About theories and their application in general

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I did recently mention the concept of accidental guerrillas; the idea that killing one wrong person spawns multiple new enemies.A commenter stated that he doesn't believe in this theory because the Taliban would have spawned way too many enemies pre-2001 if it was correct.Well, this touches on a very general problem; people have misunderstandings about how to apply theories (or non-scientific attempts to explain what's happening).Many scientific theories look at an issue from one angle, on one spot and make a correct statement with very limited applicability. The correctness depends on the correct conditions. A neutron can split an atom, but it has to be the right kind of atom, and the neutron's energy needs to be right as well. Newton's mechanics apply, but only at non-relativistic speeds. Certain theories about an optimal currency area are valuable, but only if labour is really mobile. A drug may cure a disease, but only so if the bacteria isn't resistant yet.In this case, the "accidental guerilla" explanation seems to be valid for the 2001-2011 time frame of the Western occupation of Afghanistan, but incorrect for the previous Taliban rule.Why? Well, the Taliban ruled under different conditions. The Hama option was feasible and valuable for them and an effective counter to the accidental guerilla problem, but to us it would be a perversion and has a negative value. Different circumstances - different dominant approaches - different outcomes.This is of course also applicable to my attempts to contribute to military theory (one of the things that differentiate this blog from almost all other MilBlogs). All but the most general theories apply only under certain circumstances in (hopefully well-defined) cases. Sometimes it's even up to other theories to define the limits of a given theory. That's how science and much else advances in the Western World; by incremental improvements coupled with a readiness of at least some people to accept the complicated or complex nature of their field of interest.
S O
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Comment

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This is a great opportunity to declare victory and get out of the mess without losing (much) face..

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Draft for German security policy: discussion parts (13) to (16)

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Comments and discussion on:

(13) Intervention without an alliance obligation
(14) Geographical orientation of the Bundeswehr
(15) Focus on potential for quick force expansion
(16) Protection of maritime trade
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More on horizontal cooperation

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This is a quote from chapter V.1 of the book "Blitzkrieg-Legende" about the France campaign 1940:

Am Morgen gelang der endgültige Durchbruch durch die Hügelkette westlich des Ardennenkanals, wo die Franzosen einen letzten Versuch unternommen hatten, den Brückenkopf von Sedan abzuriegeln. Von da an drangen die Panzerverbände fast ungehindert nach Western vor. Inzwischen war der sogenannten "operativen Führungsebene" längst das Heft des Handelns entglitten. Die Panzerwaffe führte sich vielmehr selbst. Bezeichnend hierfür ist eine Episode, die sich [...] an diesem Tag auf dem Marktplatz von Montcornet abspielte. Hier trafen General Guderian und Generalmajor Kempf aufeinander, dessen 6. Panzerdivision eigentlich dem Panzerkorps Reinhardt unterstand. Beide Generale beglückwünschten sich gegenseitig zu ihrem Erfolg, dann begannen sie, die durcheinander geratenen Kolonnen zu entwirren, und verteilten untereinander die Vormarschstraßen für den weiteren Angriff. Dies wäre eigentlich die Aufgabe des Generals v. Kleist gewesen.

Map of the first phase of the Westfeldzug
1940. Montcornet is in the southern part of the red area.I have only the German edition,so I guess my translation has to suffice:

The final breakthrough through the ridge-line west of the Ardennes canal succeeded, where the French had for a last time attempted to contain the bridgehead of Sedan. From there the armoured formations advanced almost without resistance westwards. In the meantime, the so-called "operational level of command" had long ago lost control. The armoured forces rather led themselves. Symptomatic for this was an episode which happened on this day on the market place of Montcornet. General Guderian and Major-General Kempf coincidentally met there. Kempf's 6th armoured division was assigned to the armoured corps Reinhardt. Both generals congratulated each other for their success, then they began to disentangle the marching columns and distributed among each other the further routes of advance. This was in actual fact the task of the General v. Kleist [Guderian's superior].

This is a historical example for what I attempted to push more into the spotlight in previous posts already: Less vertical control by superior, more horizontal cooperation. This is obviously totally opposed to the U.S. emphasis on "synchronization" that dominated military thinking in the 90's and helped a lot (together with Air-Land Battle thinking) to create the fetish about information superiority.Officers with suitable training and thinking do cooperate instead of compete or even attempt a free ride in challenges. The horizontal cooperation happens between the best-informed minds available for coordination. There's no need to inform a higher staff in detail about a fluid situation as for coordination. Few if any plans agreed on in horizontal coordination will be outdated before implementation.Let's have a theoretical example:A1 and A2 have a common superior in A. Their opponent is B and the best chance for success is a joint attack at the same time from different directions on B.Vertical coordination (synchronisation) would require A to know about the positions of A1, A2 and B and to guess the near-future movements of B correctly. It would order an attack at a given time from two given positions on B. B could ruin the whole plan by dodging the whole with movement because the process is slow.Horizontal cooperation would only require A1 and A2 to understand the situation and to stay in contact till both have manoeuvred into a good position and are ready for attack at the same time. Then they agree to attack immediately to exploit the opportunity. This attack cannot happen too late or too early unless they misunderstood the situation - a circumstance that would affect vertical coordination the in same way.
It's similar to two men carrying heavy furniture up some stairs. A third man giving orders from a distance is rarely even useful. The two have a much better, more direct grasp of the situation and most of the coordination needs to be done by them anyway.

The same principle can be applied to indirect fire support. There's no need to pool long-range fire support under centralised command if it could as well be allocated to individual manoeuvre elements who support simply everyone in their range - including other elements of their own kind. They could have too few indirect fire support for their own needs, and this would force even the least social commanding officers into cooperation and giving support as much as they receive support.

This could be very important in a modern setting, where we lack the force density for establishing and maintaining front lines in most scenarios and could thus not expect that centralised indirect fire support would be protected against raiders by a screen such as a front line.

No army anywhere seems to emphasise the importance and potential of horizontal cooperation. Even the German army (which is too content with its 19th century Auftragstaktik innovation) merely stresses the importance of staying in contact with neighbours for maintaining situational awareness and avoiding fratricide and gaps. I have read field manuals from eight countries plus many historical ones and none came even close to emphasise horizontal cooperation vs. vertical coordination or even give guidance about the relative strengths and weaknesses.This is one of the reasons why I consider even the Western military forces to be way behind the potential, in other words: Outdated. This happened before (around 1890-1913) and led to the extreme suffering of the First World War..

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Sloppy journalism (as usual)

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Some reporters misunderstood a pictogram (obviously showing a flare hanging on a parachute) on an illumination mortar bomb (there's "ILLUM PARA" written on it - how dumb are those reporters?!) for a star of david and a crescent.End result: A conspiracy theory about Israeli weapons in Libya.On another note, German news reported about the crash of a U.S. warplane (A-10) with "11000" rounds of ammunition on-board (many news outlets copy-pasted the faulty dpa message).Let's look at the Spiegel news; it cites the dpa nonsense of 11000 rounds AND a much closer to reality report from a local newspaper about 1500 rounds. The Spiegel author KNEW that the figure was obviously fishy, but he DID NOT spend one minute on a quick wikipedia check in order to learn that an A-10 has a capacity for 1,174 rounds (or 1,350 if you look in the German wikipedia) and is written "A-10", not "A10".It's really an inconvenient price we pay for free press. It's so enticing to think of a world in which reporters who do not fact-check properly be fined.

S O
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There was a tiny flaw in the plan

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Historical crappy ideas. Today: "Fall Blau"

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Fall Blau (case blue) was the title of the Axis summer offensive of 1942 on the Eastern Front.
Historical advance of the axis forces as part of Fall Blau - (c) by gdr
Early 1942.
Germany had needlessly declared war on the United States late in 1941 and had learned that the Soviet Union was still powerful despite the incredible Red Army losses of the second half of 1941. It was predictable that U.S. forces would make their involvement felt in the next year (1943), and the British were still building their forces and learning valuable lessons in North Africa. There were no reserves left for securing the undefended Western Mediterranean in the next winter - the Red Army had to be defeated decisively in 1942 if Hitler's military long-term strategy (defending the conquered regions against the superior economic power of the Allies) should stand a chance.

The Soviets expected the German OKW (supreme command of armed forces) to be intelligent and to seek a decisive battle in the centre of the front, near Moscow.

The Stavka (or Soviet High Command), was unable to discern the direction of the main German strategic offensive in 1942 that they were expecting. Stalin was convinced the primary German strategic goal in 1942 would be Moscow, in part due to Fall Kremel ("Case Kremlin"), a German deception plan aimed at Moscow. 57% of all Red Army troops were deployed in that region. However, the direction of the German offensive was still defended by the Bryansk, South-Western and Southern fronts that between them accounted for 25% of all All-Arms armies, nearly 30% of all Soviet artillery, over 38% of all tanks and 42% of all Red Air force aircraft.

Obviously, Stavka (Soviet supreme command of armed forces) was in error when it assumed intelligent major decisions at the OKW.
The actual Fall Blau was an operation that made sense at first glance for a long war. It was meant to reduce the capability of the Soviets to maintain their war effort. The advance to Stalingrad was meant to take out this traffic bottleneck (both in terms of railway lines and Volga shipping) in order to secure the flank for the main push to the south. This latter main push had superficially two advantages; to capture the world-famous oil producing region of Baku and -possibly- to enlist the Caucasus people (such as the Chechens) which were well-known for not being loyal to Moscow or to anything Russian in general. It seems almost nobody in the OKW thought about enlisting locals at all, though. Most were likely already conscripted or deported anyway. The oil was -as usual- the primary motivator. Oh, and the Gulf region with its Iranian oil fields was 'just behind' the Caucasus as well.
I wrote "at first glance" and "superficially" for a reason: The whole idea was crap.Independent of what influential people might have thought at the time; the plan sucked.Stalin was easily able to disable the oil production facilities and refineries. The oil wells and refinery at the small Maikop oil field north of the Caucasus were thoroughly demolished when German troops conquered the area.
The wells might have been repairable in the summer of 1943, but certainly not in the long winter of 42/43. Oil refineries are extremely complicated installations with an incredible quantity of pipes, boilers and so on. A repair after a thorough demolition was uneconomical. The construction of a new refinery would take years, especially at the end of a thousands of kilometres long railway supply line. Germany could have made use of some oil from around Baku by late '43, but only so at the expense of railway capacity for the army. Oil containers would need to be shipped to Baku in mostly empty state and then be shipped back by railway (and few over the Black Sea).The Stalingrad as flank security idea was also crap:What was the flank security for the army at Stalingrad itself? The low morale Romanian troops (Romanians had little reason for being motivated to fight on the Eastern Front in '42 after their experiences of '40). This vulnerable part of the front was hardly providing security for the Caucasus advance as long as it was itself in peril.There were even more serious problems in the plan:The deception by Army Group Centre:STAVKA was led to concentrate forces near Moscow. What were they supposed to do with these forces after the main push to south became obvious during the summer? In the best case they would end up having hundreds of well-trained divisions ready for a summer offensive 1943. In worst case they would attempt a major offensive or two on their own. The bottleneck of the German supply lines near Rostov was an obvious target for a counter-offensive.Seriously, there was not some kind of Sahara, Himalayas or mega Bermuda Triangle south of the Caucasus region. The Americans and British would have been able to open a new front in Persia/Iran and would likely have been able to push the overextended German Army back to the Caucasus in '43. That would have stretched the allied shipping lanes, but also the German railway connections.The whole advance towards the Caucasus was unnecessary:To cut off the Caucasus region from Russia at Stalingrad was already enough. There was no need for capturing the economic riches of the Caucasus region (or what would be left after Red Army engineer demolition teams worked on them) simply because cutting them off from Russia would have sufficed.

On 29 July, German units blew up the last railroad links from central Russia to the Caucasus region.

("When Titans Clashed", Glantz/House, p.121)
A possibly more promising OKW plan ("promising" entirely from an apolitical, purely operational art point of view) would have been to mount equal deception ops in the south (pointing at the Caucasus), in the centre (pointing at Moscow) and in the north (pointing at cutting Leningrad off for good). This would have left Stavka clueless.Some reserves could have been relocated from France and other occupied regions to Russia, especially after the British Empire troops got a bloody nose at Dieppe. Historically, such reserve movements only took place during the crisis of early '43. Hitler thought rather the other way around  in '42 and sent fine divisions from the Eastern Front to Greece and France.The early offensives could have aimed at eliminating local problems at the front:- Capture of Sevastopol (South; Crimea)- Capture of Kerch (South; Crimea)- Interruption of the Murmansk railway somewhere east of Finland (instead of attacking Murmansk directly) in order to interrupt the North Atlantic connection between the SU and the UK.- multiple limited offensives in order to eliminate problematic salients- multiple local withdrawals in order to change the front line to a more easily defensible front lineThe second phase would have been to about a move towards a Don river line and towards Stalingrad to cut off both the Volga shipping and the railway lines between Russia and the Caucasus region. permanently. Alternatively an armour corps could have been tasked with dominating the steppe south of the upper Volga in order to block land traffic in the region permanently. This might even have substituted for the capture of Stalingrad.Non-German forces could have held the Crimea and the region around Rostov against whatever the Red Army could have mobilised for offensives in the Caucasus region. Few Western allies supply  shipments through Persia/Iran could have reached the central front in autumn '42.
These two phases were mostly meant to improve the situation instead of aiming at a quick defeat of the enemy. They could have tuned the enemy's strength in the Moscow region to an optimal degree and would have allowed for maximum concentration of German high quality forces in Army Group Centre (leaving mostly 2nd rate divisions to defend north and south). The third phase could have been about a decisive battle for the Moscow region. By now, some of STAVKA's reserves should have been diverted away from the central front. This could have been a final and decisive battle - the Schwerpunkt for the whole European axis. It would have required maximum priority for resources, limited only by railway capacity.

A German success in such a final battle was rather unlikely, of course. The German army had lost too many motor vehicles, too many strong horses, too many young infantrymen, too many junior leaders. It had still problems with concentrations of T-34 and/or KV tanks due to too few long 75mm and 76 mm cannons in service and it had the inferior railway network capacity on its side.

This alternative plan is typical for me; first gain a solid stance, then strike. My martial arts training has probably left its mark.

I came to this conclusion with the advantage of hindsight and plenty of time. The people at the OKW did not have these advantages, but they were supposed to (and it was their job to) settle on a better plan than the fatally flawed and superficial Fall Blau. They had the advantage of being a group of highly experienced professionals (and admittedly a few jerks). 
They didn't get the urgency right, were distracted by a too indirect means (oil) away from the key (the political, economic and military concentration in the Moscow region) and accepted a major risk too much. The jerk at the top of the OKW is to blame as well, of course.

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