Offensive Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for Dominance

By Fouad Sabry

What is Offensive Warfare

An offensive is a military operation that seeks through an aggressive projection of armed forces to occupy or recapture territory, gain an objective or achieve some larger strategic, operational, or tactical goal. Another term for an offensive often used by the media is "invasion", or the more general "attack". An offensive is a conduct of combat operations that seek to achieve only some of the objectives of the strategy being pursued in the theatre as a whole. Commonly an offensive is carried out by one or more divisions, numbering between 10 and 30,000 troops as part of a combined arms manoeuvre.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Offensive (military)

Chapter 2: Battle

Chapter 3: Blitzkrieg

Chapter 4: Battle of Kursk

Chapter 5: Aerial warfare

Chapter 6: Operation Bagration

Chapter 7: Military operation

Chapter 8: Second Battle of Kharkov

Chapter 9: Combined operations

Chapter 10: Case Blue

(II) Answering the public top questions about offensive warfare.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Offensive Warfare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: May 26, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Offensive (military)

An offensive is a military action that aims to seize or regain territory, capture an objective, or accomplish a more significant strategic, operational, or tactical goal. The word invasion or the more broad assault are other terms for an offensive that are frequently used in the media. An offensive is the execution of combat operations that aims to accomplish only a portion of the goals of the overall theater plan. As part of a combined arms maneuver, one or more divisions with between 10 and 30,000 soldiers often carry out an offensive.

Although it was acknowledged that a defense phase would occur at some point throughout the execution, the offensive was thought to be the best strategy for achieving success.

Consider the number of troops on the side launching the offensive as a quick indicator of the offensive's size or breadth.

In a conflict between opponents, offensives are typically used to get the upper hand. They can be fought in the air, at sea, or on land.

A naval offensive, like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, can have enormous effects on national plans and calls for a sizable logistical investment to eliminate the naval capabilities of the adversary. In conflicts like the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, it can also be employed to blockade enemy shipping. Naval offensives can also be tactical, as seen by Operation Coronado IX carried out by the Mobile Riverine Force of the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.

Any number of distinct types of activities, typically limited to particular types of aircraft, might be referred to as an air offensive. Establishing air superiority in a certain air space or over a specific area is the main goal of offensives using fighter aircraft. The Allies made extensive use of bomber offensives, also referred to as strategic bombing offensives, during World War II. In the beginning stages of the Red Army's Operation Kutuzov and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev, when hundreds of Il-2 aircraft were utilized en masse to overwhelm the Wehrmacht's ground soldiers, the deployment of ground attack aircraft in support of ground offensives can be considered an air offensive.

A theatre offensive can be one of numerous components of a war if a country is engaged in multiple theaters of conflict, as the United Kingdom was in 1941, or it can be a war and a key element of a national security strategy. In the general theater, offensives call for the commitment of nearly 250,000 troops to combat operations, as well as joint planning involving many armed forces branches, such as the integration of air defense personnel into the broader ground operations strategy.

A strategic offensive, which is frequently a campaign, would involve the use of more than 100,000 troops as part of the overall conflict plan in a specific theatre. For instance, Operation Barbarossa, a theater offensive that took place in the Southern, Central, and Northern regions of USSR territory, consisted of three separate but related campaigns. During World War II, multi-front coordinated operations were a common feature of Soviet strategic offensive operations. These were the major military operations of the twentieth century, together with the Wehrmacht actions on the Eastern Front of World War II. Large-scale Soviet operations are listed in Strategic operations of the Red Army in World War II.

A strategic offensive combines all resources available for achieving specific goals that would fundamentally alter the balance of power between belligerents. It is the aggressive expression of war preparation and the use of strategic forces as a whole. However, as it is unrealistic, uneconomical, and impossible to conceal a full-scale rehearsal of large-scale operations, the planning and execution of strategic offensives are always based on theoretical considerations.

A strategic offensive consists of concurrent, tandem, or staged operational offensives that aim to accomplish certain operational goals that ultimately result in the accomplishment of a strategic goal, typically the total defeat of the opposition, but it can also include the destruction of a sizable enemy force or the occupation of strategically important territory, as in the case of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.

{End Chapter 1}

Chapter 2: Battle

A battle is a conflict that takes place in armed conflict between opposing military forces, regardless of their size or number. Typically, a war consists of numerous engagements. In general, a battle is a clearly defined military engagement in terms of time, space, and force commitment. Skirmishes are occasionally used to describe an interaction where there is little mutual commitment and no clear winner.

Rarely, the term battle will also be used to describe a complete operational campaign, despite the fact that this usage substantially deviates from the term's usual or conventional definition. Typically, a protracted combat encounter in which one or both fighters shared the same tactics, materials, and strategic goals throughout the encounter is referred to as a battle when describing such campaigns. The Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain, and the Battle of Stalingrad, all of which took place during World War II, are some notable examples of this.

Military strategy directs wars and military campaigns, whereas fights occur at an operational mobility level of preparation and execution. was how strategy worked.

The word battle is a loanword from the Old French bataille, first recorded in 1297, from the Late Latin battualia, meaning exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing, from the Late Latin beat, which is also where the English word battery comes from via Middle English batri..

With changes in the structure, employment, and technology of military forces, the definition of the conflict as a concept in military science has evolved. The ideal definition of a fight, according to English military historian John Keegan, is anything which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical collapse of one or both of them, although the causes and results of battles are rarely so easily summed up. When a conflict lasts more than a week, it is frequently because of planning and is referred to as an operation. When one side is unable to retire from combat, the other may arrange, confront, or force a battle.

A battle's main objective is always to accomplish a mission objective through the use of military force. When one of the opposing sides routs the other (i.e., forces it to withdraw or renders it militarily worthless for further combat operations) or annihilates the latter, resulting in their deaths or capture, the other is forced to renounce its purpose and surrender its forces. A conflict could result in a Pyrrhic triumph that eventually benefits the side that lost. A stalemate can happen in a battle if no solution is found. An insurgency frequently results from a disagreement where one side refuses to settle the issue through a frontal confrontation using conventional combat.

The bulk of fights up until the 19th century were brief, with many only lasting a few hours. (The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) and the Battle of Nations (1813) were remarkable in that they lasted three days.) This was primarily because it was challenging to equip mobile forces or carry out night operations. Typically, siege warfare was used to extend a combat. The First World War in the 20th century saw a dramatic evolution of trench warfare with its siege-like characteristics, extending the length of fights to days and weeks. As a result, unit rotation became necessary to prevent combat weariness, with troops ideally not being in a theater of operations for more than