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.