Re: Manuever warfare was:Anti-Tank guns

Donald Hosford wrote:
> 
> "John M. Atkinson" wrote:
> 
> > I think I may have seen this one.  IIRC, it focuses on the
> > organizational and high-level doctrinal aspects of maneuver warfare,
> > rather than applications for the batallion or brigade commander.
> 
> It sounds to me that the concept "Maneuver Warfare"  has a more
commonly known title:
> "Strategy".

Operational art, which is different from strategy.  

Tactics is how you fight your battles.	This is what most wargamers
obsess about.  This is a concern of colonels and lower.

Strategy sets political/military goals and directs how to achieve them. 
This is a concern of a nation's top leadership.

Operational art is how you use your battles to achieve the ends set by
strategic plans.  Maneuver warfare does this by emphasising decisive
maneuver over firepower.  Attrition warfare emphasises firepower over
maneuver.  An example of operational art can be seen in the biographies
of German generals during WWII on the Eastern Front.  Anywhere they
were, they winning on a tactical level.  There was always a failure
'somewhere' else, usually blamed on Italians or Romanians or reservists,
where possible.  That's operational art--even though you loose a lot of
your tactical fights, you can still win campaigns.  While the Russians
were loosing a lot of troops in front of the German armored
kampfgruppes, they would be making a breakthrough against second-rate
troops somewhere else.	That's why I consider that every time I go onto
a Dirtside II or Full Thrust table, it's a failure somewhere at a higher
level.	Why?  Because it's even.  Good use of operational art would only
set up battles where the odds are heavily in my favor--I don't have
masses of Siberian peasants to waste pinning down the enemy. 
Operational art is the concern of Corps and Divisional commanders
(sometimes brigade commanders, if the size of the force is small
enough).

John M. Atkinson