[The E]

NOTE: The following is just my uninformed speculation on the matter. Nothing in this post should be treated as anything more than the ramblings of an amateur.

The decision of going for AW vs MW is one that will inform everything you do, going through all the layers of your force structure. A force built on Maneuver Warfare will always emphasize quick reactions and intelligent initiative in its training and doctrine, whereas an AW force will emphasize a more conservative approach (in order to maximize the lifetime of your assets and minimize the lifetime of theirs).

As Dilmah said, neither school is wrong; it's just that there are different costs associated with each that you have to evaluate before deciding on a path.

[Dilmah G]

Indeed. The conservatism though I think is something a bit interesting to just briefly mention a bit more in-depth. AW generally does not rely upon innovation and quickly observing-orienting-deciding-acting (I'll mention OODA loops in a bit more detail later!) - it relies on superior mass in order to defeat the enemy. As a result of this, they are conservative in that respect but not always with regards to their force deployment. In the eyes of an AW commander, any tactical victory is an operational victory because they see the overall destruction of the enemy's mass as their strategy to defeating the enemy. This means that where one is possible, it is generally beneficial in their eyes to commit forces, even if it does not advance them closer to their operational goals (I'll address this more later and the disconnect that becomes visible here). This is in direct opposition to what is necessary to an MW commander, who will generally like to engage the enemy only if it brings them closer to their operational objectives.

[Killer Whale]

What is a critical vulnerability? Could someone give some more applicable examples than chess?

[The E]

A supply line, for example. If your opponent is operating in a logistics-intensive fashion (Burning fuel, ammo), then he becomes very vulnerable if you disrupt his flow of supply. While an AW strategy would concentrate on attacking the bits of the attacking force that are shooting things, a MW strategy would involve circling around the enemy in order to hit its resupply first, then wait until the attacker has exhausted its supplies. A historical example of this would be what happened to the egyptian forces during the six day war.

[NGTM-1R]

What is a critical vulnerability? Could someone give some more applicable examples than chess?

During Gulf One, the entire Iraqi air-defense network was run out of about six buildings. You probably saw them on TV, the ziggurat-like stepped structures in night vision from a stealth aircraft.

At least you saw them for a few seconds before the bomb went through a ventilation shaft. All the communications and command and control and intelligence functions necessary for Iraq to maintain control of its own airspace either passed through or were housed in those structures. Without them search radars were disconnected from units that would actually engage the enemy, aircraft in the air were blind save for what they could see themselves, and any kind of large-scale coordination was impossible. Without those six structures if the system managed to fight at all it did so like it was punch-drunk.

That's critical vulnerability. Something that if lost will severely degrade the enemy's ability to fight.

[TrashMan]

What is a critical vulnerability? Could someone give some more applicable examples than chess?

Command and control infrastructure

something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Blue_Ridge_(LCC-19)

[Dilmah G]

A good way of identifying them is to adopt the viewpoint of the enemy commander, what would paralyse him? Also worth noting that they occur at every level of warfare.

Say at the Tactical level, the COG/CV of a force is usually its leader, its supply train, or a geographical feature (we'll come to those in FS when I post up the second part). At the Operational level, they are what make an Army's position untenable, so usually its command staff (what would happen to the GTVA force in Sol if the UEF eliminated Steele? What if the Shivans nailed Petrarch? Or 3rd Fleet Command?), its supply train, geographical positions such as choke points, etc. At the Strategic level, we look at what would paralyse the actor. Leaders, capital cities, and the dominant ideology are all good places to start.

Also I have to apologise, I've got a mild-moderate peanut allergy and have made the mistake of letting my friend buy me a kebab without realising the satay sauce had peanuts, so whilst not incapacitated obviously, I may not be able to submit anymore substantive material tonight, but I'll do my best!

[niffiwan]

Just wondering it you've got anything ready for the 2nd part of discussion you referred to, I'm keen to see your views on MW in Freespace.  I read a bit more about MW and it seems that mobility is key, if you & your opponent have about the same mobility then it's quite hard to practise MW.  And in Freespace, with everywhere in-system being only a 5 min jump away, it seems that the setting would make MW difficult, until you add stuff like (BP specific) sprint drives & different jump drive recharge times, or the Shivan "enhanced understanding/control" over subspace (e.g. being able to use inter-system nodes too unstable for the GTVA).  Perhaps this is one reason for the TV war lasting 14 years?

[Dilmah G]

Hey mate, I actually have about 3/4 of it done but I haven't been able to complete and post it because I've got an exam tomorrow morning, and three more that finish on the 17th, at which point my plan is to have a few beers and then finish it up. Glad to see that there's interest in this.

I agree with your point about mobility to a large extent, but I was going to introduce the Boyd cycle in a bit more depth (OODA loops, which will probably be already familiar to you) in the second part of the discussion and the large role it plays in MW. Significance of the Boyd cycle being that if we measure a force's mobility by how fast it can Boyd cycle, it's now unlikely we'll have two evenly matched forces and forces who are conventionally mobile, i.e. their ships legitimately have greater acceleration and top speeds to our own are now restricted by that. If they can out Boyd cycle us on the tactical level (OODA faster than us), we can defeat them by Boyd cycling them at the strategic and operational levels by putting the fights on our terms where we know that we'll win. This is what we should already be doing, but if we discover that we're being Boyd-cycled at the tactical level we can be smart about what we're doing and employ positional dislocations and functional dislocations (EMPs and feint attacks) to nullify it.

I have some more detailed thoughts about the feasibility of MW in FS obviously, but I'll leave those for the second part.

[Luis Dias]

Interesting and fascinating.

I wonder how much (if anything or how radically) change technological revolutions should change these philosophical warfare strategies. Between WW1 and WW2 simple technological changes were enough to create breakthroughs in warfare strategies (something that cost the French a hard lesson), and such things kept on changing henceforth, from ICBM's, all the cold war MAD strategies, smart missiles, drone wars and so on and so on.

So no matter how interesting all this is, I think it needs a really deep iterative process of continuous creative destruction in the form of we discussing how **** should go within the scope of subspace jumps, nodes, being on top of planets, and so many other things. Of course, BP already made a lot of interesting rethinking about this, but I wonder if we couldn't go a lot further.

[Dilmah G]

I plan to deal with your last paragraph there, noting that MW as a strategy is much more philosophical than say, a concrete 'do this x when y' checklist of how to fight war, so it may not be as specific as some people would like in addressing the FSverse, but it can certainly provide a platform to make a lot of interesting comments about FS warfare. I can't say more without giving away the conclusion of the second part!

I think the French example is an interesting one and ties into MW quite well, because the Wehrmacht during that point in time practiced what was more of less the purest application of MW one had seen in recent times. In fact, German Officer training is very interesting to study from a British or American perspective because it is so focused on MW and has consistently done so WELL since WWI, to the point where some literature published regarding training comparisons made between the US military and the German military has been accused of 'deifying' the Bundeswehr. The Blitzkrieg in essence is was an MW affair - the Wehrmacht well and truly out Boyd-cycled the French and British (and everyone else), and did so through penetrating weaknesses to reach the enemy vulnerabilities.

In this sense, I think MW as a philosophy is an enduring one in warfare, because you can fundamentally describe it as out-acting, and out-thinking the enemy, and this is what warfare, provided you haven't lost all of your assets, will always come down to.

This'll make more sense after Part 2, believe me.

[Dilmah G]

My last exam is 9 o'clock tomorrow morning and I've got most of the second part written up, which should hopefully be done by Tuesday!

[niffiwan]

Good luck with that exam!

[Dilmah G]

It's actually on 'Strategy, Diplomacy, and Conflict', so I'm trying to justify this as study.

[Veers]

Consider it justified! 

[Luis Dias]

This'll make more sense after Part 2, believe me.

It already does! and I am looking forward to your next instalment.

As an aside, there's this chess game that can't get out of my head while I was pondering this subject. The game was the first game in the 1997 rematch between Kasparov and Deep Blue, where Kasparov sticks his pieces to the first three rows for almost half of the game, avoiding direct confrontation and thus confusing the machine. Then, a sudden straight attack in the right flank gives Kasparov the opening to put two friggin pawns up, shattering his formation and eventually the game. Endulge me and look at that game, it's full of "maneuver warfare" .

[Bullhorn]

MW requires something badly lacking from FS2 tactics - Concentration of Force.

GTVA tactics and strategy are incredibly unsound - high value targets like destroyers are not surrounded by anything like the force protection of modern Carrier Groups. Cruisers never travel, manoeuvre or attack in division. Destroyers never fight together,  with one providing CSP (combat space patrol) for the two while the other launches massed attacks.

MW is impossible if you fight like the WW2 French Army.

Bh

[The E]

Consider the specific peculiarities of the FS universe.

Point 1: All points in a system are, for practical purposes, equidistant. There are no front lines and no rear areas as modern strategic thinking defines the terms; once the enemy has broken past the defenses at the jump node, he is free to maneuver in an unimaginably vast area of space.

Point 2: Concentrating your force, paradoxically, makes it more vulnerable, as there is a period of several minutes after a jump during which the jumping ship is effectively immobilized on a strategic scale, with its best form of defense unavailable.

Point 3: The menu of deployment options favours the defender, as he is able to picket his vulnerable points and able to concentrate his forces at a moment's notice should the enemy decide to attack any single one.

On a strategic level, combat then becomes a game of action and reaction, the attacker trying to force the defender away from certain positions and the defender trying to commit enough forces to battle to achieve a defeat in detail while not uncovering critical positions.

As mentioned upthread, a lot of this thinking is what is behind the actions of the GTVA in BP, based on our idea that the GTVA in FS1 and FS2 was operating on a "needs must when the devil drives" basis, rather than established doctrine, and made sure that that would not repeat itself here.

[General Battuta]

All good points, though in Bullhorn's favor the BP GTVA does escort its destroyers heavily and use multiple air wings in concert.

[MatthTheGeek]

GTVA escorts its Hecates heavily because they need it. I don't believe they allocate as much forces to the defence of TEI destroyers.