Notice that he specified "fixed" fortifications, which given the time period were things like the French Maginot Line or the German Atlantic Sea Wall.
The bottom line is that there is no "impenetrable fortress".
That doesn't mean that fortifications are stupid. What is stupid is to be so invested in a piece of terrain as to give up the ability to maneuver trying to hold it. The Russians have twice used a campaign of defensive action to good effect, first against Napoleon and second against the Third Reich.
The first problem with fixed fortifications is that they give the enemy an exact location of where you will be, and most likely when you will be there. This means that the enemy chooses the time for the battle even if you chose the place.
The second problem is that a defensive posture is inherently passive. How many men do you have guarding the others for the guard rotation? An old trick is to send small probing parties to bring a fortification to 100% alert for two or three days in a row, denying the defending force sleep while the attackers rest up for a massed assault.
In Vietnam the idea of mutually covering firebases took hold, and still the enemy was able to overrun several due to environmental factors such as weather making the use of air support and artillery impossible. The Soviets in Afghanistan (and the US Military in Iraq) congregated on large bases (GEN Petraeus used the troop surge to push combat power off of FOB's and into neighborhoods with good effect).
Infantry doctrine calls for an "offensively minded defense" meaning that the goal of the defense is still to close with and kill the enemy. Such an example would be to have an Engineer squad prepare dug in fighting positions along a route of egress so that the covering forces can slow the progress of a pursuing force. The Prussian "discipline of the spade" followed the Roman example and made the infantry dig in whenever stopped. A sound tactic for staying alive.
Now how do we apply these lessons to the American Militia? Well first don't get cornered in compounds or houses. The inevitable result is Ruby Ridge or Waco. To be effective you have to maintain the ability to maneuver, even if you don't have freedom of maneuver. After all the city fighting in Stalingrad saw entire regiments moved one man at a time through holes and tunnels single file.
To sum it up, always have an escape route. Better yet, have two or three. Because if you make it REALLY hard for the enemy to get in, you make it really hard for yourself to get out.
2 comments:
Read this the other day and it fits in here. Legs and maneuver are more important than a strong upper body, much more often than not...:
Lawrence’s masterstroke was an assault on the port town of Aqaba. The Turks expected an attack from British ships patrolling the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. Lawrence decided to attack from the east instead, coming at the city from the unprotected desert, and to do that he led his men on an audacious, six-hundred-mile loop—up from the Hejaz, north into the Syrian desert, and then back down toward Aqaba. This was in summer, through some of the most inhospitable land in the Middle East, and Lawrence tacked on a side trip to the outskirts of Damascus, in order to mislead the Turks about his intentions. “This year the valley seemed creeping with horned vipers and puff-adders, cobras and black snakes,” Lawrence writes in “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” of one stage in the journey:
We could not lightly draw water after dark, for there were snakes swimming in the pools or clustering in knots around their brinks. Twice puff-adders came twisting into the alert ring of our debating coffee-circle. Three of our men died of bites; four recovered after great fear and pain, and a swelling of the poisoned limb. Howeitat treatment was to bind up the part with snake-skin plaster and read chapters of the Koran to the sufferer until he died.
When they finally arrived at Aqaba, Lawrence’s band of several hundred warriors killed or captured twelve hundred Turks, and lost only two men. The Turks simply did not think that their opponent would be mad enough to come at them from the desert. This was Lawrence’s great insight. David can beat Goliath by substituting effort for ability—and substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula...
Patton was a boss general. I watched the movie a few weeks ago and I loved it
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