Battleplan 01. Blitzkrieg (19 of 19)

Battleplan

In the ''break through'' and ''strike deep'' phases of the battleplan, the technological balance between each side and its enemy played a crucial role.
Except in the air, the Germans had no advantage in numbers or equipment.
They achieved overwhelming force where it was needed by grouping their Panzer Divisions together and using them ruthlessly.
In contrast, the Americans used the enormous technological superiority of their weapons and communications to overwhelm an enemy which theoretically outnumbered them.
But there were cautionary final notes which showed that even a hi-tech Blitzkrieg is exposed to the same inherent problems that the Germans encountered in 1940.
The Germans faced two attempted counterattacks, but both were poorly co-ordinated and ineffective.

The psychological power of their Blitzkrieg had stunned their enemy.
The American combat units had little problem with the regular lraqi army or even the Republican Guard.
Their problems came further back.
The skill of the American logistics units helped to sustain the extraordinarily rapid advance, but only up to the same sort of 250-mile distance that the Germans had achieved, then, even with trucks and helicopters rather than feet and horses, a halt became inevitable.
And for the Americans this long logistics train turned out to be vulnerable to guerrilla action by relatively unsophisticated enemy troops.
It was a different form of counterattack which could have caused major problems, had the lraqis used it more consistently.
The major problems that the Coalition would later face - the follow-up phase of Blitzkrieg - came only after the amazing success of the Blitzkrieg battleplan.
But this only emphasises another lesson that the Germans had learned over 60 years before - that, ultimately, a mass army is needed on the ground to secure it after the first rapid victories.
For the long-term future, there was a new factor.
The lesson of Operation lraqi Freedom, l think, is that you can either have a large force that moves slowly or a small force that moves quickly, but you can't have a large force that moves rapidly.
l think we'll see in the future a great deal of use of the Blitzkrieg battleplan, but on a smaller scale.
It 's unlikely that we'll see a repetition of the large-scale Blitzkrieg attacks of the Second World War or even of Desert Storm until someone solves the problem of large battle tanks that require six gallons of fuel for every mile they travel.
The wheel has come full circle in the battleplan for Blitzkrieg.
Once again, the way commanders fight this fast-moving, hard-hitting type of warfare is being limited by the capability of the technology available.
Blitzkrieg awaits its next revolution.