Chapter 3: Offense

The offense carries the fight to the enemy. The OPFOR sees this as the decisive form of combat and the ultimate means of imposing its will on the enemy. While conditions at a particular time or place may require the OPFOR to defend, defeating an enemy force ultimately requires shifting to the offense. Even within the context of defense, victory normally requires some sort of offensive action. Therefore, OPFOR commanders at all levels seek to create and exploit opportunities to take offensive action, whenever possible.

The aim of offense at the tactical level is to achieve tactical missions in support of an operation. A tactical command ensures that its subordinate commands thoroughly understand both the overall goals of the operation and the specific purpose of a particular mission they are about to execute. In this way, subordinate commands may continue to execute the mission without direct control by a higher headquarters, if necessary.

All tactical offensive actions are designed to achieve the goals of an operation through active measures. However, the purpose or reason, of any given offensive mission varies with the situation, as determined through the decision making process. The primary distinction among types of offensive missions is their purpose which is defined by what the commander wants to achieve tactically. Thus, the OPFOR recognizes six general purposes of tactical offensive missions:

Gain freedom of movement.
Restrict freedom of movement.
Gain control of key terrain, personnel, or equipment.
Gain information.
Dislocate.
Disrupt.

These general purposes serve as a guide to understanding the design of an offensive mission and not as a limit placed on a commander as to how he makes his intent and aim clear. These are not the only possible purposes of tactical missions but are the most common.

These six general purposes are only a few of the many reasons the OPFOR might have for attacking an enemy, a potential enemy, a neighbor, or someone else. The true intent of an attack may reside at the operational or strategic level, but the attack is executed at the tactical level. Therefore, the actual reason for the attack may often be difficult to discern. In addition to those listed above, a few other reasons to attack may be to destroy, deceive, demonstrate dominance, deter (such as to discourage a neighbor from joining a coalition or alliance), or any number of other purposes.

In each of these general purposes of tactical offensive missions, the enemy may be destroyed or attrited to varying levels. Destruction is an inherent part of any attack. The critical tactical factor to the OPFOR commander initially is not how to conduct the offensive mission—but rather why. Once the why has been decided the method with the best chance of achieving tactical success becomes the how.

Attack to Gain Freedom of Movement

An attack to gain freedom of movement creates a situation in an important part of the battlefield where other friendly forces can maneuver in a method of their own choosing with little or no opposition. Such an attack can take many forms, of which the following are some examples:

Seizing an important mobility corridor to prevent a counterattack into the flank of another moving force.
Destroying an air defense unit so that a combat helicopter may use an air avenue of approach at lower risk.
Breaching a complex obstacle to allow an exploitation force to pass through.
Executing security tasks such as screen, guard, and cover. Such tasks may involve one or more attacks to gain freedom of movement as a component of the scheme of maneuver.

Attack to Restrict Freedom of Movement

An attack to restrict freedom of movement prevents the enemy from maneuvering as he chooses. Restricting attacks can deny key terrain, ambush moving forces, dominate airspace, or fix an enemy formation. Tactical tasks often associated with restricting attacks are ambush, block, canalize, contain, fix, interdict, and isolate. The attrition of combat elements and equipment may also limit the enemy units’ ability to move. An example of this may be a preemptive strike on the enemy’s water-crossing or mineclearing equipment.

Attack to Gain Control of Key Terrain, Personnel, or Equipment

An attack to gain control of key terrain, personnel, or equipment is not necessarily terrain focused— a raid with the objective of taking prisoners or key equipment is also an attack to gain control. Besides the classic seizure of key terrain that dominates a battlefield, an attack to control may also target facilities such as economic targets, ports, or airfields. Tactical tasks associated with an attack to control are raid, clear, destroy, occupy, retain, secure, and seize. Some non-traditional attacks to gain control may be information attack, computer warfare, electronic warfare, or other forms of information warfare (INFOWAR).

Attack to Gain Information

An attack to gain information is a subset of the reconnaissance attack. (See Reconnaissance Attack later in this chapter.) In this case, the purpose is not to locate to destroy, fix, or occupy but rather to gain information about the enemy. Quite often the OPFOR will have to penetrate or circumvent the enemy’s security forces and conduct an attack in order to determine the enemy’s location, dispositions, capabilities, and intentions.

Attack to Dislocate

An attack to dislocate employs forces to obtain significant positional advantage, rendering the enemy’s dispositions less valuable, perhaps even irrelevant. It aims to make the enemy expose forces by reacting to the dislocating action. Dislocation requires enemy commanders to make a choice: accept neutralization of part of their force or risk its destruction while repositioning. Turning movements and envelopments produce dislocation. Artillery or other direct or indirect fires may cause an enemy to either move to a more tenable location or risk severe attrition. Typical tactical tasks associated with dislocation are ambush, interdict, and neutralize.

Attack to Disrupt

An attack to disrupt is used to prevent the enemy from being able to execute an advantageous course of action (COA) or to degrade his ability to execute that COA. It is also used to create windows of opportunity to be exploited by the OPFOR. It is an intentional interference (disruption) of enemy plans and intentions, causing the enemy confusion and the loss of focus, and throwing his battle synchronization into turmoil. The OPFOR then quickly exploits the result of the attack to disrupt. A spoiling attack is an example of an attack to disrupt.

The OPFOR will use an attack to disrupt in order to upset an enemy’s formation and tempo, interrupt the enemy’s timetable, cause the enemy to commitment of forces prematurely, and/or cause him to attack in a piecemeal fashion. The OPFOR will either attack the enemy force with enough combat power to achieve the desired results with one mass attack, or sustain the attack until the desired results are achieved.

Note. Disrupt is not only a purpose of the offense, but also a tactical task.

Attacks to disrupt typically focus on a key enemy capability, intention, or vulnerability. They are also designed to disrupt enemy plans, tempo, infrastructure, logistics, affiliations, C2, formations, or civil order. However, an attack to disrupt is not limited to any of the above. The OPFOR will use any method necessary to upset the enemy and cause disorder, disarray, and confusion.

Attacks to disrupt often have a strong INFOWAR component and may disrupt, limit, deny, and/or degrade the enemy’s use of the electromagnetic spectrum, especially the enemy’s C2. They may also take the form of computer warfare and/or information attack.

Attacks to disrupt are carried out at all levels and are limited only by time and resources available. The attack to disrupt may not be limited by distance. It may be carried out in proximity to the enemy (as in an ambush) or from an extreme distance (such as computer warfare or information attack from another continent) or both simultaneously. The attack to disrupt may be conducted by a single component (an ambush in contact) or a coordinated attack by several components such as combined arms using armored fighting vehicles, infantry, artillery, and several elements of INFOWAR (for example, electronic warfare, deception, perception management, information attack, and/or computer warfare).

The OPFOR does not limit its attacks to military targets or enemy combatants. The attack to disrupt may be carried out against noncombatant civilians (even family members of enemy soldiers at home station or in religious services), diplomats, contractors, or whomever and/or whatever the OPFOR commanders believe will enhance their probabilities of mission success.

Planning the Offense

For the OPFOR, the key elements of planning offensive missions are⎯

Determining the objective of the offensive action.
Defining time available to complete the action.
Determining the level of planning possible (planned versus situational offense).
Organizing the battlefield.
Organizing forces and elements by function, including affiliated forces.
Organizing INFOWAR activities in support of the offense (see chapter 7).

Planned Offense

A planned offense is an offensive mission or action undertaken when there is sufficient time and knowledge of the situation to prepare and rehearse forces for specific tasks. Typically, the enemy is in a defensive position and in a known location. Key considerations in offensive planning are⎯

Selecting a clear and appropriate objective.
Determining which enemy forces (security, reaction, or reserve) must be fixed.
Developing a reconnaissance plan that locates and tracks all key enemy targets and elements.
Creating or taking advantage of a window of opportunity to free friendly forces from any enemy advantages in precision standoff and situational awareness.
Determine which component or components of an enemy’s combat system to attack.

Situational Offense

The OPFOR may also conduct a situational offense. It recognizes that the modern battlefield is chaotic. Fleeting opportunities to strike at an enemy weakness will continually present themselves and just as quickly disappear. Although detailed planning and preparation greatly mitigate risk, they are often not achievable if a window of opportunity is to be exploited.

The following are examples of conditions that might lead to a situational offense:

A key enemy unit, system, or capability is exposed.
The OPFOR has an opportunity to conduct a spoiling attack to disrupt enemy defensive preparations.
An OPFOR unit makes contact on favorable terms for subsequent offensive action.

In a situational offense, the commander develops his assessment of the conditions rapidly and without a great deal of staff involvement. He provides a basic COA to the staff, which then quickly turns that COA into an executable combat order. Even more than other types of OPFOR offensive action, the situational offense relies on implementation of battle drills by subordinate tactical units (see chapter 5).

Organization of the battlefield in a situational offense will normally be limited to minor changes to existing control measures. The nature of situational offense is such that it often involves smaller, independent forces accomplishing discrete missions. These missions will typically require the use of task- organized tactical groups and detachments of various types.

Note. Any division or brigade receiving additional assets from a higher command becomes a division tactical group (DTG) or brigade tactical group (BTG). Therefore, references to a tactical group throughout this chapter may also apply to division or brigade, unless specifically stated otherwise.