32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting thesis, July 26, 2004
This review is from: Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Hardcover)
According to Stephen Biddle force employment or the use of combined arms is the secret to military success not superior technology or overwhelming numbers. The first example that Biddle uses is the opening German offensive in 1918 against the British in which they succeded intially against the English army due to effective coordination of artillery and infantry. The second case that Biddle brings up is the British operation Goodwood against the Germans in 1944. The British failed, according to Biddle, due to the lack of cooperation between infantry and armor.Also Biddle dispels the myth that technology alone won Desert Storm because the Marines,equipped with only sixties era tanks, were able to defeat the Iraqis with superior tactics. The only weakness of Biddle's book is that he leaves out the two cases in which opponents with superior nummers defeated a force with effective force employment methods which is the defeat of the Germans to the Russians in the summer of 1944, and the rout of the Americans from North Korea by the Chinese in the winter of 1950. Otherwise, Biddle writes an effective case that force employment and not technology is the most important factor in military victory.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant study of modern warfare, February 21, 2005
This review is from: Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Hardcover)
Stephen Biddle, a Professor at the US Army War College, has produced an important book on modern warfare. He shows how material forces, numbers and technology, only count if used in the modern system. Force deployment shapes the role of material forces. He analyses full data-sets of modern battles, proving that bigger is not always better.
The increasing lethality of firepower means that since 1914 exposed mass movement is suicidal. Only the modern system of using combined arms, cover and concealment enables the attackers' forces to survive the defence's response.
Biddle looks at three significant battles, firstly, the successful German attack of March 1918. For preponderance theorists, the Allies should have stopped this attack dead. The German/British force-to-force ratio was 1.5/1, among the least favourable of any major attack of the war. The British had a few more tanks, but the main weapons were still the infantry and guns of 1915-18, a defence-dominant technology. The British official history blamed the fog, as if there had been no fog until then.
The Germans won an unprecedented breakthrough, advancing 40 miles across a 50-mile front. The Germans implemented the modern system tactically and to some extent operationally; the British didn't. This broke the great stalemate, not new technology, US intervention or exhaustion.
Biddle's second example, Operation Goodwood in July 1944, was the failed Allied effort to break out of the Normandy beachhead. The British had more troops and weapons: 1,277 tanks, 4,500 aircraft and 118,000 troops against 319 tanks, several hundred aircraft and 29,000 troops. If preponderance theorists were right, the British would have won, but they tried an exposed mass tank charge, unsupported by infantry or suppressive artillery.
Biddle's third example is Operation Desert Storm of 1991, which US forces won with an unprecedentedly low loss rate. US forces used the modern system, the Iraqis did not. The superior US air technology did not eliminate the Iraqi resistance: 2,000 tanks still fought back after the air assault. US troops with or without advanced ground technology, and those fighting local engagements at better or worse odds, won equally convincingly.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Science of Military Outcomes, November 24, 2004
This review is from: Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Hardcover)
This is an exceptional work of real empirical science. Steve Biddle has a hypothesis that "force employment" is a more important determinant of military success than either technology or preponderance of military forces. He subjects this hypothesis to a wide range of analytical and empirical tests, and the evidence in support of his argument is compelling. And the author has the foresight to raise many of the issues that occur to a skeptical reader, and to treat them with reasoned analysis and data. His prose is clear, and this is compelling reading even to one who is not an expert in this field.
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