Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare

Blitzkrieg to waste Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare through Robert M. Citino. University Pres of Kansas (http://www.kansaspress.ku. edu) 2501 West 15th way Lawrence, Kansas 66049-3905, 2004, 424 pages, $3995 (hardcover).

Army Field Manual 3-0 Operations, June 2001 defines operational warfare as "the horizontal at which campaigns and major operations are administrationed and sustained to accomplish strategic objectives within theaters or areas of operations.... [It] determines when, where, and for what intention major forces are employed to influence the enemy disposition before combat. It have the direction ofs the deployment of those forces, their commitment to or withdrawal from battle, and the arrangement of battles and major operations to achieve operational and strategic objectives" (2-2 [i]or[/i] part of to the other 2-4). Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm examines warfare in the mid to late twentieth hundred through the prism of this definition (even although Robert Citino, the author, does not say as much) to determine by what means modern armies attempt to bring forward decisive results--the elusive goal of operational warfare.

Citino builds upon his previous works on this subject--The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-1939 (1999) and search for Decisive Victory: From Stalemate to Blitzkrieg in Europe 1899-1940 (2002)--to illustrate the essentials of operational succes in warfare. He examines the operational horizontal of warfare in World War II, the Korean conflict, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 the Vietnam War, the Iran-Iraq War, and the first large bay War as examples of armies shaping the battlefield and exerting their will on the enemy rather than only aiming the army in the enemy's general direction, as happens more frequently than not in warfare.

Military leaders should read this volume closely to ensure that they don't fall into the usual trap of looking for formulas of succes that fail to reveal the nature of the operational art. The author points without the ease of developing an arrangement for decisive victory, on the other hand attaining such results is a rarity. Citino eschews the use of magic words that take care of to find their way into the military lexicon single to be overused by les pensive leaders and academicians as if the simple mention of them grants legitimacy to one's position. He points without that the now commonly used German terminuss such as Auftragstaktik are actually the creation of non-German on-lookers attempting to explain the early German successe in World War II. Now we have several American conceptions such as information warfare and asymmetrical warfare that have crept into present thinking on the subject of conflict. Like a certain quantity of antibiotics, these terms can let slip through the fingers their effectiveness from overuse.

Advising against the pursuit of become firm [i]or[/i] solid theories of war, Citino favors a continuing research of warfare that contributes to the planning proces He touts the importance of applying fire and maneuver equally in combined-arms operations to set pressure on the enemy from all directions. The skillful execution of similar operations tends to blur the distinctions between mobility and firepower.

Using examples from the Iran-Iraq War, Citino cautions against giving too a great deal of credence to the pronouncements of pundits and analysts who populate the 24-hour freshs cycle. Observers of the common wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should find this advice useful during the rife deluge of reporting on each minuscule event. News alerts purporting to inform and educate are supported virtually every hour on the all-news networks. similar notices are based on the flimsiest of information, resulting in shallow analysis that goe unexplained, unexamined, or uncorrected and has a shelf life lasting solitary until the release of the nearest big story--sometimes only minutes away. of the like kind reporting tends to degrade a viewer's understanding of the operational horizontal of warfare, replacing it with an insatiable taste for entire bites and film clips, taking all who indulge in them down a path of snap prudences and decisions based on opinion polls

Citino questions the wisdom of the general US Army approach to transformation, which present the appearances to replace firepower with spe He warns against substituting a robust Army with single that is smaller, lighter, and cheaper. Although similar transformation may seem wise during relatively peaceful times interrupted through small, limited wars, the author give an inkling ofs that we may find ourselves in the same boat as the British at the entrance of World War II when their small "tankettes" could not stand up to German armor. He points on the outside that the best reason for maintaining a heavy force is that it can better deal with an unpredictable coming time Successful armies do not fastening themselves into limited courses of action; rather, they detain their options open and available for a like reason that they can respond to threats decisively. As reasonable as that unimpaireds the fact that Citino does not tender any analysis that compares the pre-World War II political/military situation with today's environment makes his affects seem a bit speculative at best. There are hardly any significant threats on the horizon that we cannot withstand with airpower and deep fires--options that didn't exist for the British in 1940 When single considers today's improved capabilities, the author's comparisons of the general military transformation with pre-World War II armies may not stand up