Alternative Conventional Defense Postures In The European Theater by Hans G. Brauch Robert F. Jr. Kennedy

Author:Hans G. Brauch, Robert F. Jr. Kennedy [Hans G. Brauch, Robert F. Jr. Kennedy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780844817286
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1992-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Relieves armored forces for concentration into operational reserves.

Strips out the precursing reconnaissance and breaks down the synergism of the attacking enemy’s combined arms team.

Channelizes the attack into thrust vectors.

Sets up and masks the tank counterattack into the deep flank of the enemy thrust vector.

Light infantry holds its ground in urban areas. Its protection from tanks and artillery is masonry and rubble. In forests, light infantry fights spatially and in small groupings. Tanks are not a threat. Artillery is. Elusiveness is the way light infantry protects itself from artillery firepower and the assault of motorized infantry, which lacks the infantry skills to fight in a similar, elusive manner.

This concept forms the basis for light infantry in armored warfare. In the screening scheme outlined above, light infantry was the foil for the armor. Heavy forces remained the dominant element. Emerging technology will soon reverse these roles. Light infantry itself becomes the main destroying mechanism.

The major payoff from new technology is not from marginal improvements in familiar weapons systems. Major payoffs require integrating technology, tactics, and terrain (T3) in new ways. Occasionally these are significant enough, as in this case, to form a tactical discontinuity on the battlefield. The tactical irruption dominating warfare for the last half-century can now be contained in much the same manner that Wellington stopped Napoleon’s columns. Equilibrium, long overdue from a historical perspective, is once again returning to European warfare and the age-old struggle between the defense and offense, firepower and maneuver, stability and irruption.

Emerging technology will soon be forcing the tank out of the open into the close terrain. A defender oriented toward long-range hypervelocity direct fire gunnery will be soundly defeated by an attacker stressing (1) multispectral smoke, movement freezing mines, and heavy top attack munitions against defiladed defending tanks, and (2) close terrain maneuver for his own tanks.

Conversely, new technology leads to a tactical discontinuity unambiguously favoring the defense. New technology allows defenders in close terrain to dominate adjacent open terrain with concealed and sheltered antitank weapons while holding armor out of close terrain and allowing infantry to fight only within close terrain. Antitank fire in this system is rapid and indirect and controlled by a tight firing loop with elevated sensors. Firing platforms with telescopic masts hug buildings for shelter or fire from small openings in forests. Escorting light infantry fighting only within the close terrain protects these platforms from assault from enemy infantry and tanks. Techno-engineers establish monitoring sensors, on-call minefields, and automated unmanned first lines of defense along the edges of the village/forest. The latter can be smashed but not suppressed.

This defense poses a triple threat to any offensive against NATO. First, it completely overthrows an aggressor’s tempo of operations. Second, whereas an aggressor can with great concentrations of effort and cost systematically clear the first layering of villages in thrust areas, an aggressor cannot provide the requisite artillery support for such attacks when drawn into depths of 10 km or more. Nor is an aggressor’s motorized infantry suitable for clearing forests defended by amorphous Jäger-style light infantry.

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