 88 Northern Ireland 71, 179 Nott, Sir John, quoted 177, 192

Port Stanley 182 principles of war, ambiguity of 46– 47; dynamic 49–3, 54 Principles of War by Marshal Foch (1903) 148 psychological dislocation 56, 62, 116, 148

O’Brien, William V., quoted 58 observation-orientation-decisionaction (OODA loop) 108 O’Connor, Gen. Sir Richard 30 operational level of war x–10, 41–4, 43, 78, 81, 96–8, 129; operational imperatives, universal nature of 103 Operational Manœuvre Group (OMG) 111 ‘Options for Change’ 198 orders, nature of 6 originality: definition and characteristics 22–5; limitations of 25; recognition in others 26; imagination and 41; moral courage and 41–4 Ouspensky, P.D. 56 over-confidence in predicting future 7 Overlord, Operation (1944) 23

Race to the Swift (1986) by Brig. Richard Simpkin 4, 24; see also Simpkin, Brig. Richard; tempo Rangoon 80, 95 Rapid Reaction Corps 186, 197–4 Reagan, President Ronald 66 reconnaissance 4 Reformation of War, The (1923) by Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller 55 reserves, commitment of 5, 48–2 Richmond, VA 5, 54 Robertson, Field Marshal Sir William 10 role specialization 16, 21 Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin 24, 26, 37 Royal Air Force 2, 10, 15, 95, 96 Royal Navy 10

Palestine Liberation Organization 178, 179 Palmerston, Lord 193 Passchendaele, Battle of (Third Ypres, 1917) 36, 61, 181 ‘Peace for Galilee’, Operation (1982) 178 Peirse, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert 94 Pile, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick 29 planning system 7

Quebec, Conference 83; siege and battle of (1759) 23, 150

Saigon, fall of (1975) 172 Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle 57 Schwarzkopf, Gen. Norman 7 Schwebo plain 92 Scipio Africanus 24, 25, 26 Scoones, Lt. Gen. 83 security 5, 54, 155 Shakespeare, William, quoted 125 Sharon, Gen. Ariel 25 Sheffield, HMS 163 Shenandoah Valley 54 Sherman, Gen. William T. 63, 65 Simpkin, Brig. Richard 4, 24, 40, 42, 70, 139, 140

INDEX 207

Singapore 79 Sir Gallahad, HMS 177, 181, 182 Sittang River 79, 85 Slim, Field Marshal Viscount 30, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 77–86, 91, 92, 95, 96, 98, 101–7 Snelling, Maj. Gen. A.J.H. 96, 97 Somaliland Rebellion (1920) 15 Somme, Battle of (1916) 25 South East Asia Command (SEAC) 86, 92, 94, 96, 96 Staff College, Camberley 29, 35 stage management of battle 7 Stilwell, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. 79, 81, 86–2 Stirling, Sir David 30, 40 Stopford, Lt. Gen. M. 83 strategic bombing 58, 61, 66, 67–1 Strategy: The Indirect Approach by Capt. Sir Basil Liddell Hart 23, 60–7; value of 75; will o’ the wisp 60 Stratemeyer, Lt. Gen. G.E. 94 Stuart, Gen. Sir John Burnett 29 Suez, Operation (1956) 7–8 support for civil power 11, 14 surprise: absolute 152, 154; deception and 23, 148–4, 152, 154, 155; doctrinal surprise 148; importance discussed 143–51, 147, 153, 156; indirect approach and 63, 70; media might endanger 155; ‘neglected principle’ 143, 156, 158; not end in itself 5, 143; risk-taking and 150–6; Soviet view of 156–2; technological 21, 23, 146–2, 152–8 Tactical Air Force, Third 94, 95 Tank, discussion in 1920s 18 Taylor, A.J.P., quoted 29, 37

technology: ‘arrogance’ of 152; pace of change of 16–17; as panacea 2; tempo and 113–18, 116–1 television: compared with newspapers 162, 180; competition with newspapers 164; drama and 163, 166–1, 169–4, 179; neutrality 181; styles of 168–3, 173, 181; techniques of 163, 168, 179, 180 tempo: culture and 114, 120–8; definition of 105–11; elements of 111–16; enemy, place in 122–8; informationdecision-action cycle 107–13, 110, 111, 121–6, 122; improvements to 114–19; mobility and 115; need for 107–15; OODA loop 108; organization and 117–2, 119, 123; sub-divisions of 112, 113; summary of 123–9; technology and 113, 115–21 Ten Year Rule 11 Tet Offensive (1968) 167, 172–7, 174–9 Thompson, Maj. Gen. Julian 6 ‘threat perspective’, detachment from x, 8 Three Fold Order 56 Tidworth Experimental Mechanized Brigade 18 time, military, importance of 4 Times, The, article by Sir John Nott 192 training 99–5 Training Divisions 100 Tuchachevski, Marshal M.N. 30 Tuker, Lt. Gen. Sir Francis 33

208

INDEX

‘U-Go’, Operation 83 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, dissolution of x United Nations, and peacekeeping 14 Variety 169 Verdun, Battle of (1916) 5, 181 Versailles Treaty (1919) 11 Vietnam War 159, 164–9, 167, 169, 172–9, 183 Vinci, Leonardo da 37 Walawbaum 83 Wallach, Col. J.L. 64 Walawbaum 83 Warsaw Treaty Organization 51, 125 Washington Treaties (1922) 12 Waterloo, Battle of (1815) 48 WAVELL 131 Wavell, Field Marshal Earl 29, 30 80 Wellington, 1st Duke of 48 Western European Union (WEU) 196, 198 Western Front (1914–18) 109 Westmoreland, Gen. William C. 165, 169, 173, 183 Windass, Stan, quoted 145, 146, 155 Wingate, Maj. Gen. Orde 29, 30, 36, 40, 81 Wolfe, Maj. Gen. James 23, 26, 150 Yeltsin, Boris 189 Yom Kippur War (1973) 25–8, 64, 149, 150–6, 178

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