Maneuver warfare

Maneuver seeks to inflict losses indirectly by envelopment, encirclement and disruption, while minimizing the need to engage in frontal combat.

Rather than seeking victory by applying superior force and mass to achieve physical destruction, maneuver uses preemption, deception, dislocation, and disruption to destroy the enemy's will and ability to fight.

[4] However, advanced technology, such as the development of cavalry and mechanized vehicles, has led to an increased interest in the concepts of maneuver warfare and in its role on modern battlefields.

Since tempo and initiative are so critical to the success of maneuver warfare, command structures tend to be more decentralized with more tactical freedom given to lower-level unit leaders.

He used operational maneuver, command and control, deception, and precise battlefield tactics which were vastly superior to those of his opponents in China, Russia, Persia, and Eastern Europe and defeated virtually every enemy army that he faced.

The Mongol army's constant movement and maneuvering tied down the Khwarazmian forces, denying them the ability to gain the initiative as well as shocked and demoralized the Khwarazmian Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad as well as his army, thus ending the campaign before the Shah could bring to bear his much larger numbers.

Both his ability to move huge armies to give battle where he wanted and the style of his choice would become legendary, and he was seen as undefeatable, even against larger and superior forces.

Napoleon also arranged his forces into what would be known in the present as "battle groups" of combined arms formations to allow faster reaction time to enemy action.

Napoleon's principal strategy was to move fast to engage before the enemy had time to organize, to engage lightly while moving to turn the flank that defended the main resupply route, to envelop and deploy blocking forces to prevent reinforcement, and to defeat those contained in the envelopment in detail.

It was that and subsequent defeats that caused a major doctrinal reevaluation by the Prussians under Clausewitz of the revealed power of maneuver warfare.

Some train-borne maneuvering took place during the American Civil War in the 1860s, but the sizes of the armies involved meant that the system could provide only limited support.

Germany introduced new tactics with infiltration and stormtrooper "shock troops" toward the end of World War I to bypass resistance.

During the interwar period, the British developed ideas for fully-mechanized all-arms warfare with the Experimental Mechanized Force.

The German military stressed several key elements: versatile tanks combined with mobile infantry and artillery, close air support, rapid movement and concentration of forces (Schwerpunkt), and aggressive independent local initiative.

In the Soviet Union during the 1920s and the 1930s, the concept of "deep battle" was developed and integrated into the Red Army field regulations doctrine by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

We will concentrate fires and forces at decisive points to destroy enemy elements when the opportunity presents itself and when it fits our larger purposes.

"The possibility of a massive Soviet offensive in Western Europe led to the creation of the US Army's AirLand battle doctrine.

In operations whose intelligence is either inaccurate, unavailable, or unreliable, the successful implementation of strategies based on maneuver warfare can become problematic.

When faced with a maneuverable opponent capable of redeploying key forces quickly and discreetly or when tempered, the capacity of maneuver warfare strategies to deliver victory becomes more challenging.

Despite overwhelming firepower and complete air superiority, Israeli forces were unable to deliver a decisive blow to the command structure of Hezbollah or to degrade its effective capacity to operate.

Although inflicting heavy damage, Israel was unable to locate and destroy Hezbollah's diluted force dispositions or to neutralize key command centers.

[15] According to Michael Kofman "Russian forces do far better when they're operating with prepared defense, fixed lines, more on positional warfare.