Deep operation
Deep operation, also known as Soviet deep battle, was a military theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a tenet that emphasized destroying, suppressing or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact but also throughout the depth of the battlefield.
The term comes from Vladimir Triandafillov, an influential military writer, who worked with others to create a military strategy with specialized operational art and tactics. The concept of deep operations was a state strategy, tailored to the economic, cultural and geopolitical position of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the failures in the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, and the Polish–Soviet War the Soviet High Command focused on developing new methods for the conduct of war. This new approach considered military strategy and tactics and introduced a new intermediate level of military art: operations. The Soviet Union's military was the first to officially distinguish the third level of military thinking which occupied the position between strategy and tactics.
The Soviets developed the concept of deep battle and by 1936 it had become part of the Red Army field regulations. Deep operations had two phases: the tactical deep battle, followed by the exploitation of tactical success, known as the conduct of deep battle operations. Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy's logistical structure and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible, or irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.
History
Before deep battle
The Russian Empire had kept pace with its enemies and allies and performed well in its wars up to the 19th century. Despite some notable victories in the Napoleonic Wars and in various Russo-Turkish Wars, defeats in the Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, the First World War and the Polish–Soviet War highlighted the weaknesses in Russian and Soviet military training, organization and methods.After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the new Bolshevik regime sought to establish a new military system that reflected the Bolshevik revolutionary spirit. The new Red Army combined the old and new methods. It still relied on the country's enormous manpower reserves and the Soviet program to develop heavy industry, which began in 1929, also raised the technical standards of Soviet arms industries to the level of other European nations. Once that had been achieved, the Soviets turned their attention to solving the problem of military operational mobility.
Advocates of the development included Alexander Svechin, Mikhail Frunze and Mikhail Tukhachevsky. They promoted the development of military scientific societies and identified groups of talented officers. Many of these officers entered the Soviet Military Academy during Tukhachevsky's tenure as its commandant in 1921–1922. Others came later, particularly Nikolai Varfolomeev and Vladimir Triandafillov, who made significant contributions to the use of technology in deep offensive operations.
Roots of deep battle
In the aftermath of the wars with Japan as well as experiences gained during the Russian Civil War several senior Soviet commanders called for a unified military doctrine. The most prominent was Frunze. The call prompted opposition by Leon Trotsky. Frunze's position eventually found favour with the officer elements that had experienced the poor command and control of Soviet forces in the conflict with Poland during the Polish–Soviet War. That turn of events prompted Trotsky's replacement by Frunze in January 1925.The nature of this new doctrine was to be political. The Soviets were to fuse the military with the Bolshevik ideal, which would define the nature of war for the Soviet Union. The Soviets believed their most likely enemy would be the capitalist states of the west they had defended themselves against before and that such a conflict was unavoidable. The nature of the war raised four questions,
- Would the next war be won in one decisive campaign or would it be a long struggle of attrition?
- Should the Red Army be primarily offensive or defensive?
- Would the nature of battle be fluid or static?
- Would mechanized or infantry forces be more important?
The doctrine pursued by the Soviets was offensively orientated. Tukhachevsky's neglect of defense pushed the Red Army toward the decisive battle and cult of the offensive mentality, which along with other events, caused enormous problems in 1941. Unlike Tukhachevsky, Svechin thought that the next war could be won only by attrition, not by decisive battle. Svechin also argued that a theory of alternating defensive and offensive action was needed. Within that framework, Svechin also recognised the theoretical distinction of operational art that lay between tactics and strategy. In his opinion the role of the operation was to group and direct tactical battles toward a series of simultaneous operational objectives along a wide front, either directly or indirectly, to achieve Stavka's strategic target. This became the blueprint for Soviet deep battle.
In 1929, Triandafillov and Tukhachevsky formed a partnership to create a coherent system of principles from the concept formed by Svechin. Tukhachevsky was to elaborate the principles of the tactical and operational phases of deep battle. In response to his efforts and in acceptance of the methodology, the Red Army produced the Provisional Instructions for Organizing the Deep Battle manual in 1933. This was the first time that "deep battle" was mentioned in official Red Army literature.
Principles
Doctrine
Deep battle encompassed manoeuvre by multiple Soviet Army front-size formations simultaneously. It was not meant to deliver a victory in a single operation; instead, multiple operations, which might be conducted in parallel or successively, would induce a catastrophic failure in the enemy's defensive system.Each operation served to divert enemy attention and keep the defender guessing about where the main effort and the main objective lay. In doing so, it prevented the enemy from dispatching powerful mobile reserves to the area. The army could then overrun vast regions before the defender could recover. The diversion operations also frustrated an opponent trying to conduct an elastic defence. The supporting operations had significant strategic objectives themselves and supporting units were to continue their offensive actions until they were unable to progress any further. However, they were still subordinated to the main/decisive strategic objective determined by the Stavka.
Each of the operations along the front would have secondary strategic goals, and one of those operations would usually be aimed towards the primary objective.
The strategic objective, or mission, was to secure the primary strategic target. The primary target usually consisted of a geographical objective and the destruction of a proportion of the enemy armed forces. Usually the strategic missions of each operation were carried out by a Soviet front. The front itself usually had several shock armies attached to it, which were to converge on the target and encircle or assault it. The means of securing it was the job of the division and its tactical components, which Soviet deep battle termed the tactical mission.
Terminology, force allocation and mission
| Mission | Territory | Actions | Force allocation |
| Strategic aim | Theatre of operations | Strategic operation | Strategic unit |
| Strategic mission | Strategic direction | Front operation | Operational-strategic unit |
| Operational mission | Operational direction | Army-size operation battle | Operational unit |
| Tactical mission | Battlefield | Battle | Operational-tactical unit |
The concept of deep battle was not just offensive. The theory took into account all forms of warfare and decided both the offensive and defensive should be studied and incorporated into deep battle. The defensive phase of deep battle involved identifying crucial strategic targets and securing them against attack from all directions. As with the offensive methods of deep battle, the target area would be identified and dissected into operational and tactical zones. In defence, the tactical zones, forward of the objective would be fortified with artillery and infantry forces. The outer and forwardmost defences would be heavily mined, making a very strong static defence position. The tactical zones would have several defence lines, one after the other, usually 12 kilometres from the main objective. In the zone 1–3 km from the main objective, shock forces, which contained the bulk of the Soviet combat formations, would be positioned.
The goal of the defence in depth concept was to blunt the elite enemy forces, which would be first to breach the Soviet lines, several times, causing them to exhaust themselves. Once the enemy had become bogged down in Soviet defences, the operational reserves came into play. Being positioned behind the tactical zones, the fresh mobile forces consisting of mechanized infantry, foot infantry, armored forces, and powerful tactical air support would engage the worn down enemy in a counter-offensive and either destroy it by attacking its flank or drive it out of the Soviet tactical zone and into enemyheld territory as far as possible.