Chapter 5: Information Warfare

While the OPFOR sees the offense as the decisive form of military action, it recognizes defense as the stronger form of military action, particularly when faced with a superior, extraregional foe. Defensive operations can lead to strategic victory if the extraregional enemy abandons his mission. It may be sufficient for the OPFOR simply not to lose. Even when an operational-level command--such as a field group (FG) or operational- strategic command (OSC)--as a whole is conducting an offensive operation, it is likely that one or more subordinate units may be executing defensive missions to preserve offensive combat power in other areas, to protect an important formation or resource, or to deny access to key facilities or geographic areas.

OPFOR defenses can be characterized as a “shield of blows.” Each force and zone of the defense plays an important role in the attack of the enemy’s combat system. An operational-level defense is structured around the concept that destroying the synergy of the enemy’s combat system will make enemy forces vulnerable to attack and destruction.

Commanders and staffs do not approach the defense with preconceived templates. The operational situation may cause the commander to vary his defensive methods and techniques. Nevertheless, there are basic characteristics of defensive operations (purposes and types of action) that have applications in all situations.

Strategic Context

Defensive operations are an important component of all OPFOR strategic campaigns. However, the scale and purpose of defensive actions may differ during the various types of strategic-level actions.

Regional Operations

The State possesses an overmatch in all elements of power against internal and regional opponents. It is able to employ that power in regional operations in a conventional operational design. This overmatch does not imply, however, that regional operations are entirely offensive. Consolidation of gains, security actions, and economy-of-force measures can all produce defensive courses of action inside a larger offensive design.

The State’s military forces are sufficient to overmatch any single regional neighbor, but not necessarily an alliance or coalition of neighboring countries. They may not be a match for the forces an extraregional power can bring to bear. Thus, the OPFOR seeks to exploit its numerical and

technological overmatch against one regional opponent rapidly, before other regional neighbors or an extraregional power can enter the fight. In some cases, this may require defensive operations against one or more regional neighbors who are not the main target of the strategic campaign, to mitigate their ability to disrupt an OPFOR offensive against the one that is.

Regional operations include essentially defensive security actions to maintain internal stability. In addition, the Internal Security Forces help control the population in territory the OPFOR seizes or engage enemy forces that invade State territory.

The State’s military goal during regional operations is to destroy its re- gional opponents’ military power in order to achieve specific ends. The State plans regional operations well in advance and executes them as rapidly as is feasible in order to preclude intervention by outside forces. Still, at the very outset of these operations, it lays plans and positions forces to conduct access- control operations in the event of outside intervention. Extraregional forces may also be vulnerable to conventional operations during the time they require to build combat power and create support at home for their intervent