Military tactics

Overview

Military units preparing for and in battle are governed by the overall strategy of the campaign. All component elements of a military force in a campaign maneuver fight within an operational plan. At the sharp end (in contact with the enemy), all personnel use tactics—essentially, methods—to achieve their aims in movement around the battlefield, in defense, and in attack. Tactics can be seen as small-scale, immediate decisions while strategy plans large-scale, longterm decisions; military operations is the intermediate stage translating strategy into tactics.

Significance

To a great extent tactics have always been influenced by the technology available at the time. From rock to rifle to rocket, tactics have evolved to use what is available to inflict the most damage on the enemy while preserving lives on the user’s side. The evolution of battlefield weapons and their increasing range and power have affected tactics directly. Another significant factor in tactics is mobility: Both defenders and attackers need to be able to move freely about the battlefield; failure to maintain freedom of movement can easily lead to defeat. Throughout history great military theorists have developed tactics to most effectively use prevailing technologies in service of strategy.

Tactics throughout the ages have always been crucial in determining how much damage each side can do to the other in battle. The side with the most soldiers and the best weapons could normally be expected to prevail, but there are occasions when small groups that were better armed and equipped or otherwise tactically prepared were able to inflict disproportionate damage on much larger forces. The use by the British army of machine guns in nineteenth century colonial warfare and the Spencer rifle (invented by Christian Spencer in 1860) in the American Civil War are examples of this.

History of Tactics

Ancient and Medieval World

Tactics are governed to a large extent by available weapons and the range and firepower of those weapons. In the period of early warfare weapons were limited in range to below the total range of vision. This meant that anyone out of range of bow or catapult was safe to move. Tactics developed to bring the enemy within range by maneuver and speed of deployment. Consequently they also depend on factors such as geography and weather, troop numbers, military intelligence, and even psychology.

Weapons available in the pre-firearm period included the sword, bow and arrow, spear, javelin, lance, and siege engines. Troops en masse on foot moved slowly and were difficult to maneuver once a battle had begun. The answer was to mount some men on horses, giving them a greater speed on the battlefield and a greater range on reconnaissance. Horses could be trained to endure the stresses of combat and elite mounted warriors, or cavalry, could attack footsoldiers to devastating effect. In the West this trend led to the rise of heavily armored knights during the medieval period. Their tactics relied not only on their arms and armor but often on codes of honor and ethics tied to their noble status, including chivalry. Initially the defenses against cavalry were limited to spear, pike, and bow; it was the more powerful longbow that finally began the decline of knights, for well-trained archers were capable of piercing armor and breaking up a dense charge long before it reached the defender’s front line.

For the defender, one of the best protections for hundreds of years was walls and towers, as seen in the development of the castle, keep, fortified town, and other strongholds. Tactically defenders often had the advantage of internal lines of communication (and therefore freedom of movement, at least in a controlled area) and established resources. The static defenses of thick walls and towers often defeated attackers as long as provisions held out within. If defenses could not be breached attackers had no path to victory other than a long siege, which was often as costly to the army laying siege as to the besieged, if not more so. However, technical developments led to the invention and development of siege engines of considerable power and eventually cannons, capable of demolishing even the thickest curtain walls. Other tactical methods of defeating fortifications including mining underneath them.

Early Modern World

The invention of gunpowder in China and its eventual use in weapons was one of the main technologies of change that brought about the beginnings of the modern world. The very first military firearms were designed perhaps more to frighten enemy horses than to have a killing effect. Yet soon effective handheld and heavier guns were developed and provided an enormous advantage over swords and spears due to their extended range and over arrows and other projectiles due to their power. The rate of fire, accuracy, and general effect of early firearms was limited, but technology made great strides in improving these characteristics with each ongoing decade.

The arrival of firearms on the battlefield further limited the effect of cavalry, although horses would remain important in warfare for centuries. Initially the limited range and firepower of guns meant that musketeers normally needed protection by pikemen, but nevertheless charges of heavy cavalry were often defeated by effective mass use of firearms. Additionally, as the price of firearms declined a footsoldier with a gun became much more cost effective than a highly trained horse and rider, and large armies of infantry began to dominate. In response the role of cavalry shifted to further emphasize speed and maneuverability. As training and tactics improved mounted troops became the masters of the shock effect. Riders wielding sabers and pistols were able to break through infantry lines and enable attacks on an enemy's generally less-defended flanks or rear. Military leaders such as Napoleon made great use of cavalry to surprise and defeat enemies.

The development of cannons and other artillery also changed defensive technology and tactics, with high curtain walls replaced in fortifications by low, sloped ramparts and ditches with gun emplacements allowing a wide field of defensive fire. The art of large-scale static defenses reached its peak with the detailed designs of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633–1707), although the very last such constructions were seen as late as the twentieth century in the Maginot line (named after André Maginot, 1877–1932) in eastern France and similar defensive works.

Rise of Industrial Warfare

In the nineteenth century changes to firearms that made them more effective began to create a need for changes in tactics. The rate of fire was increased, accuracy improved, and the arrival of the breech-loading rifle, the machine gun, and quick-fire cannon would affect tactics more rapidly than had been seen before.

Breech-loading rifles meant that no longer did infantry have to stand to fire; earlier muzzle-loaded weapons had to be reloaded with the soldier standing up. The ability to reload lying down meant that infantry could be less obvious on the battlefield and hence better protected against enemy cannon fire. Defenders began to dig into the ground to lower their silhouettes and to protect themselves even more, and attacking infantry therefore had to move toward the enemy across ground that was covered by the defenders’ fire.

The cannon on the battlefield had for a long time been limited in effect by its lack of maneuverability, but manufacturing techniques slowly overcame this problem and guns were soon able to keep up with cavalry, first by being horse-drawn on highly mobile and stable carriages and eventually by train or truck. Breech-loading methods for artillery improved the rate of fire, higher standards of manufacture increased accuracy, and the basic cannon developed into the field gun with considerable effect upon bodies of troops present on the battlefield.

The invention of the machine gun spelled the end of massed troop formations, although this was not immediately fully understood in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Units with machine guns issued to them often failed to use them despite the obvious advantage of a high rate of sustainable fire, still preferring to fight battles with verve and élan rather than brains.

World War I (1914–1918) saw the technology of war finally show how utterly ruthless it could be against masses of men, as the industrial aspects of battle were realized and put to devastating effect as new tactics took hold. No matter how great the attacker’s superiority in numbers, machine guns, artillery, and barbed wire spelled the end of millions of lives. The problem for the tacticians of this war was that technology had supplied weapons of defense that were far superior to the weapons of attack, and the prevailing tactics led to a strategy of drawn out trench warfare that brought heavy casualties with little territorial gain for either side. In most cases the attackers were armed simply with rifle and bayonet and were faced by increasing numbers of defending machine guns, deep belts of barbed wire, and artillery defense plans that left the attackers dead and dying in front of the defending trenches.

Trenches in World War I were redolent of the earlier wall defenses of the Middle Ages and earlier. Siege warfare existed between the two sides on the western front, and although major attacks were made, they failed in the main in the first three years of the war because the defender had the advantage. It must also be recognized that the more senior officers on both sides (particularly the British commander, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Viscount Dawick) were still convinced of the value of cavalry (against machine guns, barbed wire, and guns) to make the breakthrough and develop the attack into a rout. This was simply impossible. What was needed was a breakthrough weapon.

That weapon was the tank, which became the new cavalry. Invented by the British and much promoted by Winston Churchill, the tank was seen to be capable of breaking through enemy defenses unscathed, and, accompanied by infantry, could lead a breakthrough into the enemy gun lines and rear, whereby victory would be won. However, technology in World War I lacked the ability to provide sufficiently reliable tanks, and the defenders soon realized that they could fight against tanks. Nonetheless, the idea bore eventual fruit and led to the infantry-tank warfare of World War II.

In World War II the predominant tactics again underwent changes to incorporate the improved tanks and the even newer concept of air power. The Germans demonstrated their new tactics in Poland, Denmark, Holland, and France in 1939 and 1940, and early in the war it seemed that there was no real answer to the tactic popularly known as blitzkrieg. This combination of highly mobile infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft caused a remarkable effect on the battlefield. The "empty battlefield" of World War I became even more essential in World War II for the reason that movement, concentrations of troops, and defensive positions were all vulnerable to air attack, shelling, or an infantry tank attack combined with supporting weapons.

The pace of tactics had changed dramatically; no longer did battles proceed at the pace of the infantry but rather at the speed of the motor vehicle (and later, with the arrival of paratroops and "vertical envelopment," at the speed of the aircraft). The need for rapidity of movement now became paramount, and infantry, to keep up with the tanks, had to be carried in trucks—or, better still, in armored personnel carriers, a concept of Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895–1970) and Major General J. F. C. Fuller (1878–1966), completely adopted by the Germans, especially Colonel General Heinz Guderian (1888–1954). Artillery also needed to move faster, and so was towed or even self-propelled in semiarmored vehicles.

Tank battles were sometimes fought tank against tank, but by the side of this was a developing ability for the infantry to destroy tanks themselves with easily movable antitank guns and, later in the war, portable "fire and throw-away" antitank weapons, as well as the bazooka and similar weapons. Tanks were becoming hunted as well as hunters.

In the air, enormous strides were made in developing weapons to make air-ground cooperation a reality. The increasing capabilities of aircraft and precision of air-to-land weapons allowed effective air support to infantry or cavalry units. In the course of the war rocket-firing aircraft could knock tanks out, and even large-scale strategic bombers were used (sometimes not very effectively) to aid ground troops at the tactical level. Air power quickly became a critical component of tactical success, leading to major emphasis on aircraft technology and airfields on both the tactical and strategic levels. This was perhaps best demonstrated in the United States' island-hopping campaign across the Pacific to get within striking range of Japan. Together with another technological breakthrough that would forever shape warfare—nuclear technology—this allowed the use of atomic bombs to ultimately end World War II.

The ensuing Cold War would see a greater emphasis on strategy than tactics by the United States and the Soviet Union. However, the guerrilla warfare that dominated proxy wars and other conflicts of the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first century combined both strategic and tactical elements to provide an effective means of combat against even vastly superior forces. The Vietnam War was one example in which Communist guerrillas used small-scale tactics to continually harass US troops, whose commanders employed tactics that often failed to destroy the enemy and often alienated the broader population.

Tactics Today

Modern tactics for conventional military operations are a combination of the well-tried and -tested fire and movement technique (some men fire at the enemy, while the others move forward tactically) and a mobility that is fundamental to gaining surprise on the battlefield. The delivery of troops unexpectedly on the battlefield has always been a great contributor to success; paratroops were used for this purpose, but nowadays air-landed troops (from aircraft or helicopter) can often tip the scales in favor of the side using them (whether as attacker or defender). Airlifting troops both to make an assault and to put "boots on the ground" can proceed so quickly that rapid buildups of troops are possible in a very short time.

Infantry still strive almost invisible on the battlefield, whether moving or in defensive positions. The ability to use night as cover has disappeared with the appearance of light-intensification and infrared equipment, and sophisticated tanks and aircraft can engage the enemy by heat signature alone. Highly powerful and accurate artillery can deliver devastating, concentrated fire from great distances, helping to demoralize any defender. While anti-aircraft and antimissile systems have also improved, increasingly innovations such as stealth technology and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) allow precise strikes almost anywhere in the world at any time.

In fact, the power and range of ballistic missiles and similar weapons has made traditional defense of or assault upon a military position all but impossible against the forces of a powerful, modernized military such as that of the United States. Together with the strategies imposed since the Cold War regarding nuclear weapons, this concentration of power has forced opponents of the superpowers and their allies to largely abandon traditional or conventional military tactics in favor of methods that leave them less vulnerable to technological superiority. In most cases this means that guerrilla warfare—and increasingly terrorism—has predominated in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Terrorist tactics such as hijackings, car bombings, and suicide bombings are difficult to counter with standard military methods no matter how powerful those methods may be. There is no longer a set battlefield; combat occurs in public and any counterstrikes generally run a high risk of civilian casualties as terrorists blend into the population. Even generally precise methods that hit small-scale targets such as a single house or vehicle—for example a commando strike or drone attack—can go wrong and cause more harm than good in some cases. While counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics do exist, experts increasingly agree that the military aspects must be complimented with social, political, and economic activities in order to prevent the spread of unrest and enemy ideology. Military tactics also increasingly rely on cyberwarfare, cybersecurity, and efforts to stop cyberterrorism before any traditional combat is even begun.

Tactics may seem to have developed beyond recognition form their historical roots, but in fact at their core they remain the same: to engage the enemy and defeat them. Only the technology has changed. Speed is of the ultimate essence: speed of movement, rate of firepower, speed in gaining and using intelligence, speed in reacting to enemy threat. On the ground it all comes down to getting into such a position that defeat of the enemy can be achieved. Unlike strategy, tactics can be very personal to soldiers, as their effectiveness can mean the difference between life or death.

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