The Quest for a New Offensive Doctrine
The lessons from Ukraine is driving the need for new forms of successfully executing attacks - at all levels of military endeavour
A confluence of circumstances has restored the dominance of the defensive. The greatest single influencer has been technology.
In the lead up to the First World War, most European armies had focussed on offensive doctrines. Described as the Cult of the Offensive, this was a situation where military theorists and senior military leaders believed that an attacking force would be successful regardless of the defensive regime established by a defending force. In its ultimate manifestation, this thinking led to strategies that neglected defensive approaches and resulted in an imbalance in thinking and capability that was biased heavily towards ‘the attack’.
As we know, this didn’t work out so well in the early years of the First World War. The profound changes in technology brought about by the Second Industrial Revolution, which included the mass manufacturing of weapons and munitions and the changes in lethality brought about by improved machine guns and artillery, saw mass casualties during attacks by both sides. Eventually, the defensive become the dominant military strategy. This situation persisted until at least 1917, when the Germans, French, British, Canadians and Australians began to experiment with new forms of offensive operations which included infiltration and embraced much tighter coordination between the combined arms on the battlefield.
The current situation in Ukraine mirrors this in some respects. After two years of war, and some early successes in offensive operations, adaptations on both sides have led to an increasingly difficult environment for the conduct of offensive operations. As the Ukrainian counteroffensive last year, and the lack of significant progress in Russia’s 2024 offensives against a much weaker Ukrainian force demonstrate, the defence is now the stronger form of war – at least in Ukraine.
This is a phenomenon which has been explored by several military theorists in recent years. Brilliant articles by the late Dave Johnson, T.X. Hammes, Frank Hoffman, and Alex Verhinin since the beginning of Russia’s large scale invasion have all examined the shift to defensive dominance in military operations. I recommend reading them all.
The problem is that wars are not won by staying on the defensive. Even coming to the aid of an ally or security partner such as Taiwan may require some form of strategic or operational offensive. It is a critical skill set in the armour of any modern military, notwithstanding the current dominance of the defence.
What is the current problem?
In a recent article for Modern War Institute, I explored some of the operational problems that contemporary military organisations are facing. While a changed strategic environment, with aggressive authoritarian regimes, is part of the political challenge, the military environment is being increasingly impacted by several new technologies.
While there are a range of different technologies that are contributing, three key systems of technologies and processes are the dominant factors. These three, which I have previously described as the transformative trinity, are:
The autonomy - counter autonomy system, which includes autonomous and semi-autonomous systems in the air, ground and maritime environments and the developing counter autonomy systems.
The meshing of civil and military sensors and analysis capacity that is transforming the level of situational awareness available to all levels of military command and streamlining kill webs (or perhaps better described as kill-meshes).
The democratizing of battlefield digital command and control (C2) systems, which is seeing digital C2 becoming available to nearly all combatants and support personnel.
This has resulted in a number of tactical and operational challenges, which in turn have complicated military and national strategy for Ukraine and Russia. But these challenges are also troubling existing force structure paradigms in countries from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. It is important that we understand these new operational challenges because if they are diagnosed correctly, this understanding can lead to the development of new doctrines that offer a better balance of offence-defence capacity in military institutions.
As Williamson Murray and Allan Millett note in their book Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, “a number of factors contributed to successful innovation. The one that occurred in virtually every case was the presence of specific military problems the solution of which offered significant advantages to furthering the achievement of national strategy.”
While there are many challenges in modern war, including the need to develop better defences against drones, the following operational challenges are the most prominent ones which need to be resolved.
First, the massing versus dispersion predicament. A new-era meshed civil-military sensor framework, developed over the course of the Ukraine war, has produced an environment where all the signatures of military equipment, personnel, and collective forces can be detected more accurately and rapidly. When linked to an array of precision munitions, this closes the detection to destruction gap in military operations to just minutes.
The Chinese are certain to have streamlined their operational and tactical kill chains based on observing Russia and Ukraine. Massing military forces for ground combat operations, large-scale aerial attacks, or naval operations therefore has become a high tactical and operational risk. Even if an array of hard and soft kill measures can protect massed forces, they are almost assured of detection, which makes achieving surprise difficult.
Modern military forces must be equally capable of operating in dispersed and massed forms, but they must be able to minimise their detection when they do mass in a way that provides an improved chance of surprise and landing a decisive blow against an adversary.
Second, the ‘closing with the enemy’ challenge. Modern combat forces require new-era techniques that are quicker, lower signature, and more survivable at crossing operational and tactical spaces between them and their objectives. The failings of current Western military doctrine were exemplified by Ukraine’s struggle in 2023 to penetrate Russian minefields and defensive belts in southern Ukraine (although there were other command and leadership as well as training factors).
Meshed sensor nets, EW and multi-layered drone frameworks make this a very difficult problem. In the Indo-Pacific, Chinese satellite and underwater surveillance will only magnify this problem. But this is not just a tactical challenge of being able to close the final few hundred metres with an enemy. It presents as an operational challenge in places like the western Pacific where allied forces might have to fight their way forward from Hawaii and Australia just to aid their allies in the Western Pacific.
A key operational problem for modern military forces is the developing, testing, implementation and ongoing adaptation of new warfighting concepts to survivably cross tactical and operational distances before engaging in combat, penetrating and fighting through tactical and operational defensive schemes, and ensuring friendly forces have sufficient combat power to exploit such breaches.
Third, getting the close- and long-range combat balance right. This is a challenge across the land, air and maritime domains. Ukraine’s investment in a wide array of aerial and maritime long-range strike systems is maturing and showing results against Russian airfields, air defence systems, strike aircraft, defense factories, and oil and gas export infrastructure. This an important capability in the arsenal of any military organisation because it allows for the attrition of an enemy force well before it can engage in close combat. It also permits the degradation of the overall cohesion of an enemy force by destroying headquarters, fires, air defence, reserves and logistics.
But important as long-range strike is, it is not a silver bullet in modern war. The planning, conduct, assessment, and adaptation of long-range strike across the domains must be balanced with investment in close combat capabilities. This forces adversaries to also make difficult choices about the array of military capabilities to develop and deploy, generating uncertainty.
A key operational problem for contemporary military institutions is achieving an appropriate balance in the deep battle and the close fight (with the appropriate support mechanisms for both). Not only must the balance of investment be at least mostly right, but there should also be an effective operational synchronicity between these two military endeavours and an ability to adapt the balance once a war begins.
This diagnosis has aimed to provide a start point for experimentation and development of new doctrine that can address the problems presented by new technologies such as drones and meshed civil-military sensor networks. But, why is re-establishing the ability for offensive operations so important?
Why is offensive doctrine important?
This might seem like a silly question to some, but it is important to understand the purpose of offensive operations if effective, 21st century offensive methods are to be developed and implemented. To many, the reasons below will appear self-apparent. But, in some elements of democratic societies and politics, the need for military offensive capabilities must be re-explained to every generation.
The first reason why an effective offensive capability is needed is because it is a foundational capacity for demonstrating will. Carl von Clausewitz has much to say on this topic in On War, but I don’t intend quoting the great man here – his work is available widely for readers to review and ponder. The investment in offensive capabilities, on land, in the air and at sea, represents a significant investment for nations. In making such an investment, they are demonstrating the national and political will to secure their sovereignty as well as potentially contribute to helping their allies to defend themselves.
Second, offensive capacity is an essential part of any national deterrent capability. In essence, if an adversary understands that a potential target for aggression can strike back and hurt it, this – at a minimum – complicates their planning. Hopefully, it will actually deter aggression in many cases. And if a war does break out, deterrence by denial remains an integral part of military strategy to deny an adversary the achievement of strategic and operational objectives.
Third, if a nation does find itself at war, it is almost impossible at the tactical or operational levels to seize or maintain the initiative without offensive capability. Whether one starts the war or not is irrelevant. But if a nation is at war, allowing the enemy the initiative to strike where and when they want is a recipe for defeat. Offensive capacity, to attack and counterattack, as well conduct deep strikes, EW and cyber operations, is an essential part of any military strategy, even one focussed on the strategic defensive.
Finally, offensive capacity is essential to the moral aspects of war. Remaining only on the defensive in war erodes morale of soldiers and citizens. Both need to see progress against an adversary. Attacking the enemy through various forms of offensive operations underpins military and national morale, which in turn is critical in sustaining political support in a democracy at war.
Principles for a new offensive doctrine
While there is much intellectual work to be done in solving these challenges, several principles for potential solutions might be identified. The items below are not an exhaustive list but could be common elements in new offensive doctrines at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
Command and Control. Principles of command, such as span of control, unity of command, mission focus, mission command, alignment of political goals with military missions, and cross-domain integration will be part of any new offensive doctrine. All of these functions of command are likely to be aided by algorithmic decision aides. How this is executed must be explored and tested for different 21st century warfighting scenarios.
Surprise. This is one of the most basic aspects of an offensive doctrine. Surprise is one sure way to be able to generate shock in an enemy system, degrade their response times and corrode their ability to fight as a cohesive organisation. Achieving surprise, something that is difficult in the current environment of situational awareness, must be a core element of any new offensive doctrine. It is worth noting that being able to see more on the battlefield does not always mean we are wiser about what is actually happening or about how an enemy is thinking.
Deception. Closely linked to surprise is the central concept of deception. This both a science and an art. It is focussed on leading an enemy commander or commanders to believe something they are already inclined to believe in order to deceive them about our tactical, operational or strategic intentions. Generating advantage in the signature battle will be a critical element of this. While a central element in Chinese military theory, it is something that Western military institutions have not practiced to a high degree in their early 21st century operations. But, as the allies demonstrated in the lead up to D-Day, it is something we have done before, and are very capable of doing again.
Human – machine balancing. New offensive doctrine will need to achieve a balance of new and old technologies. Theorists such as T.X. Hammes have written at length about the imperative to move to force structures that balance the smaller numbers of expensive, exquisite capabilities with large numbers of cheaper, attritable systems. This is the case in the land, air and maritime domains. It will demand different kinds of organisations and different kinds of tactics and training for our people. It is probably one of the key non-discretionary elements of a future offensive doctrine. No 21st century offensive doctrine which is focussed purely on legacy equipment is likely to succeed.
Kinetic – non-kinetic balancing. While human and autonomous systems must achieve a different balance, so too must kinetic and non-kinetic capacity. Fires, equipment and close combat still matter, but so too do newer methods of degrading the cognitive ability of enemy commanders at all levels, as well as corroding the morale and cohesion of enemy forces. EW, cyber and cognitive warfare must be balanced with fires of all types.
Integration. There is unlikely to be a solution that can be provided by a single service. Any future concept of the offensive will undoubtedly require the integration of effects from across all domains. But, as Ukraine has also shown, no nation today can fight alone. As such, experimentation with allies and security partners will also be needed.
Sustainability. While this is partially about logistics, which must be capable of moving faster in the tactical environment, and lower signatures in the tactical and operational environments, sustainability is also about the strategic and national capacity to provide the resources for offensive operations. Offensive capacity is far more resource intensive, and if nations are to sustain a credible offensive capacity over time, it must be sustainable from within national and/or alliance industrial and personnel resources.
People quality. Finally, regardless of how much technology might be absorbed into military organisations, how much intellectual development takes place, or how many new organisations are established, quality people will be the foundation of any new offensive doctrine in the 21st century. Training and education regimes will need to evolve, as will military leadership development models. Better training regimes for human-machine teams as well as enhancing team and individual resilience will be vital. But ultimately, it will be the enhanced planning models, and the ability of leaders at all levels to provide compelling purpose for offensive operations, that will be critical.
A tough challenge – but we have been here before
The journey from strategic stalemate to operational breakthrough in the First World War took several years. It required changes in leadership and challenging the culture and traditional models of military planning and operating. And it required a realistic diagnosis of the tactical and operational challenges faced by combatants. As Robert Scales once wrote, “any doctrine founded on a false premise cannot be sustained.”
None of these were simple obstacles to overcome, and as many explorations of that war show, millions of lives were expended on the battlefield before new offensive doctrines were implemented in 1918.
That generation, shaped by the mud and the blood of the western front, demonstrated that they were (eventually) capable of rethinking war, challenging old paradigms and better integrating new technologies and ideas to build effective offensive operations. A new generation of military leaders, who have experienced the rigours of early 21st century combat, are also very capable of developing and implementing the new ideas needed for a new offensive doctrine.
In many respects, a new generation of military personnel are already doing this. We in older generations may offer some wisdom but probably just need to get out of their way. We must allow a new generation of military professionals to move faster and take more risk, and permit them to build new and effective integrated concepts for offensive military operations before our enemies do.
Great insights Mick.