Human warfare is, unfortunately, older than recorded history. We have not yet reached a condition where it is absent from somewhere in the world.
Maneuver warfare theory (MWT) holds that warfare occurs over a spectrum of options, with attrition warfare at one extreme and maneuver warfare on the other. Attrition warfare is a brute-force battle against the numbers. When humans were relatively equal against each other with techniques and tools, the larger force would win. Thus, military strategy for most of human history was to assemble increasingly large armies of people. Assuming you could organize, train, and assemble enough people, and accept the inevitable losses, it was safe to assume that those with the largest and strongest forces would win.
However, history has been punctuated and greatly affected by the exceptions. Smaller and weaker forces have repeatedly defeated their opponents, whether in particular battles or in prolonged wars. Perhaps the greatest and most influential military upset in human history is the battle of Cannae in 216 B.C. In a single day, Hannibal defeated the largest number of Roman soldiers ever assembled, approximately 70,000 in number. The Romans out-numbered Hannibal’s forces approximately two-to-one.
Sun Tzu, author of “The Art of War,” is credited with many early principles of maneuver warfare. Rather than focusing on physical force, maneuver warfare is more about psychology and a state of mind: in yourself, in your organization, and in that of your opponents.
Much like the martial arts that Sun Tzu would have been familiar with, the most effective victory is one in which there is never a single bullet fired. Eliminating someone’s will to fight—or capturing their “treasure” before they have noticed what is happening—is a more elegant and efficient way to achieve the ultimate objective.
This is the essence of maneuver warfare theory. Napoleon’s rapid maneuvers with cavalry and fast marches, The Nazi Blitzkrieg, and guerrilla warfare are all examples of using speed, agility, and unpredictability to create chaos, confusion, and hopelessness among enemy ranks. If chaos, confusion, and unpredictability already exist on your “battlefield,” maneuver warfare theory is what you need to survive and win.
In the United States, Air Force Colonel John Boyd (1927-1997) was the principal thought leader and champion to bring MWT into the modern US military. We owe the F-16 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft to his emphasis on agility and maneuverability. Later, his ideas greatly influenced the doctrine for the US Marine Corps. His ideas later extended into non-military applications, as will be shown.
To set expectations, there is not a “checklist” or formally established set of terms to define maneuver warfare theory. Examples and analogies from business and sports will be used to show how MWT concepts find expression and application in many facets of human activity outside of military warfare. The relevance and value of MWT for stakeholders in the sUAS landscape should be immediately apparent. But the reader is likely to discover applications and benefits in other areas of life as well.