Anoffensive is amilitary operation that seeks through an aggressive projection of armed forces to occupy or recapture territory, gain anobjective or achieve some largerstrategic,operational, ortacticalgoal. Another term for an offensive often used by the media is "invasion", or the more general "attack". An offensive is a conduct of combat operations that seek to achieve only some of the objectives of the strategy being pursued in the theatre as a whole. Commonly an offensive is carried out by one or moredivisions, numbering between 10 and 30,000 troops as part of acombined armsmanoeuvre.[citation needed]
The offensive was considered a pre-eminent means of producing victory, although with the recognition of a defensive phase at some stage of the execution.[1]
A quick guide to the size or scope of the offensive is to consider the number of troops involved in the side initiating the offensive.
Offensives are largely conducted as a means to secure initiative in a confrontation between opponents. They can be waged onland, atsea[2] or in theair.
Anaval offensive, such as the Japaneseattack on Pearl Harbor, can have wide-ranging implications for national strategies and require a significantlogistical commitment to destroy enemy naval capabilities. It can also be used tointerdict enemy shipping, such asWorld War II's Battle of the Atlantic. Naval offensives can also be tactical, such asOperation Coronado IX[3] conducted by theUnited States Navy'sMobile Riverine Force during theVietnam War.
Anair offensive is an operation that can describe any number of different types of operations, usually restricted to specific types of aircraft. The offensives conducted with the use offighter aircraft are predominantly concerned with establishingair superiority in a given air space, or over a given territory. Abomber offensive is sometimes also known as astrategic bombing offensive and was prominently used by theAllies ona large scale duringWorld War II.[4] Use ofground attack aircraft in support of ground offensives can be said to be an air offensive, such as that performed in the opening phase of theRed Army'sOperation Kutuzov andOperation Polkovodets Rumyantsev, when hundreds ofIl-2 aircraft were used en masse to overwhelm theWehrmacht's ground troops.
Atheatre offensive can be awar and a dominant feature of a national security policy, or one of several components of war if a country is involved in several theatres such as the United Kingdom in1941. In general theatre, offensives require over 250,000 troops to be committed to combat operations, including combined planning for different arms and services of the armed forces, such as air defence troops integrated into the overall plan for ground operations.[5]
Astrategic offensive is often acampaign and would involve the use of over 100,000 troops as part of a generalstrategy of the conflict in a given theatre. For example, theOperation Barbarossa was a theatre offensive composed of three distinct and inter-related campaigns in the Southern, Central and Northern parts of USSR territory.Soviet strategic offensive operations during World War II often involved multi-front coordinated operations. Along with theWehrmacht operations on theEastern Front of World War II, these were the largest military operations of the twentieth century.Strategic operations of the Red Army in World War II provides a listing of large-scale Soviet operations.
A strategic offensive is the aggressive expression of war planning and the use of strategic forces as a whole, combining all resources available for achieving defined and definitive goals that would fundamentally alter the balance of power between belligerents.[6] However, the planning and execution of strategic offensives are always based on theoretical considerations because it is impractical, uneconomic and difficult to hide a full-scale rehearsal of large-scale operations.
A strategic offensive consists of simultaneous, tandem or phased operational offensives that seek to achieve specific operational objectives that eventually lead to the achievement of a strategic goal, usually a complete defeat of the opposition, but also destruction of a significant enemy force or occupation of strategically significant territory, such as theManchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.[7]
Any given strategic offensive is a derivative of a combination of factors such as national military doctrine, past military experience, and analysis of socio-political, economic and military circumstances.[8]
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