Patterns of Conflict Slide 55

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 55

Quantico Transcription

Okay. Now with that in mind, then, let’s look at the action, reaction that flows out and stagnation came in, [unintelligible] what happened. I want to talk about what’s happening [unintelligible].

First of all, these offensives tend to be conducted on wide frontages. So they emphasize few, rather than many, independent thrusts. In other words, each thrust was geared to the other ones. They wanted to do it carefully synchronized.

Remember that word I used to talk about the other night, carefully synchronize those thrusts.

You go back and look at it. Christ, it was a goddamn— they were trying to choreograph the Schlieffen Maneuver. Well, what happens when you do that, if somebody gets slowed up, then the other ones get slowed. You go the pace of the slowest unit. We talked about that.

So evenness of advance maintained to protect flanks, provide artillery support as advance makes headway. Well, two things, you become predictable for two reasons. One, it’s all working the same way. And two, when somebody gets slowed up, you operate slower so that also makes it predictable.

Those guys, all the time, they were worrying about choreographing the goddamn operation. Okay. Then what happened? When they run into difficulty, then they throw the reserves in at the point where the difficulty is. So the other guy throws his reserves in. What do you got now? A blood bath.

Audience: Strength against strength.

Boyd: You’ve got a blood bath. Strength against strength. And you just keep piling up strength against strength. You’ve got a blood bath, which is exactly what happened. And you go back and

look, Battle of Verdun, you look at the Passchendaele and all those battles. Some of them we’ll talk about, we see it done over and over again.

So eventually though, reaction sets in to this, where you’re trying these maneuvers. Defense organized into belts of fortified terrain. Yes, it does. So-called trench warfare. Two key ingredients, artillery and machine guns, to arrest and pin down the attackers, and eventually the counterattack to throw the bastards out. Remember, they’re all exhausted. It was going back and forth.

And of course, the results are not too surprising. But what was that the evidence of in terms of OODA loops? What does that really tell you, if you want to use the OODA loop as a measure of merit? What’s that telling me? You don’t have much initiative, do you? It means you’re not getting inside your adversary’s loop. He’s not getting inside yours. It’s just sort of a stalemate, going back and forth. You’re just blowing one another away at a high rate. It’s like an equilibrium condition. Stagnation and equilibrium. Just little gains going each way. And the result is large body counts with no appreciable gain. Because here’s what they’re doing, going along, there is no perspective in the way they’re setting it up. Okay?

Well, let me talk to that, a good example. I want to make good examples, don’t want to go too fast. Now let me give you some examples. The Battle of Somme, they figured, okay. We’re going to break through. So they had a one-week artillery preparation in the narrow Somme sector, pumped in something like two million rounds of artillery over a one-week period. Just bang, bang, bang. Well, you know, the other side after a while is going to get wise. Hey, there’s something going on here. We’re coming pretty soon, guys. So that’s a notion of predictability.

And it’s not only that, they prepared for previous artillery because instead of keeping the guys just in their trench line, they dispersed them on the field, plus they put them in bunkers, plus they started moving divisions into reserve.

So then on the final day of the rolling barrage, the infantry goes in in these nice, neat, standard formations. And the British, in the first day, then, of a seven-day operation, first day the infantry goes in, 60,000 casualties in one day. 60,000. In one day.

Okay. So what happened? The Battle of Passchendaele 1917— 1918, I’m sorry. It was the next year. What’d they do? Pumped in four million. They said look, we’ll double this, all we got to do is we got to double the effort. Didn’t change the metric. They doubled the effort. So they pounded an area. [05:00]I think they went ten days or something like that, it was two weeks. Back in again. Once again, huge casualties, no appreciable gain.

So think about that. For a long artillery preparation, what are you doing? Isn’t that a notion of predictability? So the guys are ready for it, right? [unintelligible]. And then the way you make the attack, isn’t that another aspect of predictability? Of course.

So what you want to be is, you want to be unpredictable. All the stuff they were doing, becoming very, quite predictable. Plus the fact— another notion of predictability, if you’re going— you’re able to make an assault upon their front, they’re going to know way ahead of time, because in order to dump in those huge amounts of artillery they were pumping into the ground, you’ve got to build up the artillery stockages.

And you’re not going to put them 500 miles away. You’ve got to put them near the front, where you’re going to use them. And all that activity’s going on, enemy reconnaissance and intelligence activity is going to build it up. They’ll say hey, they’re getting ready for a big operation here. So you want to think about that.