U.S. Army Doctrine by Walter E. Kretchik

Author:Walter E. Kretchik [Kretchik, Walter E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Strategy, United States, Technology & Engineering, Military Science
ISBN: 9780700618064
Google: AbceKQEACAAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2011-01-15T02:46:19+00:00

Donn Starry (U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania)

Given his European experience as a general officer, Starry focused TRADOC’s attention on changes within the Soviet military. To prevent the Warsaw Pact from effectively employing operational maneuver groups, army analysts soon developed the concept of the extended battlefield based upon “deep battle” or “deep attack.” Rather than defend a front, Starry saw the battlefield in three dimensions, frontage, depth, and altitude. The covering force battle was critical, as it set the conditions for eventual victory in the main defense. Assets such as satellites, sensors, and long-range reconnaissance units would locate enemy forces and then electronically pass information to units capable of employing aircraft, rockets, and helicopters to strike Soviet forces. The deep attack method focused upon the Soviets second-echelon forces, while defending army ground units destroyed the attacking Soviet first echelon. Once the first- and second-echelon forces were defeated, army forces would assume the offensive. Starry borrowed the term “AirLand Battle” from the 1976 manual to describe a new doctrine that balanced the importance of the offense and the defense.112

The 1982 Field Manual 100-5 Operations

Resplendent in its paper camouflage cover, the newest FM 100-5 Operations appeared on 20 August 1982. The manual was written primarily at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Starry had recognized that much of the resistance to the 1976 version was because army schools had little input. Their buy-in, he believed, was essential. Still, although army leaders were consulted during manual production, TRADOC maintained overall control as Lieutenant General William R. Richardson was both the deputy TRADOC commander and the commanding general of the Combined Arms Center (CAC) in Kansas.

The manual acknowledged that the Army must be prepared to fight anywhere in the world in combating Soviet aggression, thus removing the 1976 fixation upon West Germany. It was also the first to address levels of war and specifically the operational level. This concept had been discovered by Soviet thinkers prior to World War II as a means to strike an opponent’s reserves and rear area using deep attack assets while simultaneously using mechanized forces to attack front-line enemy troops. Although the initial theorists had been purged after 1937, the Soviets rediscovered this theory in the 1960s and 1970s and applied it to an echelon style of war in which waves of forces, separated by time and space, would fall upon a defending enemy. American AirLand battle was designed to counter Soviet multi-echelon attacks.113

The operational level of war filled a gap in how wars had been conceived of in the past. Traditionally, in the twentieth century, wars were hierarchical, the strategic or national level being the highest and the tactical or combat level being the lowest. The 1982 manual inserted the operational level between strategic and tactical, defined as the theory of large-unit operations through the planning and execution of campaigns. Although campaigns had been discussed in previous manuals, the 1982 version was the first to associate them with the operational level of war. In sum, a military campaign had

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