The Need for Organisational Resilience Chapter-6

This may include time to maintain tanks and vehicles, as well as time to obtain spare parts or

have an army unit resupplied. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the Germans keeping

their units operational, despite the need to replace destroyed tanks and material, or to

retrieve broken down or knocked out tanks from the battlefield and have them serviced in a

nearby repair depot. Unlike the Germans, the French were plagued by downtime, although

not all down to logistical constraints, though. Some armoured units could not move due to

lack of operational readiness. They were still in training and/or simply did not have sufficient

‘continuous logistics’ allocated to them (see textbox).

[Text Box starts]: Continuous Logistics

Recalling our physical view of warfare, we said that classical warfare is best expressed by the laws of

solid mechanics. Modern warfare on the other hand is best expressed by the laws of fluid mechanics.

Fluids represent two states of matter: liquids and gases. Units engaged in distributed battle are

analogous to liquids under the dynamics of extreme heat and pressure. Formations conducting a

distributed campaign are analogous to gases undergoing similar force dynamics. If we are to maintain

the validity of this particular physical analogy, we must show how these fluids maintain their density.

Under the classical paradigm, Clausewitz characterised the strategic level of war in terms of

space, time and mass. In terms of space, strategy is concerned with the expanse of a theatre of

operations; in terms of time, with the duration of a campaign; and in terms of mass, with the density of

an army as a whole.

Under modern conditions the army as a whole can be visualised as flowing or percolating

distributively through the depth of the theatre of operations. At this level the army projects force by

virtue of its rate of flow: its tempo and density. Because of the significance of this physical relationship

we can see why it becomes critical to view operational manoeuvre as relational movement to achieve

and deny freedom of action. Fundamentally, the denial of freedom of action drives military forces and

pressure to zero. Since pressure is proportional to density (mass) and tempo (acceleration), the ability

of the attacker to mass and continue his momentum must be maintained. But tempo is not only

practically a function of freedom of action, it is also a function of movement. And movement brings us

to the issue of logistics.

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