In ground attack position, penetration is the breaching of, and moving past, a defensive military line.
Penetration is a strategic military maneuver much like the pincer movement with a few differences. The penetration attack goes straight through the enemy's lines and, once through, each flank turns and attacks the opponent's rear, similar to the blitzkriegstrategy.
A penetration is a form of maneuver in which an attacking force seeks to rupture enemy defenses on a narrow front to disrupt the defensive system. A commander employs a penetration when there is no assailable flank, enemy defenses are overextended and weak spots are detected in the enemy's positions, or time pressures do not permit envelopment.
The penetration is carried out as part of a frontal attack when there is no assailable flank available. It takes the form of assaulting the enemy positions, creating a rupture, widening of the gap and finally breakthrough. Separate forces are earmarked for the assault and break-out stages of penetration. Penetration has the stages of break in, dog fight and break-out. There are no clear-cut demarcations between these stages and these tend to overlap.
Flank attack and other forms of maneuver are preferred to the penetration or frontal attack.
Combined arms is an approach to warfare that seeks to integrate different combat arms of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects—for example, using infantry and armour in an urban environment in which each supports the other.
A frontal assault is a military tactic which involves a direct, full-force attack on the front line of an enemy force, rather than to the flanks or rear of the enemy. It allows for a quick and decisive victory, but at the cost of subjecting the attackers to the maximum defensive power of the enemy; this can make frontal assaults costly even if successful, and often disastrously costly if unsuccessful. It may be used as a last resort when time, terrain, limited command control, or low troop quality do not allow for any battlefield flexibility. The risks of a frontal assault can be mitigated by the use of heavy supporting fire, diversionary attacks, the use of cover, or infiltration tactics.
The Battle of Celaya, 6–15 April 1915, was part of a series of military engagements in the Bajío during the Mexican Revolution between the winners, who had allied against the regime of Gen. Victoriano Huerta and then fought each other for control of Mexico. The Constitutionalists under Gen. Venustiano Carranza faced off against the Army of the División del Norte of Pancho Villa. The first battle of Celaya was fought April 6–7, 1915, near Celaya in present-day Guanajuato, Mexico. The second battle of Celaya was fought April 15–16. These encounters between the Constitutionalist Army led by Gen. Álvaro Obregón, Venustiano Carranza's best general, and the army under the command of Pancho Villa were crucial in determining the outcome of the Mexican Revolution.
The Atlanta campaign was a series of battles fought in the Western Theater of the American Civil War throughout northwest Georgia and the area around Atlanta during the summer of 1864. Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman invaded Georgia from the vicinity of Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in May 1864, opposed by the Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston.
A counterattack is a tactic employed in response to an attack, with the term originating in "war games". The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy during attack, while the specific objectives typically seek to regain lost ground or destroy the attacking enemy.
Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy which emphasizes movement, initiative and surprise to achieve a position of advantage. Maneuver seeks to inflict losses indirectly by envelopment, encirclement and disruption, while minimizing the need to engage in frontal combat. In contrast to attrition warfare where strength tends to be applied against strength, maneuver warfare attempts to apply strength against weakness in order to accomplish the mission.
A breakout is a military operation to end a situation of investment by offensive operations that achieve a breakthrough—escape from offensive confinement. It is used in contexts such as this: "The British breakout attempt from Normandy". It is one of four possible outcomes of investment, the others being relief, surrender, or reduction.
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 Battle of Xinkou was a decisive engagement of the Taiyuan Campaign, the second of the 22 major engagements between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The second Smolensk operation was a Soviet strategic offensive operation conducted by the Red Army as part of the Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1943. Staged almost simultaneously with the Lower Dnieper Offensive, the offensive lasted two months and was led by General Andrei Yeremenko, commanding the Kalinin Front, and Vasily Sokolovsky, commanding the Western Front. Its goal was to clear the German presence from the Smolensk and Bryansk regions. Smolensk had been under German occupation since the first Battle of Smolensk in 1941.
In military tactics, a flanking maneuver is a movement of an armed force around an enemy force's side, or flank, to achieve an advantageous position over it. Flanking is useful because a force's fighting strength is typically concentrated in its front, therefore, to circumvent an opposing force's front and attack its flank is to concentrate one's own offense in the area where the enemy is least able to concentrate defense.
VC and PAVN battle tactics comprised a flexible mix of guerrilla and conventional warfare battle tactics used by Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to defeat their U.S. and South Vietnamese (GVN/ARVN) opponents during the Vietnam War.
Envelopment is the military tactic of seizing objectives in the enemy's rear with the goal of destroying specific enemy forces and denying them the ability to withdraw. Rather than attacking an enemy head-on, as in a frontal assault, an envelopment seeks to exploit the enemy's flanks, attacking them from multiple directions and avoiding where their defenses are strongest. A successful envelopment lessens the number of casualties suffered by the attacker while inducing a psychological shock on the defender and improving the chances to destroy them. An envelopment will consist of one or more enveloping forces, which attacks the enemy's flank(s), and a fixing force, which attacks the enemy's front and "fixes" them in place so that they cannot withdraw or shift their focus on the enveloping forces. While a successful tactic, there are risks involved with performing an envelopment. The enveloping force can become overextended and cut off from friendly forces by an enemy counterattack, or the enemy can counterattack against the fixing force.
The hammer and anvil is a military tactic involving the use of two primary forces, one to pin down an enemy, and the other to smash or defeat the opponent with an encirclement maneuver. It may involve a frontal assault by one part of the force, playing a slower-moving or more static role. The second phase involves a more mobile force that maneuvers around the enemy and attacks from behind or the flank to deliver a decisive blow.
The Battle of Hwacheon was fought between 22 and 26 April 1951 during the Korean War between United Nations Command (UN) and Chinese forces during the Chinese Spring Offensive. The US 1st Marine Division successfully defended their positions and then withdrew under fire to the No-Name Line.
The 381st Rifle Division was raised in 1941 as an infantry division of the Red Army, and served for the duration of the Great Patriotic War in that role. It began forming in August, 1941 in the Urals Military District. It first served in the bitter fighting around the Rzhev salient, deep in the German rear in the 39th Army and came close to being completely destroyed in July, 1942. The division's survivors were moved north well away from the front for a major rebuilding. It returned to the front in October, joining the 3rd Shock Army for the battle and siege of Velikiye Luki. The division remained in this general area in western Russia until March, 1944, when it was moved to the Reserve of the Supreme High Command and then to 21st Army north of Leningrad in April. It served in the offensive that drove Finland out of the war from June to September, winning a battle honor and the Order of the Red Banner in the process, before being transferred back to the Soviet-German front in October. As part of the 2nd Shock Army of 2nd Belorussian Front the 381st advanced across Poland and Pomerania during the winter of 1945, then joined its Front's advance across the Oder River into north-central Germany in late April, ending the war on the Baltic coast. In the summer of that year the division was disbanded.
The Battle of Nevel was a successful military operation conducted by the Red Army in the Pskov Oblast of western Russia and in northern Belarus during World War II, from October 6 to roughly December 16, 1943, although fighting persisted in the area into the new year.
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