Do long-range precision fires and persistent battlefield surveillance make ground maneuver impossible?
Well, that's certainly a future:
The Army may need to rethink its traditional emphasis on maneuver warfare in the face of new weapons and other technology that will make tomorrow’s wars “increasingly lethal,” the service’s Training and Doctrine Command says in a new report. ...
Part of the shift is due to the increasing importance of fires, a term most frequently associated with the use of indirect fire like artillery, rockets, and missiles, but which may also refer to drones and other assets. These weapons will “be the center of gravity, making protection a priority and maneuver difficult,” according to the report.
These changes to the battlefield “may require a reassessment of our approach to maneuver, fires, and protection,” the report added.
Maybe. I've certainly asked that question:
Are fires and and surveillance now dominant over maneuver on the battlefield with precision and persistence added, respectively, to the equation?
And I can go back eight years:
The old infantry phalanxes were rectangles of men who fought shoulder-to-shoulder in an interlocking formation that pressed into an enemy phalanx to slash at the forward edges and ultimately shove the enemy formation back until it lost cohesion and could not stand it's ground in the "push of shields."
Could we eventually see a joint force in a theater function as a giant phalanx of swarming robots with persistent surveillance and long range firepower called in to support the battle in mortal combat with an enemy theater-wide phalanx?
Lanchester's Square attrition models might rule the battles, with the winner being the last one with functioning robots surviving on the battlefield.
If so, our strategy of using quality to overcome quantity will no longer work if our enemies have qualitatively equivalent robot swarms directed with an equivalent command and control system with an equivalent surveillance network.
Will we then have wars of attrition based on robots rather than men locked in combat?
I mentioned the UAV aspect of such a phalanx, too.
It is a future. But I don't assume this is our future. Ukraine's recent surprise incursion into Russia was not a war-winner, but it showed possibilities. But if maneuver faces a bleak future, something will be conceived in equipment or tactics that helps break the phalanx--again.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.NOTE: I'm now on Substack, with The Dignified Rant: Evolved.