What Exactly Is A Military Offensive

In order for us to understand this term lets look at the key phrase offense

. So a military offensive is a campaign designed to take or control territory. It may be designed to destroy people and equipment. The thing to remember is that it is a move against the enemy unlike a defensive operation which is designed to protect you from enemy action.

We normally think of an offensive in terms of taking and holding territory but recent wars have been totally different. When we look at the first Persian Gulf Offensive (Desert Storm) we see that its primary purpose was to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The US succeeded in this but the real objective of this campaign was to destroy the Iraqi army. Even after Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait they were chased northward up highway 1 and destroyed by air strikes and the 24th Infantry Division. You can see that in this case the offensive was not an offensive in the traditional sense of the word.

Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom are offensives also. Their aim is not to take territory or to destroy equipment but to root out and destroy Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists who may attempt to attack Americans. The term counteroffensive refers to a campaign launched to expel an enemy after you have been attacked. The Pacific Operations of WWII were a perfect example of this. The Japanese conducted an offensive on the United States when they attacked Pearl Harbor. Our response was a naval campaign to rid the Pacific of Japanese forces because as long as they remained there they posed a threat to our forces.

In most cases when you conduct an offensive operation you need to have greater numbers of people and weapons than the defender. This is true when you intend to take and hold territory permanently, but in many cases such as a raid you want to take a small force just sufficient enough to perform a certain job or task. The military formula for conducting an attack is a three to one advantage but it has been proven that if you have the better trained and equipped army you can win with less.

There are a number of preparatory steps which are taken before an offense is conducted. The actual measures which are used will depend on the situation. In traditional instances and in most cases there is a period of artillery or air attack on the target area or on surrounding areas to cut off support to the targeted area during fighting. The actual target will be hit with artillery and/or air just prior to the fight to insure that it has been weakened sufficiently to give ground forces an advantage.

Intelligence has to be gathered in order to determine the best and most efficient way to conduct the strike. Intelligence is normally gathered by a variety of techniques which may include aerial surveillance, human agents, satellite intel, or what is known as reconnaissance by force. In a reconnaissance by force combatants are sent in to cause a disruption. The purpose of this disruption is to evoke a response from the enemy to determine how he will fight and the types of weapons that he has to fight with.

Other supporting types of military operations which may be used to support an offensive are feints, raids, and ruses. Military Ring Express

by: tishbite

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