RAA Liaison Letter 2024 - 2025 Edition

RAA Liaison Letter – 2024 / 2025 Edition 108 and versatile it allows our forces to avoid formulistic procedures. If we rely on formulas our tactics to fight a reactive enemy are predictable. With predictable tactics how can we be expected to create surprising and dangerous situations for the enemy, to the point of confusion for their forces and commanders? How can we remain unpredictable yet maintain structured and developed tactics? “It (Manoeuvre Theory) emphasises the centrality of the human element in warfare including leadership, organisation, cohesion and morale. Manoeuvre draws its power primarily from opportunism — taking calculated risks and the exploitation of chance circumstances and of forced and unforced errors.” (LWD 1) Historically, such tactics of exploiting the enemy weakness and creating gaps have been very successful on the battlefield. Napoleon was famous for creating these scenarios using concentration of force to create decisive effect. Numerical superiority has always had an advantage on the battlefield. Napoleon knew this in his campaign across Italy in 1796 because in this case, the advantage was on the side of his adversary. To counter this, he split his forces up into very small elements stretching a vast amount of ground, forcing the enemy to react and split their much larger force apart. Once the enemy were split in smaller elements, the French concentrated force by joining Napoleon’s units together and creating a force that could easily overwhelm the enemy units. These units then manoeuvred to another smaller friendly element, and then proceeded to join them into another attack with their larger concentrated force against the enemy. Another key to the success in the tactic known as ‘defeat in detail’, is the element of speed. The speed these were conducted in was fast, and in succession to each other to the point the enemy was unaware of the size of the force they were fighting, to then become complacent underestimating the force they were against and leading to the blunder of their forces. Agility The US Army marched into Iraq over the southern border in March 2003, with land forces leading the northbound “shock and awe” style push. The rest of the forces followed behind in mostly unarmoured vehicles with doors removed and just light flak vest designed to stop shrapnel rather than bullets. The US Army trained for this type of operation for years, honing their combined arms TTP’s and becoming a competent, and unquestionably very manoeuvrable force trained to conduct high intensity warfighting. A force with an understanding and appreciation of their role, combined with a ruthless combined arms assault focused on securing objectives, remaining proactive, and maintaining a high initiative is a prime example of applied manoeuvre philosophy. There is no doubt that they had an unmatched ability to fire and manoeuvre to destroy the enemy in close combat. The coalition forces of 2003 possessed the highest agility of all in the conflict. To conduct manoeuvre warfare, agility is required. At the lowest level our refined warfighting agility can be found in vehicles and body armour systems. The present forces all over the world rely heavily on protection, we no longer deploy in unarmoured vehicles, and we wear tactical body armour platforms. But the more emphasis placed on protection comes at the expense of agility. Modern adversaries have degraded our decisive and overmatched land force’s ability to execute proactive tactics against an enemy. Today’s ADF has moved into a reactive force, a force that is prepared to deal with threats. Contemporary operations have largely moved from warlike deployments to now domestic and peace keeping operations. The ADF still provides a proactive warfighting component and agenda. After all, the ADF is still a lethal force prepared to do what Government requires of it, from fighting wars to peace keeping operations, border protection, and the current domestic operations to help the Australian public at home. During the last 2 years, the ADF has shown its agility to deploy multiple assets in multiple capacities, from war zones to hotel quarantine. Focusing on protection turns forces into a reactive force than rather a proactive posture. Reactivity and the lack of agility surrenders the initiative to the enemy to place our forces in more of a defensive posture. The strength of our Army does not solely lie in our superior protection and equipment, but in the initiative and offensive spirit of soldiers and our commanders. The 1994 Royal Australian Armoured Corp Manoeuvre Warfare Handbook talks force and inertia of a military element in a concept not commonly thought of: