Enemy Appreciations and SOPs

Beth,

Think of it this way. Some militaries (most good ones) train their soldiers in
lots of situations and drill them in varying scenarios. Why? To give them the
ability to think on their feet and lead when the "plan" ends up not working
out.

Intelligence (and I include in that appreciations of enemy tech, doctrine, and
fighting ability) only goes so far. It gives you a ballpark of what your enemy
might do. Your own doctrine gives you some idea of how to counter these
weaknesses or strengths should they arise.

If you blindly assume the enemy will do what you expect (hello, General
Custer), without using your own scouts effectively, you'll get what you
deserve. If you are overconfident because you believe in your own superiority
and lack the ability to deal with real stresses, you'll tend to fall apart at
key moments (hello Lt. Gorman).

A good, flexible commander has intelligence to tell him who he thinks he'll be
fighting, how the other side usually fights, and his own SOPs and doctrine to
tell him what he can probably do to that enemy to take him apart. But the good
commander also uses his own recce elements
to good effect (and any ELINT/SIGINT/IMINT) to
determine if the enemy is doing what he is expected to, if the enemy is the
unit(s) expected, and to keep track of any "other factors" not yet accounted
for.

By doing so, he doesn't get himself locked into a particular appreciation of
the enemy prematurely. And a good commander, if he discovers thing have
changed, can change plan
in mid-stride and have some reasonable chance
of pulling it off (assuming he has good troops under him.... good commanders
would have a hard time saving poorly trained troops).

War by doctrine alone probably mostly went away after the meat grinder battles
of WW1. We still see it rear its head here and there, and misappreciation of
the enemy sometimes happens (though if I had to misappreciate I'd rather
overestimate than underestimate). And of course, the closer the enemy is to
your own level of skill (or God Forbid, if he's better), then he'll be trying
to insure that you don't see what he's actually doing or that you see
something you might be anticipating while he actually does something else.
It's all a game of think and counter think and intelligence. But your local
SOPs and various training drills give you an enhanced chance to respond to a
sudden change in the situation.

Remember, as the famous general Kochte once said "No battle plan survives
contact with dice".

T.

> --- Thomas Barclay <kaladorn@magma.ca> wrote:

> War by doctrine alone probably mostly went

"Doctrine" has become a dirty word among civillians and amateur historians
after WWI.

Professionals went right on writing it and applying it.

Doctrine, in a good army, is a guideline and set of rules of thumb which give
good ways to deal with most situations. I would argue that superior doctrine
went
a long way to creating the victory in Storm--for
instance the Iraqis had better and more artillery (almost none of which was
destroyed by the air campaign), but superior US artillery doctrine created by
40 years of planning to deal with Soviet artillery superiority in Central
Europe resulted in such a lopsided victory that it's overlooked a great deal
today.

Now, to become too attached to bad doctrine (the problem in WWI) is bad, but
fighting without doctrine
is the same as fighting without training--amateurs get
lucky, professionals win in the longterm.

Wow, I can't believe how many emails were generated on this topic just since
the last time I checked:)

Just in response to all of you guys who said that making assumptions about the
enemy is dangerous. Of course, you're all right. Making your doctrine too
inflexible would certainly let your enemy take advantage of it. But on the
other hand, you still do certainly need guidelines for your troops about the
operations of both your enemy and yourself. This is the reason that armies
still do have standardised TO&E's and doctrine, for both themselves and their
enemies. (just look at all of the US Army's field manuals) Of course it should
be made very clear to the troops that blindly following procedures is
undesirable, but on the other hand, just "winging it" all the time, with no
other information, won't do either.

It looks like John A. is replying in a far more in depth manner than I am
though:)

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