Mongol use The
Mongol emperor
Genghis Khan used a military system of maneuver warfare that focused on rapid, decisive maneuver, utilizing the skill and endurance of his Mongol horsemen. He used operational maneuver, command and control, deception, and precise battlefield tactics which were vastly superior to those of his opponents in China, Russia, Persia, and Eastern Europe and defeated virtually every enemy army that he faced. An example of his usage of maneuver warfare was the defeat and annexation of the
Khwarazmian Empire between 1219 and 1221 CE, which wielded an army nearly three times the Mongol army, in just a few months of fighting. The Mongol army's constant movement and maneuvering tied down the Khwarazmian forces, denying them the ability to gain the initiative as well as shocked and demoralized the Khwarazmian Shah
Ala ad-Din Muhammad as well as his army, thus ending the campaign before the Shah could bring to bear his much larger numbers.
Napoleon's use Similar strategies are also possible using suitably trained infantry.
Napoleon I used preemptive movements of cavalry and fast infantry to interrupt the initial deployment of enemy forces. This allowed his forces to attack where and when he wanted, enabling
force concentration, possibly in combination with
advantage of terrain. It disabled effective coordination of enemy forces, even when they were superior in numbers. That was effective tactically and strategically. During his time as a general and indeed his power base to become the head of France, Napoleon's reputation was based on a powerful and fluid campaign in northern Italy, opposing the numerically superior Austrians. He cited
Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne as one major source of his strategy. He trained a normal, if rather undisciplined,
French Army of Italy into moving faster than most thought possible. That was partially because his army lived off the land and had no big logistical "tail." Both his ability to move huge armies to give battle where he wanted and the style of his choice would become legendary, and he was seen as undefeatable, even against larger and superior forces. Napoleon also arranged his forces into what would be known in the present as "battle groups" of
combined arms formations to allow faster reaction time to enemy action. That strategy is an important quality in supporting the effectiveness of maneuver warfare and was used again by
Carl von Clausewitz. Napoleon's principal strategy was to move fast to engage before the enemy had time to organize, to engage lightly while moving to turn the flank that defended the main resupply route, to envelop and deploy blocking forces to prevent reinforcement, and to defeat those contained in the envelopment in detail. All of those activities imply faster movement than the enemy as well as faster reaction times to enemy activities. His use of fast mass marches (
forced foot marches) to gain strategic advantage, cavalry probes, and screens to hide his movements; deliberate movement to gain psychological advantage by isolating forces from one another; and their headquarters are all hallmarks of maneuver warfare. One of his major concerns was the relatively slow speed of infantry movement relative to the cavalry. It was that and subsequent defeats that caused a major doctrinal reevaluation by the Prussians under Clausewitz of the revealed power of maneuver warfare. The results of that review were seen in the
Franco-Prussian War.
Mechanization In the mid-19th century, various forms of mechanized transport were introduced, starting with trains running on
steam power. That resulted in significant logistic improvements. Opposing armies were no longer limited in speed by the pace of march. Some train-borne maneuvering took place during the
American Civil War in the 1860s, but the sizes of the armies involved meant that the system could provide only limited support.
Armored trains were among the first
armored fighting vehicles employed by mankind. During the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians, knowing that the French could field a larger army than theirs, made a plan that required speed by surrounding the French strongpoints and destroying or bypassing them; it was called the
Kesselschlacht, or 'cauldron battle'. The remainder of the army could advance unopposed to take important objectives. If war was declared, Prussia could quickly
mobilize and invade. That tactic was used to devastating effect in 1870 since Prussian forces surrounded and defeated French forces, captured
Napoleon III and
besieged Paris. The Germans' battle plans for
World War I were similar. Germany attempted to repeat the "knock-out blow" against the French armies in the
Schlieffen Plan. However, technology evolved significantly in the preceding four decades; both the
machine gun and more powerful
artillery shifted the balance of power toward the defense. All combatants were desperate to get the
front moving again, but that proved to be difficult. Germany introduced new tactics with
infiltration and
stormtrooper "
shock troops" toward the end of World War I to bypass resistance. Russian general
Aleksei Brusilov used similar tactics in 1916 on the Eastern Front during the
Brusilov Offensive. The introduction of fully armored tanks, in a series of increasingly successful operations, presented a way out of the deadlock of attrition and
trench warfare, but World War I ended before the British would field thousands of tanks to be put in a large-scale offense. Fuller had proposed
Plan 1919 to use tanks to break through the lines and then to wreak havoc on the German lines of supply and communication. During the interwar period, the British developed ideas for fully-mechanized all-arms warfare with the
Experimental Mechanized Force. The Germans reviewed their doctrine and revised their approach by expanding on infiltration tactics and amplifying them with motor transport.
Heinz Guderian was a leading proponent of armored combat. The German military stressed several key elements: versatile tanks combined with mobile infantry and artillery, close air support, rapid movement and concentration of forces (
Schwerpunkt), and aggressive independent local initiative. All was strictly coordinated by radio and contributed to new tactics during the
Battle of France in 1940. Theories in Germany about armored warfare have some similarities with interwar theories of British officers
J.F.C. Fuller and
B. H. Liddell Hart, which the British army failed to embrace and understand fully. There are similarities between
blitzkrieg and the Soviet concept of "
deep battle," which the Soviets used to great effect in 1944 and continued to use as a doctrine during the
Cold War.
Soviet deep battle In the Soviet Union during the 1920s and the 1930s, the concept of "deep battle" was developed and integrated into the
Red Army field regulations doctrine by Marshal
Mikhail Tukhachevsky. That led to the creation of
cavalry mechanised groups during World War II and to
operational maneuver groups during the Cold War.
Maoist China Mobile warfare () is a military strategy of the
People's Republic of China employing
conventional forces on fluid fronts with units maneuvering to exploit opportunities for tactical surprise, or where a local superiority of forces can be realized. One of early CCP leader
Mao Zedong's three forms of warfare (), mobile warfare was the primary form of warfare used by
Chinese communist forces from the early 1930s to the conclusion of the
Chinese Civil War. The other two forms of warfare that Mao defined in
On Protracted War,
guerrilla warfare () and positional warfare (), were less frequently employed. The US Marine manual goes on to say: "This is not to imply that firepower is unimportant. On the contrary, firepower is central to maneuver warfare. Nor do we mean to imply that we will pass up the opportunity to physically destroy the enemy. We will concentrate fires and forces at decisive points to destroy enemy elements when the opportunity presents itself and when it fits our larger purposes." The possibility of a massive Soviet offensive in Western Europe led to the creation of the US Army's
AirLand battle doctrine. Though far from focusing on maneuver, it emphasized using
combined arms to disrupt an enemy's plan by striking through their depth and was seen as moving toward maneuver warfare in comparison to the earlier active defense concept. The AirLand doctrine was seen by
Martin van Creveld as "arguably a half way house between maneuver and attrition".
British air maneuver doctrine The British Joint Forces are limited to consider
air assault or
airmobile operations in their 2016 publication "Joint Doctrine Note on Air Manoeuvre".
Limitations in a modern context A key requirement for success in maneuver warfare is up-to-date accurate intelligence on the disposition of key enemy command, support, and combat units. In operations whose intelligence is either inaccurate, unavailable, or unreliable, the successful implementation of strategies based on maneuver warfare can become problematic. When faced with a maneuverable opponent capable of redeploying key forces quickly and discreetly or when tempered, the capacity of maneuver warfare strategies to deliver victory becomes more challenging. The
2006 Lebanon War is an example of such shortcomings being exposed. Despite overwhelming firepower and complete air superiority, Israeli forces were unable to deliver a decisive blow to the command structure of
Hezbollah or to degrade its effective capacity to operate. Although inflicting heavy damage, Israel was unable to locate and destroy Hezbollah's diluted force dispositions or to neutralize key command centers. Therefore, it did not meet its war aims. The
insurgency in Iraq also demonstrates that a military victory over an opponent's conventional forces does not automatically translate into a political victory. Some military theorists such as
William Lind and Colonel
Thomas X. Hammes propose to overcome the shortcomings of maneuver warfare with the concept of what they call
fourth generation warfare. For example, Lieutenant-Colonel S.P. Myers writes that "maneuver is more a philosophical approach to campaign design and execution than an arrangement of tactical engagements". Myers goes on to write that maneuver warfare can evolve and that "maneuverist approach in campaign design and execution remains relevant and effective as a counter-insurgency strategy at the operational level in contemporary operations." In the early stages of the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia's advances were stalled by Ukraine's widespread deployment of
man-portable anti-tank missiles. The scholar
Seth Jones argued that Russia was forced to abandon maneuver warfare after an inept failure to apply combined arms, forcing a transition to a war of attrition. Ukrainian forces attempted to use maneuver warfare during the
2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive but their advances became stalled due to Russian prepared defenses in the form of minefields and trenches. Later in the war, Ukrainian forces used maneuver warfare more effectively during the start of the
2024 Kursk Oblast incursion where Russian forces initially struggled to repel the attack. However, that advance later stalled. According to Michael Kofman "Russian forces do far better when they're operating with prepared defense, fixed lines, more on positional warfare." == See also ==