War in Iraq: Shock and awe?

Army, May 2003 by Atkeson, Edward B

Actually the problem had been recognized well before that. Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786) had been known to remark, "Beyond three miles, you have a problem with command." For centuries before and since, the Russians sought to compensate for this phenomenon by resorting to mass. Lots of big battalions, it was believed, could beat a smaller number of units of more modest dimensions no matter how much better the latter might maneuver. As early as 1591 the British poet, Giles Fletcher, had noted this tendency among the Slavs. "The Russe," he wrote, "trusteth rather to his number."

In World War II the Soviets, having murdered most of their most talented officers in the purges of the 1930s, came to depend upon the creation of first echelon throw-away units. These were designed essentially to charge straight ahead for as long as possible and then to be replaced or overrun by succeeding echelons. During the Cold War the joke was that Soviet division commanders carried a simple box with a two-position switch. Turn it on and the unit charges ahead. Turn it off and it stops. This, some argued, was a sensible system for an organization assembled in a top-down-oriented society, in which deviation from approved standards by low level commanders might really screw things up. Initiative was a sin to be avoided. Like a clock, the Soviet army was designed to perform predictable, prearranged, straight-for-the-objective motions. Simplicity and reliability, coupled with mass, according to their theory, could overcome much of the problem of command and control of large units noted by both Frederick and Napoleon.

But that was not to be found suitable by the more imaginative German military theorists. To begin with, they could not field as many troops, but more important, their experience with bright young officers leading their units from the front persuaded them that they could develop a system for much greater decentralization of control. Aufragstaktik it was called. As Maj. Gen. J.J.G. MacKenzie of the British army and Brian Holden Reid would write in their volume The British Army and the Operational Level of War:

Operational directives, mission orders and a comprehensive doctrine, coupled with a staff that are trusted by the commander to make decisions, should help to ameliorate the problem of commanders being absent for lengthy periods or out of radio contact. Aufragstaktik is, therefore, part of the solution.

Doctrine developers in the United States agreed. In 1986 the Department of the Army issued a revision of its Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations. In it readers would find the following:

It is essential to decentralize decision authority to the lowest practical level because overcentralization slows down action and leads to inertia. At the same time, decentralization risks some loss of precision in execution. The commander must constantly balance these competing risks, recognizing that loss of precision is usually preferable to inaction.

Now, however, at the turn of the millennium, a covey of intellectuals have suggested that technology has changed the battlefield again. Large, dumb armies, no matter how well armed or armored, they argue, cannot cope with a fast-moving, all-seeing, fully coordinated, digitized opponent, with super-accurate, highly lethal weaponry.