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    Fighting And Winning Encircled
    Fighting And Winning Encircled
    Fighting And Winning Encircled
    Ebook77 pages56 minutes

    Fighting And Winning Encircled

    By Major Thomas H. Cowan Jr.

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    About this ebook

    This monograph answers the question “What must an encircled unit be provided and do in order to successfully hold?” Following the end of the Cold War and the subsequent drawdown, the United States adopted a military strategy of force projection. Given this new strategy, any future adversary of the United States is likely to attack early to deny the points of entry into the theater. The initial deploying U.S. forces must be prepared to fight and defend these points of entry until relieved or reinforced.

    The author uses historical examples of encirclements from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to support lessons learned during a major simulation exercise in which a division had to fight encircled. The report presents the preconditions that an operational commander must set for the encircled unit which are: provide the necessary combat power, apply external pressure on the enemy, maintain air superiority, provide logistical support, and give the tactical commander freedom of action. Then the report takes a systems perspective to analyze the tactical commander’s mission using the battlefield operating systems as a tool. The author presents the specific tasks the commander must execute and the concepts that he must consider. If the operational commander does not provide the necessary preconditions for success or the tactical commander does not take a systems perspective when setting up the defense, the encircled unit will fail.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTannenberg Publishing
    Release dateNov 6, 2015
    ISBN9781786252289
    Fighting And Winning Encircled

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      Book preview

      Fighting And Winning Encircled - Major Thomas H. Cowan Jr.

      This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – picklepublishing@gmail.com

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 2002 under the same title.

      © Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      FIGHTING ENCIRCLED AND WINNING

      By

      MAJ Thomas H. Cowan Jr., USA

      ABSTRACT

      This monograph answers the question What must an encircled unit be provided and do in order to successfully hold? Following the end of the Cold War and the subsequent drawdown, the United States adopted a military strategy of force projection. Given this new strategy, any future adversary of the United States is likely to attack early to deny the points of entry into the theater. The initial deploying U.S. forces must be prepared to fight and defend these points of entry until relieved or reinforced.

      The author uses historical examples of encirclements from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to support lessons learned during a major simulation exercise in which a division had to fight encircled. The report presents the preconditions that an operational commander must set for the encircled unit which are: provide the necessary combat power, apply external pressure on the enemy, maintain air superiority, provide logistical support, and give the tactical commander freedom of action. Then the report takes a systems perspective to analyze the tactical commander’s mission using the battlefield operating systems as a tool. The author presents the specific tasks the commander must execute and the concepts that he must consider. If the operational commander does not provide the necessary preconditions for success or the tactical commander does not take a systems perspective when setting up the defense, the encircled unit will fail.

      Section I: Introduction

      Background

      The fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989 will symbolize for all time the end of the Cold War. It symbolized an end to one of the largest build-ups of weapons in the history of humanity. Almost overnight the mighty military power of the former Soviet Union collapsed as the nation separated into several diverse parts. Many of the former members of the Warsaw Pact alliance began looking to the West for aid in attempts to create their own independent destinies. No one can argue that the end of the Cold War was a complete victory for the United States and its allies. However, this great victory was to create even greater problems.

      Just like at the end of every major conflict in its history, the United States military began a reduction in personnel strength after the Cold War. It could no longer justify its Cold War budget. The problem was determining what level of reduction. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States with a very unstable international situation. The bipolar world that had existed since the end of World War II had kept the rest of the world fairly stable even though its primary elements had been at odds with each other. The fall of the Iron Curtain left the United States as the sole superpower with a world full of potential hot spots but no major adversary. This new situation called for a change in strategy.

      The United States could no longer predict with a high degree of certainty where the next conflict would be. There was also a need to reduce the force. The public outcry against having a large force deployed overseas caused the United States to change its old strategy of forward-deployed forces. A new strategy of power projection became the national approach. Force projection is what the army called its part of the power projection strategy. FM 100-5, Operations, defines force projection as the demonstrated ability to rapidly alert, mobilize, deploy, and operate anywhere in the world.{1} The strategy of force projection was to receive its first major test in the fall of 1990.

      In the early morning hours of 2

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