Categoría: COMBINED ARMS UNITS IN COMBAT

THE RECONNAISSANCE AND THE INTELLIGENCE: A MILITARY OPERATIONAL SYSTEM.

The reconnaissance generates information of the different operational levels of military action. This must be turned into intelligence. That is the reasonably trustworthy and sufficient knowledge of the enemy, his intentions and capacities and the fighting possibilities and transitability of fields, etc. To enable us to take a “founded resolution”, based on the use of our means and fighting forms, in accordance with our objectives.

Concepts y Principles of the Reconnaissance.

Reconnaissance is one of the most important functions to be fulfilled by units during operations. The information it provides, how it is elaborated and transmitted and to whom is a fundamental part of intelligence. This, finally, is one of the key factors of decisive command.

Resultado de imagen de SDKFZ 263.    SDKFZ 263.

Reconnaissance can be divided into strategic, operational or tactical and combat, according to its mission and the area it encompasses. The strategic one seeks to uncover key information about the enemy in the operations deep theater: his concentrations of forces, his great movements, his important defensive lines and possible surface targets, etc. A surface target becomes a “destruction zone” by the effective action of heavy weapons of destruction, for example, reactive artillery or tactical nuclear devices.

The operational or tactical reconnaissance tries to define the situation and the intentions of the enemy in the operations area of the great units, type division, corps or army. It determines the movements of the enemy in the border zone between forces, his formations and deployments, his defense lines and possible surface targets. This reconnaissance is carried out by aviation, drones, specific reconnaissance units and the reinforced reconnaissance armored battalion of the corps. In this respect, a total connection and complement must exist in the missions of aviation and ground reconnaissance and keeping in mind that its task is never of fighting.  

The reinforced reconnaissance battalion operates in a sector of up to 60 kilometers wide and 100 kilometers deep. Its advance over the parent unit must be at least 6 hours in order to utilize gathered information. On the basis of its reconnaissance order, battalion commander, keeping his companies always under control, can send up to 16 patrols of 3 vehicles to covering his sector, looking always for a gravitational center of the deployment. Having done this, he can send on the concentric center of the effort up to 2 patrols’ echelons, being relieved or being inserted, according to the used method. Finally, if the area to reconnoiter is occupied by the enemy, he can advance his companies as attack spears, under the screen of advance patrols. The battalion must not infiltrate very deeply inside the enemy deployment, if there exists a serious risk of being isolated.

Resultado de imagen de Panhard AML-245    PANHARD AML 245.

Not all Armies have given or given sufficient value to this last reconnaissance type, which depends on their military doctrine.

All the operational principles of reconnaissance could be summarized as follows: Always focus on the objective received from the command (its mission is to generate information, the combat will be done by others), seeking the maximum use of time and its means, getting and maintaining contact with the enemy and never losing the freedom of action. It will allow him to perform and to escape, without being caught by ever higher forces.

The tactical reconnaissance is also needed in the urban combats. Not always the tactical reconnaissance penetrates too much in the disputed or enemy area. The industrial or populated zones, full of «concealing relative heights» and staggered in depth, which offer protection from the enemy sights, even nearby, and covers against the light and heavy fire, «thicken» considerably the tactical maneuver of the contenders. Reducing this way, the depth of the fighting zone of the infantry. So, masses of the artillery, as batteries and medium groups of it, are deployed at very short distance to his enemy. In a artillery fighting zone then very next to the forward limit of the own defense position.

“On October 9, 1942 a patrol of Soviet reconnaissance entered behind the German lines in Stalingrad, seeking to detect the enemy movements in his rear. The 4 men sheltered in an auxiliary railroad coach, torn and left, placed in a railroad between the workshops of the Red October factory (where before were made metallic pieces and small weapon), at North-East of the city. And the disputed Mamaiev hill, towards the geographical center of Stalingrad, which was offering grand sights on most of the city.

Resultado de imagen de Engesa EE-9 Cascavel brasileño. ENGESA EE-9 CASCAVEL.

During almost the whole day they remained in that hiding place, communicating by radio to his lines the German activity. They had located several dozens of German mortars and howitzers, accompanied by the trucks which were moving his ammunition, by the rear roads to some emplacements placed in the suburbs of Stalingrad’s west. Also they located numerous mortars and pieces placed in a glen at the north of the Mamaiev hill, doing fire against the Soviet positions in the city.

On having got dark, the explorers broke a telephonic cable of the fixed enemy network of communications and hoped that the Germans were coming to repair it. Very soon they observed the light of a lantern and when the soldier came closer, killed him to shots. One of the Soviets disguised himself with his uniform and placed close to the route of the railroad, hoping that another German came closer the cut cable. Soon another lantern started approaching by the way. The soldier fell in the ambush and the explorers made it unconscious. On having recovered, he met 4 Soviets of foot together near him. Pulled down the soldier Willy Brandt gave his name, range and unit of belonging. Psychologically they had already gained the hand on him.

Resultado de imagen de drones guerra Vietnam   DRONE AQM-34 Ryan Firebee, IN VIETNAM.

Immediately afterwards, the German told to the explorers that 94th German infantry division had come to the factories zone from the south of the city, that 24th panzer division was going towards there and that the Fuehrer had ordered that Stalingrad should be totally taken by October, 15. This confirmed to them the reason of the extensive movements estimated by them in the German operational zone.

For the small reconnaissance patrol, to take with it after his lines, a prisoner already interrogated, was more a nuisance and a danger that a minimal success. And, in spite of the hardness, even the brutality, of the combats in the city, they neither killed, nor mutilated him. The Soviets reported to Brandt that had revealed military secrets, took him to the railroad line and indicated the direction that he had to continue to reach his comrades and left him free”.

But, what is this of speaking about operational reconnaissance in the age of the electronics, the robotics and the computer science?

Almost 50 years ago, the North Americans had developed an arsenal of electronic devices, directed to the vigilance (surveillance) of his enemies in Vietnam. Already they had reconnaissance drones to monitor «from above» their guerrilla slippery enemy. That transmitted his images by television to the planes of detection and transmission, placed at dozens of km from the observed zone.

Resultado de imagen de sensor ADSID   ADSID SENSORS .

The principal sensor used in the remote vigilance was the ADSID (Air Delivered Seismic Intruder Device). It was thrown principally from the F-4 Phantom, following guidelines of navigation by radar, in order to cover adequately the observing zone, as a traffic route of men and vehicles, a parking or store. The device measured 91 cm. of length and 15 cm. of diameter. And on having fallen down was remaining almost buried, opening then a transmitting aerial of 120 cm. height, camouflaged as if it was a defoliated bush. His battery allowed it to issue during a month and half.

With these sophisticated artifices they were trying to observe the traffic of goods and men by the Ho Chi Minh Route, the route of supplies of the Popular Army of North Vietnam and the Vietcong in South Vietnam. It was a highly branched out and protected route that, departing from North Vietnam penetrated in Laos and crossed it. And then, detached diverse routes towards the different communist operations zones in South Vietnam.

The program «White Igloo» destined 1,7 thousands of million dollars between 1966 and 1971, for these tasks of compilation of information with the ADSID. With the information gathered from the traffic in the routes, the Americans were deciding the interdiction bombardment actions, using his different air devices, including the invisible and inaudible (with his cruise height) B-52 strategic bombardiers. At the beginning of 1971, the information of the aerial photos after the bombardments, taken by planes that were flying after the assault formations, allowed the analysts to suppose that the «war of trucks» was causing a very severe effort to the industrial capacity of the suppliers of North Vietnam (the USSR and China).

Resultado de imagen de Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System  A BOEING OF THE JSTARS SYSTEM.

But, if it was true that were destroying so many trucks and equipment, how was possible that the communists were keeping the tactical initiative in South Vietnam? On the other hand, where were the tens of thousands of remains of trucks that literally had to cover many of the ways and parks of the Route? Who were bothering to remove them? The response was given soon by the American junior officers: they were ate by a monster called the «Great Laotian Truck Eater»; a horrible rotten that was getting up towards the dawn and was devouring the vehicles destroyed by the aviation during the night, after the photography for «wreck count». Because the Americans are very scrupulous with the statistics and consider the lie an almost inexcusable social sin for his civil servants.

Up to today, almost 50 years later, the electronics, the robotics and the computer science have continued improving. But it does not seem that they are useful in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, to detect a “donkey bomb”; to avoid that group of cruel fanatics without God («as Allah does the Good, make you also the Good and do not promote the corruption (the “evil», the Noble Koran orders them), destroys great part of one of the principal mosques sanctuaries of the chiism in Samarra; to know if in an Iraqi or Syrian house are terrorists or only a terrified Arabic family, before demolishing her with heavy fire from a distance and extremely, according to his military operational doctrine.

In addition, during enough time still the air and spatial American means, as spy satellites, drones or not crewed planes and planes of the system Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), will have serious limitations for the detection and check of small ground, even regular, forces. In the areas of difficult transitability and with possibilities of concealment, as mountains, jungles and forests, marshes and urbanized zones (industrial, of logistics, and of housings). Those not only offer concealment, but also coverings from the fire up to the near combat distances.

The Americans do not use the tactical reconnaissance, which demands some tactical characteristics of semi independent elite forces and a specific moral courage. And that is one of the most difficult tasks of the infantry. They use the combat reconnaissance and call her, expressively, reconnaissance.

(TO BE CONTINUED).

The Will of Defense of a Society. 2nd Part.

(FINAL)

And the Strategy, the Operational Strategy and the Tactics, as Levels of its Military Actuation.

 

The Levels of Military Actuation.

The first level of activity in the defense of a society is called national strategy or, also, in a some antiquated form, great strategy. In it are included the economic and diplomatic resources of the State. As part of the resources of a nation to get his great strategics aims in a war.

Resultado de imagen de montesquieu  THE BARON OF MONTESQUIEU.

 

Military Strategy, or simply Strategy, in a great second level of activity, refers to the definition of the larger aims of a war, of an operations theater or of a campaign, including the distribution of the generally scanty military resources used to fulfill them.

Tactics refers to the ideal execution of the combats with an enemy, who opposes with armaments, to the achievement of our strategic aims.

Between strategy and tactics exists an essentially practical space of prominent activity, called the operational level or operational strategy. Its mission is to optimize tactics and the means available in a campaign and in the theater of operations. As such, it defines and conceptualizes the battles, marches, etc., both the military operations and its correct succession, according to those decisive aims. It provides the tactics and the decision, a transcendence far beyond of the pursuit and the tactical exploitation of success. That is to say, operational strategy employs tactics as an essential instrument, combining them to achieve the ultimate objectives to which they are orientated and dedicated to achieving, forming then part of its strategic nature.

 

Thus, the operational strategy defines its own aims in the theater or in the campaign of action, which are the incapacity and disorganization of the enemy by exploiting his strategic and operational vulnerabilities. The first is orientated to reducing the enemy’s combat capacity, seeking to functionally or positionaly disable it, while protecting own’s combat capacity. The second is get by occupying or destroying the enemy’s critical vulnerabilities in the operations zone.

Resultado de imagen de refinería de petróleo OIL REFINERY: SYMBOL OF THE ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF A MODERN SOCIETY.

 

The critics vulnerabilities of the enemy are those whose occupation or destruction produces his serious disorganization and/or the loss of his will of defense. They are those elements, characteristics, possessions that give sense to the fight that he maintains. Its loss instills inevitably in the enemy a sensation of hopelessness and a sense of uselessness in continuing the fight at those moments, except for accumulating more losses.

The critics vulnerabilities are different in each one of the levels of military action, although the effects produced in the superior levels are transmitted to the inferior ones.

A strategic critical vulnerability, handled capably by the Spaniards in century XVI during the conquest of America, was the capture of the great chief or emperor of the indigenous confederations of the great invaded countries (Moctezuma in Mexico, Atahualpa in Peru). But, once turned hostage, the symbolic representation of a leader of this type plummeted, because the social vitality of the community which he directed, demands his renovation, as if he had died.

In II World War, the occupation of the capital and the fall of the government were strategic critics vulnerabilities, to which was acceded through an operational strategy of mobile warfare: spring campaign of 1,940 in the Western Front. The same tried Hitler in 1941 in relation with Moscow in the East front. Probably in that total war, almost of extermination, its fall had not the political importance that was attributed to it. But Moscow constituted a great hub, a railway communications center vital for all the U.R.S.S. at the west of the Urales and, in this sense, it had been a critical operational vulnerability.

To achieve these strategic intermediate aims, the operational level has some specific operational means that are the intelligence, the imbalance and the incapacity of the enemy, the time or speed of the operations and combats, the logistic organization and his physical support or line of supplies and the correct sense of the own command.

It uses these means to drive and to use ideally (and without squandering) the tactical-operational means at his disposition.

Resultado de imagen de reuniones sindicales grandes  THE NATIONAL MORAL FLOURISHES IN ALL THE PLACES OF SOCIAL COEXISTENCE.

These are:

The ground transitability (in the whole geographical dimension of the nature of the areas, climate, station and hour of the day),

the combat capacity (military means made concrete in men, equipment, supports and combat vehicles) and the capacity of operational movement (transport of great and small tonnage, the supplies of all kinds and combustibles and the warehouses and accessible parks in the zone) owns available,

the freedom of action and the «favorable interfaces of action» with the enemy (that exist and that they can also be created always, by means of the extension or decrease of the «field of action» on that, as a tactical operational zoom, or by means of his change to another front sector or in the depth of the enemy zone). With these last 2 «systems» we can act always according to our criterion and interest and not simply react to the actions of the enemy.

This way, the mentioned «operational systems» realize the employment and the functioning of all the levels of the national defense. And they go from the conception and the great creation of aims, interests and available resources, received from the command and the nation, up to its practical final accomplishment. Involving in this also the necessary and the inevitable and imposed by the enemy, tactical employments of the military means, as stages for the ideal achievement of those commended aims.

THE END.

IN PURSUIT OF THE MILITARY EXCELENCE.

THE INCOMPLETE AND SLANTED THEORY OF SHIMON NAVEH

The author realizes a methodical and deep critique of the different fighting forms in each of the historical epochs.

It is specially hard and mordant with the form of fight of the Germans during the World War II. His aim is to degrade and minimize it, to reduce it importance and validity in the history of the ground operations. Depriving this way the evolution of the American theory on the those operations, of any intellectual influence or debt with the doctrine of the German war.

The one that the author considers to be more opportunist and tactics, that complete and scientific. And he thinks that it was favored in its results by the lacks and the mistakes of its enemies. It is possible that an academic analysis of the form of German fight, approaches to give this verdict.

But, the evidence is the touchstone of the reality without appearances. And the case is that the Germans triumphed widely and extensively with that one, during the first stage of the World War II in Europe: 1939 1942. During which, his enemies could learn of the tactics, technologies and the German operational strategy. Since it extended too much in the time, on having multiplied the theatres of the war.

Imagen relacionada

And that, in the last phase of the war: 1943-1945, the Germans were exceeded, overwhelmed and, finally, defeated. To what contributed the qualitative and quantitative differences in the logistic flows, which supported both armed rivals; the enormous bleeding of the German commands and cadres, which turned out to be irrecoverable and reduced the qualities of his units; and the quantitative demography of the Allies.

Naveh grants wide quality and esteem to the military doctrine of the Soviets. That he considers to be scientific, because it was following a linear process of arguments, logic and results (that for a long time, were only longed for or foreseen). And that was adapting and guiding specifically and really, to an army of slightly educated masses and nourished by a resounding demography. That always had an insufficient logistic support, when it was not precarious. The mechanization of the infantry to collaborate with the tanks, was always a longing and a hope, more than an average real capacity.

Resultado de imagen de germany military power ww2

At the first times after the Bolshevik revolution, even directed by the young theorist of the deep maneuver, general Mikhail Tujachevski, the Russian armies remembered «slow and exhausting hordes» in their marches. That were living for the sustenance from the own or strangly territory where they were advancing. The men more relatively educated, always scanty, were enlisted in the technical weapons: artillery, engineers, aviation. Or in the most effective and necessary branches for the penetration and the exploitation of the enemy operational rear: tanks, Guard infantry.

Finally, Shimon Naveh concentrates his efforts, summary and praises in the long process of development of the American AirLand Battle doctrine and his following updates. Whose kindness and efficiency got reality in the air and ground offensive against the Iraqi regime in the War of the Gulf of 1991, looking for the liberation of Kuwait from the power of Saddam Hussein. War that was the touchstone of that doctrine supposedly culminada.

Initiated the ground offensive, the American forces and his allies rapidity faced to practically all the Iraqi forces that were occupying and defending Kuwait. From the Persian Gulf operated the naval forces, that threatening with an amphibious disembarkation on the narrow coasts of the emirate. From the south, the American marines took charge in fixing the Iraqi forces of the south flank of the defense. Confirming this way, for the Iraqis, that the assault front of the allies would be the south and east.

Resultado de imagen de soviet polish war THE SOVIET POLISH WAR OF 1920.

But, at the south of Iraq / Kuwait, the bulk of the Allies mechanized forces penetrated in whirlwind along the western front of the Iraqi deployment, blind and static. Immediately afterwards to be divided this allied deployment in several advance spears, over all the Iraqi units of this flank.

The campaign was a great atrition operation: of the strongest against the strong, for the major technological means and capacities of the Allies. Where a simultaneous assault was looked, to the Soviet style, to all the steps of the enemy order of battle and in the depth of his defensive rigid deployment. In the south of this one there existed armored or motorized Iraqi divisions, ready to counter-attack any allied penetration. Towards the center and north, there was the thickness of the Republican Guard, ready to counter-attack any operational Allied action.

Where a simultaneous attack was looked for, of the Soviet style, to all the levels of the enemy order of battle and in the depth of his defensive rigid deployment. In the south of this existed armored or motorized Iraqi divisions, ready to counter-attack any Allied penetration. Towards the center and north, was the bulk of the Republican Guard, ready to counter-attack any Allied operational action.

The concentrations, maneuvers and actions neither were searching, nor had, a gravity center of the efforts. That was successively defined and applied as the campaign was developing. But, using the already mentioned advantages, the allied forces were seeking to fix and crush the enemy units at their range, by a direct and almost joint form. Creating really this way, a battle of encircle and annihilation, of the family of Cannas and Tannenberg, where the liquidation of the siege was done by parts and was uniformly accelerated in the time.

Resultado de imagen de soviet polish war SWEEPING THE RUSSIAN HORDES.

The Iraqi divisions at the east were submitted to the central and direct control of Saddam Hussein and his Central Staff. That depriving them of initiative, flexibility and freedom of action. If not, some Allies’s corps or divisions could have been put in difficulties by the action of some great Iraqi unit. After the beginning of the ground attack and having the Allies the air supremacy in the campaign, the Iraqis were deprived of the operational exploration. So, the surrounding maneuver of the Allies by the east and towards their rearward, was concealed to them.

 

 

The operational Strategy in the Irregular War.

Naveh, nevertheless, does not approach, far from it penetrates and analyzes, a type of war that already existed from a lot of time ago. Before the genesis and ripeness of the American operational strategy. And that is the guerrilla warfare, word taken from the Spanish by all the languages. The one that, pompously, the Anglo-Saxons called war of IVth generation. Though it is almost as ancient as the human conflict. The modern technological armies find difficulties to face this form of fight. Using the means, the doctrine and his regulations, the order of battle and the trainings with which they are provided.

The guerrilla war is synonymous of long and deeply rooted conflict in the civil society, where it appears and develops. It is of low military intensity, except in its last stage (if she reaches it) and of great ideological politicization and polarization of the rivals. These characteristics do that inevitably the civilians are involved in her and that the military conflict is arbitrary, hard and cruel. There face positions and antagonistic interests, which, in the use of the violence, derive towards her limits and that of the suffering of whom involve her.

The author might speak about the application of the operational strategy in the guerrilla warfare. Or used in the direction and the operations of the elite units (marines, rangers, SEALs, etc.), that realize counterinsurgency missions. Here, the gravit centers of the efforts, globally coordinated, include the economic, military, political and social areas. And will exist in these fields and will be applied in a harmonic, joint and coordinated way. Working for a common and convergent effort, using different combinations of means in the different cases that appear.

A central counterinsurgency command will exist, that must bring together and direct the efforts, means and actions. In agreement with the specialization of the means that act and the actions and the aims that are looked for in each of the mentioned levels or fields of action. A characteristic of the acts and their effects is that they must be convergent. Looking for the multiplication and increase of these and the synergy of the first ones. This way, in any action, from a level of forces, budget or looked for results, will act the Counterinsurgency Command.

As examples, in the military area will be gravity centers the semipermanent bases, the communications between the bands and with the countrymen, including the logistics, and the movements of the rebels groups. The static defense will be kept in the centers and means necessary for the effort of war. Others will have to defend by a system of garrisons for the defense of the territory. That will be supported by a military system of mobile patrols and of reconnaissance and of ground attack aviation. The special units will realize deep incursions of attack, exploration and harassment in the areas in dispute with the guerrillas or in power of these.

The Will of Defense of a Society.

And the Strategy, the Operational Strategy and the Tactics, as Levels of its Military Actuation

The Ideology or Concept and its Range.

The “will of defense” of a nation is its capacity to cause, create, develop and maintain defense forces. The strength of the defense forces, in turn, rely on the necessary support of the economy of the country and the diplomacy of the state. The will of defense is an expression of the will of being and the vital capacity, even biological, of a society. This concept overcomes and perfects the so called hybrid war or of V generation. That implies and supposes the employment of all his «orthodox and heterodox means of intervention» by the social belligerent group.

Resultado de imagen de GUERRA V generación  IMPRECISE ALLEGORY OF THE FIFTH GENERATION WAR.

 

As the term implies, will of defense is healthy, normal and sufficient when defense forces and the strength of the country’s economy and the quality of state leadership and diplomacy are proportional and adapted to the political objectives of society. These must also be adequate to the possible threats that the country may have to oppose, both within and out the country, within its geopolitical region or other sources of threat. This capacity and its performance in different situations stems from a correct “national moral”.

The will of defense is shaped normally in the Armed Forces, in its capacity of specific instruments of the defense function. The resources of the Armed Forces include the human resources, psychological and intellectual resources and material resources. The basis for the will of defense, the source from which these resources flow is the society itself.

At the level of human resources, troops must have suitable training, the combat readiness and a certain esprit de corps. Human resources are shaped by doctrine, military direction and military moral. So, they can carry out the military operations withstanding the effort and the wear of them, while maintaining their conviction in the missions to which they are assigned.

Resultado de imagen de fuerzas armadas

Materials resources must support the military theory of the Armed Forces and have the necessary technological sophistication to serve the military’s objectives. They include the weapon systems and all the military hardware. All of these resources flow from a society that provides, maintains and nourishes them.

Which is operational about this natural phenomenon of the society’s capacity of defense?

In a modern society, the chain of transmission of the popular will to the Armed Forces, passes through a series of intermediate sociological gears of authorities and institutions. In them, crystallize and fulfill the popular will, albeit with all the shades, errors and deviations, derived from the degree of imperfection of society’s institutional system and of some authorities.

Resultado de imagen de misiles nucleares CHINESE INTERCONTINENTAL DF-41 MISSILES.

 

This implies that a direct military attack on the civil populace, does not debilitate the will of defense already shaped within its Armed Forces. So, military action is better focused on undermining the will of defense of the enemy armies, not on the society from which it springs.

To do this, the immediate goal would be the enemy’s Armed Forces, followed by the political system of the enemy’s country including its political objectives, plans, and alliances, as well as its military and auxiliary industries. Only finally would the focus of attack or pressure be on civilians of the enemy country.

The civil population, which is not intrinsically organized but is dominated by the ideological and institutional apparatus of the state, is capable of absorbing tremendous military blows. Examples of this are the bombing raids that Germany and North Vietnam endured for years. Ultimately, only the invasion of Germany forced its surrender. There is also the case of Iraq which was submitted to a kind of military siege in which its people were impoverished. Still, the Iraqi regime was even stronger than at the end of the allied invasion in the winter of l991, having suppressed internal opposition from Shiites and Kurds and having attracted the support or admiration of its resistance in the Arab world. Despite the first war against Iraq and the following siege, Iraqi’s did not rise against their political institutions and the content and expression of Iraq’s national will of defense was not altered. In the most radical case of a nuclear war, great civilian losses would occur initially, yet if the Armed Forces remained relatively intact due to defensive deployment and protection measures, it could prolong the defense of its country and even win.

This brings us to time as the environment in which the will of defense is expressed, and whose “effective factor” is “national moral”.

In effect, the will of defense is constructed in the time. And to destroy it requires actions within time. Those engaged in insurrection come to understand this point well. That a prolonged war directed at the source of the will of defense, the country’s people, will in effect attack the country’s national moral.

The National Moral, source of the Will of Defense.

The “national moral” is the collective conviction of how best to live by following historically-proven trends of peace, progress, own satisfaction, service and justice. This certainty is assumed by a society as its own vision, or conception of its destiny.

When individuals or groups do not subscribe this vision, or when they pervert it, the quality of national moral can deteriorates and often produces messianism. But, without illusion and enthusiasm, societies cannot achieve or create beneficial enterprises. Enthusiasm is a force of spirit, which conquers moral and ideological entropy (that is inevitably generated in societies), enlightened by a «reasonable illusion«.

Resultado de imagen de lideres mundiales THE DOCTRINE OF XI JINPING «illuminating» Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. IT WAS INCLUDED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY. ONLY MAO AND DENG XIAOPING DESERVED SUCH AN HONOR.

 

When leaders also are in tune with the right social trend, and with the wishes of their people, a moral community is established between leaders and their people, that harmonizes and promotes national and social feelings. This process is the origin and creator of the national moral of societies and is at a different qualitative level than that of purely biased, ethnically-based or group-based interests.

There is an ideological creation from the people and to the people, which reason is that it most be in favor the people. Still, this process remains subject to deviations and historical aberrations.

The process of creating the national moral are positive when leaders act collectively with honesty and inspire their people to follow «correct ways» of living, within all the possible ways of living available to them. This implies and demands a certain ideological control on the part of the state’s leadership, which is one of its main functions. Abuses of this responsibility are best represented by Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Mr. Goebbels; the political deputies and the party structure for the proletarian dictatorship with Stalin, etc.

Resultado de imagen de winston churchill

The natural organs for forming and transmitting the “national moral” are far removed from official propaganda offices. The reason is that the natural organs that generate national moral are found in the nuclei of society’s collective action and in its natural and institutional leaders. That is to say, the spaces in which national moral is created are homes, schools, churches, political parties, unions, working centers, and associations in general, etc.

After the battle of England, Churchill said that the future generations would say that «that one was our more glorious hour». This was possible thanks to an unbreakable social discipline, which was not ensuing from the study of manuals of civic education, but of the follow-up of a model spread by infinity of personal testimonies. The diffusion of the moral model of the citizen owed in a great extent to the educational labor of the Anglican Church.

The own Montesquieu admitted that the republican virtues only existed in the tales of the antiquity. This way, they were attractive to a leader minority, but his adoption by the citizens could not be done by legal or constitutional mandate. The moral theoretically proposed values, were seen as something artificial and remote. Without real connection with a practical and known moral code, highlighted with alive examples that could be follow.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

 

The modern Hybrid Warfare. 3rd. Part.

(THE END)

The Multifunctional, Total or Multisubject Wars.

In general, the attacks are realized to the software of a system, looking for a «weakness» of this one. And using the malicious codes, the back entrances, etc. A penetration or attack to the software is prevented in general with an antivirus adapted to the received virus. To attack the hardware is necessary to act on the «physical component» of the computer. And his detection, with the nowadays existing miniaturization, turns out to be very improbable and long in the time, until the devastation is detected. The best way of acceding to the hardware is realizing the intrusion in the factories of components and of assemblies. But these are protected by control measures of components and external equipment, based on the nationality and the producer of them.

The cyberattacks go to cybernetic networks of the society, both public and private, to the communications and means of control of equipment and networks. Becoming concrete definite in the facilities of different out-standing or strategic sectors of a country or alliance; like, industrial centers, military communications, administrative public negotiations, social opened networks, energy distributors, intranets of banks and economic means. And they seek to paralyze or to disturb the functioning of them or to distribute in them more or less opened tendentious information, to alter or to direct the public or particular general opinion in favor of the interests not always evident of the attackers.

Resultado de imagen de ataques ciberneticos mas famosos

The cyberattact is a «total attack» of swarm type; that is, of multiple and simultaneous or sequential character. It is directed on the economic, administrative, civil and military structures, which hold and allow that a «social group» should work. It is a «form of fight» in the cybernetic area. Where «one» seeks «to occupy» tactical or strategic «advantageous positions«. And «to damage» the enemy, preventing him from keep his pace, his «habitual tempo» of functioning and stealing and depriving him sometimes of the costly goods of research and development created by him. And that were allowing him to keep a competitive advantage in national «intervention means» in the industrial, economic and military fields. A branch of the cyberattack is the industrial espionage.

With them is achieved to seriously concern and debilitate the diplomatic, economic, military and civil sectors of a society. In the civilian is the original humus, the social essence, as creator of the «national morale» and the «will of defense» of the social group. Being those sectors the «means of intervention» with which a State counts for his global, holistic defense, against the aggression and external and internal dangers.

It is known the supposedly American attack using an advanced virus against the software of the Iranian centrifugal machines. That were operating to separate the isotopes of the Uranium 235 and Uranium 239 (not fissionable), using his different “molecular mass”. Seeking to obtain U235 enough pure to create «self fissionable critical masses«, the explosive of the atomic bombs, for his supposed nuclear devices. As the % of purity between an industrial use, to generate electricity, for example, and the great purity that needs a «critical mass», both «activities of successive enrichment» are perfectly recognizable by the foreign intelligence. In May, 2010 it was detected by the Iranians a malicious virus, called Stuxnet, in the of Nataz’s nuclear station. And that gave to a thousand of them the «order» of self-destructing. But, already in January of this year, the inspectors of the Atomic International Energy Agency (the AIEA) and the Iranian technical personnel had detected that many centrifugal machines were working slowly or badly and without a certain motive.

Resultado de imagen de ataques ciberneticos mas famosos

China takes a privileged singular position as a «great universal factory» in the global economy. And the same sells cheap products of immediate consumption on a large scale, that compete principally in price, which makes already products of high added value with the most modern technologies. This allowed him to lead one of the most significant and consistent cases of cyberattacks on a large scale against a country or coalition. The history was published by Bloomberg.

The agents of a unit of espionage and cybernetic war of the Chinese Popular Army managed to place some malicious «components» in the motherboards of IT equipment of the Supermike company, of San Jose, California. Who buys to Chinese factories, which have, in turn, subcontracts and suppliers of components in China. This way, the IT equipment with this «Trojan horse» allowed the cybernetic Chinese spies to accede for 3 years to industrial and governmental secrets of the EE. UU.

The anomalies emerged in 2015, when Elementary Technologies, who was designing software to compress files, reported of them in the baseplates of his cybernetic servants. Around 30 technological companies existed, between them Amazon and Apple, and diverse agencies of American intelligence, «invaded» in the Chinese attack. It was verified that the cybernetic servants of Elementary were mounted by Supermike, which is the major world producer of cybernetic servants.

It was found that some plates of the cybernetic servants had installed a «perfected component» that did not appear in his design and that it was not a chip. This multifunctional «foreign corps» would have been placed in 4 factories of China that mount the cybernetic servants of Supermike.

Resultado de imagen de ataque chino al hardware THE SUPPOSED CHINESE COMPONENT INTRODUCED IN THE HARDWARE.

The physical interventions in the hardware are more difficult, because all customers theoretically verify the equipment that they make or buy. Attack to the other people’s hardware foreign are doing usually during his traffic from the manufacturer to the client. That is the method that the American agencies use. But this malicious and comfortable manipulation of the Chinese spies can be effected because China is the great manufacturer (with license or without her) of hardware (computers, mobiles). And the directors and controls of his factories collaborate of well or badly degree with the «requests of the authorities», in a wide sense.

And, finally, some days ago was important the recidivist case, still not close, of the Chinese giant of the telecommunications Hua Wei. This way, the agencies of intelligence of the U.S.A- has warned that must not be used the products and services of Huawei and ZTE. Accusing that the terminals of these brands might be working as «cybernetic concealed agents«, spying for the Chinese government. Also, the Pentagon has prohibited to his personnel to introduce in the military bases the products of these brands.

China, as a great power example, of realizing his own and adapted «combinations» of means of intervention in his different stages.

Imagen relacionada CHINA’S ASPIRATIONS…

One first Chinese national foreign objective is to promote the multipolarity in the world structure of the great powers and his allies. Looking that does not exist a world hegemonic power, like the USA, that hinders him in the extension of his influence and power from his «nodal center«.

For it, he will create alliances and will establish agreements with others countries in detriment or in substitution of that hegemonic power. And he will be a «obstructionist intransigent actor» in all the actions that that power promotes unilaterally in the international forums (UNO, Atomic International Energy Agency). This way, the actions of the western nations in the Syrian conflict were frustrated and limited by the systematic veto of China to his approval in the Security Council. Though the Chinese communists consider to be out of the fight for the direct influence in the Moslem Middle East. And, the Chinese decision to renew his relations with the Sub-Saharan Africa, it was partly a strategic corollary of the «war to the terror» of the USA and the NATO in Middle East, as supplier region of crude oil and gas to the whole world.

Resultado de imagen de china poder político militar A CHINESE NAVAL GROUP OF STRATEGIC PROJECTION SAILS IN THE CHINA’S SOUTH SEA, AFTER CROSS  THE TAIWAN’S STRAIT.

China is for Russia and Russia is for China a partner, competitor and rival, if it is worth this polyvalent definition, which does that none of the expressions is in fullness. Both are «emergent powers«, according to the new nomenclature, determined in growing, in not get damage directly for the moment and in eroding the hegemonic power and his Europeans allied.

This way, the Chinese would not act directly, not by third interposed countries, in Syria, in the boiling cauldron of the Asia of the Southwest, scene of the global contest that sunnis and Shiites develop for the control and the supremacy in the Islam. But they will do it collaborating up to a point with the interests and the diplomatic propositions of the Russians. Reinforcing this way a political common position of counterweight and neutralization of the influence of West in the zone. And in exchange for a certain Russian reciprocity in favor of the Chinese interests, in other countries in which do not shock the national influences of both. Resultado de imagen de china Paracelso y Spratly. A CHINESE NAVAL BASE OF MISILES IN A SMALL ISLAND OF THE PARACELSO’S ARCHIPELAGO .

A strategic exterior Chinese preference goes towards the Indian subcontinent and to the nations of the first Asian circle of terrestrial and maritime nearness. The India is a radical rival at his measure, with whom it beared several frontier wars in the middle of the 20th century. The India has a political structure more advanced than China, the liberal participant democracy, still in spite of all his contradictions, ethnic, religious and social discrimination and lacks of all kinds. And it possesses a demographic strength that overcomes China’s people grow. Though lately the Chinese begin to realize the irrational of his «pseudo scientists» methods of the control of the birthrate. That the communist China applied in altars of a material rational progress. Progress which only enjoys in diverse degrees at the present, the members of the communist party and his families, the technical personnel who design, stimulate and develop it, the chiefs and officials of the armed forces and a minority of entrepreneurs and men of business. That have prospered at the shade of an institutional inveterate clientele of the mentioned public elites.

At the west of China, close with his Sinkiang’s immense region (Xinjiang), in the Oriental Turkestan, there is a rosary of former soviet socialist republics of 2 thousands Km long, that get until the Caspian Sea. They are, from east to west, Kazajistan, Kirguistan, Tadzikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. And there form these countries a monolithic set of several etnias, gathered in the names of them, but extended over several simultaneously, of Turkoman origin, of the central steppes of Asia. And agglutinated also by his belonging to the Islam sunní. All this form a multinational defensive and refractory shield to the expansive activity and to the significant presence of the Chinese in his internal matters or in his exterior trade, always with effects of political guardianship. These Turkoman Muslims are rather potentials allied of the Great Russia, with only she puts a bit of care and dedication to attract and to attend them.

Imagen relacionadaCHINA PROJECTS IN  AFRICA HER ECONOMY AND INFLUENCE. DISPLAYING HERSELF AS A COUNTRY THAT NEVER WAS COLONISLIST.

Another great strategic preference of Beijing is to extend his influence and increase the economic and diplomatic bows with the development nations, specially those who have «natural resources and primary cultures«, that are necessary for the manufacturing production, the supply and the general development of the nations. She has taken it even far beyond his geographical borders of political influence or strategical military.

With the interminable income of his exports and with the knowledge of the development in many areas, China does intelligent and massive strategic national «landings» in diverse countries of Africa and Spanish America. With them it establishes «binding alliances» of backing, advising and support. Trying to anchor firmly and creating allies or «friends» by all this world in development. 

Going firmly by the political, economic, diplomatic and military way of turning to what China really seeks to be:

one (or the) hegemonic power in the 21st century.

 The litigious, even violent, and, at least, very menacing, that China keeps with the countries of the East Asian, demonstrate how awkward, despotic and subjecting can be his presence in the short distances. When China thinks that com into play his national interests or his national pride. Whose loss in hands of the «foreign powers» until almost middle of last century, is one of the neurotic tics of the exterior politics of Beijing, from October 1, 1949.

In the Sea of the South of China, this power is expansive and hegemonic. And keeps litigious more or less important with the rest of the Asian countries bathed by this sea. That are The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

This sea has 3500 thousands Km2. And China thinks that it is his «Second Persian Gulf«, for the sub aquatic oil and natural gas deposits, existing and estimated. For comparison and perspective, the Mediterranean Sea only has 2500 thousands Km2 and his coasts bathe to 24 countries in three continents. None of which is hegemonic or expansive.

In order to settle itself in the «disputed archipelagos«, China follows a strategy of small and consolidated advances. Installing in them, in islands and rocky islands, military air or naval bases and extending the logistic capacities of some of them, substracting area to the sea. This has forced to some coastal countries to realize occupations in the islands of his regional seas. Destined, rather, to indicate his presence and sovereignty.

Two of the most showy cases are the archipelagos of Spratly and Paracelso.

The Spratly has hundreds of islands and rocky islands spread by more than 400 thousand Km2, near the Philippines. In relation to this archipelago, the Court of Arbitration of The Hague already pronounced that does not exist a legal base for the Chinese claims. And that the Spratly are not islands with economic projection. But, China, simply, does not recognize it.

The Paracelso’s archipelago, at 700 Km south of Hong Kong, is placed at the west of the southern Sea of China, in the entry of Tonkin’s gulf (Vietnam). There, China has crude oil platforms in dispute with the Vietnamese government. Near the Chinese facilities have been diverse incidents between the Vietnamese fishing boats and patrols and the Chinese ships of escort. That have dispersed them using water cannons.

Genesis and practice of the Russian strategy of deep incursion. 2nd Part.

Incursion to Tatsinskaya’s airport in the Christmas of 1942

The Deep Incursion to Tatsinskaya.

In the exploitation of the break success, Vatutin threw on December 18, the 24 Corps of Tanks (Badanov) to attack and occupy Tatsinskaya and the 25 Corps of Tanks (Pavlov), against Morozovskaya‘s airport. Behind them, advanced the 1st. Mechanized Corps of the Guard, following their moving directions, to support and stimulate it and to eliminate the resistances of the enemy units remains in his deep rear. Badanov had 5 thousand men, 300 trucks, 90 tanks T-34 and 55 light tanks T-70. These, for his characteristics of fire, armour, mobility and with 2 crew members for the multiple tasks, were not suitable companions of the first ones. The infantry brigade of the Corps had the task of the occupation the aims captured by the tanks.

Resultado de imagen de soviet infantry over tanks Soviet infantry tanks riders.

Resultado de imagen de nikolai vatutinLieutenant General Nikolai Vatutin, chief of the Southwest Front.

The orders were not right and both Corps should go on eliminating the enemy resistances in his advance sectors, distracting from his main goal. Badanov also received orders to facilitate the advance of the I Guard Army, on which he was depending and that followed him at distance, increasing the exploitation. The radio communications with Vatutin and the I Guard Army were insufficient and spasmodic, due to the increasing distance and the characteristics of his only transmitter RSB-F. That, for example, had in march 30 Km of range.

From the second day of march, the support to both mobile groups by the 17º Soviet Air Army was diminishing drastically. In a winter hard environment, with a poor road network, the armoured vehicles and the trucks of troops and supplies were advancing slow and dificultly. This did that the ground support planes of both rivals could attack, without risk, the enemy vehicles and was favoring the Germans.

Resultado de imagen de general Vasily Badanov Major General Vasily Badanov.

Both Corps of Tanks were advancing towards his aims with great effort from the drivers and deployed in brigades, forming 2 or 3 echelons of march. Seeking to save fuel and to keep controlled the almost 500 vehicles of a Corps. Only there was daylight between 7 and 15:30 hours. Though on the paper, Vatutin was waiting for an advance of 50 km per day and calculated 5 days of march to reach both aims, placed at 240-250 Km, the results were of scarcely 25 Km per day.

At 25 Km from Tatsinskaya and 30 Km from Morozovskaya the Bystraya river was traversing. The Germans placed to the south of this natural without reinforcing obstacle, several Kampfgruppen or Task Forces, created ad hoc to prevent the enemy advance and to exhaust it. Von Manstein knew this incursion and wanted to protect, by all means, the airports. This way, he withdrew 6ª Panzer Division from Hoth, to create a mobile reserve for the Group of Armies Don

Resultado de imagen de field marshal von manstein Fieldmarshall Erich von Manstein.

Against 24 Corps faced 4 small Kampfgruppen, which eroded it. The Gruppe Spang designated with the name of his command, faced in a difficult fight the 25 Corps of Tanks. Pavlov thought that it was a German small resistance and, forgetting his strategic aim and instead of flanking it cleanly, he attacked it. The Gruppe received the air support of a dozen of the dive bombers JU-87, that were returning quickly to his base to refuel, and that teared to pieces Pavlov’s unarmed tanks. The arrival of 1er. Mechanized Corps of the Guard allowed Pavlov to get out of the combat and to continue his march to Morozovskaya, though his Corps was exhausted in his combat capacity and with its fuel spoiled.

Pavlov came up to Uryupin, at 25 Km from Morozovskaya. But, the bombers placed in this airport submitted it to hard attacks, that reduced his combat capacity to 25 tanks with scantiest fuel. The Mechanized Corps, after a day of combat with the Gruppe Spang, was also very reduced and was not in conditions to support it. With which, were eliminated the possibilities of an assault to Morozovskaya.

Resultado de imagen de Kampfgruppe Spang 1942 Karl Spang, as German general.

One of the great disadvantages of these operations of deep incursion was also the absence of the logistic support to the operational units. This required them to advance, attack and occupy up to the exhaustion of his available resources. But, they did not have another option.

Tatsinskaya’s Defense.

The commaner of the airport was the lieutenant general Fiebig, commander of the VIII Air Corps of the Luftwaffe. On November, 30 he was nominated Chief of the Air Supply to Stalingrado. And he established his H.Q. in Tatsinskaya, which was occupied by the Germans on July, 21. Fiebig was a good organizer, so his appointment was justified, but he did not rise to the occasion, as tactical commander, neither in the defense, nor in the evacuation of the airport before the Soviet assault.

From the safety of Berlin and already failing the ground rescue, Goering ordered Fiebig that his men should resist in Tatsinskaya. And only will evacuate it when the Soviets already were firing in his runway. This did that Fiebig was late beyond the prudence in giving the evacuation order. And only the fogs, the enemy weariness, and the exiguous Soviet forces, 20 tanks and 55 infantrymen, who assaulted Tatsinskaya, allowed to evacuate the majority of the parked planes.

Resultado de imagen de general Martin Fiebig Luftwaffe Lieutenant General Martin Fiebig

The base force were 1800 men, without counted the crews and mechanics of the planes. They had, at the moment of the assault, 2 88 mm cannons and 4 cannons of rapid shot of 20 mm, since great part of the artillery was tranfered to the Kampgruppen entrusted to block the Soviet advances. The Germans did not organize any defense in Tatsinskaya. When the explorers of 24 Corps approached the airport in the night of 23, observed that the anti-aircraft positions were not occupied and that did not exist ground defenses.

The assault to Tatsinskaya.

Finally, at 8:30 of December 24, tanks of the 130 Brigade of tanks (Nestorov) assaulted Tatsinskaya’s airport from the east and some tanks of 54 Brigade of Tanks (in reserve) penetrated by the northwest at the end of the operation.

Until that evening, Badanov did not give for finished Tatsinskaya’s and his surroundings capture. Near 125 planes of the Luftwaffe escaped and came to other airports of the Axis. The Soviet mediocre gun fire and the impacts between planes at the takeoff destroyed 50 planes. But, the Lufwaffe already had lost 250 airplanes between November and December, 1942 during Stalingrado’s air supply, due to breakdowns, the weather and the enemy action. The Germans had 100 fallen, between dead and wounded, and 350 men were captured.

The 24 Corps still had 39 T-34 and 19 T-70. And each tank had less than 40 rounds for the principal weapon and its remaining fuel allowed it to cover 50 km. Badanov transmitted to Vatutin that he was assuming the defense of his positions.

Resultado de imagen de T-70 light tank T-70 Russian light tank.

Similar to what happened with the VI Army of the Wehrmatch, at 7:30 of the 26th, Badanov received a Vatutin’s message: «His Corps has been transformed into a unit of the Guard. You has granted Suvorov’s Order of 2º degree». But, the happiness never lasts very much in house of the poor man. The situation was indefensible and, four days later, Badanov broke, slipping, the functional, not physical siege. To which he was submitted by the different German units that were coming on the 24 Corps of Tanks of the Guard. At the end of the operation Small Saturn and by indication of Stalin, Badanov was nominated commander of the remains of the three Corps Mechanized and of Tanks that took part in this deep incursion. But, possessing each one less than 20 tanks, they were too weak to carry out a joint operational action.

THE END

Genesis and practice of the Russian strategy of deep operation.

Incursion to Tatsinskaya’s airport in the Christmas of 1942

Introduction.

After the invasion of the USSR by the 3 Groups of Armies of the Wehrmatch (North, C; Center, B; South, A) on June 22, 1941, remained clear the higher capacity and efficiency of these, opposite to the Soviet armies deployed in the border and in the strategic rear. The disorder was general in the Red Army, as evidence of his demoralization and lack of a military modern doctrine, after Stalin‘s purges of 1937. That was worried that the force and capacity of the Red Army, could turn it into a rival of the Party and of himself in the distribution of the State powers. In addition, the social characteristics of the Soviets were making them more inclined to the obedience, the resistance and the sobriety and less towards the originality, the assumption of responsibilities and the take of decisions of the commands and his men. Then, the Red Army only had some real capacity of fight in the artillery and in the almost inexahustible demography of the Sovíet country.

This prompt did that the strategists and planners of the Red Army realized that, if they wanted to survive, stabilize his nation and the army and begin to gain the war, they had to start gaining all the battles that were turning out to be strategic for this social military effort. This way, on one hand, they began to deepen and develop the operational and strategic defense, connecting her with the operational counter-offensive, establishing fortified in depth zones, areas and regions, and creating mobile reserves in the different steps of fight.

Resultado de imagen de ROTMISTROV Colonel General Pavel Romistrov, commander of the 5º Tank Army of the Guard.

For the great positive actions, of assault or counterattack and victory, of exploitation and consolidation, the high commands of the Stavka or Central High Staff of the Red Army, presided by Stalin, developed throughout several years the Tanks Armies. By 1944, in the order of battle of the Red Army existed up to six of the above mentioned strategic Armies. They were destined to operate independently in the operational (up to 80 Km in the depth) and, even, strategic rear (up to 200-250 Km) of the Wehrmatch and his allies.

His tasks were to attack, occupy, consolidate and defend some area or important city, which was not capable of offering an effective defense; to spread the destruction, the disorganization and the panic in his «zone of advance» in the enemy rear, using also the «tactical influence» that was generating on the enemy, at both flanks of it and in function to his distance to it, measure in time of arrival. Behind this great strategic unit, would advance the «mass of support» of the armies of the Soviet Front at which the Army of Tanks was subordinated. That would initiate his exploitation operations, after concluding the irruption and break of the defensive enemy front by the infantry or shock Armies of the Front or Soviet Group of Armies, due supported by the heavy fire, the engineers and the supporting tanks.

Resultado de imagen de task force baum Telegram of condolence of the General Assistant of the Secretary of the War to the family of one of the «missing persons» of the «Task Force Baum». 

This is theoretically easy and simple. But it is necessary to count for his accomplishment with the almost innumerable collective (small units, units and great units) and personnels actions, that are the source of mistakes, failures and diversions, in relation with the foreseen in the calculations and plans. It is necessary to have, to put it into practice, a military well trained organization, which guarantees the constant and sufficient flow of communications, updated intelligence and logistic. It is needed the appropriate, coordinated and convergent action of the units used in the complex and successive operations. It is necessary to count with the transitability characteristics of the areas of operations, influenced not only by his orography, but also by the network ways, the waterways that should cut more or less perpendicularly the ways, the climate, the seasons, the moments of the day. In March, 1945, the general George Patton arranged a deep incursion, not authorized by his superiors, using the Taskforce Baum (integrated by approximately 314 soldiers and 16 tanks) to 80 Km behind the German lines and at few days of the capitulation of the IIIrd Reich. His mission was to rescue a group of American prisoners, who were in Hammalburg. The result was disillusioning and the action, for painful, was not too much spread to know. The attackers were surrounded by the German forces and destroyed by his counterattacks. Only 11 % of the men returned to the lines of the famous Army III of the U.S. Army.

Antecedents and Introductions.

On November 23, 1942 at 2 p.m., the VI German Army, the most powerful great military unit of the Wehrmatch, got definitively surrounded in Stalingrad by several Soviet Fronts. The Operation Uranus was creating a strategic siege. And the contact of the VI Army and other units of the IIIrd Reich or of his allies, 267.000 soldiers of the Axis, with other units of this one by land, already did not exist. In Stalingrad, the Germans did not have the shuttle of ferries crossing the Volga, to supply the city and to re-equip and re-put the sieged mlitary units, as the Soviets had.

Resultado de imagen de friedrich von paulus Recent Marshal von Paulus surrenders his Staff in Stalingrad.

The nearest airports in hands of the Germans were those of Tatsinskaya and Morozovskaya, at west of Stalingrad. In them, the colonel general Wolfram von Richtofen, command of 4 ª Air Fleet of the Wehrmatch, placed rapidly a tasks group of transport, bombardiers and fighters, with the mission to move the military and material supplies to all the sieged ones. Von Paulus, command of the surrounded forces, was promised to deliver 500 Tm daily of supplies. But, the daily average delivered during the siege was 100 Tm. And only one day, the German aviation could deliver 500 Tm. And, in those moments, the rejection capacity of the besieged to the Soviet assaults, to break by parts the defensive zone or to reduce his area, was depending on the number and the quality of the supplies that were receiving by air.

Resultado de imagen de wolfram von richthofen  Colonel General of the Luftwaffe Wolfram von Richthofen.

On December 10, the IV Panzer Army of the colonel general Hoth initiated from Kotelnikorski, 100 Km at east of the edge of the siege, an attack to establish a ground link corridor with the defense zone of Stalingrad and to relieve the besieged. It was the operation Wintergewitter or Winter Storm. The VI Army would initiate the break of the Soviet ring, towards the helping forces, which was the most predictable direction and which did not possess the surprise factor, when these were at 30 Km of distance. The vanguard of the German forces corresponded to the reduced 57º Panzer Corps. In this operation the Soviets counter-attacked with mastery and continuously and the principal weapon of both sides were the tanks. Finally, on the 26th, this Panzer Corps was depleted and the Wintergewitter was stopping, at 46 Km from the Stalingrad’s siege.

But the Soviets, who had prepared themselves well for his winter offensive, were still keeping another disagreeable surprise to the Germans. In the Stavka, the colonel general Aleksander Vasilievsky, among other Soviet high commands, was thinking and controlling her, seeking to complete in it the German defeat in the south of Russia. Vasilievsky gave, as chief of the Central Staff, rationality and patience to the «interchanges of impressions» with Stalin.

Resultado de imagen de Aleksandr Vasilievsky  The Marshal of the USSR Aleksander Vasilievsky.

On December 16, lieutenant general Vatutin threw a strategic blow with his Front of the Southwest (the Operation Small Saturn) against the VIII Italian Army, deployed in the left flank of the Group of Armies of the Don (marshall von Manstein). In the breaking forces of the Italian front were the 1st. and 3er. Armies of the Guard, who moved forward three Corps of Tanks (one was the 25º, of the major general Pavlov) and a Mechanized Corps (bigger and more balanced in combined arms) and 9 infantry divisions. That already on the 17th had achieved diverse irruptions and breaks in the Italian front.

The crumbling of the Don’s front, at north of Stalingrad, opened several possibilities to the Soviets: a) To consolidate Stalingrad’s siege, being able to operate in the whole deep rear of the Axis, dismantling its defense capacity and pursuing the support units (logistics, aviation and artillery) and the remains and reserves of the Armies who were spreading out in her. b) To make move back the Group of Armies of the Don towards the Donetz, as a new sustainable line of his defensive front, forcing him to a rapid retreat. This forced the forces of von Manstein to shorten his lines, for, in the new front that they presented to the Soviets, to be able to have not only first line forces, but mobile armoured forces, to counter-attack the Soviet onslaughts. c) To force the Germans to keep in Rostov, near the river mouth of the Donetz, an opened corridor with his south rear, to avoid that the Group of Armies of the Caucasus (marshall von Kleist) could get cut off, as it happened with the VI Army. And could go out by it towards the new German rear at the west. d) To facilitate the final push of all the Soviet Fronts towards the Donetz and to consolidate this way all the strategic earnings obtained in his complex and extensive winter offensive of 1942.

The Intellectual Baggage of the Deep Insertions.

The theoretics of the Soviet deep operation (glubokaya operatsiya) in the period between 1928 and 1936 were the lieutenant general Triandafilov, the brigadier Isserson and the marshall Tujachevsky. This one established the Instructions for the Deep Battle (glubokiy boy) in 1935. That then incorporated into the Regulations of the Service of 1936, as military official doctrine, PU-36.

The preexisting concepts were based on the good results of the cavalry operations, singularly Cossak, on high fluid situations of fight and movement, on the operational enemy rear. And acting against small enemy detachments and the communication lines. But, the armies based on the employment of the fuel engine, to develop an operational or strategic penetration the enemy rear, and in the armored moving platforms for direct fire cannons (tanks) and trucks (infantry and artillery), had logistic needs (maintenance, rotation of crews in long marches, supplies) that were not even glimpsed by the ancient commands.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

The Tactical or Operational Military Success. Its Signs.

Introduction.

It is not a question of defining how to act, thing that already we try to do in other published articles or that they will be in a future. But that, perceiving in the operations development certain facts, guidelines or behaviors of the conflicting parts and of the objective conditions (of the ground, etc.), we will be able to diagnose a very probable forecast for the culmination of those operations.

This way, we will be able to trust in and to rest on these favorable forecasts. And to reinforce mental and physically our signs of the Tactical and Operational Military Success. To control better the fears, worries, assignments of the scanty forces, uncertainties, endless lacks, unexpected bad understanding, recoverable frustrations and the partial crises. Which will arise inevitably during the operations development.

The main Signs of the Tactical or Operational Military Success to look for:

The Signs of Tactical or Operational Success about Us:

The operational military plans will be simple, flexible and with capacities of alternative developments. They must be capable of adjusting to the unforeseen and the contingencies. And endlessly incorporating intelligence updates about the intentions and possibilities of the enemy and ground reconnaissance. This is specially important in maneuver operations.

There will exist an operational own initiative, that will allow us to develop our plans. Always using us the activity, even in the defense. And keeping endlessly the action freedom and given priority to its recovery, in case of its loss.

The own exploration and intelligence are fundamental, the more creative and risky is the operation to realizing. Reciprocally, the enemy exploration and his perceptions will be pushed back and/or be disturbed systematically. Will be included in this repulse and mixtify, the security of the units, false positions, advanced detachments and combat patrols, fogs and smokes, the combat for the wireless communications, etc.

The knowledge of the enemy and his actions will be always incomplete and imperfect. And will be extended with the evolution of the situation in relation to him. They will not be known temporarily, even positions, movements, combat readiness, deployments or fundamental units. But not those that affect us direct and tactically in our operation under way. On those we will place the gravity center of our exploration. That will be even “in force” against certain enemy hard objectives.

The own combat capacity for the propose operation will be sufficient and will be equipped, distributed and protected. Considering the friction and inevitable minor errors, derivatives of our own military activity in the hyperfunctional chaotic environment, and the necessary reserves. Our security will inexorably be kept during the operation and in the consolidation of occupied terrain. And specially defending, with combat detachments, the advance sectors of our “mobile groups” operating in the enemy operational rear.

Decisions on which tactical battle areas will be engaged, will consider: accessibility (whether they offer neutral or favorable transitability); vulnerability, whether one’s forces can apply sufficient combat capacity against an enemy, in an area that had not attracted much of his attention; transcendent, the action will produce the decision or will contribute decisively to her and the tactical result will have operational efficiency.

One example is the operational counterattack of the German Armies Group Don of Marshal Von Manstein. That was carried out between February and March of 1943 in the Donbass river basin and around the city of Kharkov. Let us remember the development of this counterattack, its tactical combats and their effect on the “sui generis” Tanks Army of General Lieutenant Popov (Group Popov), the Infantry Armies and both Tank Corps as the mobile reserve of the Southwest Front of General Vatutin and, apart and also, the 3rd Tanks Army of Lieutenant General Ribalko.

The logistics is an essential piece of the victory. When the armies are modern, mechanized and technical. And they are, this way, highly dependent on the fuels, the spares, the supplies of all kinds and on the rotation or reinstatement of units. It is supposed tactic and operationally that the means of all kinds are available and more or less nearby. To support the impulse, the fire and the operative efficiency of all the “units of action”, it is necessary to guarantee them a constant and sufficient flow of the mentioned means. Therefore, the commands must take the actions to defend the «physical support» of the logistic structure. Specially against assaults from the enemy depth or in sensitive and critical points or in the routes most far from our units. Constituted by all the “supplying routes”, from the units up to our operational rear. And that are still more important that the so called “retreat routes”. Though they could coincide in some sections. Among other things, because the modern forces must count with remaining isolated for a certain time. And keeping in this period their tasks, in agreement with the entrusted missions.

The Signs of our Tactical or Operational Military Success about the Enemy:

There will be a passiveness or operational delay in the enemy. Generally he will act with an intention that is not convergent with our own. And, at least, not harmful for our operation, especially in the first stages of the process. When she develops her impetus or push or movement quantity (combat capacity X average sustainable speed, in every stage). This sign of the tactical or operative success is a «pear in sweet», that not always will give itself so clearly, as in the following example.

It is worth to remember the development of the Blitzkrieg in the West and invasion of France by Germany in the spring of 1940. The main part of the French maneuver troops, their three more modern armies, and the British Expeditionary Force rushed toward Holland and Belgium to stop the German scythe-like advance. That was supposed directed at the interior of France and the rear of her Maginot line. The Allied High Commands, whose doctrine had not evolved, were thinking that in May 1940 Germany would repeat their “Schlieffen modified plan” of 1914 in their new invasion of France.

Resultado de imagen de INVASION francia 1940 THE OPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.

Resultado de imagen de INVASION francia 1940 ITS RESULT…

In agreement with the new plan of General Erich Von Manstein, really the “blow of scythe” was given by the Armies Group A of colonel general Von Rundstedt. Which was possessing as spear lance the Panzer Group of general Von Kleist. His five Panzer and five Motorized divisions, integrated in three Panzer Corps, were going to cross the Ardennes and to carry on a wide break in the French line around Sedan. Turning then rapidly towards the west and pressing finally on the flank and the rear of the Allied forces in Belgium. Which would find operationally isolated, with their line of communications, support of their logistics of supply, cut off.

The tactical enemy activity is inevitable. It will be permanent, harmful and even it will be unexpected and will partially affect us. But it will not be fundamental for our plans. Remember that we are looking for signs of our success, not those of the enemy. The best sign of maturity will be that it does not worry excessively to our tactical or operational commands. If this activity did not exist, it would be because the enemy was not there. To overcome and to get used to these tactical accessory crises and not be left to drag by them, harming our principal operation, is the touchstone of the serenity of the commands. Always we must bear in mind the possibility that the enemy appears tactically in «the moment and in the zone» more inconvenient and difficult for us. If it does it operatively it is that we have incurred a mistake of intelligence or of the valuation of the correlation of forces and of the enemy capacities or intentions.

Napoleon, without getting to exhaust the reserves, but without they were exceeding, attended to the different local tactical crises that appeared in Austerlitz’s battle. After the occupation of Pratzen’s heights by two infantry divisions of the Army Corp of marshal Soult. This sealed the destruction of the joint Russian Austrian army and his Austerlitz’s victory.

Resultado de imagen de Napoleon Austerlitz CREATED THE CONDITIONS FOR THE MILITARY DECISION: AUSTERLITZ.

Let’s see the process of development of the tactical containment of the Allied enemy. With the enemy forces concentration attacking the supposed tactical and operative (without protecting the line of retreat towards Vienna) Frenchmen deployment weakness. The grenadiers of Oudinot were sent from the Zurland hill to support the south flank, where the principal battle was getting away. Bernadotte advanced up to Blaswitz village, to cover the Soult’s north flank. The Murat’s cavalry reserve, in the Santon hill, the left flank (at north) of the French deployment, had to fight against Liechtenstein’s cavalry, to support the novices of Lannes’s Corp who were defending it. Kutusov managed to bring towards Pratzen part of the forces of his left wing (at south). And Soult, attacked by three sides, had to employ part of the general artillery reserve to contain the enemy with its wearing fire. Around 1 p. m. Constantine and the imperial Russian Guard counter-attacked the already tired Frenchmen in Pratzen. Their first line yielded. The cavalry of the French Imperial Guard, who had been advanced by Napoleon, supervised by marshal Béssiers and general Rapp, attacked the Russians and put them in escape. And Bernadotte, from Blauswitz, sent a division in support of the center of the punished French deployment.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

News on Modern Conflicts. Novedades en Conflictos Modernos.

Utilizamos esta Sección de Novedades para dar a conocer en avance los próximos artículos que irán apareciendo en las distintas «categorías» de temas de esta página, dedicada a los conflictos y crisis modernos.

 

THE WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN. An apocalyptic war?

Introduction.

We have before us, face to face, the two most dangerous and extraordinary rivals that exist on Earth. They are the Jews or Israelites and the Shiite Islamists.

What gives them similarity? Both have a strong religiosity, resistant to anything, which is part of their identity and the essence of their life.

LA GUERRA DE ISRAEL E IRÁN. ¿Una guerra apocalíptica?

Introducción.

Tenemos delante, frente a frente, a los dos rivales más peligrosos y extraordinarios que existen sobre la Tierra. Ellos son los judíos o israelitas y los islamistas Chiíes.

¿Qué les da semejanza a los dos? Ambos tienen una religiosidad recia, a prueba de cualquier cosa, que es parte de su identidad y la esencia de su vida.

ACTION INTERFACES as Zones of TACTICAL DEVELOPMENT against the Enemy.

The action interface is a spatial concept that defines the zone and space where we develop violent action against the enemy and his means, following tactical criteria adapted to the nature of our objectives. The effective action factor in the action interfaces is the combined arms or inter-arms system.

In a penetrating attack, for example, the surface of the interfaces is quantitatively limited and these are selected in the enemy’s depth, according to their critical points and those that hinder the advance of our forces, for example, observatories and anti-tank firing points. In defense, we quantitatively increase the potential interfaces in our depth and in a somewhat laminar way.

The interface is what makes tactical action and the destruction of the enemy possible, applying a pure, chosen, selective and favorable attrition. The absence of interfaces, on the contrary, gives a certain security to any force. With the presence of the enemy, even close by, being a threat.

Terrorismo, Guerrillas y Violencia

El Terrorismo es una compleja operación Política y Violenta de amplia Variedad de acciones. Sus acciones violentas deben ser deliberadas, Continuas o Sistemáticas y buscando Influenciar a una amplia audiencia (mucho mayor que los afectados Directamente por dichas acciones violentas) y generando miedo, hasta miedo insuperable, en dicha “población blanco u objetivo”. Para que realicen y tomen las actitudes y acciones que los terroristas buscan.

Así, una acción aislada o sin interés político no es terrorismo. Será vandalismo,odio vesánico, brote psicótico… pero no es, ni será técnica o jurídicamente terrorismo.

Terrorism, Guerrillas and Violence

Terrorism is a complex Political and Violent operation with a wide Variety of actions. Their violent actions must be deliberate, Continuous or Systematic and seeking to Influence a wide audience (much larger than those directly affected by the violent actions) and generating fear, even insurmountable fear, in the “target or target population.” So that they carry out and take the attitudes and actions that the terrorists seek.

Thus, an isolated action or one without political interest is not terrorism. It will be vandalism, mad hatred, a psychotic break… but it is not, nor will it be, technically or legally, terrorism.

Inteligencia militar y nacional, fallos y resultados.

Los servicios de inteligencia de los grandes países suelen acertar muchas veces en sus opiniones y pronósticos.

Los trabajos concretos de inteligencia a los que se dedican unos pocos agentes modernos, suelen terminar con un éxito parcial o total.

Los trabajos complejos con ramificaciones y desarrollos, que esconden un futuro estimable, pero, no seguro, fallan estrepitosamente. Por esta particularidad compleja y futurible. Y, porque la capacidad de observar y medir un parámetro del alma humana es algo inaprensible, dudoso e incómodo. Seguidamente veremos varios casos concretos.

Las razones para que se produzca la divergencia de aciertos entre los casos singulares y la proyección al futuro (solución prevista) de los asuntos complejos, trascendentes al tiempo, están en parte en la dificultad de su concepción, el riesgo que se corre en aventurar y en la exposición no contrastada a los mandos. Evidentemente, existe aquí una dialéctica entre el ocultamiento realizado y el proceso cognitivo e intuitivo de su imaginación, desarrollo y proyección (solución estimada).

Military and National Intelligence, failures and results.

The intelligence services of large countries are often correct in their opinions and forecasts.

The specific intelligence tasks to which a few modern agents are dedicated usually end with partial or total success.

Complex works with ramifications and developments, which hide an estimable but not certain future, fail miserably. Because of this complex and future peculiarity. And, because the ability to observe and measure a parameter of the human soul is something elusive, doubtful and uncomfortable. Next we will see several specific cases.

The reasons for the divergence of successes between singular cases and the projection into the future (foreseen solution) of complex issues, transcending time, are partly in the difficulty of their conception, in the risk that is run in venturing and in the non contrasted exposure to the commands. Obviously, there is a dialectic here between the concealment carried out and the cognitive and intuitive process of its imagination, development and projection (estimated solution).

HAMAS ATACA A ISRAEL EN 2023.

Los distintos atacantes llevaron a cabo un “ataque de enjambre” sobre posiciones en el centro y sur de Israel. Varios, de los principios o normas de las fuerzas militares en un ataque convencional fueron desatendidos. Por ejemplo, la unidad del objetivo y la unidad del mando de las fuerzas y el mantenimiento de una estructura, de un despliegue para todas las fuerzas atacantes. Aquí, cada pequeña “unidad de acción” islamista tenía su propio jefe y su particular objetivo. Y, es el conjunto de acciones del “enjambre atacante” el que define la estrategia y el complejo objetivo real de Hamas.

LA GUERRA DE MANIOBRAS. EL CONCEPTO DE LA BATALLA AÉREO TERRESTRE MODERNA. UNA INTERPRETACIÓN DEL MARISCAL ERICH VON MANSTEIN.
 Un ejemplo poco conocido de la trascendencia omnipresente de la logística y de su línea de comunicación (más o menos ramificada) en las operaciones y muy importante por sus resultados finales, es la operación denominada DONBASS (la gran zona operativa) por los soviéticos, desarrollada entre el 29 de enero y mediados de marzo de 1943, al sudoeste del río Donetz. Ella forma parte de lo que los alemanes llamaron la batalla del DONETZ: el último éxito estratégico de Von Manstein, que fue malogrado por Hitler en Kursk.
 
 
THE MANEUVER WARFARE. THE CONCEPT OF THE MODERN AIRLAND BATTLE. AN INTERPRETATION BY FIELDMARSCHAL ERICH VON MANSTEIN.
A little known example illustrates the omnipresent transcendence of logistics and the line of communication (more or less branched out) in operations and their final results. Between January 29 and mid-March 1943, the Soviets developed an operation called Donbass at the southwest of the Donetz. This operation forms part of what the Germans called the battle of the Donetz. And was Marschal von Manstein’s last strategic success. Which wasted by Hitler in Kursk.

Valery Gerasimov, comandante militar ruso en Ucrania.

Con todas las derrotas acumuladas padecidas por el Ejército de la Federación rusa en su “operación militar especial” en Ucrania desde el 24 de febrero de 2022 hasta ahora, Vladimiro Putin no descansa, se irrita y no tiene paz.

Su último “as en la manga” es el general de ejército Valery Gerasimov, nacido en la ciudad rusa de Kazan, hace 67 años y jefe del Estado Mayor General desde 2012.

Una edad casi ideal para el trabajo que se le viene encima. Definido por organización, cambios estructurales, disciplina, flujo suficiente de medios y mano dura.

Valery Gerasimov, Russian military commander in Ukraine.

With all the accumulated defeats suffered by the Army of the Russian Federation in its «special military operation» in Ukraine from February 24, 2022 until now, Vladimir Putin does not rest, he is irritated and has no peace.

LA PSICOLOGÍA DE LOS TERRORISTAS ISLAMISTAS

La civilización y sus estructuras vital y social en sus interacciones con los individuos y su psicología.

El fallo de los yihadistas en integrarse en un «grupo con creencias y virtudes (los valores permanentes) compartidos». Que le den identidad, sentido y pertenencia a sus vidas.

¿Por qué se comportan así? ¿Cómo tratar a los recuperables? ¿Cómo combatir a los vitandos o recalcitrantes?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ISLAMIST TERRORISTS

The civilization and his vital and social structures , in his interactions with the individuals and their psychology.

The failure of the jihadists in joining a «group with shared beliefs and virtues» (the permanent values). That give to their lives identity, sense and belonging.

Why do they behave this way? How to treat the recoverable ones? How to attack the hatefuls or recalcitrant terroris

THE PERSECUTIONS TO THE MODERN CHRISTIANS.

There is taking place in the last months a real «planetary conjunction». It is about the «temporal coincidence» of a bloody and fierce pursuit of the Christians, whose «green outbreaks» are in the Arabic Islamic countries. That is coincidental with the solvent, quiet and cunning action of the European «trendies», against the virtues of the European societies. Both actions are surely a «cosmic part» of the so called «Mysterium iniquitatis» or agree to the Darkness.

THE INFANTRY FIGHTING: EAST VS WEST II.

(CONTINUATION)

 

This doctrine spreads and concerns, across the NATO, the strategic aims of his allies and the assigned and specific means to reach them. The training with IT programs is an example of the new practices of military training. Instead of moving soldiers in the Boot Camps or the vehicles of the mechanized or motorized units in the maneuvers areas, the NATO is developing new artifices in the Network (online) to instruct the personnel. And, though it could not be the norm of formation or training, the project is illustrative of that the Alliance adapts to the new times of «financial global restrictions» for the Armies. But this goes against and impedes, almost for definition, the adjustment of the light infantries to the war against the regular and irregular “broken-down” enemies. And it goes against and prevents the use and the employment of the «maneuvers war» at the levels of the small units and men groups, entrusted to realize it in the fight zone of the infantry. Because the demanding and constant training of the men is here essential and is a condition necessary for his success in the combat.

Peculiarities of the modern Fight in the Infantry Zone.

Any assault aim of the small unit or group of action always will present a route of covered, defilade or secret approximation. That can be exploited to approach up to the close fight distance. This without losses of his combat capacity and without having an engineers’ high formation. So, the “routes” like that might be the curbs of the sidewalks or the sewers in the urban or industrial zones. For the distant or air (drones and crewed planes) observation these singularities do not exist and this way, the enemy does not detect the potential vulnerability of his positions.

Resultado de imagen de deep battle american doctrine

In the rejection the same thing happens, but the other way round. A deployed company in his platoons for the usual circular defense, presents several tens of small exposed careless or not attended flanks. And these can be used by the trained enemy in the use of the microarea to approach and to slip between his combat positions, patrols and fox holes. And to be positioned to attack her by reverse a little later. Or to destroy some important assets (hangar, fuel deposits, vehicles parkings, artillery, aircrafts, arsenals, command positions). And these vulnerabilities and deficiencies are kept and, even, they increase almost unfailingly with the confidence and the carelessness that arise in the routine and current activities.

However much there exist protocols, regulations and theoretical advices that affect in the alert and the keeping of the vigilance and security. Because the permanent «combat availability» neither is kept, even does not exist. And it is not a question, as it is in the habit of doing, of creating any more procedure or of hardening those who exist. Because the bureaucracy and his evils will kill the initiative and the inventiveness of the bureaucratized soldiers. It is a question of carrying out those with interest, commitment with the missions and, the most difficult thing, banishing the mental stupor of the routine. Nor, and this is a deficiency derived from the most panoramic vision that is looked, these elementary “microunits” are trained for correctly and temporarily defend itself. If they are surrounded or overcome in number by the regular or irregular enemy, who exploits the “microarea” and knows the field. And, consistently, they also lack enough organic weapon, as to avoid to be surrounded by an enemy major unit.

In West this specific formation is tended to give to his elite units, whereas his «poor» enemies form in her all his infantry: elite, regular, light and irregular. These «bare» armies have to use more the human resources, on having lacked so many modern and sophisticated means. His men are educated in the control (physical and mental) of the risk and of the fear, to survive. And in the discovery and the development of his warlike potentials, turning one with his environment, to overcome the obstacles, to triumph in the mission and to continue living. Some of the personal characteristics that must be more developed in the western «small units», to obtain a «bonus», a complement, of security, surprise and efficiency in his «interfaces of action» on the enemy in the fight in the infantry zone are: motivation, formation and constant training; mobility, concealment and knowledge of the enviroment; safety, surprise and creativity; resistance, patience, quietude, silence, sobriety, calmness, alert of the senses (dulled by the withdrawal from the nature and the plethora of information that is received at all the levels) and self-sufficiency; freedom of action, initiative and decision at the level of his behavior and mission.

It is evident that, if the men fullly develop these military characteristics and tasks, we will be forming units of elite. But the certain thing is that the added ones or «adendum» of these qualities that they acquire, will give them major autoconfidence. And will qualify them to carry out better the infantry fight against «broken down» enemies armies, that have incorporated them into his usual form of combat.

During enough time still the air and spatial American means, as spy satellites, not crewed planes and planes of the system Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), will have serious limitations for the detection and the check of small ground, even regular, forces, in the areas of difficult ongoing and with possibilities of concealment, as mountains, jungles and forests, marshes and urbanized zones (industrial, of storage and distribution, and of housings). Those also offer covered to the fire up to the close combat distances. It is paradoxical that the western armies, who try to take care and to protect his members, do not sufficiently form them in the fight that his «ragged» enemies realize. These «modern infantry» units would fight by means of the infiltration or the slide; the cover and the concealment; the rapid or imperceptible movements for the enemy observer, according to the case; and always silent; the dispersed and/or camouflaged of circumstances positions and in the later slope; the constant surprises; the countershocks and the ambushes; in both forms of fight: defense and attack.

As for the guerrilla war against the irregular enemies, we will treat the «wide zone» where the rebels do not dominate, but they keep the pulse with the military men and try to go snatching them the people and the areas. This is the zone where would have clearer and direct application the modern western infantry units, to fight against the irregular orientals. The only effective way of defending from these rebel groups is obtaining the initiative, dislocating his movements between positions and towards their aims, exhausting his operatonal rear, taking from them the freedom of action and demonstrating the people whom have the means and the determination to gain the war, supporting his government and authorities. To defend himself is not to be left to reduce or to corner in the garrisons, by the action and the extension of the bands. Garrisons that turn in enormous and costly «protected warehouses» of materials and men without using. This is to be left to oxidize, to demoralize and to enervate by the mobil, active and very asymmetric enemy. And was the “main way” used by the high commands in Afghanistan and Iraq. The “patrols and small military positions” network of in this «critical zone», it has as operational task to deny the initiative and the mobility to the guerrillas, cutting his communications with his bases, with his collaborators’ network and between them, and raise off them, like in the hunt, from his protective bases of civil character and from his isolated redoubts. The «official network», which covers operationally a wide extension, is also capable of catching sensitive information. The knowledge of the rebels, of the zone and of the neighborhood can be one of his major assets. The conviction of impunity of the rebels will disappear.

A necessary and forgotten complement of the regular network to fight against the guerrilla are the rebels «false bands». These would be destined to operate in zones inclined to the insurgency, from where several of his members come. And his action and concealment would be favored by the decentralized character of the rebel groups. His missions would be to obtain information, to prove the loyalty of the civilians and to annihilate enemy small groups or suicides. They should not be major of a reinforced squad, except in the special occasions of combat. This can seem to be imaginary or, at least, theoretically, and unrealizably. But the case is that in the definitive defeats of the Apaches bands in the southwest of the USA, between 1872 and 1886, after the changes effected in the deployments, the tactics and technics and the doctrine by the general Crook, was decisive the incorporation of numerous Apaches explorers in the US Army Cavalry. Not only to locate the hostiles bands, but to attack them specially and hardly. And the taciturn, distant, slightly nice and haughty or indifferent character of these Indians towards other Americans, that can be observed in an attentive visit to a reservation, was not making them precisely inclined to be «collaborationists» of the whites men.

THE END

THE INFANTRY FIGHTING: EAST VS WEST.

The last tens of meters up to reaching a determined enemy or gullible in his positions, form the fighting zone of the infantry. And she has yet major validity and importance in the actual wars. With the approximation to the combat from the brigade, the last global direct human possible vision of the units and resources, and the division, the western doctrines tend to be fixed in the dominant characteristics of the area and of his transitability or ground ongoing throughout the day and of the years seasons and according to the climate, to realize his plans.

But they neglect the use of the microarea at the levels of squads, teams, companions pairs and weapon servants. In the microarea, by means of the cover, the patience, the secrecy and the concealment, those «combats groups» might use against the enemy, his capacities of resistance (to the surprise), of mobility or concealed tactical «activity» (in the defense), of initiative and of freedom of action. Operating over him in minuscule «action interphases» (or microsectors). This is specially actual and necessary in the fight against regular and irregular «nobody» enemy, which lack the modern military technological advances and the economic resources to provide them. And that search for need and/or idiosyncrasy, to compensate his asymmetries with the domain of this infantry fight, seeking to see this way the white of the eyes of the enemy.

The military American Doctrine for the modern Wars.

The news that are received since years from the war operations zones in the countries in conflict, proceeding from the journalists inserted in the fighting forces, of the correspondents detached in the different populations of those (Kabul, Baghdad, Saigon, Hue) and those that the armies in presence issue, are revealing a series of characteristics that are common to the forces of the different western modern armies. They all are following the trend initiated by the Americans of having the enemy less nearby, more seen and observed and more beaten by the heavy air and artillery fire. It is not looked with this, in increasing effects order, to blind it, to disturb it, or to neutralize it, but to destroy it. That is the costliest and improbabliest of his effects and that demands an increased and deficient expense of the resources. And the worse thing is that does not always exist his direct connection with the offensive maneuvers of the ground forces. That often do not come to beating the broken enemy after the fires blows. The ground deployments are «secondary» and, therefore, also are his movements, dispersions and concentrations. The heavy fire has turned into a «economic and industrial» substitute (it changes military effort into dollars) of the maneuvers and the assaults of the ground forces. And the reason of all that is known by the poor and asymmetric enemies of West: the horror to the risk in combat and to assuming falls.

Resultado de imagen de deep battle american doctrine MONGOLS SOUGHT FOR THE ENEMY DISRUPTION, ATTACKING ITS VULNERABILITIES, PENETRATING ITS EMPTY REARWARDS, MOVING FASTER AND CREATING APPEARANCES FOR THE ENEMY.

The massive employment of the heavy fire is the principal «argument» of the Pentagon. His doctrine (Field Manual of the US Army 100-5, Operations) does not emphasize the initiative and rests in enemy reacts to the «real or potential action» from protected positions in the whole operations zone. The USA has created a ground forces with few capacity and skill in his small units for the combat in the infantry fighting zone, where more risk take the men. The trend of the doctrine looks for a formation (knowledge, education and command) and an intelligence (as elaborated, sufficient and constant information) excellent and abundant for the chiefs and officials. They are the managers of conceptualize the combat and the persons in charge of the fulfillment of the mission of his units and small units. It is supposed that the soldiers will do well and will work well, being able to use his sophisticated equipments and those of his companions of unit and fulfilling the orders of his subofficials and officials. These are supposed elaborated at the sufficient level, to give them perspective and cohesion with the intention of the high controls.

Resultado de imagen de deep battle american doctrine GOOD AGAINST A II GENERATION ARMY AND MORE CENTRALIZED THAT OURS: THAT OF SADAM HUSSEIN.

One of the operation principles that gathers strength in this renewed doctrine is that of the simultaneity. This establishes to beat at the same time, with heavy fire of artillery and aviation, the first and second enemy attack echelons and even his reserve, using against her the aviation and the tactical rocketry. The infantry and tanks forces are designed to attack or to counter-attack this now beaten enemy in all his depth and to assure the battle decision. Here does not exist the detection and the assault to the enemy weak points. Nor the «general saving» (an essential, universal and original principle of the war, according to Fuller) of means and of human lives. Nor the skilful, risky and fruitful maneuvers of functional and/or positional dislocation of the enemy. In opened area, the infantry cannot attack without indirect and/or direct heavy fire support and without concealment (night, fogs, smokes, draggings). But this complementary support has been hypertrophying, up to turning into a «weapon» for itself (as decades ago it was tried to do with the tanks) in the mix of the military resources and in one supposedly «maneuvers warfare». About which speak, but not well applied, the updates of the FM 100-5 from 1985. The such promising, already omnipresent and wished “not driven planes” of exploration and/or bombardment or «drones» are not more than the global projection in scope, safety of employment for the user and game of possibilities of the heavy fire, about which we speak. The marshall von Hindenburg designed the adage: «A battle without Schwerpunkt (the place where or the unit that applies our “principal effort”) is like a man without character». The North American army acts generally evoking a heavy, forceful mace, hammering and excessive. The Afrika Korps, by the contrary, reminded us an elegant, agile, unforseeable, (almost) sufficient and effective foil.

The Employment of a IIIrd Generation Army in the “military asymmetric” Enviroment.

The wars of fourth generation are the counterinsurgency wars or guerrilla wars or irregular wars or armed revolts or national liberation wars or organized banditry, which always have existed, coexisting with the conventional variants where only regular forces combat. They are those that the USA has lost or not won lately: Vietnam, The Lebanon (Marines’ peace disembarkation, then demolished in his barrack), Somalia (the uncontrollable and unforseeable wasp’s nest of «all against all» of the tribal masters of the war and the militias of the Islamic Courts, now of al-Shabab), Iraq and Afghanistan. They are very unequal wars against an enemy of lower technological military level man relative to the own regular forces, taken root almost always in the own or occupied civil population, militarily low intense and extensive or long in the space and the time. With awkward frequency, when the human (own or local agents) or technological Americans «sensors» detect some probable rebel activity of the yellow ones, muhaydins or hostile foreigners, they first devastate the building, the «block», the zone. What for them is really a surface target. And then they are going to wipe off and to do the corpses inventory, the «body count». Sometimes between the rubbles they can meet the corpses of a yellow, blackish or innocent and numerous Muslim family. It abuses of the attrition, when the enemy fuses with the civilians. It is careless the active, unexpected patrolling work, who needs proportionally less material and human means. But that bases In the military trade, the physical and moral courage, the freedom of action and the creativity in the low and intermediate commands and in the men.

Imagen relacionada OBAMA FIRED CENTCOM GENERAL MATTIS WITHOUT A PHONE CALL.

The western soldiers have exchanged or forgotten the «principles» or rules of the good to do in the war, for the simultaneity and the depth of the distant fire, covering the whole enemy highly probable zone. With it there is neither means economy, nor principal effort, nor the necessary discrimination between soldiers and the potentially enemy civilians. The armies look eagerly for the safety and the confidence in his decisions and missions. Precisely when the environment in which they are and act in the last 5-years periods, the guerrilla or asymmetric wars, is variable, fleeting, without definite limits, confused and hard to grasp. The uncertainty, the chaos, the mistakes, the friction and the failures, the scanty means and the partially fulfilled plans, the weariness and the fear are the «omnipresent demons», that characterize and concern this neutral «magma» of the war. And it is neutral because it leaves being drive and guide largely by the human superior «plans and actions». That are stimulated by the «correct sense» of the commands, the determination, the will, the physical and moral courage, the motivations (ideological, religious, ethnic, social…), the suitable training, the sufficient equipment, the commitment with the tasks and missions and the respectable and respected commands.

Resultado de imagen de obama got away from iraq and afghanistan SOME DEADLY RECORDS.

George Bush’s strategic national doctrine established, but without being due explained, not tacitly accepted by both American parties, that the «asymmetrical wars» (irregular and with low level of military equipment) were supported and necessary, to remove of the American territories and those of his allies, the threats of the fundamentalist foreign terrorism of any origin, religion or ideology. It justified the ill-fated post war bad oriented occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, with a fiscal and exterior deficits ran away and with a Democrat Administration, it is necessary for the USA to save in military resources. To dedicate them «to construct a nation here, at home», as defined Obama. This way, the USA lowered qualitatively the bar of the exterior terror, putting al-Qaeda as almost the only one violent not national enemy. This internationalist salafist terrorist «network», with delirious and impossible ideas, without own territory, with his operational chiefs known, fled and not wished as guests in a normal country, is a more attainable, adaptable and manageable aim for his forces and means of «rapid punctual incursions». This justifies the increase of the use of the drones, spy satellites, own or local agents in the hostile areas, operations of assaults by elite units and small expeditionary forces and of Marines amphibious assault. These transported by «ships of control and transport» of strategic projection with his naval escort. The deployments of tens of thousands of military men and his luggage and specific equipment for several years in an operations theatre, they are indefinitely rejected by the new «doctrine» of the «diminishing defense».

(TO BE CONTINUED)

THE TACTICAL FACTORS AND THE MILITARY SURPRISE.

THE TACTICAL FACTORS METT-TC OF THE RECEIVED MISSION FROM THE DIRECT COMMAND.

The Mission (M) determines the employ of the surprise, because it defines the «tactical environment«, over the merely spatial component, in which this one can apply and where it will be developed. The fulfillment of the received mission will determine decisively the possibilities of conception and application of the surprise. On having defined and express that one, the goal of the multiple and convergent actions of the efforts and means assigned by the superior command to a tactical chief. The detection by the exploration or the advanced “units of action” of a possible «interface of action» favorable over the enemy, does not authorize “per se” to a command to separate from the fulfillment of the mission of the top command.

The Enemy (E) is the essential and principal aim of a command. And the surprise is a multiplier essential factor of his potentials and means, to fulfill the received mission and to contribute to it. Surprise must then to look for: the spatial or functional dislocation of the enemy; or the economic wastage of his capacities; or a more rapid and effective fulfillment of the entrusted mission; or a positional advantage for the own deployment, for own immediate maneuvers; or the decisive assault or the counterattack to the critical or secondary vulnerabilities of the enemy, according to the plan of the top command.

The Terrain (T) and, for extension, the space is the essential support of the «tactical area» of the military action. This must use it always in its own profit, both in the assault and in the defense. In the rapid maneuvers, typical of the surprises, one will prefer using the favorable area for the employed weapon, in order that it favors the pace or tempo and the impulse or moment of them.

This way, the tanks (which fighting way is the attack) will use favorably in lightly wavy grounds and with great domain by the sights, without perpendicular cuts or water currents or rocky important outcrops. Nevertheless, the complete surprise can need the employment of tanks in difficult, not impossible ground, for them, so they are not waited by the enemy. Even, using in the spear of advance fewer armored units than the usual ones, which, with the surprise, would make feel with his presence equal fire power and shock.

The grounds provided with covers and/or concealments and the night and the atmospheric phenomena or meteors (rain, snow, hail), that reduce visibility and combative disposition in the defenders, favor the movement to the combat of the units and means of the surprise. Also, they allow their temporal concealment in the decided rest and departure zones. The inconvinient and/or disagreeable grounds facilitate the final approximation of the means of the surprise: gutters, edges of the streets close to the sidewalks, vertical walls that are practicable, cultivated fields, bushes, wetlands. In exchange for inconveniences and of time in the advance, we will win in the effective employ of the surprise.

In the defense, we will use the broken ground, with concealment relative heights (CRH) and covers for the small units (urban and industrial zones); partly resting on the rear slope and in natural obstacles (rivers, trees spots, etc.) that run parallel to the tracing of the defensive position; that impede or reveal the enemy movements, breaking his impulse, and facilitate the rejection from our own favorable positions. The counterattack from the depth of our tactical zone on the reverse or the flank of the enemy spears of advance, preferably after his determination, will be a very effective employ of the surprise. The fire traps (fire bags), the dispersed and small minefields, the fire blows from the defense points and resistance nests, retained up to the close distances with the enemy, are defensive surprises, but more waited by the enemy.

Being based on the ground characteristics and paying attention to the particularities of some part of the tactical area (enemy, mission, area, opportunity) the surprise will be planned and decided. And it will implement his assembly, deployment, support and unfolding, following a sufficient, protected and constant flow.

The Troops (T) necessary to execute and fulfill the conceived and decided surprise, must be adapted for the mission by his characteristics. The surprise is an offensive action over the enemy, developed unexpected, rapid and thougtlessly, in general. The equipment of the men and the air and artillery support must be the necessary and sufficient, in conformity with the determined plan. Besides his general training, the men must receive the specific training, depending on the characteristics of the mission and the actions to develop. The characteristics of obedience and initiative, patience, resistance and sobriety, physical qualities, enthusiasm and spirit of group, commitment with the mission, must be the best in the men. As they will be an important part of the actions. And they will act as chiefs and persons in charge of themselves and of his mission companions, in certain moments.

It is important a complete real time training of the mission. There are devices that fail at the X hours of use. The tension on the men and his sustained efforts affect their comfort and their efficiency and rapidity of action. With repercussions in his combative disposition, his alert and the precision of answers.

Often the heavy fire will be used to conceal the enemy from our surprise. The coordination of different weapon in the same mission or sector, is a critical point of it. For example, units of infantry, reinforced by some squads of engineers and supported by a few tanks sections, crossing a thick forest to surprisingly reach an enemy important position in the depth of his deployment. Acting in the same sector of advance or assault, the coordination between the small units must be tested and confirmed.

The Time (T) of the mission is a decisive factor of his success. On one hand, it must be the opportune one. For other part, the time must be enough and accelerated uniformly in the «successive cycles of action» of the development of the mission. In order that the concentration, the sequence or the simultaneity of employs and the forcefulness of our actions demolish the enemy human aim at which they are applied, once gotten the surprise.

It is necessary to consider always that all the actions need to happen an estimated planned time plus a complementary corrector time. This will depend on the degree of complexity of the mission: units, logistic support, demonstrative helping actions, crossing distances, passage difficulties, presence and intention of the enemy, simultaneity or sequence of employs, coordination. And it originates in the failures that arise in all the human activities and in the small and medium mistakes that are committed by the commands and men. Some call these the tactical friction of war. A serious mistake would suppose that the surprise was badly calculated or executed and it is an operational serious mistake.

The civilians (C) must not be damaged in a surprising mission. Even when the enemy mixes and protects in a civil area, it is possible to define and to make concrete a purely military aim. To isolate, attack and extirpate it with military accurate and mopping-up. Here is necessary the employ of the organic weapon of the ground attacking unit, which limit the not wished hurts and make concrete his effects in the selected targets.

The heavy indiscriminate air and artillery fire is a weapon of merciless and spread results for the employ in urban areas. His aim is not to blind, to disturb or to neutralize the enemy. The excessive and insistent heavy fire seek to destroy it. That is the more uncertain and less economic goal of all. Both the Soviets and the western allieds have used it with profusion in the civil wars of the Southwest of Asia. His use has as goal to destroy from far off and before to the assault, the enemy positions in the villages. Avoiding as much as possible that the own ground forces fight at close distances with the islamist rebels.

THE MILITARY SURPRISE AS ART AND HETERODOXY

Almost all the technologies, tactics and operations directed to obtaining the tactical or operational surprise over the enemy, can be benevolent considered at the edge of the regulations and existing procedure. That are practised in the different countries and groups of them or supranational alliances.

Between other reasons, to fight only according to the «book» is usually too much acquaintance and predictable. In addition, many of the general «knowledge» gathered in them are shared by different blocs and nations, even antagonistic. And it is necessary, to respect the regulations and ordinances and to look for the aim indicated by the command, as the goal to obtaining.

But the creative and decisive action must follow the one that we call the «way of the surprise«. As guide, compass, of our decisions and actions. Looking for that fleeting and juicy opportunity that arises in the development of the mutual actions between the armed rivals; those careless or vulnerable enemy weaknesses, in conditions that we can create sometimes, equally more unforeseen and unusual. To obtain our goals with more forcefulness, efficiency, elegance and rapidity. Achieving it with fewer loss of time, of men and of means. Let’s remember the basic and universal principle of the economy of the means.

Sure that following always the «book» they will be able to approach and to take to good term the common operations. But, apart from the fact that the enemy has an essentially equal doctrine and regulations, a way of fighting will be first known and then learned or dominated and, probably, up to overcome finally by the enemy. The triumphant Germans in the first period 1939-1941, with the extension of the war, allowed the knowledge and the learning of his war of combined weapon by his enemies. That finally overcame them in technologies, tactics and operations and drove them to their thunderous defeat in 1945.

And this «guide» is of special need and affection in the bureaucratized and crystallized armies. Where the unforseeable, not guilty failures, are not only a contingency to be overcame by the set. But they can be also an administrative or political weapon against the persons in charge. And where the follow-up of the «book» and the superiors orders to the letter, armour and protect the low commands of the responsibility of their acts and results.

Martin Van Creveld said that was the anteroom, before the final unworkability and prostration, of «the military organizations that were not getting up-to-date and renewing». Martin Van Creveld was expelled as lecturer, many years ago, from Israel’s Military High College.

Then, the results will be obtained increasingly at the cost of the wear and the men means and materials losses. Tending to triumph then the rival that more demographic and economic capacity has.

There arises then a corollary of this way of thinking the military thing. The zeal to avoid human falls, extended to all the modern armies or of IIIrd generation, will lead to the preventive, protective and therapeutic employment of the own heavy fire. Looking that the own forces do not have to fight at close ranges. This is called military modern technology and is highly regarded by the national armament industries. This is not more than the perversion and trick of the heavy fire. Whose functions or tasks, in increasing order of action and efficiency, are: to blind, to disturb, to neutralize or cover and to destroy the enemy in the different fighting forms and situations.

And the action over the aim will tend to the physical destruction, as guarantee of the security of the men. In the actual civil wars in Iraq and Syria, we have the examples in the exagerate and methodical bombardments on the enemies. Armed and civilians; real and suspects.

The Military surprise, looking for the enemy dislocation and shock

During his operations, the enemy deployment is conforming in the direction and with the intention that he has decided and determined, for his military echeloned means and for his logistic routes. This way, he is showing his «cards» to his rival, depending on his action tempo and he is commiting, according to those.

Our surprise can create «per se» a new «exposed flank«, another more or less critical «vulnerability» in the enemy. That he was not considering yet, that he was not waiting, nor was prepared to defend her by some of the fighting forms. That are the attack and the defense, in their varieties and combinations.

Our surprise «penetrates» in the enemy deployment, seeking to shock and dislocate functionally or positionally it. And, at least, to cause him losses, to occupy profitable positions for our operational development, to diminish his tempo or operational pace and to confuse, delay and disturb him in his plans and deployments. Using for it, by our part, the minimal means expense and seeking to achieve the maximum possible effect on the enemy. With which we optimize the effort of our actions, following the general principle of the economy of the available means.

When the enemy reacts, to offset and overcome the effect of our surprising action, he is adapting necessarily to our intention. And, if that one is serious, he moves away more or less from his interests and plans. With his reacting movements for the rejection and the attack to our forces, the enemy is disregarding his intention and his mission. In relation to these, the enemy is removed from them and also unbalanced. This way, a right conceived, planned and realized surprise can «prepare» the enemy for us. So, he face in disadvantage, with fewer available resources and a worse deployment, our offensive principal action. That would be already more direct, massive and orthodox.

In such a way that exist a whole range of possible effects to obtaining over the enemy with our surprising actions. That will change also according to the means destined to obtain our surprise, the conception, the preparation and the accomplishment of it and the available time, considering also the set of our operations.

THE MANEUVER WARFARE. THE CONCEPT OF THE MODERN AIRLAND BATTLE. (SECOND PART).

AN INTERPRETATION BY FIELDMARSCHAL ERICH VON MANSTEIN.

 

(CONTINUATION)

 

Results of the German counterattack and its trascendence.

Nevertheless, the booty gained was scanty. Von Manstein declared that there were approximately 23,000 dead Soviet soldiers and 9,000 captured Soviet soldiers. The materiel captured were approximately 615 tanks (probably largely recovered), 354 campaign guns, 69 anti-aircraft pieces and more than 600 machine guns and mortars. It was not possible to encircle the enemy and Soviet soldiers took advantage of this by leaving the heavy equipment and retreating. Von Manstein said that, because the extreme cold, his soldiers were bunched into small, tight groups, leaving wide spaces and lines in his rearguard, without effective cover. This partly happened because they were elite troops and because the war was without mercy.

COLONEL JOHN BOYD, AN AMERICAN TEORIST OF ITS MANEUVER THEORY.

At the beginning of March, 48th panzer Corps pressed toward the east of Kharkov and the SS panzer corps of General Halder was entrusted with recovering the long-suffering city for the Germans.

At the middle of the month, the Germans had a defensive resistant front from Tangarov to Belgorod, supported on the Mius and the Donetz. They also possessed in the south of Russia sufficient mobile reserves to push back possible Soviet operational breaks in the zone.

As late as 1944, the Soviets had 26 tanks Corps and 11 mechanized Corps. Part of them joined together to form 6 tanks Armies. Each of which had two tanks corps and a mechanized corps (bigger and more balanced inn infantry and artillery). Some mechanized Corps joined a cavalry Corps, forming a great unit similar in capacity to the tanks Army but with fewer armored vehicles and more mobility in areas of difficult transitability (marshes, mountains, woods). These were used to exploit the break in the swampy areas of the south of the Soviet Union, as that of the Pripet river in the north of Ucrania. Although never coexisted more than two or three in the order of battle of the Soviet Army.

WILLIAM LIND, A CIVIL TEORIST.

The destruction of 6 tanks Corps of the Southwest Front (especially equipped with mobile forces) and dismantled them from their “support masses”, was an especially prominent, profitable and low cost operation for the Germans.

In addition, in its advance toward Kharkov between March 1st and 5th, the SS and 48º panzer Corps smashed from its flank and rearguard the Soviet 3rd tanks Army, led by general Pavel Semjonovic Ribalko. This Army was launched to relieve the forces of 6th infantry Army and had continued advancing toward Kharkov. This city that was by then, attracting all the attention and efforts from both sides.

As poor results and large losses mounted for the mobile Soviet forces, pessimism also grew in Stalin, who asked Sweden to mediate in seeking a solution to the war with Germany.

Nevertheless, the advance on Belgorod, outlining Kursk’s projection inside the territory occupied by Germany, sealed the aim for Germany’s strategic summer Campaign. After all these events had passed, the strategic initiative returned to the Germans at the level of the theatre of operations.

But, beginning on July 5, delayed in relation with the victories of Von Manstein, their action gave the Soviets time to extensively strengthen themselves, to establish “fortified regions” at the front level, and to assemble and organize a powerful counterattack force in the north and south of the projection. The allied landing in Sicily on the 10th of July, aborted the Wehrmacht’s already disastrous Operation Citadel. The Germans would never recover the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front.

GENERAL DONN STARRY, HIGH COMMAND OF THE U.S. ARMY’S TRADOC.

Was it possible to avoid what happened to the Popov group and, thus, to the Soviet’s strategic plans for its 1942 winter campaign and to the Soviet’s strategic initiative, at least in the Southern theatre of the Soviet Union?

It was possible.

We have observed, in parallel and in a very second plane with some key facts, the getting absorbed (to get very much in …), the delight (to be delighted with …) and the fixation (to do without other rational arguments) of Stalin, in relation with the results that he promised himself with the impelled operations by the mobile corps of the Southwest Front of general Vatutin.

General Vatutin, one of the best field chiefs of the Soviet army, died before his time at hands of Ukrainian (anti-Soviet) guerrillas, only participated in this in a minor degree. Still, the delegate of the Stavka in charge of these crucial operations (Zhukov, Vasilevsky?) remembered him the transcendence that for the Supreme Commander and for the Soviet people they had.

A little time ago, Hitler also fixated on Stalingrad. This fixation led him to squander the capacity of his best Great Unit (the 6th infantry Army of general Paulus—yes, without the aristocratic Von) in a street struggle and a force-to-force confrontation. Their enemies were arranged on a static defense. A position that they were better able to defend and maintain than were the Germans, in the gigantic steel and cement fortress that was Stalingrad.Fight in which was not counting the German superb capacity of operational movement, which reduced the effort done to a confrontation between man vs. man and machine against machine. And, thus, causing a terrible attrition to the combat and movement capacities.

We can discuss about the strategic mistakes of high chiefs. As the line of communications (branched out) is so crucial, it is necessary to protect it adequately. But this fact is obscured and blurred by the desires of commanders.

What are the possibilities of defense for the advance sector that contains the communications line?

Independently of the advance deployment of mobile groups and their support mass (which must include the securities elements adapted for marches in enemy areas), «advanced detachments» must be brought forward.

These will be integrated by 15-30 % of the forces that bring them forward and will possess sufficient operational movement and combat capacities. The time it takes for the main group to join them is a function of the transitability of the terrain and of the capacities and intentions of the enemy in the operations zone. Its mission in defensive operations is to be used as “stable hinges” between the deployments of Great units, facilitating and protecting the movement of forces and supplies between them.

If the mass of support is too slow for the mobile group to continue advancing at a reasonable rate, it will end up lengthening dangerously the distance between the units and their support. This situation is very vulnerable to a mobile assault by the enemy from the depth of his zone and the sector of advance would be under threat of being cut, depending on the means and intentions of the enemy. This probability would require that a “mechanized group” be placed between the mass of support and the mobile group to reduce the distance between all three deployments and reducing reaction times to respond to a crisis. This would reasonably stabilize the sector of advance after the mobile group.

The mission of the mechanized group, which has less capacity for operational movement than the mobile group, will be to carried out the “sector mobile defense”. And will last until the forces of the mass of support arrive to relieve it. The anti-aircraft and antitank defense plan, the centralization of reserves and the defense of key points of the area, by means of “delay positions” and together with necessary heavy fire support, will be characteristic of the fight to stabilize the sector.

That is to say, it is necessary to sacrifice speed for safety to consolidate the stability of the sector of advance in enemy territory. A territory that does not need to be all occupied in force. Because would be defended by a mobile defense for a limited period of time. Taking disproportionate risks would be reckless and would put men, materiel and the operation in danger.

But, men (in this case, Hitler and Stalin are two examples) continue to make mistakes when faced with such circumstances…

THE END.

WARFARE IN THE INFORMATION AGE.

Introduction.

The appearance of the IT treatment of the information supposed a revolution in the capture, production and transmission of the existing or caught information. Whose possibilities and transcendency are still far from know, even in his scope and his limits. The information generated in a battlefield or an operations theatre of is enormous, ephemeral in diverse times, almost immeasurably and fluid. The latter quality is fundamental for the production of the intelligence. That is the information caught by the units and sensors of all kinds and that is digested or prepared by the specific organs (G2, S2 and agencies of intelligence), to create a sufficient, effective, opportune and constant intelligence. That is used by the «advanced users» or commands in the different levels of military action (tactical, operative and strategic).

Since it could not be otherwise, in view of the brief exposed scheme, the IT industry soon found an enormous area of activity and possibilities in the military field. And the high military commands, often in «ad hoc» prepared meetings and coctails, received from the manager directors and chairmen of the branch corporations, animated, brief and exciting presentations of the enormous performances that might give to their units of all the branches, the designed, elaborated and installed softwares and hardwares by these vanguard technical companies. The battlefield or the operations zone (the area, the enemy and I), known, conveyed and controlled in real time by my men!!!

The Support of the military Information Systems.

It is not the case that these new technologies allow to elaborate a complex and integrated weapon system. This already existed before the information age and the electronic existing advances allowed his creation. For example, the AEGIS defense system for ships against aircraft, warships, missiles and submarines was designed, created and installed for the first time in 1973. It is equiped by destroyers and even frigates (in a simpler model) of the USA and his allied nations. And this way they are called the «shields or defenders of the Fleet». In effect, every «naval group» centred and escorting an aircraft carrier and every «naval combined force of strategic projection», rely on several ships provided with the AEGIS system. This consists of a powerful radar of several megawatts of power, capable of catching and continuing up around 200 potential targets, placed at distances of up to 350 km to the installed system.

The caught information goes to a computer center that reports to a decision center. Which arranges the launches of missiles depending on the mission of the group or naval force and the estimated danger generated for him by the target. The system is installed in front of the armoured control center of the ship. That gives the final permission for the launch of the missiles. These are arranged in rows of vertical silos (habitually, are four with 4 missiles each one) placed in the front cover, in the part that was occupying the conventional artillery. The silos are re-fed from the interior of the ship with other missiles after the launches. The missiles are propeled by solid fuel, which allows that they should be smaller than the land launched. And the adjustment of the system is studied for the destruction of the enemy ballistic missiles.

Resultado de imagen de warfare in information age

The activities that the military men realize in action in front the enemy are numerous, varied and some of them are complex. And all of them demand a sufficient attention from the controls and men. Let us see some of the most significant. Regarding the movement in the ground: to advance, to stop and to move back; so much running as walking, crawling or incorporated, and doing it by jumps or in zig zag. Regarding placing and valueing the environment, hostile or not: to observe, to detect, to process, to decide, to transmit or not the results and to act. Regarding the form of fight (rejection or attack): to hide, to cover and to be protected, to change position, to define well evasive detected targets, to receive the orders of the immediate chief, to attack them with deliberate, rapid, etc. fire, (if it is a question of an infantry). Regarding the communication with his “group” (team, weapon, squad, section): to receive orders and information, to send information and orders, to spread information. And they carry out all this under the uncertainty, the lack of comfort, the tension, the loneliness, even of his companion or buddy, and the fear … The constant and repeated sometimes audio-visual information, that is communicated by the modern digital systems can relieve this physical and psychic load of the soldiers? So to achieve it, would really be of great help for them.

Resultado de imagen de warfare in information age ARE THEY LOOKING, DECIDING OR FIGHTING?

Resultado de imagen de warfare in information age IS IT USEFUL HERE?

To all that, it could join a flood of information, insignificant in this moment for his mission or his immediate action. This can generate an increase of the needs of the attention capacities of the military men. Through the more important senses, the sight and the ear. And to originate a diversion of his effective available attention (if there is), towards external not fundamental or neutral stimuli of the images and the conversations. The system is going to transmit them a clearer and detailed information of the targets, even defining some more ephemeral or veiled. But it will not give them information about the intentions and the mental conditions of the different located enemies and their group. Though the system is served with probabilities, previous experiences, alogarithms and reliable estimations…

A practical Application.

In the new model of fighting, the attacking force would be kept simultaneously dispersed, communicated and informed in real time and looking for and attacking the enemy. It would be the supposed advantages of the swarm and his concentric and simultaneous assault, which would count now with the knowledge of the ground and the enemy, thanks to the multiple sensors and systems and the real, caught and transmitted information (not intelligence) to the units of the force.

Are similar in capacity all the units of the force? Then we are demanding from them that each one acts as a «polyvalent» fraction of the unit, without specializing them. With what they will probably have some specific, quantitatively insufficient capacities. Are specialized the units of the force? Then they will have to rely on the simultaneous concurrence, in the defense and the attack, of several units. That should complement between all the necessary functions of this tasks «group». And if the enemy electromagnetic countermeasures work against the wireless communications and is established a communications «silence»? And if we now do not have the telephony circular network of the unit and do not possess double couriers for the transmission of “parts and orders” to the chief and from the chief?

And if the enemy deploys in the same way as us? So we would come to a general clash of weak individual forces against enemies weak forces individual. As the great units spread out for his fighting form. Clash that would be solved by multiple partial and isolate combats, using the attrition. They would be like the singular combats of champions and leaders, which happened in other times. And would gain those who were finally keeping a major number of valid units. It would be a clash won by pure material wear of means: men, military means and expensive and sophisticated IT material, almost without transcendent application.

THE WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS. Second Part.

(CONTINUATION)

 

Operational Characteristics of the Attacks with Elite Ground Forces.

Units and small units that attack with limited aims (a deep incursion, the temporal capture of a critical position, an ambush) constitute a military closed «system». This condition imposes specific characteristics on the “interfaces of action” with the enemy, which are sometimes different to those of great units, especially in the theme of available means and the time of action.

Attacks with limited aims have been operationally used along large fronts. Where the enemy’s defense lacked depth and enough reserves and was looking to minimize own wear and make use of the multiplier effect of the set’s efforts. This occurred with notable success when the forces of the 9th German infantry Army of General Model sought to reform and consolidate its fronts in the Sychevka’s southwest zone between January and April of 1942.

The definitive characteristic of his use, adapted in these tasks, is that is used with criterion unity, by a kept and «concentric» in the result of his impulses “operational gravity center”. So that the limited efforts do not vanish in reconnaissance in force actions, in not suitable or out of opportunity sectors. It is to say, usiing unduly.

The field of action is the secret for applying freedom of action. By extending or decreasing the field of action, or by changing the field of action on the enemy, one can keep or recover the necessary freedom of action to act favorably and not simply reacting to the enemy.

«Field of action» is any «spatial-temporary-circumstantial» situation that allows for the suitable employment of an Army’s means and capacities in accordance or as part of that army’s intention. The field of action is formed by one or several «interfaces of action«, which are the very small sectors where direct contact occurs between the small units of action of each rival. Examples are when a deployed platoon attacks an enemy section, when a tank attacks infantry heavy weapons, when a section attacks by firing on an enemy’s strong position, when an engineering section opens a path in a minefield, etc.

The task is to find an optimal way in which, through successive «periods of action» applied in «fields or interfaces of action», one can gain the relative freedom of action to act and to carry out «quantum» or elementary units of the general intention. In addition, a general action can be divided into numerous partial actions to achieve in stages, momentary or minor «periods of action»; acting this way in the same «field», divided in minor interfaces of action.

Interaction in stages and situations suitable to advance one’s military means guided by the superior intention or orders is the general mechanism for applying, recovering and maintaining freedom of action in one’s favor.

A characteristic of the freedom of action is that is interactive with the enemy in the «interface of action» and is played out in fields of action that chosen by or imposed on an army. Passiveness means that freedom of action is not taken advantage of through lack of initiative. Thus, freedom of action can also have a result opposite to its intention and this can happen regardless of the type of fight engaged in, whether it is offensive or defensive.

The units had to gain combat superiority over the enemy, since obtaining a local and temporary supremacy would allow them to achieve their aims.

Essential to the mission’s conception are intelligence and simplicity. Essential to its preparation are security and training. The characteristics of the mission in action are surprise, tempo and the commitment of all the mission participants.

Simplicity allows the force to concentrate on a few related aims, using a limited number of men and means in the military closed system. If new tactics or different technologies are used, both the simplicity of the mission’s conception and the surprise of its execution will be enhanced.

On September 12, 1943, the captain of the S. S. Otto Skorzeny carried out the rescue of the Duce from his prison in the high mountain hotel Great Sasso located in the Apennines. Gliders were used to assault the position, fighting against the difficult cold draughts (these produced a delay in the arrival, as they landed at midday) and scarce sites for landing. That such a difficult assault would be attempted, higly surprised the on duty «carabinieri». The attackers took advantage of this by gaining access to the principal building while. At the same time, an acquaintance general of the «carabinieri» friendly landed with Skorzeny. Combat supremacy was rapidly achieved.

Intelligence supposes complete, up-to-date and timely knowledge of the circumstances and characteristics of the mission. Here, with so limited employing means, intelligence is facilitated by different agencies and units that intervene with the mission, even those at the level of the state. Specially the CIA, the National Security Agency or NSA, the Central Security Service or CSS, that links with the NSA, and the FBI.

Security refers principally to the stages of planning, preparation, training and, if appropriate, stage of transport or insertion. It has active and passive aspects. Giving off misleading information and concealing the force’s real intentions up until the stage of action on the objective. Each person must only know what is necessary for his actuation.

Training must be generic for actions and tactics and specific for those actions required for the mission. Independently of this, training is necessary to achieve coordinated actions among units taking part simultaneously in some part of the mission. A general rehearsal of the mission is also necessary, including its planning duration and margins for mistakes. It is also good to include some variant that represents a mistake, an unforeseen event or a loss of combat or movement capacity. And that the men train in correcting them or, at least, in neutralizing them with his effort. For example, a part of the helicopters is knocked down or lands at major distance of the foreseen in the theoretical disembarkation zone.

The final «training area» must be similar in general characteristics to the «target area». And it must be placed at safe of detections and filtrations of information (security), which onlookers and interested persons can catch. The independent variable of «time» introduces sometimes unexpected and not always welcome effects. For example, a vehicle presents problems after a number of hours of hard use, that was not foreseen in tests of «at scale» time.

Surprise supposes attacking an enemy (even if arranged in prepared defense) at a point or flank that is neglected by him at the moment, giving the attacker a favorable «interface of action» on him. It must suppose a “tactical innovation”. Though it could also contain technical differential or new elements. Examples of such “innovations” in the past are hollow load bullets or charges and flame-throwers.

The surprise is the sufficient and necessary multiplier of the combat capacity of the «small incursion force». That will allow him to compensate the scanty military resources that it has on the area. To it joins his inconsiderate and carefully applied with rapidity employment. To provoke an overwhelming effect on the enemy, achieving the temporary local superiority. As being an «isolated military system», the incursion force of will receive neither reinforcements, nor supplies. For its part, the time is not neutral, here is an enemy: because there is not more operation time. From his depletion, the unit will confront the pursuit and his annihilation…

Speed consists in firmnessly acting, ahead of the enemy, in the successive elementary «cycles of action» that define a performance or process. It also presupposes acting with opportunities and with pace (adapted speed, relative to the enemy). Remember that an action cycle includes a phase of observation, a phase of determining the situation, the decision phase and the accomplishment phase. If one’s speed is greater than that of the enemy, his actions will be in response to situations that have already just passed.

Speed also implies rapidly reaching a situation of active supremacy in combat capacity. The enemy’s reaction speed is initially very slow as he is in a stupor, trying to verify what is happening. This means his phase of determining the situation will be lengthened. Deceptive action in these moments will lengthen the time that passes and fog the determination of the situation. Ways of doing this include utilizing some of the enemy’s uniforms, equipment or language by certain parts or subunits involved in the action. Once supremacy over the enemy is attained, it must always be kept. As scanty resources make its recovery very difficult. Once supremacy in combat capacity is reached, the probability of a mission’s success increases exponentially and the vulnerabilities of one’s forces are dramatically diminished.

The commitment of men and officers and their selection qualities, lend moral and physical courage to the actions they undertake. This is necessary to overcome uncertainty, stress, mistakes, diversions, enemy actions, and to take advantage of the always fleeting opportunities. Commitment supposes full knowledge of the mission and the full, voluntary and enthusiastic support of all participants.

Execution is carried out by establishing at the level of the regiment, battalion or company a center of gravity for the common effort, which harmonizes and consolidates the «missions» of its subunits.

THE END.

THE WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS.

The global war against the organized terrorism, proclaimed by the president Bush after September 11, 2001, has gone flat. And with it, the military strategy of attacking the many-colored islamist jihadism, always threatening, in his nests and in his infected areas. Without existed for them neither bases, nor sure refuges in the world. Seeking to suffocate this certain, threatening, watched and already long-suffering danger. And to remove it from home, from the territory of the USA. Mr. Obama qualitatively and substantially cut down in 2011, the antiterrorist aims in the exterior American politics.

The new National Strategy of the USA.

For it, the Stategic Plan establishes aims more political than military in the Islamic Central Asia. «This one has been a difficult decade for our country. (Now) we can be glad to know that the pressure of the war is yielding». Is admitted that the Americans are not capable of «leave a perfect Afghanistan». Neither the western democracy is perfect. But it is comparatively the least unjust of the political known systems. And, due regulated by the play of the public powers and the honesty of his agents, it was the one that allowed the advent of the middle, numerous, polite, laborious and progressive classes. This way, they bet for the political negotiation with the moderate Taliban, to lower the activity of the armed groups. Bringing over the possibilities of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. But the major premise fails. The moderate Taliban do not exist. This name is disgusting to the logic. Since it is a contradiction in the used terms. Like the «negative growth», of which some politicians speak to us. The Taliban apply rigorously the sharia. That are the civil laws and penal social derivatives of the literal and rigid application of the Koran and Sunna or tradition, in the profane matters. And they impose it by the force. And with a foreign yielding enemy, without firm convictions, with internal contradictions; why the Taliban are going to negotiate, having the victory already smelling them as the aromatic flowers of Allah’s garden?

Obama proclaims, with fiscal and exterior deficits running away, the need to save in military resources. To dedicate them «to constructing a nation here, at home». This way, he qualitatively lowers the strip of the exterior terror. Putting the Base (al-Qaeda) and the IS as the violent not national enemies of the USA. The salafista internationalist terrorists with his known, fled and not wished as guests in a normal country, operational chiefs, is a more attainable and manageable aim for the schemes, the budgets and the aspirations of the «diminishing American defense». And it stays within range of the actions: of the CIA and of the Pentagon’s flaming spies; of the not crewed airplanes (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) of reconnaissance and atack; of the military punctual actions of the elite forces of the Pentagon; of the assaults of small expeditionary forces and/or of amphibious assault of the Marines, transported in «control and/or transport warships» with his naval escort; of the penetration of the terrorist groups or, at least, the approximation, the observation and the information, by local related elements, paid by the espionage of the USA. The deployments of tens of thousands of American soldiers and their complex equipment and specific supply for several years in a theatre of operations, are indefinitely rejected by the new «doctrine». The American people infected with the adherent and complex economic crisis, with the lack of political effective control, with the costs of the wars against the terror (it speaks about 1,6 $ trillions – not thousand millions – spent till now in Iraq and Afghanistan and around $60 million per month en the deployment of Libia, without taling part in offensive actions), is tired of the exterior actions and constantly reflects it in the surveys. As in the old times, in other national crises, a country that is almost a continent, partially withdraws towards himself.

The Need of a new formal and international “Legal Setting».

The laws give juridical character and institutionalizing for what the needs, the customs and, finally, the social norms have been looking and establishing in the evolution of the societies. There does not exist in the History an example similar to the operational, legal and institutional picture that that pose the USA and the islamist violent rebels in their antagonistic armed dialectic by the whole global world. Therefore, almost all the laws of the countries where develop episodes of this war, the international laws in use and the social existing norms, lack practical meaning and aptitude to establish an operational sufficient frame for this warlike conflict. Both great conflicting rivals use more or less freely the whole world bullring, included the space, as local «fields of action» to realize all kinds of operations against his enemy, his allies and his means and properties.

The real terms of application of this violent dialectics are changed, are new or different: total internationalization of the warlike scene. Will mention some of the significant or more known: the borders and the operations strips or sectors are diluted or are not significant in these. The operations precede and mark the combats or small battles. Violent, dispersed, slightly decisive, unexpected, discontinuous in the time actions; which obtain their transcendence by accumulation, not by successive or simultaneous concatenation. There take place large movements of units or small units in very short time. Great concentrated and rapid firepower capacity used by the rivals: the explosive vehicles manage to have the demolition capacity of a “smash block bomb”. The employment of these small units, which do not constitute a «useful target», protects them from the enemy heavy support fire. The digital capacities of the wireless communications and of the treatment and custody of the information are a new weapon in the fighting field for the sensitive information. This has taken the enemy to the employment of old means, which were put away: couriers, manuscript or typewritten reports, heads of local reports, which successively deliver the orders, etc. Qualitative increase of the importance of the dissimulation, concealment, disguise, mishap and enemy disinformation capacities.

This demands the creation of a new legal and normative frame, which gathers and regulates the new warlike conditions that are appearing, they are maturing and are developing since several decades. And everything, having a sufficient vision of future, in order that the evolution of the rivals and of the circumstances and the events do not invalidate the legal and moral means, at not much time of being defined and accepting by a majority of countries and persons. Because, the agents and the units and the reconnaissance means cross and will constantly cross the space and/or the territory of the rivals and of numerous foreign countries in their conflict. Because, the enraged contenders will continue skipping the borders, to realize their harassment punctual actions. They are of harassment because they suppose the destruction and/or the punctual abduction of persons and/or units. Without with them the operational capacity is significantly altered in the theatre or area.

The Use of Drones in the War against the Islamic Terrorists.

The drones are used in the irregular war in reconnaissance tasks and follow-up and in assault actions against small targets. The US Air Force of the Pentagon has more than 1300 pilots of drones, being employed at 13 air bases of the USA. And calculates that at end of 2015, will have around 2000 pilots of drones. Already she is training more pilots for remote-controlled planes that for the conventional flights: around 350 in 2011. From 2012 the formation is specific for them: the pilots only pass 40 hours on board of a Cessna, without flying in fighters, to pass to learn to direct a drone. The equipment in the air base for the guide and control of the drones is very simple and highly elaborated: the control or helm of the drones, several television screens, surrounded with numerous auxiliar visual indicators and controls and a pedal. Everything arranged in pairs in front to both ergonomic chairs of the pilots. The drones have cameras that transmit in live time their sights to his pilots. A deliberate observation precedes an assault. The pilot of the drone and the camera controller of the, which form a «killer team», observe to his «designated aim» during long time, verifying his environment and his activities. The assault would be realized when, for example, the possibility of not wished human hurts («collateral damages») was minimal. The plane is capable of, once caught and authorized by the pilots an aim to beating, initiating by itself the assault, but this function has never allowed it.

The reconnaissance of the enemy and his exact location, both units and commands and local chiefs, and the recognition of the operations area is an old dream of the commands of all the times, to free themselves of part of their dreads and uncertainties. Because the modern maneuvers, even at the close distances, are changeable and plastic for the rivals commands. If we add the possibility of a constant follow-up of that one, this is “honey on small leaves of cereal”. In these tasks, the capacities of the drones allow his deep insertion in the enemy territory, without any danger for the reconnaissance specialized own forces and a clear, fluid and effective transmission of the results that they catch. It might say that they are a weapon designed with fortune to fulfill the opportune missions, if his employment is reasonable, controlled and shown restraint.

Because, the use of «not crewed planes» in reconnaissance missions of the enemy, raises a problem of difficult solution for the Americans Intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. Is thought that only the CIA can be receiving daily near 2000 photographies and 2000 hours of recordings of video from his spìes «drones». And all this nonsense informative, this undue plethora of images, only can drive to the clogging of the transmission, processing and valuation channels of the information. And to the tedium and disorientation of the intermediate commands. All this, though are used powerful computers and «key images and signs» to discriminate them in the process of selection. This result only can drive to a few routine and shallow analyses in «importance content» and to a profusion of non asked reports.

That they would be late years in turning in real intelligence, because here it is necessary to think for it. That one is the confirmed and valued information for the different operational and strategic controls. That clear and sufficiently orientates them of a situation, of his probable evolutions and changes and of the own possibilities of action, in agreement with the military strategy and the operational one or the received mission. With the abuse, already it is not a question of «obtain relevant and sufficient information». But the information that is obtained is overflowing, relarge and indigestible. And it is an information that poisons and disorients all. The essential and decisive criterion, is that the efforts go to the sectors and the most sensitive and important aims of the complicated process of the massive espionage. Which allows to discriminate the gathered information with unit of criterion and respecting the Universal war principle of the saving of the means. And that, continuing proven and effective alogaritms, other aims and neutral topics are chosen and sift with a given periodicity.

The destructive capacity of the explosive charges that carry the not driven assault plane is limited in his number and in his total power. The essential characteristic of his use is that is destined to limited goals, well in his size (a small number of not very spread enemies) or in his protection (not fortified targets). Nevertheless, they are useful to beat combat armoured vehicles, included the main battle tanks, with his hollow load missiles, which attack them in their vulnerable parts or zones (tracks, roofs).

(TO BE CONTINUED)

THE MANEUVER WARFARE. THE CONCEPT OF THE MODERN AIRLAND BATTLE.

AN INTERPRETATION BY FIELDMARSCHAL ERICH VON MANSTEIN.

 

 

A little known example illustrates the omnipresent transcendence of logistics and the line of communication (more or less branched out) in operations and their final results. Between January 29 and mid-March 1943, the Soviets developed an operation called Donbass at the southwest of the Donetz. This operation forms part of what the Germans called the battle of the Donetz. And was Marschal von Manstein’s last strategic success. Which wasted by Hitler in Kursk.

 

General Nikolai Fiodorovich Vatutin, commander of the Southwest Front, created a mobile corp (under the command of general Markian Mijailovich Popov) in the Soviet Front, to exploit the break its armies had achieved at the south-east of Kharkov. The Corp was like an Army of tanks (the Soviets had five Armies of tanks in their battle order). It was integrated by 4 tanks Corps of limited capacity (3rd, 10th, 18th and 4th of the Guard), each of which was reinforced by an infantry mobile division (in trucks). For support it had the mobile Front reserve, the tanks Corps (full up) 25th and 1st of the Guard. These reserves would, at the beginning of February, pursue a exploitation direction different from that of the Popov Group. Assimilating those tactical subordination divisions into the mechanized Corps, thus making them stronger in men and heavy equipment, was hoped to compensate for the specific lack of infantry and artillery of the Soviet tanks Corps.

GENERAL VATUTIN.

Popov Group initially crossed the Donetz from a southwest direction. Its 4th Guard tanks Corp reached Krasnoarmeiskaia on the morning of February 12, after a night march of 60 kilometers from Kramatorsk. During this march, the Corp used one of its tanks brigades, the 14ª of the Guard, as an “advanced detachment”, to eliminate the “tactical rubbing” in its advance sector and thus maximize its speed of advance.

GENERAL POPOV.

On February 15, General Vatutin employed his two reserve Corps in the Pavlograd-Zaporozhe direction, towards the mouth of the river Dnepr on the Black Sea. Zaporozhe was the Headquarters for the Don German Group of Armies (this Group had been called South until February 1, 1943) and the 4th Air Fleet (led by Marshal Von Manstein and General Von Richtofen, respectively) which were located in the low Dnepr.

The efforts of the Russians were aimed at trying to reach the coast and to cut the Germans’ land communications. But the Russians also stubbornly insisted on boasting. Their supporting forces (the rest of the Armies of the southwest Front, especially the 6th infantry and 1st infantry of the Guard) were not defending the advance sectors of their mobile forces. And these forces, advancing as fast as they could toward their ideal operational-strategic aim, stretched their communications lines to the maximum. And made them increasingly vulnerable by extending its length and, thus, the coverage required by antitank and anti-aircraft weapons supported with infantry.

The Soviets acted as if the speed of reaching the objective could, by itself, unhinge the German deployment, by cutting it off from its general Order of Battle and lines of communications towards the West. In reality, they were not given full credit to their enemy’s maneuver capacity, his ability to create and improvise resources and his still relatively powerful combat capacities, especially among his mobile and crack forces, in the operational zone.

THE SUPREME SOVIET COMMANDER.

Yet much of the pressure for a rapid advance came from Stalin. Probably through the Stavka, Stalin incited Vatutin to spur on Popov and the other mobile corps. Ultimately, this led to Stalin’s disenchantment (to the point of leading him to request a peace through Swedish diplomats) when the planned operations concluded. See Gerhard L. Weinburg. A World at Arms. Cambridge, 1944.

For their part, the Germans had difficulties in containing the Soviet’s winter offensive concentrated at the south of Belgorod. In the operational strategic zone of the Don Group of Armies, the Soviet forces overcame the Germans at a proportion of 8 to 1, whereas, in the case of the German Center and North Groups of Armies, that ratio was only 4 to 1.

Von Manstein maintained a front that was 750 kilometers long with 30 divisions. This left him vulnerable to envelopment on the north flank, in a maneuver that could reverse his front or turn his forces back in his operational or strategic rear. Or his forces could be broken through by a forceful action in any zone and he would be left without sufficient available mobile forces to launch an operational strategic counterattack. It was necessary to readjust the front, anchoring it on natural obstacles; and to push back the Soviet offensives toward Kiev (north flank) and the Black Sea or the Azov Sea, creating for it the necessary mobile reserves. Hitler, probably affected by the fall of 6th Army at the end of January in Stalingrad, compromised with Manstein’s requests to yield land in order to gain safety and mobility.

IN THE COVER OF «TIME» NEWSMAGAZINE…

Thus, during the first fortnight of February, the Hollidt Army moved back from the low Donetz, following the Rostov and Tangarov route and dug in again along the river Mius, approximately 80 kilometers to the west of Rostov. The 48 panzer Corps that were in action at the east of Rostov, moved to the north of Stalino, to join the 4th panzer Army of General Hoth and to form part of the mobile counterattack force.

In the middle of February, despite Hitler’s orders to resist at any price, the SS Army Kempf (formerly Lanz) evacuated Kharkov, when its north flank was enveloped by the Soviets from the direction of Belgorod. Meanwhile, the 4th panzer Army was moving back from the low Don toward positions to Stalino’s northwest. This was a difficult march of more than fifteen days over poor road conditions and railroad connections and lines. For its part, the 1st panzer Army, formerly part of the A Group of Armies in the Caucasus, could have moved back through Rostov, thanks 4th panzer Army hold on the front in the low Donetz area. And was taking positions in a front from north-east of Stalino up to the north of the Mius river.

THE GERMAN FIELDMARSCHAL’S COMMAND BATON.

With these maneuvers the Germans left the projecting in their front formed by the Don and Donetz rivers, readjusted their defensive front and managed to create an important operational maneuver force, formed by all three mentioned armies. It is important to emphasize that the Germans were not reacting to the Russians; they were adapting to the general conditions and the forces relations existing, with the expectation that they would act positively when the opportunity arose. This is probably the secret behind their operational blow (like a scythe blow) and the operational and strategic “stunning waves” that they were to unleash on the Soviet Armies, which reached the enemy’s Supreme Commander.

On February 22, the two armored Corps (48 at the right side and the SS panzer at the left side) of the 4th panzer Army of Hoth initiated an offensive movement in the northwest direction on the communications lines of Popov Group and both independent Soviet tanks Corps of the southwest Front.

The terrain was highly favorable for using armored vehicles. Its surface was slightly wavy, allowing for extensive sight control. The narrow creeks that interlaced it were frozen.

Simultaneously there was a convergent attack by the SS Army Kempf from the west, completing the operation of the other five panzer divisions (reduced). This Army also had to prevent the advance on the Dnepr of forces from other Soviet Fronts, either around Krasnograd and Dnepropetrovsk or around Poltava and Kremenchug. This soviet attack, that was aimed at Kiev, was of a larger scope and, therefore, had scantier prospects for success before the spring thaw. The army SS Kempf had limited capacity to reject it.

It is worth emphasizing that, at the time, the 4th Air Fleet of General Richtofen enjoyed air supremacy over the operations zone and his aircraft could support the objective of cutting the enemy’s communications with up to 1,000 daily sorties.

THE FÜHRER ADOLF VISITS HIM IN ZAPOROZHE, TO CALM DOWN.

The Russian armored vehicles and truck columns were moving back toward the north and north-east at a distance of between 15 and 20 kilometers from the Germans, making them prey to the German divisional and army Corps artillery and aviation.

It was not a question of the “surrounded bag”-style operations that the Germans had carried out in 1941. The area being covered was larger, the German combat capacity (mainly based on infantry forces with artillery and antitank weapons) was scanty and the Soviet forces were elite mobile units with great fire and shock capacities. And knew the danger presented by the loss of its logistical support, at least their commands.

On February 23 both armored army Corps (the SS and 48th) of the 4th panzer Army were converging on Pavlograd. They cut the communications line of the Popov group, which was situated around Grishino, and of the 25th and 1st of the Guard tanks Corps (the mobile reserve of the Southwest Front) which were already approaching Zaporozhe, although not yet in full force. Likewise, the Germans severely struck the 6th infantry Army (at the west of Isyum), following the Front’s mobile reserve, and the 1st infantry Guard Army, which was behind the Popov group, before they cross the Donetz, moving back to their rearguard.

This temporarily liquidated the combat capacity of the Southwest front (General Vatutin). Unless that front focused on reorganizing and re-equipping itself and covering its casualties. And also tried to revive its combat morale by encouraging cohesion and retraining its units and small units.

(TO BE CONTINUED)