Air University Review, November-December 1979

William S. Lind

I APPRECIATE the thought Major Specht has devoted to the conceptual issues John Boyd, General Furlong, and I, among others, have raised. While Specht has not produced an effective critique of the maneuver concept, he has provided something almost as useful in furthering the debate: a catalogue of misperceptions, misperceptions which, I suspect, are not uncommon.

• Misperception 1. Maneuver warfare is an excuse for cutting the defense budget.

Major Specht sets up a dichotomy between increasing defense resources and adopting a maneuver concept of war. This is a straw man. While we can improve net effectiveness by adopting a maneuver concept even within current force levels, doing so would not necessarily argue for or against increases in defense resources. In fact, until we have reformed our doctrine and force structure, we cannot determine what our total resource needs will be: they may be greater than today, or they may be less.

I cannot help suspecting that Major Specht's linking of maneuver doctrine with opposition to defense budget increases betrays a not uncommon prejudice among military officers: civilian defense theorists ("those civilian pukes") are all antimilitary in their motives, and their only goal is cutting the defense budget. This is not only a misperception, it is a dangerous perception. It reinforces the already debilitating "we-they" division between uniformed and civilian personnel. It can push civilians who have a genuine concern with military effectiveness into the camp of the budgeteers and the emotionally antimilitary. It can isolate the theorists, many of whom today are civilians, from the practitioners. To put it gently, it is not a very useful attitude.

• Misperception 2: Destruction means blowing things up.

Major Specht weaves his argument around the need for destroying the enemy's forces. I do not disagree with that. His misperception is that destruction means physical destruction--killing and wounding troops, blowing up equipment, shooting down aircraft, etc. Major Specht seems to be a prisoner of the "body-count" approach to warfare.

To be sure, destruction can mean physical destruction, but that is not the objective. The objective is the destruction of the enemy's forces as active, effective fighting forces, and that can be achieved in many ways other than physical destruction. It can be achieved on the battlefield itself by inducing surrender (prisoners vice kills); it can be achieved in a campaign by bypassing enemy forces; it can be achieved in a war by paralyzing the enemy's government so that his forces cease to be active and effective. All these means of destroying the enemy's forces are tools of maneuver warfare.

• Misperception 3: Maneuver warfare is a magical force multiplier.

Major Specht claims I present maneuver warfare as a "magic formula for NATO victory," a device that completely negates the quantitative balance. I make no such claims. As I stated in my paper "Toward a New Understanding of War," "The quantitative balance is seldom totally irrelevant to the outcome of a conflict, especially when the opponents are roughly equal in deployed military technology. "¹

Maneuver warfare is the best bet for a force that must fight outnumbered, and historically it has often enabled an outnumbered force to win. But it is not a complete substitute for numbers. In fact, if NATO is to implement a maneuver strategy, it will require more ground combat units, not fewer. This does not necessarily mean larger total forces; better use of European reservists coupled with a reorganization of the U.S. Army to improve the teeth-to-tail ratio (currently the lowest among major powers) can provide a significant increase in combat units.

What a maneuver strategy does offer is an opportunity to use the increased forces we need in an effective manner. Merely adding more troops or planes to the current strategy does not offer decisively greater effectiveness. The inherent weaknesses of a linear, firepower-oriented defense cannot be overcome without more forces than we could conceivably add.

The best comment on the current strategy and deployments was offered by Napoleon. When his staff presented him with a plan for a cordon defense of France, with units spread out along the borders and no operational reserve, he asked, "What is it for? To prevent smuggling?"

The misperceptions of historical facts are numerous, including the following:

• "Not since the eighteenth century have commanders won wars by avoiding battles." Take a look at the island-hopping strategy in the Pacific during World War II.
• "Thus, maneuver and the indirect approach are only means to accomplish the classic objective of destruction." Have we so quickly forgotten Vietnam? North Vietnam never physically destroyed our forces; it did compel the United States to withdraw.
• "Even if the peripheral actions in Gallipoli, Greece, Mesopotamia, and Palestine had been effective, the Allies would still have found it necessary to defeat the Germans on the Western Front," In fact, the Allied advance from Salonika was an important contributor to Ludendorffs decision to recommend an armistice, The overall German weakness was due in large part to the blockade, an element of indirect strategy, which severely damaged morale on the home front and, ultimately, in the Army.
• "Mr. Lind seems to forget that the fight for France was a battle…." In relation to France, it was a war; it resulted in the surrender of the French nation. The implication that the Germans failed on the strategic level is quite correct; while German tactics and operations were generally superior throughout the war, German strategy and grand strategy were abysmal. The concepts reflected in German tactics and operations were not applied on the higher levels.
• "This optimistic judgment in support of maneuver doctrine fails to consider such unique historical circumstances as Russia's lack of preparedness." Specific weaknesses are usually unique; the existence of weaknesses which maneuver can exploit are common. Could a maneuver doctrine today exploit weaknesses such as Soviet concern about the reliability of its Warsaw Pact allies or the centralized nature of Soviet military decision-making?
• "The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concludes that the Japanese were ultimately defeated through attrition." The survey neglects, among many other things, the way U.S. island-hopping avoided the attrition warfare on which Japan counted and the psychological effect on Japanese decision-makers of Russia's entry into the conflict.
• "The Federal Republic of Germany would not support such a [maneuver] strategy," The Federal Republic will not support an abandonment of forward defense, but it might support supplementing forward defense with strong operational reserves for a war of maneuver in the event the forward defense is breached (which it will be, as the German military is well aware), Indeed, German plans suggest a possible shift from forward defense to mobile defense after the first few days, unless the conflict goes nuclear, German and other European attitudes about conventional defense are changing rapidly, in reflection of growing recognition of the meaning of strategic parity.

Again, Major Specht has made a valuable contribution to the debate, He has done what too few Air Force officers take the time to do--he has thought about an issue and written about it, There is no shame in making mistakes; we all make mistakes, Zero defects equals zero progress, It is only by making misconceptions public that they become subject to correction and the dialectical process moves forward.

Note

1. William S. Lind, "Toward a New Understanding of War," in ACSC Readings and Seminars, vol. 11 (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University/ATC, 1979), p. 131.

Dr. Russell F. Weigley

I am somewhat at a loss to decide what course is appropriate, since Major Specht’s article "Is there Really a Better way to Win a War in Europe?" does not take issue with anything I have said in print nor even with my views generally. I see much merit in William Lind’s stimulating criticisms of current military policy, but on the issues that Specht raises and where he criticizes Lind, I am with Specht and not with Lind. So I will simply write a few lines clarifying my position.

Specht mentions me in his article only to say that according to me, Liddell Hart misinterpreted Sherman, and Sherman was not the apostle of the indirect approach that Liddell Hart makes him out to be. My position is still the same one on Sherman that Specht accepts and commends.

In a larger way, I think Specht is right in arguing that the destruction of enemy forces remains the only sure road to victory in war. One of the conclusions that I share with General U.S. Grant, the pivotal figure in my American Way of War, is that modern armies and states are too resilient to be defeated by psychological means alone; their destruction must be more literal. So, while I believe that Bill Lind often offers fruitful suggestions--such as his idea that it would be more effective for NATO tactical air power to make Soviet artillery rather than tanks a primary target--I heartily agree with Specht on the issue of means and ends: with Specht's conclusion that "maneuver and the indirect approach are only means to accomplish the classic objective of destruction."

Perhaps it has been my criticisms of the new edition of the Army's Field Manual 100-5, such as those I voiced at the October 1977 meeting of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, that have gotten me associated with Bill Lind. Without accepting Lind's theory of maneuver as more than a means to a strategic end, I agree completely with him in the sort of criticisms of Field Manual 100-5 that he advances in his Air University Review article.^l I agree completely because, like Lind, I think Field Manual 100-5 embraces neither firepower/ attrition doctrine nor maneuver doctrine; indeed, it offers no clear doctrine at all.

I also believe that while Field Manual 100-5 opens with the observation that the United States cannot again count on the superiority of resources it enjoyed over its enemies in World War II, the rest of the text does not consistently take this observation to heart. I think that tacitly falling back on the expectation of restaging World War II is all the worse because our military doctrine was not as clear as it might have been in that war either, and one consequence was that in large part we had to rely simply on overwhelming material resources to win, Our World War II strategy aimed clearly enough at the classic objective of destruction. But we lacked consistent tactical and operational doctrine to implement that strategy in ground war. Instead, though we then had the most mobile army in the world, we did not use our mobility either for an indirect approach as a means to destruction or consistently to concentrate our military power for a direct approach. Instead, our armies in Europe moved unimaginatively forward on a broad front, with neither indirectness nor concentrated power, and I believe the war was prolonged unduly as a result.

Note

1. William S. Lind, "Military Doctrine, Force Structure, and the Defense Decision-Making Process," Air University Review, May-June 1979, pp. 21-27.

Lieutenant General Raymond B. Furlong, USAF (Ret)

Major Charles W. Specht has demolished the premise that one can win a war "… without directly confronting opposing forces that have insurmountable advantages in military resources." Fortunately I did not offer that premise nor, do I believe, did Mr. Lind. The crux of the argument lies in the difference between annihilation and attrition—and concepts to advance the chosen objective—not between accepting and avoiding battle.

Much of Major Specht's argument has the ring of the American way of war as seen by Professor Russell Weigley--annihilation, e.g., "The destruction of the enemy is what always matters most"; "...[The Germans'] failure to annihilate [the remaining French and British forces at Dunkirk] may have lost the war, "(Specht, pp. 74-75, 76) He even casts an admiring glance at the strategies that produced the carnage of World War I. If annihilation is the objective, then I agree that we must take extraordinary measures to close the quantitative gap, assuming of course that the Warsaw Pact would permit this to occur. If one retains this objective and cannot close the gap, there is a basis for substantial force reduction. If we cannot prevail with forces now provided, we can be equally unsuccessful with much smaller forces. In any case the quantitative gap could not be closed in less than five years, more likely ten, if ever; for that reason alone I suggest we need to find a way to do the best we can with what we have, Since both Major Specht and I agree that we cannot now attain the objective of annihilation, we are both left with the objective of attrition, Clausewitz, our mutual source, offers some ideas.

Indeed, Clausewitz does hold that "the fighting forces must be destroyed; that is, they must be put in such a condition that they can no longer carryon the fight. Whenever we use the phrase 'destruction of the enemy's forces' this alone is what we mean."¹ I suggest that there is commonality between this view and Mr. Lind's "... rending; our opponent's materiel strength irrelevant to the outcome of the battle," Indeed, this is precisely the result that the North Vietnamese obtained: our forces were put in such a condition (domestic pressures) that they could no longer carryon the fight. Our materiel strength, always vastly superior, was irrelevant to the outcome of the battle. Major Specht states that the North Vietnamese relied on attrition, He offers other examples of how one might successfully use attrition, e.g., British pilots, defeat of Japan, Sherman, etc. He does not make clear why he finds the concepts of "disorganization" or "maneuver" as inconsistent with attrition.

Major Specht is troubled by the contention that war is a "psychological contest," Clausewitz had no trouble with this thought, "...the war, ... cannot be considered to have ended so long as the enemy's will has not been broken... The personalities of statesmen and soldiers are such important factors that in war above all it is vital not to underrate them."² Indeed, the very object of attrition warfare is to persuade the enemy that the price of war exceeds the price of peace. Only with successful annihilation can one ignore the mind of the commander, for only this result denies the enemy the option to continue.

Major Specht and I agree that we cannot win a war without directly confronting the enemy. In context I believe he agrees with my premise that we cannot, or need not, seek the objective of annihilation but rather can succeed with an objective of attrition to "put the enemy in such a condition that they can no longer carry on the fight. "³ In seeking this objective, I offered the concept of "disorganization"; Mr. Lind has offered "maneuver," Major Specht finds both defective. Given the existing quantitative disadvantage and the improbability of its short-term reversal, I reassert that "we can no longer rely on raw strength and must now turn to brainpower, "⁴ I await the presentation of Major Specht's alternative concepts.

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 90.

2. Ibid., pp. 90, 94.

3. Ibid., p. 90.

4. Lieutenant General Raymond B. Furlong, "Stratgegymaking for the 1980’s," PARAMETERS. Journal of the US Army War College, March 1979, p. 9.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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