Air University Review, November-December 1979

Is it any longer possible for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to win a war against the vast Warsaw Pact forces? Should the United States consider major increases in military spending to close the quantitative gap? Or should it accept the reality of continuing, relative weakness and develop a qualitatively new strategy to offset quantitative disadvantages?

William S. Lind and Lieutenant General Raymond B. Furlong, then Commander of Air University (ATC), have recently addressed this latter alternative.¹ Neither Mr. Lind nor General Fur

*This discussion presents my reactions to the William Lind, John Boyd, and Raymond Furlong reflections on the indirect approach.

long discounts the need to modernize existing military hardware, but both men draw on military history and the ideas of Air Force Colonel John Boyd and British military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart to explore alternatives to current U.S. strategy. Mr. Lind and General Furlong both seek ways of winning a war without directly confronting opposing forces that have insurmountable advantages in military resources. However, they apparently forget that not since the eighteenth century have commanders won wars by avoiding battles. The history of warfare since the French Revolution and Napoleon supports Clausewitz's dictum that "the destruction of the enemy is what always matters most."² NATO can accomplish this objective only through substantial improvement in its existing military capability.

In his analysis of air-to-air combat, Colonel Boyd concluded that the Success of the F -86 during the Korean War was due to its ability to proceed from one individual maneuver to another maneuver more rapidly than the MiG-15. Thus, the United States pilots were able to keep the enemy off balance by operating within his ability to receive information, process it, and then act on it. Such tactics succeeded because the enemy became so psychologically confused and disorganized that he could no longer fight effectively.³

In building on Colonel Boyd's theory, Lind identifies the doctrine of firepower / attrition and the doctrine of maneuver as two basic doctrines for ground force operations:

Both employ the same elements, fire and maneuver, but firepower/attrition doctrine uses maneuver primarily as a way to transport and position firepower so that firepower can physically destroy the enemy by attrition. According to firepower/attrition doctrine, the object of military action is physical destruction of the enemy. This is not the object of maneuver doctrine, where firepower is used only when necessary to create opportunities for maneuver. Maneuver doctrine's object is to break the spirit and will of the enemy command by creating surprising and dangerous operational or strategic situations.⁴

Mr. Lind maintains that modern military history demonstrates the superiority of maneuver doctrine over firepower/attrition doctrine. And he criticizes Army Field Manual 100-5, Operations, because it requires Army movement and reinforcement to counter the strengths of Warsaw Pact forces rather than exploit their weaknesses.⁵ For example, the Army intends to destroy large numbers of Soviet tanks, but Lind considers this strategy a mistake. That is, Soviet commanders expect to lose tanks, but they are psychologically dependent on the support provided by their artillery. Lind proposes that NATO tactical air power should destroy Soviet artillery and that NATO strategy should be revised to exploit other Soviet vulnerabilities.⁶

General Furlong's position is similar to Mr. Lind's in some respects. However, General Furlong takes a more balanced and tentative view and seems much less certain that he has discovered a magic formula for NATO victory. He states that "classical strategy alone, while it is a worthwhile subject for study, cannot form the basis for the tasks our nation now faces.... We can no longer rely on raw strength and must now turn to brainpower. "⁷ In borrowing from Liddell Hart, General Furlong suggests that strategy has as its principal objective the mind of the enemy commander and that this objective can be accomplished either through destruction or disorganization. The principle of disorganization "seeks to disorient the enemy by presenting incomplete and inaccurate data; to disrupt operations to generate confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos; and, through these actions, to shatter cohesion and cause paralysis and collapse."⁸ General Furlong prefers a strategy of disorganization similar to the strategy used in guerrilla warfare and in the battle of France in 1940 when German Field Marshal Heinz Guderian fought and defeated French forces without destroying them. General Furlong calls for the development of new strategies and, thus, implicitly criticizes Army Field Manual 100-5.⁹

The ideas expressed by Mr. Lind and General Furlong reflect Liddell Hart's concept of the indirect approach in the use of military force: avoid enemy strengths, exploit his weaknesses, and emphasize the psychological aspects of war rather than physical destruction.¹⁰ Lind refers to this approach as the "natural partner" of maneuver doctrine.¹¹ Although such tactics are obvious aids to victory, they fail to recognize adequately that firepower/attrition is still the deciding factor in modern warfare. The indirect approach can serve only as a means to this objective; it is not itself the objective, as Lind seems to indicate. One need not distort Clausewitz's classical dictum to affirm his validity in modern warfare. The primary objective of land battle is destruction of the enemy's military force. The victorious force can then occupy territory to impose its will on the enemy population. Thus, maneuver and the indirect approach are only means to accomplish the classic objective of destruction.

In their analyses of history, Mr. Lind and General Furlong at times seem to misinterpret modern military history. For example, Professor Russell Weigley has shown that Sherman's march through Georgia was not an application of the indirect approach to defeat the South but rather an extension of Grant's strategy of annihilation. The march was a means to attrite the South's forces.¹² Weigley thus shows that, in this instance, Liddell Hart confused means and ends, and I believe that Mr. Lind and General Furlong have committed similar mistakes in their analyses. For instance, General Furlong points out that guerrilla warfare emphasizes the use of strengths against weaknesses and the avoidance of battle, but he fails to recognize that it also relies on attrition of the enemy's armed forces for final victory.¹³ Mao Tse-tung ultimately defeated the Chinese Nationalists and General Vo Nguyen Giap defeated the French forces in Indochina through conventional warfare.

World War I also shows the necessity of confronting the enemy's strengths. Even if the peripheral actions in Gallipoli, Greece, Mesopotamia, and Palestine had been effective, the Allies would still have found it necessary to defeat the Germans on the Western Front. Even the withdrawal of Russia in 1917 did not eliminate the need for such a confrontation.

The experience of World War II leads to similar questions. The Germans came dangerously near to winning the Battle of Britian through the attrition of British pilots. If German fighters had been allowed to seek out and destroy British fighters well in advance of German bombers in the same manner that escorting American fighters engaged German fighters after January 1944, the Germans would have destroyed Royal Air Force resistance. Thus, contrary to Mr. Lind's view, the German decision not to exert a sustained effort against radars and the fighter command and control network was not a critical factor in the eventual German defeat.¹⁴ The Germans lost the battle not because they failed to use the indirect approach but because they failed to make the attrition of British pilots their primary objective.

Furthermore, Mr. Lind seems to forget that the fight for France was a battle, and the battle might have been decisive if the Germans had rapidly closed on Dunkirk to attrite the remaining French and British forces. Blitzkrieg maneuvers won the battle; failure to annihilate may have lost the war.

Mr. Lind states: "Some military authorities believe that Germany could have beaten the Soviet Union had the maneuver doctrine not been abandoned after 1941 on Hitler's orders in favor of a policy of holding ground."¹⁵ Although military historians agree that German effectiveness declined largely because of Hitler's ineptness, they offer no strong support for the conclusion that Germany would have defeated Russia. Furthermore, this optimistic judgment in support of maneuver doctrine fails to consider such unique historical circumstances as Russia's lack of preparedness, Stalin's refusal to believe that Germany had attacked, and his purges of the Russian officer corps in the late 1930s. These circumstances militate against drawing parallels between the Eastern Front in World War II and the current situation in Central Europe.

The Germans lost World War II because of the attrition they suffered in the Battle of Britain, North Africa, Russia, the air battle over Germany, and the second battle of France. And the thrust in the central Pacific under Admiral Nimitz was an extremely effective application of the indirect approach, but the United States Strategic Bombing Survey concludes that the Japanese were ultimately defeated through attrition. A combination of sea mining, submarine warfare, surface blockading, conventional bombing, and nuclear weapons (instant attrition) led to the collapse of Japan. The indirect approach was not responsible for victory in World War II, Blitzkrieg warfare on land and sea failed as an effective alternative to the prolonged carnage of World War I.

Therefore, the United States should not rely on a strategy based on the indirect approach, the doctrine of maneuver, and the mind of the commander as a panacea to the Warsaw Pact threat in Europe, In the first place, the Federal Republic of Germany would not support such a strategy, Mr. Lind states that the "holding of territory is not of prime importance" in maneuver doctrine, but the German Minister of Defense insists that the "defence of the Federal Republic of Germany must be conducted as far forward as possible, that is to say immediately at the intra-German and Czechoslovak borders,"¹⁶ And, contrary to Mr. Lind's contention, war is not just a "psychological contest," It is thus simplistic and dangerous to hold that the "task facing us at this time [is] the task of rendering our opponent's material strength irrelevant to the outcome of the battle, "¹⁷ NATO forces must destroy Warsaw Pact forces in the event of a European war, Adoption of the proposed strategy would not only fail to bring victory, it would also weaken the inclination to develop the military capability necessary to prevail in future decisive military confrontations.

1. See "Military Doctrine, Force Structure, and the Defense Decision Making Process," Air University Review, May June 1979, pp. 21-27, hereafter referred to as "Military Doctrine"; and "Strategymaking for the 1980's," PARAMETERS, Journal of the US Army War College, March 1979, pp. 9-16, hereafter referred to as "Strategymaking."

2. Carl von Clausewitz. On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, New jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 577.

3. William S. Lind, "Toward a New Understanding of War," in ACSC Readings and Seminars, vol. 11 (Maxwell AFB, Alabama Air University/ATC, 1979), pp. 134-35.

4. Lind, "Military Doctrine," p. 22. Emphasis added.

5. Lind, "Some Doctrinal Questions for the United States Army," Military Review, March 1977, pp. 54-65.

6. Lind, "Toward a New Understanding of War," pp. 137-38.

7. Furlong, "Strategymaking," p. 9.

8. Ibid., pp. 14-15.

9. Ibid., pp. 9. 14-15.

10. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, second revised edition (New York: Praeger, 1967).

11. Lind, "Some Doctrinal Questions for the United States Army," p. 60.

12. Russell F. Weigley, "U.S. Strategic Legacy for Land Warfare," in ACSC Readings and Seminars, vol. II (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University/ ATC, 1979), pp. 190-94.

13. Furlong, "Strategymaking," p. 14.

14. Address by William S. Lind to the Air Command and Staff College, 1 February 1979.

15. Lind, "Some Doctrinal Questions for the United States Army," p. 60.

16. George Leber, "Principles Underlying German Defence Policy," NATO Review, April 1976, p. 9.

17. Lind, "Toward a New Understanding of War," pp. 138-39. Emphasis added.

Major Charles W. Specht (USAFA; M.A., University of Nebraska) is a C-5 pilot assigned to the 75th Military Airlift Squadron. Travis Air Force Base, California. He has served as an F-4C and U-4 pilot, forward air controller 0-2, T-37 instructor pilot, and T -37 academic chief and class commander and has been an assistant professor of history at the United States Air Force Academy. Major Specht is a Distinguished Graduate of Squadron Officer School and Air Command and Staff College.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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