Deep Battle 1914-1941:

The Birth of theModern Styleof Warfare

by Brigadier Jonathan B.A. Bailey, MBE

Editor's Note. This article is the first of two exploring the concept thatthe First World War was the most significant revolution in military affairs(RMA) in history. In this first article, Brigadier Bailey discusses thesignificance of the birth of deep battle in the First World War and showsthat all developments that have followed only complement this model.In the second article, he will discuss the persistent underestimation offirepower in the 20th century and how armies can learn from the patternsof technological developments that have enhanced the deep battleconcept since the First World War. For more comprehensive informa-tion and references on the RMA and its impact, read the Strategic andCombat Studies Institute's Occasional Paper Number 22: "The FirstWorld War and the Birth of Modern Warfare" written by Brigadier Bailey.The 1996 pamphlet is available in several US military libraries or can beobtained from the Editor, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, BritishStaff College, Camberley, Surrey, GU154NP, United Kingdom.

There is a misguided tendency inmilitary cultures to assume thatthe more recent military history

is, the more "relevant" it is. The familiarfrom our recent past may be reassuringbecause of technical trappings and theavailability of data when, in fact, older

and less familiar periods may be morerelevant conceptually.

The focus on the recent past also maytend to encourage the flawed view thathistory can tell us what to do next ratherthan, as Clausewitz recommended, de-velop our "educated judgement." The

FA Journal July-August 1998

military needs to make up its currentdeficit in historical study, particularlyof the First World War. Conceptually,the First World War gave birth to thedeep battle, a model for the ModernStyle of Warfare, and by studying thatwar, military professionals can help de-velop educated judgement for the future.

The ContentionMy contention is that the most signifi-

cant RMA in the history of warfare tookplace between 1917 and 1918. It amoun-ted to the birth of modern warfare withthe advent of artillery indirect fire as thefoundation of planning at the tactical,operational and strategic levels of war—the invention of deep battle.

This phenomenon was so revolution-ary that the burgeoning of armor andairpower and the arrival of the Informa-tion Age since then have been no morethan complements to it—incrementaltechnical improvements to the efficiencyof the conceptual model of the Modern

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Style of Warfare. They are its products,not its peers.

I contend that this RMA had techno-logical and tactical but, most crucially,conceptual components. While elementsof the first two existed before the FirstWorld War, it took the shock of war toact as a catalyst for change. From thesolution to pressing tactical problemsemerged the unforeseen possibility thatthe new techniques of deep attack mightcreate a new operational paradigm.

Equally, as the means of prosecutingdeep battle have became ever more so-phisticated, so the logic of the ModernStyle of Warfare has encroached uponand now dominates the strategic level.

Modern Style of Warfare. Let mepaint a picture of what we understandby the Modern Style of Warfare, usingoffensive operations as an example:

• It takes place over an extended areaand is three-dimensional.

• The importance of time is critical interms of tempo and simultaneity.

• Information about enemy disposi-tions is gathered by aerial, electronicand optical means. This is transformedinto intelligence about enemy inten-tions and potential targets throughoutthe depth of the enemy positions.

• The capability exists to hit high-payoff targets accurately throughout theenemy's space; the targets can be at-tacked separately or in synchronizationwith the contact battle.

• A plan is developed for maneuverforces to achieve a rapid penetration orbreakthrough.

• The fire plan creates shock and maxi-mum dislocation. It's synchronized withair operations and the scheme of ma-neuver to achieve a synergy of effects.The weight of fire is carefully measuredaccording to the neutralizing or destruc-tive effects required. The fire plan at-tacks enemy headquarters, communi-cations systems, artillery, logistical op-erations, bridges and depots. It blindsenemy observers and destroys strong-points and field defenses. It attacks en-emy positions in depth—especially theenemy reserve before it can join thecontact battle—sealing off the battle-field and harrying any who flee.

• Command, control and communica-tions (C3) systems and styles of commandthat can fuse the capabilities of these sys-tems can break the enemy' s cohesion andwill with catastrophic consequences.

• The plan includes ruses and decep-tions, including a complete dummy fireplan, if necessary.

Mules Hauling Ammunition at St. Baussant, 1918

• Planning for this operation is con-ducted at a high level under centralizedcommand, but measures are taken tomake the plan responsive to the unex-pected that will inevitably occur.

This generic model is readily recog-nizable in the doctrine of NATO andWarsaw Pact armies of the Cold War, inthe operations for the Egyptian crossingof the Suez Canal in 1973 and, morerecently, in the minds of Gulf War plan-ners. At the tactical level, many of thecomponents are integral to a contempo-rary attack helicopter cross-FLOT (for-ward-line-of-own-troops) operation. Itis also the precise blueprint for battle astested by the British Army at Cambraiin November 1917, but seen in morecomplete form in the German offensivesof spring 1918, the "Kaiserschlacht"and the Allied offensives later that year.

Warfare in 1914. More than 80 yearslater, we know this model of 1917 asour own style of warfare; but in 1914,just three years earlier, it would haveseemed entirely unfamiliar.

• Warfare in 1914 was linear with pre-vailing doctrines emphasizing flanks,envelopments and annihilations. It wasbased on the contact battle of physicalencounter where maneuver forces weresupported by artillery firing directly,generally at short range.

• While the few aircraft could conductreconnaissance, they had no means oflocating targets in depth; relatively fewhowitzers in service were capable ofengaging targets in "dead" ground—ground that can't be observed becauseof terrain features. Techniques to adjustfires were primitive and generally in-volved an estimate on the gun positionitself. Communication with observerswas by a limited number of telephones,semaphore or megaphone.

• In the case of the British field army,all artillery ammunition was shrapnel.There was no means of supplying largequantities of artillery ammunition tomaneuver forces in the field, and partlyin recognition of this fact, there wasvery little ammunition.

• Artillery planning did not exist at theoperational level, except in siege war-fare. Indeed, given the purely tacticaloperations envisaged, centralized, high-level command of artillery would havebeen irrelevant.

Clearly between 1914 and 1917 some-thing extraordinary of enduring militarysignificance happened: the indirect firerevolution and birth of modern warfare.

Tactical and TechnicalDeficiencies of 1914

The revolution was technical, tacticaland conceptual, but many of the com-ponents that contributed to the indirectfire revolution were not new. The im-portance of being able to engage unseentargets had been clear even in antiquity.Indirect fire was common in siege war-fare, but observers generally were notin a position to adjust the fall of shot andprecision was relatively unimportant.

The earliest use of indirect fire on thebattlefield was probably at Paltsig in luly1759 by the Russian Army firing over thetops of trees. By 1840 the British hadgiven the howitzer the task of firing fromcover at enemy artillery, but this wasliterally a hit-or-miss business with nocalculation. Primitive indirect systemsrelied upon a line of markers from the gunto the point at which the target could beobserved. This made them relatively im-mobile and, therefore, generally unus-able, given the tactics of the day.

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The Germans advocated the use ofindirect fire as a means of protectinggunners from machineguns based ontheir experience in the Franco-PrussianWar. In 1882, the Russian Karl Gukwrote a seminal book Indirect Fire forField Artillery that described the essen-tials of aiming points, crest clearanceand observer corrections to fire.

The Germans followed these develop-ments and produced a device to facili-tate indirect fire cal led the Richtflaeche.By 1904, the Russian artillery had anindirect fire sight used on a large scaleat Liao-Yang in August; thereafter inthat war, indirect fire became the norm.The US Army noted the value of indi-rect fire in the Russo-Japanese War asreflected in its artillery "Drill Regula-tion" of 1907.

The British experimented with indi-rect fire during the Boer War and con-cluded that in mobile warfare it was notpractical. It was a neglected art, and theRoyal Field Artillery did not have aneffective indirect fire sight until 1913.

Indirect fire also had been practiced insiege warfare and by garrison and coastalartilleries where the problems of accu-rate survey were less severe. It was inthese branches of the artillery, far re-moved from the battlefield, that themost progress was made.

Despite the existence of so many com-ponents that would ultimately be meldedto create the indirect fire revolution,armies failed, or chose not to realizetheir potential for a number of reasons.

• No Apparent Tactical Necessity. Allarmies of the day planned to conductfast-moving operations in which it wasquite possible that artillery would beunable to keep up.

• No Apparent Operational Necessity.There was no concept of artillery beingused at the operational level to breakthrough enemy lines; such an eventual-ity was not contemplated. The excep-tion to this would be the reduction offortifications, such as those at Liege.

• No Action to Supply the Means:Guns and Ammunition. Because firewas generally to be direct, guns had arelatively short range and would nothave been able to make the most of anindirect fire concept. Longer range gunswould have been heavier, even lessmobile and, thus, even less relevant tothe prevailing concept. Shortly beforethe First World War, British designersof a new gun carriage chose to sacrificerange for mobility. Because the pri-mary role of artillery was not coun-

terbattery fire (CB) and because mostCB would be direct fire, howitzers wererelatively few in number.

Ammunition was of limited util i ty anddid not exist in sufficient quantity toprosecute the sort of concept so familiarthree years later. Pre-war doctrine hadnot envisaged that such a catastrophecould occur. The British war establish-ment of 1913 allotted each 18-pounderhowitzer 1,000 rounds with 300 in theUnited Kingdom (UK) and an addi-tional 500 to be provided from factorieswithin six months. Of the 1,000 rounds,only 176 were held at the battery level,and they could sustain firing for just 44minutes at Rate 4. Six such periodswould consume the ammunition of theforce, with 75 minutes worth in the UKand another 60 minutes worth arrivingwithin six months. In comparison, by1918 most light guns of both sides ex-pected to fire about 600 rounds per dayat the start of an offensive.

While many of the means to fire indi-rectly existed in some form, there re-mained substantial technical deficien-cies in accuracy. The means of locatingtargets in depth were wanting, as werethe means of predicting fire.

The issue was, however, not merelytechnical. The prime reason for the fail-

ure to exploit indirect fire—given thatso many of its means could have beenmade available—was lack of imagina-tion and doctrinal laziness. Once thebrutal necessity presented itself, thetechnical and tactical problems soonwere overcome. The problem also wentbeyond laziness; in part, it was sheermiscalculation by the conservative mili-tary cultures of the day.

As early as 1890, Moltke had express-ed concern at the diminishing prospectsof avoiding a long war. In 1900, thePolish financier Jan Bloch had foreseenthat the overwhelming lethality of de-fensive firepower would slaughter at-tacking infantry, and Lord Kitchenerpredicted the war would last for years.But their views were dismissed becauseof the unacceptable conclusions thatflowed from them.

Artillery was held in the highest socialand professional esteem in the RussianArmy, which had pioneered indirectfire; but even in the Russian Army,some were deeply suspicious of offic-ers with technical ability. During theRusso-Japanese War, one Russian gen-eral, on seeing a battery take up positionbehind cover, ordered it out into theopen; he refused to believe it couldengage an enemy it couldn't see.

Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 1918. A Coastal Artillery 14-inch railway gun fires on Germantargets 20 miles away.

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In the British Army, artillery officers'use of maps to fix targets was consid-ered to be ungentlemanly, devaluingthe skills of estimating range by eye.The introduction of high explosive (HE)ammunition had been suggested butwas dismissed partly on the groundsthat it was rumored to give off noxiousfumes that wou Id not have been a properway to wage war. The more probablyreasons for not introducing HE was toavoid complicating logistics and theunlikelihood of its ever being required.The elan of horse artillery summed upthe ethos of the gunner: survey, math-ematical calculations and static opera-tions were the unspeakable diet of thegarrison and coastal artillery.

InMay 1914,CaptainHilloftheRoyalGarrison Artillery addressed the RoyalArtillery Institute on the subject of indi-rect fire. He was greeted with hoots oflaughter when he asserted that withintwo months of the outbreak of war,Field Artillery would be making cor-rections for meteorological variations.

The French and Germans were nobetter. Artillery was not widely esteemedin the German Army. It is worth notingthat the designer of the German blue-print for the Modern Style of Warfare,Colonel Georg Bruchmueller, was onlyon temporary active duty and, despitethe award of the Pour le Merite, wasnever promoted above colonel. He re-tired on a lieutenant colonel's pay.

In spite of the 1907 US artillery man-ual's emphasis on indirect fire, Lieuten-ant Colonel E. McGlachin noted as lateas 1916 that some of the most experi-enced graduates of the US Army's Schoolof Fire could not conduct indirect firemissions. Although the US Army had theequipment and theory to apply indirectfire, it lacked the qualified personnel and,presumably, the will to do so.

Problem Assessed:1915

The battles of summer 1914 were typi-fied by artillery deploying in the open,rapidly expending its ammunition andbeing destroyed. The power of machine-guns and rapid rifle fire in the defensebrought maneuver to a grinding halt,and there was insufficient artillery fire-power to break the stalemate in theoffense.

It soon became clear that an entirelynew approach would be required, andthe problem had to be examined from

the first principles. The solution, albeitan imperfect one, took four years toevolve, and is still with us today.

Tactical Problem. The tactical prob-lem was clear. The force had to breachobstacles, destroy or neutralize as manytroops manning them as possible, con-duct CB fire to protect assaulting troopsand be able to fire at unseen targets inthe enemy's depth to protect troopsexploiting success before the enemy'saccompanying artillery could come for-ward. In 1914 and 1915, artillery coulddo none of these adequately and, in mostcases, not at all.

In the battles of 1915 at NeuveChappelle, Festubert and Loos, Britishplanners came to understand the newfundamentals of firepower and battle-field geometry by trial and error. AtNeuve Chappelle, 10 to 12 March 1915,the British Army deployed 354 piecesagainst 60 German pieces on a sector of1,200 meters. This was a density notmatched until 1917, yet the British onlycould fire 200 to 400 rounds per gun. Inaddition, targeting was defective, al-though aerial photography was avail-able at the time. At Festubert on 15 May1915, the attack was preceded by a fireplan lasting 48 hours rather than the 35minutes of Neuve Chappelle. However,the destructive effect was still inade-quate, and surprise was lost.

At Loos on 15 September 1915, theattack sector was eight times longer andthe density of guns only one-fifth that atNeuve Chappelle. To achieve the weightof fire required, the guns had to fire fora longer period, again compromisingsurprise.

The issues were:• Was it necessary to destroy the en-

emy obstacles and trenches or rather toneutralize the men defending them?

• How much fire was required for howlong to achieve the desired result?

• Could the amount of fire required becalculated through some universal math-ematical formula? If so,

• Was this to be expressed in terms ofguns-per-yard-of-front or the roundsthey could deliver on a given front overa given period, and of what calibers theguns should be?

• Was the rate of fire of the appropriatecalibers of ammunition or the availabil-ity of ammunition per day the key?

• If an adequate, high rate of fire couldbe achieved over a critical period, did itmatter that this could not be sustained?

• How long should fire be appliedbefore the maneuver phase began?

• How long did a battle last—oneweek or nine months?

The Operational Problem. Tacticalsuccesses were mere attritional encoun-ters if they lacked an operational di-mension. The operational conundrumfor both sides was how to achieve thebreach and breakout.

The Germans defied Allied tacticalsuccesses, such as they were, by con-structing and withdrawing to ever moreformidable fortifications, culminatingin the Hindenburg Line. These with-drawals were ever deeper and to denserfortifications and their defense evermore "elastic."

In the defense, the key was to hold aline so far in depth that if the enemyreached it, he couldn't bring his artil-lery forward fast enough to support hisgains, subjecting him to massive defen-sive fire and counterattack. A "rule ofthumb" developed that reserves shouldbe held nine kilometers to the rear, cap-able of counterattacking within twohours of the start of an attack. The shapeof the battlefield, thus, came to be deter-mined by the range of artillery. Theability of artillery to locate and engagetargets in depth and to move guns for-ward rapidly came to have operationalsignificance.

The ConceptualSolution: 1916-18

It became clear that indirect fire wouldbe the key to answering these tacticaland operational problems. The startingpoint was the availability of artilleryammunition and gun barrels. From thisa solution might be crafted.

1918 "BC Scope." A Redleg observes thenext target from the ruins of war.

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Aerial photography permitted precise targeting throughout the theatre and up-to-datemapping of ever-changing trenches. Here an observer operates the Graflex camera froman observaton plane.

Vast attritional experiments were con-ducted at Verdun and on the Somme.By 1917, it was accepted that, given theconcentration of resources, the gunscould advance two to three kilometersvirtually anywhere. But this tacticalachievement could only be bought atthe expense of forfeiting any hope ofoperational surprise and success. Otherapproaches to the application of fire-power would be needed to achieve op-erational success. By 1918, these ap-proaches were established.

Technical Means. In an astonishinglyshort time hitherto, conservative mili-tary establishments identified the tech-nical obstacles and devised a series oftechniques to overcome them. Thesehave stood the test of time and are, es-sentially, the basis of gunnery today:the conceptual model of three-dimen-sional firepower. Such a model appliesequally to airpower.

Air observers and aerial photographypermitted precise targeting throughoutthe theatre and up-to-date mapping ofever-changing trenches. But not until 1917were the problems of image distortionovercome to achieve adequate accuracy.

Advances in military survey enabled agun to fix its own position exactly, anachievement made easier by the staticnature of the war. But even when theexact locations of the target and the gunare known, inaccuracies still occurred.The means were devised to minimizethese. Meteorological data were gath-ered and calculations made to compen-sate. Allowance was made for the wearon each gun barrel, called calibration.

The displacement of each gun from thepoint of survey was taken into account—also the effects of temperature on thepropelling charge and variations inammunition manufacture by batch. By1918, an 18-pounder could be assumedto fire with an accuracy of 80 mils overa range of four kilometers, a similarstandard expected of today's field gunat that range.

Communications to send correctionsto the fall of shot remained a problem asthey were based on vulnerable tele-phone lines or primitive radios. At thesame time, techniques of electronic war-fare were developed to intercept wire-less and telephone communications.Pigeons, semaphore and runners alsowere used. Aerial observers developedelaborate signaling systems to commu-nicate directly with gun positions.

A series of heavier guns and howitzerswere produced along with a variety ofHE and gas shells and fuzes, the mostimportant of which were the instant anddelay fuzes. The instant fuze gave HEeffects similar to those of shrapnel with-out requiring the same skill in firing it.In its way, it was as significant as theintroduction of radar fuzes in 1944.

Organizational Means. A new artil-lery command, intelligence and plan-ning organization was created for theoperational and tactical levels. By 1916in the British Army, the artillery com-mander at the corps level commandedall the divisional artilleries. He set thetimes of fire plans, and he allocatedobservers to batteries throughout theformation. By 1918, artillery planning

in the British Army was conducted atthe army level and decentralized to thedivisions for execution once the offen-sive was launched.

The Germans did not have a corpsartillery until February 1916, and eventhen it was merely a reserve pool ofordnance. There was no coordinationbetween divisional and corps artillery;the former could not call for the supportof the latter. By spring 1918, all Ger-man artillery was task organized intoseven functional groups divided intosub-groups—a revolutionary departurefrom traditional command hierarchies.

The distinction between the close anddeep battles was fully recognized aswas the need to coordinate the two. By1918, German artillery received times,tasks and areas of fire from the army-level command, but targets were se-lected by the group and sub-group. Asimportant, the emphasis in training andplanning was on all-arms coordinationand making fire plans flexible enoughto match the new infantry tactics.

An enormous new logistical organiza-tion was created to service the unprec-edented demands of artillery. The armiesof 1914 were the armies of the Indus-trial Revolution but mere shadows ofwhat the Great Artillery War was tobring forth. The Royal Artillery be-came larger than the Royal Navy. In thecase of the British and German armies,the ratio of gunners to infantrymendoubled between 1914 and 1918 andthe French ratio trebled. Whereas inApril 1917, the US Army had nine fieldregiments, by the Armistice it had 234.Gigantic new arms and munitions in-dustries were created with huge socialconsequences—not the least of whichwas the emancipation of women.

Experiment and Practice. Thesetechnical, tactical and conceptual ad-vances came to fruition in November1917 in the British Offensive at Cambrai.The firing of the first predicted (as op-posed to registered) fire plan was argu-ably more significant than the first massdeployment of tanks. It was to be themodel for the successful offensives ofthe summer of 1918 on the Marne and atAmiens.

The Germans demonstrated the appli-cation of fire in novel tactical and op-erational ways without armor in theirKaiserschlacht of spring 1918 as mas-terminded by Bruchmueller. Interest-ingly, in the battles of the last few monthsof the war, tanks featured less promi-nently and artillery became even more

FA Journal m July-August 1998 27

dominant. By 1918, artillery had re-stored maneuver and exploitation to thebattlefield, capabilities that had beensnuffed out in 1914.

The First World Waras an RMA

So how do the events of 1917 to 1918rate as an RMA? The revolution in theFirst World War changed the face of20th century warfare in many ways.Above all, warfare became dominatedby artillery—became an ascendancy offire and artillery by indirect fire.

The Schlieffen Plan and the Germanoffensive of 1914 from which it wasderived had been the epitome of a styleof warfare: two-dimensional linearity—a style perhaps as old as warfare itself.

The revolution of 1917 to 1918 oc-curred because prevailing ideas firmlyrooted in the establishments of the daywere out of step and unyielding to themultiple pressures of change. The tec-tonic plates of firepower and maneuvershifted and could not be restrained bysocial and technical conservatism, the

perceived lessons of previous wars orconvenient general staff theory.

The secondary shock from this mili-tary earthquake occurred in the follow-ing autumn and winter when the imbal-ance was further magnified by the rein-forcement of defense and immobilityby the power of the newly developedtrench lines. The result was a suppurat-ing stalemate and the gestation of a newconcept that would generate sufficientfirepower in the offense to make ma-neuver possible once more.

By 1918, the new paradigm employedthree dimensions. Its object was a break-through with simultaneous fire into theenemy's rear areas leading to paralysisand collapse rather than mere envelop-ment. Indirect firepower was the key.

Based on this indirect fire model, theexecution of the concepts of 1917 and1918 was wanting in two primary re-spects. First, there was a lack of trans-port to move forward and supply gunsover rough terrain in the offensive and,second, both armies lacked the commu-nications to maintain decentralized con-trol over a fire plan once an offensivehad begun.

The Paris Gun fired a 264-pound shell more than 60 miles to bombard Paris.

Communications to send corrections tothe fall of shot remained a problem as theywere based on vulnerable telephone linesor primitive radios.

After the war, the model's implemen-tation was improved by mechanizedtransport, close air support (CAS) andwireless communications. The absenceof these had not prevented the birth ofmodern warfare; they were the naturalconsequences of the desire to improveits efficiency. They were technical"fixes" and not, in themselves, concep-tually revolutionary.

Modern Style of Warfare after 1918.After 1918, the Germans sought toachieve a paralyzing operational break-through using armor supported, not byartillery, but by airpower. Some havedescribed the difference between theSchlieffen Plan and the airpower ap-proach of Manstein's Sichelschnitt asrevolutionary, given the concept of thebreakthrough in the latter. I would ar-gue that the last four years of the FirstWorld War had been precisely aboutcreating a breakthrough, and thatSichelscnitt was merely a replay of theKaiserschlacht with updated technol-ogy and tactics.

Therefore, the most instructive com-parison isn't between the Schlieffen Planand Sichelschnitt, but between theSchlieffen Plan and the Kaiserschlachtand between the Kaiserschlacht andSichelshnitt. The difference betweenthe first two was conceptually revolu-tionary and between the latter merelytechnical and tactical.

From their miraculous victory inFrance in 1940, the Germans proceededto learn disastrous lessons, believingthat the tactics and technology demon-strated in France constituted an RMA.They missed the point that the criticalelement in the Modern Style of Warfareis three-dimensional firepower through-out the area of operations. This was adifficult lesson to relearn a few years

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later in the USSR when the Luftwaffecould not deliver this and artillery wasoften not available to compensate. Op-erations became rooted in the style offlanks, envelopments and attemptedannihilations. The rapid strategic break-through and paralysis achieved in Francewas not repeated.

As a result, the Germans were mired inanother materialschlacht (a battle ofrelative logistic strength) with the East-ern Front degenerating into a prolongedfour-year agony analogous to the finalmonths of 1918. This was a historicalmodel their planning had specificallyintended to avoid. Thus the Kaiser-schlacht and Operation Barbarossa inJuly 1941 followed a similar pattern.

Strategic Perspective. In 1918, theGermans fired on Paris with their "ParisGun," an attack in keeping with theemerging Modern Style of Warfare. Thisattack was the first long-range strategicattack using surface-to-surface sys-tems—a revolutionary conceptual andtechnical event. Its immediate effectwas minimal, but it proved the imma-ture first step along a path that wouldlead to the V1 and V2 rockets in WorldWar II and the Scud intercontinentalballistic missiles (ICBMs) and cruisemissiles of today. The logic of the Mod-ern Style of Warfare is that as technol-ogy allows, it has expanded ever out-ward from its tactical origins to its cur-rent dominance at all levels of warfare.

In the 20th century, developments infirepower have outstripped those inmaneuver. From 1914 onward, the chal-lenge was to convert a tactical break-through into an operational break-through, and firepower was the means.Increasingly, the challenge is to maketactical and operational breakthroughssimultaneously strategic—firepower,again, will be the key. This strategicbreakthrough may entail operations thatare not merely deep in the traditionalgeographical sense, but also integratedand non-linear wherever and wheneverneeded to create that effect. This is theenduring dynamic of the Modern Styleof Warfare.

Today, some say we're experiencingan RMA. But the fundamentals looksimilar to those of the First World Warand hardly revolutionary by compari-son. The new factors generally cited areprecise, standoff strikes; improved com-mand, control, communications and in-telligence; information warfare; and non-lethality. In First World War parlance,these would be termed accurate indirect

US Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). By 2005, ATACMS Block MA will be able toprosecute the deep attack out to 300 kilometers.

fire; improvements in command and con-trol, intelligence and the means of actingupon it; and the munitions and techniquesof neutralization and suppression.

The Information Age does not heralda new RMA, rather it adds technicalimpetus to the conceptual dynamic ofthe Modern Style of Warfare. The ef-fects of the microchip are no more pro-found than was the technical apparatusof the Blitzkrieg in 1940—both shouldbe seen as scientific attempts to make anolder conceptual model operate moreeffectively. Thus, the joint surveillanceand target attack radar system (1STARS)and similar systems are merely techni-cal developments along the conceptualpath pioneered by aerial photography.Likewise, the global positioning sys-tem (GPS) is a technical evolution aris-ing from the conceptual revolution thatfirst required firing platforms to surveytheir positions and make their fire moreprecise when standing off from targets.Such additions make the prosecution ofdeep battle more efficient.

Many will naturally be impressed bythe enormous technical achievementsof their day and insist that the scale ofthis achievement must warrant the term"revolution," even if conceptually it isnot. Without a conceptual perspective,such an analysis latches onto the con-spicuous and the material and is impov-erished and, probably, unsustainable.At the same time, we are clearly wit-nessing a period of astonishing changeand imaginative innovation in warfare.

The RMA of 1917 and 1918 does notdiminish the significance of develop-

ments since; but the two are not compa-rable. For such a comparison, we mustawait the arrival of four-dimensionalwarfare—cyberwar or whatever else thatmay be.

Future wars involving developed na-tions are unlikely to look anything likethe World Wars—we all hope they donot. But the developments in fires be-tween 1914 and 1941 do inform us andconfirm how we might best shape ourefforts in changed circumstances. Themore we study the future, the more re-markable the RMA of 1917 and 1918 is.

Brigadier Jonathan B. A. Bailey, Member ofthe British Empire (MBE), is the Chief of FireCoordination for the Allied Command Eu-rope Rapid Reaction Corps in Germany. Hecommanded the 40th Field Regiment inGermany and a battery in the 4th FieldRegiment, Royal Artillery. He also servedas a Tactics Instructor and member of theDirecting Staff at the Staff College in En-gland, from which he was a graduate, andas the Artillery Operations Officer for the4th Armoured Division in Germany. Otherhighlights of his service in the British Armyinclude commanding a Zipra guerrilla As-sembly Place in Rhodesia as part of theCommonwealth Cease-Fire Monitoring andserving as an Operations Officer and Bat-tery Commander during the Falklands landcampaign. Brigadier Bailey is a graduate ofthe Higher Command and Staff Course inEngland and holds a Bachelor of Arts inMedieval History and Philosophy from theUniversity of Sussex. He has written a num-ber of articles and books on the subject ofartillery and military history.

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DISCLAIMER: The majority of the FA Journal, a bimonthlyprofessional journal for US Army and Marine Field Artillerymenprinted by the US Field Artillery Association, is a reprint of the FieldArtillery Bulletin published by the US Arrny Field Artillery SchoolBuilding 746, Fort Sill, OK. All advertising and Field Artillery Asso-ciation news and information articles, as indicated by the table ofcontents, have been inserted by the Association after the publica-tion of Field Artillery and are solely the Association's responsibil-ity. In no way does their inclusion constitute the US Army's affirma-tion of their accuracy or endorsement of products or concepts.

Field Artillery Bulletin Staff:Patrecia Slayden Hollis

EditorBob T. Coleman

Art DirectorJoanne Alexander Brown

Assistant EditorPURPOSE: As stated in the first Field Artillery Journalpublished in 1911—To publish a journal for disseminating profes-sional knowledge and furnishing information as to the artillery'sprogress, development and best use in campaign; to cultivate,with the other arms, a common understanding of the power andlimitations of each; to foster a feeling of interdependence amongthe different arms and of hearty cooperation by all; and topromote understanding between the regular and militia forces byforging a closer bond; all of which objects are worthy andcontribute to the good of our country.

SUBSCRIPTIONS/ASSOCIATION MEMBER-SHIP: Subscriptions to the FA Journal come with membershipin the Association. Individual or corporate memberships may beobtained through the US Field Artillery Association, P.O. Box33027, Fort Sill, Oklahoma 73503-0027. Telephone numbers are(580) 355-4677 or FAX (580) 355-8745 or Email: usfaa@sirinet,net.Dues are $20.00 per year for an individual membership ($38.00for two years and $56.00 for three) to US and APO addresses. Allothers add $13.00 per subscription year for postage. CorporateMemberships are available at $700.00 per year and CorporateAssociate Memberships are $350.00 per year,

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ADDRESS CHANGES: Members call or write the Asso-ciation at the telephone numbers/Email listed in "Subscriptions"or the address listed below. Third-class postage paio by the USField Artillery Association, P.O. Box 33027, Fort Sill, Oklahoma73503-0027. POSTMASTER SEND ADDRESS CHANGES to theAssociation at the same address.

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DAVID E. OTTLieutenant General, US Army, Retired

President, US Field Artillery Association

US Field Artillery Association Staff:Anna Lou JohnsonManaging Director

Mary C. HillCirculation/Address Changes

Dorothy AdamsSaint Barbara/Molly Pitcher Awards

A Professional Journal for Redlegs

July-August 1998 Volume III. No. 4

INTERVIEW

4 History—The Context for Change in the ArmyAn interview with Brigadier General John W. Mountcastle,Chief of Military History

ARTICLES: History

7 Staying on the Cutting Edge: Military Professionalism and theMexican War

by Major R. Fowl Smith, Jr.

13 1999 History Writing Contest Rules and 1999 Field ArtilleryThemes

14 From the Parade Ground to the Battlefield: Henry Knox andthe Battle of Monmouth

by Captain Michael D. Carter, USAR

19 Steel Curtain—The Guns on the la Drangby Captain Steven M. Leonard, OD

23 Deep Battle 1914-1941: The Birth of the Modern Style ofWarfare

by Brigadier Jonathan B.A. Bailey, MBE

40 Thunder in the Ozarks: The Battles of Wilson's Creek andPea Ridge

by Majors William S. Bland and William M. Raymond, Jr.

46 Big Gun Vignettes: Fun and Games in WW IIby Colonel (Retired) Robert B. Partridge

ARTICLES: Other

30 Fire Support in Bosnia-Herzegovina: An Overviewby Colonel Mark T. Kimmitt

33 Integrating Targeting and Information Operations in Bosniaby Lieutenant Colonel Steven Curtis, IN; Captain Robert A. B. Gum's;and Major (Retired) Marc J. Romanych, ADA

FEATURES

3 FROM THE FIREBASE

39 VIEW FROM THE BLOCKHOUSE

48 ASSOCIATION NEWS

Editor's Note. This is the second of two articles exploring the conceptthat the First World War was the most significant revolution in militaryaffairs (RMA) in history and that indirect firepower has persistently beenunderestimated. Brigadier Bailey's first article was "Deep Battle: TheBirth of the Modern Style of Warfare" and was published in July-August1998. For more comprehensive information and references, read theStrategic and Combat Studies Institute's Occasional Paper Number 22:"The First World War and the Birth of Modern Warfare" written byBrigadier Bailey. The 1996 pamphlet is available in several US militarylibraries or can be obtained from the Editor, Strategic and CombatStudies Institute, British Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, GU15 4NP,United Kingdom

In the 20th century, we persistentlyundervalue the role of firepower inwarfare and overestimate the im-

portance of attritional ground maneu-ver. This article reassess aspects of theFirst World War, looks briefly at trendsin technology and establishes the line oflogic from the intellectual landmark of1917 and 1918 through 80 years of theascendancy of fires. The ascendancy of

26

fires has implications for the joint andcombined battle in the century of fire-power.

The Underestimation of Firepower.The following four examples selectedfrom many illustrate cases in which theunderestimation of firepower has beenfatal in this century.

1. Predictions of Jean de Bloch. At theturn of the century, Jean de Bloch pre-

dicted the new technology of industrial-ized warfare would so strengthen thedefense that attacking infantry wouldbe slaughtered in horrifying numbers.Wars would become struggles of attri-tion in which defeat would bring eco-nomic, social and political collapse. Hisviews were generally regarded as per-verse, and no army reassessed its doc-trine in the light of the revolution infirepower he described; they preferredto retain doctrine emphasizing infantrymaneuver and willpower over firepow-er. The prescience of Bloch's analysiswas revealed in the Russo-Japanese Warof 1904 and 1905.

2. Failure to Adopt Indirect Fire as aSystem. The effects of firepower in theRusso-Japanese War, especially indi-rect fire, were well-documented andchanges were recommended; but theimplications of restructuring armies todeliver that fire threatened the prevail-ing culture of elan and maneuver—"The Cult of the Offensive."

March-April 1999 FA Journal

FirepowerBrigadier Jonathan B. A. Bailey, MBE

The Century of

Doctrine regressed and Europeanarmies took the field in 1914 with massesof infantry maneuvering into range ofeach other's infantry firepower, and astheir positions locked, they found theylacked the artillery firepower to gain adecisive outcome. Artillery, which haddeployed in sight of its target, was usu-ally blown away. Only by rebuildingthe capability to deliver decisive firesafter four dreadful years of experimentwas the deadlock on the Western Frontbroken.

3. Abandonment of the Self-PropelledGun. Surprisingly, after the dominationof artillery in the First World War, asimilar underestimation of firepower oc-curred again, this time in the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republic. Almost im-mediately, a new Cult of the Offensiveemerged that promised quick victoriesand was based on the tank. Typical ofthe craving to dispense with the burdenof artillery was the doctrinal regressionthat rejected the self-propelled gun.

Self-propelled guns were first pro-duced in 1917, but by the early 1920s,armies had persuaded themselves thatartillery mobility commensurate withtanks was unnecessary or logisticallyimpractical. They argued that tanks didnot need artillery support, and since theoffense was the responsibility of thetank, most artillery should be consignedto the defense. The experience of theSecond World War rapidly changed per-ceptions, and the self-propelled gun soonbecame critical equipment in all majorarmies after 20 wasted years.

4. Stripping of Firepower from theWehrmacht. The Wehrmacht grossly un-derestimated the importance of fire-power in the crucial years 1940 and1941 with dire consequences. It wasstripped of much of its firepower in themisplaced belief that rapid armored ma-neuver would win the war by the end of1941. The Germans' neglect of air powerand artillery and their inability to de-liver sustained firepower throughout thetheater of operations proved fatal tothem in the USSR.

From May to September 1940 in theBattles of France and Britain, theLuftwaffe lost 3,064 aircraft, 65 percentof its force. In September 1940, themonth that Germany lost more planesthan itproduced, Hitler ordered plannedaircraft production cut; that year Britishaircraft production outstripped Ger-many's. Between July and December1941, the USSR produced 5,173 fight-ers and the Germans 1,619. The Ger-

mans fought the last four years of thewar with inferior close air support andwithout a full-fledged strategic air force.'

Changes in artillery production anddeployment illustrate the same point. Inthe summer of 1941, the Soviets andGermans had roughly 6,000 and 7,000

guns, respectively. The Germans broketheir corps artillery into divisions, be-lieving the artillery above the divisionlevel could not keep up with the speedof maneuver and cover the huge spaceof the USSR. This proved to be the case,but without self-propulsion, even the

US 105-mm Howitzeron Holt Chassis

French-BuiltRenault Tank1917In early attempts to de-

sign self-propelled guns,the Americans mounted a105-mm gun on the HoltCaterpillartractor chassis,which allowed no room fora crew or ammunition. Bythe early 1920s, armies hadpersuaded themselvesthat artillery mobility com-mensurate with tanks wasunnecessary or logisticallyimpractical.

M7 105-mm Howitzer in the Second World War. The self-propelled gun soon becamecritical equipment in all major armies.

FA Journal March-April 1999 Continued on Page 30 27

divisional artillery was often left be-hind. Air power proved an inadequatesubstitute, and the Germans failed togain territory without the appropriatefirepower.

The Germans failed to develop self-propulsion earlier and concentrate theirartillery decisively in 1941 and thereaf-ter. At the same time, their priority wastank production because the tank was tobe the campaign winner, as it had beenin France. In July 1941 as OperationBarbarossa was launched, a 70-percentcut in artillery production was ordered,and between April and December 1941,funding for artillery ammunition wasreduced from 69.1 Reichsmarks to 15.7Reichsmarks. By December 1941, artil-lery ammunition production was fallingfast.2

In contrast, the Soviets increased artil-lery production and deployment at alllevels in July 1941, creating new "op-erational" artillery formations above thedivisions. The Soviets learned from theFirst World War and, in part, from theideas of German Artilleryman ColonelGeorg Bruchmueller that they had tohave firepower to win.3

From 1 to 14 November 1941, the So-viets reinforced their Western Front with2,000 guns as German artillery produc-tion was declining. By 1943, the Ger-mans realized their error and tried tocopy the Soviet artillery structure withArtillerie Division 18, but it was toolate.4 Resources to equip it were lack-ing, and by then, nearly one million men

and 55,000 guns, including 75 percentof Germany's 88-mm guns, were point-ing at the skies over Germany to counteraerial attacks. In 1944 and 1945, artil-lery production again gained precedenceover the tank in recognition of the greatercombat power for the investment.

While often portrayed as the mastersof combined arms combat, the dimin-ished artillery structure of theWehrmacht, combined with a culturalpredilection for poorly coordinated ar-mored assaults resulted in such catas-trophes as the loss of 645 tanks atKursk in July 1943 and morethan 600 in the Ardennes inDecember 1944.5 Manystudies have ex-plained the excel-lence of German all-arms cooperationat the tactical level, but the failure tofight an effective all-arms battle at higherlevels is less often noted; if the failure isnoted, it's explained merely in terms ofpolitical interference. The failures usu-ally are seen as symptoms of Germany'slogistical weakness and ignore the factthat the imbalance between the armswas a conscious procurement decisionbased on skewed doctrine.

Challenging the First World WarMyths. The essence of the myths of theFirst World War is based on the condi-tions on the Western Front: Millionsdied because the war was conducted bycommanders wedded to monstrous,static, attritional tactics to win a fewyards of shattered mud across trench

Manning arms plants hundreds of miles apart, Soviet workers assemble howitzers duringthe Second World War. Josef Stalin called his artillery the "god of war" and saw to it thathis forces had more artillery than the Germans.

German Stuka Ju 87G in the Battle of Kursk,1943. A deadly diving tank-killer with a 37-mm gun in a pod on each wing, this aircraftwas very effective in Russia, but the Ger-mans had too few to make a significantimpact.

lines that scarcely moved in five years.The horror only ended when the innova-tive Germans introduced "StormtroopTactics," revealing the primitive follyof earlier Allied offensives, and the tankwas introduced to smash through theGerman lines leading to an Armistice.Almost none of the above is sustain-able.

The tragedy allegedly was com-pounded by the fact that only the Ger-mans learned the true lesson of thiswar—the need for a coherent armoreddoctrine. The Allies paid the price fortheir complacency with the German vic-tories in 1940 and 1941, and thereafter,the tank dominated war on both sides.This view is also dubious.

The myth of military bungling emerg-ed, in part, in the 1920s, is the reactionof liberal societies against their recentcatastrophe and was reinforced by aca-demics and the popular culture of the1960s for whom this line struck an at-tractive chord.6 The notion that therewas an alternative to the horrors of theFirst World War was encouraged by theNazi propaganda machine that inventedthe Blitzkrieg Legende and has beenaccepted uncritically by many since.7

Such was the basis of the First WorldWar myths, as follow.

• Operations were typically static. TheFirst World War was only static for re-latively limited periods and then prima-rily on the Western Front; elsewherethis was generally not the case. In thewest, 1914 was predominantly a year ofambitious German and French maneu-ver, while 1915 to 1917 was indeed cha-

30 March-April 1999 M FA Journal

racterized by static trench warfare. Forthe Allies, this was not the tactic ofchoice but an unwelcome prelude to thebreakout and maneuver. In 1918, thelatter was achieved and the war con-cluded.

Speeds of advance were similar tothose of the Second World War, giventhe relatively primitive means of mobil-ity. For example, the Allied advance inItaly from September 1943 to May 1945was 25 miles per month and in Nor-mandy from June 1944 to February 1945was 50 miles per month. In France fromAugust to November 1918, five BritishArmies advanced at 30 miles per month.The war, even on the Western Front,was thus not one of unrelenting staticoperations, even when compared tooperations 30 years later.

• Static operations are more costlythan mobile ones. Were the high casu-alty rates of the First World War a con-sequence of static operations? The tac-tics of the day are said to have been bothfatally concerned with capturing a fewyards of mud and, at the same time,unduly concerned with attritional force-on-force confrontations. Yet periods ofrelatively static operations were notmore costly than the periods of maneu-ver, but rather the reverse—with thecasualties due to maneuver spread overa larger area of the battlefield. The mea-sure of success should be whether thecost of the desired outcome was opti-mized.

There were probably as many decisivestatic operations as ones of decisivemaneuver, and the latter were morecostly. The disastrous French maneu-vers of the summer of 1914 cost 955,000casualties, and that year the Germanssuffered 370,000 casualties on the Marneand at Ypres alone. The much-laudedGerman operational maneuvers of spring1918, which so embarrassed the Allies,proved expensive disasters. BetweenMarch and July 1918, the Germans prob-ably sustained one million casualtiesand another 500,000 men deserted.7

Between July 1918 and the Armistice,they probably lost another 760,000 anda further one million refused to serve ordeserted.8 By comparison, they prob-ably lost 500,000 in the static Battle ofthe Somme and 350,000 in the Battle ofVerdun in 1916."

Static operations and maneuvers donot appear to have been inherently moredecisive one than the other. The warended with a successful maneuver fol-lowing what the German High Corn-

Germans on the Front in the First World War. Elite German Stormtroopers were created atthe expense of the rest of the army in an infantry innovation designed to lever a decisiveadvantage—a price that proved too costly with the defeat of 27 of the 36 assault divisionsin July 1918. This left a relatively low-grade majority to struggle on until the Armistice.

mand identified as a decisive period ofattrition, which might be seen as theAllies "winning the fire fight"—the fa-miliar ingredient in sustained success.

• Tanks won the war in 1918. The roleof the tank in breaking the deadlock onthe Western Front from 1916 onward isoften seen as decisive. This was farfrom the case.

The tank was used spectacularly atCambrai in November 1917, but its ac-tions were less remarkable than firingthe first predicted artillery fire plan andthe innovative melding of aircraft andartillery operations. On 8 August 1918,the British Army successfully deployed630 tanks, but thereafter the role of thetank diminished with only six occasionswhen more than 50 were massed andthree when more than 100 were fielded.The tank's mechanical endurance wasonly about eight hours and its crew'sendurance about two hours before mo-tion sickness incapacitated the soldiers.Unlike horse-drawn artillery, tankscould not keep up in the fast-movingbattles of the summer and autumn of1918, and the burden of combat contin-ued to fall on the artillery.10

• German Stormtroop tactics and op-erations in 1918 were a success. TheGerman tactics often are regarded as adazzling tactical innovation used withstartling operational consequences."But the quality of these elite troops wasbought at too high a price for the re-mainder of the German Army, and it'sdoubtful that anything worthwhile wasachieved by their sacrifice.

The popular notion of Schwerpunkt inGerman doctrine acknowledges thatrelative weakness must be accepted insome areas to achieve a decisive strengthelsewhere. A similar imbalance is often

noticeable in German force structures,creating a well-furnished elite to lever adecisive advantage, albeit at the mate-rial expense of the majority of the force.Thus, Germany selected and trainedStormtroopers in 1916 and 1917, strip-ping the rest of the army of its best men.By July 1918, 27 of Germany's 36 eliteassault divisions had been written off,leaving a relatively low-grade majorityto struggle on until the Armistice.

The German Army's tactical "suc-cesses" in 1917 and 1918 often havebeen attributed to infantry innovation.But the system for the delivery of firedevised by Georg Bruchmueller wasmore significant. The mass of the Ger-man Army that assaulted Allied lines inthe spring 1918 did so in primitive style.Not surprisingly, their casualties werecomparable to those of Allied attackersin 1916. In many cases, the scale of theircatastrophe may be attributed directlyto their infiltration tactics, which causedthousands to be enfiladed by machine-gun posts, cut off and captured.12

A British Mark V tank put out of action bythe direct fire of a German "77" in the FirstWorld War. Although the tanks of this warhad a mechanical endurance of about eighthours, the crews had incapacitating mo-tion sickness after about two.

FA Journal March-April 1999 31

In the spring of 1918, the GermanArmy led by its elite formations neverachieved an operational breakthrough.The Amerika Plan designed to win thewar before the US Army could arrive inEurope in strength failed, guaranteeingthat Germany would suffer strategicdefeat in 1918 rather than 1919.

• The First World War commanderstypically were stupid and inflexible. Bytoday's standards, many of the com-manders had an unacceptably high tol-erance of casualties. This was the resultof their refusal to acknowledge thestrength of modern defensive technol-ogy and the demand for self-sacrificeby troops maneuvering in the face of it.The quality of these same commanderswas apparent when they changed theirapproach, creating the revolution inmilitary affairs (RMA) described in myfirst article. They were perhaps the great-est innovators in military history.

• The Germans learned the right les-son from the First World War, and theFrench got it wrong. It is often held thatthe Germans were successful with theBlitzkrieg while the French executedthe folly of the Maginot Line and theBataille Conduite. This is a false com-parison. The French imperative was todeter and defend, avoiding another warwith Germany. The Germans designeda force to win a war they intended to ini-tiate, an offensive.

The fair test of whether the Frenchwere wrong and the Germans wise, isone that demonstrates whether or notthe Germans would have adopted a dif-ferent approach to that of the French iftheir imperative had been to defend.From 1941, defense was the Germanimperative in the west and, shortly afterthat, in the east as well. In the defense,the Germans proved themselves prob-ably the greatest planners and buildersof static fortifications in history. TheAtlantic Wall and a series of lines inItaly dwarf anything built by the French.The German forts at Breslau and Bou-logne were as much recreations of FortsVaux and Douaumont as anything onthe Maginot Line, and they possessedcuriously puny firepower.

The paralysis that gripped the Germandecision makers in the days after D-Dayin 1944 is similar to that which beset theFrench in the crucial moments of May1940 when their linear defense failedand the enemy appeared on an unex-pected flank. The German strategic andoperational leadership, which hadseemed so deft and decisive when it

German tanks with armored cars regroup in Russia at the Battle of Kursk 1943. The humancatastrophe at the hands of well-orchestrated Soviet and Allied firepower is seldom laid at thefeet of the German's fatal, armored offensive doctrine—another Cult of the Offensive.

held the initiative in the offense in May1940, looked anything but that in thedefense in June 1944.

It is not that the Germans' approach in1940 was right and the French wrong,rather they were approaches to differentstrategic objectives. In admiring theGerman military approach, the unwaryalso are paying tribute to its flawedstrategic imperative. Their success in1940 was often in the balance, and thedecisive factor was the distinctive Ger-man style of command and risk taking,admirable no doubt at the tactical levelbut generally unacceptable in a democ-racy at any other.

• The futile operations of the FirstWorld War were worse than those ofmaneuver in the Second World War.After the First World War, the Wehr-macht was designed to fight a war ondifferent terms. The error was not in amisreading of the fundamentals of theFirst World War, but rather, havingidentified them very clearly, in the de-termination to substitute rapid maneu-ver for fire superiority, repeating theintellectual errors of 1905 to 1914.

The emphasis was on maneuver by anarmored elite to win a quick victory atlow cost rather than the provision ofsustained firepower in decisive timeand space. Despite many misgivingsand helped by extreme good fortune,the flawed German approach was fa-tally endorsed by the victories of 1940.The underlying fundamental, the ascen-dancy of firepower, became evident soonafter, over-ruling wishful thinking. TheGermans were fated to refight their mili-tary anathema, while woefully ill-equipped and configured to succeed.

The Second World War was to be evenmore costly for Germany than the first,and its campaigns more attritional. Butbecause the campaigns initially involveddramatic maneuver, the human catas-trophe at the hands of well-orchestratedSoviet and Allied firepower is seldomlaid at the feet of the German's fatal,armored offensive doctrine—anotherCult of the Offensive.

From 22 June to 26 August 1941 inOperation Barbarossa, the successfulmaneuver by which the Wehrmachtforced its head into the Soviet noose,the Germans suffered 440,000 casual-ties, a rate seldom seen in the FirstWorld War. By December, German ca-sualties had reached 830,000. This wasan operational disaster of greater mag-nitude than Verdun, ensnaring the Ger-mans in a Materialschlacht far exceed-ing that of the First World War." After1942, much of the fighting on the East-ern Front degenerated to a primitive,low-technology, static warfare typicalof the middle years of the First World Warfor which the Soviet doctrine based onfires was configured to fight.14

German planning had been based noton military calculation, but rather theideological conviction that, as Hitlerput it, "Kick in the door and the wholerotten edifice will fall down," and Ger-man maneuver doctrine had been anaccomplice to this error. Its devotion tothe unbalanced doctrine of lightningarmored warfare was ultimately theundoing of the Wehrmacht.

• The First World War doesn't matterto us now. Today's concepts for thedelivery of fires were founded on opera-tions in the First World War. Two-

32 March-April 1999 FA Journal

dimensional warfare, the direct firecontact battle, had been the style of war-fare for millennia until 1917 and 1918.Thereafter, the ability to deliver fireindirectly through the third dimensionto fight the deep battle as well the closebattle revolutionized warfare; and thedelivery of joint fire at the decisive timeand place has been the dominant themein warfare ever since. The lines of itsdevelopment also have been strikinglyconstant, with ever-improving acquisi-tion; range; stand-off capability; preci-sion; command, control, communica-tions and intelligence (C3I); and termi-nal effects. The manner in which firesare delivered today and the appearanceof the wars and engagements in whichthey are used look very different thanthose of 80 years ago, but these areappearances rather than underlying con-cepts. Another dimension may emergemaking Cyber War the dominant meth-

od of warfare; but in the near future, itwill probably serve merely to makethree-dimensional warfare in its vari-ous forms more efficient.15

The Evolution of Military Technol-ogy. There is an apparent pattern in theevolution of military technology: First,the military utility of a technical devel-opment is noted and usually found want-ing; sometimes the concepts of thoseemploying it are scorned as being ex-cessively ambitious or mistaken. Forexample, the Germans were offered aform of radar in 1916 but turned it downbecause it needed at least six monthsmore work.16

The moment arises when someone hasthe foresight to transform a technicalcapability into a system, and it becomesa dominant technology rather thanmerely a piece of clever science. Thispattern applies to indirect fire: it hadbeen demonstrated before 1914; by

1918, it had become the decisive systemof war and has remained so today asjoint fire in many different forms. TheUS forces' current efforts to system-atize the "digit" also fit this pattern.

In time, the disproportionate effects ofa system diminish and others supersedeit. The figure displays this phenomenain the evolution of military technology.Strategic artillery is likely to remain adominant factor in warfare. But in thefuture, the distinction between tactical,theatre and strategic artillery, as be-tween the close, deep and rear battles,will disappear as even more capableground fires are integrated with air firesin simultaneous attacks.

In the 20th century, the balance ofcapability has tilted in favor of fire overmaneuver, and sustained success hasmost often been achieved when maneu-ver is synchronized with decisive attackby fire. There have been examples in

The Evolution of Military Technology

34 March-April 1999 FA Journal

ExperimentalUse

Long-Range RifleRail Transport

Machine-Gun Indirect Artillery TanksStrategic ArtilleryChemical WeaponsEWAir

Nuclear WeaponsHelicoptersTGM

Attack Helicopters Cyber-WarGenome Kampf

FlawedImmaturity

Long-Range RifleRail Transport

Machine-GunRail Transport

Indirect ArtilleryMachine-Gun

Indirect ArtilleryTanksChemical WeaponsInternal CombustionEWAir

Strategic ArtilleryNuclear WeaponsCASBAIAl

Biological WarfareHelicoptersTGM

Cyber-War

Maturity

Rail TransportMuzzle-LoadersBayonet

Long-Range RifleRail TransportBayonet

Long-Range RifleRail TransportBayonet

Long-Range RifleMachine-GunIndirect Artillery

TanksInternal CombustionEWCASStrategic Bombing

TanksStrategic ArtilleryChemical WeaponsNuclear WeaponsTpt HelicoptersEW, BAI, AlInformation Warfare

Strategic ArtilleryChemical WeaponsBiological WarfareNuclear WeaponsAttack HelicoptersTGM

Dominance

Muzzle-Loaders Long-Range RifleBayonet

Long-Range RifleMachine-GunIndirect ArtilleryRail Transport

Indirect ArtilleryRail Transport

TanksStrategic ArtilleryInternal CombustionEWCASBAIStrategic Bombing

Strategic ArtilleryNuclear WeaponsInternal CombustionEWInformation WarfareBAIAlTGM

Diminution

Muzzle-Loaders Long-Range RifleBayonet

Machine-Gun Indirect ArtilleryRail Transport

TanksInternal CombustionCAS

Legend:Al = Air Interdiction

BAI = Battlefield AirInterdiction

CAS = Close Air Support

EW = Electronic WarfareTGM = Terminally Guided

MunitionsTpt = Transport

20th century warfare where coup demain operations or dazzling, but poorlysupported, ground maneuver have suc-ceeded. Such operations and campaignshave tended to be highly risky and oftenhave not been sustainable or successfulin the longer term, leading to disaster.

Equally, there have been exampleswhere sudden attack by fire alone hasproven decisive. The means to generatefirepower, however, is not of itselfenough to guarantee success—as wasshown in Vietnam. Misapplied, firepow-er even may be counter-productive.

VII Corps Multiple-Launch Rocket System in OperationDesert Storm. Desert Storm achieved outstanding suc-cess through the application of meticulous joint fires inconjunction with maneuver.

Success requires the application ofdecisive fire harmonized with maneu-vers focused on achievable strategicobjectives. An operation such as DesertStorm achieved outstanding success, pri-marily through the application of me-ticulous joint fire planning in conjunc-tion with maneuver and a clear strategicdirection. The overwhelming evidencesupports a formula that is so orthodox asto need little advertisement: win the firefight decisively and, thereby, gain the

freedom of action to exploit it with ma-neuver in the most effective manner toconclude the matter at optimal cost.

An astonishing aspect of warfare thiscentury has been that military establish-ments have frequently resisted this con-clusion in defiance of the evidence andneglected to develop their capacity todeliver fires, denying their self-evidentlethality, preferring instead to constructmodels that might obviate these facts.This often has been in response to stra-tegic direction and the inclination ofmilitary cultures that tend to favor

ground maneuver. Wish-ful thinking often failed tomatch the actual techno-logical capabilities of theday, and many were dis-tressed when their doctri-nal constructions were re-vealed as lethally flawed,creating worse outcomesthan the paradigms theywere seeking to avoid.

In a familiar pattern, thedominance of fires tends toreassert itself in combat,ground maneuver provestoo attritional and forcesare restructured in wartimeto reflect this. Thus whatshould be regarded as or-

thodox in 20th century warfare has moreoften been regarded as regressive andheretical in peacetime.

Happily there is an increasing congru-ence in Western societies between theirtechnological capability to generate fire-power and their desire not to committroops unnecessarily to attritional groundmaneuvers and short-range combat withthe enemy, which were so often theobjectives of doctrine and the causes ofdisaster in the past. Today, it is fires or

"fire maneuver," not ground maneuver,that is the "Maneuverist" in the sense ofleveraging combat power, underminingan enemy's will and avoiding attrition tofriendly forces.

In this century, ground maneuver toooften has been seen as the best means ofavoiding close combat and its ensuingcasualties. Today, we should be cau-tious lest "fire maneuver" be propoundedin the same manner, and we should notunderestimate the efficacy of "boots onthe ground" or the need, on occasion, toclose with the enemy. However, a doc-trine based on the application of fire-power is likely to prove the most suitablefor Western societies; and the confidenceto assert this comes from the bitter expe-rience of the 20th century and the tragiccost of ignoring that evidence.

Brigadier Jonathan B. A. Bailey, Member ofthe British Empire (MBE), is the Chief of FireCoordination for the Allied Command Eu-rope Rapid Reaction Corps in Germany. Hecommanded the 40th Field Regiment inGermany and a battery in the 4th FieldRegiment of the Royal Artillery. He alsoserved as a Tactics Instructor and memberof the Directing Staff at the Staff College inEngland, from which he is a graduate, andas the Artillery Operations Officer for the4th Armoured Division in Germany. Otherhighlights of his service in the British Armyinclude commanding a Zipra guerrilla As-sembly Place in Rhodesia as part of theCommonwealth Cease-Fire Monitoring andserving as an Operations Officer and Bat-tery Commander during the FalklandsCampaign. Brigadier Bailey is a graduate ofthe Higher Command and Staff College. Hehas written a number of articles and bookson the subject of artillery and military his-tory.

Notes:1. D. Irving, The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe. The Life of Erhard Milch' (London: Weidenfeldand Nicholson, 1973).2. J. Ellis, Brute Force (London: A. Deutsch, 1990), 46-48. In December 1941, Germanyproduced 9,000 light howitzer shells but consumed 1,260,000, See J. Engelmann, GermanArtillery in World War II (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1995), 112. Many statistics about artillery areconfusing because self-propelled gun production is often grouped with that of tanks.3. Bruchmueller's work was brilliantly described by David T. Zabecki in Steel Wind: ColonelGeorg Bruchmueller and the Birth of Modern Artillery (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994);Soviet Marshal F. I. Kulik asserted that tanks were "a sheer waste out of which the artillery wouldmake scrap," as quoted from E.F. Ziemke, "The Soviet Armed Forces in the Interwar Period,"Military Effectiveness, Edited by A. R. Millett and W. Murray (Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin,1988), 32.4. Jonathon B. A. Bailey, Field Artillery and Firepower (London: Oxford Press, 1989), 221 -222.5. Ibid., 200-206.6. M. Stephen. The Price of Pity (London: Leo Cooper, 1996).7. K-H Frieser, Blitzkrieg Legende (Muenchen: Militaergeschichtliches Forschungsamt im ROldenbourg Verlag, 1995).8. T. Travelers, How the War was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on theWestern Front 1917-18 (London: Routledge, 1992), 154-157.9. Casualty figures for the First World War are wildly inconsistent and require further research.Those given in this article reflect recent estimates, it's interesting to note that the worst

casualties were sustained on the mircrobial front with 25 million deaths in 1918 and 1919attributed to the great influenza epidemic. G. Noon, "The Treatment of Casualties in the GreatWar," British Fighting Methods in the Great War (Ilford Essex: P, Griffith, 1996), 209-227.10. Bailey, 209-227.11. Bruce Gudmundson has described the evolution of German thinking, organizationalchange and practice in Stormtroop Tactics, (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1989.) TheFrench were influenced by similar innovative infantry tactics, devised by Andre Laffargue asearly as May 1915, although these were not implemented systematically. The British includedsuch tactics in their platoon training manuals as early as February 1917 to be practiced by all.See P. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1994), 194.12. The evidence is taken from the battle between the British 55th Division at Givenchy facingfour German divisions on 9 April 1918. The band instruments were collected later as trophies.13. Ellis, 72.14. O. Bartov, Hitler's Army (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992), Chapter 1.15. R. J. Bunker has speculated about a BlackFor Cyber-State as an opponent, challengingthe view of the US Department of Defense that ".. .the strategic environment of 2020 will bemuch like that of 1997." See, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting, SSI Paper. (US Army WarCollege, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 10 March 1998), 3. The diversification of warfare rather thandominance of Cyber War is the most likely development in the coming decades16. W. Murray and A. Millet (ed.), Military Innovations in the Interwar Period (Cambridge,England: Cambridge, 1996), 268.

FA Journal March-April 1999 35

A Professional Journal for RedlegsMarch-April 1999 Volume IV, No. 2

INTERVIEW

IET: Starting the Soldier Out RightInterview with Lieutenant General William J. Bolt, Deputy CommandingGeneral of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) for InitialEntry Training (IET)

ARTICLES: Initial Entry Training

10 So...You Want to be a Drill Sergeant?by Sergeant First Class Thomas M. Easterly

12 Honor, Courage, Commitment: Transformation to a Marineby Captain William P. Rayfield, USMC

15 Redleg Mentor Program: Sharpening the Sword, Nurturingthe Spirit

by Lieutenant Colonel Britt E. Bray and Major William M. Raymond, Jr.

22 Rites of Passage: Civilian to Soldierby Lieutenant Colonel George W. Steuber

24 A Day in the Life of a Basic Trainee

40 Army Values and Basic Trainingby Lieutenant Colonel Michael A. Byrd

46 OCS Hall of Fameby Captain Larry D. Pool

50 OBC: Training the New Lieutenantby Captain Ferdinand Burns III

ARTICLES: Feature

7 3x6 Operations in the Paladin Batteryby Lieutenant Colonel Stephen D. Mitchell and Captain Patrick D. Quinn III

17 Fire Support Planning for the Brigade and Belowby Major David A. Lee and Colonel John A. Yingling

26 Part II: The Century of Firepowerby Brigadier Jonathan B. A. Bailey, MBE

36 The FA Wargame Synchronization Matrixby Lieutenant Colonel Patrick J. Sweeney

41 Deliberate NFA Sizing for Combatby Major Rodney L. Lusher

47 Training and Maintaining AFATDS the Red Team Wayby Colonel David C. Ralston and Captain Thomas R. Bolen

DEPARTMENTS

1 FROM THE FIREBASE

DISCLAIMER: The majority of the FA Journal, a bimonthlyprofessional journal for US Army and Marine Field Artillerymenprinted by the US Field Artillery Association, is a reprint of the FieldArtillery Bulletin published by the US Army Field Artiiiery SchoolBuilding 746, Fort Sill, OK, All advertising and Field Artillery Asso-ciation news and information articles, as indicated by the table ofcontents, have been inserted by the Association after the publica-tion of Fi&ld Artillery and are soteiy the Association's responsibil-ity, in no way does their inclusion constitute the US Army's affirma-tion of their accuracy or endorsement of products or concepts.

Field Artillery Bulletin Staff:Patrecia Slayden Hollis

EditorLinda Bitter

Assistant Editor

Bob T. ColemanArt Director

PURPOSE: As stated in the firsl Field Artillery Journalpublished in lQ11-~To publish a journal for disseminating profes-sional knowledge and furnishing information as to the artillery'sprogress, development and best use in campaign; to cultivate,with the other arms, a common understanding of the power andlimitations of each; to foster a fee/ing of interdependence amongthe different arms and of hearty cooperation by all; and topromote understanding between the regular and militia forces byforging a closer bond; alt of which objects are worthy andcontribute to the good of our country.

SUBSCRIPTIONS/ASSOCIATION MEMBER-SHIP: Subscriptions to theFAJouma/come with membershipin the Association, individual or corporate memberships may beobtained through the US Field Artillery Association, P.O. Box33027, Fort Sill, Oklahoma 73503-0027. Telephone numbers are(580) 355-4677 or FAX (580) 355-8745 or Email: usfaa@sirinet.net.Dues are $20.00 per year for an individual membership ($38.00for two years and $56.00 for three) to US and APO addresses. Allothers add $13.00 per subscription year for postage. CorporateMemberships are available at $700.00 per year and CorporateAssociate Memberships are $350.00 per year.

SUBMISSIONS: Mail FA or fire support-related articles toField Artillery, P.O. Box 33311, Fort Sill, Oklahoma 73503-0311[DSN 639-5121/6806 or commercial (580) 442-5121/6806 orFAX DSN 639-7773/commercial (580) 442-7773 or Emailfamag@usafas.arrny.milj. Articles are subject to edit by the FieldArtillery staff; footnotes may be deleted due to space. MailAssociation chapter news, reunion news and other such informa-tion to the FA Journal, US Field Artillery Association, P.O. Box33027, Fort Sill, Oklahoma 73503-0027 [(580) 355-4677 or FAX(580) 355-8745 or Email: usfaa9sirinet.net).

REPRINTS: The US Field Artillery Association is pleased togrant permission to reprint articles. Please credit the author andthe FA Journal.

ADDRESS CHANGES: Members call or write the Asso-ciation at the telephone numbers/Email listed in "Subscriptions"or the address listed below. Third-class postage paid by the USField Artillery Association, P.O. Box 33027, Fort SB, Oklahoma73503-0027. POSTMASTER SEND ADDRESS CHANGES to theAssociation at the same address.

Redleg Hotline(Organization, Materiel, Doctrine and Training)

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Fort Sill Home Pagehttp://sill-www.army.mil/index.htm

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52 ASSOCIATION NEWS

Front Cover: SFC Thomas M. Easterly is Drill Sergeant of the Year for the FA Training Center(FATC) at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He won the award while serving as Drill Sergeant in D/2-80 FA.Currently, he is the Senior Drill Sergeant for the Cadre Training Course at FATC.

DAVID E. OTTLieutenant General, US Army, Retired

President, US Field Artillery Association

US Field Artillery Association Staff:

Anna Lou JohnsonManaging Director

Mary C. HillCirculation/Address Changes