The post on attrition from earlier this year is here.
First, let’s get something straight.
Maneuver is not the absence of attrition.
Maneuver is not the absence of attrition.
Maneuver is not the absence of attrition.
Attrition should enable maneuver. Maneuver should enable even more attrition. The intent of any plan should not be to win while not attriting the enemy. The point of maneuver is to achieve an advantageous position against the portions of the enemy force which are weak (critical vulnerabilities) and/or on which they depend (centers of gravity) so that you can attrit them.
The Ukrainians are providing great examples of maneuver warfare. At various points, they have targeted Russian ammunition dumps and Russian command and control nodes. These are both critical vulnerabilities as the Russian Armed Forces are extremely poor at both logistics and command and control. Even though the Ukrainians are attriting those things, even though lots of Russian soldiers and materiel is being destroyed, it is maneuver warfare. Not attrition warfare.
These two ideas, maneuver warfare and attrition warfare, are commonly called styles of warfare but it's better to think about them as two tactical theories of victory. Attrition warfare seeks victory solely by attrition, causing enough casualties and damage to convince the opponent to give up. Maneuver warfare seeks purposeful attrition to certain components of the enemy system that, when destroyed, mean that the system as a whole can only function in a degraded manner or not at all. At which point, that degraded state can be exploited to defeat the force, usually through even more attrition. This is exactly what is happening to the Russian forces in Ukraine- they are operating in a degraded manner.
One theory is not better than the other. Even if we were to stick to these two tactical theories of victory, and I’m on the record for years saying that we should not, certain operating contexts may call for one or the other. A military may be called upon to pursue one or the other even as others may only be suited to one or the other. The Marine Corps, for example, is by size, equipment, roles, and responsibilities only suited for maneuver warfare. Because it is a small forward-deployed, crisis response, medium-weight expeditionary force, it has to assume that it will always be outnumbered and outgunned until follow-on forces arrive. An attrition warfare Marine Corps would be a suicide squad, and any force that is heavily outnumbered and outgunned should be very deliberate about adopting an attrition-focused theory of victory. It is only a good idea in some situations, like for a guerrilla force for example.
Which is why recent depictions of naval warfare as inherently attritional is worrisome. The U.S. Navy is outnumbered, outgunned, and out of balance in comparison with its pacing threat. Moreover, the PLAN can be regenerated, both in terms of repair and rebuilds, faster than the U.S. Navy. Adopting an attritional, lethality uber alles tactical theory of victory is probably not the right call. The U.S. Navy is not a guerilla force and it increasingly lacks the capacity to perform its basic peacetime functions. The belief that it has the capacity to survive an attrition fight- distributed or not- against the PLAN is preposterous.
Another poor depiction of maneuver is in recent criticisms leveled at the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 reforms. The effort has been depicted as “attritional” because there is a lot of focus on increasing the Marine Corps’ ability to destroy enemy ships and aircraft. If the focus is purely on the Marine Corps, this seems to make sense since the Marine Corps’ ability to maneuver against ships is limited. But when the Marine Corps is properly viewed as part of the larger maritime fight, these platforms are intended to use attrition to deny sea and air space to the enemy force. Sea and air space denied to the enemy force becomes available to the Navy, Air Force, or partnered naval and air forces to use as maneuver space. The attrition is purposeful for a larger, maneuver-centric campaign. It is thus an application of maneuver warfare and falls right in line with the Marine Corps’ philosophy and its traditional role supporting a naval campaign.
Still another critique, this time of recent Army doctrinal changes, also misuses the word maneuver. In this article, it is used synonymously with mechanized maneuver forces. Maneuver warfare seeks any advantageous angle or method against an enemy force, not just the positional maneuver at which mechanized forces excel. Investment in fires-centric organizations like the multi-domain task forces does not necessarily mean a turn away from maneuver just because the term is shared by a style of warfare and certain types of units.
The “Styles of Warfare” section of MCDP-1 Warfighting takes great pains to describe this interaction and states that the styles are not mutually exclusive. Yet, they are continually confused and misrepresented in myriad venues, even by retired Marines presumably very familiar with a philosophy that was designed and promulgated during their careers. If the Marine Corps should decide to revise MCDP-1, this component should be the first to go.