Senin, 07 Maret 2011

Hedgehog Waterway Defense: Proposed Polish strategy and tactics in the event of invasion

This paper deals with the strategy and tactics Poland should employ if attacked. We hope, of course, that such state of affairs will never come to pass, and this brief study is purely hypothetical in nature solely for the sake of discussion.
In this study, make the following assumptions:
1.     That Poland will not be assisted by other countries, NATO or otherwise.
2.     That Bielorus and the Ukraine have come back into the Russian orbit or that they can be sufficiently influenced as to allow the passage of Russian troops onto their territory.
3.     That nuclear weapons will not be deployed.
Let us first look at two historical precedents in the twentieth century when Poland clashed militarily with its neighbors.
Polish–Soviet War
The Polish–Soviet war was the result of the expansionist policies of both Poland and Soviet Russia. For its part, Poland saw the opportunity to build a buffer zone against Russia, while Russia saw the opportunity to expand the communist revolution westwards.
By 1920, the Red Army felt confident. It had won important battles over the White Armies and had signed peace treaties with Latvia and Estonia, thus securing its flanks. The Russians began to assemble a 700,000–man army near the Berezina River in Belarus.
Armaments for both armies were limited; both sides were underequipped, arms being made up of leftover WW I German supply depots and arms captured by the Russians rom the Allied expeditionary forces.
Poland’s front was held by a thinly-manned force of 120,000 men spread along the border, and there were no strategic reserves. This type of defensive posture harkened back to World War I and proved to be inadequate against the numerically superior Russian invasion force. The Poles were not only outnumbered, but had no significant fortifications. When Russia attacked, the Polish lines were quickly breached, and the Poles fell back in disarray. Things seemed dire until, thanks to quick maneuvering and intelligence on Russian movement, the Battle of Warsaw took place where the Russians suffered a crushing defeat, effectively ending Russian ambitions of Western expansion and of internationalizing the revolution.  In the endgame, the advance of Russian pawns by curtailed by daring moves by Poland’s main pieces.
The war convinced the Poles of the importance of maneuvering and of mobile units, which was to influence Polish military doctrine going forward.
In World War II, however, despite its tactical emphasis on mobile mounted infantry units, strategically, the Poles made the same mistake by grouping their forces on the border, thereby sacrificing mobility.
The reason for this static defense strategy was probably the fear that the real objective of the Germans was not an overthrow of the state but to seize Silesia (Slask), the way the Germans had seized Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. Poland had a border of over 3,500 miles in the West and North, and with Prussia it had a border of over 1,250 miles. Poland’s southern flank was also exposed to Czechoslovakia, another 500 miles.
As a result, the Poles had no strategic depth to their defense, and as in 1920, their lines were quickly breached by the enemy. The German poured troops into the breaches and struck deep into Polish territory, attacking civilian targets, and causing mass panic, flooding the roads with refugees.
The Polish plan (codenamed “Zahod”) to fall back to the Rumanian bridgehead was pre-empted by an unexpected attack by the Russians on the Eastern front. The strategic situation was dire: German forces were attacking from the West, from the Gdansk corridor, from the South from occupied Slovakia, and the Russians were attacking from the East. The Polish army soon lost its capacity to function and in chess terms, it was check and mate: the surviving Polish forces were ordered to leave Poland to continue the struggle overseas.

Lessons Learned
In order to conquer Poland, it needs to be isolated from its allies. This is a pre-condition to any invasion. Germany was very shrewd in guessing that Poland’s Western allies would not honor their promises. Poland has no mountain ranges, or impassible swampland like the Priznit Marshes in Bielorus, and if the Poles decide to make a stand on the borders, they will be quickly bypassed, encircled and enveloped in a mobile war. The intuition of the Poles after the Polish–Soviet War was confirmed that any future war would be a mobile, fast-moving conflict. Unfortunately, they failed to translate such deductions into military doctrine.



Attack on Poland
Where would a modern Russian attack come from? The main threat comes from the East. The Russians have a wide array of options to launch an attack. Assuming the Russians control Bielorus and the Ukraine, there would be a long border for the Poles to defend. An attack could be mounted from Kalinigrad as well (though a troop build-up there would be quickly noticed). Naval landings from the Baltic Sea would be a bold move, but could not be completely discounted. In all probability, the weight of the main Russian attack would come the East where logistically the Russians could best supply their forces.

Polish Defense
In light of Poland’s geography, strategic potential and history, the strategy it should employ against a Russian attack should draw upon its strengths and avoid the strategic errors it made in past wars.
1.     Overall strategy:
The strategic priority of the Poles should be to ensure the existence and striking power of the Armed forces over everything else. This is a difficult decision, as it means sacrificing symbolic possessions such as major cities, the capital, etc, and it means failing to protect the civilian population. There is a danger that the Russians could simply seize border territory and then cease hostilities, laying claim to the occupied land. However, these are risks that must be taken. Only the continued existence of the army will give the Poles a fighting chance.
2.     Concessions:
The Poles should give up on trying to defend their borders or civilian population or cities. Frankly speaking, against the vastly more numerous Russian army, a defense of any of the foregoing would not be feasible. Although for humanitarian and political considerations this will be difficult, it is a necessary, albeit difficult, pre-condition to victory.
3.     Tactics:
It is often said that Poland has no natural defenses. This is not true. Poland has a large number of river and waterways, and they should be the basis of the Polish defense. The Poles should be organized into mobile units capable of fjording and fighting in such conditions. Emphasis should be on mobility and on inflicting maximum damage on the enemy and then falling back to the next waterway.
4.     Hedgehog organization:
The Polish armed forces should be organized into small, independent, mobile fighting units. The Poles can be expected to have their forces split up, disorganized, surrounded, and so they should be ready for such an eventuality. If cut off, units should have the initiative and means to continue to pursue their objectives independently. Each unit should be like a “hedgehog”, able to fight when surrounded and independent from outside support. Each ‘hedgehog’ straddles a waterway and can engage or disengage from the enemy by moving up or down the waterway. The sum of these hedgehogs constitutes a defense network; the war will be won or lost depending on the attrition of the enemy and/or the defenders in this network.
5.     Mobility:
The Poles should prioritize mobility over all other considerations. Special forces should be the emphasis of the Polish Army, forces able to move quickly across rivers, to launch spoiler attacks and able to retreat in good order. Strategic depth will allow sufficient maneuvering room for the Polish Army to retreat, strike back at enemy forces and continually regroup; the modus operandi should be to make the enemy suffer losses for one position and then fall back to the next one, and continue to repeat this strategy as long as possible.
Speed can defeat force since if we are not where the enemy strikes, he cannot harm us. He only thing that can beat speed is timing; in military terms, this means that Polish forces must use a combination of local knowledge, camouflage and technology to be where they need to be and strike where they need to strike.

6.     New technology:
Polish forces should thus be specialized in amphibious operations, river crossing and in precision spoiler and counter-attacks. The procurement strategy should favor quality over quantity, as it is given that the Russians will be more numerous. Fast-moving Polish forces should be armed with ATGM to fend off Russian armor.
The motion of winning or losing territory should be dispelled as quickly as possible. There is to be no advance and no retreat, only engage/disengage. There is no “line” to be breached or Schwerpunkt to be surrounded; if the enemy pushes inland, it will find there is no force to encircle, no supply lines to block off, no communication lines to cut. The Polish units should act autonomously, geodesically, linked by wireless connection.

The winning advantage of the Poles -- and this cannot be emphasized   enough -- is in mastery of a new technology: a technology of movement and maneuvering in a river/amphibious environment. Polish forces must be intensively trained to be able to operate on Poland’s waterway as autonomous units; to this end, each hedgehog should have its own engineers, armor, artillery, etc. They should be able to fight for long periods without resupply; to this end, storage depots should be established and hidden from the enemy. They should be able to cross the waterway at will; to this end, new technology and training will be necessary. They must be able to maintain communications with other “hedgehogs” even when lines of communication are out; to this end, all forces should be linked electronically in real time.

7.     Diplomatically:

The Polish government should immediately set up operations in a friendly country and direct operations from there.

The ultimate strategic goal is to continue the armed struggle using the hedgehog strategy as long as possible while the government musters political and military support from its allies.

Conclusion
In our view, using the foregoing strategy and tactics would make Poland the winning side in a military confrontation, despite Russia’s preponderance in manpower and equipment.

It has been said that ‘geography is destiny’, and the hedgehog strategy embodies this spirit of this maxim by using Poland’s natural abundance of waterways as the basis of its defensive strategy. To realize this vision, however, military leaders must learn to think within the parameters of a new paradigm where combat is not conceived of in terms of lines on a map with advances and retreats, like a game of chess, but as akin to billiards, an environment where units operate independently and where attacks can occur at from any angle and from any point in the “defense network” (as opposed to the “defense front”). The technology now exists to enable such a strategy. It remains to be seen whether the present Polish leadership has the vision to incorporate it.