An analysis by Xavier Cardenas Conio
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this article is to explain the difference between Fire & Manoeuvre and Attrition warfare and define whether one of them is better than the other and whether they are tactical actions or not. To do so, I resort to historical examples and explain if it is a choice or an imposition for a commander to do so. I use the military Intelligence approach to battle, which is analyzing: the enemy, terrain and weather conditions. The historical examples are only from the 20th century onwards. There are other types of warfare, but I will focus on land conventional warfare only.
This is not an empirical approach but rather a qualitative research on past conflicts.
Thesis.
My thesis is that Fire & Manoeuvre is not better or superior to Attrition, and its use will depend on other factors, but not on the Commander liking it or not. However, I have my own opinion.
THE LEVELS OF MILITARY CONDUCTION AND THE TACTICAL ACTIONS
With some local variations in most Western armies, there are three levels: strategic, operational and tactical. There is the first one that is Politic Strategic, where the political leader establishes the country or group objective and tasks the mission to the defence area with the scope of achieving it, so political involvement ends here, but not always. In some wars, the President has appointed a Minister in Campaign to go along with the troops with two main missions: ensuring the proper logistic support and that the military commander’s strategy aligns with the political objective. But sometimes the political leaders have conducted the strategies themselves, like when President Roosevelt met General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz to discuss the strategy for the Pacific war. Strategic is the conduction of a whole army or coalition in the entire Theatre of War to achieve the objectives the political leader has established. At this level starts the only-soldier action. Operational is the link between strategic and tactical in a theatre of operations and commanders plan, execute movements, and logistics to achieve strategic objectives through the coordination of battles. Tactical is where direct combat occurs. This is where the men-to-men shooting happens.
Strategic involves whole armies or parts of them such as an army corps or a division. Operational moves around a brigade or a division, and tactical involves from brigade down to companies and troops. I say it moves because a unit in an operational status can go up to strategic according to the objectives, the theatre of war and the time frame. A strategic objective can be achieving a certain line 70 km ahead in two weeks. This translates into a series of operational actions conducted to gain a certain objective by doing battles, one after the other, to achieve the strategic action in two weeks. The tactical level entails a series of tactical actions that can last in combat for one or three days in objectives at shorter distances such as 10 or 20 km. per action. The sum of tactical actions allows to reach the operational objectives and the sum of these allows to reach the bigger strategic objectives.
The principal tactical actions are attack, defence, retreat and dilatory resistance. They are principal because they involve direct action with the enemy. The complementary are repose, march, reconnaissance and others. These are done away from the enemy and far from their weapons, but are considered actions because they involve the creation of plans and orders and a main force doing the action with another providing security to it. The actions can be done also by different methods. An attack can be frontal or enveloping. A defence can be in position, in-depth or mobile and retreat and dilatory resistance can also be made in different ways. This is in simple.
FIRE & MANOUVRE AND ATTRITION
Fire & Maneuver (FM) is not a tactical action in itself but a way to perform warfare that seeks movement and speed exploiting weaknesses or gaps in the enemy positions. It is a strategic and operational approach, rather than a single tactical action. While it employs tactical techniques like flanking and deception, its essence lies in achieving strategic objectives through operational manoeuvre, rather than direct attrition-based engagement. It can be used in all strategic, operational and tactical actions.
Some authors, such as Amos Fox, put attrition another name: the “destruction-based approach”, and I think he is right because it explains in a better way this form of warfare as it does seek the destruction of the enemy, but for the moment, I’ll keep the name attrition. But languages can vary the description of attrition. In Spanish attrition is translated as “desgaste” which means “to wear out” and I think this is even better because it explains better attrition as the objective is to destroy the enemy until it surrenders because it can’t take it anymore. Submit it to constant all-arms fire, aerial bombings, impeding its movement so the only thing it can do is take cover while casualties mount, logistics begin to fail, fatigue and lack of sleep affect them and defences begin to crumble. And so go on, and on, and on, day and night with no pause until they have so many casualties with no chance to escape that a final attack is made to destroy the remaining or forcing the still-surviving to surrender.
There are previous historical examples, but a good one is the Left Hook strategy the coalition forces made in the First Gulf War that comprised a deep and fast flanking manoeuvre that cut logistics and routes for retreat to the Iraqi forces that were in Kuwait while surpassing their main positions. This offensive included the famous 73 Easting battle where the Iraqi Tawakalna division - part of a mobile defence to be used to make a counterattack - was destroyed. In the Second Gulf War, the coalition performed the Thunder Run offensive strategy consisting of a fast armoured offensive that brought them to the outskirts of Baghdad in 20 days, leaving behind chaos in the Iraqi forces and another chaos when they reached the capital so fast, surprising the enemy. Thus, instead of making a frontal assault that could have caused unnecessary casualties and a slow advance, they surpassed the enemy positions and ran deep and fast to the main objective. This is manoeuvre warfare, but the strategic action was Offensive, and at the tactical level, they were Attacks. So the doctrine didn’t change.
COMBINED ARMS DOCTRINE
It started to be used many years before, but the Germans put it in a better context when conducting the Blitzkrieg in the IIWW and the Russians used a similar approach with the Deep Battle idea. To conduct FM warfare, countries developed a combined arms doctrine that helps them to maintain a unified way of thinking, planning and combat. The US names them Task Forces and the British have an equivalent in the Battlegroups, both around a brigade or battalion size with representations of all arms making them independent and self-sustained units that operate swiftly with enough firepower for each action.
IN WHAT TACTICAL ACTION CAN FM BE USED
Manoeuvre warfare is conducted not only in attack. Retreat can also be conducted through FM warfare. And here Rommel’s Afrika Korps retreat from El Alamein to Tunisia is a good example of a mix of defences and dilatory resistances. In Mersa Matruh and the Halfaya Pass the Germans set up a dilatory resistance to delay the Allied offensive and when they achieved their objective, they retreated. In the Mareth Line they set up a Defence, but the Allies outflanked it and the Axis was forced to continue the retreat. But overall, despite having been defeated, Rommel was able to avoid the destruction of his main force. At the end of the day, Rommel was using FM in retreat, and Montgomery was using FM in the offensive.
The way the Germans fought the Italian campaign is perhaps the masterclass of using attrition and manoeuvres at the same time. Firstly, they prepared 6 defensive lines. Gustav, Gothic and Hitler are amongst the most known. They used FM when retreating through counterattacks and dilatory actions. They did so until they pulled back to the defensive lines where they fought through attrition and kept their position as much as they could. Then they pulled back to the next defensive line while doing FM in dilatory actions and went back into attrition again. With this, they were very successful and delayed the Allies' advance in almost a year, preventing the forces from being used in another front.
Another lesser known example was during the Italian retreat from Russia. We all know it wasn’t exactly a retreat but more a save-your-souls. However, the Italians were moving away from the front, but at Nikolajewka (near current Livenka, Belgorod Oblast) they found a Russian position blocking the road and in a desperate fight they conducted an attack led by the Alpini. With heavy losses, the Italians were able to break the Russian lines and continued their retreat. So it was retreat, attack, and then, continue the retreat.
Another example of successful manoeuvre warfare was the Japanese conquest of Singapore. In only 70 days, a Japanese much smaller force numbering around 36.000 raced down Malaya to force the surrender of 85.000 British defenders using infiltration and deep and swift advances using bicycles bypassing strongholds rather than frontal assaults.
FM warfare is more popular because it is bold and offensive, and the commanders that have used it are most widely known by public opinion as being fierce-minded and successful. Names for this are plenty. Zhukov, Rommel, Patton and many others are remembered for this. But the commander doesn’t say: We will do a FM manoeuvre or attrition. Instead, he orders strategic, operational and tactical actions such as the ones mentioned, such as attack, defence or retreat. Whether it is FM or not comes out in the way he conducts the operation.
FM IS NO BETTER THAN ATTRITION
But FM is neither the opposite of attrition warfare nor is it better. I prefer it, but the choice of one or the other does not depend on the commander liking it or not. The use of one or the other depends on several factors like the enemy’s situation, my own situation, the objective, the mission and the terrain. For this reason, attrition warfare is not necessarily a one-to-one situation. Its use depends on the factors just mentioned but not directly on the correlation of forces. FM requires enough space to use my force, and if I don’t have the space I will have to go for attrition. The examples already mentioned from the Gulf War were possible because the desert provided huge spaces to move armoured units and outflank the enemy. Without it, the commander should have used other approaches like attrition. The thing is that when doing attrition warfare, a force is able to make a breach in the enemy’s positions, it has to try to use that gap to make a fast and deep thrust to divide the enemy forces and go ahead to the rearguards seeking their collapse.
BASTOGNE
Commanders who have used FM are thought of as better than other commanders who have gone for attrition, but it shouldn’t be so. Every commander has acted as the situation has indicated or allowed him and those who have been involved in attrition have also been successful. A good example is a siege like the one that happened in Bastogne when the Germans surrounded the city in the Battle of the Bulge. The 101st Airborne along with other elements, under the command of General McAuliffe, sustained the fight and did not surrender for 41 days until it was relieved by Patton’s 4th Army. So, in the end, they won, and McAuliffe’s response: Nuts! became a symbol of American resistance.
ATTRITION IS ALSO USED AND NECESSARY
Now, FM does not mean that attrition is not used. A commander might use FM in one part of his front and attrition in another. Rommel used FM all along, but in Tobruk, his only choice was going for attrition, and so he did until he captured it after a 7-months siege. In the Italian campaign, the Allies had been advancing north in Operation Shingle to outflank the Gustav line, but the Germans had a defence so well prepared in Montecassino that they had to stop the advance and turn into attrition warfare to conquer that position. It took them four months of infantry assaults and aerial and artillery bombardments to do so because it was full of engineer obstacles and the defenders were hard fighters among others from the 1st Fallschirmjäger division. But from the strategic or operational point of view, it was attrition, but it also included FM tactical actions such as infantry assaults and German counterattacks.
Also, FM and attrition can be used at the same time. When the Allies were crossing France into Germany, the land component was advancing using FM, but at the same time they were conducting aerial bombings day after day non-stop and that was attrition.
In Desert Storm, there was also attrition in the sense that some coalition forces attacked the entrenched Iraqis to force them to hold the ground, thus preventing them from retreating or regrouping, thus facilitating the main thrust.
Also, an action at any level of conduction can include FM and attrition and change back and forth as the situation changes, as in Montecassino where the allies were advancing, had to stop there and then continued advancing after that battle was won. The invasion of Peleliu in the Pacific theatre in the IIWW can also serve as an example. Firstly, fire was used by bombing the island for three days before, then came the naval bombardment, and finally the landing itself was the offensive manoeuvre stage. But on entering the island the approach had to change because the Japanese had prepared a rigorous defense in depth that forced the Marines into attrition. A small, tiny island was so well prepared for defence that it took 74 days to conquer it, becoming one of the deadliest actions in this theater. And, the Japanese commander did not destroy his enemy but was successful in sustaining such a long battle and causing so many casualties.
HOW WAR IS SEEN IN DIFFERENT LEVELS OF CONDUCTION
What one level can see as attrition in another can be seen as FM. Firstly, we have the example of Montecassino already mentioned. In Peleliu from the Marine's point of view, it can be considered attrition, but at General MacArthur’s strategic level, it was still manoeuvre. The conquest might have taken more or less days from afar, but in his maps, it was still FM.
But Montecassino also shows another thing. If the enemy commander is good and sees we are in an offensive using FM, he will try to stop it by counterattacks or well-prepared defences, forcing us to stop the advance and turn into attrition until we destroy it. And when we do so, we must try to continue our offensive using FM to destroy the retreating enemy force, and then carry on with our offensive.
A commander might decide to use attrition amongst others in these situations:
When he faces a well-defended position.
When he needs to prepare a strong defence to avoid the capture of a certain ground.
When he confronts an enemy doing FM and decides to stop it like the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023. The Russians saw it coming and prepared a good defensive strategy, stopped the Ukrainians and forced them into attrition. The Russians dismantled the offensive.
To soften the enemy before an offensive FM.
When the commander does not have enough forces or means to conduct FM.
From the above, we can extract that attrition should and must be used if necessary to destroy the enemy or create good conditions to proceed with a deep thrust of manoeuvre. An analysis of the Institute for the Study of War from the War in Ukraine indicated that both forces were engaged in attrition trying to create the conditions to retake manoeuvre, thus indicating that the objective of winning an attrition situation was to regain the initiative by doing FM.
But, also attrition can be used to soften the enemy before an FM operation. In Peleliu, it was three days of aerial bombing plus the naval bombardment on the day of the invasion, in El Alamein it was six miles of British guns that fired all night and in Desert Storm it was six weeks before the land offensive involving an impressive armada of nearly a thousand aircraft.
Fighting in urban areas has almost always been conducted by attrition, such as in Market Garden where the 82nd. Airborne Division supported by the British XXX Corps fought a fierce battle amongst the buildings in the northern part of Nijmegen. A more modern example is the Battle for Ramadi, Iraq in 2015-2016 where the fight was block by block with heavy casualties on both sides.
In Montecassino, the Allies’ objective was to destroy the Axis Forces to regain FM towards the north of Italy. So it wasn’t a choice but an imposition.
WHY I PREFER FM
I prefer FM because it allows a better application of the Principles of War like Freedom of Movement, Offensive and Surprise, amongst others. Also, the speed and deep penetration allow to destroy the rearguards without confronting the main enemy force that is in the first line. At the moment of penetration, a strong fight will happen, that’s for sure, where there will be a bigger amount of casualties, but after that, they can keep on pushing until reaching the objective far behind the front line. Another thing that can be achieved in a deep penetration is swinging around to encircle the enemy force, forcing them to surrender. According to the enemy’s resistance, it might be possible to reduce one’s own casualties, and even win the battle faster. Winning faster without confronting the enemy’s main force will also help, in the best of cases, to the destruction of the enemy’s forces with no chance to regroup or time to call the reserves and can provoke the political collapse of the enemy and the final total surrender of that country or political group. The fall of France in the IIWW and both Gulf Wars, I think, are good examples of what can be achieved by using deep thrusts employing manoeuvre warfare causing the quick defeat of the enemy country.
But, the commander has to be realistic. He might prefer FM, but if the situation does not allow him to use it, he will have to use other methods, like attrition. From my perspective, the only way to win a war is by being offensive. At least me, I was taught actions from the strategic down to the tactical levels that were conducted by Fire & Manoeuvre and if the enemy's obstacles were in the way, to smash it down with heavy fire until they recoiled. Thus, we used FM as a method and attrition only derived from the needs.
MAIN CHARACTERISTICS
The main characteristics I see of both methods are:
MANOEUVRE:
Uses speed and deep penetrations to reach the objectives. Therefore, it requires highly mobile units such as armoured, mechanized infantry, mobile artillery and aerial support and the other support branches.
It focuses on disrupting the enemy’s cohesion, decision-making, and ability to fight effectively rather than engaging in direct force-on-force battles.
It aims to achieve victory through paralysis, shock, and disorganization, rather than sheer destruction.
Tactics that are mainly used are flanking, and envelopment.
The time it takes might be shorter than attrition.
It needs lower resources relying upon speed, mobility and surprise.
Decentralized command. The commander issues his orders and trusts that his subordinate commanders will be able to reach their objectives. Therefore, it requires commanders who have been well trained to work independently, and this goes down to the last infantryman.
The control of the combat is made using lines of advance, timings, and others.
Here the subordinate commanders have to be clearly told what is the superior commander’s intention. I have always thought that this is very important, knowing the why? Perhaps a commander will not be able to achieve an objective as it was ordered, but knowing his superior’s intention he can devise other ways to achieve it.
Commanders will face the unpredictable or even more the unexpected and they have to be able to adapt to accomplish the mission.
It doesn’t seek the enemy’s destruction. It seeks for the enemy to quit.
For the same as above, it’s not measured by the body count but for the captured POWs.
All commanders instead of relying on strict control have to rely on tactics.
For all these reasons the number of casualties is reduced.
The frontline is in constant movement and evolution.
Contact with the enemy is maintained by swift and long advances. Once the contact is achieved, the attacker must maintain the pressure to destroy the retreating enemy in what the British call “tempo” that in the end, means rhythm. Advance, don’t lose contact and destroy.
ATTRITION:
Centralized command. The commander tends to control the actions, even down to the smallest unit.
For the same as above, the freedom of action of subaltern commanders is reduced.
It is more predictable. As it is a more static warfare, the knowledge of the terrain and the enemy help to forecast future actions.
It can be more mathematical. If I know how many enemies I have in front of me, I can make better calculations of the ammunition needed and other logistic considerations.
It doesn’t seek for the enemy to quit. It seeks to destroy the enemy.
The success is measured in the body count and the destruction of his assets.
They fight each other until one of them gets destroyed and is unable to continue the fight and is depleted or retreats.
The tactics used can be frontal assault and massive and prolonged bombardments.
The timeframe might be longer than in FM.
It depends on bigger amounts of resources such as ammunition and reinforcements.
Demands sustained pressure and involves prolonged engagements and static front lines.
Involves an increase in casualties.
The psychological and physical strain on soldiers is heavy and sometimes too much.
Contact with the enemy can be maintained without the need of major movements.
This is in the plains. In mountain warfare, it is another thing. So manoeuvre or attrition do not disrupt, replace or eliminate the tactical actions.
ANALYSIS
Big armies like the US and British say that Fire & Manoeuvre are not the opposite nor better than attrition, but their maintenance of highly mobile Task Forces and Battlegroups do indicate they favour the first.
In both Gulf Wars, the Allies chose Fire & Manoeuvre offensives, thus indicating they see it as a better choice.
History shows that every time a commander has been able to do so, he has preferred Fire & Manoeuvre.
In the same way, Fire & Manoeuvre have shown to be more effective and overwhelming over the enemy, forcing it to retreat in haste or surrender in big numbers, thus achieving victory faster while reducing the casualties.
Commanders have decided to go into attrition only when they haven’t found a proper way to use Fire & Manoeuvre.
When a country has decided to wage war against another, it hasn’t stopped at the border to begin an artillery shelling. Instead, they have performed attrition to soften the enemy to then conduct deep and quick offensive invasions by FM into enemy territory.
Countries have continued to invest in having highly mobile armies, thus showing a preference for Fire & Manoeuvre.
All the above allows me to say that, even if they don’t recognize it, big countries' armies prefer Fire & Manoeuvre Warfare and go into attrition only when the situation doesn’t allow them to use the first.
However, attrition is highly possible in any war so armies have to train to perform it.
From Ukraine, lessons can be learned but I see no indications for the tactical actions to be changed and manoeuvre warfare even less.
CONCLUSION
Fire & Manoeuvre and attrition do not replace tactical actions. They are a way to conduct the actions.
Both, Fire & Manoeuvre and Attrition, can be used as a mix at the strategic and operational level according to the factors already mentioned.
Fire & Manoeuvre have many advantages over attrition, but if a Commander can’t perform them he will have to use attrition.
Attrition can be planned but it also can be forced by the enemy. From the above, we can extract that attrition should and must be used if necessary to destroy the enemy or create good conditions to proceed with a deep thrust of manoeuvre.
But, at the same time, commanders have been trained to follow a doctrine and those who have dared to break the rules of doctrine have been successful in deceiving the enemy.
One thing that is common to both types of warfare is that they have to be conducted in the most violent possible way.
In the modern era, Attrition might win Battles, but Fire & Manoeuvre are more likely to win Wars.
Thus, I prefer offensive and merciless Fire & Manoeuvre.
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