The Evolution of Maneuver Warfare

With a better understanding of the larger context into which maneuver warfare fits, we now turn to history. You will, no doubt, recognize many of the names that follow; what may be less readily apparent is why they have stood the test of time. But understanding why and seeing how maneuver warfare has evolved over time are, in our estimation, crucial to the process of distilling it into a set of problem-solving techniques and leadership lessons that can be applied in business.

Armed conflict between opposing groups is as old as humanity itself, and as long as war has existed, military leaders have endeavored to develop innovative tactics and methods to defeat their adversaries. Maneuver warfare s emergence is a direct result of this process. Only after many centuries did it develop into a fully articulated doctrine, but in the past sixty-five years its evolution has accelerated so dramatically that it now occupies a preeminent place in military thought.

Elements of maneuver warfare first appeared in the tactics employed by the ancient Greeks, who pioneered the use of unbalanced formations to attack opponents weaknesses, and in the writings of Chinese General Sun Tzu. In the Art of War , written around 500 b.c., Sun Tzu prescribed a series of distracting tactics ”the cheng ”and rapid, calculated moves, the ch i, that pitted strength against weakness to achieve a decisive outcome. Indeed Sun Tzu epitomized maneuver warfare when he suggested that the best victories were achieved when the enemy realized he was defeated and simply did not offer battle.

Sixteen centuries later, Genghis Khan led his Mongol hordes halfway around the globe and nearly conquered the known world. No army could match the blistering speed of his highly skilled, entirely horse-mounted forces, and no commander could match his use of communications ”a sophisticated system of swift messengers and signal flags ”to react to and shape events as they unfolded. Genghis Khan repeatedly used these advantages to seize the initiative from opponents and dictate the terms of battle. Equally effective was his masterful use of arrows, javelins, and even Chinese firecrackers and his employment of diversionary tactics to disrupt opponents cohesion.

The next major wave of innovation in maneuver warfare hit eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. In the eighteenth century, the Prussians pioneered the use of mission orders , which maximized flexibility and speed by stating broadly what needed to be accomplished and leaving completion of the task at hand to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of subordinate leaders. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the legendary French general Napol on Bonaparte repeatedly achieved decisive victories by splitting his forces in the face of a larger enemy and unexpectedly bringing overwhelming might to bear on his opponent s weakest point at the most opportune moment.

In World War I, the Germans pioneered a new type of attack ”infiltration ”to break the stalemate created by the conventional tactics of trench warfare: once highly skilled scout units had identified weak points in enemy lines and had penetrated far behind enemy strong points, large reinforcements immediately followed. Complementing this unique decentralized approach was the use of mission orders, a Prussian legacy, to preserve maximum flexibility during the attack. The initial successes of these innovative tactics, coupled with the sting of eventual defeat at the hands of the Allies, prompted the Germans to develop an entirely new, sophisticated approach to combat after the war.

The first broadly disseminated articulations of this new approach ”widely regarded as maneuver warfare s modern conceptual foundation ”appeared in 1937 with the publication of Attacks by German military officer Erwin Rommel, later known as the Desert Fox, and with the publication of Achtung-Panzer! by Heinz Guderian, another well-known German military officer. These two master tacticians advocated a radically new approach to combat: fast-moving, decentralized forces that deeply penetrated an enemy s rear area at breakneck speed, disrupted his balance, and prevented him from using his reserve forces.

This last point is critically important: in World War I the time needed for an attacker to exploit an initial advantage was so long, and consolidation of gains so slow, that the enemy nearly always had time to bring up reserves from behind the lines and plug any gap created by the attacker. Thus, even if the attacker achieved breakthrough , an initial tactical advantage, he seldom converted it into breakout , a momentum-shifting strategic advantage. Achieving breakout by exploiting gains before the enemy had time to respond was the aim of this new approach to warfare.

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a major contribution to modern maneuver warfare theory and several landmark victories that validated the viability of maneuver warfare as a modern combat philosophy. U.S. Air Force colonel John Boyd s contention that conflict could be understood in terms of OODA loops ”time-competitive cycles of observing, orienting , deciding, and acting ”brought considerable focus on relative decision-making speed as a key determinant of success in combat. And resounding victories by modern practitioners of maneuver warfare ”notably the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, MacArthur at Inchon in 1950, the Israelis in the 1967 War, and the Coalition Forces in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 ”all proved that maneuver warfare theory was devastatingly effective when applied in practice.

The latest in this long line of practitioners of what we now know as maneuver warfare is the United States Marine Corps, which has long prided itself on being at the leading edge of tactical innovation. Ever since its first landing on the beach at Nassau, Bahamas, during the Revolutionary War in 1776, the Marine Corps has continuously refined the doctrine of amphibious ship-to-shore attacks. In the 1930s and 1940s the Marines were among the first Allied aviators to provide close air support to troops on the ground by dropping bombs or strafing with machine guns at low altitudes. In the 1950s the Marines pioneered the use of the helicopter to support and transport ground forces, thereby revolutionizing mobility and operations on the battlefield.

But not until the late 1980s, under the guidance of General Gray, did senior Marine leaders come to the realization that their organization needed to rethink how it approached armed conflict. A perennially underfunded and undermanned organization, the Marine Corps would once again have to do more with less. Defense drawdowns in the wake of the cold war threatened to further erode its budget and manpower levels. But as America s 9-1-1 Force in Readiness, Marines would continue to be called on to face more heavily equipped foes in unfamiliar and distant locales. With the publication of Warfighting in 1989, the Marines ”once a devil -be- damned , charge-up-the-middle outfit ” formally adopted maneuver warfare as doctrinal philosophy.