Fighting 360 Degrees

Y a. Normal Orientation V O Q O g b. Orientation for 360-Degree Battle Figure 1. Orientation of weapon systems in an armor-heavy team’s battle position, showing normal orientation, top, and reorientation when faced with the possibility of a 360-degree battle. Note that sectors of fire will be much wider in latter case. Figures assume all fighting positions are dug in. Fighting 360 Degrees by Captain Michael A. Deaton The war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact is five days old. Casualties have been high on both sides, and NATO lines have become critically thin. Dawn is now breaking over Central Europe. Cold rain has fallen all night, and the images in the thermal sights are little more than green blurs. lntel-ligence reports throughout the night have been limited to those of “sounds of tracked vehicles some-The gray light of dawn slowly begins to illuminate the fog- and rain-shrouded company-team battle position. Stand-to is twenty minutes old; all weapons are manned, but with visibility limited to a half mile, the crews can’t identify any targets. Yet the rumble of tanks and BMPs continues, and when they break through the mist, they are behind the friendly battle position! The company-team has been bypassed by an attacking Soviet motorized rifle battalion, and a company of that battalion has broken off to fix the company-team until another force can get there to destroy the Americans. How well the bypassed company-team is prepared to fight in all directions will, within the next three to five minutes, determine the fate of nearly a quarter of its parent task force’s firepower and the lives of nearly 100 American soldiers in the bypassed position. Current Soviet battle doctrine calls for breaking through the thin, dispersed front lines of NATO forc-. where to the east.” 32 es at numerous sites and making subsequent deep penetrations. With the numerical superiority that the Warsaw Pact enjoys, this situation is not an unlikely possibility. Such a penetration would result in the -at least initially - bypassing, isolation, and even encirclement of friendly units. The units would be forced to fight a 360-degree battle. Our AirLand Battle doctrine touches on this scenario. Much of our current doctrine addresses the prevention of the bypass and the actions needed to regain and maintain friendly contact. Little is said, however, about how to fight effectively while encircled. It is axiomatic, though, that the bypassed force must simultaneously fight, reorganize, and consolidate in order to mass enough firepower to effect a breakout. Present ARTEP scenarios and STXs designed for the company-team, however, do not adequately address the problem of how to prepare for and conduct this 360-degree battle. Like every other contingency, we must train for it through repetitive drill in order to handle it with any degree of proficiency. While it is not specifically addressed in company-level tactics, we can plan for the encirclement battle and execute it using extensions of existing doctrine. Planning for the 360-degree battle begins with terrain analysis. Here the S2 can help a lot. A company-team positioned on dominant terrain between two potential avenues of approach that are defended by other friendly forces is a candidate for being bypassed. A company-team defending with a task force boundary on its left or right also faces the possibility of being bypassed should the threat successfully “slide down the seam” or should the neighboring task force be forced to withdraw. Mission analysis is also important when planning for the 360- degree fight. Units are much more likely to be bypassed when the)ask force is defending in sector than when it defends from a battle position. Defense in sector generally demands an in-depth defense on a relatively wide frontage, so there usually will be greater distances between companies than might ordinarily be desired. Especially in the desert, the layout of the defense, therefore, can create likely avenues for bypass and encirclement; these avenues and locations must be incorporated into task force and team-level planning. First of all, the commander and S3 must adhere to some basic principles to prevent bypass. In the creation of elaborate obstacle plans and kill zones, tactical planners must never split responsibility for avenues of approach. The best way to accomplish this is to ensure that at least one team is astride the avenue and that it can engage targets on that avenue at maximum effective range. If the lack of defensible terrain makes this impossible, the responsible unit should not be in a position so far away from the avenue that the unit cannot engage the threat until he is parallel to the friendly battle position. At that point, engagement is often “too little and too late.” All of this sounds like good common sense, but they are principles frequently violated, especially in the desert or in areas in Europe where long engagement ranges exist. A corollary of not splitting responsibility for an avenue of approach is that no team should have responsibility for more than one primary approach. If this occurs, the task force commander, or his S3, should reallocate or reposition his forces or coordinate with the brigade commander for more forces or a change in task force boundaries in order to narrow the task force sector. These measures, and thorough coordination between neighboring units, should prevent bypass and encirclement. However, textbook scenarios rarely present themselves on the battlefield, and the 360-degree battle remains a contingency foi which the team commander must plan and be prepared to execute. Part of the team commander’s plan must include the team’s combat trains. The team commander has a difficult choice to make when he positions these service support assets. He can keep them up close for fast, efficient support, or he can position them farther to the rear for security. In either event, the 1SG should prepare the trains’ position as a strongpoint. This should include a fairly elaborate obstacle plan because of the trains’ limited firepower. Dug-in positions are essential. LP/OPs must be positioned, and direct fire weapons must be set up to cover likely avenues of approach from all directions. Because they lack tank-killing systems, the vehicles in the trains must have LAWS, in the event the trains are separated from the combat elements of the company-team. The team commander must fight the 360-degree battle in two phases if the team is to be successful: the first phase is the stationary phase, and the second phase is the mobile phase. The team commander has two tactical options when fighting the stationary phase. The first option is that of reorienting gun tubes so that the unit resembles a herringbone formation (See Figure 1). However, platoon leaders must ensure that fighting positions are dug to provide adequate protection in all directions. The Y-shaped position should fulfill that requirement. When using this tactical option, the team commander must be sure that supplementary sectors of fire are assigned and that outboard positions assume responsibility for the flanks. The second tactical option is that of supplementary platoon positions. Again, platoon leaders must ensure that the positions and the routes to them are prepared so that vehicles are not unduly exposed to enemy fires. Each crew must know the routes to the new position and should rehearse that movement. This second option is a less desirable way to establish a 360-degree defense because it may involve moving assets in the middle of a firefight. This movement reduces Figure 2. Initial echelon’s fixing force breaks off to bypass and isolate a forward cornpany/team until follow-on echelon can arrive to destroy defenders. the volume and accuracy of critically needed firepower. As always though, METT-T will determine the option that the team commander decides is best for his unit in the particular situation that he faces. During no other tactical event is the interplay between tank commanders, squad leaders, section leaders, and platoon leaders as critical as during the 360-degree defense. Every weapon’s sector of fire must overlap with that of another weapon. These sectors will, by necessity, be wider than the primary sectors because of the 360-degree posture of the team. Combat vehicle commanders will have to know who is covering the sectors adjacent to their own sector and - in reaction to spot reports - keep a running status in their minds on the ability of those systems to accomplish their missions. These same vehicle commanders will also have to exercise initiative in reacting to losses of adjacent elements and be able to adjust to cover now-uncovered sectors of fire. Gunners of crew-served weapons and squads will have to adhere to even stricter sector-of-fire discipline than under normal circumstances. The crew and squad must be confident that their flanks and rear are covered in order to prevent confusion in target acquisition and engagement. The best way to prevent an uncovered sector is to build redundancy into the fire plan by assigning at least two weapon systems to each sector. While this may result in a slight amount of overkill, it reduces the possibility that the destruction of one system will leave an entire sector uncovered. The unit fighting a 360-degree defense will have few advantages, so it must capitalize on all that it does have in order to be successful. It will have the standard advantages of the defender: camouflage, cover, precision gunnery, prepared positions, familiarity with the terrain and sectors of fire, and obstacles. Once the team commander identifies the possibility of being bypassed, he should plan for and emplace obstacles to the flanks and rear of his battle position to prevent enemy penetration of it. The passages through these obstacles must be known to every vehicle driver, and each crew should practice moving to and through them, both during daylight and at night, to ensure a rapid effective withdrawal when it is needed. These flank and rear obstacles will impede and confuse the threat forces during their advance. This confusion can be compounded by a few more factors also. First, if the threat force elects to bypass, it will probably dedicate only a portion of the lead echelon to stay back and fix the bypassed unit 33

PRIMARY BAlTLE POSITION u. Figure 3. When attempting to displace from primary battle positions during the narrow time window between the advance of first and second threat echelons, gun tubes must be oriented to maintain 360-degree coverage. (See Figure 2). The elimination of the bypassed force would become a mission for the second echelon. In addition to fires from the bypassed unit, the threat fixing force should have to contend with the long range fires of forces defending in the depth of the task force sector and indirect fires supporting the task force. Since attacking forces tend to orient frontally, this combination of fires should result in some confusion for the threat fixing force as to target acquisition, the location of the most dangerous targets, and just how the threat force should be oriented. If the task force commander has “laid out’’ the battlefield properly, and terrain has permitted it, the threat fixing force should find itself sandwiched between two or more friendly units and exposed, no matter which way it moves. In order to add to this confusion, the bypassed team commander should do everything that he can to convince the threat fixing force commander that he has been given a task that is too big for the fixing force to handle. To do this, the bypassed team needs to conduct a battle of unparalleled violence. The volume of fire coming from the bypassed unit should increase to the point that it rivals that of the remainder of the task force. Ammunition conservation need not be a consideration in the 360-degree battle. For if the defending unit fails to bring the fight to a rapid and successful conclusion, ammunition which has been conserved will no longer be needed. (This, however, makes prestockings of Class V in subsequent battle positions essential.) The key term here is rapid. The best time for the bypassed unit to accomplish a breakout is during the window between threat echelons. For this reason, the fixing force must be decimated rapidly through the use of accurately-placed, high-volume fires, coupled with lethal obstacles and massed indirect fires. The mobile phase of the 360-degree battle can then begin. The mobile phase of the 360-degree fight has as its objectives the breakout of the bypassed team, the movement of that team, and the occupation of a subsequent battle position. In some cases, this phase could also become a counterattack into the rear of the first echelon. The bypassed team commander should employ any and all means to mask his team’s movement from the enemy. Indirect fires, smoke missions, smoke grenades, smoke pots, and the use of vehicle smoke generators can assist in this effort. During movement, 360-degree security is mandatory. Appropriate weapons and observation orientation must be maintained by the combat vehicle crews (See Figure 3). Executed quickly and coordinated with the fires of the other teams in the task force, this withdrawal/counterattack can effectively confuse the commander of the threat’s first echelon, assist in his destruction, and thus allow the bypassed team to occupy its subsequent battle position and carry on the fight. Some readers may think it defeatist even to consider the possibility that a U. S. unit would allow itself to become bypassed. However, real defeatism is failing to train for this possibility. By ignoring the possibility of bypass and encirclement, we imply that a unit which becomes bypassed and encircled will automatically be defeated. This is pessimism at its worst. The Threat enjoys a numerical superiority which enables him to isolate our teams, and the Threat’s doctrine and training support that fact. If one of our units finds itself in that situation, it simply cannot quit. That team must keep on fighting in order to survive. However, in order to fight effectively in all directions on a fluid battlefield, we must train that team to do so. -

CAPTAIN M I C H A E L A.

DEATON entered active duty after completing his PhD. at Vanderbilt University in

1983. He has served as a tank platoon leader and tank company executive officer while assigned to the 5/33 Armor and was later assigned to the 42d Field Hospital for cross-training in medical support operations. He is on orders to report to the US. Army Institute for Chemical Defense, Aberdeen Proving Ground. This article grew out of an experience last January at the National Training Center. 34