Manœuvre Warfare 

I am a former USMC concepts and doctrine writer myself (I worked with John Schmitt on MCDP 1 and was the primary author of MCDP 1-1 and 1-2, etc.). This is a solid enough treatment of maneuver warfare at the tactical level. However, it incorporates a very serious flaw typical of many (by no means all) John Boyd and Sun Tzu "fans," who have an unfortunate tendency to sneer at and misrepresent other important thinkers, especially Clausewitz. For instance, a couple of years ago a lecturer on Sun Tzu visiting the National War College stated that the MCDPs "managed to avoid all that Clausewitz nonsense." Note, unfortunately for that argument, that MCDP 1 mentions Clausewitz's name 22 times (all positively), Boyd 6 times, and Sun Tzu 5. A quick look at the chapter and section titles will quickly inform anybody actually familiar with these writers that this document is very heavily influenced by the infamous "dead German." Schmitt does indeed consider himself a "Sun Tzu guy," while I am a pretty committed "Clausewitz guy," but we were very much on the same page throughout the writing of the MCDPs. That's because these three geniuses are far better understood as a team rather than as competitors--they are seldom truly in opposition to one another, though it is easy to create false conflicts by juxtaposing juicy quotations ripped out of their larger contexts. While Captain Grazier recognizes the importance of Clausewitz, he evidently cannot resist the pointless urge to flip him off anyway. If you're going to attack the guy, at least pronounce his name right: who's "Cloushwhitz"?

I'm so glad somebody finally put up a competent and well done video on Maneuver Warfare on youtube. I was actually thinking of doing it myself, but not as well done as this. Thanks for this video, hope you make more.

Thank you very much for this most motivating essay! As a German, of course, I am running to the support of Clausewitz: As far as I understand him, one of his central ideas is "friction" - and, even more, to accept friction as an essential and unevitable experience in war. His first concern are the pretty good generals who are making pretty good plans - without giving room for the unexpected, the mistakes, the errors and the bad wheather, i.e. - for the "frictions". A perfect example how not to do it would be the almost failed British attack on Goose Green during the Falkland campaign, where the brilliant and brave (but probably somewhat over-ambitious) Colonel Jones developed an almost perfect plan, which had only one weak point: It didn´t work, because of some unexpected stiff resistance. Instead of moving his schwerpunkt to the other (right) flank, he stubbornly went on, trying to break through, mit dem Kopf durch die Wand. If I remember correctly, Col. Jones had made something like a six-phases-plan for the battle, almost a screenplay. But not even the Argies did the favour to stick to it. On the other hand, the old Moltke (another one of our dear dead Germans) said, famously, no operational plan survives the first battle. This means: Prepare for everythink, and react to the unexpected. Clausewitz, again, spoke of strategy as an art, just because of this need for creative improvisation. Here the solutions lies with the Auftragstaktik, which gives to the commanders on the spot the liberty and responsibility to act freely in the best interest of the given mission. Clausewitz had experienced bad leadership as a young officer in the battle of Auerstädt in 1806, when the Prussians didn´t dare to attack an inferior French force. Other than Col. Jones the Prussian commander didn´t have any plan at all, not even a perfect one, and when he was shot, his deputy (and, even worse, the Prussian king) didn´t do anything at all - but letting the infantery stand and die in the line of fire. Very stimulating are the tactical situations you develop! Some years ago I read Lind´s Manoeuver handbook; I understood he holds a liking for the deep strike. So I would think that your flanking attacks are closing to early, especially with enemy tank reserve in front of them. I guess Bill Lind would lead the atttackers force strike further - this would move the action from a tactical to an operative solution, maybe similiar to the decisive breakthrough at Sedan in 1940 - which definitely "went for the king"! That being a brilliant comparison of yours! You see how inspiring you are! Thank you very much! Herzliche Grüße aus Deutschland, Ihr Burkhart Berthold

Dear Mr. Grazier, thank you for this refreshing and philosophical presentation.

VERY well executed, text, examples, and graphics. Timely too as petrified thinking can be locked into the reset of "getting back to sea roots."

Superb is the word. I am astounded by the clarity of thought. Well presented and my compliments to you. Brigadier V Mahalingam (Retired), Indian Army

Thank you for this interesting Keynote. Greetings from Germany from a former Panzergrenadier, Divisional HQ staff company of the former 13th PzGrenDiv

This is great stuff. I can't get enough of maneuver warfare and Boyd. It applies everywhere and the Boyd Cycle (the real one) is a work of genius.

It took me about 60 seconds to understand this concept. But I kept watching.

As an old (enlisted) infantry soldier the one thing that I most dislike about Boyd-related theories is how they are, despite their "non-expert" claims, not applicable to the "non-experts" at lowest level of the military organization - the 4-man team. The "mindset" as taught by Col Boyd is not universal and was never meant to be. If there is one criticism that can be leveled against the venerable colonel, it is that he did not fully understand or accept why certain parts of the military (the Army) conducted matters the way they did. Near as I can tell neither The Colonel nor his followers had any interest in this essential self-learning. If the ideas are "difficult" and cannot be explained in terms understandable to your "average grunt", then it will never find application at that level. As an example, Boyd theory doesn't properly explain situations like Dien Bien Phu - even when basic or "average grunt" explanations exist. The fact Boyd theory expressly refuses to either acknowledge or build upon the existing grunt wisdom (i.e., OCOKA, the Principles of Patrolling, et al) exhibits the very same distractive thinking that led General Navarre to fortify his Assembly Area rather than formulate a coherent battle plan against the enemy. Westmoreland further proved, at Khe Sanh, that at best such ways of thinking are in the end pyrrhic. The second-handed nature of the psychological appeals in Boyd theory are also odd to me. Why is psychology given second shift to this "unexplainable" officer only stuff? Wouldn't the theory be better served if it could coherently explain to a grunt how a 4-man team can use psychology to advance it's given mission? I will never understand why Col Boyd flipped the table over a matter so universal as OCOKA; who in their right mind would choose to follow in the operational footsteps of General Henri Navarre? No amount of vehicle technology or "creative thinking" will get a ground commander out of poorly chosen terrain, doubly so if the ground commander didn't choose the terrain he was installed upon!

Just wanted to say thank you for posting this video. I started researching John Boyd and now have an actually some coherent level of understanding of Sun Tzu. I have been excited and constantly learning during the journey for knowledge this video started. Thank you.

Thanks for caring to share your profound wisdom on living stone art of dead silent craft hidden in between dark sciences and deep spaces optics communications engineering dense military industry complexes combined strategic application technology spectrums.

"I must break you" great line....

You should be considered a national treasure, though for this thought I may have written it under emotions. E: If not a treasure at least an admirable educator

To be an expert in a subject means that you've studied a subject exclusively for a significant period of time (measured in years for any non trivial subject). It does not mean that one knows everything about that subject. In fact, the more you know.(the higher the level of expertise) the more you understand how much you don't know about the subject.

This is excellent!!! Captain Grazier, please do more of these!!!

I just read a book Called The Marine Corps Way Of War. Really good in depth book on this topic.

Thank you Capt

Like commented and subscribed 👍

Can you please write out the full reference list shown at timestamp 2:38 - some of the titles (and authors) are not easy to read - thank you for the video it was really well done

Great job. Thank you.

very good presentation and explanation, hard work appreciated, kindly do post the links for mcdp docs for perusal

excellent video, well crafted, very comprehensive

A point of importance if i may: A competent enemy will not offer an open flank to allow you to bypass and jump straight to exploitation. You will have to create it yourself with a frontal breakthrough. Which means massing combat power at a narrow objective to achieve local numerical superiority. Which means bloody combat. Now, if the breakthrough point happens to be a weaker position all the better. But even in this day and age the means of acquiring knowledge about enemy disposition and where he is the weakest are limited. Deception can go a long way when preparing for such a breakthrough but still you have to be ready for bloody frontal combat. Over reliance on outmaneuvering the enemy will prove costly if you lack the "full frontal" mentality required to open the enemy lines for maneuver. I fully disagree when such breakthrough assaults are viewed as attritionist mentality. Quite the contrary, they are the big and most important enablers of maneuver warfare.

This explanation is simply put great. Thank you Dan. Is it okay to download it?

would you be able to skip the attack phase, if the enemy had superiour intelligence. if they knew that your attempts at exploitation and attempts to seed chaos were hollow, would you still be able to continue this strategy. on the modern battlefield, with satellites and sensors and networking, if maneuver as we used to think about it, may need a bit of a change.what that is? i dont know...

It's easier to just overwhelm the enemy with extreme firepower. But maneuver makes you feel like you're Napoleon or Alexander or Hannibal.

Thank you for the guide on how to attack france!

This is a very good presentation. Thank you for your service and adding knowledge/value to others. Quick question, do you have a Website or PDF list of the books you've read to help with this presentation? I can see some of the titles in the video but others are hard to discern.

Fascinating!

Just a question Dan. The two pages with old language, is it written in Medieval Danish or Medieval Swedish? Probably the latter.

1:10 No i wasn't wrong. Its a 2d shape

The problem I have with how we teach maneuver warfare at TBS is the lack of context and past developments that influenced it today. We don’t teach how it evolved from Napoleon, Clausewitz analysis, Helmoth Von Moltke, Heinz Guderian (influenced by Mongolian mounted speed warfare), and later Boyd/Lind. For example, Napoleon won against the Australians at the battle of Ulm by just maneuvering around his enemy making it look like he was surrounded.

This is the sort of thing I had hoped to learn in the Corps. But alas I was enlisted, and a field music. Smh.

The Alcyoneus Principle makes sense

I still feel like maneuver warfare, even though its probably a good strategy has been morphed through public discourse into be like Desert Storm and Blitzkrieg and not Vietnam or Afghanistan

Ah, los árboles y el biswue

A pyramid is not a shape, its a geometric body

Some one please explain to me how Wagner happened, and somehow wastedtheir momentous outcome? Seriously this probably the most expensive outcome, Unless it was a typical maneuver tactics of diverting experienced expectation. And if so brav-fucking-o, tho I fucking doubt it

Very interesting lecture - I loved the use of contrasting Clausewitz and Sun Tzu to illustrate the _Manuever_ concept. However I found it a bit ironic that he used the 2003 Iraq war (apologies for forgetting the op's name) to illustrate it. Although I acknowledge that he only was speaking about the opening decapitation of their command and control and the simultaneous actions taken by us and our allies in the field, it seems that from a macro perspective with regard to our* use of _Manuever_ in that war, one or a combination of the following must be true: 1. it was nonexistent, i.e. not employed 2. it was used so minimally as to render it ineffective 3. it was employed with such incompetence that it was effectively nonexistent The plan for what to do (following what was as near as a 100% probability of victory that one force can have over another) was obviously completely misguided. To lose control of the situation such that we did so soon after we had so quickly and dominantly achieved victory over their forces showed that we absolutely operated without _Manuever_ after the primary fighting was concluded. * Here, I am referring to the war's highest strategic planners such as Rumsfeld, not the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who actually fought the war.

wow

Rah 🤙

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I’m here because of Enders game lmao

I sadly don't think Manœuvre Warfare is a realistic option for the U.S. military. Attrition is simply a much bigger business. Just think of the Iraq invasion in 2003. All that firepower brought in, even though the Iraqi army was only a shadow of it self. Martin Van Creveld, not sure where I read it, but in one of his writings, he pointed out the vast number of Apache Helicopters, even though there really never was any need for them. Maybe he wrote it in his book "Supplying War".

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You asked me what shape I see, which happened to he the same shapes illustrated then showed a different shape to tell me THAT is what I saw, which was not the same as the other three. every step of that was incorrect - deception failed

This is a great job thanks for sharing I wish to communicate with you if ok

28:00 - How Ukraine took back Kharkiv as well as the Donbas Airport (and counting)

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You uttered an extreme misconception of boxing.

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Vê se o mesmo valor do cartão do meu pai e o valor e o valor da entrada da passagem da manhã e a noite eu não vou poder fazer a cirurgia do

Is it true that the military recommends reading Ender's Game?

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ooda loop has been debunked tho

I cannot be impressed with Sun Tzu. Any man who cannot organize 12 women without first cruelly murdering two of them is nothing in my esteem. By all means read his book. You can be sure your enemy has. If he is very clever he will anticipate that you have as well and plan accordingly. That is the moment you will thoroughly surprise and confuse him by doing something UnSun Tzu.

physically remove, so to speak

Darn it. I thought this was manure warfare. Unsubscibed..