No Combat Without Movement: Enders Game as Maneuver Warfare Primer
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And yet we're supposed to believe that "hey, strategic and tactical movement is pretty great" is a new idea?
Frankly, most of the time, size and power win the day. Oracle is still here. Microsoft is still here. Yahoo is still here.
The reason Card writes about weakness combined with movement and agility and brilliant insight is the same reason we are all fascinated with startups---because they're all counterintuitive (read: loses most of the time) and therefore fun to watch. That's it. Not because it's always a superior fighting style. Try fancy-schmancy maneuvers in the no-man's land of WW1 and you're done.
Now, I am an underweight computer programmer, so I don't know what I'm talking about. All I've done is think, and play video games. Which is precisely what Card has done.
And I say this as a fan of Card's work. But turning military fiction into the Art of War is a little much, it seems.
Most people don't have that. Most people HAVE to start small, or burn the midnight oil working on their MVP, trying to get traction. It's not because we necessarily want to, it's because we're hungry to win and we just don't have the firepower that our established competitors have.
It seems like there are a few different frames people have to think about startups. Some think of it like gambling (as you've said), some think startups are x-wings trying to take down the death star (with enough skill and a LOT of luck, a startup will hit it big), some want to reign startups back into being a business (start with an idea that makes money!), and then there are the founders in the trenches fighting on the daily. We're the guys that have been persistently working on our businesses, our projects, our hare-brained business models that just might work. We're grounded by reality - that this is very hard - but we just keep fighting down here. I'm going to stay on these front lines until I lead the guys here who believe in me to a decisive victory.
Why the tossaway account?
It's true that asymmetric warfare is the most likely face of warfare in the future, but countries with standing armies still remain a greater threat to the United States.
When, not if, the US gets in a fight with another country, it'll be the typical blitzkrieg again. So no, it's not "yesterday's war".
Only by the narrowest of definitions. The US modus operandi with armoured warfare could be straight out of the German High Command's playbook. I strongly suspect that Guderian, Rommel and Manstein would be completely at home with US non-COIN doctrine.
Also, what's this about the Soviet Union? I'm having trouble parsing that sentence.
No amount of buzzwords can conceal that you don't understand what "maneuver warfare" is, either; fourth-generation warfare pretty much is maneuver warfare. Your dilution of your point by introducing United States themes and specific tactical situations makes me question why you're putting so much skin in this discussion if you're as lay as your questions indicate. I'm not criticizing you, for what it's worth, just wondering why you're cloaking not knowing something with extra buzzwords -- you should be happy to learn, not apt to show off.
Terrorism and insurgency are forms of maneuver warfare, and the term "maneuver" doesn't imply scale (and certainly not armor, for that matter). Since you're quite obviously American, the Marine Corps' definition of "maneuver warfare" should interest you:
"Maneuver warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope."
That's from Warfighting[1]. Seriously, read up, you sound interested but misguided, and I made a throwaway just to spite you. :)
"Along with placing greater emphasis on adaptability, the Army has transitioned its focus on training and operations from developing forces for large-scale maneuver warfare to increasing the capability of individuals to operate in smaller, decentralized elements." [2]
The wikipedia link to Warfigthing is broken. I am having trouble finding the manual on DoD's doctrine section.[3][4] Is it still relevant?
You made a throwaway account because you did not want to have your name attributed to what you wrote, I experienced no spite
[1] Understanding Fourth Generation War by William S. Lind
[2] Special Operations as a wr fighting function, http://www.soc.mil/swcS/SWmag/archive/SW2401/SW2401SpecialOp...
[3] http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/index.html
[4] http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/search.html?zoom_query=mcdp+war...
Maneuver warfare isn't the specific strategy on a general's table. It's an ethos of war. In particular, maneuver warfare embraces decentralized command, as you're so vociferously citing in your defense; Iraqi Freedom was a war of colonels, not generals, as discussed in a link I shared with you earlier.
I tried to be kind in my reply since you share a passion for military theory, and it's a topic I happen to be extremely versed in (as in, my entire adult life to this day). I hope one day you realize that there are people out there in the world that know more about a topic than you do, don't feel like justifying that authority to you, and that you should appreciate that they took some time out of their day to try to inform you rather than attack them belligerently because they dared to disagree with you.
I see this is fruitless, so, best of luck debating with other laypersons on the Internet.
That is two of the last three wars the US has fought, and exclusive to when they've had an opposing force that was actually structured.
The concepts haven't been abandoned just because there are other types of operations being conducted too.
[1]: http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,NI_WAR_0104,00.ht...
Iraq, however, was obviously maneuver early on, on the part of the US (who kicked ass; the war in a conventional sense really was won in a few weeks/months -- a reasonable person could have pulled out at that point, and we might have had some stupidity at the Presidential and State Department levels not happened). It then turned into maneuver warfare by the insurgents -- striking the weak link of the US, the large logistics convoys, largely operated by KBR under LOGCAP, needed to supply the logistics-heavy US force. (and arguably the same thing has happened in Afghanistan, aided by the terrain and Pakistan.)
The relative victory post-2007 was primarily due to the old British Empire tactic of dividing your enemies (i.e. buying off both the Shia militias by putting US forces in small posts in their territory to keep them safe from the Sunnis, and by bribing the Sunnis as "Sons of Iraq" to join the US as well) -- with FREs largely destroyed by this time, it meant leaving only AQ, straight-up criminal gangs, and some seriously hardline Shia (Iran-linked) enemies.
Those guys essentially got defeated by the "task force with many names" (6-26, 121, 88, assorted colors, etc.); essentially JSOC. It was pretty much the same as you'd roll up organized crime in the US (i.e. watch The Wire) -- identify high value targets, "human" focal points, and then go kill/capture them. By removing the bulk of non-hardline opposition, the US was left with thousands of enemies, of which only tens or hundreds were key -- and they ended up dying pretty fast.
Small JSOC units operating from the air, from civilian vehicles, etc. were highly mobile, so it was essentially maneuver warfare at the small scale. Essentially all "raid" type SOF missions depend on speed and mobility; there is no way for even a 10x better trained/equipped force to stand and fight against a much larger conventional force for a long period of time, outside of a video game.
I can see most not being able to execute AirLand or anything involving long-distance strategic mobility, but outside of maybe NK (defending prepared positions with dug-in infantry and artillery), or non-state actors (but even there, it's more like the ultimate evolution of maneuver warfare than anything else), it would seem like the default tactic of most militaries. Certainly US, UK, etc.
The theory of the 'good guys' (the scare quotes aren't hedging, they're just being careful to avoid ideological framing of the discussion), Lind in particular, is rapidly adjusting to the new threat model. That was the thrust of my point to the other commenter here. There's an interesting parallel in that countering terrorism and counterinsurgency are largely reactionary by their very nature, and the 'good guys' have been left reacting to the new model of warfare in itself in, say, the last decade. People do disagree with Lind on fourth-generation warfare, for what it's worth.
We're "catching up," not "innovating" on the battlefield today. That's the big lesson here.
Also IIRC the Vietnam war is not considered to have been one of America's finest military successes, either.
Americans grew tired of Iraq when insurgents kept picking off a soldier every other day and there was little to show for their loss. Similar themes presented in the latter years of Vietnam, combined with a complicated political picture stateside. That's the success of an insurgency: attrition not of materiel, but the minds, resolve, and fortitude of a belligerent. That was certainly evident in Vietnam, as well, and it's a great parallel.
There really was ~zero progress (net; there were some wins and some losses) from late-2003 to early-2007 in Iraq, overall, and from ~2003 to ~2009 in Afghanistan (the 2009 end date is questionable; I'm reluctant to say Afghanistan overall is better right now than it was right after the CIA/ODA 555 operations in late 2001, as described in First In by Gary Schroen).
I was in Iraq watching this and was a lot more critical of the way the US was fighting from 2003-2006 than of the actual casualty numbers.
It's certainly more rational to be more willing to take a few hundred casualties if it brings a quick victory than to endure long slow bleeding of thousands, but I don't know if popular opinion is rational. I think casualties-per-second are much higher in offensive operations than in purely static defense, though.
I've lately come to the conclusion that modern warfare came into being because of Napoleon's genius and his wars of the early 1800s. He was way ahead of his time, and you could sense this by how "surprised" at his tactics were the guys confronting him from the other side (the Prussians, Austrians etc). For what it's worth, I think that WW1 which took place 100 years later was still an "old world" war.
What I'm trying to come at is that even Napoleon had to face a huge "insurgency" war in Spain (those insurgents will by today's standards be called "terrorists"). Even Napoleon couldn't "win" that war, I doubt it that in today's US military there are smarter heads when it comes to war.
They were won from a tactical perspective, but I'd say that strategically the second one was lost (while the first one was not such a clear-cut victory either, with Saddam still clinging to his post). Yes, I know that the US had their "mission accomplished", but true war is never that, is only "the continuation of politics by other means". True war has nothing to do with video games (with the probable exception of "Eve Online")
The point is that the actual warfare component of the war was fought and won with the doctrine the GP suggests was yesterday's tactics.
The occupation of Iraq - notably barely a war never mind a use of maneuver - is where the US is failing.
Well, no -- I don't think that point was really argued anywhere in the article. The tactics of movement are perhaps only recently being formalized, but I think most students of history would agree that all modern military strategy has historical precedent ... assuming that you generalize the tactic broadly enough.
> Frankly, most of the time, size and power win the day.
Hmm. There are two ways I can see to parse this: one is historical -- "most of the time, size and power have won the day" -- and the other is theoretical -- "most of the time, size and power will win the day". I would readily agree with the first, but I'm circumspect about the latter.
I avoid computer games because they're a time sink that I can't afford, but I did get introduced to Sins of a Solar Empire a while back, and I still set aside a little time for it now and again. It is a game that depends very strongly on relative sizes to determine victories. But, my favorite race is militarily also the weakest one. I have the most fun trying to break the game, coming up with less obvious tactics and strategy.
I think there are enough exceptions to the rule of the mightiest throughout history that it's somewhat self-defeating to assume that force size will decide a battle.
> Oracle is still here. Microsoft is still here. Yahoo is still here.
Although there are some parallels, business is different from war. We shouldn't use businesses to make points about military strategies.
> The reason Card writes about weakness combined with movement and agility and brilliant insight is the same reason we are all fascinated with startups---because they're all counterintuitive (read: loses most of the time) and therefore fun to watch.
Well, sure. That doesn't mean that it can't also be a good example of a subject.
> Try fancy-schmancy maneuvers in the no-man's land of WW1 and you're done.
I would counter-argue that WWI in particular was such a messy, horrible, ugly disaster particularly because of the use of non-fancy maneuvers combined with new technology. Trench and chemical warfare was direct force-on-force conflict, and because planes were relatively new inventions, they were de-emphasized despite being exactly what each side needed to win the war.
Most of the military histories of that war I've read don't so much blame the tactics, but technological limitations. Radios were still too large and power-hungry to be practical anywhere but at sea, last-mile telephone cables tended to get cut by artillery as soon as battle started, and optical signalling (e.g. flags) were difficult to make out near the front, leaving commanders basically with runners and carrier pigeons as soon as battle started.
When a local engagement can be won and lost in half an hour to an hour, but the communications RTT is 2-3 hours, maneuver warfare gets impractical (as do a lot of other things, like long range artillery against anything other than fortifications).
Which invalidates the entire GP's reasoning about 'size and power always winning the day'. You can't really compare warfare modes before and after portable radios; feedback loops are different.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amiens_(1918)#Plan
"The Battle of Amiens was a major turning point in the tempo of the war. The Germans had started the offensive with the Schlieffen Plan before the war devolved into trench warfare, the Race to the Sea slowed movement on the Western Front, and the German Spring Offensive earlier that year had once again given Germany the offensive edge on the Western Front. Armoured support helped the Allies tear a hole through trench lines, weakening once impregnable trench positions. The British Third Army with no armored support had almost no effect on the line while the Fourth with fewer than a thousand tanks broke deep into German territory, for example"
This happened. 1940, Germany (maneuver warfare style called "Blitzkrieg") vs. British Expeditionary Force and France using more traditional strategy and tactics, in roughly the same area as the world war 1 battles. BEF was routed, France forced to surrender.
And this you can surmise not by digging up some obscure work from a library but simply by reading the wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Development_of...
The notion that Ender's game, whatever one might think of its merits, was somehow an early and unrecognized insight into maneuver warfare is ludicrous and silly.
I think the OA is very much and very ludicrously claiming that.
Because in economy the "giants" are well adapted to the current set of rules and the rules change very slowly. Also, the "giants" have more to say when new rules get crafted.
I a "real war", you have no rules. That's why economical wars and other fights for power are not actually "wars". And this is a good thing! You wouldn't want to be part of a "real war". A "real war" doesn't even have the concept of "war crimes", these are facts judged afterwards by the winners (anything "goes", including killing millions in concentration camps and other mostruosities)! Thank god we didn't have any large-scale "real wars" in the last half of century, and pray neither us nor our children ever experience such thing!
And the french system (impulse) developed out of the 7 years war and used by Napoleon used manover with combined arms to defeat the static linear armys he was facing
That's a common misconception about WWI, but it's really not true. At the beginning of the war the Germans came very close to out maneuvering the French army and seizing Paris with barely a fight, ending the war instantly. And on the eastern front the Germans very successfully used maneuver warfare to destroy one of the main Russian armies right at the beginning, allowing the Austrians to shift their troops south to compensate for their sudden betrayal by the Italians.
In the trenches themselves the Germans did use fancy maneuvers very successfully (see the other comment about stormtroopers), but contrary to popular opinion the trenches were never the real problem. Both sides were able to break through a trench line when they were willing to devote enough resources throughout the war.
The real problem was that once the line was broken, what do you do next? There was no motorized transport on the offence, soldiers had to travel on foot carrying all their food and supplies and nobody can keep doing that quickly for long. And the advancing soldiers had no way of communicating with command, meaning that they couldn't adapt their attack to changing conditions. By contrast, the defenders trying to contain the breakthrough had railroads and telegraphs to let them move around and communicate. So while both's side can and did create breakthroughs, the only effect was to move the front back a few dozen kilometers.
But of course, those factors aren't obvious to the naked eye like the trenches are, so are often forgotten.
By the time world war II rolled around attacking forces had internal combustion engines and the radio that let them have the same maneuverability and communications as the defenders. But as the Japanese and Germans found, while superior maneuver might let you defeat stronger foes, if you fight someone who is so much bigger that they can absorb defeat after defeat and still come on strong sooner or later they'll up their game, figure out how to fight as well as you do, and crush you.
Hitler's move to bomb cities in Britian cost them London. His decision to change his objectives half way through the Russian campaign cost them Moscow (although you could argue invading Russia at all was dumb, the German army was still poised to overcome this, amazingly.
As for Japan, I think your point stands.
The most famous principle Boyd formulated is the OODA loop, which says that if you can observe the situation, figure out what's going on, decide what to do and take action faster than your enemy can, you probably win. A lot of the book is about how you do that faster, in a business situation. Some of it is about making your enemy slower (but that's more difficult to apply in business).
It's true that it didn't all start with Boyd. Some goes back to Sun Tzu, and the Germans applied it to great effect with the Blitzkrieg.
The maturity, scope and content of the writing in Ender's Game's pales in comparison to many childrens books, modern or otherwise, including J.K. Rowling's.
As someone else in this thread posted, it will feel like reading a (barely) sci-fi version of Twilight, aimed at a pre-teen audience, and you may question why some opine the book's greatness. You may have a point...
Ender is an impossible creature and creates an archetype that cannot be lived up to. People make mistakes, it's what makes them learn, advance, succeed, become stronger. Ender is some kind of perverted ideal.
The way this essay describes military strategies makes it seems like those running today's theaters are absolute idiots that simply smash one group of soldiers to another just like the British did in the 1800s. This is not the case. "Attrition theory" is not what's employed in individual battles, pawn-for-pawn style exchanges. The US Army, as an example, takes extremely low numbers of casualties with staggeringly high numbers of casualties inflicted.
Most of these bold claims about Card's novel seem like fluff on closer examination. They're plot drivers for a novel and in that sense they bear a similarity to real-life examples. Nothing more.
I like to think that God is actually deliberately making things harder for me on/with purpose. Keeps me fighting.
Besides, he is not without flaws. If you didn't notice them, maybe you weren't paying enough attention?
Besides, Ender's Game is simply the setup for Speaker of the Dead, a much more interesting book.
To be fair. I read Ender's Game multiple times when I was younger. I have not yet read it again now that I have a better understanding of Sun Tzu's Art of War and the John Boyd biographies. I have no idea what I'd find if I read it again.
I still think there is a lot more content in Ender's Game than in Twilight. The message of Twilight is basically "be depressed and broody, and a shiny vampire with superpowers will fall eternally in love with you". In Ender's Game at least there are real problems and real solutions, even if perhaps it is unrealistic that a single guy could have come up with them. Then again, the book was written by a single person, so it is not completely unfeasible to have such thoughts and ideas.
Isn't that the point? It's the same as reading about the life of an amazing Olympic athlete. The book follows a prodigy military strategist -- shouldn't he be an archetype?
Movement and physical speed is just the most basic of the possible maneuvers in this context.
The rest of it does seem pretty good/interesting though
And it's cool that those are actual tactics- plus the timeline makes it look like Ender's Game was actually on the cutting edge of military thought.
"Despite this aggregation of martial thought, the best book on maneuver warfare is in fact a 30 year old science fiction novel. Although incomplete in addressing all aspects of theory, Ender’s Game is one of the best books on maneuver warfare ever written."
And then conclude with:
"Not all precepts of maneuver warfare are explored in the book...Nevertheless, there are enough examples in the book to make a credible case for the book as a primer on maneuver theory."
It is worth noting that for Lind maneuver warfare was third generation warfare and not fourth generation warfare.
I don't have any evidence of this mind you, but I've been through this cycle with favorite books enough times to have learned: don't get your hopes up.
Anyway, I have friends who are ROTC instructors and forwarded this article to them. MCDP 1 (Warfighting) is dry, so EG is a fun (though shallow) primer to discuss. It should also make the concepts in Warfighting easier to visualize for someone without any concept of asymmetric warfare.
To respond to some of the comments, maneuver warfare isn't a new concept but it’s obvious it's not well understood, particularly in business. Another useful military idea to apply to business is the OODA loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop).
Side note: I really hope the movie coming out later this year does the book justice.