Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq sic-1
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Missions
Missions for a mounted corps are normally either terrain or force oriented. The corps will take certain actions principally to occupy or defend terrain, or else they will take other actions principally to defeat or destroy enemy forces. These types of missions are not mutually exclusive, but they are fundamentally different. In NATO, for example, VII Corps had the mission of defending NATO territory. To do that they had to defeat any enemy force that came into their area… and maybe even attack to throw such a force out. But the main aim was preservation of territory. Defeat or destruction of the enemy force was a means to that end. Theoretically, if no enemy had come into their area, they could have gone elsewhere to help someone else. In the offense, terrain orientation means that you want possession of what is called key terrain. If you have key terrain and deny it to the enemy, that will contribute to the defeat of the enemy by giving you positions of advantage. Many times, of course, the enemy has the same appreciation of key terrain that you do and will do his best to occupy it or fight you for it. In that case, you'll have to attack that enemy force in order to occupy or otherwise control the ground. Korea was a good example of terrain orientation on the 38th Parallel. After Chinese intervention and the beginnings of armistice talks, UN forces attacked to gain ground that would put them on or above the 38th Parallel and thus restore the original Korean status quo. In the Gulf War, XVIII Corps had a terrain orientation to interdict Highway 8, in order to prevent Iraqi forces from reinforcing from Baghdad or escaping the Kuwaiti theater to Baghdad. Their mission was to get to Highway 8 fast. Enemy forces were a target only as they got in the way of interdicting Highway 8. Since in fact few enemy forces stood in their way, and since their terrain orientation gave them a fixed geographic spot to reach, measuring how fast they traveled from their start point to Highway 8 made eminent sense.
Force orientation is another matter. In a force-oriented mission your essential task is to aim your force at the enemy force in a posture and in a direction that allows you to accomplish your mission at least cost to your troops. Except that it must be negotiated to get to the enemy, terrain is not of much consequence. Sometimes that is a real problem, requiring considerable effort in the use of bridges and limited road networks, and in bad weather. A mission to conduct a force-oriented attack is time- and space-independent until the commander assigns an area within which to conduct the mission and then adds time or distance constraints if they are required. Though you will have to cover space in order to close with and defeat or destroy the enemy force you are aiming at, your orientation does not directly depend on how fast you go or on the physical distances you cover. In other words, unless your mission requires specific time parameters, you focus on the enemy and operate at the speed and over the distances that allow you to defeat or destroy him. A further priority is to retain physical cohesion and protection of your own force, so that when you strike the enemy you do it with all the advantages to your side. Normally, the enemy force is either stationary in known locations or capable of moving. Thus you are not quite sure where they will be when you reach them.
Because of the greater number of variables involved, aiming your own moving force at a moving enemy force, and hitting it, is the height of skill required in maneuver warfare. Some sports analogies — such as open field tackling or blocking on a screen pass — come to mind. But with a corps you are not talking about a few players on either side but about tens of thousands of vehicles and aircraft. Not only must each of these change direction and speed, but — to generate focused combat power — each of them must also remain in the right physical relationship to the others. Since battles and engagements in land warfare are usually decided by destruction of the enemy, it is vital for you to maneuver the various parts of your force to positions where they can either do that or threaten to do it, and thus cause the enemy to quit or go away. So where you position your tanks, artillery, intelligence collectors, and logistics all determines how much physical combat power or firepower you will be able to focus on the enemy. Thus, even as the two forces are in motion relative to each other, you are looking hard at the capability of your own forces and their disposition, while judging the capability and disposition of enemy forces. Because there is no fixed target to aim your force at when the enemy is moving, after you find him, you try to fix him. The art in this is to make your final commitment to a direction of attack and an organization of your forces that will hit the enemy at a time and place that will result in fixing him at a relative disadvantage, or so that the enemy cannot adjust to your attack in your chosen configuration and direction. Then your troops outfight him and you win.
The success of a force-oriented mission is achieved by the defeat or destruction of the enemy force, as measured against your own losses, within the time you are given, if that is a criterion. The success of a terrain-oriented mission is judged by the occupation of the ground, again within whatever time you are given, if that is a criterion. When comparing unit performance to the sole standard of the amount of ground covered in a given period, the unit with a force-oriented mission will always come out second best.
A mounted corps moving and aimed at a moving enemy force can put itself into any number of configurations on the ground. When you are certain the enemy will be at a place and time and in a known configuration, you can commit your own forces early to the exact attack formation you want and leave them that way. When the enemy is less predictable and has a few options still available to him, then you want to move initially in a balanced formation, and commit to your final attack scheme as late as possible. You want your own forces to be able to execute, but you don't want to give your enemy time to react. That is a matter of judgment and a — much misunderstood — art form that takes much skill, brains, intuition, and practice to develop well. It is the essence of senior-level tactical decision making. To commit to an attack maneuver prematurely is to give the enemy time to react. To commit too late is to prevent your own forces from accomplishing the maneuver.
Principles
A commander will also pay attention to traditional military principles.
The principles of war — so called — were derived late in the nineteenth century, but they are still applicable today. They usually characterize any successful operation. They are:
• Mass—physical and firepower concentration on the decisive point;
• Maneuver—ability to gain position advantage over the enemy;
• Surprise—gaining advantage by achieving the unexpected in time, location, numbers, technology, or tactics;
• Security—protection of your own force from the enemy and from other factors, such as accidents and sickness;
• Simplicity—making operations as concise and precise as possible;
• Objective—focus on what is important while avoiding distractions;
• Offensive—gaining and maintaining the initiative over the enemy, usually by attacking;
• Economy of force—using smaller forces—"economizing" — where possible, in order to leave larger forces for the main effort; and
• Unity of command—one commander in charge of each major operation.
During Desert Storm as VII Corps commander, Fred Franks constantly checked his own thinking against these rules to see if he was violating any of them. (Violating them is OK and even called for at times, but you must consciously know you are doing it and why.)
Other principles a commander must consider are the elements of combat power: firepower, maneuver, leadership, and protection. And he must understand further that combat power is situational, relative, and reversible. In other words, you can bring your own combat power to bear on the enemy and enjoy an advantage, but you have to be aware that the advantage is not absolute, does not last forever (the enemy can react and usually does), and depends on a particular situation and a particular enemy force. Situations can change rapidly to your disadvantage. The German surprise attack in the Ardennes in World War II was immediately successful,
but after the Allies adjusted to the surprise, they inflicted a crushing defeat on attacking German forces. To put this another way, war will always involve risk and hazard.
In this connection, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, one of the masters of maneuver warfare and battle command, liked to make a distinction between taking risks and taking gambles: With a risk, if it doesn't work, you have the means to recover from it. With a gamble, if it doesn't work, you do not. You hazard the entire force. Normally, to succeed you must take risks. On occasion you have to make a gamble. Because of the extreme difficulty of the maneuver, Franks's decision during Desert Storm to turn VII Corps east ninety degrees and attack at night with three divisions on line was a risk. But the greater risk was to allow the Iraqi defense more time and to fail to use superior U.S. night-fighting capabilities. His decision the first night to halt major ground offensive movement, on the other hand, was a gamble. If the Iraqis discovered it, they could have attacked with chemicals or positioned the RGFC more skillfully to defend against the VII Corps attack and caused more casualties. The greater gamble was getting the corps strung out, causing piecemeal commitment against RGFC units 100 kilometers away. After balancing the vulnerabilities, Franks made his decision. No choices for commanders in war are free of degrees of risk or gamble. Often you must choose between difficult or even bad alternatives.
Just as in any profession, military professionals use precise terms for economy and precision of language. A few of these terms are worth mentioning.
• Center of gravity is a term first used by Clausewitz to designate the source or characteristic from which the enemy derives his power and which should be your aim in your attack. General Schwarzkopf rightly named the RGFC as the center of gravity in the Kuwaiti theater of operations, because the Republican Guards represented the power that permitted the Iraqis to continue to occupy Kuwait and threaten them in the future.
• Culminating point is the limit reached by an attacking force beyond which it is without power to continue or to defend itself in the face of a determined enemy attack. At its culminating point, an attacking force is literally "exhausted." At El Alamein in 1942, Rommel's Afrika Korps had gone past its culminating point.
At the start of an attack, you are at the peak of your power or strength. You know that in time you will be weakened by your own physical actions and by what the enemy does. The art of command is to husband that strength for the right time and the right place. You want to conduct your attack in such a way that you do not spend all your energy before you reach the decisive point. You want to stay at sustained hitting power for as long as you can. If your main objective is at some distance from your starting point, then you want to pace your maneuver toward your objective so that when you reach it, you will be able to sustain your hitting power long enough to finish the enemy. The ability to do that is a function of both physical and human factors, and commanders must pay attention to both.
• Deliberate attacks are conducted when you need time to get your forces arrayed and the possibility of surprising the enemy is low.
• Hasty attacks are normally conducted when it is better to attack than to wait — when waiting longer would give the enemy a better chance to defend. In Desert Storm, except for the breach, which was a deliberate attack, VII Corps units conducted mainly hasty attacks.
• Pursuit is a form of tactical offense. You conduct a pursuit when all or most enemy resistance is broken, the enemy is attempting to flee the battlefield, and you want to prevent his escape. Since Desert Storm, there has been a hot controversy over whether VII Corps was in pursuit or attack during the first three days of the battle (24 to 27 February). The evidence shows that they were in attack until 27 February, when much of the Iraqi resistance was broken. But most of at least two divisions in VII Corps (1st and 3rd Armored) were in hasty attacks right up to the cease-fire.
Maneuver Theories
In attack problem solving — bringing his corps to the right place at the right time in the right combination of units, with his soldiers in the right condition — a corps commander must try to see (in his mind's eye or on a map) the current situation (his own and the enemy's), envision what the future situation must look like to accomplish his mission, then figure out how to move from one state to the other at least cost to his troops, communicate that in clear, precise, concise language and by sketches on maps, and finally command the physical execution of the maneuver. In short, attacking requires what the U.S. Army Infantry School taught Fred Franks a long time ago: "Find, fix, and finish the enemy." Conducting an attack has an intellectual or continuing problem-solving dimension as well as physical and human dimensions.
Successful attack problem solving is a combination of art, science, and years of education, training, and experience. VII Corps had more than fifteen major subordinate units, each with from 500 to 8,000 vehicles. With that many moving parts, there are many opportunities for chance and friction to interfere with plans. Orchestrating such a massively complex organization through even the simplest of maneuvers (the VII Corps attack maneuver in Desert Storm was anything but simple) involves both constant problem solving and raw brute-force physical execution. Knowing how and when to execute the maneuver involves picturing all those moving parts in your mind and having the latest intelligence on the enemy. Then all of your units need skill, hard physical work, teamwork, and discipline, in order to execute the maneuver, in both daylight and darkness.
A mounted corps uses as its instruments of destruction its armored and mechanized divisions with their carefully put-together punch of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and attack aviation. They are the heavyweights. The commander works out how to put the maximum of that power onto the enemy in the shortest possible time. He uses the rest of the corps to reinforce his heavyweight punch. That is the physical. The human dimension rests with his soldiers. They alone bring this awesome physical combat power to its full potential. What is the human dimension? It is the quality of their training and the competence of their small-unit leadership. It is their courage and toughness. It is their motivation to accomplish the mission. It is also their mental and physical state. To the extent you can, you want your soldiers and leaders in such a mental and physical state when they hit the enemy that they are relatively fresh and can sustain the momentum of their attack until the enemy is destroyed.
When the enemy fights back and a battle ensues, adjustments are necessary. That is the essence of fighting. In the midst of these demands, soldiers and small-unit leaders must keep their heads and execute. Leaders must very quickly decide whether to stay the course or adjust. In the face of all this, all soldiers need physical toughness, perseverance, and an iron will. It is a matter of the mind and of the human spirit. Commanders have to influence both.
The forms of maneuver available to the corps to attack an enemy force are well known:
• Penetration—normally an attack on a very narrow front by a concentrated force to rupture an opening in a set enemy defense;
• Infiltration—normally passing through small friendly units by stealth into the enemy's rear, then turning on the enemy from there;
• Envelopment, either single or double—taking your force around one end or both ends of an enemy formation and then either attacking the enemy from the side or bypassing him to reach other objectives;
• Turning movement—a movement around the end of an enemy defense designed to force the enemy to turn out of his defense to face you from a different direction; and
• Frontal attack—usually the most costly maneuver; in a frontal attack, you attack directly into a prepared enemy position, normally seeking to defeat it by weight of numbers and firepower.
In a particular attack, the corps might be in one form of maneuver and the divisions of the corps in another. When VII Corps turned ninety degrees east early on 26 February 1991, the corps itself was executing a turning movement, while the divisions of the corps were executing an envelopment.
Selectio
n of one of these forms of maneuver also involves command preference. "If called on to fight, my preference has always been for use of overwhelming force," Franks says. "My combat experience in Vietnam and in thousands of training exercises has convinced me to crush the enemy force and not sting him. In Desert Storm, I did not want to poke at him with separate fingers; I wanted to smash him with a fist (we even named one of our phase lines "smash"). I've said this before. I'll say it again: Get the enemy down and then finish him off. Get him by the throat and don't let go until he is finished. Go for the jugular, not the capillaries… That thinking influenced my selection of tactics and maneuver options."
Depth
Depth of the battle space is a vital element on any modern battlefield. As weapons gain longer reach and become increasingly lethal, formations on land are tending to grow smaller and more dispersed. A similar process has gone on in the air and at sea. It's doubtful that we'll ever see again anything like the massed air and sea armadas of World War II. The developments on the ground allow an army commander to use more and more of the battle space to focus his combat power simultaneously on more and more of a given enemy force. Such capabilities require a senior tactical commander to look ahead in time two to three days, and in distance normally 150 to 200 kilometers.
He must, in short, consider the battle space in depth. During the Cold War, the echelonment doctrine of Soviet and Soviet-style forces — waves of attacking echelons that ultimately overwhelm a defender by attrition at the point of attack — made it necessary to consider depth. If the defender did not attack follow-on echelons at the same time he was defending against attacking echelons, he would soon be overwhelmed. Even after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, a corps commander in today's battlefield environment must see the battle space given him to accomplish his mission as three dimensional. It has width, depth, and airspace above it. Within that bounded area, the corps decides where, when, and in what priority to continually apply its own combat power (as well as that temporarily available from air-and sea-based forces) to accomplish the mission it has been given.