Maneuver Warfare Today

The maneuver warfare philosophy, tailor-made for a smaller, lighter force with limited resources, is particularly well suited to today s combat environment. Traditional battle lines have blurred. Weapons have become incredibly accurate and, therefore, extremely lethal. Communications advances have increased the flow of information on the battlefield, often to the point of overload, and have created a new dimension in armed conflict ”electronic warfare. Speed and distance in engagements have increased. Multinational coalition warfare has become common practice. Entirely new types of low-intensity conflicts have emerged ”in countries such as Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan ”where the identities of amorphous enemies are increasingly difficult to distinguish, rules of engagement restrict available alternatives, media scrutiny is intense , and the liability of collateral damage has heightened. Accompanying all of this change are the enduring constants of human fear, exhaustion, and confusion, as well as exogenous factors such as unforeseeable contingencies and unpredictable weather. Indeed the pressure to make sound and timely decisions in armed conflict has never been greater.

As you can surely attest, the pressure to make sound and timely decisions in business is also greater than it has ever been. To guide and improve your decision making amid friction, uncertainty, fluidity , and disorder and to show you how you can use maneuver warfare to lead your organization in the modern business environment, we dedicate the remainder of this book to examining, in great detail, maneuver warfare s seven guiding principles and enabling leadership prescriptions.

But first, to set the stage, we offer in the coming chapter the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. In this textbook example of maneuver warfare, an undermanned, resource-constrained force achieved an overwhelmingly decisive victory against a numerically superior opponent in a minimal amount of time and with a minimal loss of human life. This is not a story about the U.S. Marines, but you can bet that the Marines have studied it extensively and have emulated many of the practices that made the Israelis successful in this war. We hope you will find it ”and the detailed review of the Israelis actions in Chapter 3 ”equally enlightening.