Mystics & Statistics

Panther Breakdowns in February-March 1944

In a previous post, I presented information on the actions of the I./Pz.Rgt. 26 Panther battalion in January 1944.

Panther Breakdowns In January 1944

During late January and February, the battalion had usually been attacking. In March, it found itself embroiled in defensive fighting. This would show up in its losses. On 1 February, it reported 30 operational Panthers and 8 in workshops. No less than 24 had been sent off by train for more extensive engine repairs. Eleven Panthers had been irrevocably lost in combat (five due to hits that caused permanent damage, five had been damaged but could not be recovered and one had suffered an accident and could not be recovered). Two Panthers had been lost to engine room fires during march.

The battles fought 1-20 February only cost the battalion one Panther destroyed by enemy action (burned out due to AT round hit). Also, one more Panther spontaneously caught fire in the engine room and burned out. In the same period, no less than 97 Panthers were repaired by the workshop units, a very high damaged to destroyed ratio. Note that these repairs are due to combat damage as well as non-combat damage.

On 12 February, 20 Panthers were operational, 25 in workshop and 14 were to be recovered from various locations.

From 21 February, the battalion shifted to defensive operations and would retreat. This would lead to an increasing number of tanks being irrevocably lost. On 6 and 7 March, eight Panthers were blown up by the battalion. Of these only two had been damaged by enemy fire. The remaining six suffered from mechanical breakdowns.

The report (I./Pz.Rgt. 26 “Zusammengefasster Bericht über Panzerlage”) gives causes for each Panther being put out of action these days. It is clear that of 15 Panthers put out of action 5-7 March, only three had been hit by enemy fire and it seems that none received irreparable damage.

The battalion continued to retreat and on 8 March two Panthers were cannibalized for parts and subsequently blown up. These two (numbers 132 and 332) had not been knocked out by the enemy. They had simply got stuck in the terrain, one of them had also damaged a final drive. Lack of towing vehicles meant that they could not be recovered.

Late on 8 March it was decided to blow up another three Panthers, all of which had technical problems but could not be recovered in time, due to lack of towing vehicles and mounting enemy pressure.

On 9 March, another six Panther were blown up. Three had been hit by enemy fire, but as they were blown up, it seems unlikely that they had received terminal damage before being blown up. Finally, on 14 March two more Panthers were blown up. They both had technical damage.

After the actions in the Uman–Zvenigorodka area, the battalion retreated southwest, to the Kishinev–Balta area. During the retreat, another 19 Panthers were blown up, none of which had been damaged by enemy fire. Instead, demolition was carried out because vehicles had crashed off bridges, suffered technical damage, got stuck in the terrain, but could not be recovered in time before enemy pressure got to strong.

Despite these problems, the repair services repaired 41 Panthers in the period, which indicates that they worked hard.

During the first three months of 1944, the I./Pz.Rgt. 26 lost 60 Panthers irrevocably. Of these 37 were blown up without being damaged by the enemy. Four destroyed themselves by engine room fires. This left 19 being hit by enemy fire. Of these, its seems only 7 were actually destroyed by the hits received.

It seems clear that enemy fire was not the main cause of losses. As long as the Germans could recover damaged tanks, and had spare parts, few total losses occurred. Also, it is obvious that tanks were put out of action mainly by other causes than enemy fire. However, advancing Soviet ground units had much to do with the German tank losses, as such action could prevent recovery and force the Germans to blow up otherwise repairable tanks.

I have previously encountered claims that the Germans kept destroyed tanks on the rosters and thereby their true losses would appear smaller than they actually were. That notion finds no support in the very detailed war diary of the I./Pz.Rgt 26. I cannot find one single such case in the three months I have studied. Instead, it is clear that they far more often had to blow up perfectly repairable tanks.

During the three months discussed here, the workshops of the battalion repaired well over 200 Panthers, perhaps as many as 300, which can be contrasted to only about 7 being directly destroyed by enemy fire. This shows that it can be very problematic to infer tank losses from changes in the number of operational tanks from one time to another. Also, it shows the importance of controlling the terrain after the action has been fought.

All information is from the war diary, with annexes, of the I./Pz.Rgt. 26 (Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, RH 39/599).

Really the End of Stealth?

This blog reported in July that the end of stealth might be near.  Further evidence comes with Aviation Week’s interview with Fred Kennedy, the lead of the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) reveals key elements of the debates within the US defense community, specifically about stealth.

“We have been doubling down on the miracle of stealth for forty years. … There are diminishing returns to using the same tactic.  I don’t think there is a lot of advantage to going further into this particular tactic of stealth.”  Rather, DARPA suggests what they call “un-deterable air presence. … You’re going to see me coming, since I won’t be stealthy, and you’re going to shoot at me, but you’re not going to hit anything.  An example is hypersonics.”

Meanwhile, Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein is looking at the network approach, sometimes called combat cloud.  ”When you look at — through the lens of the network — and you look at air superiority as a mission, as a family-of-systems approach, you can see why you don’t hear me talking a lot about a replacement, A for B.”

This indicates that several programs which are underway to consider building new stealth aircraft might be facing an uphill battle to convince the Air Force, DARPA and Department of Defense (DoD):

  • Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)
  • Penetrating Counter Air (PCA)
  • F/A-XX

So, does this mean that stealth is near its end? A few key facts illustrate otherwise:

  1. Significant investment in new stealthy platforms, worldwide.
    1. US F-117 – in service from 1983 to 2008
    2. US B-2 – in service since 1997
    3. US F-22 – in service 2005-Dec, first combat 2014-Sep
    4. F-35 Program – first combat by Israeli Air Force, 2018-May
    5. US B-21 Program – expected to enter service by 2025
    6. British Tempest – concept announced 2018-July
    7. Franco-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS)
    8. Japanese X-2 Shinshin – costly, but may proceed with partners
    9. Korean & Indonesian KF-X – expected by 2032
    10. Turkish & British TF-X – first flight by 2023 ?
    11. Chinese J-20 – in serial production since 2017-Oct
    12. Chinese J-31 – improved version, first flight 2016-Dec
    13. Chinese H-20 – strategic stealth bomber, planned for 2025
    14. Russian Su-57 – in service, combat evaluation in Syria
    15. Russian PAK DA Program – bomber planned for 2025-2030
  2. Research projects by DARPA that leverage existing stealthy platforms.
    1. Gremlins – semi-disposable, air launch and recovery UAVs
    2. Software – System of Systems approach (SoSITE)
  3. Evidence that stealth capabilities by potential adversaries are overstated.
    1. India Air Force claims Su-30MKI tracked Chinese J-20
    2. Russia cancels mass production of Su-57

Clearly then, stealth is a capability that is here to stay, and many new aircraft with incorporate it into their design. The point that DARPA’s Kennedy makes is that potential adversaries know this tactic, and they are investing in ways to counter it.  Stealth is no longer a source of technological surprise, it is mainstream.  It was original and likely the source of significant surprise in 1983!

Tank Losses to Mines (Mines at Kursk II)

This is a follow up post to this post:

Mines at Kursk I

This is excerpted directly from my Kursk book, page 423.

The German tank losses due to mines can be estimated for this day [5 July 1943]. There is a report that appears to record all the German tanks lost to mines on 5 July. The 3rd Panzer Division reported losing six tanks damaged to mines. One other was destroyed, and while the records do not explicitly so state, the assumption is that this one was also lost to mines. The Gross Deutschland reports that it lost 5 assault guns and about 20 tanks to mines. This was the worst loss to mines suffered by any division. The 11th Panzer Division reported losing eight tanks on 5 July. It is unclear, but it appear that all of these were also lost to mines. The Adolf Hitler SS Division reported losing 20 tanks on 5 July, including six Tiger tanks. The Totenkopf SS Division lost 12 tanks, including five Tigers. The record notes that these were “mostly from mines.” The Das Reich SS Division reported 12 tanks lost, including two Tigers. They do not report the cause of loss, but it is also assumed that most were from mines. A comparison of the calculated losses from these divisions (generate by subtracting the number of tanks ready-for-action on the evening of the 4th from the number ready-for-action on the evening of the 5th) compared to the reported losses due to mines shows the following:

                           Calculated losses     Reported losses     Mine loss 

                           (from all causes)      (mine losses)          as a percent

                            5 July                       5 July                     of total loss

3rd PzD                  10                                7                             70%

GD PzGrD              30                              25                             83%

11th PzD                12                                8                             67%

LSSAH PzGrD       20                               20                          100%

DR SS PzGrD        19                               12                            63%

T SS PzGD            15                               12                             80%

                            ——                           ——                            ——

                            106                               84                             79%

 

It is estimated that the Panther regiment lost 19 tanks to mines on this day. In the case of the III Panzer corps, it showed a decline in strength on the first day of 64 tanks. Assuming that the same percent were lost to mines as for the other two panzer corps, then another 51 tanks were lost to mines. We do know that at least 9 Tigers were lost to mines on this day and a total of 16 were lost to mines in the first three days of battle.

Therefore, it is estimated that on the 5th of July, the attacking Germans lost as many as 154 tanks to mines out of 249 damaged or destroyed that day. This amounts to 62 percent of the tanks lost on that day and accounted for 10 percent of the total German tanks lost between 4 and 18 Julty. This is the upper estimate, as the records often report that “most” of the tank losses were to mines. If one assumes that “most” means 75 percent lost to mines, then the figure are less. The XLVIII Panzer corps loss to mines would remained at 40, the SS Panzer Corps loss to mines would lower to 33, the Panzer Regiment von Lauchert to 15, and the III Panzer and Corps Raus to 44, for a total of 131 tanks lost to mines on 5 July.

Of those tanks lost to mines, only one or two, including one Panther, were clearly destroyed by mines. Most of the tanks lost to mines were damaged without loss to the crew. In many case the tanks were repaired and put back into action within a few days. There were also at least four Soviet tanks lost to mines on this day, probably their own mines, and we know of two German Tiger tanks that were lost to their own mines.

One more mine related post to follow.

China versus India

In a blog posts on Indian demographics someone asked “The question is why India (per capita income $6,490-2016) is still so poor compared to China (per capital income $15,000 – 2016).” I have never really examined this, but it is an interesting enough question that I wanted to take a further look at it.

In 1960, the World Bank has China’s GDP at $60 billion. India’s GDP at $37 billion. India’s GDP is around 61% of China’s. Considering that India’s population was smaller, they were clearly at similar levels of development. This is, of course, back in the day when China and India were having border fights in the Himalayas (like in 1962).

Over the next couple of decades, India actually closed in on China. In 1970, India’s GDP was 67% of China’s GDP. In 1980 it was 96%. In 1990, they had separated a little with India’s GDP being 88% of China’s. So for three decades they grew at similar rates. And then as you can see rather clearly from the chart below, China’s economy took off.

By the year 2000, China’s GDP was 2.6 times larger than India’s. India was at 38% of China. By 2010, the disparity widened, with China’s GDP now 3.7 times larger than India’s (27%). As of 2017, the disparity continued to grow with China’s GDP now 4.7 times larger (or 21% for India). This is a pretty significant change over time, with clearly most of the difference developing from 1990 to the present. It has been an amazing three decades for China.

Of course, the last time we saw such amazing growth was with Japan up through 1995. Is China growth permanent and sustainable (like U.S. growth tends to be), or is it a bubble?

See:

Where Did Japan Go?

 

What Does Lethality Mean In Warfare?

In an insightful essay over at The Strategy Bridge, “Lethality: An Inquiry,” Marine Corps officer Olivia Gerard accomplishes one of the most important, yet most often overlooked, aspects of successfully thinking about and planning for war: questioning a basic assumption. She achieves this by posing a simple question: “What is lethality?”

Gerard notes that the current U.S. National Defense Strategy is predicated on lethality; as it states: “A more lethal, resilient, and rapidly innovating Joint Force, combined with a robust constellation of allies and partners, will sustain American influence and ensure favorable balances of power that safeguard the free and open international order.” She also identifies the linkage in the strategy between lethality and deterrence via a supporting statement from Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan: “Everything we do is geared toward one goal: maximizing lethality. A lethal force is the strongest deterrent to war.”

After pointing out that the strategy does not define the concept of lethality, Gerard responds to Shanahan’s statement by asking “why?”

She uses this as a jumping off point to examine the meaning of lethality in warfare. Starting from the traditional understanding of lethality as a tactical concept, Gerard walks through the way it has been understood historically. From this, she formulates a construct for understanding the relationship between lethality and strategy:

Organizational lethality emerges from tactical lethality that is institutionally codified. Tactical lethality is nested within organizational lethality, which is nested within strategic lethality. Plugging these terms into an implicit calculus, we can rewrite strategic lethality as the efficacy with which we can form intentional deadly relationships towards targets that can be actualized towards political ends.

To this, Gerard appends two interesting caveats: “Notice first that the organizational component becomes implicit. What remains outside, however, is the intention–a meta-intention–to form these potential deadly relationships in the first place.”

It is the second of these caveats—the intent to connect lethality to a strategic end—that informs Gerard’s conclusion. While the National Defense Strategy does not define the term, she observes that by explicitly leveraging the threat to use lethality to bolster deterrence, it supplies the necessary credibility needed to make deterrence viable. “Proclaiming lethality a core tenet, especially in a public strategic document, is the communication of the threat.”

Gerard’s exploration of lethality and her proposed framework for understanding it provide a very useful way of thinking about the way it relates to warfare. It is definitely worth your time to read.

What might be just as interesting, however, are the caveats to her construct because they encompass a lot of what is problematic about the way the U.S. military thinks—explicitly and implicitly—about tactical lethality and how it is codified into concepts of organizational lethality. (While I have touched on some of those already, Gerard gives more to reflect on. More on that later.)

Gerard also references the definition of lethality Trevor Dupuy developed for his 1964 study of historical trends in weapon lethality. While noting that his definition was too narrow for the purposes of her inquiry, the historical relationship between lethality, casualties, and dispersion on the battlefield Dupuy found in that study formed the basis for his subsequent theories of warfare and models of combat. (I will write more about those in the future as well.)

Human Factors In Warfare: Fear In A Lethal Environment

Chaplain (Capt.) Emil Kapaun (right) and Capt. Jerome A. Dolan, a medical officer with the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, carry an exhausted Soldier off the battlefield in Korea, early in the war. Kapaun was famous for exposing himself to enemy fire. When his battalion was overrun by a Chinese force in November 1950, rather than take an opportunity to escape, Kapaun voluntarily remained behind to minister to the wounded. In 2013, Kapaun posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the battle and later in a prisoner of war camp, where he died in May 1951. [Photo Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Army Center of Military History]

[This piece was originally published on 27 June 2017.]

Trevor Dupuy’s theories about warfare were sometimes criticized by some who thought his scientific approach neglected the influence of the human element and chance and amounted to an attempt to reduce war to mathematical equations. Anyone who has read Dupuy’s work knows this is not, in fact, the case.

Moral and behavioral (i.e human) factors were central to Dupuy’s research and theorizing about combat. He wrote about them in detail in his books. In 1989, he presented a paper titled “The Fundamental Information Base for Modeling Human Behavior in Combat” at a symposium on combat modeling that provided a clear, succinct summary of his thinking on the topic.

He began by concurring with Carl von Clausewitz’s assertion that

[P]assion, emotion, and fear [are] the fundamental characteristics of combat… No one who has participated in combat can disagree with this Clausewitzean emphasis on passion, emotion, and fear. Without doubt, the single most distinctive and pervasive characteristic of combat is fear: fear in a lethal environment.

Despite the ubiquity of fear on the battlefield, Dupuy pointed out that there is no way to study its impact except through the historical record of combat in the real world.

We cannot replicate fear in laboratory experiments. We cannot introduce fear into field tests. We cannot create an environment of fear in training or in field exercises.

So, to study human reaction in a battlefield environment we have no choice but to go to the battlefield, not the laboratory, not the proving ground, not the training reservation. But, because of the nature of the very characteristics of combat which we want to study, we can’t study them during the battle. We can only do so retrospectively.

We have no choice but to rely on military history. This is why military history has been called the laboratory of the soldier.

He also pointed out that using military history analytically has its own pitfalls and must be handled carefully lest it be used to draw misleading or inaccurate conclusions.

I must also make clear my recognition that military history data is far from perfect, and that–even at best—it reflects the actions and interactions of unpredictable human beings. Extreme caution must be exercised when using or analyzing military history. A single historical example can be misleading for either of two reasons: (a) The data is inaccurate, or (b) The example may be true, but also be untypical.

But, when a number of respectable examples from history show consistent patterns of human behavior, then we can have confidence that behavior in accordance with the pattern is typical, and that behavior inconsistent with the pattern is either untypical, or is inaccurately represented.

He then stated very concisely the scientific basis for his method.

My approach to historical analysis is actuarial. We cannot predict the future in any single instance. But, on the basis of a large set of reliable experience data, we can predict what is likely to occur under a given set of circumstances.

Dupuy listed ten combat phenomena that he believed were directly or indirectly related to human behavior. He considered the list comprehensive, if not exhaustive.

I shall look at Dupuy’s treatment of each of these in future posts (click links above).

Greetings from Japan /日本から今日は！

Image Credit: Japan Ministry of Defense

This blogger has now relocated to the land of the rising sun, for professional and personal reasons. Note the location of the Ministry of Defense in the focused circle in the image above.

As a student of Japanese language, politics, economics, history culture and martial arts, I’m now enjoying being in close proximity to many places that I’ve studied, and are symbolic of the Japanese nation.

For example, my “monthly apartment” is close to Kudanshita station (九段下駅). This is right across the street from Yasukuni Shrine, which is rather famous, given that other nations such as China and Korea are somewhat critical and skeptical about Japanese nationalism. For example, this statement by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Yasukuni Shrine, located in Tokyo, Japan, is dedicated to over 2,466,000 Japanese soldiers and servicemen who died fighting on behalf of the Emperor of Japan in the last 150 years. It also houses one of the few Japanese war museums dedicated to World War II. The shrine is at the center of an international controversy by honoring war criminals convicted by a post World War II court including 14 ‘Class A’ war criminals. Japanese politicians, including prime ministers and cabinet members have paid visits to Yasukuni Shrine in recent years which caused criticism and protests from China, Korea, and Taiwan.

Image credit: Geoffrey Clark, Yasukuni Shrine at night

I’m planning a new series of blog posts, of the following topics:

  • East Asian military forces, Orders of Battle (OOB) – in Japan, military forces have been at the center of politics as a key item of debate during the run up to the election on 9/20 for Prime Minister; Shinzo Abe won a third term, securing his position through to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The question was about how (no longer if) to amend the post-war constitution to specify the legal status of the armed forces of Japan, euphemistically called the “Self Defense Forces” today. Abe now has enough political capital to move forward with some changes, although language is still being debated.
  • East Asian Geography – as an archipelago, Japan sits in a seemingly precarious position, close to Russia, China, the Koreas and Taiwan. Given the legacy of the Pacific War, as well as the modern economy, Japan has various ties to these countries, as well as territorial disputes. The recent discussions with Russia on a possible peace treaty to formally end the Pacific War has been in the news, and it involves islands in dispute. The implications of these types of territorial change of hands have big implications on military balance. The military implications of some of these issues will be examined in more depth through a commercial wargame.
  • Air Combat in General – On the utility of stealth, the possible outcomes of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program in the US, the statements by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on stealth and the Third Offset Strategy, to the advance of drones, there is much to talk about!

Mines at Kursk I

Soviet TM-41 Antitank Mine

I have been doing some more work on Kursk recently. I have a rather extensive discussion of the Soviet defensive works at Kursk in Chapter 4 of my book, but I did want to better summarize the state of the works. In this case I focused on the mines. Here is what I wrote:

Just to look at one aspect of their defensive works, as part of these works were a considerable collection of the antitank and antipersonnel mines deployed in the first two defensive lines. This means in the first and second defensive echelons of the Sixth and Seventh Guards Armies. In the case of the Sixth Guards Army, this was 170,210 mines as of 4 July 1943. As of 30 June, it was 88,261 antitank mines and 53,324 antipersonnel mines. The mines were mostly deployed in the first echelon, which had 80% of the mines. They were deployed almost evenly between all four rifle divisions in the first echelon. The situation with the Seven Guards Army was similar, with 151,954 mines deployed by 5 July (66,814 antitank and 85,140 antipersonnel), of which 92% were in the first echelon. Unlike the Sixth Guards Army, their placement favored the divisions on each end of their line, the 36th Guards Rifle Division which was opposite the German XLII Corps, and the 81st Guards Rifle Division, which was facing the 6th Panzer Division. The Fortieth Army had 59,032 antitank mines, 70,994 antipersonnel mines as well as 6,377 “mine shells” (this is assumed to be artillery shells rigged to explode). The Fortieth Army, to the right of the Sixth Guards Army, was not attacked.

So for the defense phase of the Battle of Kursk (4-18 July), the Soviet Army laid at least 291,797 antitank mines and 294,378 antipersonnel mines. In the south this produced an impressive 1,666 mines per kilometer and 1,624 antipersonnel mines per kilometers.

Overall, the first defensive line of the Voronezh Front (including the first two echelons of the defending armies) had at least 221,846 antitank and 219,134 antipersonnel mines emplaced before the battle began (excluding the Thirty-eighth Army). The linear density of mines in the area (175.1 kilometers) is some 1,267 antitank mines and 1,251 antipersonnel mines per kilometer. While this appears impressive, what it would really amount to over the entire width of the front is a two-row deep minefield, with a little more than a single mine per meter in each row.

The density of the second echelon tended to be 100 to 200 mines per kilometers, or one per every five to ten linear meters of front. Clearly, the mines in the second echelon were not being laid in belts, but were instead being gathered around defensive points and blocking certain passages.

In contrast, in the third defensive belt was the First Tank Army, which reported having laid some 1,980 antitank mines and 1,520 antipersonnel mines by 4 July. Considering that the frontage of the Army was some 25 kilometers, this was indeed a very thin line of defensive works. The Sixty-Ninth Army, also deployed in the third belt had emplace as of 4 July 17,671 antitank mines and 16,848 antipersonnel mines.

There were of course, extensive earthworks, trench systems, gun pits and so forth. But again, this was heavily biased into the first echelon, with the army’s second echelon being considerably weaker. The front’s third echelon was even less prepared and some of the works, including tank ditches, had not been completed.

Anyhow, this is the first of three posts on the subject. Most of this is drawn from pages 199-205 of my Kursk book.

Japan versus Germany

Comparing Japan and Germany is an interesting exercise….as they kind of started at the same point. Their leaders in World War II were disgraceful incompetents who got their nations into wars they could not win, leading to them being bombed into oblivion and then occupied. They both started at the same point for recovery. In 1970 Japan had a GDP of 212.609 billion while Germany had a GDP of 215.022 billion. They oddly enough, almost ended up at at the same point, for in 2017 Japan had a GDP of 4.872 trillion while Germany had a GDP of 3.677 trillion. Considering that in 2017 the Japanese population is 127 million, and the German population is 82 million, at this stage Germany actually had the higher per capita income, being $44,550 compared to $38,440 (or $50,206 compared to $42,659 using PPP – Purchasing Power Parity, IMF 2017 figures). On the other hand, their trips to these points are very different as shown in this graph, showing their GDP from 1970-2017:

From 1970 through 1977 their economic growth almost parrelled each other. After that Japan’s economy started growing faster, then it boomed and after 1995 it busted. The German economy also declined after 1995, but since then seems to have grown and then stabilized.

While both nations have a fertility rate well below 2.1 (which is the replacement rate) they have reacted differently to immigration. Germany has been far more accepting of immigration than Japan. The end result is that Germany’s population is projected to still be at around 79 million in 2050 while Japan is expected to decline to 109 million. I am probably on safe ground to state that in the long run, Germany will have a higher GDP than Japan, meaning it will probably rise to be the third largest economy in the world.

Simpkin on the Long-Term Effects of Firepower Dominance

To follow on my earlier post introducing British military theorist Richard Simpkin’s foresight in detecting trends in 21st Century warfare, I offer this paragraph, which immediately followed the ones I quoted:

Briefly and in the most general terms possible, I suggest that the long-term effect of dominant firepower will be threefold. It will disperse mass in the form of a “net” of small detachments with the dual role of calling down fire and of local quasi-guerrilla action. Because of its low density, the elements of this net will be everywhere and will thus need only the mobility of the boot. It will transfer mass, structurally from the combat arms to the artillery, and in deployment from the direct fire zone (as we now understand it) to the formation and protection of mobile fire bases capable of movement at heavy-track tempo (Chapter 9). Thus the third effect will be to polarise mobility, for the manoeuvre force still required is likely to be based on the rotor. This line of thought is borne out by recent trends in Soviet thinking on the offensive. The concept of an operational manoeuvre group (OMG) which hives off raid forces against C3 and indirect fire resources is giving way to more fluid and discontinuous manoeuvre by task forces (“air-ground assault groups” found by “shock divisions”) directed onto fire bases—again of course with an operational helicopter force superimposed. [Simpkin, Race To The Swift, p. 169]

It seems to me that in the mid-1980s, Simpkin accurately predicted the emergence of modern anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) defensive systems with reasonable accuracy, as well the evolving thinking on the part of the U.S. military as to how to operate against them.

Simpkin’s vision of task forces (more closely resembling Russian/Soviet OMGs than rotary wing “air-ground assault groups” operational forces, however) employing “fluid and discontinuous manoeuvre” at operational depths to attack long-range precision firebases appears similar to emerging Army thinking about future multidomain operations. (It’s likely that Douglas MacGregor’s Reconnaissance Strike Group concept more closely fits that bill.)

One thing he missed on was his belief that rotary wing helicopter combat forces would supplant armored forces as the primary deep operations combat arm. However, there is the potential possibility that drone swarms might conceivably take the place in Simpkin’s operational construct that he allotted to heliborne forces. Drones have two primary advantages over manned helicopters: they are far cheaper and they are far less vulnerable to enemy fires. With their unique capacity to blend mass and fires, drones could conceivably form the deep strike operational hammer that Simpkin saw rotary wing forces providing.

Just as interesting was Simpkin’s anticipation of the growing importance of information and electronic warfare in these environments. More on that later.