Force concentration
Encyclopedia
Force concentration is the practice of concentrating a military force, so as to bring to bear such overwhelming force against a portion of an enemy force that the disparity between the two forces alone acts as a force multiplier, in favour of the concentrated forces.
From an empirical
examination of past battles the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz
was able to conclude:-
Such calculations led to the adoption of the military doctrine of attrition
.
Frederick W. Lanchester formulated Lanchester's laws
that calculated that the combat power of a military force is the square of the number of members of that unit so that the advantage a larger force has is the difference of the squares of the two forces, i.e.
So a two to one advantage in units will quadruple the firepower and inflict four times the punishment, three times as many units will have nine times the combat ability and so on. Basically the greater the numerical superiority that one side has the greater the damage he can inflict on the other side and the smaller the cost to himself.
There is no battlefield where battle tactics can be reduced to a pure race of delivering damage ignoring all other circumstances. However, in some types of military warfare such as battle for air superiority, confrontation of armoured forces in World War II and battleship-based naval battles, the ratio of armed forces could become the dominant factor. In that case, equations stated in Lanchester's laws
model the potential outcome of the conflict fairly well. Balance between the two opponent forces incline to the side of superior force by the factor of
. For example, two tanks against one tank are superior by a factor of four.
This result could be understood if the rate of damage (considered as the only relevant factor in the model) is solved as a system of differential equation
s. The rate in which each army delivers damage to the opponent is proportional to the number of units – in the model each unit shoots at a given rate – and to the ability or effectiveness of each surviving unit to kill the enemy. The sizes of both armies decrease at different rates depending on the size of the other, and casualties of the superior army approach zero as the size of the inferior army approaches zero. This can be written in equations:
The above equations result in the following homogeneous second-order linear ordinary differential equations:
To determine the time evolution of
and 
, these equations need to be solved using the known initial conditions (the initial size of the two armies prior to combat). See http://www.sosmath.com/tables/diffeq/diffeq.html for the general solution of second-order linear differential equations.
This model clearly demonstrates (see picture) that an inferior force can suffer devastating losses even when the superior force is only slightly larger, in case of equal per-unit qualitative capabilities: in the first example (see picture, top plot) the superior force starts only 40% larger, yet it brings about the total annihilation of the inferior force while suffering only 40% losses. Quality of the force may outweigh the quantitative inferiority of the force (middle plot) when it comes to battle outcomes.
. The Canon–Xerox copier battle in the UK, for example, reads like a classic People's war campaign. In this case, the laws supported the establishment of a "revolutionary base area" by concentrating resources on a single geographical area until dominance could be achieved, in this case in Scotland. After this, they carefully defined regions to be individually attacked again with a more focused allocation of resources. The sales and distribution forces built up to support these regions in turn were used in the final "determined push in London with a numerically larger salesforce".
Traditionally it is accepted that a defending force has a 3:1 advantage over an attacker. In other words, a defending force can hold off three times its own number of attackers. Imagine then, that the defensive line is four units in length, so that each portion of the line can be held by a single defending division. Assume that they can take on the oncoming armour on equal terms (with ATGW's
, pre-prepared artillery
fireplans etc.) and that they have had time to dig in
. This single unit should be able to hold off 3 times its own number. With the attacking force having only 2 armoured units the defenders should have the advantage.
However, as the defensive line increases from the imaginary four units in length, the advantage slips from the defender to the attacker. The longer the line to be held the thinner the defenders will be spread. With the defender having sacrificed his mobility to dig in, the attacker can choose where and when to attack. Either penetrating the line or turning a flank and thus being able to destroy the enemy in detail
. Thus, concentrating two divisions and attacking at a single point generates a far greater force than is achieved by spreading two divisions into a line and pushing forward on a broad front.
Concentration of force in this scenario requires mobility (to permit rapid concentration) and power (to be effective in combat once concentrated). The tank
embodies these two properties and for the past seventy years has been seen as the primary weapon of conventional warfare.
No one side has a monopoly on military art, and what is obvious to one side is obvious to the other. A far more likely scenario is that both forces will choose to use their infantry to hold a line and to concentrate their armour, however rather than a line in the sand, the infantry line would be more of a trip wire, to warn of where the enemy has chosen to launch his attack, with the armoured forces jostling to find the right place to attack or counterattack. Other considerations then must come into play for a decisive blow to be achieved.
Such considerations may be economic or political in nature. e.g. one side is unable or unwilling to allow the sanctity of its soil to be violated, and thus insists on defending a line on a map; most nations who have fallen victim to this vice have lost wars.
for example, was one way of achieving a force concentration during a battle.
, in the first years of the first millennium, Rome's Legions were grouped into battle groups of three or four Legions, on the Rhine, on the Danube
and in the Levant
. By the Third Century A.D. these Legions had been dispersed along the frontiers in frontier fortifications, and within the Empire as internal security troops. In the first case Rome's military might, was disposed in a manner in which it had a concentration of force capable of offensive action. In the second case it could defend effectively but could only attack and counterattack with difficulty. In the first instance Rome was confident and aggressive with the possibility that the entire world would fall to them. In the second instance, Rome was in decline, fearful that what was theirs would be snatched from them; as indeed it was.
, finding it prudent initially to avoid any large concentrations of government/occupying forces. However through the use of small attacks, shows of strength, atrocities etc. in out of the way areas, it may be able to lure its opponents into spreading itself out into isolated outposts, linked by convoys and patrols, in order to control territory. The guerrilla forces may then attempt to use force concentrations of its own; using unpredictable and unexpected concentrations of its forces, to destroy individual patrols, convoys and outposts, in this way it can hope to defeat its enemy in detail
. Regular forces may act in order to invite such attacks by concentrations of enemy guerrillas, in order to bring an otherwise elusive enemy to battle, relying on its own superior training and firepower to win such battles.
the Central Powers
became increasingly unable to meet the Allied Powers
in terms of outright number of fighter aircraft
. To overcome this shortcoming rather than deploying their fighters uniformly along the fronts, the Germans concentrated their fighters into large mobile Jagdgeschwader formations, the most famous of which was Manfred von Richthofen
's Flying Circus, that could be moved rapidly and unexpectedly to different points along the front. This allowed them to create a local superiority in numbers, that could achieve air supremacy
in a local area in support of ground operations or just to destroy Allied fighters in the overall strategy of attriton
.
Similarly the Second World War Big Wing
was one tactic that was evolved to cause maximum damage to the enemy with the minimum of casualties.
doctrine was developed and established during the run up to World War II. A fundamental key to conventional warfare is the concentration of force at a particular point (the [der] Schwerpunkt). Concentration of force increases the chance of victory in a particular engagement. Correctly chosen and exploited, victory in a given engagement or a chain of small engagements is often sufficient to win the battle.
defence of France in 1944 could have followed one of the two models offered in the hypothetical example. The first to distribute the available forces along the Atlantic Wall
and throw the invading Allies
back into the sea where and when they landed. The second was to keep the German Panzer
s concentrated and well away from the beaches. Territory could then be conceded to draw the invasion force away from their lodgement areas
from which it would be nipped off by the cutting of their supply lines and then defeated in detail. The superiority of concentrated forces using maneuver warfare
in the hypothetical example carried the proviso of "all other things being equal"; by 1944 things were far from being equal.
With Allied air superiority not only were major force concentrations vulnerable to tactical and heavy bomber
s themselves, but so were the vital assets–bridges, marshalling yards, fuel depots, etc.–needed to give them mobility. As it was in this case, the blitzkrieg solution was the worst of both worlds, neither being far enough forward to maximise the use of their defensive fortifications, nor far enough away and concentrated to give it room to manoeuvre.
Similarly, for the Japanese in the final stages of the Island hopping campaign of the Pacific War
, with Allied naval and air superiority and non-existent room to manoeuvre, neither a water's edge defensive strategy nor a holding back and counterattacking strategy could succeed.
, to combat the overwhelming Soviet supremacy in armour and men, NATO planned to use much of West German
territory as a flood plain
in a defence in depth
to absorb and disperse the momentum of a massed Soviet attack. Mobile anti-tank teams and counterattacking NATO armies would seek to cut off the leading Soviet echelons from its supporting echelons, and reduce the cut off elements with superior air power and conventional munitions, and if this failed with theatre nuclear munitions
.
In an effort to avoid the use of nuclear munitions in an otherwise conventional war, the US invested heavily in a series of stand off "Assault Breaker" air launched and artillery
weapon systems, such as the MLRS, ICM
s, M712 Copperhead
and the BLU-108
sub munition. Against such weapons massed concentrations of armour and troops would no longer be a virtue but a liability. From the mid eighties on a much greater level of Force dispersal
became desirable rather than concentration.
The model for forces in the future it seems, is for forces no longer to be concentrated in space and location, but to be united in action and objective, not least by doctrine and training but also, for those who can afford it at least, through data link
s creating a netcentric
concentration of force rather than a physical one.
Mass of decision
Force concentration was integral to the Prussian military operational doctrine of the mass of decision the target of which was to cause disproportionate losses on the enemy, and therefore destroy the enemy's ability to fight.From an empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
examination of past battles the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier and German military theorist who stressed the moral and political aspects of war...
was able to conclude:-
...we may infer, that it is very difficult in the present state of Europe, for the most talented general to gain a victory over an enemy double his strength. Now if we see double numbers prove such a weight in the scale against the greatest generals, we may be sure, that in ordinary cases, in small as well as great combats, an important superiority in numbers but which need not be over two to one, will be sufficient to ensure the victory, however disadvantageous other circumstances maybe...
—On WarOn WarVom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz , written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832. It has been translated into English several times as On War...
, Book 3, Superiority of numbers.
Such calculations led to the adoption of the military doctrine of attrition
Attrition warfare
Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent side attempts to win a war by wearing down its enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and matériel....
.
Lanchester's laws
During the First World WarWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Frederick W. Lanchester formulated Lanchester's laws
Lanchester's laws
Lanchester's laws are mathematical formulae for calculating the relative strengths of a predator/prey pair. This article is concerned with military forces....
that calculated that the combat power of a military force is the square of the number of members of that unit so that the advantage a larger force has is the difference of the squares of the two forces, i.e.
- If force A has say 2 units and force B has 3 units, then the advantage force B has is 3²-2² that is 5.
- If force A still has 2 units and force B has 4 units then the advantage force B has is 4²-2² or 12.
- If force A still has 2 units and force B has 5 units then the advantage force B has is 5²-2² or 21.
So a two to one advantage in units will quadruple the firepower and inflict four times the punishment, three times as many units will have nine times the combat ability and so on. Basically the greater the numerical superiority that one side has the greater the damage he can inflict on the other side and the smaller the cost to himself.
Mathematical model
Lanchester's laws
Lanchester's laws are mathematical formulae for calculating the relative strengths of a predator/prey pair. This article is concerned with military forces....
model the potential outcome of the conflict fairly well. Balance between the two opponent forces incline to the side of superior force by the factor of
. For example, two tanks against one tank are superior by a factor of four.This result could be understood if the rate of damage (considered as the only relevant factor in the model) is solved as a system of differential equation
Differential equation
A differential equation is a mathematical equation for an unknown function of one or several variables that relates the values of the function itself and its derivatives of various orders...
s. The rate in which each army delivers damage to the opponent is proportional to the number of units – in the model each unit shoots at a given rate – and to the ability or effectiveness of each surviving unit to kill the enemy. The sizes of both armies decrease at different rates depending on the size of the other, and casualties of the superior army approach zero as the size of the inferior army approaches zero. This can be written in equations:
is the number of units in the first army
is the rate in which army 1 damages army 2 (affected by unit quality or other advantage)
is a coefficient which describes army 1's ability to inflict damage per unit per time.
The above equations result in the following homogeneous second-order linear ordinary differential equations:
To determine the time evolution of
and , these equations need to be solved using the known initial conditions (the initial size of the two armies prior to combat). See http://www.sosmath.com/tables/diffeq/diffeq.html for the general solution of second-order linear differential equations.This model clearly demonstrates (see picture) that an inferior force can suffer devastating losses even when the superior force is only slightly larger, in case of equal per-unit qualitative capabilities: in the first example (see picture, top plot) the superior force starts only 40% larger, yet it brings about the total annihilation of the inferior force while suffering only 40% losses. Quality of the force may outweigh the quantitative inferiority of the force (middle plot) when it comes to battle outcomes.
Lanchester's laws and business strategy
In the 1960s, Lanchester's laws were popularised by the business consultant Nobuo Taoka and found favour with a segment of the Japanese business community. The laws were used to formulate plans and strategies to attack market shareMarket share
Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
. The Canon–Xerox copier battle in the UK, for example, reads like a classic People's war campaign. In this case, the laws supported the establishment of a "revolutionary base area" by concentrating resources on a single geographical area until dominance could be achieved, in this case in Scotland. After this, they carefully defined regions to be individually attacked again with a more focused allocation of resources. The sales and distribution forces built up to support these regions in turn were used in the final "determined push in London with a numerically larger salesforce".
Hypothetical example
Imagine two equally matched sides each with two infantry and two armoured divisions. Now visualize a straight defensive line with the two infantry and two armoured divisions, deployed equally along the length of the line. Hypothetically the attacker can win by concentrating his armour at one point (with his infantry holding the rest of the line).Traditionally it is accepted that a defending force has a 3:1 advantage over an attacker. In other words, a defending force can hold off three times its own number of attackers. Imagine then, that the defensive line is four units in length, so that each portion of the line can be held by a single defending division. Assume that they can take on the oncoming armour on equal terms (with ATGW's
Anti-tank guided missile
An anti-tank missile , anti-tank guided missile , anti-tank guided weapon or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily-armored military vehicles....
, pre-prepared artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
fireplans etc.) and that they have had time to dig in
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
. This single unit should be able to hold off 3 times its own number. With the attacking force having only 2 armoured units the defenders should have the advantage.
However, as the defensive line increases from the imaginary four units in length, the advantage slips from the defender to the attacker. The longer the line to be held the thinner the defenders will be spread. With the defender having sacrificed his mobility to dig in, the attacker can choose where and when to attack. Either penetrating the line or turning a flank and thus being able to destroy the enemy in detail
Defeat in detail
Defeat in detail is a military phrase referring to the tactic of bringing a large portion of one's own force to bear on small enemy units in sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once...
. Thus, concentrating two divisions and attacking at a single point generates a far greater force than is achieved by spreading two divisions into a line and pushing forward on a broad front.
Concentration of force in this scenario requires mobility (to permit rapid concentration) and power (to be effective in combat once concentrated). The tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
embodies these two properties and for the past seventy years has been seen as the primary weapon of conventional warfare.
No one side has a monopoly on military art, and what is obvious to one side is obvious to the other. A far more likely scenario is that both forces will choose to use their infantry to hold a line and to concentrate their armour, however rather than a line in the sand, the infantry line would be more of a trip wire, to warn of where the enemy has chosen to launch his attack, with the armoured forces jostling to find the right place to attack or counterattack. Other considerations then must come into play for a decisive blow to be achieved.
Such considerations may be economic or political in nature. e.g. one side is unable or unwilling to allow the sanctity of its soil to be violated, and thus insists on defending a line on a map; most nations who have fallen victim to this vice have lost wars.
History
Force concentration has been a part of the military commander's repertoire since the dawn of warfare, though maybe not by that name. Commanders have always tried to have the advantage of numbers. The declined flankOblique order
The Oblique Order is a military tactic where an attacking army focuses its forces to attack a single enemy flank. The force commander concentrates the majority of his strength on one flank and uses the remainder to fix the enemy line. This allows a commander with weaker or equal forces to...
for example, was one way of achieving a force concentration during a battle.
Disposition of Roman Legions
At the beginning of the Roman EmpireRoman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, in the first years of the first millennium, Rome's Legions were grouped into battle groups of three or four Legions, on the Rhine, on the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
and in the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
. By the Third Century A.D. these Legions had been dispersed along the frontiers in frontier fortifications, and within the Empire as internal security troops. In the first case Rome's military might, was disposed in a manner in which it had a concentration of force capable of offensive action. In the second case it could defend effectively but could only attack and counterattack with difficulty. In the first instance Rome was confident and aggressive with the possibility that the entire world would fall to them. In the second instance, Rome was in decline, fearful that what was theirs would be snatched from them; as indeed it was.
Guerrilla warfare
As they are usually the smaller in number an appreciation of force concentration is especially important to guerrilla forcesGuerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
, finding it prudent initially to avoid any large concentrations of government/occupying forces. However through the use of small attacks, shows of strength, atrocities etc. in out of the way areas, it may be able to lure its opponents into spreading itself out into isolated outposts, linked by convoys and patrols, in order to control territory. The guerrilla forces may then attempt to use force concentrations of its own; using unpredictable and unexpected concentrations of its forces, to destroy individual patrols, convoys and outposts, in this way it can hope to defeat its enemy in detail
Defeat in detail
Defeat in detail is a military phrase referring to the tactic of bringing a large portion of one's own force to bear on small enemy units in sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once...
. Regular forces may act in order to invite such attacks by concentrations of enemy guerrillas, in order to bring an otherwise elusive enemy to battle, relying on its own superior training and firepower to win such battles.
Aerial warfare
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
became increasingly unable to meet the Allied Powers
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
in terms of outright number of fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft
A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...
. To overcome this shortcoming rather than deploying their fighters uniformly along the fronts, the Germans concentrated their fighters into large mobile Jagdgeschwader formations, the most famous of which was Manfred von Richthofen
Manfred von Richthofen
Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen , also widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial German Army Air Service during World War I...
's Flying Circus, that could be moved rapidly and unexpectedly to different points along the front. This allowed them to create a local superiority in numbers, that could achieve air supremacy
Air supremacy
Air supremacy is the complete dominance of the air power of one side's air forces over the other side's, during a military campaign. It is the most favorable state of control of the air...
in a local area in support of ground operations or just to destroy Allied fighters in the overall strategy of attriton
Attrition warfare
Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent side attempts to win a war by wearing down its enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and matériel....
.
Similarly the Second World War Big Wing
Big Wing
The Big Wing, also known as a Balbo, was an air fighting tactic proposed during the Battle of Britain by 12 Group commander Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Acting Squadron Leader Douglas Bader. In essence, the tactic involved meeting incoming Luftwaffe bombing raids in strength with a...
was one tactic that was evolved to cause maximum damage to the enemy with the minimum of casualties.
Blitzkrieg
Modern armour warfareArmoured warfare
Armoured warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a major component of modern methods of war....
doctrine was developed and established during the run up to World War II. A fundamental key to conventional warfare is the concentration of force at a particular point (the [der] Schwerpunkt). Concentration of force increases the chance of victory in a particular engagement. Correctly chosen and exploited, victory in a given engagement or a chain of small engagements is often sufficient to win the battle.
Defence of France 1944
The NaziNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
defence of France in 1944 could have followed one of the two models offered in the hypothetical example. The first to distribute the available forces along the Atlantic Wall
Atlantic Wall
The Atlantic Wall was an extensive system of coastal fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the western coast of Europe as a defense against an anticipated Allied invasion of the mainland continent from Great Britain.-History:On March 23, 1942 Führer Directive Number 40...
and throw the invading Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
back into the sea where and when they landed. The second was to keep the German Panzer
Panzer
A Panzer is a German language word that, when used as a noun, means "tank". When it is used as an adjective, it means either tank or "armoured" .- Etymology :...
s concentrated and well away from the beaches. Territory could then be conceded to draw the invasion force away from their lodgement areas
Lodgement
A lodgement is an enclave taken by and defended by force of arms against determined opposition made by increasing the size of a bridgehead, beachhead or airheadOxford English Dictionary lodgement, lodgment "3. The action of establishing oneself or making good a position on an enemy's ground, or...
from which it would be nipped off by the cutting of their supply lines and then defeated in detail. The superiority of concentrated forces using maneuver warfare
Maneuver warfare
Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare , is the term used by military theorists for a concept of warfare that advocates attempting to defeat an adversary by incapacitating their decision-making through shock and disruption brought about by movement...
in the hypothetical example carried the proviso of "all other things being equal"; by 1944 things were far from being equal.
With Allied air superiority not only were major force concentrations vulnerable to tactical and heavy bomber
Bomber
A bomber is a military aircraft designed to attack ground and sea targets, by dropping bombs on them, or – in recent years – by launching cruise missiles at them.-Classifications of bombers:...
s themselves, but so were the vital assets–bridges, marshalling yards, fuel depots, etc.–needed to give them mobility. As it was in this case, the blitzkrieg solution was the worst of both worlds, neither being far enough forward to maximise the use of their defensive fortifications, nor far enough away and concentrated to give it room to manoeuvre.
Pacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
, with Allied naval and air superiority and non-existent room to manoeuvre, neither a water's edge defensive strategy nor a holding back and counterattacking strategy could succeed.
Cold war and beyond
For much of the Cold warCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, to combat the overwhelming Soviet supremacy in armour and men, NATO planned to use much of West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
territory as a flood plain
Floodplain
A floodplain, or flood plain, is a flat or nearly flat land adjacent a stream or river that stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls and experiences flooding during periods of high discharge...
in a defence in depth
Defence in depth
Defence in depth is a military strategy; it seeks to delay rather than prevent the advance of an attacker, buying time and causing additional casualties by yielding space...
to absorb and disperse the momentum of a massed Soviet attack. Mobile anti-tank teams and counterattacking NATO armies would seek to cut off the leading Soviet echelons from its supporting echelons, and reduce the cut off elements with superior air power and conventional munitions, and if this failed with theatre nuclear munitions
Nuclear artillery
Nuclear artillery is a subset of limited-yield tactical nuclear weapons, in particular those weapons that are launched from the ground at battlefield targets...
.
In an effort to avoid the use of nuclear munitions in an otherwise conventional war, the US invested heavily in a series of stand off "Assault Breaker" air launched and artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
weapon systems, such as the MLRS, ICM
Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition
A Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions is an artillery or surface-to-surface missile warhead designed to burst into sub-munitions at an optimum altitude and distance from the desired target for dense area coverage. The sub-munitions are designed for both antiarmor and antipersonnel attack...
s, M712 Copperhead
M712 Copperhead
The M712 Copperhead is a caliber cannon-launched, fin-stabilized, terminally laser guided, explosive projectile intended to engage hard point targets such as tanks, self-propelled howitzers or other high-value targets. It may be fired from different artillery pieces, such as the M114, M109 and...
and the BLU-108
CBU-97
The CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon is a United States Air Force 1,000-pound-class non-guided Cluster Bomb Unit . It was developed and produced by Textron Defense Systems.-Overview:...
sub munition. Against such weapons massed concentrations of armour and troops would no longer be a virtue but a liability. From the mid eighties on a much greater level of Force dispersal
Force dispersal
Force dispersal is the practice of spreading out soldiers and vehicles in an army. It is used to minimize the effects of collateral damage, such as from bombs and artillery, and increases the number of artillery rounds needed to neutralize or destroy a military force in proportion to the dispersal...
became desirable rather than concentration.
The model for forces in the future it seems, is for forces no longer to be concentrated in space and location, but to be united in action and objective, not least by doctrine and training but also, for those who can afford it at least, through data link
Data link
In telecommunication a data link is the means of connecting one location to another for the purpose of transmitting and receiving information. It can also refer to a set of electronics assemblies, consisting of a transmitter and a receiver and the interconnecting data telecommunication circuit...
s creating a netcentric
Network-centric warfare
Network-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations, is a military doctrine or theory of war pioneered by the United States Department of Defense in the 1990's....
concentration of force rather than a physical one.
See also
- BlitzkriegBlitzkriegFor other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
- Shock and awe
- Schlieffen PlanSchlieffen PlanThe Schlieffen Plan was the German General Staff's early 20th century overall strategic plan for victory in a possible future war in which the German Empire might find itself fighting on two fronts: France to the west and Russia to the east...
- Force dispersalForce dispersalForce dispersal is the practice of spreading out soldiers and vehicles in an army. It is used to minimize the effects of collateral damage, such as from bombs and artillery, and increases the number of artillery rounds needed to neutralize or destroy a military force in proportion to the dispersal...
- Human wave attackHuman wave attackHuman wave attack, also known as human sea attack, is an offensive infantry tactic, in which an attacker conducts an unprotected frontal assault with densely concentrated infantry formations against the enemy line, intended to overrun the defenders by engaging in melee combat.-Definition:According...
- List of military tactics
- Saturation patrolSaturation patrolA saturation patrol is a police or military patrol tactic wherein a large number of officers are concentrated into a small geographic area. Saturation patrols are used for hot-spot crime reduction, DUI checkpoints, and other location-specific patrols...