The meaning of manoeuvre

Postmodernist Command: A Contradiction in Terms for the British Army?

“…Attrition of men and equipment still play a role but it is the purpose of that destruction which defines the Manoeuvrist Approach. 24 Destruction seeks to enable manoeuvre allowing 'unacceptable pressure' to be placed upon the enemy 'at times and places he least expects'. 25 The tempo of the friendly forces enables them to paralyse the enemy's ability to decide and act in a timely manner.…”

Defence Policy under the Labour Government: Operational Dynamism and Strategic Inertia

“…The origins of Mission Command lie in Prussian military thought and the concept forms a key element of the British Manoeuvrist Approach. As Alex Danchev (1998, 33–35) and Sir John Kiszely (1998) demonstrate, the core features of the Manoeuvrist Approach can be traced back to Sun Tzu, but also to the British theorist J. F. C. Fuller (1928), and the ‘indirect approach’ of Basil Liddell Hart (1929). It was not, however, until the mid‐1970s that Manoeuvre theory was revised (Kiszely 1999, 37) and the principle of Manoeuvre Warfare and its associated concept of Mission Command was only formally adopted in place of Montgomery's ‘Set‐Piece Battle’ by the British military in 1987 (Kiszely 1999).…”

“…Observation of the RMA has been supplemented by British operations, before and after the SDR. Operations in Bosnia demonstrated the applicability of the Manoeuvrist Approach to peacekeeping at the operational and tactical levels (Kiszely 1998, 39). Kosovo, Sierra Leone (2000) and Operation Telic also illustrated the importance of the balance ‘between direction and delegation’ provided by Mission Command (Melvin 2002, 40; Storr 2003, 123; Dorman 2006, 156–157) 45 .…”

“…The document was quickly replaced by ‘Joint Warfare Publication 3–50’, which envisioned a more ‘robust’ role for Land Forces (Rollins 2006, 88). The 1998 British Defence Doctrine formed an important watershed in thinking on expeditionary crisis‐management operations (Kiszely 1998, 39; Cassidy 2004, 185–199; Frantzen 2005, 108). The document pointed to the ‘continuum of conflict’ (the tendency of operations to vary quickly in intensity) and the difficulty of making sharp distinctions between peacekeeping and high‐intensity conflict (Frantzen 2005, 108).…”