Friction, technology and infiltration

If we critique Clausewitz, we note that he tended to overemphasize or overplay the idea of decisive battle, tended to underplay strategic maneuver. You can understand why. ⁸ Remember, in a sense, he was reacting against that eighteenth-century warfare where they tried to do all these elegant maneuvers and they made no decisions. So somewhat of an overreaction.

The other thing: Clausewitz emphasized method and routine at the tactical level. He had a chapter on method and routine. And he wanted, at the tactical level, in his own words, to reduce his own internal friction. His own words. Why?

Clausewitz was very much concerned with trying to overcome or reduce friction/uncertainty. Unfortunately, he didn't turn his argument around. He failed to address the idea of why not try to magnify your adversary's friction/uncertainty. It's not that the former is wrong. You want to look at it both ways. Remember, if you reduce your own and you're not looking at his, you may also help your adversary, relative to you. You've got to look at it both ways all the time.

Clausewitz also was trying to exhaust his adversary by […] him to increase his expenditure. Once again, he didn't turn the argument around. He failed to address the idea of why not try to paralyze your adversary by denying him even the opportunity to spend any of it.

Now we see a difference between him and Sun Tzu. Clausewitz, in a sense, was trying to keep himself from being driven bananas, while Sun Tzu was trying to drive his adversary bananas. Or, using Clausewitz's term, Clausewitz was trying to reduce his own friction/uncertainty, whereas Sun Tzu was concentrating on trying to magnify his adversary's friction/uncertainty.

Read Sun Tzu: he's doing both. He's worrying about his own plus his adversary's. And it's richer in that sense. He didn't use the word friction, but the idea is there. Friction is Clausewitz's word.

And then Clausewitz made an incorrect statement. Quote: “The center of gravity is always found where the mass is concentrated most densely.” That's not always true. The center of gravity in a [doughnut?] is in the hole. There is no mass. Or in a hollow steel ball, where the steel isn't. Or in a dumbbell, it's in the connection between the two masses. Come up with all kinds of counterexamples.

And somebody said, wait a minute here, that might be a cheap shot. He might not appeal to that definition that strictly. That's correct. But let's see how he did appeal. He argued that's where the blow should be aimed, where the decision should be reached: at the center of gravity.

But then he gave three examples of centers of gravity: the army, the capital and public opinion. He followed up the army and the capital, but didn't follow up on public opinion. That was a mistake. Because public opinion depends upon what? The connections, one against the other. That's the thing you people deal with. And if you disrupt those connections, you generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity.

And that's my point. He failed to develop the idea of generating many non-cooperative centers of gravity by striking at those connections that permit a larger center of gravity to exist. Follow? So it raises a rather interesting question: what does all this mean? I made this big argument. Where in the hell am I going?

So let's invert the argument. Very often you get insight when you invert. Let's assume that we generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity in our adversary's system. ¹¹

If we can do that, then we deprive him of the opportunity to expend effort. That's the same thing as paralysis. If we paralyze him, we impede vigorous operation. That's the definition of friction. We magnify friction.

So if we can generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity in the system, we deprive him of the opportunity to operate in a directed way, which paralyzes him, which impedes vigorous activity, which defines friction, magnifies friction. That's the solution. He didn't draw a real good connection between friction and center of gravity, even though he saw it one way. ¹² In any case, if you paste all that together—

—here's the message. If you're trying to keep your methods and routine the same, and the other guy's the same, pretty soon you get these nice, well-regulated battles and strength going against strength. It's a bloodbath.

You want to read into these very carefully. ¹³ With that in mind—

—where we sort of have this notion and key idea he had in mind. So we outline his Art of War: 1836. His key idea was to generalize the oblique order associated with [Name unclear.].

Then he said, in your mind's eye, you want to divide the front, or the theater, into three parts and subdivisions: two wings and a center. Or, he said, not so ideally, two wings—or two wings and […]. In other words, it's a mental mechanism so you can kind of determine how you want to allocate the forces relative to your adversary, so you can gain that leverage.

And the key idea: gain leverage in terms of what? […] in strategic and grand tactical maneuvers. That's what he's trying to do. Then he recognized the importance of your lines of communication, your bases and your lines of operations—lines of communication.

He said, you want to set up your bases of operations such that you can shape and shift your operations. In other words, so you can feed these strategic and grand tactical maneuvers, so you can gain leverage over your adversary. So you can set up your bases accordingly in order to try to do that.

But you people know, in a physical sense, he's talking about what? A support base. In politics you have to have a support base. In anything you have to have a support base. But he's talking about a physical support base in this.

If you pull these things together, we begin to see strategy and grand tactics. Note this statement: “By free and rapid movement, […] against fractions of the [enemy?].” So you see the idea of speed; you see the idea of strength against weakness. Then he said, strike in the most decisive direction: go against the center or one wing, or both simultaneously.

I have to […] this because I'm talking about two aspects: strategy and grand tactics. If you're operating in a large strategic arena, you can go against the center or one wing, but not both simultaneously, because otherwise you may be defeated separately in detail. But if you're operating in a grand tactical sense, in a smaller region, then you go against one or the other or both, because you have the time and ability to adapt.

Note this—straight Napoleonic. If possible, grab his communications. Also, he said, without losing your own. The idea is to cut him off, deny him reinforcement, cause him to fight under unfavorable circumstances. Straight Napoleonic. Remember, he was a Napoleonic general.

And note this one: if the enemy's forces are too much extended—remember Napoleon's central position—split them up, take out one, then the other.

And note this one. Just like [Patton?]: hold them by the nose and kick them in the rear. […] flank and turn a wing. Hit the enemy in the flank and also contain him at the front. Hold them by the nose and kick them in the rear.

Now this last one I want to comment on. Note this: an attack can be made simultaneously on both extremities, but not if you're inferior to your adversary. There are too many counterexamples to that. We've already cited a couple of them: Cannae, Marathon, Napoleon at Dresden. He was outnumbered by his adversary and did double-envelopment schemes [and he succeeded]. So that really doesn't hold up—in an absolute sense. But in a relative sense, it does hold up.

Unfortunately, he didn't quite make it clear what he was speaking to. Basically, he was comparing a double envelopment or double outflanking versus single envelopment, single outflanking […].

And basically what he really meant to say was, look: with the same force I can get more leverage out of a single-envelopment scheme than I can with a double envelopment. Or I can afford to [use or lose?] less force with a single-envelopment scheme, and I can get the same effect I would out of a double envelopment with a larger force. They're equivalent statements.

And we'll see later on that the Germans—in many of their blitzkrieg activities, particularly Manstein and some of the others—were very gifted in terms of interpreting and using that.

His aim was to make evident a secret for success in war. It wasn't literally a secret. All he's trying to do is give you a way of dealing with this complex activity: what's going on and how you can deal with it so you can cope and adapt. Okay, with that in mind, let's proceed—

—to Jomini. He was very much preoccupied with the form of operations, arrangement of bases, formal orders of battle, et cetera. That's not so good. What does that do? You tend to become less adaptable, more predictable. […]

Also, he had a lack of appreciation for the use of swarms of guerrillas and skirmishers. In fact, he tended to put them down in his comments on them. What they tended to do was mask your own activity and also confuse and disorder the enemy. And the likely result: operations become stereotyped unless you can appreciate his ideas outside their formal underpinnings.

Now, if you take those formal underpinnings and pull them away, then there's some nice fluidity and adaptability in the operation. But if you tend to retain that, then you tend to be less adaptable, more predictable.

In other words, throw away the latticework. After you create the picture, you don't leave the lattice there in order to screw up the picture. Same thing.

Well, if you've been following what I've been saying about Napoleon, Clausewitz and now Jomini, you should have detected something. They all, in a sense, had the same blind spot. All three of them did not appreciate the importance of [loose, irregular tactical arrangements—the phrase is garbled in the speech evidence].

Remember, Clausewitz worried about method and routine. Napoleon, 1791 drill regulations; Clausewitz, method and routine; and now we see Jomini in some of the same […]. Why do they have this blind spot? Because all three of them tend to view the climate of war from top down, emphasizing adaptability at the top and regularity at the bottom.

As a matter of fact, a couple years ago an Army colonel got up and said, “Boyd, that's all wrong. You don't have it right. That's an incorrect statement.” […] He had a beautiful straight man. Nice way he did it.

He said, “Because today we have regularity at both top and bottom.” I always use that. I said, this is one of the pervasive effects. He said, “No, you're all wrong. We have regularity at both top and bottom.” Now here's a person's experience.

If you look at our modern command and control systems, they tend to do that. I'll get into that later on. I don't want to preempt myself too much. The way we construct our command and control systems does impose a regularity. We say it isn't there, but it really is, and it causes some problems. Because we tend to articulate it in terms of our high technology: we can have all these fusion centers, communication centers. In order to make that work, people tend to do things in very rigid recipes. Go ahead.

Audience question: (speaker inferred) Was the regularity at the bottom of their tactics imposed by the general, or was it sort of the chicken-and-the-egg routine—that they had rather low-quality troops or something?

Boyd, inferred: […] I'm just going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about it right now. Just hang on—[…]

Now recall, we critiqued Napoleon. We said he got hung up and he tended to have the tactical regularity; we see the same thing. So the question is, why did this occur—which is your question? There are a number of things you can offer.

One: remember, even though we had the Napoleonic Revolution, which tended to pull these things apart, Napoleon later on reinstalled himself as emperor. Also, remember the period that he, Clausewitz and Jomini came out of. They came out of the eighteenth century, the age of aristocracy, where they wanted to have adaptability at the top and regularity at the bottom.

So, in other words, they're imprinted by their culture. You tend to get imprinted by your culture—you don't even realize it. Then you make decisions based upon that culture.

Let me give you an example. This is not going to be a [charitable or terrible?] example. I'm going to hit you over the shoulders with this one a little bit. People like ideology. I call it ideology—it's closer to being an idiot. The reason being, if you use ideology, or ideology, as a screening device, then you're denying yourself the opportunity to see things from a different perspective. It's a filtering device.

Well, if you've been imprinted by a culture and you see things a certain way, that's another aspect you can think of as sort of an ideology too. So it's a screening device, so you don't see things the other way. You've been imprinted. We're all imprinted by our culture. It has some value there. If you're not imprinted by a culture, you're going to be confused and disordered all your life. You have to have certain constancies and things in your life to even deal with variety.

But then, if you impose those [constants or constraints?] in certain situations such that you can't adapt, then you tend to screen out things you need to know. So even Napoleon himself, who was a creature of the Revolution, reinstalled aristocracy, because remember, his culture is also from the eighteenth century, which is aristocracy. You have to keep that in mind.

There are some other features. I just wanted to bring that in. You could give another reason why Napoleon did it. Remember, after he became emperor and he started conquering all these various countries and installing his own puppets, or his own people there as the case may be, he also depended upon these other countries for a troop levy. So, in order to get them to work together, he started imposing more and more rigidity.

In fact, you can go back to Frederick the Great. He said, hell, he didn't even like to march his army near a wood because he said half of them would desert. They want to keep them in formation. They're concerned about their troops. So by putting that regularity on, it was to keep track of them, be sure they showed up for the battle or showed up for their assignment. I want you to keep that in mind. We'll come back to it later on in a different context.

So these are the kind of things that are going on: your culture, the fact that these people didn't have a piece of the action. The only way you get them to do something is by rather onerous and sharp techniques you use upon them: uniformity or rigidity. But then when you do that, you also make yourself less adaptable, more predictable.

Remember, [you've got to?] look at these things from different sides. You may get one benefit; you also may get a detriment somewhere else. You want to keep track of that. You want to have values, you want to have things you believe in, but you want to think about those all the time. By doing this, hey, am I hosing myself over here? Do I have any workarounds? If I don't have any workarounds, I better start rethinking the problem. ⁵¹

Now you can be committed to something. Remember, if you're going to do something, there may be some disadvantages. Then you say, well, maybe I can still retain that. I might have some workarounds, still get me— You want to look for those. Just don't say, “Bullshit, we're going to continue on.”

How many times have you been in a meeting, discussing something with people—this is an important point—and maybe a new idea comes out, and a guy says, “Oh, bullshit”? He won't even think about it. See, he's got a structure in his mind and he's got a yes-no system there, and that thing didn't fit that, so he said no, no. He's evaluating according to the structure he's got in his mind. It may not even be the right context to evaluate it.

You've got to bring it on. You say, okay, let that guy talk a little. Let's see what that structure is. It might be valuable, and then again it may be bullshit. I've seen people—we used to call him Doctor No. That's Doctor No. He'll always say no. It doesn't fit. It's imprinted in his brain.

Think about it for a while first. You're being given the opportunity, maybe or maybe not, to look at something from a different vantage point, which means you can widen your variety. Then you can use it for leverage. And if you restrict it, narrow your variety, somebody will leverage you then. We talked about that at the beginning. Very important. Okay, with that in mind—

—we find out there are a number of people who talked about war at that time, and some people were affected by the Napoleonic experience. One of these gentlemen was a guy by the name of Schalk. [Question unclear.] He was actually in Philadelphia. Note the date: Philadelphia, 1862. He took all this stuff and he said he reduced the science of war to three great maxims. Here they are. Let's read his work, during the Civil War.

One thing to keep in mind as we're working forward: so far, except when we talked about […]—and except for maybe the way Clausewitz looked at the psychological and the moral—we tend to think of war very much in a physical sense. Notice, it's very much in a physical sense, what he's describing. That's one thing.

The other thing is caution. He really doesn't address it—these are my words—down at the tactical level. He hasn't come to grips with the tactical-level problems […]. Okay?

With that in mind, let's look at another impact in the nineteenth century, the so-called rise of modern technology and its impact upon war. We begin to see the emergence of railroads and telegraphs, quick-fire artillery, machine guns, repeating rifles, barbed wire and trenches. It's all coming out in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

So what do we see in terms of trend? Emphasis toward mass firepower and large armies supported by rail logistics. They had it, so they dumped all this firepower in there and used that as a basis for decision. Increased emphasis on holding defense and flanking or wide-turning maneuvers. In other words, hold back and sneak in the back door.

But still [at the?] tactical level, the use of these frontal assaults, large stereotyped formations, trying to blow their way through. And the result's not too surprising. You tend to suppress ambiguity, deception, mobility. You suppress this, you suppress surprise. What do you get then? Bloodbath. These are the kinds of ingredients you need in order to generate surprise.

So let's tie a few of these things together. Let's couple that—

—the idea of modern technology, or the rise of nineteenth-century technology, with the ideas of Napoleon, Clausewitz and Jomini. Tie that together, and you see what happens. These things tend to feed upon one another. In other words—and I'm repeating these words—you tend to suppress ambiguity, deception and mobility, particularly down at the tactical level. Therefore you're unable to generate that surprise. It was done in all these wars, Civil War all the way down to World War I. So in that sense, technology down at the tactical level was being used as a crude club, trying to beat your adversary over the head.

Now look at the Civil War. People like to criticize Grant very heavily. His Vicksburg maneuver was a real neat strategic maneuver. And he, in conjunction with Sherman, laid on a nice strategic maneuver when he was playing the [cheng?], holding Lee up north so Sherman could go crashing through the South. […] But tactically it was […] up the middle and blowing people away, both sides. Didn't make any difference whether it was a long war or a short war.

Grant's been criticized, but primarily at the tactical level. But he was no different than other people. They're all doing it. That's my point. Evolution of tactics did not keep pace with the increased weapons lethality developed and produced by that nineteenth-century technology.

So it raises a rather interesting question: why were the nineteenth-century, early-twentieth-century commanders unable to evolve better tactics to cope with those ingredients that technology produced?

We're going to pretend right now we're still back in the nineteenth century. We can't answer that question. We're going to answer it, but back in the nineteenth century we don't know the answer either, right? I want to show you some more events where people did cope with it, and how they did. It was finally answered. But it didn't get answered until the latter part of World War I. We'll bring that out. Right now I'll let the question stand. We will address it. But I want to bring that to your attention.

And with that in mind, there's another thing that showed up in the nineteenth century. After this we'll take our break.

So we not only have nineteenth-century technology, but nineteenth-century technology also brought about something we call, like, Marxism. In other words, the impact of nineteenth-century capitalism on what today we call insurrection and revolution. And this is with a Marxian flavor.

Remember, I just put on a Marxian hat. ³⁴ I'm on the other side. You've got to look at the other guy's culture from his viewpoint. That's why I call it with a Marxian flavor. From their viewpoint, see what we pull out. I'll let you read it and I'll comment on it.

We all became Marxists when you read it.

Now notice a couple of things. What we begin to see now is not conflict between social systems, but conflict within a social system.

[Exchange unclear.] Modern guerrilla warfare, of course, sort of leading up to it.

Also, we start talking about things like crises and vanguard. You see it very often in their literature, the idea of crises and vanguard. Yet we see in our depiction of modern guerrilla warfare, they don't bring that out. I said, read theirs. They're the ones that are doing it to us. See it from their viewpoint. You might get an insight.

Notice we're talking about crises and vanguards. That's why I underline that. So it raises a question: how is such an unpleasant situation to be corrected? We'll look at it once again—

—we've got a Marxian hat on. We're going to continue. And after you read this, I'll comment on both these charts.

All right. Note what I depict: necessary conditions for success, both the crises and vanguard. You get the crises; that allows you to build up the vanguard. The vanguard then can exacerbate the crises, the crises build up even more vanguard. Now you've got an incestuous feedback loop. You can pull the whole thing apart.

So look at that. Crises then represent the height of confusion, disorder, and the idea of generating many non-cooperative centers of gravity in the guy's system. In other words, pumping up his internal friction, the inverse Clausewitzian notion. […] Then the vanguard […] more instability, more crises, which feed the vanguard. So now you've got the thing going where the whole thing comes down—[…].

And it's really interesting when you read the Russian documents, or you read the Marxian flavor in a modern sense, how they bring out the ideas of vanguard, crises—you know, they're talking about guerrilla warfare and all this […]. Very important.

So I'm trying to say, in a sense, they are the golden key […] in the idea of insurrection, revolution, guerrilla warfare, insurgency, et cetera. But think about it. When you're talking about crises here, you're trying to disrupt or destroy those ties that make a society, generate those non-cooperative centers of gravity and pump up that internal friction so they can't function as an organic whole. The inverse Clausewitzian notion.

Okay, now let's glue it all together up to this point—

—so we look at capitalism, technology and conduct of war. That's sort of a quick summary.

Now, if we look at the Schlieffen Plan, it's a good vehicle for observing that first part. Why? What I'm showing you here is a schematic of the way it actually unfolded, not necessarily […]. You people who've read some military history—and there's pros and cons, or we should have gone this way and that way—I don't want to get into that argument.

Basically, we see five armies […]. And the idea was to get in behind the Allied armies, put them in a bag, isolate them and, of course, terminate the war. Naturally, that didn't work out. The chart also indicated that.

So what am I really trying to depict here? Basically what I'm showing you is a large-scale single-envelopment scheme. We call it a large-scale or a gigantic single-envelopment scheme. Remember, we talked about [Name unclear.]. Now we're seeing a much vaster scale of single envelopment. So that's all I want you to remember: single envelopment, kind of a scheme—

a way out. The rise of so-called infiltration tactics and guerrilla tactics. A French captain by the name of André Laffargue, in 1915, wrote a pamphlet as a way of trying to go through these fortifications with infiltration tactics. The Germans captured the pamphlet, plus they were thinking along similar lines, so it acted as a catalyst. They started training a lot of troops. And they washed over the West in the spring of 1918.

Sometimes they're credited to General von Hutier. I have a question mark here because he was not an architect of that. He just happened to be one of the commanders on the German side who did employ those tactics. At the macro level, you can credit Ludendorff. He did recognize the importance of it, so he did support the whole effort and, rightly so, was deemed a macro-level architect in that sense.

And then another tactic was guerrilla tactics, seen through Lawrence of Arabia—or Peter O'Toole, if you saw the movie. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, if you want to read the book. In any case, we see he recognized the importance of that kind of thing.

But there's even another guy who was probably more adept at it than even Lawrence: Lettow-Vorbeck [Prussian?], down in German East Africa. With a few officers and a couple of thousand enlisted men and some Africans, he surrendered after Germany did during World War I. He fought off [Number unclear.] British troops, and I think he had twenty or thirty generals arrayed against him […]. Actually getting stronger toward the end. They had to convince him that Germany had lost the war.

Audience: Was that in Europe? Was that in Europe?

Boyd: German East Africa. Yeah. Yeah. Down in German East Africa.

And even in British official accounts, they tend to give him more credit than Lawrence. Not that Lawrence wasn't a successful commander, but remember, Lawrence was being supplied by Allenby in the Middle East, whereas Lettow-Vorbeck was virtually cut off and was literally living off the British himself. So we see that kind of thing.

We're going to look first at infiltration tactics and guerrilla tactics […]. Now let's look at the infiltration tactics.

I'll let you read this, get sort of a feel for it, and I'll discuss it. This is the one-chart snapshot. ⁴ But the key point: instead of just trying to destroy people, you use it to disrupt or suppress the defense. That's one aspect of it, and obscure the assault. So in that sense, you can think of the artillery as being a cheng for the follow-on effort.

And look at the second bullet. These small teams, instead of these huge formations going through, these small squads—[Number unclear.]. There's a little swarm. Each one is working its way independently forward. They're spaced out […], too. They're trying to find the gaps or weaknesses in the front, trying to flow into them.

And then behind them, small battle groups go through and try to cave in the local defense areas the Germans have there, from the flank and the rear. And then even larger groups, reserves and stronger following echelons, go through those breaches and widen them even more. Always working flanks and rear, until finally you've got what Liddell Hart likes to call a torrent pouring through the front. But at every level you're trying to work the guy's vulnerabilities and weaknesses. There's always some weakness.

Now, if you read that, you begin to say, well, my God, that sounds like what Sun Tzu was talking about: water going downhill. That's Sun Tzu tactics. But it took until World War I before they could come up with the Sun Tzu tactic. He wrote that back somewhere between 300 and 500 BC, as people say.

So we begin to see that kind of thing. And of course, the idea is quite simple: irruption of many thrusts, not just one thrust. That gets blocked; the other ones [whether “don't” or another connective is unclear] go through. You're just trying to pour through. The idea is to break through, envelop and cause your adversary to cave in. Okay? So you see it's a different kind of thing. And it raises this point.

They may create some vivid images in your mind, but what they really don't address is how the fire-and-movement schemes work. How you use firepower with movement as a basis to gain leverage. So let's give you an insight into that.

Here's the key thing. Fire at all levels: artillery, mortars, machine guns. In other words, at the upper level you have huge artillery; […] down at the lowest level, you have mortars, machine guns, et cetera. In any case, the idea is to pin your adversary down.

In other words, you're not going to stand up when some guy is spraying an area with machine-gun fire. You're going to get pinned down. Plus, together with gas and smoke, it tends to obscure what's going on. It also tends to cloak the infiltrators' movements.

In the meantime, instead of these nice, deep, huge formations, the infiltrators are slipping forward in small groups [swarms?]. It's far harder to see, too. If you combine all that—the captured attention, the obscured view and the indistinct character—they really deny your adversary an opportunity to picture what's taking place. You can't get a good image of what's going on.

But remember, if you're not oriented, how are you going to make the appropriate decision to take the appropriate action? You can't. When you're talking about a guy getting a picture in his mind, you're talking about orientation. So you've obscured things enough that he can't get a proper orientation. Therefore, he can't make the proper decision to take the appropriate action.

So what happens? The results aren't too surprising. People who had to face that, all of a sudden they said these people ended up coming out of nowhere, and they're marched off as prisoners, totally confused —they can't figure out […].

We've even seen some of those accounts in Vietnam. Guys holding positions, all of a sudden these guys are in behind them and they can't figure where they came from. It causes all kinds of panic and chaos. It's infiltration. So that's a very different kind of attack. The key thing is, by doing it, you're really, in a sense, screwing up […]. He doesn't get good observations. The orientation is screwed up. The decision is screwed up. His actions are screwed up. […]

So we look at it, and what's the essence of the method?

You're really trying to cloud and distort your signature, improve your mobility to avoid […], yet focus effort. You're trying to penetrate his system. You're trying to shatter it […].

The intent's quite simple. Use tactical dispersion in a focused way to gain tactical success and expand into grand tactical, and hopefully strategic—which they didn't get; I'll comment in a minute. Now think about Napoleon. What did he do? He used strategic to gain grand tactical and tactical. Now we're going opposite: tactical to gain grand tactical and strategic. Interesting.

Plus, Napoleon, what else did he have? He had strategic dispersion followed by a tactical concentration. Here you have tactical dispersion and a strategic focus. You have two inversions. Why did you have them? Very simple. […] They had to change […] and force the people to disperse. […]

So the implication is quite simple. Small units exploiting tactical dispersion, rather than large formations abiding by the principle of concentration. Remember Napoleon's strategic dispersion followed by tactical concentration; now you've got tactical dispersion with a strategic focus or concentration. This is the opposite. By doing that, then you can pump up his friction, paralyze him, bring down his system.

So it raises an interesting question. Are they rejections of Napoleonic methods, these infiltration methods, or are they applications of methods under a different guise? By putting that after the double dash, I'm suggesting they're applications under a different guise.

Now, in this chart we'll answer the nineteenth-century question we haven't answered before. So if you look at these infiltration fire-and-movement schemes, you can think of them as Napoleon's multi-thrust strategic penetration maneuvers. Remember, he had his units separate in divisions […] at the strategic level. Now we're doing it all the way down to squad level. Fine-graining Napoleon's strategic maneuvers down at the squad level in order to penetrate a guy's system.

And until the rise of infiltration tactics, and the use of tanks by the Allies, [neither] nineteenth- nor twentieth-century commanders were able to evolve effective penetration maneuvers. You don't penetrate the other guy's system, why should he throw in the towel? He won't. Physically, mentally or morally [Aside unclear.]. You can't penetrate his moral, mental or physical stability, why should he quit? He won't. He shouldn't. I wouldn't. […]

And if you start getting inside his mind, all of a sudden he starts […]. His confidence starts going south. Now we answer. Remember, we went back to that question we had in the nineteenth century. Why were the nineteenth- and twentieth-century commanders unable to evolve effective penetration?

The aristocratic tradition, the top-down command-and-control system, the slavish addiction to the principle of concentration, the drill-regulation mindset. You put them all together, what are they? They're an obsession for control. That's what it is: an obsession for control by high-level superiors over low-level subordinates. When you do that, you start restricting imagination, initiative and adaptability. If you do that, now you can't evolve new methods, because you've got all those constraints upon you.

You see it. You go back and read the account, you say: God, why didn't these guys change? […] And all they're worrying about is whether they're going to make the line this way or the column this way. And I mean, you talk about little teeny changes, and they think they're making something dramatic. They had to do something totally different. They couldn't see it. [Word unclear.] people eventually did. ²⁹

I might add, even after World War I, […]. It took us a while. Some people still don't see it, because they want to—I've got to control those people. If you've got them all slithering through in different directions, how do I control them?

Audience: Why did we end up winning World War I, then? The Germans were better at this. Why did we win World War I?

Boyd: I’m sorry. No, remember I said they succeeded at the tactical, the grand tactical, never succeeded at the strategic level. Remember, I said it earlier. The methods were good, but they also didn't apply them entirely correctly. We'll get into that. I'm not up to that chart yet. That's a good question. I want to bring in a couple of points. But this is very important. Also, the Germans—remember, we used the tanks. They didn't use it for a while, and that helped us a lot, too. ²⁸

Just because they got the infiltration tactics right doesn't mean they got a lot of other things right. But I want to bring that point home, because we've had trouble being able to adapt down to the lower level. It's not that easy. There's a lot of things that can get in the way. We have to get some other information. But now we'll try to get to the question.

The infiltration tactics did succeed down at the lower level, but they're coupled with ultimate failure at the corps and army level. The question is, why did that occur? One, Ludendorff violated his own concept. He laid out his plan; when he got hung up, he wanted to go the same direction. He starts feeding failure rather than success. Wasn't able to adapt. That's sort of a harsh statement. I'm going to soften it in just a minute. There are some comments that have to be laid in there.

Another one: exhaustion of combat teams leading the assault. After they went forward, they didn't replace those teams. They got tired out and the assault withered away. Nowadays, when you have an assault go in like that, once one goes so far, you start rotating reserves to be the point, back and forth, and keep the momentum of the operation going.

And then here's another important one: logistics were too inflexible to support that fluid penetration. We didn't have that gasoline engine at that time. Plus, those battlefields were all torn up. It was hard to move forward. In other words, to support that, to exploit those penetrations, or even bring up the artillery when they did need it.

And the fourth was a very key point. Communications were too immobile to allow command to quickly identify and reinforce. Let me pinch in on that point. Let's pretend you're a front commander, and you do want to use these infiltration tactics when you're going to exploit your adversary's […]. Well, first of all, you've got to know where they are. You've got to have some feeling where they are so you can do this.

Okay, the people who are succeeding know that. Some are going to get hung up, some are going to succeed. You want to feed success, not failure. But then they're going to have to transmit those instructions back to the higher-level commander so he can go through. Well, they didn't have the communications to do that too well.

He's got to allocate the forces. He has to know where it is. If he doesn't know it, he's going to start pumping forces up blind alleys or […]. In other words, you have to have a good bottom-up communication system so the commander at the topside can reallocate or allocate correctly. He controls the follow-on forces and the reserves. Depending upon his decision, how they're going to be allocated, or where they're going to be allocated, when—at the appropriate time.

And then finally, the elastic defense. The idea was initially French, but it was developed by the Germans and borrowed by the French, by Pétain […]. The basic idea: rather than trying to defend the terrain, use the terrain as a medium for maneuver. […] And so you bend before the assault, move back before the assault, drag the German infantry out beyond their artillery, pour your artillery in, and then locally close them off from the flanks and the rear.

Remember I said terrain doesn't fight wars, machines don't fight wars, people do, using their minds. But we get this thing where we always have to defend every foot of the terrain. The terrain doesn't fight the war. Use terrain as a medium for maneuver in order to take out the force. Makes no difference going forward or backward, as long as you have the initiative and you're realizing your purpose against your adversary. So we see these kinds of things.

Plus the U.S. also had entered the war there. That's one of the reasons why the Germans wanted to get that drive going before we get over there and bring our force to bear. Okay?

Now let's look at guerrilla, à la Lawrence. He recognized how important the support of the population was. Like modern guerrillas: in other words, it's a medium through which you operate, plus you can disguise your own activities. Note this, one of these quotes, “get inside their minds.” Straight from Lawrence. You don't see that often. I saw it: that's the very thing I'm talking about. “Get inside their minds.” Look at that quote.

Another thing, note this: “be an idea or a thing,” drifting about like a gas. That's even more delicate than water, because it brings out the idea not only of fluidity, but the invisible, inconspicuous or indistinct. I can't get an image of what you're up to. And then attacking in depth, so in other words, you're doing it in different areas, too.

Well, you think about this kind of thing, and combined with that, you should be “tip-and-run, not pushes but strokes.” You're in and out, going in every direction on your adversary. Use of the [strongest?] smallest force, quickest time, farthest place. Well, think about that. If you're doing all these kinds of things, it's like the Mongols. Pretty soon you seem to be everywhere, yet nowhere. They don't know how to cope with it.

And his strategy was very simple: war of detachment. What he really tried to do was pin the Turks down along the Hejaz Railroad between Medina and Damascus. He wanted to pin them down to get them to bring in more troops and more supplies, to suck up their effort there, because he was a cheng for Allenby's ch'i, which was a stroke into Palestine.

In other words, to free up the resistance against Allenby. In other words, he was holding them by the nose, so Allenby had lesser resistance elsewhere. In this sense, the guerrillas were cheng. And you can think of the same thing. Remember what I said about Grant? In the final drive, Grant was holding Lee up near Richmond while Sherman was cascading through the South. So Lee couldn't […]. He backed off […]. […] So these things are […]. Pile up one way in order to stroke in another direction.

And note this: never on the defense except by accident and error. Many military men make that mistake. They think they're on the defense because they're moving backwards. Let me preempt myself here. Mao said there were three phases to a guerrilla campaign: strategic withdrawal, strategic equilibrium and strategic offense. But they were all tactical offense, tactical offense, tactical offense.

Because what the guerrillas understood: terrain doesn't wage war. Machines don't wage war. People do it. They use their minds. So his way of depicting whether you're on the offense or defense: do I or do I not have the initiative? If I've got the initiative, it makes no difference whether I move forward, backward or in any direction. I'm on the offense. The initiative is the key word.

Now we have a principle of war called the offense. The British tried that at the Somme, and it blew away 60,000 guys in one day. Now they're starting to modify. I noticed lately the Army came up with the principle of initiative […]. That's correct. Although I tend not to like the principles of war, it's going in the right direction. The idea of initiative. Because the guerrillas do understand […].

So initiative is tied to people. Do I or do I not have it? How do I know when I got the initiative? We can tie it to something else. If I'm getting inside my adversary's [loop?], I got the initiative. If he's getting inside my [loop?], he's got the initiative. In other words, if I got him so fouled up that he can't make the appropriate decisions or take the proper actions, I'm getting the initiative. Makes no difference what direction I'm moving in. So you can tie all these things together.

And of course, the idea behind it, I'd put it a little differently. Lawrence’s actual words were to [extrude?] the Turks from Arabia. But the techniques he was using were really just disintegrating their ability to govern.