William S. Lind provides a rather colorful tactics primer — written for Marines? — explaining the difference between Second and Third Generation tactics:
Second Generation tactics, like those of the First Generation, are linear. In the attack, the object is to push a line forward, and in the defense it is to hold a line. As we saw in so many battles in and after World War I, the result is usually indecisive. One side or the other ends up holding the ground, but the loser retires in reasonably good order to fight again another day.
Usually, achieving a decision, which means taking the enemy unit permanently out of play, requires one of two things, or both in combination: ambush or encirclement. Modern, Third Generation tactics reflect an “ambush mentality,” and also usually aim for encirclement. To that end, Third Generation tactics are sodomy tactics: the objective is to get in the other guy’s rear.
On the defense, that is accomplished by inviting the enemy to attack, letting him penetrate, and then launching a counterattack designed to encircle him, not push him back out. This was the basis of the new, Third Generation German defensive tactics of 1917, and also the German Army’s standard defense in World War II.
On the offense, the rule is not “close with and destroy” but “bypass and collapse.” The goal is to penetrate deep into the enemy’s rear, by stealth or by force (the Germans used a three, not two, element assault, and the largest element was the exploitation element), then roll up the enemy’s forward units from the flank and rear while overrunning his artillery, headquarters and supply dumps. The same approach was used by the Panzer divisions on the operational level, leading to vast encirclements of hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops on the Eastern Front in 1941.
The U.S. military today knows little or nothing of this. It did attempt an operational encirclement of the Iraqi Republican Guard by 7th Corps in the First Gulf War, but that attempt failed because 7th Corps was too slow. On the tactical level, most American units have only one tactic: bump into the enemy and call for fire. The assumption is that America’s vast firepower will then annihilate the opponent, but that seldom happens. Instead, he lives to fight again another day, like Osama and his al Qaeda at Tora Bora.
While the central problem here is conceptual — sheer ignorance of Third Generation tactics — there is a physical aspect to it as well. On foot, American soldiers are loaded down with everything except the kitchen sink, and they will probably be required to carry that too as soon as it is digitized. To use tactics of encirclement, you need to be at least as mobile as your enemy and preferably more so. The kind of light infantry fighters we find ourselves up against in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan are just that, light. They can move much faster on their feet than can our overburdened infantry. The result is that they ambush us, then escape to do it again, over and over. Flip-flops in the alley beat boots on the ground.
As the students in my seminar at Quantico discovered early in the year, the decisive break, both in tactics and in organizational culture, is not between the Third and Fourth Generations but between the Second and Third. It is little short of criminal that the American military remains stuck in the Second Generation. The Third Generation was fully developed in the German Army by 1918, almost a century ago. It costs little or nothing to make the transition. To those who understand how the Pentagon works, that may be the crux of the problem.
There is nothing light about our light infantry.
The intent of most attacks on either side in the first world war was breaking through the enemy trench line at a single concentrated point, getting into his rear, and putting him to route. Haig was a cavalryman by trade and, since the break into the rear was what cavalry did, Haig was always yearning for the moment when the Hun’s line would break so he could send in the cavalry to exploit the breakthrough. He tried bringing up the cavalry during the war winning Hundred Days offensive in 1918 but found that supplying gasoline for tanks put less strain on logistics than moving up oats to feed the horses.
The tactics that won in 1918 and 1945 were not the Hutier tactics that the Germans developed in 1916-1918 but the attritional tactics developed by Marshal Petain based on the combined arms use of artillery, armor, airpower, and infantry i.e. “Fire conquers, infantry occupies”. The German tactics worked in the Russia of 1917 when Russian soldiers willingly surrendered to them in droves. It failed in 1918 because the Germans lacked the maneuver space on the Western Front than they had on the Eastern Front. It worked in 1940 when the narrow confines of Belgium allowed them to pin Allied forces against the sea in a timely manner. It failed in 1941 when many Russian soldiers simply walked out of their “encirclement” because the Wehrmacht lacked the mass to maintain an airtight cordon in the vast spaces of the East.
Even though man for man the American doughboy of WWI and GI of WWII had worse tactical training than his Hun opponent, the standard practice of stopping when you hit an obstacle to call in artillery or air strikes was far more efficient in American lives and killing Germans than German practices. American forces had a qualitative edge in coordinating ground forces with indirect fires and airpower, they played to their strength, and won their part of the war. American artillery inflicted 70% of German casualties caused by American forces. German artillery only accounted for 50% of casualties caused by the Wehrmacht. Unless you were the Soviet Union or Republic of China, shells are cheaper than manpower.
I’d like to see a Bruce Bueno de Mesquita-style game theory analysis here, of light vs. heavy and what exactly 2nd vs. 3rd conflict likely predicts.
Now I have to find out how accurate a war simulator Starcraft 2 is. Usually, Star2 works on second-generation warfare — though since troops don’t have morale, you can fight to the last man and achieve a decision anyway.
But there are tactics which make the opposing general back off, holding the line. There are mobile units which can harass the back, and the line-holding stuff should free up resources to buy them. In theory, this combination should be strictly superior to standard Star2 tactics.
I will have to try it.