MINDSET: National Styles in Warfare and the Operational Level of Planning, Conduct and Analysis

摘要

Although the balance of deployable forces has shifted against the United States in almost every category of military power, the American style of warfare has not adjusted to the great change. By and large, tactics on land, at sea and in the air remain those of attrition, where the aim is to reduce cumulatively the strength of the enemy by the efficient application of firepower in all its forms. The attrition style of war has the fatal defect of virtually ensuring defeat if its presumption of an overall materiel superiority is not fulfilled. Relational-maneuver in war at the operational level (e.g. the classic Blitzkrieg of 1939-1942) is not efficient since in order to maximize disruptive effects units integrity, logistic neatness as well as the maximization of firepower lethality are all sacrificed to achieve surprise, shock, and fluid opportunism (in tactical action) and above all to maintain the momentum on which all maneuver depends. It follows that the relational-maneuver style of warfare cannot be pursued by managerial means and by the managerially minded. There is no doubt that attrition methods are more congenial to the American military culture and there is no doubt that they are more reliable, but in the present state of the U.S.-Soviet balance of military forces overall they are apt to guarantee defeat.