Centers of gravity exist all over the place—and they keep on a-changin'.
Colonel Mark Cancun generated a hailstorm of controversy among traditional military thinkers with "Centers of Gravity Are a Myth" (September 1998 Proceedings, pp. 30-34). Many see the Clauswitzean center-of-gravity concept as little more than 19th--century poetry. For example, "The hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends" sounds to some like Sun Tzu being misquoted in a bad kung-fu movie. Presumably, if we meditate on our enemy long enough, we will come to understand where he is strong and discover ways to defeat him where he is weak. We only hope that this revelation comes to us before our legs atrophy in the Lotus position and thus become too brittle to march against the foe. The center--of--gravity theory won't wash if it takes a Zen master decades of rumination from atop the highest peak in Tibet to apply it. The war will be over, and he'll still be stuck in Lotus.
To cut through the fog of planning, we need a more practical approach to centers of gravity. If we think of operational design as an exercise in problem solving, we can identify centers of gravity by their place in a basic equation. Three principles of this approach to centers of gravity are:
- Centers of gravity are related to objectives. The point is not to beat up the school kid during recess; it's to get his milk money.
- Centers of gravity can change across levels of war. The kid with the milk money is a tactical center of gravity. His parents, the source of his milk money, are centers in a more operational or strategic sense.
- Centers of gravity may change over phases of operations. If we take the milk money from Kid A two days running—and his parents stop giving him milk money so we can't take it—on the third day we have to find a Kid B.
We need only overcome centers of gravity forcibly enough to achieve the objective. If the kid is really stubborn, we may have to go with the attrition option and beat him up. If the kid is a lot bigger than we are, we are wise to practice maneuver methods. If we convince him that we'll go get his milk for him and then run away when he hands us the money, we turn three of his weaknesses—laziness, stupidity, and size—into critical vulnerabilities.
At whatever level or phase we are operating, our opponent's center of gravity is the main obstacle standing between our objective and us. If we articulate the objective properly, the center of gravity becomes evident with minimal mental or physical contortion. The trick then is to determine the most effective way of overcoming the obstacle with the resources at hand. If a center of gravity does not exist, it is only because there is no obstacle in our way, and therefore we have no conflict. Lacking conflict, we must redirect our martial energies toward other ancient and honorable means of employment.
Centers of Gravity Are Things, Not Attributes
Our own center of gravity is the thing that will attain our objective. The enemy's center of gravity is his thing that can keep our thing from doing its thing. Critical factors—strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities—are inherent or external attributes that may help or hinder centers of gravity in attaining, their objectives. Critical factors are important to operational design, but they should not be confused with centers of gravity. If we wish to establish a lodgment or a beachhead, for instance, we will need maritime and air power to support the operation, not to mention boats and planes for logistics support, but a Marine expeditionary unit is the thing that actually will put its toes in the sand.
In the same scenario, let's say that Bad Guy has a bunch of tanks sitting 100 miles south of the beachhead. Our study of the environment reveals that he also has a well-paved six-lane highway that his tanks can take all the way to the beach. Through his excellent warning-and-direction system, he can tell his tank guys right away when it's time to drive their tanks down to the beach and shoot anybody they find there who isn't wearing a bathing suit. His tank guys have plenty of gas to get their tanks to the beach and maps that show them how to get there. Thanks to Bad Guy's superb training continuum, his tank guys know how to gas the tanks, how to drive them, and how to read their maps well enough to find their way to the beach. What's more, once they get to the beach, they can shoot their tanks' guns and actually hit what they're aiming at. To top it all off, their morale is so sky-high that they're downright enthusiastic about the whole project.
Command and control, information, sustainability, mobility, training, and morale are enemy critical factors in this example. It's vital to remember, though, that none of these force attributes, combined or singly, can stop us from attaining our objective. On the other hand, if we defeat or neutralize all of these attributes, and the tanks still manage somehow to get to the beach before our Marines do, things are going to get ugly. In planning this notional operation, we first must correctly identify the tanks as the enemy center of gravity—and then construct our operational design over that foundation.
Things Change
In the school yard of international relationships, the strategic center of gravity always is political leadership. Whatever our war aims might be—adherence to sanctions, withdrawal of forces, a halt to ethnic cleansing, unconditional surrender, or whatever—no conflict is over until a head of state cries, "Uncle!" At the operational level of war, we're concerned with overall force objectives; at the tactical level, we are focused on unit missions or tasks. At both of these levels, centers of gravity consist of some type or quantity of military force.
The Intermediate Training Assessment (TTA) portion of Atlantic Fleet Carrier Battle Group training illustrates how the hierarchy of objectives, centers of gravity, and critical factors fit across the spectrum of war.
In the ITA scenario, Orange country's totalitarian Bad Guy leader (the enemy's center of gravity) wants to upgrade his status from neighborhood thug to regional hegemon in an Arabian Gulf like geographic area (his strategic objective). The U.S. National Command Authority (NCA, our center of gravity) wishes to maintain a balance of power in the region, to allow for open trade and diplomacy with the area's developing nations (our strategic objective).
Bad Guy, convinced that the American public will not support a major armed conflict halfway around the world (a perceived strategic critical vulnerability), determines that he can dominate the region by using military force to close off the Virgin Passage choke point (the enemy's operational objective). NCA directs deployment of a carrier battle group—equipped with its tactical air wing and land-attack cruise-missile ships—to the area to maintain free passage through the Passage (our own force's operational center of gravity and operational objective).
In light of our operational objective, Bad Guy's operational center of gravity consists of the forces he can use to deny maritime freedom of action in the choke point: combatant ships, submarines, mines, coastal surface-to-surface missiles, and maritime attack aircraft. Because the carrier group is an air--power--projection force, our planners design an offensive air operation that places elements of the enemy's center of gravity at the top of the prioritized target list. Key components of enemy direction, mobility, and air--defense capability are operational critical factors that also make the list.
Our planners assign certain targets to Navy tactical air strike packages. A strike lead will have a collection of 20 or so aircraft with which to execute his assignment. Since his objective involves bombing something, his bombers are his tactical center of gravity. His fighter, airborne-early-warning, electronic-warfare, and defense-suppression aircraft are tactical critical factors These critical factors will (we hope) neutralize the enemy's tactical center of gravity—which, from the strike lead's perspective, will be those specific fighter and air-defense artillery elements that can keep his bombers from reaching their targets and skedaddling back to the carrier to strike another day. The enemy tactical center of gravity has a supporting cast of tactical critical factors that includes specific warning and directional nodes.
At the high end of the warfare spectrum, political leadership remains constant as the strategic center of gravity. At the other extreme, we can have so many tactical centers of gravity—simultaneously or over time—that they're worth analyzing only if we are planning and executing a particular tactical action.
Operational centers of gravity may shift during the course of multi-phased major operations and campaigns. Second Fleet's Joint Task Force Exercise (JTF--Ex) simulates just this type of operation. The exercise has three sequential combat phases: a maritime-dominance problem, followed by an amphibious assault, ending with a land battle to recapture a strategic energy resource. When we have a distinct shift in operational objectives, operational centers of gravity usually will change as well, as will their surrounding critical factors.
A Good Thing
Attrition and maneuver are commonly accepted as opposing styles of warfare. Most agree that—when there is a choice—maneuver is the preferred way to fight. The Department of Defense's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms defines maneuver as "employment of forces on the battlefield through movement in combination with fire, or fire potential, to achieve a position of advantage in respect to the enemy in order to accomplish the mission."
Many consider maneuver to be more of a philosophy or methodology than a physical movement of forces. They see attrition as a direct, linear contest and view maneuver as an indirect approach to strategy and operational design. Some assert that attrition is fighting fair; maneuver is fighting smart. Others use a checkers-and-chess analogy.
The best take on the concept may be that we practice the maneuver principle when we "maneuver" the situation toward our own force's advantage. The key to practicing maneuver warfare successfully is identifying and creating critical factors.
Identifying strengths and weaknesses may seem a fairly straightforward problem—but any given attribute may be both, depending on the circumstances. In a direct, attrition-like confrontation, the fat kid's size can be a strength. That his size makes him inherently slow also is a weakness that we can turn into a critical vulnerability, whenever we devise a plan that uses that attribute to our advantage.
Similarly, in the case of the enemy tanks in our amphibious assault example, mobility can be either a strength or a weakness. The road system that gives the tanks a straight shot at the beach is a strength unless we do something about it. A superior interdiction plan would funnel the tanks into a position with major clover-leaf intersections in front of and behind them and impassable terrain on either side of the road. If we then destroy the two intersections with air power, we can use this same air power to attrite the trapped division. We thereby eliminate the enemy center of gravity before it ever makes contact with ours. Through an operational design that makes use of an enemy weakness (mobility limitations), a pair of our own force strengths (air strike and air superiority), and the environment (terrain and the road system), we create a critical vulnerability that ensures achievement of our operational objective with few if any own-force losses.
No Betty Crocker-style checklist can walk planners through the maneuver concept in every situation. Practicing common sense is a good guiding principle. Another valuable rule of thumb is to disregard the most common misconceptions that exist about the nature of maneuver warfare and centers of gravity. Among them are:
- Maneuver warfare is a bloodless panacea. Without some measure of attrition, a state of hostilities can hardly be said to exist. We practiced maneuver warfare by using air power to trap and attrite our fictional tank division. Attrition isn't a bad thing per se—as long as it is something that happens to the other guys and not us.
- Identifying centers of gravity always reveals critical vulnerabilities that allow us to practice maneuver warfare. A stubborn enemy simply may not have any weaknesses that we can turn into critical vulnerabilities. Colonel Cancian correctly identified this circumstance in the 1943 battle for Tarawa. The only way to defeat firmly entrenched Japanese defenders determined to fight to the last man was a toe-to-toe attrition-style operation. This does not mean that a center of gravity did not exist. It did—and it was the Japanese naval infantry.
- Centers of gravity and critical factors are the same thing. Whenever we apply the term centers of gravity to information, economic, and mobility systems, we are driving up the wrong side of the interstate. They may or may not be critical factors and worthwhile targets, but we can determine that only if we correctly identify the true centers) of gravity in the first place. Air power, potentially the ultimate tool of maneuver warfare, often is misused because of confusion about what really is a center of gravity and what isn't.
Too Much of a Good Thing
In World War II, when the Allies wanted to take out a ball--bearing plant, we ordered wave upon wave of thousand--plane raids to carpet bomb the greater metropolitan area. This stratagem was costly in terms of aircraft, collateral damage, and the downed-airmen population throughout Germany. Lamentably, it contributed almost nothing to the Allied war effort. But it did something for the Germans—steeling them to fight on against long odds.
The history of air power is filled with similar examples of misdirected bombing efforts. Today, we could clobber that ball--bearing plant with a fistful of cruise missiles. Our technology would bring us substantial cost--per--clobber economics, but we'd still be clobbering the wrong target. Our precision has improved exponentially, but our aim is no better than it ever was.
Air power theory and doctrine, as expressed by the U.S. Air Force, contains a fundamental flaw that survives in Joint Publication 3-56.1, Command and Control for Joint Air Operations. The publication delineates five sequential steps in the air operations planning process: operational environment research, objective determination, strategy identification, centers) of gravity identification, and joint air operations plans development.
This is a logic train with the coal car placed ahead of the engine, with the caboose somewhere in between. Small wonder so many air operations resemble train wrecks.
As we have seen, centers of gravity should be determined by objectives, and strategies should be built around centers of gravity. Formulating strategy first and determining centers of gravity second only grants a license to call everything a center of gravity and bomb all of it. This leads to plans that have only accidental connection, if any, with our objectives and that barely reflect anything we even remotely could call a "strategy."
A cynic might describe this approach to conjuring air operations as being more supportive of the U.S. Air Force's force--planning strategy than having anything to do with effective war fighting. If everything is a center of gravity, then we need lots of bombers to bomb them all. We also need gobs of fighters to protect the bombers from Bad Guy fighters and tons of stealth technology to protect the bombers and fighters from Bad Guy air--defense artillery. Factor in a whole bunch of supporting infrastructure and we wind up with a whopping 99% of the defense budget in the U.S. Air Force's pocket.
Interservice fiscal maneuvering should not have a dominant influence on operational art. As priorities do, centers of gravity cease to exist when everything becomes one.
One More Thing
By anchoring operational analysis and design to objectives, we make it relatively easy to identify centers of gravity and critical factors correctly. The hard part is determining and articulating coherent objectives, because in doing so we have to ask a string of even harder questions:
- What strategic change do we want in the belligerent leader's behavior?
- What operational objectives can our military attain that will produce this strategic behavior (suitability)?
- What tactical actions can our military perform that will attain our operational objectives (feasibility)?
- Is accomplishing our strategic objectives worth the size of the bill that comes with it (acceptability)?
Pondering these questions may produce an answer we don't want to hear, namely, that our military can't accomplish every strategic objective we'd like to attain. When the military can't do the job alone, the only policy tools left at our disposal are those economy and diplomacy things, and they're entirely too complicated, slow, and boring. After all, nobody rallies around the president over a trade agreement. But that's okay—having his Good Guys over for a six-pitcher skull session before committing forces to combat probably is a good thing, assuming that the Guys both know what they're talking about and tell the truth.
Someday, we can only hope, our operational art will catch up with our technology.
When that day arrives, the Secretary of Defense may be able to fight and win wars single-handedly by directing precision fires against well-chosen targets from a computer on his desk. Then we really will have to worry about preserving our ancient and honorable means of employment. The few of us left on active duty will have little to do besides pointless paperwork and golf. Not to worry, though, that day is a long way off.
We'll bomb that bridge when we come to it.
Commander “Zen” Huber graduated from the U.S. Naval War College in 1995, with a distinct lack of honors.