The demise of linear frontlines

Very often in military planning there is a temptation to draw straight lines and sectors for one's own forces, denoting clear boundaries. Company A advances along this block, B the one adjacent, C the one further down, and so on. It gives the very Napoleonic image of troops drawn up shoulder to shoulder.

Equally often this image is false; there are simply often not enough bodies on the ground at any given time to wholly secure an imagined "frontline". For nations with shrinking armies - such as Singapore, where the phenomena of a smaller combat-fit force is a reality - this is even more so.

As has been made clear in the much-vaunted "3G Army" campaign, the Singaporean army has sought technology-based solutions to overcome this lack of bodies. On the frontline, there is the "SAF in a backpack" integration of artillery and airforce strike assets with the frontline soldier, gadgets such as improved nightvision and unmanned ground sensors to replace pickets. Unmanned supply vehicles and engineer assets are also perhaps still in the offing, if this (admittedly old) video is any guide. These technologies understandably take a long time to mature.



This blog however submits that planning and a shift in mindsets are equally valid. In an era where there will never be enough troops on the ground, the idea that there is a fixed frontline, composed of units standing shoulder to shoulder, should be abandoned.

Instead of a contiguous front, a model of clusters of men continuously on the move may be more useful. The fighting companies, followed by their associated artillery, air defence and logistical teams. (Defense and Freedom does a better job of elucidating such concepts than I.)

This will require some readjustments. The front is a leaky one, and there is a necessity for all-round defence rather than just frontal ones. Lip service is always paid to such an endeavour but it genuinely has to be emphasized that the army is a group of clusters on the move, not a sanitising front and safe zone behind.

The preparedness and equipment of "rear-area" units such as artillery, air defence, headquarters and logistics ones may have to be examined as well. If enemy light armour breaks through the thin frontage of say an infantry battalion, will the battalion combat service support troops have sufficient training and weapons to see the threat off? Your author is reminded of an anecdote he heard from a Finnish conscript, where an "OPFOR" (opposition forces) SISU personnel carrier somehow snuck through the lines of a unit's rifle companies and wrought havoc on the unprepared headquarters company, before it was mercifully driven off by some lucky simulated rocket shots! Do Singaporean combat units have a brace of MATADOR rockets in the back of the headquarters trucks?

Perhaps (for tactical planning purposes) it may be a good reminder as a matter of staff practice to represent one's units as ovals on the map, not as a continous frontline.

Such changes in practice may matter even more than technology, and its benefits will be apparent even sooner.