‘Defeat in detail’ is a military tactic of destroying an
enemy force by engaging its small, isolated units one by one with a larger
force.
This is a great military theory – and proven successful –
but it requires that the enemy present his forces in small, dispersed packets
ready to be defeated. This generally
only happens if one is fighting an utterly inept foe or if the enemy’s units
are forced to disperse due to unrecoverable circumstances such as the rout of a
main force or the end of a conflict when the enemy lacks the forces to mass and
fight.
In other words, no sane military is going to willingly
present its forces to the enemy in small, isolated units. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the Navy
and Marines seem determined to do. They seem
committed to a war doctrine of small, isolated, individually weak units that
will, in some unexplained and unfathomable manner, not only survive and avoid
defeat in detail but will go on to exert an effect greater than the woefully
weak sum of its parts.
Let’s briefly remind ourselves of the small, isolated units
the Marines and Navy are planning to field.
Missile Shooters - The Marines have converted from a
middle weight, combined arms force to a penny packet force of platoon size
units that will engage in missing sniping deep inside enemy controlled
territory.
Distributed Lethality – The Navy wants to disperse
all manner of isolated ships (the LCS is frequently mentioned) deep inside
enemy territory where they will not only survive but, in some mythical way,
find enemy ships and sink them while remaining undetected. The Navy has even talked about arming
amphibious and logistic ships for use in the distributed lethality scheme. How these non-stealthy, slow, defenseless
ships would remain undetected and survive remains unexplained.
LAW – The Marine’s Light Amphibious Warship (a
laughable term right up there with Littoral Combat Ship) is intended to operate
alone or in very small groups while supplying hidden Marine units and
relocating them from island to island.
How these small, non-stealthy, slow, defenseless ships would remain
undetected and survive remains unexplained.
Unmanned Surface Vessels – The Navy plans to use
dispersed, remote, and/or isolated small, unmanned vessels in some yet to be
fully explained manner which they believe will ‘confuse’ the enemy and rain
destruction down on an unaware foe.
Unmanned Underwater Vessels – Similar to the USV
plan, the Navy envisions small UUVs operating alone inside enemy waters in some
unexplained manner.
Retirements – The Navy is downsizing the fleet’s
firepower by retiring Ticonderoga cruisers and SSGNs with no direct
replacement, contributing to a significant decrease in VLS cells in the fleet. Thus, the individual ships and task forces
are becoming steadily weaker.
LCS – The Navy has described the LCS as the modern
day PT boat and envisions them operating in enemy territory, hiding amongst
islands.
Task Forces – The Navy is training only with single
carrier task forces and escorts numbering around three per carrier. While one would desperately hope this is not
the actual wartime plan (so why aren’t we training like we’ll fight?), the
reality is that’s the only configuration being practiced. If this is what actually happens, this will
be less than a ¼ carrier task force.
And the list goes on.
The common characteristic of these small, isolated units is
that they are defenseless in any practical way.
When found – and it’s a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ – they will be
destroyed as a matter of course. In
other words, they’ll be defeated in detail.
The Navy and Marines seem utterly ignorant of the lessons of history as they
apply to combat. All of our much-hyped plans
will be quickly put to ruin when the individual units encounter larger
forces.
Defeat in detail.
Distributed lethality is the same issue artillery guns face on ground. The artillery is dispersed to complicate targeting, so that all thr eggs are not in one basket. It's been doctrine since WW2 that all these dispersed guns will, at the direction of Division, mass their fires by all shooting at the same target point, with calculated firing tables and instructions sent for a time on target barrage, so that all rounds are arriving at once.
ReplyDeleteThe brainrot is intrinsic to the american system.
Try this. This largely depends on battlefield communications - functioning under enemy's electronic warfare. Civilian wireless communications, especially in areas of poor signal provide clues on battlefield communications:
Deletehttps://inf.news/en/military/48d7958fb1aea9d06000379155538320.html
M982 fired by M777 don't perform well in Ukraine despite they performed very good in Afghan where Taliban has no electronic warfare capability.
One of the many issues with USN/USMC "plan" is they really counting that everything works and China does everything wrong. There's no option B, no redundancy, nothing. It works or we get utterly destroyed.
ReplyDeletePeople have ridiculed - US makes ppt; China implement. Many idea listed above have been implemented by China. This is danger. China displayed this unmanned submarine in this year's DSA 2024 (Malaysia weapon trade show). It has torpedoes. Since it is unmanned, it can sail to danger locations to fire on expensive manned submarines:
ReplyDeletehttps://armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2024/dsa-2024-china-unveils-new-uuv-300cd-unmanned-underwater-vehicle-capable-of-launching-torpedoes#:~:text=SH%2D...-,DSA%202024%3A%20China%20unveils%20new%20UUV%2D300CD%20Unmanned%20Underwater,Vehicle%20capable%20of%20launching%20torpedoes.&text=At%20DSA%202024%2C%20Poly%20Technologies,%2D300CD%20and%20UUV%2D300CB.
Following is a 2021 report on Chinese unmanned surface vessels
https://en.topwar.ru/179436-bezjekipazhnye-nadvodnye-korabli-ugroza-s-vostoka.html
This is a report from 2022 Zhuhai Air Show (mainly promote Chinese weapons for export) for customers want network based capability of land invasions:
https://inf.news/en/military/d8cc6ae72320c18a9748aaeb14e2d11b.html
"Since it is unmanned, it can sail to danger locations to fire on expensive manned submarines:"
DeleteThis is ridiculous. Did you note the endurance of 450 nm at 5 kts? That's uselessly slow and very limited range. I also seriously doubt the ability of a tiny, unmanned submersible to detect a submarine with a small, passive sonar when our very largest and best sonars have a very difficult time doing so.
This is technology for the sake of technology or possibly for the sake of foreign sales.
Seems like the Navy gets to do whatever the hell it wants these days - generally dumb, blatantly stupid, or completely and bizarrely idiotic.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to Congressional oversight?
Don’t we have an Armed Forces Committee anymore?
If it’s still functioning what are the members doing all day? I mean aside from getting wined and dined by defense contractors.
Pity we can’t shoot an admiral from time to time like the Brits did with Byng back in the day, or bring back keelhauling and flogging - Richard Dana has a lot to answer for.
Congress has been attempting to exert oversight but the Navy has simply and repeatedly ignored Congress. Until Congress starts firing admirals, nothing will change.
DeleteIt’s not clear that Congress has the Constitutional authority to ‘fire an admiral’. The President probably has such an authority, subject to various statutory constraints, although if by ‘fire’ you mean outright dismissal without the need to show cause rather than an engineered resignation through eg demotion to permanent rank, even that authority is questionable.
Delete"It’s not clear that Congress has the Constitutional authority to ‘fire an admiral’."
DeleteHistorically, it has never been necessary as the offending officer is relieved via the chain of command including up through the Commander in Chief. However, in a case where the chain of command refuses to act, Congress certainly has powers even if they haven't been tested in court. For example, without the legalese and exact quotes, the Constitution grants Congress the power to raise, organize, and 'govern' the military which, since approvals of flag ranks are a specific and recognized Senate responsibility, one would assume that the reverse action, removal from office, would also be an authority. Beyond that, Congress has overwhelmingly strong power to remove officers indirectly via the power of the purse. In other words, Congress could withhold funding until the President/military removes the offending officer or, alternatively, Congress could refuse to approve any further officers until the offending officer is removed.
So, one way or another, Congress can certainly remove officers.
The President acting as Commander-in-Chief can certainly relieve an officer (including an admiral) of his command, as Truman did to MacArthur.
DeleteWhether Congress has this power is very doubtful, particularly if the officer retained the confidence of the President.
But as you say, there are indirect means of achieving the same objective.
While it has not, to my knowledge, been exercised, the Constitution would appear to offer Congress great power (total power?) in running the military. Consider the following passages,
Delete"Article I, Section 8, Clause 16:
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; . . ."
"Scope of the congressional and executive authority to prescribe the rules for the governance of the military is broad and subject to great deference by the judiciary. The Court recognizes “that the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society,” that “[t]he military constitutes a specialized community governed by a separate discipline from that of the civilian,” and that “Congress is permitted to legislate both with greater breadth and with greater flexibility when prescribing the rules by which [military society] shall be governed ... "
Those certainly sound like the basis for both 'hiring' officers and disciplining ('firing') them.
Going beyond, Congress established and passed the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1950 which established formalized a system of military justice including courts-martial. From this, one would reasonably infer that Congress also has the authority to more directly involve itself in 'firing' of officers, if they were so inclined.
Because the ability has not been exercised does not mean that it does not exist. The relevant verbiage certainly seems to suggest that Congress could, if it wished, 'fire' officers since Congress has the entire responsibility for raising, organizing, and maintaining the military. It would be illogical to think that Congress had the power to raise, organize, maintain, and establish a justice system but not have the power to remove an officer.
Again, though, it's nearly a moot point as Congress certainly has many indirect means of 'firing' an officer.
One thing that has been really bothering me for quite a while is the issue of institutional knowledge. Every time a purported conflict with China comes up, a large number of people are quick to state that China doesn't have a hope because the US has a huge depth of institutional knowledge on how to fight a peer war and China doesn't.
ReplyDeleteI'm not seeing it. Sure, at the micro level the US knows how to operate carriers very well on a day to day basis, but China also has a clear path to acquire the same abilities.
Once you get beyond the micro level, it gets a lot different very quickly. The Cold Warriors are gone. And as far as I can tell, that was the last competent group that understood peer conflicts.
There are so many genuinely idiotic policies, strategies, tactics and acquisition programs coming out of the US and NATO that it seems that there is pretty much nobody in a position of authority that has a clue.
On the other hand, China seems to be building up their Navy and Air Force in a rapid, systematic and logical manner, all the while holding continuous large scale and painfully realistic war games to validate their decision making.
I don't see how this ends well if we get into a scrap with them, and it further seems to me that the correlation of forces is going to get worse every year from now to 2035 when the Chinese build up is supposed to be complete.
Am I wrong?
"a large number of people are quick to state that China doesn't have a hope"
DeleteWhat sites or people have you been listening to???? You've never heard that here!
"US has a huge depth of institutional knowledge on how to fight a peer war"
The US has squandered most of its institutional knowledge.
"Am I wrong?"
Only in who you're listening to!
Critical to the survival of any of these types of small, distributed, relatively defenseless units is air cover. Robust and effective air cover that pushes enemy targeting and strike capabilities away from the battlefield can make up for a multitude of sins. I'd go so far to say that, without effective air cover, the lifetime of these units will be measured in hours once the shooting starts. But, battlespace air dominance can change the odds significantly.
ReplyDelete" battlespace air dominance can change the odds significantly."
DeleteAnd where do you see this air cover coming from for the US? Guam is around 2000 miles from the South China Sea or Taiwan, depending on the exact point of interest. That doesn't lend itself to effective air cover anywhere. Our carriers have no long range air superiority fighter.
Where is our air cover coming from?
Do not misunderstand me: I said air cover is necessary to make a difference -- not that such air cover can presently be made available everywhere it might be needed, particularly in the South China Sea. Absolutely, that is a challenge.
DeleteTo that end, the US should aggressively establish and/or develop usable airfields as close to Taiwan as possible. The Lal-lo airport in northern Luzon, an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement site, is within about 200 nm of the southern tip of Taiwan and is an example of this. Okinawa helps (maybe 450 nm from Taiwan?) as does a carrier (or better yet. multi-carrier) group, particularly when such a group is able to overlap with aircraft operating from these land bases.
You don't necessarily need to be able to shoot down every single Chinese flying object in the area in order for air cover to be successful. You just need to deny the ability of China to systematically find and destroy a bunch of distributed targets using its air assets.
I think history has shown that taking surface ships and land units into harms way without air cover usually ends pretty badly. The US needs to put more thought into this question.
"Luzon"
DeleteHere's where we start to run into practical problems. As I understand it, we are not allowed to permanently base troops (or aircraft) in the Philippines. We merely have temporary access rights.
"Okinawa"
The US is being pushed out of Okinawa by the local populace. Surveys consistently show that the Japanese do not US troops there.
Also, it is not a given that Japan would enter a war against China. If Japan opted to remain neutral, the US would be unable to operate from Japanese bases. It is very risky to build a military strategy based on the use of bases that may or may not be available when war comes.
The reality is that we just don't have any good options.
Other than carrier air, we simply can't generate the requisite air cover, reliably, and our carrier air wings have the wrong type of aircraft and have been reduced in size by nearly half.
"The US needs to put more thought into this question."
No disagreement there!
Clearly there is more risk involved in use of foreign bases vs. a carrier or Guam, but I think they are more complementary and valuable than people sometimes credit them for. First, they act as spoilers by complicating China's decision making. Given significant allied bases near Taiwan, China has to either constrain its attack so the Philippines and Japanese can believe that they aren't directly at risk if they stay out, or China needs to go all-out and destroy those bases on day 1 to avoid the risk of ceding air superiority to the US. Second, a major challenge for the US is how to have materiel in-theatre that doesn't get destroyed in a surprise attack on day 1. There is a whole spectrum of support activities that could be negotiated while avoiding direct combat sorties to give the host country a fig leaf to hide behind.
DeleteThe Marine Corps Light Amphibious Warship is a good idea as it is the only ship type really capable of landing troops on a hostile shore in the modern era. No vulnerable and expensive "connectors" are needed and with no explosive aviation gas aboard. Gather 50 loaded LAWs and have them charge the beach with destroyer escort and carrier air overhead. Get rid of the useless LPDs to pay for them. Here is my article on that:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.g2mil.com/Landing%20Ship%20Assault.htm
But the idea of sending them into hostile areas alone is insane. I can't believe any speaks about this! When the idea began, some wrote the Corps could buy various used small cargo ships for a couple million each and keep their civilian colors. Maybe register them aboard so they fly neutral flags as is common. These could move about the Pacific delivering supplies while blending into civilian traffic with contract crews of a dozen and collect intel too. If sunk, no big deal.
That idea is plausible, but the LAW will be Navy grey with a big Navy crew, cost a half a billion, and will be easy to recognize from far away.
Any "amphibious force" without LSTs is not an amphibious force.
DeleteThe concepts driving the LAW, distributed lethality and EABO are both ridiculous. The Marines want up to 30 LAWS, and carrying 75 Marines each, that's less than what you'd see aboard one LHD. The fact that people are saying "hide among civilian traffic" in public is hilarious for a number of reasons that are well known here. Their slow speed makes them a poor platform whether acting individually, or as a massed force. I don't see them as viable platforms for much of anything, and have often thought that the Navy continually has delayed them in the hopes that the Berger ideas and doctrine would die and they would be canceled. I think that even the Navy sees the lack of value in the concept and ideas that spawned it.
DeleteImho, the Navy has to correct the deficiencies in equipment and doctrine that have put the LH fleet so far offshore in order to make the Marines relevant and useful again...
"This generally only happens if one is fighting an utterly inept foe or if the enemy’s units are forced to disperse due to unrecoverable circumstances such as the rout of a main force or the end of a conflict when the enemy lacks the forces to mass and fight."
ReplyDeleteIt also happens when the force is dispersed to avoid detection and destruction.
What we're seeing is the Ukranians and Russians are operating their tanks in penny packet detachments of 2-4 tanks at a time, instead of company and battalion-sized attacks, because a company of tanks occupies a large area and is an inviting target for ATGM and drone attack, and can be detected and engaged before it can place the objective under direct fire. Conversely, operating distributedly, with tanks in their ones and twos, assigned to support infantry platoons, gives them a modicum of signature reduction and reduces the risk of detection and engagement en route to the objective.
The flip side of that is that this means the tanks do not have sufficient mass to punch through enemy defenses and act as the breakthrough element. So some of the company survives long enough to reach the objective, and then stalls out.