Fluid Battle Doctrine
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Fluid Battle (Menghean: 유동 전투 / 流動戰鬪, Yudong Jŏntu) is the military doctrine used by the Menghean Army and the Menghean Marine Infantry. Drawing on the principles of maneuver warfare, it emphasizes a flexible approach to attack and defense, with a focus on concentrating attacks against weak points in the enemy line in order to encircle front-line troop concentrations and overrun rear-area positions.
Fluid Battle Theory was first developed during the 1920s, and is most strongly associated with the work of General Son Gyŏng-taek, who was the first to use the term. It underwent rapid evolution during the Pan-Septentrion War, which saw Menghean forces advancing and retreating on broad fronts that favored flexible maneuvers. During the Menghean War of Liberation, it evolved further to cover guerilla warfare and insurgency. The Menghean Army's subsequent transition from an infantry-based force to a mechanized one brought a new range of developments in military theory, though the core tenets of Fluid Battle remained the same.
History
Background
For much of ancient and medieval history, Menghe was the leading land power on the Hemithean continent, and centuries of internal conflict and frontier war with barbarians provided the basis for treatises like Sunja's Art of War. Yet until the middle of the 19th century, Menghe had been relatively isolated from the latest doctrinal and technological developments in the Western world. After suffering humiliating defeats in the Uzeri Rebellion and the Brothel War, Menghean military commanders began a concerted effort to study Casaterran tactics and equipment in order to modernize their own forces and repel foreign invasions. The Three States Period, which pitted the nationalist Sinyi faction against the republican Namyang faction in an on-and-off war lasting for several decades, saw both sides steadily hone their tactics through practice.
Yet while drills and tactics improved, grand strategy saw little change. Both sides sought out direct confrontations between massed armies in which the side inflicting more damage emerged as the victor. Ro Mu-yŏl, a prominent Sinyi general, summarized this approach as being "like steel:" a mix of firepower and willpower determined which side would break and rout first.
As modern firepower grew increasingly destructive in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this approach became increasingly costly. In Casaterra, the War of the Serenoran Succession (1915-1919) saw the land theatre descend into slow-moving trench warfare, as the weaponry of the time heavily favored the defender. The massive size of opposing armies also meant that fighting took place along a continuous front line, rather than between discrete, concentrated armies.
Menghean combat experience in the early 20th century revealed slightly different lessons. A failed intervention in the Polvokian Revolution (1905-1909) proved unable to suppress the communist miltias, who avoided direct battles and instead harassed Menghean supply lines and outposts. And while Menghe's limited involvement in the War of the Serenoran Succession began with costly assaults on coastal forts, it was followed by months of indecisive skirmishing with Qusayni tribal forces, who mounted an insurgency from inland bases.
Origins of Fluid Battle
Within Menghe, the perceived ineffectiveness of decisive land battle strategies during the 1900s and 1910s led to an energetic debate in the 1920s on how to adapt. One of the first theorists to emerge at the forefront of this debate was Son Gyŏng-taek (also transliterated Soon Kyung Thaik), an enterprising young general who had fought in Polvokia as a field officer. Rejecting Ro Mu-yŏl's "like steel" slogan as outdated, he argued that a modern military force must operate "like water," adapting easily to the situation and flowing around the enemy's strong points to seek out vulnerabilities. In 1923, he formally titled this approach "Fluid Warfare Theory" (유동 작전 이론 / 流動作戰理論, Yudong Jagjŏn Iron).
Son's Fluid Warfare Theory was based on four assumptions. First, due to its large population and lack of expeditionary focus, the Menghean Army would have the advantage in numbers. Second, in any confrontation with a major Casaterran power, the Menghean Army would have a minor disadvantage in technology and firepower. Third, any war fought on the Hemithean mainland would be spread over a wide front line. And fourth, any engagement between highly concentrated forces would strongly favor the defender. From these premises, Son argued that the Menghean Army should leverage its numbers not to stage all-out mass assaults, as previous doctrine suggested, but to disperse its troops over a broad front. If the smaller enemy force tried to disperse as well, it would become vulnerable to defeat in detail; if it remained concentrated, Menghean troops could encircle it and force its surrender. Son attributed many of his ideas to concepts from Sunja's Art of War, such as the balance of direct and indirect attacks, but also drew on contemporary thinking in Casaterran military theory.
In its early form, Fluid Battle was very passive, and aimed to achieve encirclement without directly confronting enemy front-line units along the way. Son himself strongly favored light forces, such as mounted dragoons, and opposed heavy weapons which could slow down a unit's advance. Initially skeptical of tanks, by the late 1920s he viewed them as cavalry weapons only, insisting that they be designed for speed, range, and reliability rather than armor and firepower. It was only in the late 20th century that Fluid Battle would come to emphasize breakthrough operations and massed firepower as the means to achieve encirclement.