No Combat Without Movement: Enders Game as Maneuver Warfare Primer

http://blogtarkin.com/2013/01/28/there-is-no-combat-without-movement-enders-game-as-maneuver-warfare-primer/

by bkohlmann • 13 years ago

124 84 13 years ago

mattdeboard2• 13 years ago

I first read this book early in my first USMC enlistment in the late 90s. It was (is?) on the Commandant's Reading List, even, as recommended reading for mid-grade NCOs and junior officers because of the strong representation of maneuver warfare, the importance of individual initiative, etc. In the intervening years I've read it a good 10-15 times. If you've not read it you're missing out.

dfc8• 13 years ago

Have you read Lind or Leonard's book?

mattdeboard2• 13 years ago

God no. I think by "best book" he means most entertaining and most accessible treatment of the concepts of the book.

blackhole• 13 years ago

I've read this book a good 3 or 4 times and it never ceases to amaze me. Ender's Game is without a doubt Orson Scott Card's magnum opus and a must read for anyone remotely interested in science fiction. I always had an interest in the combat tactics employed in the book, and admired Ender's seemingly unlimited ability to innovate, but never realized it had such a concrete grounding in legitimate military tactical theory.

astrodust2• 13 years ago

I used to like this book. Then I realized it's basically Twilight for teenaged boys and started to think about it more critically.

Ender is an impossible creature and creates an archetype that cannot be lived up to. People make mistakes, it's what makes them learn, advance, succeed, become stronger. Ender is some kind of perverted ideal.

The way this essay describes military strategies makes it seems like those running today's theaters are absolute idiots that simply smash one group of soldiers to another just like the British did in the 1800s. This is not the case. "Attrition theory" is not what's employed in individual battles, pawn-for-pawn style exchanges. The US Army, as an example, takes extremely low numbers of casualties with staggeringly high numbers of casualties inflicted.

Most of these bold claims about Card's novel seem like fluff on closer examination. They're plot drivers for a novel and in that sense they bear a similarity to real-life examples. Nothing more.

coffeedrinker• 13 years ago

Life is difficult. For me, the point is to let yourself grow stronger to meet those challenges rather than giving up.

I like to think that God is actually deliberately making things harder for me on/with purpose. Keeps me fighting.

mgarfias2• 13 years ago

Stormin Norman's initial war plan for Iraq 1 was indeed attrition based. We were to land in Kuwait and beat the Iraqis back via blunt force. Cheney,secdef at the time, realized how bloody this would be, and pulled Boyd in from retirement to rewrite the war plan. The marines succeeded brilliantly with their part. The army did not, and concern for their flanks allowed the Iraqi army to escape.

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

Of course he is a perverted ideal. It's been a while, but didn't they insinuate he was genetically engineered or something along those lines?

Besides, he is not without flaws. If you didn't notice them, maybe you weren't paying enough attention?

Cushman2• 13 years ago

Ender is profoundly not a role model. I think you may have missed something crucial there.

hosh2• 13 years ago

So Ender's Shadow shows that the teachers running the game behind the scenes were playing a much deeper game, one designed to bring about the insights that Ender developed. That further, it was important that Ender developed them on his own so that he realize, he can never depend on doctrine handed down from the past, and so develop something from a fresh start.

Besides, Ender's Game is simply the setup for Speaker of the Dead, a much more interesting book.

To be fair. I read Ender's Game multiple times when I was younger. I have not yet read it again now that I have a better understanding of Sun Tzu's Art of War and the John Boyd biographies. I have no idea what I'd find if I read it again.

Tichy• 13 years ago

Aren't most heroes in books impossible creatures impossible to be lived up to?

I still think there is a lot more content in Ender's Game than in Twilight. The message of Twilight is basically "be depressed and broody, and a shiny vampire with superpowers will fall eternally in love with you". In Ender's Game at least there are real problems and real solutions, even if perhaps it is unrealistic that a single guy could have come up with them. Then again, the book was written by a single person, so it is not completely unfeasible to have such thoughts and ideas.

lotsofcows2• 13 years ago

"simply smash one group of soldiers to another" Wow, massive simplification of a highly effective discipline based strategy (nicked off the Romans).

darkarmani• 13 years ago

> Ender is an impossible creature and creates an archetype that cannot be lived up to. People make mistakes, it's what makes them learn, advance, succeed, become stronger. Ender is some kind of perverted ideal.

Isn't that the point? It's the same as reading about the life of an amazing Olympic athlete. The book follows a prodigy military strategist -- shouldn't he be an archetype?

dfc8• 13 years ago

How does the review begin with:

"Despite this aggregation of martial thought, the best book on maneuver warfare is in fact a 30 year old science fiction novel. Although incomplete in addressing all aspects of theory, Ender’s Game is one of the best books on maneuver warfare ever written."

And then conclude with:

"Not all precepts of maneuver warfare are explored in the book...Nevertheless, there are enough examples in the book to make a credible case for the book as a primer on maneuver theory."

It is worth noting that for Lind maneuver warfare was third generation warfare and not fourth generation warfare.

DuskStar• 13 years ago

Something that gets explored more in the sequels is what being a soldier does to him- Ender becomes a dedicated pacifist, effectively founds a religion, and devotes the rest of his life to undoing xenocide.

And it's cool that those are actual tactics- plus the timeline makes it look like Ender's Game was actually on the cutting edge of military thought.

e12e• 13 years ago

Another sci-fi book (or series) that would be relevant in the context of tactics and strategy, is Jerry Pournelle's books/compilation on Falkenberg's Legion:

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-322-the-prince.aspx

angersock• 13 years ago

Less good for strategy but more for simply being excellent military sci-fi, I'd recommend David Drake's Slammers series and Joe Haldeman's Forever War.

jonaldomo• 13 years ago

I really liked Ender's Game and can not wait for the movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

They'll slaughter it, for sure.

I don't have any evidence of this mind you, but I've been through this cycle with favorite books enough times to have learned: don't get your hopes up.

paragonred• 13 years ago

I recently picked this book up after hearing great things about it for so long. I'm not surprised that much of the information is relevant from a strategic sense. The book is really written in a thoughtful and careful manner.

Side note: I really hope the movie coming out later this year does the book justice.

phaus• 13 years ago

If they got Haley Joel Osment to play the lead back in the day, it would have had a shot. I can't think of anyone young enough that can actually act these days.

mhd• 13 years ago

I had the exact opposite experience. After everyone gushing about it, I finally grabbed it a couple of years ago. I would've loved this in my teen years, but as a 30something, it felt like a rather mediocre military sci-fi book with a huge Mary Sue protagonist and dubious moral conclusions. Well, at least it wasn't as long as Atlas Shrugged.

abolibibelot• 13 years ago

I couldn't agree more. Ender's game is pretty much Atlas Shrugged in space, written in a slightly less abysmal style. Same complexity in characters, same vindication of the megalomania/resentment of the introvert male teenager reader, same cult following.

coopdog• 13 years ago

I think the article confuses physical 'movement', with maneuvering, which in the context of maneuver warfare is more about adapting your strategy to both hit the enemy's critical vulnerabilities (again not just physical, we're talking media, moral, supply chains, sight, ability to discriminate between civilian an enemy, timely communication of orders, ability to concentrate force, etc), while covering your own.

Movement and physical speed is just the most basic of the possible maneuvers in this context.

The rest of it does seem pretty good/interesting though

invalidOrTaken• 13 years ago

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. It's a great book---in fact, for a while, it was my favorite book---but humans have been fighting wars for thousands of years. The Romans ruled the ancient world, and the Mongols Asia, with their mobility.

And yet we're supposed to believe that "hey, strategic and tactical movement is pretty great" is a new idea?

Frankly, most of the time, size and power win the day. Oracle is still here. Microsoft is still here. Yahoo is still here.

The reason Card writes about weakness combined with movement and agility and brilliant insight is the same reason we are all fascinated with startups---because they're all counterintuitive (read: loses most of the time) and therefore fun to watch. That's it. Not because it's always a superior fighting style. Try fancy-schmancy maneuvers in the no-man's land of WW1 and you're done.

Now, I am an underweight computer programmer, so I don't know what I'm talking about. All I've done is think, and play video games. Which is precisely what Card has done.

And I say this as a fan of Card's work. But turning military fiction into the Art of War is a little much, it seems.

eru• 13 years ago

Since you mention World War I, and new tactics, you might like to read about the original stormtroopers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper).

kevin_rubyhouse2• 13 years ago

Startups are intuitive for most founders because of the scope of our resources. It would usually be counter intuitive for a big business or wealthy individual(s) to create a business as a startup (unless there's a lot of risk involved, perhaps) because they have what would be necessary to go at it full force. Imagine having 1mm in funding the day the MVP starts getting built because you, as a founder, have that liquid cash ready to invest. This isn't a scrappy startup, it's a well funded one.

Most people don't have that. Most people HAVE to start small, or burn the midnight oil working on their MVP, trying to get traction. It's not because we necessarily want to, it's because we're hungry to win and we just don't have the firepower that our established competitors have.

It seems like there are a few different frames people have to think about startups. Some think of it like gambling (as you've said), some think startups are x-wings trying to take down the death star (with enough skill and a LOT of luck, a startup will hit it big), some want to reign startups back into being a business (start with an idea that makes money!), and then there are the founders in the trenches fighting on the daily. We're the guys that have been persistently working on our businesses, our projects, our hare-brained business models that just might work. We're grounded by reality - that this is very hard - but we just keep fighting down here. I'm going to stay on these front lines until I lead the guys here who believe in me to a decisive victory.

kiba• 13 years ago

Maneuver warfare is not just for little guys and startups. US military doctrine is based on maneuver warfare.

dfc8• 13 years ago

Do you have a citation for that?

thaumaturgy• 13 years ago

> And yet we're supposed to believe that "hey, strategic and tactical movement is pretty great" is a new idea?

Well, no -- I don't think that point was really argued anywhere in the article. The tactics of movement are perhaps only recently being formalized, but I think most students of history would agree that all modern military strategy has historical precedent ... assuming that you generalize the tactic broadly enough.

> Frankly, most of the time, size and power win the day.

Hmm. There are two ways I can see to parse this: one is historical -- "most of the time, size and power have won the day" -- and the other is theoretical -- "most of the time, size and power will win the day". I would readily agree with the first, but I'm circumspect about the latter.

I avoid computer games because they're a time sink that I can't afford, but I did get introduced to Sins of a Solar Empire a while back, and I still set aside a little time for it now and again. It is a game that depends very strongly on relative sizes to determine victories. But, my favorite race is militarily also the weakest one. I have the most fun trying to break the game, coming up with less obvious tactics and strategy.

I think there are enough exceptions to the rule of the mightiest throughout history that it's somewhat self-defeating to assume that force size will decide a battle.

> Oracle is still here. Microsoft is still here. Yahoo is still here.

Although there are some parallels, business is different from war. We shouldn't use businesses to make points about military strategies.

> The reason Card writes about weakness combined with movement and agility and brilliant insight is the same reason we are all fascinated with startups---because they're all counterintuitive (read: loses most of the time) and therefore fun to watch.

Well, sure. That doesn't mean that it can't also be a good example of a subject.

> Try fancy-schmancy maneuvers in the no-man's land of WW1 and you're done.

I would counter-argue that WWI in particular was such a messy, horrible, ugly disaster particularly because of the use of non-fancy maneuvers combined with new technology. Trench and chemical warfare was direct force-on-force conflict, and because planes were relatively new inventions, they were de-emphasized despite being exactly what each side needed to win the war.

azernik2• 13 years ago

> I would counter-argue that WWI in particular was such a messy, horrible, ugly disaster particularly because of the use of non-fancy maneuvers combined with new technology.

Most of the military histories of that war I've read don't so much blame the tactics, but technological limitations. Radios were still too large and power-hungry to be practical anywhere but at sea, last-mile telephone cables tended to get cut by artillery as soon as battle started, and optical signalling (e.g. flags) were difficult to make out near the front, leaving commanders basically with runners and carrier pigeons as soon as battle started.

When a local engagement can be won and lost in half an hour to an hour, but the communications RTT is 2-3 hours, maneuver warfare gets impractical (as do a lot of other things, like long range artillery against anything other than fortifications).

balsam• 13 years ago

In WWI the Allies DID eventually use mobile warfare (why didn't anybody think of tanks tanks tanks) to decisively finish off the Germans [1][2]. Too besides, as pointed out below, EG is a recommended text in US military academies. Sometimes fun and games are improved by a little research.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amiens_(1918)#Plan

"The Battle of Amiens was a major turning point in the tempo of the war. The Germans had started the offensive with the Schlieffen Plan before the war devolved into trench warfare, the Race to the Sea slowed movement on the Western Front, and the German Spring Offensive earlier that year had once again given Germany the offensive edge on the Western Front. Armoured support helped the Allies tear a hole through trench lines, weakening once impregnable trench positions. The British Third Army with no armored support had almost no effect on the line while the Fourth with fewer than a thousand tanks broke deep into German territory, for example"

Kim_Bruning• 13 years ago

"Try fancy-schmancy maneuvers in the no-man's land of WW1 and you're done."

This happened. 1940, Germany (maneuver warfare style called "Blitzkrieg") vs. British Expeditionary Force and France using more traditional strategy and tactics, in roughly the same area as the world war 1 battles. BEF was routed, France forced to surrender.

glurgh2• 13 years ago

Actually, not only have 'humans been fighting wars for a long time', the entire idea of maneuver warfare predates both Ender's game _and_ it making its way into US army literature.

And this you can surmise not by digging up some obscure work from a library but simply by reading the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Development_of...

The notion that Ender's game, whatever one might think of its merits, was somehow an early and unrecognized insight into maneuver warfare is ludicrous and silly.

robertskmiles• 13 years ago

I don't think anyone is claiming that, just that it is a good introduction to the principles.

nnq• 13 years ago

> Frankly, most of the time, size and power win the day. Oracle is still here. Microsoft is still here. Yahoo is still here.

Because in economy the "giants" are well adapted to the current set of rules and the rules change very slowly. Also, the "giants" have more to say when new rules get crafted.

I a "real war", you have no rules. That's why economical wars and other fights for power are not actually "wars". And this is a good thing! You wouldn't want to be part of a "real war". A "real war" doesn't even have the concept of "war crimes", these are facts judged afterwards by the winners (anything "goes", including killing millions in concentration camps and other mostruosities)! Thank god we didn't have any large-scale "real wars" in the last half of century, and pray neither us nor our children ever experience such thing!

walshemj• 13 years ago

you obviously don't know much about tactics the Sturmtruppen in ww1 did use more complex tactical maneuvers and where successful.

And the french system (impulse) developed out of the 7 years war and used by Napoleon used manover with combined arms to defeat the static linear armys he was facing

Symmetry2• 13 years ago

Try fancy-schmancy maneuvers in the no-man's land of WW1 and you're done.

That's a common misconception about WWI, but it's really not true. At the beginning of the war the Germans came very close to out maneuvering the French army and seizing Paris with barely a fight, ending the war instantly. And on the eastern front the Germans very successfully used maneuver warfare to destroy one of the main Russian armies right at the beginning, allowing the Austrians to shift their troops south to compensate for their sudden betrayal by the Italians.

In the trenches themselves the Germans did use fancy maneuvers very successfully (see the other comment about stormtroopers), but contrary to popular opinion the trenches were never the real problem. Both sides were able to break through a trench line when they were willing to devote enough resources throughout the war.

The real problem was that once the line was broken, what do you do next? There was no motorized transport on the offence, soldiers had to travel on foot carrying all their food and supplies and nobody can keep doing that quickly for long. And the advancing soldiers had no way of communicating with command, meaning that they couldn't adapt their attack to changing conditions. By contrast, the defenders trying to contain the breakthrough had railroads and telegraphs to let them move around and communicate. So while both's side can and did create breakthroughs, the only effect was to move the front back a few dozen kilometers.

But of course, those factors aren't obvious to the naked eye like the trenches are, so are often forgotten.

By the time world war II rolled around attacking forces had internal combustion engines and the radio that let them have the same maneuverability and communications as the defenders. But as the Japanese and Germans found, while superior maneuver might let you defeat stronger foes, if you fight someone who is so much bigger that they can absorb defeat after defeat and still come on strong sooner or later they'll up their game, figure out how to fight as well as you do, and crush you.

run4yourlives4• 13 years ago

To be fair the German's lost the war to two separate things, neither of which was due to anything that happened on the battlefield directly.

Hitler's move to bomb cities in Britian cost them London. His decision to change his objectives half way through the Russian campaign cost them Moscow (although you could argue invading Russia at all was dumb, the German army was still poised to overcome this, amazingly.

As for Japan, I think your point stands.

njharman• 13 years ago

Late in the war to solve the trench impasse the German's developed infiltration tactics which were winning the war (loss was due to blockades starving people). These tactics led to blitzkrieg which led to modern maneuver warfare.

DennisP• 13 years ago

There's a lot more to it than mobility. For a good overview, which also applies the principles to business, a great book is Certain to Win by Chet Richards, who collaborated with John Boyd on the manuscripts before Boyd died.

The most famous principle Boyd formulated is the OODA loop, which says that if you can observe the situation, figure out what's going on, decide what to do and take action faster than your enemy can, you probably win. A lot of the book is about how you do that faster, in a business situation. Some of it is about making your enemy slower (but that's more difficult to apply in business).

It's true that it didn't all start with Boyd. Some goes back to Sun Tzu, and the Germans applied it to great effect with the Blitzkrieg.

stcredzero• 13 years ago

I was just reading about "Surfaces and Gaps." There is a concept there called "reconnaissance pull" versus "command push." Basically, that's MVP, A/B testing, and pivoting.

riffraff• 13 years ago

WARNING, contains spoilers.

drucken• 13 years ago

To all thinking of reading Ender's Game, do not expect some epic storytelling with the grandness of Asimov, Herbert or Tolkien, or the depth of a Greg Bear or Gibson, or intrigue of an Iain S. Banks or George R. R. Martin, or fortelling of an Arthur C. Clarke or Heinlein, etc.

The maturity, scope and content of the writing in Ender's Game's pales in comparison to many childrens books, modern or otherwise, including J.K. Rowling's.

As someone else in this thread posted, it will feel like reading a (barely) sci-fi version of Twilight, aimed at a pre-teen audience, and you may question why some opine the book's greatness. You may have a point...

Symmetry2• 13 years ago

Interesting article, but I've read Leonhard’s book The Art of Maneuver and it does a much better job of explaining all of this and especially putting it in context than Ender's Game does. And includes some very additional interesting ideas such as classifying weapons by what sort of behavior they'll induce in your enemy as the enemy tries to avoid or defeat them.

gmays• 13 years ago

Nice article. I read EG in high school and I'm Marine now, but never thought about EG as a primer on it. Depending on what experience kids have, maneuver warfare can be a difficult concept to grasp. But once understood, it can be applied widely (e.g. to business). For example, in my current startup I may not have the technical background, but I've found ways to compete anyway. Another example is where Malcolm Gladwell describes Col Van Riper's exploits in his book Blink.

Anyway, I have friends who are ROTC instructors and forwarded this article to them. MCDP 1 (Warfighting) is dry, so EG is a fun (though shallow) primer to discuss. It should also make the concepts in Warfighting easier to visualize for someone without any concept of asymmetric warfare.

To respond to some of the comments, maneuver warfare isn't a new concept but it’s obvious it's not well understood, particularly in business. Another useful military idea to apply to business is the OODA loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop).

No Combat Without Movement: Enders Game as Maneuver Warfare Primer

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