I felt like actually contributing to the FS side of the forum for once, and so as a result I've decided that I should post my thoughts on space combat operations in the FSverse and see what you guys think. This is just the first part, but I'd like to see what you guys think about it. Those interested in the BPverse as well may also be interested to use my ramblings (mostly based upon my crude understanding of Maneuver Warfare as explained by Robert Leonhard) as a basis from which to examine the conduct of the GTVA and the UEF in BP. Knowing me, I'll probably get lazy at some point, but if you guys enjoy what I'm writing I may post up a bit more.
So what follows, more specifically, will be my explanation of Maneuver Warfare and how it can be applied in the FSverse. The explanations in the first part are a bit thin now but I plan to give them some more meat soon. The level of control and polish of the essay is also fairly low, but again, will come around to this later. My number one priority is to tie this to the FSUniverse as soon as possible.
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Maneuver Warfare in the Freespace Universe: Part One
This essay will begin by introducing the concept of Maneuver Warfare as one which competes with Attrition Warfare as a strategy for winning wars, and will make the case for it being the strategy of choice for Terran Officers. Following this will be an application of Maneuver Warfare principles to the conduct of space warfare as it occurs in Freespace. This establishment of Maneuver Warfare in space will be used as a foundation from which to discuss how warfare can in future be conducted by navies in a way that is congruent with the principles of Maneuver Warfare, and this will conclude the essay.
Warfare: Maneuver and Attrition
War, as put by prominent military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, 'is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will'. For the purposes of discussing this within the universe of Freespace, this essay will clarify this to 'is sustained, coordinated violence between different political organisations.' Fundamentally, though, Clausewitz has established why organisations go to war: to make an actor do what the initiating actor wants, and the method of achieving this in war is by defeating them.
As a result, all strategy must be focused fundamentally on defeat.
Defeat is the act of winning over someone in a contest, but in the practice of warfare it is prudent to describe this also as a psychological phenomenon. That is to say that defeat is something that an individual feels. In the context of a battle, a commander can defeat her enemy by making her enemy think that they have been defeated. The use of deception, whether by use of a cavalry charge to scare her into defeat, repeated attacks in the rear to make him think that his position is untenable, and even simple propaganda are all actions designed to cause the psychological phenomenon of defeat in the enemy without the destruction of their mass being such that they can no longer achieve their objectives. It is the provocation of defeat as a psychological phenomenon that Maneuver Warfare primarily concerns itself with.
To establish this further, this essay will introduce the competing concepts of Centre-of-Gravity.
Clausewitz introduced the concept, describing it as the source of a force's strength, upon whose destruction will allow for their defeat. He also wrote that this was where the mass was concentrated the most densely, and that the most effective blow against this was one struck by one's own centre-of-gravity. Thus, war is a contest of strength against strength, and it is this conception of CoG that underlies Attrition Warfare, which is fundamentally defeat by destruction of the enemy's mass.
Maneuver Warfare advocates such as Leonhard and William S. Lind have proposed an alternate interpretation, where a force's CoG is its Critical Vulnerability. A CV is a point, person, or otherwise, whose acting upon by the friendly force will paralyse the enemy force. Leonhard best explains this using Chess, and this essay will employ that explanation to further articulate the differences.
Under Attrition Warfare, a force's CoG is the enemy Queen. It is the strongest piece on the board, and its destruction will surely result in the enemy's defeat as a result of the reduction of the greatest part of their strength, their CoG. Under Maneuver Warfare, however, it is the enemy King. His destruction results in an instant defeat of the enemy, and he is their CV.
Maneuver Warfare, subsequently, is concerned primarily with the destruction of enemy CVs in order to produce the most economical victory. To do this, Maneuver Warfare employs three primary tactics, ranked in order of priority:
1. Pre-emption.
A Maneuver Warfare commander's number one option should be to defeat the enemy before she is ready. If the commander's force strikes the enemy's CV before he has had time to act, victory is most economical.
2. Dislocation.
Dislocation, fundamentally, is rendering the enemy's strength irrelevant. This can be accomplished positionally, by moving the decisive point away from an enemy force, or functionally, by rendering the enemy's strength irrelevant by virtue of exploiting or creating a weakness. An example of this is the use of combined arms: their employment presents to the enemy an 'unsolvable dilemma' if correctly executed. Employing infantry and air forces against tanks means that the tank's strength of being able to accurately employ highly destructive ordnance in open country has been rendered irrelevant, because air forces prevent the tank's passage in open country, but this can be countered by operating in close country where ordnance cannot be precisely employed from the air; infantry, however, are highly effective in close country and easily able to ambush tanks. Thus the tanks are presented with an 'unsolvable dilemma'.
3. Disruption.
Disruption is targeted action through an enemy weakness to reach their CV. Key to this is the concept of 'Gaps and Surfaces'. A good attack, according to Sun Tzu, functions like water: it avoids surfaces and moves through gaps. The two widely practiced methods of executing this are called the 'Command Push' and the 'Recon Pull', and they take the bulk of their foundation from Soviet and German military art respectively.
The Command Push is predicated on the preselection of a point along the enemy's Forward Line of Troops for a weakness to be created or already exploited. This is facilitated by good reconnaissance and intelligence preparation of the battlefield, and is usually planned and executed at the Division level and above. Upon good intelligence and planning, a Command Push is able to employ a high degree of momentum in order to exploit the weakness and disrupt the enemy.
This is contrasted with the Recon Pull, which is where the force commander will rely on the 'force' of his force, that is, their acceleration as opposed to their velocity to find and then exploit gaps. The Recon Pull relies upon recon forces discovering the gaps and then communicating their location to the rest of the force, who by virtue of their superior acceleration will be able to reposition to the gap and then exploit it. This tactic demands a high degree of initiative and competence at the junior levels of command as opposed to senior, which is a great difference that lends it better to some force cultures more than others.
