Maneuver Warfare Collection - Marine Corps Association

The Warfighting Skills Program

An opportunity—take advantage of it

The first book, Tactical Fundamentals, provides a basic understanding of maneuver warfare. The second book, Small Unit Tactical Problems, requires students to provide solutions to a variety of tactical decision games (TDGs) that will test and deepen their understanding of maneuver warfare.

Warfighting 3.0

Moving from maneuver to moral warfare

About now, I can hear accusations running from presumptuousness to heresy. Since 1989, Warfighting has been the muse guiding combat operations from DESERT STORM to ENDURING FREEDOM. [...]I'm approaching the manual from the framework outlined by Dr. Charles Oliviero in his model of "war-centered

Implications From Operation IRAQI FREEDOM for the Marine Corps

Originally published November 2003

Conversely, by demonstrating convincingly our martial superiority, the campaign against Saddam's army probably strengthened the determination of countries like Iran to follow the lead of North Korea and acquire nuclear weapons as their deterrent against any potential American attack intent on

Complex Military Environment

A checklist mentality in a maneuver warfare environment

In the era of fourth generation warfare as outlined by William Lind in 1989 where modern challenges and technology adds friction and we are faced with a violent non-state threat, the ability of subordinates "who can manage the challenge of minimal or no supervision in a rapidly changing

The “Grand Ideal”

John Boyd and America’s strategic vision

[...]the national goal is entirely self-focused: "improve our fitness, as an organic whole, to shape and cope with an everchanging [sic] environment." [...]before an adversary ever entered the equation, a nation needed a powerful sense of what it was about, and what it sought for itself in the

Three Rules of a Marine Rifleman

Functional infantry tactics

The company, assigned to Khe Sahn, through its patrolling effort prematurely triggered a divisionsized operation to seize the American combat base.1 How was a rifle company able to defend an airstrip and project combat power across approximately fifty-four square kilometers to spoil a

Words Have Meaning

Understanding what we say and write

How common is it to hear the sage assertion from a 24-hour news cycle talking head that we don't want to get involved or tied down in a war of attrition? Because of overwhelming advantages in all warfighting functions at the tactical level, attrition is the approach American forces most often

Opening the Loop

A look inside the mind of John Boyd

Determined that the FWS' tactics program not languish after his departure, he decided to develop and codify his own manual on fighter tactics.8 The resulting Aerial Attack Study was such a thorough piece of work that no significant contributions have been made to fighter tactics since its

A Manœuvre Renaissance

Overcoming the attritionist tendency

An eccentric retired Air Force colonel accepted an invitation to speak to the students oí Amphibious Warfare School class of 1979 only after the staff grudgingly agreed to his demand for a five-hour block of time.1 From this slightly awkward beginning, the Marine Corps' doctrine of manoeuvre

Maneuver Warfare

Making it real in the Marine Corps

In the early 1990s, the United States Marine Corps officially adopted maneuver warfare, also known as Third Generation War, as doctrine, in a movement led by then-Commandant Gen Alfred M. Gray. When one civilian visitor to the CAX at Twentynine Palms said that it did not seem to reflect maneuver

The Future Threat Is Insurgency

The most likely conflicts

[...]is that the Marine Corps must implement a new retention and recruiting plan that will elevate the Corps to a level to be able to thrive in the COIN environment. Insurgency has proven to be the only platform to compete in a protracted conflict against a more powerful military. [...]it can be