(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Quick Explainer: Why do offensives end? Clausewitz and the concept of "culmination" [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-09 You can debate when exactly the current Russian Donbas Offensive started. You could argue it began in late December as Russia began its major push to capture Soledar on December 27. You could argue it began after offensives began accelerating up and down the Eastern Front around mid January. It’s also fairly clear that the Russian offensive is ending with a whimper, as daily rate of attacks dwindle having gained only about 15km of ground in any direction. The distinction of when an offensive precisely starts or ends is somewhat arbitrary, but most people who have even read a little military history know that there is such a thing as an “offensive operation” that proceeds in a number of predictable steps. The attacker prepares The offensive starts The offensive ends Attacker achieves its objectives, or The attacker gives up. While most everyone knows this is how wars are fought, what many people don’t know is—why? The conceptual framework for thinking about this topic was articulated by the famous military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, which he called “Kulminationspunkt” meaning “the culminating point.” In the simplest terms, “culmination” occurs because the rate at which resources can be contributed to an army is exceeded by the rate by which the resources are consumed. Think of it this way. A nation has, at any time, a given amount of military resources it can contribute to an offensive. This rate might be able to be changed over a longer time period, but during an offensive that lasts a few weeks or months, this rate is essentially constant. These resources (trained soldiers, ammunition, food, water, fuel, spare parts, etc.) can be stockpiled in a short term reserve that the frontline army can draw from. At any given time, “front line power” is essentially a function of how much strength it can draw from the “short term reserve.” The more soldiers, equipment, fuel and food is available for the offensive at any time, the greater the power of the offensive. However, the rate at which Frontline Power draws from the Short Term Reserve is generally at a greater rate than the long term military resources can provide on a day to day basis. This means stockpiled resources will have to be consumed for Frontline power to be maintained. This is why armies “prepare” for an offensive by hoarding materials in stockpiles. The question becomes, what happens when an army’s stockpiled resources dwindle or disappear entirely? If there are no additional stockpiles to support an offensive the amount of “military power” that flows out of short term reserve is the same as what flows in—that is, the same as the daily military output from long-term military strength. Which we observed at the beginning to be considerably smaller than what the Frontline forces can make use of. This dwindling of offensive power is what is called “culmination.” Take for example, a hypothetical artillery shell ammunition situation. Stockpile: 300.000 shells Daily production: 2,000 shells Daily usage: 12,000 shells If you use 12,000 shells daily, and you only produce 2,000 shells, obviously, you need to draw 10,000 shells from your stockpile daily to continue firing artillery at that same rate. 10,000 x 30 = 300,000 So after 30 days, your stockpiled ammunition would run out. Without a stockpile of ammunition to draw on, your artillery can now only fire what arrives that day from your factories. Stockpile: 0 shells Daily production: 2,000 shells Daily usage_: 2,000 shells So your available fire support plummets from 12,000 shells a day, to just 2,000 shells a day. Without artillery support, your attack may falter and fail to progress. Or progress slowly at unreasonable costs to your infantry and tanks. This is what causes “culmination.” In actual practice, judging what is “culmination” by that army’s own generals can be difficult, let alone anyone trying to judge culmination from the outside. For example, you would never actually want to run completely out of artillery shells, and exhausting your supplies of fuel, ammo, or many other types of resources would be disastrous Namely. your army might be annihilated in a counter attack, so you want some resources on hand, if only to retreat or fight back. Even after you’ve reached the culmination point a general might choose to continue attacks if the objective is just barely out of reach—one more even slight push might give you victory. But in most cases, once your stockpiled resources are dwindling, continuing attacks at lower power end up being blocked fairly easily, and won’t obtain any objectives. So the best course of action is to call off the offensive, and wait for your short term reserves to be replenished. That is, you call off the offensive. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/9/2162985/-Quick-Explainer-Why-do-offensive-end-Clausewitz-and-the-concept-of-culmination Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/