Words Matter

Demystifying 'Manuever'

By LTC Michael A. Hamilton

Article published on: March 1, 2024 in the Spring 2024 edition of Infantry

Read Time: < 27 mins

Author’s Note: U.S. Army doctrine is truly outstanding. It is not my intent to denigrate it. On the contrary, the intent of this article is to provoke the critical thinking and professional dialogue necessary to keep our doctrine strong and relevant. As the character of war changes, there will always be tensions between existing doctrinal concepts and innovation, along with the associated impetuses to create, expand, redefine, or jettison ideas. This article is about deliberately critiquing and influencing those impetuses to ensure the best outcome for our Army in the future.

Maneuver is one of the most common doctrinal terms in the Army, but what does it really mean? For a concept that is so central to the Army’s mission, it deserves close examination. Doctrinal use of the term maneuver is expanding. The changing character of war has inspired new warfighting concepts for how the Army conducts maneuver with new technologies as part of a joint force. Contemporary military leaders and planners describe warfighting in emerging domains and dimensions such as space, cyberspace, the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), and the information environment using terms such as “cross-domain maneuver” and “expanded maneuver.” For those familiar with maneuver in its traditional application — land warfare — this begs the question: How can we accurately describe warfighting in virtual domains in the same manner we describe it on the ground, especially at the strategic level and across the entire spectrum of conflict? While it is not misguided to draw these conceptual parallels for descriptive purposes, it’s worth considering the risk of misunderstanding such important concepts.

Why This Matters: The Risk of Misunderstanding Maneuver

“Clear-cut nomenclature is essential to clear thought.”
— B.H. Liddell Hart ¹

This is not merely an academic topic. How we think about maneuver as a specific activity that achieves a specific purpose translates directly to how we think about problem solving in war. Maneuver is an important solution to a specific problem: How does a force gain the advantage with the minimum possible risk from an initial point of parity or disadvantage? At present, the assumed answer to this question within our Army is overwhelmingly maneuver. But without a clear vision of what maneuver is, this answer is found to be ambiguous as a kind of synonym for everything considered to be “good tactics,” which is unhelpful from a descriptive standpoint. And the ambiguity is growing with the scope of its use.

This lack of precision in the meaning of maneuver carries two risks:

• The risk of institutionalizing ineffective maneuver due to ignorance of its core aspects, and
• The risk of systemically overlooking other tools of tactics, operational art, and strategy in the cognitive fog of maneuver.

Understanding the true nature of maneuver both enables its effective execution through understanding its essential elements and distinguishes it from other important warfighting concepts to enable their skillful application in competition and conflict.

An Argument for Maneuver: Position, Advantage, and Evasion

For the term maneuver to hold any significance beyond platitudinous “military movement,” it must convey unique attributes. So, what are the unique attributes of maneuver? The following is a rational, if not-so-original (reference Clausewitz, B.H. Liddell Hart, John Boyd, and Edward Luttwak) or thoroughly historical argument for those attributes. Through describing these attributes in detail and juxtaposing them with alternative methods, the intent is to illuminate the essence of maneuver and influence doctrine to take a stronger, less ambiguous, and more consistent position on what constitutes maneuver.

1. Maneuver seeks positional advantage. Maneuver leverages favorable position to gain advantage. Thus, it depends on position as the primary means of winning advantage above all other instruments. The advantages won by maneuver are local in nature, not global or absolute. In fact, a principal benefit of maneuver is the ability to overcome absolute disadvantages in strength or capability by the agile and creative employment of force against localized parts of an adversary’s whole. The instrument of effective maneuver is not a complete overmatch in strength or capability, but the ability to create a local overmatch by altering the disposition of forces or capabilities in relation to the enemy.Alternatively, the employment of forces, capabilities, or combat power without regard to achieving a favorable position should not be considered maneuver.

Maneuver often employs an indirect approach to the enemy’s main orientation or bearing. The reason for this is common sense: Assuming adversaries cannot be strong everywhere, they tend to focus their strengths or capabilities in critical areas or directions. Thus, the goal of maneuver is to seek an alternative to assenting to the enemy’s expectations. As B.H. Liddell Hart argued in favor of such an approach, “in face of the overwhelming evidence of history, no general is justified in launching his troops to a direct attack upon an enemy firmly in position;” and “with the exception of Alexander [III of Macedon], the consistently successful great commanders of history, when faced by an enemy in a position strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever attacked it directly.” ² Although Hart’s analysis has been criticized as biased in its perspective and skewed in its conclusions, the point it makes is the immense potential of indirect approaches to increase the probability of success in war. The idea of creating local advantage through an indirect approach is critical to understanding the true nature of maneuver. Conversely, the application of overwhelming force from a straightforward or direct approach should normally not be considered maneuver. Effective maneuver generally employs an indirect approach to problem solving.

Vignette: Turning Movement

Field Manual (FM) 3-90, Tactics: “A turning movement is a form of maneuver in which the attacking force seeks to avoid the enemy’s principal defensive positions by attacking to the rear of their current positions forcing them to move or divert forces to meet the threat.” ³ By threatening the Austrians’ lines of communications and supply to their rear, Napoleon’s outnumbered Army of Italy forced the numerically superior Austrians to divert forces away from their attack on Verona. ⁴ (See Figure 2.)

2. Maneuver exploits enemy weakness. Effective maneuver leverages the relative advantage against an enemy weakness. If not, its utility as a means of increasing the probability of success is greatly diminished. There are certainly other reasons to maneuver (such as achieving surprise or seizing the initiative), but the best maneuver maximizes relative advantage by massing strength against weakness. As the classic treatise on tactics Infantry in Battle describes: “To determine the location for his principal effort, the leader seeks to discover the enemy’s weakness. The flanks and rear of an enemy being weak points, he will strike at these when they can be reached. Often the ground itself will be the deciding factor. By a careful study the leader will be able to determine those parts of the terrain where the enemy cannot employ his weapons to advantage... Having made his choice, the leader’s dispositions must correspond to his scheme of maneuver. The density of deployment is greater where the main effort is to be made.” ⁵ Alternatively, the application of overwhelming force or capability to attrit enemy strength and create vulnerabilities where none already exist is not maneuver. Although maneuver seeks to exploit an adversary’s vulnerabilities through relative advantage, it is not the direct object of true maneuver to create them.

Relative advantage, like maneuver, is a slippery term that can be interpreted in many ways, but whose clear and precise meaning is key to understanding maneuver. The Army’s doctrinal description of relative advantage in the context of maneuver is ambiguous: “a favorable condition that provides temporary freedom of action to enhance combat power over an enemy or influence the enemy to accept risk and move to a position of disadvantage.” ⁶ How exactly this happens — the specific mechanism that creates this “favorable condition” — is unclear in this description, but combat power is alluded to as the causal factor. The common association of combat power with relative advantage is mainly concerned with what can be considered “objective advantage” — overmatch in strength, firepower, or resources. Despite this common understanding of relative advantage as objective advantage, it is important to acknowledge that a broader understanding of relative advantage makes room for legitimate “subjective advantages” such as surprise, initiative, or favorable terrain. This broader interpretation of relative advantage is likely one of several contributing factors of maneuver’s runaway usage, since anything that can be considered advantageous immediately becomes “maneuver.” However, if we clarify relative advantage in the context of maneuver as mainly that which generates overmatch and exploits weakness in enemy objective capability, we empower maneuver with clarity of meaning and unlock its utility as a distinct problem-solving tool.

Vignette: Envelopment

FM 3-90: “Envelopment is a form of maneuver in which an attacking force avoids an enemy’s principal defense by attacking along an assailable flank. An envelopment avoids the enemy force’s strength — the enemy’s front — where the effects of enemy fires and obstacles are generally the greatest and attacks the enemy to the flank or rear.” ⁷ The famous “left hook” of Operation Desert Storm took advantage of the vulnerable western flank of the Iraqi Army, enabled by coalition fixing and deception operations targeting the Iraqi’s principal defenses oriented to the south.

3. Maneuver avoids enemy strength. The indirect approach of maneuver is inherently evasive. It avoids an enemy’s parity or advantage in combat power as an imperative. Although this idea can be viewed as the simple inverse of the previous point of exploiting enemy weakness, it is worth distinguishing the two to fully understand the utility of each. Avoiding enemy strengths is not synonymous with exploiting weaknesses. The former focuses on mitigating risk, while the latter focuses on creating opportunity. There are situations in which avoiding such risks in confronting enemy strengths is either impractical or unavoidable but can be mitigated by other means such as surprise or massing of fires and effects to suppress, neutralize, or attrit enemy capabilities. These are important alternative tactical solutions that deserve to be considered distinctly from maneuver in its purest sense. Maneuver seeks to completely bypass the risk of enemy strength rather than reduce it. A direct approach that seeks to suppress, neutralize, or attrit the enemy’s strengths rather than avoid them is not maneuver. Maneuver renders the enemy’s principal strengths irrelevant through creatively circumventing them via the path of least resistance A direct approach that seeks to suppress, neutralize, or attrit the enemy’s strengths rather than avoid them is not maneuver. Maneuver renders the enemy’s principal strengths irrelevant through creatively circumventing them via the path of least resistance.

Vignette: Infiltration

FM 3-90: “An infiltration is a form of maneuver in which an attacking force conducts undetected movement through or into an area occupied by enemy forces… A successful infiltration requires the infiltrating force to avoid detection and engagement by enemy forces.” ⁸ Note: The potential of infiltration to achieve a position of relative advantage with little to no supporting fires and effects highlights a doctrinal inconsistency in the conception of maneuver as merely “movement in conjunction with fires,” which will be discussed later.

Understanding Alternatives to Maneuver

Maneuver is not a panacea — it requires “freedom of maneuver” that is not always at hand and often must be created. It also demands sufficient intelligence on enemy dispositions, strengths, and weaknesses, which is often challenging to say the least. Maneuver also requires a critical variable of warfare that is often precious and fleeting: time. It requires suitable mobility for the METT-TC (mission, enemy, terrain & weather, troops & support available, time available, civil considerations) conditions and is also highly sensitive to enemy freedom of action and counter-maneuver, which must be limited for maneuver to be effective. After all, if the point of maneuver is to exploit weakness and avoid strength in the enemy’s disposition, then the enemy’s disposition must be relatively fixed. If maneuver is the indirect approach to gain a position of relative advantage by exploiting weakness and avoiding strength, “non-maneuver” (for lack of a better term) is the direct approach to fix, deceive, disrupt, suppress, neutralize, or attrit the enemy through other means that set the conditions for successful maneuver. This “non-maneuver” has historically been cast in a negative light by military theorists and practitioners alike, describing it in terms loaded with negative connotation such as “attrition” or “annihilation” tactics and establishing a false dichotomy that is unnecessarily narrow; as Sir Lawrence Freedman observed, “military history gave little support to the dichotomous view of attrition and maneuver, or that maneuver could serve as an overall doctrine rather than an occasional opportunity.” ⁹ However, when we have a clear understanding of the concept of maneuver, we understand the utility of alternative direct approaches and how they enable maneuver.

Vignette: Frontal Attack — An Alternative to the Indirect Approach of Maneuver

FM 3-90: A frontal attack “seeks to destroy a weaker enemy force or fix a larger enemy force in place over a broad front... A frontal attack is necessary when assailable flanks do not exist… units rarely conduct frontal attack when they lack overwhelming combat power unless fixing the enemy is vital to a larger operation’s success.” ¹⁰ Note: Doctrine greatly confuses the concept of maneuver by including frontal attack as a “form of maneuver,” while simultaneously describing it as a tactic to be avoided unless supporting other more indirect forms of maneuver or possessing an overwhelming advantage that renders an indirect approach unnecessary. In other words, conceiving frontal attack as a form of maneuver undermines the purpose of maneuver — achieving a position of relative advantage — by drawing equivalence with a direct approach that does not seek this as an end.

Struggling to Define Maneuver in Doctrine

“When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself.”

—Karl Jaspers
German existentialist

At present, a singular definition of maneuver does not exist in U.S. military doctrine. But it does have a well-established — and recently expanded — range of usage. Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-0, Operations, the Army’s proponent document for the term maneuver, defines it simply as “movement in conjunction with fires.” ¹¹ FM 3-90 employs this same definition but also mentions that “direct fire and close combat are inherent in maneuver.” ¹² ATP 3-21.8, Infantry Platoon and Squad, reinforces this idea by stating that “maneuver begins once a unit has made contact with the enemy.” ¹³

However, ADP 3-0 also defines the maneuver warfighting function as “the related tasks and systems that move and employ forces to achieve a position of relative advantage over the enemy and other threats.” ¹⁴ FM 3-90 further employs two different definitions of maneuver as a principle of war. One definition of the principle states maneuver “places the enemy at a disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power,” while another definition adds “maneuver is coordinated movement and fire in relation to enemy forces to put them at a disadvantage with the least cost to friendly forces.” ¹⁵

Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Joint Campaigns and Operations, describes maneuver in several ways, including:

1. “The employment of forces to gain a position of advantage with respect to the enemy;” ¹⁶
2. “The disposition of joint forces to conduct operations securing positional or informational advantages across the competition continuum;” ¹⁷
3. “The employment of forces while in, or expecting, contact with the enemy;” ¹⁸ and
4. “Assuring the mobility of friendly forces.” ¹⁹

This description of joint force maneuver in JP 3-0 is further expanded to include strategic and operational applications, including flexible deterrent options, operational reach, and theater posture.

Finally, Army Futures Command (AFC) Pamphlet 71-20-1, Army Futures Command Concept for Maneuver in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, defines cross-domain maneuver as “the employment of mutually supporting lethal and nonlethal capabilities in multiple domains to generate overmatch, present multiple dilemmas to the enemy, and enable Joint force freedom of movement and action.” ²⁰

If we aggregate all these wide-ranging descriptions of maneuver, we arrive at the following: “Movement in conjunction with the flexible application of combat power to achieve relative advantage over the enemy and other threats, minimize risk to force, and enable joint force freedom of action across all domains and dimensions, the competition continuum, time, and all levels of war.” It is only a slight exaggeration to summarize this de facto definition as: “Conducting military operations and activities everywhere, all the time, to win” — a completely vacuous description of a critical concept.

Sifting Through the Clutter

There are five themes of competing demands in the current doctrinal melee of maneuver meaning: (1) relative advantage, (2) fire and movement, (3) joint, combined arms, multidomain synchronization, (4) application at all levels of war, and (5) application throughout the competition continuum. Of these demands, two (relative advantage and application at all levels of war) are legitimate and constructive; another (application across the competition continuum) is ill-advised; and the remaining two are counterproductive. It betrays the purpose of precision in doctrinal language to put all of these “big rocks” in the conceptual rucksack of maneuver. Unpacking all of this is critical.

The most counterproductive semantic demand on maneuver is “fire and movement.” The current doctrinal definition of maneuver in ADP 3-0 is at the heart of the confusion. While “movement in conjunction with fires” is certainly important and tactically sound in many situations, it is not elementary to true maneuver. The mandate of fire and movement is simple: suppress the enemy to enable friendly freedom of action. As important as this is, it is also painfully devoid of considerations for relative advantage, exploiting weakness, and avoiding strength as critical outcomes. The different demands are also mutually exclusive: The conduct of fire and movement does not necessarily require the conduct of movement to achieve relative advantage and vice versa. Forces may be employed to achieve positions of relative advantage while not in contact with the enemy, just as forces may execute effective fire and movement and still achieve no relative advantage. It seems especially prudent to separate these two concepts given the fact that there are legitimate forms of maneuver and conceivable METT-TC conditions in which suppressive fires and effects are inappropriate for the situation.

As an aside, it is worth carefully examining how “fire and movement” came to be doctrinally confused with maneuver. The drift of fire and movement into equivalence with maneuver seems to indicate, at least superficially, a tendency to confuse ways and means with ends in themselves. In stressing the importance of setting conditions for effective maneuver with fires and effects to fix, suppress, neutralize, or attrit the enemy, the institution seemingly lost sight of the distinction between the two activities. Reclaiming this important distinction will do good service to both.

Another counterproductive semantic demand on maneuver is joint, combined arms, and multidomain synchronization. The impetus set forth in AFC Pamphlet 71-20-1’s definition of cross-domain maneuver to employ “mutually supporting lethal and nonlethal capabilities in multiple domains to generate overmatch” and “present multiple dilemmas to the enemy,” while important and tactically sound, is also not constitutive of maneuver. It also seems to be semantically redundant in doctrine with two apparently diluted terms: combined arms and multidomain operations (MDO). The meaning and significance of combined arms is clear in doctrine: The synchronized and simultaneous application of arms to achieve an effect greater than if each element was used separately or sequentially. ²¹ Likewise, the meaning of MDO is also clear in doctrine: Operations conducted across multiple domains and the EMS in contested spaces to overcome an adversary’s strengths by presenting them with several operational and/ or tactical dilemmas. ²² Assuming these definitions sufficiently describe the desired outcomes of the employment of joint, combined arms, and multidomain capabilities, it may be beneficial to delink this concept from maneuver for the sake of clarity. It is curious why this oversight of combined arms and MDO as redundant to the formulation of cross-domain maneuver was possible with such clarity of doctrinal definitions that seem to suit the conceptual demands. The most likely culprit is a tendency for certain terms within institutions to become overused tropes that eventually lose their significance — precisely the situation from which we need to rescue the concept of maneuver.

Regarding the conduct of maneuver across the competition continuum at all levels of war, the issue at hand is highly subjective but worth consideration in the broader context of promoting strategic acumen. While it is true that maneuver can be executed in strategic competition, the problem is the implicitly tactical connotation the term maneuver invokes in the context of strategic competition, at the expense of emphasis on strategy. It is also curious that this “expanded” view of maneuver in strategic competition is presented as a new concept, despite not being new at all. ²³ The conceptual expansion of maneuver into strategic competition seems to be grasping at describing the specific mechanisms of successful strategy by leveraging tactical concepts and terminology. Perhaps part of the problem: Joint doctrine provides detailed descriptions of strategy and its desired outcomes without a strong emphasis on recommended tools and approaches for how to achieve it. This lack of fulsome illustration of strategic art through the mechanisms of effective strategy (e.g., posture, deterrence, strategic reach, alliances, whole-of-government integration, etc.) seems to have created a conceptual void which verbiage like “expanded maneuver in space and time” attempt to fill with implicit references to warfighting and tactics. ²⁴ Military history and literature is replete with insights on effective strategy that might contribute to more illustrative recommendations for strategic art, so it seems awkward that our joint concepts for “expanded maneuver” in strategic competition would forego these ideas in favor of co-opting implicitly tactical vocabulary.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Maneuver is movement to achieve a position of relative advantage in combat power over the enemy through avoiding their strengths and exploiting their weaknesses to increase the probability of success while exposing friendly forces to the minimum possible risk. Maneuver is neither omnipotent nor a universal dogma, but its utility as a problem-solving tool at all levels of war is critical. We must prevent maneuver from becoming a meaningless cliché that fails to convey unique and specific attributes. If “maneuver” means almost everything, then it means almost nothing. It is also not mere fire and movement, nor is it the synergy of combined arms, joint, or multidomain capabilities, despite greatly benefitting from all the above. Although suppressive fires, combined arms, and multidomain operations are critical to supporting maneuver, we must guard against the drift of these concepts into equivalence with maneuver. Each of these concepts are critical to warfighting and deserve to be appreciated in themselves as distinct ideas. The essence of true maneuver is inherently enemy oriented rather than friendly performance based. Developing true tacticians for future conflicts demands a clear understanding of maneuver as enemy oriented in terms of dispositions, strengths, and weaknesses. Otherwise, we risk a fate of rigid incompetence described by B.H. Liddell Hart:

“The training of armies is primarily devoted to developing efficiency in the detailed execution of the attack. This concentration on tactical technique, in peace-time exercises, tends to obscure the psychological element. It fosters a cult of soundness, rather than of surprise. It breeds commanders who are so intent not to do anything wrong, according to ‘the book,’ that they forget the necessity of making the enemy do something wrong. The result is that their plans have no result. For, in war, it is by compelling mistakes that the scales are most often turned.” ²⁵

Maneuver in Virtual Domains? If we accept this formulation of maneuver, then we must think critically about what constitutes effective maneuver in virtual domains. Is the movement involved in virtual maneuver focused on the disposition of physical capabilities and infrastructure in terrestrial domains? Maybe. Or is this “movement” in virtual domains more concerned with dominating networks, spectrums, and narratives? If so, does this make the physical disposition of capabilities merely administrative/logistical and not the principal mechanism of achieving relative advantage — like repositioning ground forces within an area of operations prior to commencing an attack? If the mechanisms of successful maneuver in virtual domains are themselves virtual, how can they leverage indirect approaches to exploit enemy weaknesses and avoid enemy strengths? Does this even matter in virtual domains, or does the unique nature of these domains change the considerations of risk in leveraging direct approaches?

Creative reflection on these questions by subject matter experts will undoubtedly lead to countless possibilities to achieve this in the cyber and information domains and EMS. If not, then arguably cyberspace, EW, and information operations are not necessarily achieving cross-domain maneuver in the truest sense, but they are nonetheless tremendously important for achieving the intent of MDO: overcoming an adversary’s strengths by presenting them with several dilemmas. Is this direct approach “good enough,” or should we endeavor to achieve more indirect approaches to exploit weakness and avoid strengths to achieve success in these virtual domains? Perhaps, but only if we first understand this as true maneuver.

Notes