Mobile Defense: Extending the Doctrinal Continuum.

This monograph examines the mobile defense, past and present, in order to clearly define its concept. Over the years doctrine has traditionally defined the range of possible defenses as existing on a continuum of defensive operations. This continuum has been variously defined at its ends by mobile and static poles. These poles have usually been objectified respectively as the mobile and area defenses. This study maintains that the mobile defense is defined too narrowly, and is not logically opposed to the area defense. The result is an abbreviated doctrinal continuum which fails to account for the full range of defensive operations. The study of the mobile defense proceeds conducting an historical review, beginning with its entry into the Army lexicon following World War II, and continuing to the present with the 1993 version of FM 100-5, Operations. The results of these reviews are then analyzed using as criteria the four characteristics of the defense from FM 100-3, along with risk management and relative mobility. The study concludes that the mobile defense as currently defined in Army doctrine is actually a particular and favorable type of the general pattern of the mobile defense, not the general pattern itself. The general pattern of the mobile defense should account for those defenses fought with minimal forces when the enemy has not only the advantages of home terrain, hut also force ratios greater than 31. The particular form of the general pattern may or may not include a controlled penetration as implied by current doctrine, but in its simplest form may merely be a flexible defense designed to react to enemy penetrations wherever they occur.