Quote Originally Posted by COMMAR View Post

But as similar as these examples appear on the surface none are near as comprehensive or developed as DO.

Its the level of refinement & attention to detail paid to insisting that DO remain both Comprehensive & Fluid, shifting fr/Aggregated to Dis-Aggregated or vice/versa & back according to: the enemy, the terrain, the flow of battle, etc. that makes DO Light Years beyond any previous example.

One of the Major differences that made the USMC's Amph-Asslt Doctrine more advanced & successful than any before was the recognition/development of mastering of the fluid flow of "controlled chaos" in the shift from 'Landing' to 'Build Up' to 'Breakout'.

.
Being a civvie I get the impression, for the above post and a number of Marine Corps Gazette articles I have read on DO, that it is essntially an evolutionary approach to fielding task/mission based units according to METT-T(C) through the exploitation of advanced C4I without which "controlled chaos" would result is just plain, vanilla chaos? To use the example of Wingate, poor and largely irrelevant that it may be, Operation Longcloth suffered from severe C3I problems which resulted in a number of "columns" becoming "unco-ordinated" which led to mission paralysis form the strategic and operational PoV even though, tactically, they performed well (in most instances). How would these "Enhanced Companies" operate in an environment in which C4I would be severely degraded/disrupted say by an EMP? or, in systems terms what if sub-systems were severed from their parent organisation and deprived of battlespace awareness from Bn, Bde and national intel sources....surely then the guides/scouts and their traditional role of "finding" in order to Fix and Kill would become paramount again?

On a different note, I do get that historically the force to space ratio gap has been widening since antiquity with smaller and smaller units (thanks to advances in technology (ISTAR/C3I) and weaponry) being able to hold larger and larger frontages/AOs but it seems to me that this is very much an Weberian "ideal type" refering to ann almost pure expression of Eucledian space. IN WWII Sixth Army prior to Operation Blau held a horizontal front of a few hundred kilometers yet upon entering Stalingrad the entire Army group was swallowed up in the vertical morass comprising a dozen or so square klicks. Excuse my ignorance but as you are more knowledgable than I I am taking this opportunity ask questions that I ordinarily wouldn't be able to (at least not in my local Pub!).