Enemy Appreciations and SOPs

Beth, 

Think of it this way. Some militaries (most good 
ones) train their soldiers in lots of situations 
and drill them in varying scenarios. Why? To 
give them the ability to think on their feet and 
lead when the "plan" ends up not working out. 

Intelligence (and I include in that appreciations 
of enemy tech, doctrine, and fighting ability) 
only goes so far. It gives you a ballpark of what 
your enemy might do. Your own doctrine gives 
you some idea of how to counter these 
weaknesses or strengths should they arise. 

If you blindly assume the enemy will do what 
you expect (hello, General Custer), without using 
your own scouts effectively, you'll get what you 
deserve. If you are overconfident because you 
believe in your own superiority and lack the 
ability to deal with real stresses,  you'll tend to 
fall apart at key moments (hello Lt. Gorman). 

A good, flexible commander has intelligence to 
tell him who he thinks he'll be fighting, how the 
other side usually fights, and his own SOPs and 
doctrine to tell him what he can probably do to 
that enemy to take him apart. But the good 
commander also uses his own recce elements 
to good effect (and any ELINT/SIGINT/IMINT) to 
determine if the enemy is doing what he is 
expected to, if the enemy is the unit(s) 
expected, and to keep track of any "other 
factors" not yet accounted for. 

By doing so, he doesn't get himself locked into 
a particular appreciation of the enemy 
prematurely. And a good commander, if he 
discovers thing have changed, can change plan 
in mid-stride and have some reasonable chance 
of pulling it off (assuming he has good troops 
under him.... good commanders would have a 
hard time saving poorly trained troops). 

War by doctrine alone probably mostly went 
away after the meat grinder battles of WW1. We 
still see it rear its head here and there, and 
misappreciation of the enemy sometimes 
happens (though if I had to misappreciate I'd 
rather overestimate than underestimate). And 
of course, the closer the enemy is to your own 
level of skill (or God Forbid, if he's better), then 
he'll be trying to insure that you don't see what 
he's actually doing or that you see something 
you might be anticipating while he actually does 
something else. It's all a game of think and 
counter think and intelligence. But your local 
SOPs and various training drills give you an 
enhanced chance to respond to a sudden 
change in the situation. 

Remember, as the famous general Kochte once 
said "No battle plan survives contact with dice". 

T. 
---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site

No Battle Plan Survives Contact With Dice.
-- Mark 'Indy' Kochte