At the U.S. Naval Institute Seminar, “Maneuvering in the Littorals,” on 6 September 1995, in Arlington, Virginia, the first speaker, Lieutenant General Charles E. Wilhelm, who commands U.S. Marine Corps Forces Atlantic,2 defined “the littorals” as those world regions that “fall within the area of influence of sea-based forces”—which influence through air/missile power extends hundreds of miles from the coast.3 The seminar was thought-provoking, but it would have been more useful to the country if, when addressing military operations in that immense regime, the seminar’s approach had been joint rather than simply Navy/Marine Corps oriented. If U.S. combined-arms forces larger than, say, a Marine expeditionary unit in three to five ships are committed in those regions a flag officer from the Sea Services may well command the force, but the Navy and Marines will surely not be there alone.
General Wilhelm called the seminar’s attention to the Marines’ recent coordinating draft of “Operational Maneuver From the Sea,”4 which reflects a two-year effort deriving from then-Marine Corps Commandant A1 Gray’s pioneering manual, Warfighting,5 of six years ago, and from two iterations since then of the Navy/Marine Corps White Paper, “From the Sea. . . .”6
The “Operational Maneuver From The Sea” coordinating draft is a worthy piece of work that deserves study—and application—by audiences far beyond the Navy and Marine Corps. But what it calls the “tenets of maneuver warfare”—tempo, momentum, strength against weakness, and focus on the strategic objective—while all too rarely applied, are not new ideas. And few will argue with such dicta as “bold strokes designed to exploit a significant weakness in order to deal a decisive blow,” and “mere movement, however rapid, does not qualify,” and "Operational maneuver must be directed against an enemy center of gravity.”
For purveyors of doctrine, including those of the Navy and Marine Corps, to write words like these is one thing; to get senior—and junior—officers in the field to apply them in practice is quite another. The Navy, Marine Corps, and others can talk the talk; the problem is to get commanders, especially joint commanders, to walk the walk.
General Wilhelm expanded the tenets of maneuver warfare to include “emphasis on intelligence, on deception, and on flexibility, and finally on the judicious application of organic, joint, and combined resources.” Using these two graphics (Figure 1) depicting December 1992s JTF Restore Hope in Somalia, he said that "[on the left] is how it was, [and on the right] is how it might have been or how it could be.”
General Wilhelm, who commanded Marine Corps forces in Somalia under the JTF commander, Lieutenant General Robert B. Johnston, U.S. Marine Corps, said that the “name of the [Somalia] game was saving lives from famine . . . [that] my first and foremost enemy was the clock . . . [and that my question was . . .] How can I get to the areas where the suffering is most intense the quickest?”
Using the image on the left, General Wilhelm told of his frustration at the time-consuming process of “seizing a lodgment . . . [then] seizing a succession of intermediate support bases ... to reach the famine triangle” around Baidoa-Barbera-Belatwain, 240 kilometers from the beach. Citing “mobility limitations . . . [such as] the CH-46E helicopter,” General Wilhelm said, “It took us from the 10th of December until Christmas Eve . . . fourteen days, to establish an effective presence in Bardera.” Remarking that “at that time the deaths [from famine] . . . were running at the rate of about 300 per night in each of those cities,” he said that “you can measure our delay in terms of lives lost. . . .”
General Wilhelm used the image on the right to describe how new materiel, such as the V-22 and AAAV, would have allowed the application of maneuver warfare's tenets to reach the famine triangle swiftly—thereby saving many hundreds more lives.
The panel following General Wilhelm’s talk then addressed the question: “Do the New Systems Support Maneuver Warfare?” But General Gray, a panel member, said that the “question is wrong.” He emphasized that the “thought process of maneuver warfare ... the idea of shaping the battlefield ... of using strength against weakness ... of going where they aren't ... of using surfaces and gaps ... of the need to understand [the commander's intent] up and down the chain of command . . . and all of that ... is not dependent upon equipment. . . It is applicable . . . wherever you go [and] whatever you do… and certainly throughout the entire spectrum of what we now call operations other than war. . . .”
General Wilhelm's Marine forces in Operation Restore Hope did indeed suffer from mobility limitations. But other means—non-Navy/Marine—were available for the application of maneuver warfare's tenets, specifically airlift and airborne troops that could have gone directly to the famine center of gravity around Baidoa, and to other places, such as Kismayo, where the clans ruled. That these means were not used indicates that the mentality of maneuver warfare was not the abiding mentality of key people in the chain of command—from the JTF commander, to the theater commander, to the Joint Staff s Director J-3 who guided the development of the plan, and to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself. Significantly, all but the last of these were Marines; General Gray's thought processes as expressed in his 1989 Warfighting had evidently not taken hold in their minds.7
Failure of senior military people to understand and apply the stirring tenets of doctrine is common. Take “flexibility,” for example. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commanding the Desert Storm coalition, had heard that virtue preached throughout his career. Although four days before launching his ground attack he told the press that his enemy was on the verge of collapse,8 he made no change in his plan to delay his west flank main attack until G+1, one day after his secondary attack on the east; this was a serious lapse in timely command flexibility. He tried to play catch-up on G-day, ordering both his Army corps to attack that very day instead, with frustrating consequences in VII Corps. A battalion can reasonably be ordered to attack in a few hours, but not a corps.
And General Schwarzkopf also fell short when, stressing the need to “destroy the [Iraqi] Republican Guard,” he did not plan on the basis of trapping that force as the best way to destroy it—and the Republican Guard got out the back door.1'
Bill Lind and John Boyd, early gurus of “maneuver warfare,” were present at the Naval Institute’s seminar. Lind said that the problem is one of Service culture. Boyd praised General Gray for his effort to change Marine Corps culture from the top down. Both were on target as far as they went, but we need to take a look at changing joint culture. Flag officers and colonels/captains are surely out there today thinking about how they might some day lead joint forces. Someone should be seeing that they are indoctrinated in how to do it right.
Joint doctrine is a top priority of JCS Chairman John M. Shalikashvili; he wants both to see it developed and to have it applied in practice.10 The Chairman now has, at Fort Monroe, Virginia, a Joint Warfighting Center, the two-star commander of which reports to him through the Joint Staffs Director 3-7. The JFWC’s mission statement says:
Assist the CJCS, CinCs, and Service Chiefs in their preparation for joint and multinational operations in the conceptualization, development, and assessment of current and future joint doctrine and in the accomplishment of joint and multinational training and exercises.
“Maneuver warfare” in quotation marks is generally seen as belonging to the United States Marine Corps. So be it. But maneuver warfare without quotation marks should be anyone’s property." We need not necessarily move the specific term into the everyday arena, but we need to get its ideas into serious play. At the Naval Institute’s seminar, General Gray remarked that “you can get anything done you want, if you don't care who gets the credit for it.”
I have a suggestion for the Commandant of the Marine Corps. It is that he visit the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and say, “I hereby transfer to you all rights to the term, ‘maneuver warfare.’ I do not care what you call it, provided that you will allow the U.S. Marine Corps to participate in defining whatever you call it.”12
But whether the Commandant takes that step or not, the Chairman should say to the Commander of his Joint Warfighting Center, “This Navy-Marine bag of maneuver warfare ideas is good. Take it, and any similar ideas from the Army and Air Force, and run with it; be sure to work with the CinCs and Service Chiefs. People talk about changing culture. I want to create a culture—a joint operational culture!”
1 “Maneuver warfare” is an originally controversial catch phrase designed to set that form of warfare apart from “attrition warfare.” It was first used by Bill Lind. John Boyd, and other members of the Military Reform Caucus who in the late 1970s and early 1980s were working for Senator Gary Hart and others. The phrase and its ideas caught the attention of then-Major General A1 Gray, commanding the 2d Marine Division, who adopted it while adding considerable substance to its meaning as a departure from former U.S. Marine Corps operational practice. Although it can be a poorly understood buzzword, it is a good label for a particular school of thought. Espoused officially by the U.S. Marine Corps, it has been embraced by the U.S. Navy. I believe that, like me. official Army thinkers find much value in its concepts, but, unlike me, fearing that to use the term means to buy its Marine articulation, they hesitate to do so.
2 Also Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic and II Marine Expeditionary Force.
3 General Wilhelm normally qualifies that definition as “subject to certain caveats,' and not based “simply on air/missile or other forms of coverage.” As to jointness, he visualizes littoral operations as involving “sea-based” instead of simply “naval forces
4 FMFRP 14-21, Coordinating Draft, “Operational Maneuver From The Sea,” U.S. Marine Corps, 31 March 1995.
5 FMFM 1, Warfighting, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, 6 March 1989.
6 “From The Sea . . .” was published in Proceedings, November 1992. Its 1994 follow-on, “Forward . . . From The Sea,” signed by the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, “updates and expands the strategic concept articulated in our 1992 paper to address specifically the unique contributions of naval expeditionary forces in peacetime operations, in responding to crises, and in regional conflicts."
7 This might have been because of Marine thinking that likes to go into action with plenty of supplies on hand (which not long ago was 15 days for a MEU, 30 for a MEB, and 60 for a MEF) and distrusts airlift to sustain them at lower stock levels. Army airbome/air assault thinking allows a good deal less than those Marine-favored stock levels—and trusts airlift a good deal more; it hasn't failed yet.
8 “Schwarzkopf Says Iraq's Army Losing 100 Tanks Daily, on Verge of Collapse, headline on page A1 of The Washington Post, February 20, 1991.
9 See John H. Cushman, “Desert Storm's End Game,” Proceedings, October 1993, p. 76.
10 “JCS Chairman urges better joint training,” Janes Defence Weekly, 9 September 1995, p. 6.
11 I suspect that in 1990 Major General Binford J.H. Peay, commanding the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, KY, had not studied General Gray's Warfighting. But his division superbly applied its tenets in Desert Storm, February 1991.
12 The Commandant might add: “. . . and provided that you will let me train my Marines in maneuver warfare as I see fit, as long as that does not interfere with the joint practice of maneuver warfare.”
Lieutenant General Cushman, U.S. Army (Retired), a 1976-78 commander of the combined field army force defending South Korea along the Demilitarized Zone, was the Proceedings Author of the Year in 1993.