Focusing on the latter, both yes and no.
The basic tenets of the Soviet concept of operations were as follows:
- Extreme exertion of force at the very beginning of a war.
- Simultaneity of actions.
- Economy of forces.
- Concentration.
- Chief objective - the enemy's army.
- Surprise.
- Unity of action.
- Preparation.
- Energetic pursuit.
- Security.
- Initiative and dominance over the enemy's will.
- Strength where the enemy is weak.
(Thanks, FM100-2-1!
)
They were to use simultaneity, aggression, and a high rate of advance. Any of the axes of the attack could become the main axis of advance. The emphasis was very much on bypassing resistance to penetrate deeply into the enemy's depth, which could be achieved either by flanking (as you said) or simply by breaking the enemy up into isolated groups that could then be isolated and enveloped as necessary whilst continuing the drive deep into the heart of enemy territorynote .
As we discussed a while back, this is perfectly capable of being translated into a sci-fi context. This is a very gross simplification, but I do think it's a salutary lesson in how RL tactics - particularly modern ones - can be used to devise their sci-fi successors.
edited 8th Dec '14 1:44:06 PM by Flanker66
Locking you up on radar since '09This came up a lot in the memoirs of Confederate General James Longstreet concerning the Battle of Gettysburg, he says the plan he and General Lee agreed to after invading the North was to find a good defensive ground that threatened Washington or other major cities to force the Union army to attack them on terrain favoring the Confederates. The Union would then be defeated after fruitlessly smashing itself against rebel defenses.
Somehow, everything after the "invade the North" part end up playing out in the exact opposite manner.
Ah, so amphibious warfare require actual landing-craft then? The original uses of the term were much more vague, offering real methodology as to how it should be achieved, all that stuff with tanks and aircraft was added on later, so my version, a fast powerful force to break enemy lines and attack the command structure, is in fact viable.
Blitzkrieg is more than just a decapitation strike. The strategy is to bust through enemy lines as possible, preferably with tanks, and driving as deep into hostile territory as possible. This isolates enemy units, cutting them off from command and supply. Special emphasis was on combined arms in order to maximize firepower at key locations.
Matt II: Apples and oranges comparison. Especially considering amphibious is a broad category and Blitzkrieg is a specific one that refers to mechanized warfare which used aircraft and artillery operate. Kind of hard to have mechanized warfare without mechanized units.
edited 9th Dec '14 1:07:30 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?"Blitzkrieg" in German means "lightning war" as in a type of warfare to beat the enemy quickly, efficiently and as bloodlessly (to your side) as possible.
"Blitzkrieg" in the sense of that definition was practiced by Alexander III of Macedonia against the Persians at Gaugamela.
A fast, mobile, efficient type of warfare that ended up defeating the enemy (Darius) with surprisingly low losses to Alexander and disproportionate losses to the Persian Empire. It likely shortened Alexander's conquest and the suffering of human life in the process thereof by some time, exactly what blitzkrieg intends to do.
Modern military ego however is quick to try and claim Blitzkrieg The Doctrine as modern requiring tanks and fighter jets and all that hoopla. They however forget that many actions of blitzkrieg historically from Alexander's time to the first invasions of Poland and France in WW 2 LACKED many of these things. Many areas of operations in Poland in 1939 didn't have a lot of mechanization on the part of the Wehrmacht especially in the tanks part. But they did have superior maneuver speed over a sluggish WW 1/19th century style fight. This higher maneuver speed and intensity to not let it bog down into a defensive fight quickly robbed the Polish of their ability to fight off the Germans, just as Alexander's chariot tactics robbed the Persians of their ability to defend against the Greeks.
Tom: I am afraid you are flat out wrong both factually and historically. First it is not military ego but what blitzkrieg is defined as, a mechanized strategy using that technology to achieve it. It is literally impossible to translate to ancient times period. The earliest you get for anything close is the start mechanized tactics in WWI at the very end of the of the war. There is zero analog in ancient times to all the components that are considered part of blitzkrieg. The basis and theory for blitzkrieg started out during the first World War. Second the invasion of Poland extensively used Mechanized infantry, tanks, and air support, along with artillery.
The famous incident that the Polish cavalry supposedly charging tanks it wasn't tanks but the mechanized infantry with armed APC's that drove off the Polish. The Polish had attacked a motorized company of Germans in the first place meaning soft skinned unarmored vehicles. When the APC's showed up they fought for a short bit then retreated.
Before Poland the German's were testing the theories in Spain during the Spanish civil war.
Alexander did not practice Blitzkrieg. It is physically and technologically impossible for him to have done so. He had common foot infantry no mechanized units. He had fairly standard cavalry not tanks. He had zero artillery and air support. Oh and try actually reading how that battle went. It isn't even close to how blitzkrieg is carried out.
Oh and before I forget again. Bltizkrieg is not a low risk maneuver it is a high risk one because of the nature of the contact required to make it work. If you want a nice clear example of how costly that is when it fails read up on the Battle of the Bulge.
You can't shoe horn this one in folks it simply does not work it is literally impossible. There are no analogs to fill in the roles that make a blitzkrieg possible.
edited 9th Dec '14 5:09:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?A tank is just a big heavy horse that needs more gasoline to get anywhere. A Jeep is a slightly smaller big heavy horse that similarly requires gasoline. Fighter planes are just big heavy horses that need a whole lot more fuel and can fly higher (which is why only officers get to fly planes, instead of letting us rank and file footmen do anything fun).
Sure if you are talking in the sense of My Horse Is a Motorbike. It would be one impressive horse that hauled around all that armor plate, a crew of 3-5, a few machine guns, could go as far at pace none stop without rest, and packed a cannon. You could say such a horse would have quite a bit of kick.
Or a horse that could haul a fully kitted out assault squad and mount things like AT weapons, Machine guns, light artillery, and flame throwers.
Flying horses lol. Boy talk about improvised ordinance and pissing like a race horse takes on a whole new meaning.
Who watches the watchmen?The point is that the broad idea behind blitzkrieg — attacking rapidly to break the defending force up into easily-digestible chunks while denying them the opportunity to make a unified response — is not restricted to mechanized forces. You can be pedantic about it an insist that blitzkrieg only refers to the specific strategy used by Nazi Germany early in WWII, but that seems to be a distinction without a difference. Why bother saying "blitzkrieg-like tactics" instead of just "blitzkrieg" when you mean "exactly like blitzkrieg in every relevant way, except using the forces available at that time and place instead of the forces available to Nazi Germany early in WWII"?
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.There is being pedantic and then there is actually bothering to do some reading and pointing out you grossly oversimplified and shoe horned something where it doesn't fit. You don't like being wrong that is just too damn bad.
It would take you five seconds to realize you can't translate blitkrieg into ancient history by any stretch of the imagination. This term has been defined and used to describe something specific. All you are doing is shoehorning.
edited 9th Dec '14 10:32:22 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?Because that might introduce some confusion regarding what Alexander and other ancient military commanders did. Hitler used Blitzkreig to take significant amounts of territory before his enemies could mobilize to defend them. That isnt what happened at Gaugamela. The frontal assault Alexander used there was entirely tactical- the Persians were already organized in line and the Greeks attacked it using more or less a full frontal assault. They did get a little tricky by concentrating on one flank, and then attacking in the center, but that's not Blitzkreig.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Well I have been looking at my webcomic in production Endless and I noted that there was a lot of potential for the USCF (United Space Colony Federation) to have black ops or even their own Waffen SS.
So I started thinking the Red Shoulders from VOTOMS and then I started wondering. What other black ops groups in fiction are there?
edited 10th Dec '14 8:24:31 AM by EchoingSilence

Compare to "Shock and Awe", which is actually a pretty appropriate translation of "Blitzkrieg"