The US Army, for example, constantly had to defend its own air power in the shape of helicopters and unarmed fixed-wing aircraft, against the US Air Force’s claims that it could provide all the troop lift and fire support that was needed. Hence the Army was tempted to make extravagant claims for its transport and gunship helicopters, and even set up an all-helicopter airborne cavalry division.

The Marine Corps, by contrast, did not have this problem, since it possessed its own integral air force of fast jets. It did not need helicopter gunships, simply because it could call up its own Phantoms. Nor did it believe in the small

Huey utility helicopter, preferring the much larger Sea Knights and Jolly Green Giants that were better adapted to operating from ships. The US Navy, meanwhile, feeling that it should take part in the war inland, built an advanced riverine flotilla — the ‘brown water navy’ — to transport troops and firepower around the Mekong delta.

The story did not end there. The Armor lobby wanted to move and fight on tracks, while the Engineer lobby wanted to solve battlefield problems by defoliation — using such unconventional weapons as the (mechanical) Transphibian Tactical Crusher or the (chemical) Agent Orange. Others wanted one-man personalized flying machines, while yet others looked to the hovercraft.

Finally, and in some ways most portentous for the future, a whole new lobby emerged for electronic warfare. Its vision was to avoid moving around the battlefield entirely, wiring it up `like a pin table’ with electronic sensors that would activate artillery or air strikes.

produce an armored divisional air defense system (DIVADS), or the British TSR-2 fighter-bomber, finding solutions to the technical problems involved become so expensive that the whole project has to be cancelled (in TSR-2’s case this happened just as the problems were close to solution).

There are two alternatives to gold plating. The first is to follow Soviet practice and build slowly but carefully on existing designs that have already been combat-proven. This approach shows clearly in the unbroken line of development from the World War II series of Js tanks through the T54/55, T62, T64, ‘172 right up to the latest T80s. The Red Army has thus had a plentiful supply of reasonably up-to- date tanks that were also reliable and cheap, and did not pursue technological dead-ends or follow utopian dreams.

The basic infantry fighting unit is the platoon, which consists of around 30 to 40 men, commanded by a first or second lieutenant or senior NCO. Within each platoon there are three or four sections, or squads, that may be further divided into fire teams. Each section or squad is normally carried in a single armored personnel carrier (APC), infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) or helicopter. In tank units a platoon may consist of between three and five vehicles. In the artillery it may be called a section, and consist of two guns with their supporting vehicles.

Three or four platoons, plus an HQ and administrative element, make a company, commanded by a captain or perhaps a major. In tank units it is called a squadron, and in the artillery a battery. Three or four companies; again with a HQ and admin element make a battalion, commanded by a major or a lieutenant colonel. But, just to confuse matters, some battalion strength units in the British army are called regiments.

Two or three battalions usually make a regiment, with an HQ element under a lieutenant colonel or full colonel, while two or more regiments make a brigade commanded by a brigadier or one-star general. However, in some armies a brigade may be composed just of three or more individual battalions, without an intervening regimental level of Several brigades make a division, under a major general or two-star general. Several divisions make a corps, under a lieutenant general or three-star general (the Soviet army, however, calls a unit this size an army).

Several corps make an army group (or ‘front’. in Soviet parlance), under a four-star general, while two or more army groups make a theatre under a field marshal or five-star general. A theatre is a TVD for the Soviets; NATO designates each one individually — for example Allied Forces Center for the Central Front, which means most of western Germany.

At divisional level and above there are usually large specialist formations held directly by the commander, outside the normal pyramid of battalions, brigades, and so on. Thus a Soviet combined arms army (a corps in Western parlance) might have several independent tank, helicopter, engineer, signals and artillery battalions on top of four motor rifle and two tank divisions.

In actual combat many armies use mixed groups of all arms right down to company level — where a combat team tailored for a specific task might consist of two platoons of infantry, one of tanks, and one of engineers. At one level higher, a battle group might have two tank squadrons, one infantry company and an engineer squadron, supported by an artillery battery.

At the start of a war these groups can be created as an act of deliberate choice, but later on they will often result from the scraping together of whatever remains after complete units have been shattered in hard fighting.

The conventional signs used to represent units on tactical maps try to reflect the rank of the commander — e.g. a brigade, commanded by a one-star general, is signified by one cross at the top. A platoon gets three dots, to represent a sergeant’s three stripes, and so on.

The icons designating the unit’s type are less self-explanatory, although armor is indicated by a rhomboidal shape vaguely reminiscent of early tanks; engineers get a little bridge, and machine guns and anti-tank guns are roughly sketched in plan view.

The level of battle above tactics is called ‘operations’ (in Soviet terminology, ‘operational art’). This includes the actions of corps and army groups, maneuvering to set up a series of individual tactical battles to achieve a broader overall goal. This process will often mean that some battles will deliberately be conceded to the enemy — and one’s own troops sacrificed — in the interests of achieving a higher advantage in other battles elsewhere.

Above operations comes ‘theatre strategy’ — the combination of all the operations within a given theatre. This in turn will reflect the general political strategy — the war aims — of the nation or alliance that is fighting the war. At this level strictly military considerations will often he secondary to political ones.

The West will certainly have to stay alert to the many so-called brushfire wars’ that will in all likelihood break out around the world; and in the absence of an over-arching global balance it may even be tempted to intervene more frequently than before. In this context the Christmas 1989 invasion of Panama may be seen as something of a model, insofar as the USA was encouraged to take action partly because the USSR was so spectacularly distracted by its own internal concerns in Europe.

Since there was no obvious counter-balance to the US military initiative, American decision-makers were doubtless more ready to go ahead with the use of force than they might otherwise have been.

The ‘outbreak of peace’ in Eastern Europe has certainly created, in the prediction of imminent hostilities elsewhere, a whole new industry. It is possible that current talk about potential brushfire wars’ is merely a case of ‘governments and armies in search of an enemy’, or still more so of ‘weapon manufacturers in search of a market’.

Yet even without this, most Western states will wish to ‘keep their powder dry’ by staying abreast of the new weapons technologies. No army can afford to sit back doing nothing while other armies are perfecting new and exotic super-weapons and preparing themselves for future conflict.

It has of course always been notoriously difficult to predict the shape of future battle. Lieutenant Colonel Sir George Chesney discovered this in 1871.

But often the maneuvering assault force may have to provide its own massed covering fire as it moves. In General Patton’s World War II infantry tactics this was called ‘marching fire’, and more recently it has sometimes been called ‘prophylactic firepower’. It is especially useful in distracting the operators of wire-guided anti-tank weapons, who have to keep the crosshairs aligned on their target throughout the missile’s flight.

Until very recently it was technically impossible for tanks themselves to fire on the move with any accuracy at all, and a stationary tank would always have a great advantage over a moving one. With today’s technology, however, gyroscopically stabilised guns give a moving tank considerable accuracy potential. Artillery, on the other hand, cannot fire on the move, although it may well change position between fire missions (`shoot and scoot’), to avoid counter-battery fire.

A variation on ‘fire and maneuver’ is the concept that has sometimes been called ‘maneuver and fire’. This means that the infantry, rather than overpowering the enemy itself at close quarters, advances cautiously and goes to earth close to the enemy. Then it calls up artillery and support weapons not just to win the firefight, but to destroy the opposition utterly. This tactic is less risky for the assault troops, but may fail to eradicate the enemy unless the balance of firepower is massively in favour of the attack, thus bogging the artillery down in indecisive and expensive attrition.

Archipelago Defense system of defense was developed by the German Army during World War I after the First Battle of the Somme in 1916. The linear defensive system used in that battle had caused the Germans to suffer many casualties from the heavy British shelling of the front-line trench.

In archipelago defense , the forward defended localities are manned by infantry of about section strength, to give early warning of an enemy attack. Machine-gun posts firing in enfilade (at the flank of the enemy advance) disrupt the enemy attack. Any enemy that penetrate the line of forward defended localities are then engaged by fire from the company strongpoints in the main defensive position. Should one of these strongpoint’s fall, then troops from another company position will launch a counter attack to retake it.

Similarly, a company position will launch a counter-attack against enemy between the strong points who have been weakened. The depth positions provide a final line of defense in front of the artillery positions and force the enemy to spread his attacking troops and artillery over a much larger area. Between and behind the artillery positions are the mobile counter-attack forces. These destroy any enemy units that break through to the artillery positions.

So in circumstances where an unsupported infantry assault is suicidal, success may be achieved if the foot soldiers can be accompanied by tanks and can follow a rolling artillery barrage. Of course in reality matters tend to be more complicated because there are in fact many more aspects to combat than simply the three arms.

For example, engineer preparation of the battlefield is very important, as are the logistic and command and control systems that allow the armies to fight at all. Furthermore, throughout the Twentieth Century, air power, in all its many forms, have exerted a decisive influence on the tactical results of a battle.

However this point doesn’t negate the original point that “Winning is Controlled By Training” rather it further emphasises the importance of training, co-ordination and an understanding between the various divisions on a battlefield. Warfare is now simply faster paced and much more complex thus requiring a great level or preparation than was needed in the past.

The classic German defensive doctrines that emerged in the middle of World War I stipulated a dense belt (or ‘archipelago’) of defensive strongpoints, perhaps 10km in depth, each of which would include a mobile force to react in one of a number of other ways. The enemy would be not so much ‘beaten off’ by a front line, as ‘enmeshed and smothered’ inside an all enveloping hostile area.

In the battle of Kursk. July 1943, the Russians first halted the German assaults within a very similar ‘web’ of infantry and anti-tank strong points, laid out sometimes more than 100Km in depth and supported by obstacles and minefields. The defending forces ground the attackers down by the depth and complexity of the defenses, then mounted a major counter attack with large, fresh, armored forces that pushed the Germans far back behind their original start line. It is this concept which is still at the root of their ideas of ‘defensive defense ‘ in the era of perestroika.

From 1943 onwards the Germans lacked the resources necessary to lay out defenses on the same scale as the Russian positions at Kursk; nor could they launch similarly decisive counter moves. Nevertheless they did perfect an economical system of mobile defense, under which the front line was relatively fragile but offered concentrated armored forces from the rear. The enemy would be lured forward and then struck hard by this armor after the initial impetus of the attack had been lost. In this way generals such as Erich von Manstein made the Soviets pay dearly for their tactical advances, even though the outnumbered Germans could never hope to restore their front line entirely once it had been breached.

Just as Russian defensive tactics today are inspired by the Kursk model, von Manstein’s ‘fire brigade’ concept of mobile defense has been carefully studied by many of the NATO armies as a model for their Own defensives.

‘Doctrine’ may he expressed as the ideas and expectations with which soldiers are trained to enter battle and then fight through it, and it should not be underestimated as an element of battle. If troops have poor doctrine and training, even their best weapons will be defeated, but with sound doctrine even badly equipped soldiers may achieve great overall results.

Beyond the doctrines of the offensive and the defensive, success in battle depends on the technical tactical balance between the two sides in that battle. Wars tend to bog down when conditions are such that an initially favorable attack is unable to finish off the enemy with a single blow.

The British Army’s much vaunted ability to control the Empire with small detachments of troops was earned in equal measure by discipline and equipment. Trained soldiers, armed with breech loading rifles and primitive rapid-fire weapons, could easily defeat men used to more basic forms of weaponry.

The Gatling Gun saw service with the British Army during the 2nd Afghan War (1878-1880). It made mass attacks by insurrectionary tribesmen into suicidal affairs, just as its successor, the Maxim gun was during the Sudanese War, 20 years later. There, Kitchener’s troops killed more than ten thousand Mandists for the loss of less than five hundred of their own.

That this same weapon of mass destruction could also act against them, as it would during World War I, seemed to escape the strategists when a force is deployed to attack too large an enemy. In other cases, however, the failure to win a decisive result will have more to do with the technical tactical balance than with the numerical or strategic one. In both World War I and the more recent Iran Iraq War, the fighting bogged down because the tactical attacker was unable to sustain his momentum and mobility through the whole depth of the enemy’s defense’s. His forces were too vulnerable when they moved, so they had to dig in and stay put.

The tactical balance between two sides is decided by the relationship of four characteristics: firepower, mobility, protection and the quality of the troops that each side has deployed. If firepower is heavy against poor troops with low mobility and protection, they will be unable to advance, whereas shaky or badly deployed defenders with low firepower will be unable to stop a rapid armored advance by well trained soldiers.

Overloaded soldiers wallow helplessly around it, with no protection from random shelling or snipers. If a trench is captured it is soon recaptured and the line restored. Reinforcements can be fed in quickly to stop any breakthrough — but they cannot make progress through the beaten zone or ‘no man land’.

Unfortunately, this nightmare scenario was not rendered obsolete by the invention of the tank, but has recurred in many phases of wars since 1918 — for example: outside Madrid in 1936; at Cassino and Normandy on the Western Front in 1944, and at Leningrad and in many other places on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1944; in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953; and most recently, in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88.

Admittedly the tank can help an attack to make progress, and in some circumstances it can be a decisive weapon that creates a breakthrough; but it has often been as vulnerable to anti-tank guns as the infantry has been to machine guns. The tank’s greatest successes have been achieved against defenses that have not been well dug in or coordinated.

Victory and a successful defensive strategy is fundamental to survival. Fortunately defense tends to be easier than attack, since it usually needs less organization, less movement, fewer communications channels and smaller numbers. Moreover, a defending army is usually on familiar ground, where it has been able to take advantage of any natural protection that the terrain can offer.

The main problem for a defending force, perhaps, is to know just how static or mobile it should be. History is full of entirely static defense lines that have been defeated or bypassed relatively easily — the Maginot Line in 1940 and the Bar Lev Line in 1973 spring to mind — although some equally immobile fortresses have on occasion given an attacker a very tough time. In 1916 the Germans had to fight long and hard to reduce Fort Vaux at Verdun, while in South Vietnam in 1967 the Americans found the tunnels of Cu Chi — a different style of fortification — especially troublesome.