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Well, Hartwig and I have been having some quite interesting ( to me at least ) discussions about strategy, doctrine and whether what I'm doing is Western AirLand Battle or Soviet doctrine or some other doctrine OR just whatever weird idea I come up with next - aka intensive improvisation. I think that some of these discussions might be interesting to others - particularly those offering advice to Hartwig in his AAR - and so, with his permission, I'm posting his last email to me, and my reply to it, here... Comments etc welcome. Don't breach FOW too much with specifics but I'm pretty easy-going about that. With that said, on to the meat of the exchange...

Background is that Hartwig was trying to correlate OODA (Boyd ) loops with Soviet doctrine and comparing them to AirLand Battle and stated that it seemed to him that the way to beat Soviet doctrine was to use an AirLand Battle doctrinal approach of having more mobile forces such that the speed of his forces could actually give him a decisive advantage in the A portion of the Boyd loop. Command delay isn't modelled in WiTP except insofar as one can attack one's opponent's mind and thus create uncertainty and the Clausewitzian " Order, counter-order, disorder."

Obviously I disagreed strenuously with this viewpoint he put forward and disagreed that speed was necessary to get inside an opponent's OODA loop. I avered that one could allow a speedier opponent to make all the running but still beat his OODA loop as the loop was NOT about manoeuvre but about decision-making and that, frequently, a force which is faster falls for the chimera of potency and being able to do everything everywhere if only it can phase things properly while, instead, it merely ends up overcommitting and being defeated in detail. Speed can end up getting you into trouble you wouldn't get into if you HAD to make choices between different operations because you didn't have the speed to do them all at once.

So, onto the current mail and response.

hope all is well on your side, any real life interference is of the enjoyable type and you manage to beat vista into submission... I try to make use of the time granted till I get your next turn to get out my crystal ball and figure out your future intentions along with my crowd/mob...

This is a little aside which refers to our side conversation on "the wisdom of crowds" ( people who post advice to his AAR ) vs the "madness of mobs" - which is what I said he needed to watch out for. Crowds can be serene and thoughtful but, more often than not, they degenerate into mobs. So, advisors can be a help as well as a hindrance. One of the true roles for any commander in anysituation ( a project, a war, work etc ) is to listen and then discard what is not helpful.

One of the positive side effects of this AAR is that one writes down his thoughts, which clarifies the situation.
Re. our doctrine discussions, I think you are far ahead of me. This holds in general for your knowledge of the matter, but specifically in that you are at least partly already talking about WitP where I am still reviewing the general real life doctrinal background. Once I have a picture of that, it will require adaption to the circumstances of W itP, where potentially the solitary decisions of the armchair CinC are much more subject to psychological effect and real life effects re. capability of troops are reduced.

I'm not so sure about far ahead for several reasons:
1. I only apply the basics objectively. Sure that's more than many do but it isn't rocket science [:D]

2. Objectively if I accept this praise then I will pay less attention to my dispositions as my "brilliance" will protect me. No, in reality, what protects Pearl or the Home Islands is that I take the pains to come up with a reasonable plan and then apportion my forces accordingly. Divine right has nothing to do with defeating your planning and accepting such praise is the first step toward actually believing it and allowing it to impact on my thinking.

Sure a certain amount of command arrogance is good but accepting that would be to go beyond this.

I think the real world effects of capability of troops isn't reduced and I would argue that in reality and history many times the defeat of a commander's mind DID presage the defeat of his troops just as surely as the paralysis of an opponent in WiTP presages their defeat. The exact scintillas of weighting may vary but the general thrust is present.

In other words: AirLand battle implicitly assumes that NATO has the potential to work through more OODA cycles than its opponents, which cannot be related to the concept that NATO commanders are in general more effective than their counterparts, but is supported by technology and training.

Agreed although I would also add that this is supported doctrinally by giving the NATO commanders the freedom to make those D loop decisions when the situations arose... A freedom which was missing from their WP counterparts.

I would also point out that the freedom to make a Decision in the D loop and an Action in the A loop is not, necessarily, the freedom to make the right D and A. When D & As are wrong then what matters it that you make them more quickly? You've just more quickly given your opponent the advantage in the OODA loop.

Same thing with initiative. In my game with Damian up until very recently Damian had, or at least had the power to have, the initiative in any 2 out of 3 theatres he chose. But what matter that ability when the situation had been shaped such that the choices he made were inappropriate and his D&As acted to render my long-term plan even more favourable to me?

Initiative and speed are, IMO, often over-concentrated on. Sure they are important but at least as important is shaping the battlefield so that one can present the choices one wishes to one's opponent. Then, faced with a series of unpalatable choices all of which are bad one's opponent can be freely left to use their initiative and speed to quickly and, of their own free choice, impale themselves on your spears.

E.g. Cagayan in my game vs Damian... It has become a fulcrum for the front which has robbed other Japanese holdings of some 1800 AV which should have been more than enough to properly garrison Northern Borneo and Southern Borneo +/- Jave, all of which I am now in the process of taking. Damian had a choice of how to go about dealing with Cagayan and when he chose a choice which helped further my long-term goals ( a choice I invited him to make but was POWERLESS to force as I did not have sufficient strength OR the initiative ) I helped invite him to over-commit to that choice ( at ruinous cost to my fighter and bomber forces ) by building up my forces also. Now though a tiny portion of my forces ( about 10%) are tied up in Cagayan while I suspect that roughly 50% of Damian's forces in the DEI/Phillipines are tied up there. The end result of this is that he freely impaled himself on Cagayan when he had the initiative and the ability to commit forces wherever he wanted and without EVER getting inside his OODA loop as re: Cagayan I have used that to create openings elsewhere.

Speed had nothing to do with me making and using Cagayan. As such I feel it is over-rated in terms of OODA loop.

However, your effectiveness is likely to carry the day in our little electronic war. Thus, transfers and adaptions of the doctrine need to be made. You are doubtless aware that to be of use, the doctrine must have compatibility between all sub-components. The approach to maneuver must logically link into the approach to count er-mobility. From this linkage, the equipment and organization must also support the tempo and pace of battlecalled for by the doctrine.

Aye. I think this links to your point below about my use of Fast Transports and Floatplanes etc. Actually I don't think I use them very much normally BUT in my game against Damian I had no prospect of supporting conventional landings with my CVs, utter aerial inferiority ( up until very recently ) and little prospect of upsetting that balance prior to the end of 1942 ( sure I did my best but even still the Japanese have more fighters and more experienced pilots than I on-map and I only retain the capability to gain aerial superiority over 3 or 4 bases at one time ). I did, however, have more freely disposable ground units and a large surface fleet which was, conventionally, useless in the face of enemy aerial and CV power.

As such I adapted my strategy and sought to use my limited strong points ( lots of surface warships and lots of free regiments etc in CONUSA ) to dislocate the enemy positions in the Aleutians and Burma. When the front became fluid I added paratroops etc to the mix.

It wasn't an issue though of that being something I normally do but simply an issue of that being the best way forward given THIS correlation of forces. In other games my analysis leads to different conclusions and thus I attack differently in those games. Tactics must ALWAYS be subordinate to strategy and thus the choice of the means of attack is always subordinate to the strategy. Since the strategy differs in different games any similarity of tactics is pure happenstance IMO.

If you DO have a favourite tactic then prepare to be found out when you use it in an inappropriate situation.



Therefore, transfer is needed. Highly successful approaches in real life, like good old German Auftragstaktik, cannot be implemented in this game. I believe this is also the reasons why rules of conventional wisdom do not work in your game vs Damian. In game, individual OODA cycles are much more important. Note, however, that we are not playing real time. Whereas this does not invalidate the approach, it makes outperforming your opponent more difficult. I also believe -as indicated by my short intervention in John's 2x2 AAR- that well organized teamplay (which should be more than just assigning areas of responsibility to a given player) makes breaking into an OODA cycle much more difficult, as different people filter information differently and react differently. As a consequence, predictions on the enemies cycles are much more difficult. But I deviate...

More difficult but not impossible. Psychic shock can re-assert itself whenever the game file is re-opened. As a psychiatrist I did not expect this but have, over the years, found it to be true. Its fascinating but, unfortunately, not something I'll ever get authorised to research .

In other words, what I am trying to do is to start from a real life doctrine framework and transfer that to this game. I do this now for the first time, though this is not my first PBEM - thus you see that I already start profiting from playing against you...
Therefore, my comments re. the thrust through northern Germany -which may also differ from WitP based on the operational level, as it is much more of a one-theater example (though I am not sure I use that word correctly in the Soviet sense) are based on real life doctrine.

Northern Germany would have been a Front while the entire German theatre of Operations would have been a Strategic Direction.

The Pacific is a Strategic Direction while the forces in the Aleutians are a Front. There is a doctrinal TO&E for a Front but I think it is of little matter in this game.

Every material I could find so far seems to indicate that according to Soviet Doctrine, whenever the enemy advance still retains momentum and the correlation of forces does not guarantee success, it is not considered desirable to counterattack at all.

Aye, absorb the thrust of the enemy tanks ( tanks are the arm of decision and, thus, what Soviet doctrine focusses on defeating,.... well, until recently when they, IMO, went off the rails doctrinally ) on one's largely immobile anti-tank gun fronts. Husband your own arm of decision ( tanks, mobile units etc ) until the enemy is exhausted, recon extensively and then launch a hasty attack at their most vulnerable point.

In these circumstance, it is better to deploy for counter-penetration and halt the enemy by defensive action. It may well prove necessary to utilize the combined arms reserve, and even the second echelon, but this is undesirable as these forces will not then be available for counterattacks later on.

Ideally one should only ever use static units to halt enemy attacks. Wasting mobile units on the defensive means robbing your arm of decision ( mobile armoured units ) of their strength and freshness right before the moment of decision ( the counter-attack). It is up to you to figure out what YOUR arm of decision is in-game but once you do you will need to husband it and I should never see it committed to defensive action - excepting a death ride at game's end.

I think that this is why your argument against the requirement that a counter offensive does not necessarily require the destruction of the enemy does not hold. Soviet doctrine calls for counter attack only if you can stop that center of mass. I think, however, that this statement is not necessarily true for a many theater war with an attack in one theater and an attack in another theater conducted by the other side.

So, the ONLY way to render a thing irrelevant and harmless is to destroy it attritionally is it? That is interesting. I suggest you think of other ways in which an army or CV TF could be rendered harmless without confronting it with synchronous forces and combat --- which through its strength it is almost assuredly destined to win.

Also, all material I could find about AirLand battle points to the concept of using higly mobile troops in the way described in my response.

Aye, it doesn't mean that that's the only way to use an OODA cycle to one's advantage. If I told you you could fly using a glider would that mean you could NOT fly using a powered aeroplane? The presence of one does not preclude the absence of the other.

Relating to the game - let me start by saying that I am not convinced that you use pure Soviet doctrine (after all, Boyd is not exactly soviet).

Ah but Boyd only outlined the OODA cycle. He didn't invent it. It has always been it was just never consciously codified. Much of Soviet doctrine from the time of Tukhachevsky is based on the OODA even though it never speaks of it explicitly. It is implicitly based on it.

As to Soviet doctrine and my adherence to it. Doctrine evolves over time. I wouldn't be too far from the doctrine of the 80s etc but that is derived from the doctrine of Tukhachevsky, Triandafilov etc. I would hark back to those earlier times also.

You did your transfers (like I'll do mine, and as mentioned above I believe that Boyd's conceptual framework works more directly and even better in these games than in real life combat), and that is why even with a force which does not match this doctrine you can use the derivative you created. One of the major issues where this pops to the surface is that imho you stress surprise much more than preemption. Surprise, however, is what NATO considers almost as a requirement for successful ops.

And are you saying that the Soviets valued pre-emption over surprise? Explain the first battle of Kursk to me then.

Next, look at your preferred methods. You love to use air transport and fast transport TFs. Are you really insisting that use of mobile forces is not important ? No, if it is possible, it is preferable to use this approach.

I disagree that I

love

to use air transport and fast transport TFs. I follow the strategy possible with the forces ( tactical and operational levels ) available. If this limits me to air transport and fast transport then so be it.

To me that a Fast Transport TF is FAST/mobile is an irrelevancy on a doctrinal level. It is utterly irrelevant. What matters is that it is a force which allows me to minimise my vulnerability to enemy countermeasures and was likely to be survivable enough to survive long enough to reach the end of the Aleutians chain. IF 6 knot AKs had met those criteria then I would have used them instead.

The speed was an irrelevance. The fact that given the unique position in this game at that time ( aerial and naval inferiority to such an extent that the enemy could gain superiority at any point or time of their choosing --- until such time as attrition wore them down ) this was the combination which would work was what mattered.

At the same time I do agree that they are not a must. Your battlegrounds AAR shows that neatly. You set up and sprung your trap almost statically.

TO be honest if I have a preference this would be it. It requires much greater skill to unmask fires from static positions predicted to be on the flanks etc than it does to run around and find a flank.

Personally -without knowing much about this game though I own the battleground series, but I bought it after WitP in a bundle with the napoleonic wars for a special price for the sake of the good times I had with the battle of the bulge scenarios of this or a related engine, and WitP just seems to make anything else unplayed for me- I had the impression that John's actions ever after your blow fell were no longer coherent, he was shocked by being thrown off his expectations, and that flawed his further gameplay from that point onwards.

Yes, his attack fell apart in the face of a single, hard blow struck at a crucial juncture by an inferior force. I was quite pleased at how that played out. It seems to be pretty rare for the Union Army to deliver such a rebuke on Day 1 of Ghettysburg although I'd hope to do much better in future as it was only my 2nd PBEM of that game and I was still learning the system.

As a side comment: your approach there was more soviet - you used preemption. Which is why I use the crystal ball now, of course. Maybe tea leaves or bones of a sacrificed PoW as well for better results ?

For every BB you send to Tokyo Bay without ammo I'll tell you a target [:D] I'll invade over the next 2 months . Expensive but utterly reliable intel

You are absolutely correct that what I clearly need to do is come up with a way which stresses mobility less first, equally mobile next and finally more mobile, as this is what will most likely happen in the game.

I disagree but I think that perhaps what you mean by mobility is different than what I mean. I don't think the speed with which you can put plans into action will help you much. I think that finding my weaknesses will help you much more. I can sink things moving quickly as easily as things moving slowly but, perhaps, there are things or places where I can't???

I have severe handicaps re. mobility in my present situation, both on the strategic level due to your clever separation of the map (Alfred suggested evacuation of Indian forces to make them reappear in Russia, which was a wonderful idea but just does not look possible any more)

*chuckle* That would have been fun...

and on the tactical level, as I just can't set up a 25 ship TF of capital s hips to move a really significant fast transport TF inlcuding BBs to REALLY get something somewhere quickly due to surprising lack of these ships.

Aye, I hunted them down for that, and other, reasons.

If I would capitalize now on mobility, I would create a doctrine not supported by my assets - that' a nono.

Don't alter your doctrine. Doctrine should be relatively fixed BUT feel free to alter your implementation of it based on the assets available. If you can't do A because I have unit X WHAT can you do that unit X CANNOT defend against? That should be your question IMO.

At the same time, I have to think about the things not on the menu now now as well, in order to derive something on your approach. But I hope I'll come up with something. I believe that invalidation of assumptions is an important concept to make the opponent's OODA cycle ineffective (see your battlefields AAR).

Absolutely. This is why I try to play with as few assumptions as possible. When you don't have assumptions they can't force you into error. Its also why I always talk about objective assessment. The more assumptions you have the more bias you bring to your analysis and the mroe you'll see only what you want to see. "Those tanks at Nijmegen... Oh, a tank repair yard that's all. They won't even be able to move. You go and drop right in that field in front of it Sosabowski."

But in general, the first thing to enforce a decision is providing options. While you are "on track", as long as you can stay within a standard procedure, there are no options (or rather automatically discarded options, as you know how to proceed already), thus you don't need to decide. This is why I want a mobile battlefield in India, of course. Hunkering down in a Festung or three (again, t he separation you achieve works well) makes solution of the India problem a standard procedure. Like solving a linear differential equation. Child's play, if you know your toolbox.

Well you then have the choice of either changing the situation so I can't use schema to solve the differential equation or, and more powerfully and, importantly, more stylishly, you can add in another variable you never tell me about until you unmask it and make me realise that the whole D & A section of the loop I was enacting was in response to OO sections which were completely unfitted to the situation I was facing.

Many times an opponent will delude himself as regards teh OO sections. When faced with an opponent who won't the best way to lead them into improper D&A sections is to surreptitiously change the OO sections without letting them realise it. They will then make good D&A sections for the situation they believe they face but will, in reality, be making utterly inappropriate D&As for the REAL situation.

At the opportune time unmask and watch their psychological balance crumble.

How much SPEED and MOBILITY do you need to do this? Almost none... and hence my contention of the previous email.

Options will lead to a reaction based on assumptions. The more assumptions there are, the more likely are collisions of assumptions. If assumptiuons collide, your filtering/evaluation process runs into probles. You have to make decisions based on different sets of assumptions/rules in parallel. Does not sound like straightforward any more... sounds like complicated, nasty... try to move in a world where in every room the gravity constant is different. Your downfall is imminent !
Well, this is a nice sentence to end this little e-mail. Not sure that it is true, but if reality is incoherent anyway, it must be true somewhere somehow.

LOL! In one of the parallel universes which the quantum universe yields to it is true. In this one? I'm not so sure [:D]

Hi all,

this is just a short follow-up post to Nemo's opener. We do have interesting e-mail discussions along with our game, and why not share it. I may definitely only profit from more explanations/opinions.

Let me start this with a bit of (mock) advice: Don't ever play the PsyDocs[8D]. It is SO difficult to influence them to get ahead of them in the psychological aspects of our small wars (which I believe are important)[8|].

If you try one-upmanship, they will stare into the air, say "do you really think so" and thus make you feel unsure and ask for their guidance/explanation "well... is that not the case ?", bringing you down one notch instead. They are trained to destroy that approach. Don't waste your time with it.

OTOH, if you try to flatter them to make them careless, this is what happens:

Objectively if I accept this praise then I will pay less attention to my dispositions as my "brilliance" will protect me. No, in reality, what protects Pearl or the Home Islands is that I take the pains to come up with a reasonable plan and then apportion my forces accordingly. Divine right has nothing to do with defeating your planning and accepting such praise is the first step toward actually believing it and allowing it to impact on my thinking

However, this brings up an important issue for this thread. To be honest, I do not think coming up with a reasonable plan and apportioning forces accordingly is enough. Many excellent battle plans with well-apportioned forces in history did not work - e.g. as they were preempted, as they were followed through without looking at a change in the situation, or as they were not followed through because an insignificant change in a situation was looked at as substantial.

As a matter of fact, what protects Nemo's bases may be excellent capability for performing OODA cycles with high frequency and breaking into his opponent's OODA cycles. Or, if Nemo will decline that praise again, just general unawareness of such mechanisms with many of his opponents. Or, if we want to get closer to some of the topics here, a well developed doctrine for WitP. Which is a) what I want to have as well to turn the tide in our war and b) brings us closer to the main topic of these discussions.

I won't go into detail tonight. Just very roughly: Nemo stated he is adherent to Soviet doctrine. In our game, presently he fields a superior force, like WP did in a potential conflict in Europe. Thus, I thought maybe I start by a) trying to get more familiar with Soviet doctrine (any additional material is welcome !) and b) checking the NATO counterpart. After all, they wanted to win against the Soviets. Also, Nemo had started to relate to said OODA cycle, and thus if I found out about Boyd and the AirLand battle, I thought hey - this is something that may be worth looking at in more detail. Of course, adaptions will be necessary - but maybe a starting point.

In any case (hopefully) a starting point for interesting discussions !

Hartwig

Hartwig,

Do you mean to say you weren't just asking for information out of intellectual curiosity but were, instead, seeking to carry the war on your opponent's mind over from the game into our email conversation? I'm shocked [:D]
 
 
I think it interesting that you think OODA cycles will defend my bases.... Let me give you an example... What matter an OODA cycle when you've got 1km of featureless, flat terrain to cross covered by minefields, a battalion of mortars and an MG Company with night-vision goggles. Sure, you've got a Bn of infantry but just how is the speed of your OODA cycle going to beat that?   Sure you may OO and D that your A is to retreat and try elsewhere ( perfectly reasonable ) but the speed of cycle won't matter once battle is joined as the situation/shaping is so unfavourable.
 
 
I think that the Soviet means of defeating OODA cycles is germaine here. I'm sure ALfred will outline it but I'll bottomline it. If you treat something as an irrelevance and act as though it is irrelevant then through treating it as irrelevant to YOU you can gain great advantage from it in your opponent.
 
E.g. A bareserker ( commonly incorrectly labelled a berserker ) who felt no fear and treated it as an irrelevance often inculcated fear ( which they would otherwise not have felt ) in those he faced purely through his unwillingness to allow for fear.
 
If the Soviets pushed fast and deep enough through ignoring the OODA cycles around them ( this required excellent recon such that the initial OODA cycles during the breakthrough had been taken care of in pre-breakthrough planning -- I refer here to the typical branching Soviet plan ) then through ignoring the OODA cycles around them and pushing on they'd create a situation where their very unwillingness to engage with tactical level OODA cycles gained them great rewards on the operational level OODA cycles.
 
So, there are levels of OODA cycles, not all are equal and, as always, the pattern of acceptances and declinations determines who gains advantage. Obviously at some level one must engage with OODA cycles at all levels BUT engaging with them doesn't necessarily mean trying to scramble faster than one's opponent. Sometimes letting the other guy scramble faster in search for a mirage he can never reach while you sit still is the smart thing to do.
 
You don't HAVE the be scrambling faster if the other guy is already inappropriate --- so long as he doesn't right himself before he falls off the cliff.

Nemo,

I'm shocked [:D]

Excellent. At least some progress [8D].

I think it interesting that you think OODA cycles will defend my bases.... Let me give you an example... What matter an OODA cycle when you've got 1km of featureless, flat terrain to cross covered by minefields, a battalion of mortars and an MG Company with night-vision goggles. Sure, you've got a Bn of infantry but just how is the speed of your OODA cycle going to beat that? Sure you may OO and D that your A is to retreat and try elsewhere ( perfectly reasonable ) but the speed of cycle won't matter once battle is joined as the situation/shaping is so unfavourable.

The problem with that argument is that you refer to a situation which is a consequence of previous decisions, which were apparently wrong.

The question is: What made me bring a Bn of infantry without a company of these
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... 0612121157 ?

Probably this was because I was working under the assumption that the defense of your base would be different and you just managed to unvalidate that assumption or created that assumption to begin with - e.g. showing off a fragment of your mining unit in a completely different hex which I did not realize to be a fragment. Or because I was so glad you had mentioned me as a potential high value contributor to this doctrines thread in a previous e-mail that I just forgot so click on "move to" button in the unit icon [;)].

think that the Soviet means of defeating OODA cycles is germaine here. I'm sure ALfred will outline it but I'll bottomline it. If you treat something as an irrelevance and act as though it is irrelevant then through treating it as irrelevant to YOU you can gain great advantage from it in your opponent.

I am looking forward to in-depth info here. I was about to refer to something similar when you were talking about the advantages of NATO commanders in a previous post, because I found some hints that seemed to indicate that some much more rigorous filtering would occur in a soviet commander's OODA cycle.

Are the works of those early Russians which outline similar things like the OODA cycle you mentioned above available anywhere in a language other than Russian ?

Hartwig

Probably, because I was working under the assumption that the defense of your base would be different and you just managed to unvalidate that assumption or created that assumption to begin with

 
Precisely. Assumptions are not necessarily tied to speed and hence why I think there should be less stress on speed of cycles and speed of mobility and more on how one can, with an immobile force ( the minefields, mortars and MG company which are immobile relative to the Bn of infantry ), change the SITUATION such that the enemy has to re-orient etc.
 
Remember the OODA loops do NOT require change in position they relate to a change in SITUATION. Yes that change in situation may be a change in relative topographical position but it DOES NOT HAVE TO BE.
 
 
So, if you are immobile you can still surprise the enemy.
 
If you are immobile then you can create a situation where you don't NEED to pre-empt them OR you can just gather all of your mobile forces at one point and get a mobility advantage at that point --- if you think that sort of thing is important.

I'll leave you with a quote and something to think on/read up on ( since you seem to like reading/research)... And heaven pity you but I'm on holidays this week and so have plenty of time to divert myself with fun like this
 
First the quote: " To move directly on an opponent consolidates his balance, physical and psychological and by consolidating it increases  his resisting power... At most it imposes a strain rather than producing a shock." By Basil Liddell Hart.
 
And lastly. Perhaps you are Fabius Maximus in the Second Punic Wars. I am operating in hostile territory, have a finite ability to remain and long LOCs. In addition there is, I am certain, pressure on you to attack and act and be all aggressive a la John 3rd in 1944 - which I've gone on record as comparing to the Charge of the Light Brigade in terms of folly -  but perhaps you should emulate Fabius Maximus who said, in part, " In that case I should be an even greater coward than they say I am if I were to abandon the plans I believe to be right because of a few sneers and words of abuse... "
 
I'm sure others have the time to outline Fabius Maximus' strategy but a quick precis would be that he mixed his declinations and acceptances of battle such that he only accepted battle under the most favourable of circumstances and "fought for the draw" in most of his battles as he knew that a series of tactical and operational draws would cripple Barca just as surely as it crippled King Pyrrhus's Greeks and that seeking great victory would expose him to great defeat a la Cannae.
 
Perhaps you need to channel Fabius Maximus and force me to become King Pyrrhus? Perhaps not and I want you to be Fabius as I know I won't be Pyrrhus but will, instead, emulate Xenophon when placed in the situation of the Epirians. The fun of the game is that if you try it we'll see what I have to counter it.

All I will say is that speed is sometimes appropriate, and sometimes inappropriate.  It is merely a tactical consideration and therefore never in itself and by itself the major determinant.  Strategy is always the preeminent consideration and tactics merely the means to give effect to the appropriate strategy.
 
Alfred

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

I'll leave you with a quote and something to think on/read up on ( since you seem to like reading/research)... And heaven
And lastly. Perhaps you are Fabius Maximus in the Second Punic Wars. I am operating in hostile territory, have a finite ability to remain and long LOCs.

Nemo,

I read my Livius for the 2nd Punic war (not at school, for fun). The cunctator ! Did you know that he managed to collect political powers which outshine the ones of most Roman celebrities, except Caesar ? Funny that you should mention him. Not sure all the prerequisites are met to go for a parallel, but 2nd Punic war is a juicy area of history. And then Scipio Africanus shows up and takes all the fame...

This campaign may be a nice example for robbing an offensive thrust of his momentum and then attacking elsewhere. What really did Carthago was the war in Iberia IMHO. Not sure whether this line of action should be taken as a general example though, as Hannibal was not very well at exploiting his excellent victories, he could have finished tha war in favor of Carthago IMHO. You better be better in that respect, Nemo - otherwise you will wreck your economy badly.

Back to the Roman celebrities: My actual favorite is Sulla. Read up on the bellum iughurtinum - you seem to have time at your disposal. If you go for Latin, pick Sallust's description, which is a bit sceptical but real joy to read. A pity I don't have a week off.

Hartwig

Alfred,

ORIGINAL: Alfred

All I will say is that speed is sometimes appropriate, and sometimes inappropriate.  It is merely a tactical consideration and therefore never in itself and by itself the major determinant.  Strategy is always the preeminent consideration and tactics merely the means to give effect to the appropriate strategy.

Alfred

I think there is mutual interaction. Strategy is not an entity you conjure from empty space and then you follow it. What is (e.g. tactically or logistically) possible with the assets you have limits the degrees of freedom you have for designing your strategy. You need to adapt your doctrine if necessary based on the feedback you get from operations.

In my opinion, speed is not just a tactical entity, related to moving a unit from location A to location B or to generate rapidly changing situations, which in turn lead to wrong assessments. Speed is multidimensional.

E.g., AFAIK Moltke was pretty far along the concept of a Kesselschlacht doctrine, but the speed of the available technology (specifically the one for providing the logistics) was not sufficient at that time. If speed is inappropriate at one level, it may be because you cannot really support it on another one. I think the Allied tuned down their speed of operations in Normandy because they could not support it logistically. Same thing would hold against a hasty operation which is not sufficiently prepared, which is bound to fail.

But in general, I think the faster your system as a whole can work, the better you are off. You can still decide whether you use that capability or not. You can still win a war if your opponent has a speed advantage. But if possible, you should try to optimize.

Feel free to correct me. As always, this is just a view on things of someone who is not an expert and wants to learn, but will challenge what he does not understand.

Hartwig

I think we're mixing up three things here:
 
1. Speed of a unit at a tactical level. Ship X can do 30 knots and so can get to Port B 3 times faster than ship y which can only do 10 knots.
 
2. Mobility: The ability to move forces to where they are needed in a timely manner. Somewhat related to speed but not necessarily so as good planning means you should get forces to where they are needed by forecasting the need well in advance.
 
3. Reaction time: the time period in which one can react to an enemy's change in posture or change posture oneself.
 
 
Personally I think speed and mobility are not really all that important as with good planning one can reduce the need for them to such a level that tehy won't determine all that much.
 
Reaction time on the other hand, now that's crucial. The faster one can transition between phases the less chance the opponent has to develop an equilibrium ( either physical or mental ). It is one reason the F86 Sabre beat the MiG-15 over Korea, why the FW-190 was such an excellent dogfighter in WW2 ( speed of roll really ) and why the Sopwith Camel reigned supreme in WW I ( its rotary engine allowed it to roll left 270 degrees in the time it took to roll right 90. When facing German planes this gave it a great advantage in transitioning to a different manoeuvre --- albeit that these manoeuvres were left-handed [8D]
 
 

I will not get into the discussion of the quality of airplanes here. I am not really qualified for that anyway. Let me just throw in the thesis (open for discussion) that I believe an underestimated factor in quality of an airplane may be the ease of controlling it. It reduces the number of parallel processes that need to go on in a dogfight. The camel does not qualify for that, the FW190 may do. As always, if anyone feels I tell nonsense, please explain.

Well Nemo, now we have a plane quality discussion. That should make the number of posters rock to the sky - these threads always seem to be ... intense... [8D]

Anyway, back to the real topic...

Aye, we should not mix up things and work with proper definitions. Or try to. As a matter of fact, the "mixing up" problem is multidimensional, too, because one should carefully distinguish between reality and game. The question is how can you set up your minefield, transfer the previously mountainous (sp?) terrain into a plane with no place to hide, bring in the mortars and obtain a shipment of googles (from M&M enterprises perhaps ?) without your opponent noticing this in WitP.

In other words, I want to talk (or rather ask) about reaction time, more specifically the time to change posture in WitP. Let's not bring in real life approaches, which may not be transferred easily. My key question is: What possibilities do I have in this game to obfuscate what is going on e.g. at a base hex which do not relate to mobility ? I believe that if I stress this factor more than others do, it may be because I am not aware of the options one has. Note that I will discuss also approaches which may be considered gamey, just to have a list of options that I see.

One thing I can see clearly is dividing a unit to change a unit count on the base. Works.

You may parade a fragment of a key unit at a completely different location. Let Nemo sink a TF with a tiny fragment of 1st USMC division near Cold Harbor and read the flashing message that the rest of the ships rescues surviviors, but it is sitting in Auckland ready for his invasion. Works. Not sure whether it is gamey, but I would use it in a gutter war or if I notice that my Japanese opponent works with the "prep unit on home islands for XYZ which is not my target at all" approach.

Note that the same effect can be achieved by leaving only part of a unit at a place and pulling out the rest, but this implies resorting to mobility.

Working with the AF and ship symbol and cursor intel seems to rely on mobility of ships and planes in my opinion.

In an e-mail, we talked about expanding a base almost to the threshold level of being able to use a new category of planes, e.g. Betties. Sounds static. But to make use of it, you need to make use of the mobility of the planes - or do you advocate letting them sit there until some Invasion happens to drop by ? Even worse, if mobility of the incoming forces would be equal, the concept breaks down - they can react just as quickly to the change in conditions and strike at a different place. Relates to mobility.

Thus I believe mobility really is important in WitP. In this game, I cannot hide my cavalry in the woods. The ground combat screen is going to provide a list of units, even if I order them not to contribute to the attack. I cannot take back my seemingly routed center, pull the enemy in, then suddenly stiffen resistance and crush him from several sides. Many of the concepts that may be used for deception in real life in a really static situation do not work in this game. That is why I believe that in this game mobility may be more important than in real life approaches.

As always, just the 2cts of someone who wants to learn. E.g. more tricks for handing bad surprises in a static way to my opponent.

Hartwig

How to obfuscate and opacify a situation at a base:
 
At the base:
1. Boost base numbers by posting lots of AAA and CD units and an infantry division. MY strikes will hit the infantry division and I will have to assume that the other 9 units there might contain more divisions whereas, in reality, it'll only by Bn-sized units.
 
2. Certain unit types are a strategic indicator ( or useful to me in my maskirovka ). E.g. When you get P-51s it would be reasonable for you to post this, your BEST fighter, to the base which you MOST need to protect. So, if you make a base look threatening by 1 above and then I see P-51s above it then most reasonable opponents would think that THIS is the base you are attacking from. they would never imagine that the base protected by just 24 x P-39s is ACTUALLY the one you will base out of.
 
3. You can do the same with BBs etc. Show your fast BBs in one place and rely on the fact that fast BBs go where carriers go to make me think that the CVs accompany the BBs. Obviously they won't ( although sometimes they will as varying things up is important ).
 
4. Some players count the greenness of a base icon. If your port icon turns dark green at PH then it is a pretty good bet you ahve lots of ships there aimed at JOhnson or Midway. So, why not mess with me by docking loads of your tankers and other less useful ships at PH for a week and then undocking and sending them back to CONUSA. A base port indicator-counter will use that "intel" to beef up his forces in the Pacific expecting a major invasion somewhere there within the next week. When you then land in DEI he will think you are mounting simultaneous operations and be reluctant to transfer his forces from Pacific to DEI.
 
You can then always tell him that the invasion was called off as you had gotten scared of his redeployment and he will crow in his AAR about how he averted a major invasion.
 
Obviously what you've actually done is use your psychological knowledge to anchor him to believe that when he sees this again it IS indicative of an invasion and IS an invasion he can deter. Since you've made him believe there's a pattern there that he CAN USE AGAINST YOU you make it much more likely for him to buy into that pattern.
 
 
Those are a few very simple, very doable things which basically don't involve mobility or risking a single ship or plane to enemy action.
 
 
I mean, sure, you can argue that some of those involve mobility. You might say it does, I would say it doesn't really because it is relying on static factors and mind-games rather than shuffling things quickly from place to place. I think we can agree that it would work without getting too hung up on the side-issue of whether it is mobility or not.
 
Doctrine is great for clarifying things but sometimes getting too caught up on definitions can opacify a rather clear situation.
 
Remember that when an attritionist and a manoeuvrist fight they will both view the fight differently. The attritionist will view it as attritional, the manoeuvrist as manoeuvrist BUT both are actually fighting the same fight.

The inverse relationship between Objective Assessment and Ego.


Objective assessment is the hallmark of all good business people, chess players and wargamers. It is a truism dating from Greek times that we see things not as THEY are but as WE are ( or, in a more common and clear way, "as we would like them to be" ).

I would suggest to you Hartwig that the vast majority of the time you really won't need to engage in a great deal of operational and tactical subterfuge. I don't and from reading AARs I engage in remarkably little tactical or operational finesse and subterfuge vis a vis most other players of WiTP. It was, however, ever thus. The vast majority of people are invested more in being right than being correct and less interested in correcting their perceptions from whatever comfortable fiction they have created.

They cling to their comfort myths refusing to allow for the possibilities their senses deliver unto them preferring, instead, to be lulled by the fiction they prefer.

I would suggest to you that rather than focussing on how you will fool some objectively-focussed, ego-disavowing pragmatist that you simply realise that the acme of operational deception is NOT creating a false impression in your opponent's mind but, rather, sensing what impression they wish to have and merely ensuring that one does nothing to excessively challenge that perception. Even when their perception is challenged most will resist the challenge creating a greater non-factually based complex to rationalise away the challenge.

When things get really complex you can actually challenge something a little and watch one's opponent strengthen the non-factual complex underlying his comfort myth. In common parlance - he retreats even further into his belief system decrying all usurpers. The end result is that NOW he is even more resistent to the next challenge and thus can, over time, be reality-innoculated such that greater and greater doses of reality have little impact on him/her. This works in much the same way as stress-innoculation.

Getting back to the point though the acme of deception is NOT doing anything to create an impression but, rather, doing nothing to challenge the incorrect impression most will formulate internally.

I always used to say that the corollary to this was also true. I didn't win PBEMs, I simply allowed my opponent to lose and concentrated on doing nothing which would cause me to lose more quickly than they seemed intent on doing. This formulation held when I played chess competitively, when I debated and, more recently, in PBEMs.


So, perhaps you need to do less work in-game and more work out-game in order to determine what I think the situation is and then ensure that I don't see anything which disavows me of this comfort myth I have chosen to believe.



The one exception to this is if through some fluke of bad luck the comfort myth I've chosen jibes perfectly with your actual plan [8D] in which case you need to shift the plan or shift my belief using active means.



On an interesting aside some years ago I was invited to consult with a US Army officer who was engaged in a study of using off the shelf wargames as training tools for the ROTC and one of the junior combat-grade officer training courses. I had the opportunity to play several Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, Colonels and even a retired General over several different wargames and several different scenarios ( including defence, attack, meeting engagement and even ones in which the brief-in was wildly inaccurate... as is often the case in the real world ). We played to test balance in terms of equipment and strength per side and one of the reasons I was asked to participate was that they wished to test versus a Soviet doctrinal OPFOR - which I, obviously, provided.

In any case while the officers who had come up with the concept were testing for balance etc and the individual opponents were each trying to get a measure I was, obviously, learning about my virtual enemy - the various combat and staff grades of American officer. The thing that struck me most was the emotionality and ego of the lieutenants, the beginnings of temperance in the Captains and Majors, the slight chagrin of the Colonels in being beaten ( albeit far less ego-driven than the Captains and Majors ) and the utterly pragmatic and ego-less approach of the retired general.

I found this most interesting and engaged some in external conversations to help firm up my thoughts. In the end the conclusion I came to was that through self-selection and inherent personality traits ( no doubt moderated by neurotransmitters a la Neuropeptide P etc and others implicated in the stress-management portion of the PTSD development cycle ) that there was a marked and definite trend towards a greater degree of ego-disbursement in the higher level officers. It wasn't uniform and it didn't appear to be due to any sociopathy but, rather, it appeared to be a relatively ingrained (although I'm sure some of the equanimity was acquired ) personality trait.

Now, obviously, since we deal with humans a certain amount of empathy etc is necessary for long-term cohesive team functioning - thus explaining the flaws sociopaths exhibit as team leaders - it did seem pretty clear that the less ego-investment occurred into the outcome of the game the better they played. Results followed this pattern. The retired General ran me close in 2 of our 3 games while one of the Colonels got a win and a draw ( I won the third game ). All the others were defeated in three nil whitewashes although another Major did almost get a draw in one. Even within this overall pattern of higher rank having a higher chance of winning or drawing it was noticeable that the Colonel and Major who did well were the dispassionate outliers in their respective cohorts.

So, ego investment in the game is inversely related with objectivity and objectivity is absolutely correlative with superior play. I think the Samurai had it right... What mattered not was living or dying but living or dying WELL. Once you accepted the outcome dispassionately and focussed on the process one would find that, actually, the outcome probably would favour one.

I think that with you, Hartwig, ego investment won't be a problem - which is good but in terms of efficiency I think you might want to think a little around the issue of allowing me to create my own stories which mislead me rather than trying to actively mislead me yourself. It is more efficient and, probably, also more effective.


In terms of this game ( since I think it is important to try to be supportive within this game) I think that you will probably do better by trying to correlate to my comfort myths than you will if you try to create deception plans to lead me into what YOU think would be a good comfort myth for your future operations. The reason is that it requires less art to change my perception than it does to take care "to not challenge my perception" and I'm probably going to be keeping a pretty close eye on anything I spot with a view to discovering a deception operation.

OTOH if I expect deception operations then some would suggest you show me those operations in order to support THAT comfort myth ( that you will run deception operations which I will easily penetrate ). I think it all depends on how much double-think you want to enter into. My honest advice is not to double-think it too mch as you end up getting wrapped in knots and rarely get much benefit beyond the first or, at most, second convolution.

Nemo,

the above post IS complicated. Far above me. Specifically, as it may have to be put into context of previous posts in other threads. Could we get back to the discussion of Sallust's bellum Iughurtinum I suggested above? I am far more competent there. Falso queritur de natura sua genus humanum... splendid case of a comfort myth, btw...

My EGO, however, won't let me admit that. Thus I'll try to post a few random remarks which may hopefully sound smart. But random in general is a very nice principle, as it is that unpredictable and will make anyone hunting for schemes go crazy. Much preferable to planning, as it is less effort as well. Still, I will enjoy the advantage of not being drawn into consideration of seemingly complicated things. First, thus usually linear approximation will usually do anyway. If not, I can adjust.

The interesting thing wiht a statistical approach is also that the response will not be statistical in most cases. You obtain the results of a filter working with the input that is provided. Once you know how the the filter works, you have several options. You may clog the filter, rely on what it filters out or just spam on happily using only information which will go through it in order to flood the system behind the filter which is supposed to be protected by the filter from being flooded. So many options... But back to my fake of a discussion of your topic.

First of all, I would have attributed the statement that we see things as we are to Kant. Interesting that he stole it from the Greek... Also, I would have said corollaries tend to be true by definition...

My main topic is your aside, which takes the larger part of your post. Relating to your war-gaming experience against various ranks, I really should not tell you that I think you should reassess but let you follow your myth. It's just my natural adherence to all that is true and right that does not only prevent me by definition to try anything to deceive you but also to tell you what I think here. Consider that display of ego may be a compensation effect. The more you have achieved objectively, based on your skills, the less you need to rely on display of ego. Just let the facts speak up for you. You may not have seen an effect of ego-investment, but of real competence, which has paid off in promotions. But your comfort myth was ego investment, so you took the compensation reaction for the real cause of your success and even interpret the statistical deviations within each rank to be a function of your comfort myth.

Funny, is it not ?

Hartwig

ORIGINAL: hartwig.modrow

I will not get into the discussion of the quality of airplanes here. I am not really qualified for that anyway. Let me just throw in the thesis (open for discussion) that I believe an underestimated factor in quality of an airplane may be the ease of controlling it. It reduces the number of parallel processes that need to go on in a dogfight. The camel does not qualify for that, the FW190 may do. As always, if anyone feels I tell nonsense, please explain.

I should preface this by noting that I'm not a fighter pilot and have never piloted an aircraft in my life, but I have studied a bit of aeronautical engineering, so this is largely theoretical.

If you're designing a fighter plane, you usually want to build the least stable (defined as flies straight and narrow even if you take your hands off the stick) airframe you can possibly get away with. Some of the modern fighters are, in fact, so wildly unstable that you need realtime computers and fly-by wire systems to keep them in the air, otherwise they'd wobble into a flat spin or something.

The basic idea being that a stable airframe is stable precisely because it *resists* changes in pitch/yaw/roll. It *wants* to go straight, so you have to mash a big control surface to get it to sluggishly change direction.

An unstable airframe, on the other hand, is like an eel in the air; it has very little resistence to changes in direction, so a little nudge on a control surface and the plane just *goes with it*. With a wildly unstable design you need a computer to keep your little nudge from spinning the plane out of control, but with a good, say, post-war fighter its just on the edge of being manually controllable.

Point being, at least when I studied it, stability was something you actually avoided in a dogfighter. Stable = resistent to change and hence is the antithesis of maneuverability.

Never having flown one myself, I've got no idea what the pilots thing of that, but my suspicion is the enhanced combat performance is seen as easily outweighing the greater difficulty in keeping the thing in the air.

An interesting discussion. Just some general concepts about what I know about AirLand Battle vs Soviet doctrine.

AirLand battle was developed specifically to counter the known WP doctrines. The biggest perceived weakness of the Soviet Doctrine was an increasingly operational inflexibility as the unit size became smaller. For example, at the company level, only the company commander's tank had the full radio net avaiable to him. So if the right tank out of ten was disabled, the other nine would loss contact with battalion and regimental command. Given that local initiative was discouraged and would likely be rare in a semiparanoid totalitarian state, this assumption is not without reason. So by denying the LOC at as many levels as possible, the theory was the enemy units would either follow there last order until completion/anialation or come to a halt. In theory AirLand battle was to provide more OODA cycles for NATO by giving greater resposibility to local commanders at all levels. As Nemo pointed out, the problem with this is that the local commander can only make the best decision based on the information available to him. He may therefore make a decision that seems best for his local cirucumstances but may in fact be the wrong decision for the larger front. Interstingly, that is the very reason the Soviets discouraged intiative by there local commanders.

The Soviet Doctrine emphasised a broad front offensive until a weak point was found. At this point, an Operational Maneuver Group (OMG) was to be created to exploit the weak point. It was the task of the OMG to penetrate as deep into the NATO rear to disrupt the forward units LOC. The goal was to encircle as much of the NATO force as possible that would be cut off from the rear area logistical base. Contrary to some opinions, Soviet Doctrine was not purely a brute force approach with no regards to losses. The doctrine was that whatever losses that were necessary to achieve a breakthrough and the creation of an OMG were acceptable. The true goal was not the engagement and anialation of the NATO forces head to head by overwhelming numbers but instead to use those numbers to provide the necessary salient to allow the OMG to encircle the bulk of the NATO army. By attacking on a broad front, the NATO forces would be pinched by a large force to their front and a smaller but unengaged force to their rear. This doctrine was to an extent used through all levels of command. For example a regimental attack would be two battalions on assult with the third in reserve/flanking.

In theory, AirLand battle was to use superior intel via better communications technology to allow local commanders to react more quickly thus preventing the creation of the necessary salient for an OMG to break through. Up until the early 1980's the Soviets put significant efforts into developing methods to jam/confuse NATO comms. The introduction of digital systems that literally could cycle through thousands of frequencies a second largely nullified those efforts. So in theory AirLand battle was designed to give the NATO commanders a more fluid/mobile force that could react more quickly to threats. Force preservation was also important as, especially early in the offensive, it was understood that NATO would have to trade territory for time. In addition, it was assumed that NATO would have the upper hand eventually in the Air Superiority Battle thus allowing deep strikes at the logistical tail of the Soviet Army, thus further slowing the advance.

I played a game called WWIII back in the early 1990's. I was the Soviet player and tried in vane to get my breakthrough. Even though I failed, my opponent knew that if just one of my major attacks would have succeeded, his defense would have fallen apart. It was a very even game and was not decided until the very end.

One could make the point that the Allies used Soviet Doctrine more than current NATO doctrine in the second half of the Pacific Campaign. They bypassed strong points that were not part of the strategic goal, drove as deep as possible to not allow the enemy to regroup, and encircled large portions of the Japanese defense without directly attacking them.

Pat,
 
What you are describing under the heading of instability is a feature which basically means that the plane is designe to transition more easily from one manouevre to another - e.g. rolls easily. Interestingly when you actually look at which planesdid best in dogfighting it wasn't usually the plane which could sustain the manoeuvre longest but the one which could transition between manouevres best since when a pilot could see th enemy was at an advantage in the current manoeuvre only an idiot would keep maintaining it.... but, quickly transitioning nto another manoeuvre whic rendered the opponent's manoeuvre sub-optimal, now THAT was an ability worth having.
 
 
Vettim,
Your description of theflaws n 1980s Soviet doctrine are pretty spot on I would point out thought that as formulated by Tukhachevsky etc in its earliest forulations there was not this emphasis n low-level slavish obedienc. Certainly each level was subordinate to the needs of superior levels but I think Triandafilov etc would never have trned down radios in every tank IF they could have trained the TCs well enough to ensure disciplined radio comms.
 
 
I'm also not cerain that there was such an emphasis on encirclement. Once the OMG was set free it's job was to dislocate the enemy position. When tactical-technical issues prevented an operational-level dislocation ( such as breaching the next river line in Germany ) then an encirclement miht be considered but I tink that, often, the Soviets would have felt that allowing an encirlement operation to happen was both wastefulof time and manpower as by the time the encircled force was destroyed ( at great cost ) whatever opportunity to dislocate the enemy's entire front existed would have been gone.
 
Definitely at times though te Allies in the Pacific shwed a proper appreciation for the appropriate use of operations in support of their strategic and national policy level objectives but often they didn't. MacArthur, in particular, was just an absolute nightmare. A complete narcissistic personality disorder of the first order.

Nemo,

I improperly used the term encircle. Your term dislocate is a much better term. At the tactical level, the two up/one flanking doctrine was not so much aimed at encircling the NATO force but instead to infiltrate the engaged force's rear. If accomplished this would disrupt NATO's CCC and logistics. Also the tactical commander would then be placed in a position of being able to defeat the force in front of him but risk isolation even if he succeeded.

Aye, the Soviets even have a term for the action in which the 3 elements attack in column ( 2 up, 1 back is more of a Western thing really than Soviet... not always true but much more true for Western forces than Soviet forces --- well, prior to the square reorganisation obviously .... 1st element blunders into the enemy and engages them, 2nd echelon shifts right and tries to find a flank, third element moves around the flank and takes the enemy in the rear/flank dislocating their defence and turning the initial engagement from a "hasty attack vs prepared defence" into a "pursuit" - which the Soviets expect to be much better at.

While this is going on the breakthrough force rolls through the gap and deep into the enemy's operational depth.

I'm going to make a post suggested by my game with Damian here.

In the game vs Damian in November '42 I am at Menado, Northern Borneo and Hainan Island. In other words I'm just a hop, skip and a jump from the Phillippines. For Damian the question has been how to stop me when he doesn't have the troops available to stop me on the beaches.

His solution?
1. Rush troops in from Russia and the Home Islands +/- some troops from holdings in the Pacific he is abandoning.

2. Buy time for those troops to arrive by using his CV TFs to blockade the routes into the Phillippines. It looks to me like 6 CVs are blocking the route into the northern phillippines while a smaller CV TF of 2 smaller CVs and 4 to 6 CVLs is at work to block off the route into the Phillippines from Oz.

Counting 2 CVLs sunk and a couple more damaged ( + 3 CVs damaged ) then this appears to be everything the Japanese have. This shows the importance they attach to preventing me from getting into the Phillippines quickly --- which simply highlights how weak they must be.

So, the question becomes... When an enemy shows you his strength and this shows you what he fears just how far do you push it in making that fear become real for him?

I think I spoke before about certain weapon systems being strategic indicators... KB is a big strategic indicator for the Japs and, often, acts as nothing more than a big "Hey, if you attack where this is and succeed then I'll be utterly sc***ed."


The answer: obviously is that you show him a bigger fear he never realised he had... and then he realises that what he was protecting against was NOT the worst thing that could happen to him.