Introduction
Napoleon Bonaparte radically and irreversibly upended the status quo in 19th century Europe through innovation and relentless conquest. Abandoning the rigid, slow-moving warfare characteristic of his contemporaries, Napoleon embraced lighter and faster mobility, combined arms, advanced maps and geographic intelligence, and his much-lauded Corps system, culminating in displays of military genius like the Battle of Austerlitz.
The operational problem Napoleon confronted remains familiar today. Success depended not simply on maneuvering forces, but on synchronizing dispersed formations to concentrate combat power at the decisive time and place. Although the technologies have changed, that command and control challenge continues to define modern air battle management.
The Battle of Austerlitz
December 2, 1805. Moravia. Napoleon Bonaparte is greeted by a cold and foggy morning that forms the prologue to the events that will unfold to be his tactical masterpiece as he brings to bear the wrath of the Grande Armée against the Allied forces of the combined Russian Empire and Holy Roman Empire. By the day’s conclusion, he will win a decisive battle that destroys the enemy’s fielded forces, shatters their political will, and ends an entire war in one masterstroke through superior Command and Control (C2) and operational art.
He stands thoughtful staring at the battlefield, keenly aware that he is outnumbered 85,000 to 73,000. Supplies are dwindling. Meeting the enemy force-on-force in a head-on collision would spell disaster. Against these odds, decisive victory is his best and only option. The Pratzen Heights would give it to him.
Rising approximately forty meters above two nearby streams, the Pratzen Heights provides the superior high ground coveted by 19th century forces. Napoleon chose to abandon them, leaving only a skeleton force and giving the illusion that his right flank was collapsing.
Hungrily, the combined Russian and Holy Roman forces seize the fog-covered Heights. Convinced the outnumbered and outmatched Bonaparte was preparing to retreat, the Allies give chase, descending into the valleys below, eager to slaughter Napoleon’s weakened force.
From 70 miles away in Vienna, Marshal Davout receives Napoleon’s urgent orders and marches an unheard of 70 miles in two days through difficult terrain, arriving just as the Allies begin their attack and holding the line against overwhelming odds.
Then, the morning sunlight pierces the fog, revealing the error of the Allies’ foolishness in abandoning the heights to pursue what they believed to be Napoleon’s weakened force. Hidden in the lowlands, Marshal Soult and the French IV Corps advance and after close-quarters fighting, reclaim the Pratzen Heights and sever the Allied army in two.
Once the Allies are split, Napoleon employs his mobile reserve forces to capitalize upon the opportunity and defeat the enemy in detail. Napoleon’s forces reconcentrate on the pinned Allied left flank while artillery masses fires from the high ground of the Pratzen Heights onto the retreating Russians.
Napoleon’s victory was not simply a triumph of battlefield genius. It was the product of synchronizing dispersed forces under a common intent and concentrating combat power at the decisive point.
Analysis: Dissecting How Napoleon Succeeded, and What It Means For Modern-day Air Battle Managers
The heart of Bonaparte’s military genius was his ability to master and revolutionize how to mass on objective. Mass on objective (often shortened to just mass when discussing enduring principles of warfare ) involves the synchronized concentration of military effects at a decisive time and place to achieve battlefield advantage. By dividing his Grande Arméeinto semi-autonomous corps (complete with a mobile reserve ready to capitalize upon windows of opportunity) that marched swiftly across separate routes before rapidly reconverging at or near the objective, Napoleon was able to create shock and surprise, mass fires at the decisive point and time, and ultimately place his adversaries in a position of disadvantage. He was then able to execute a repeatable process of asymmetrically attacking his adversary’s weakness with overwhelming strength before rolling up a flank to achieve a decisive victory. This is the essence of operational art and comprises the seam where the operational and tactical levels of war meet: how best to concentrate forces operating along disparate lines at the decisive time and place to gain battlefield advantage.
If Napoleon’s genius can be deconstructed to simply figuring out how to leverage combined arms to mass on objective, the battle management principles involved necessary to achieve this are not difficult to extract. In fact, one can reasonably argue that Napoleon Bonaparte was perhaps an early adopter of the command and control (C2) principles that would eventually evolve and underpin modern-day air battle management. The speed in execution necessary for Napoleon’s battlefield tactics to prove successful depended upon his Corps system. While Napoleon positioned himself at a vantage point that would offer an ideal locale to execute centralized command, his Corps functioned in a semi-autonomous manner and were led by his marshals who possessed the decentralized autonomy to maneuver aligned with Napoleon’s overall intent. Viewed through this lens, Napoleon’s semi-autonomous Corps finds a modern-day equivalent in forces executing dispersed agile combat employment. Moreover, Napoleon’s marshals find their equivalent in today’s air battle managers who solve the fundamental problem of figuring out how to keep disparate forces connected and focused for eventual reconcentration on the objective at a time and place of a commander’s choosing.
Napoleon’s marshals were more than mere executors of his orders; they were renowned operational commanders and tactical leaders trusted to exercise disciplined initiative while advancing Napoleon’s intent. Modern day air battle managers actualize this same concept by interpreting a commander’s intent and translating it to tactical execution within a desired level of risk as they respond to battlefield dynamics and what Clausewitz coined as the fog and friction of warfare. Just as Napoleon could not be everywhere on the battlefield all at once and had to depend on his marshals, modern-day adversary attempts to isolate forces and deny a commander battlespace awareness through non-kinetic actions, severing communications, and manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) necessitate air battle managers who can step into voids left behind and carry commander’s intent forward through mission command. Mass on objective remains possible as air battle managers deftly coordinate disparate kinetic and non-kinetic effects across multiple domains at a decisive time and place. In the chaotic, highly-contested air environment anticipated in peer conflict, the air battle manager realizes his/her heritage and lineage as the modern-day evolution of the marshal.
Paradigm Shift: How an Air Battle Manager Evolves from Controller to Marshal through Coup d’oeil
To realize this role, air battle managers must shift their training paradigm to proactively develop coup d’œil. Originating in French military treatises in the latter-half of the 17th century, Coup d’œil literally translates to “stroke of the eye” and captures a commander’s ability to be presented with a chaotic battlefield and immediately comprehend the tactical situation and what needs to be done to achieve battlefield advantage. Clausewitz expounds upon this principle in On War, defining coup d’œil as a quick recognition of truth the mind world ordinarily miss or only perceive after long study and reflection. Indeed, Napoleonic marshals were not forged on the battlefield; they prepared for their role through rigorous study and deep understanding of Napoleon’s intent. Coup d’œil is a holy grail of sorts for modern-day air battle managers operating in highly-contested, fast-paced, multi-domain environments, and this skill can be developed through striving to understand the why, deliberate practice under stress, focused self-study, and targeted debrief. For today’s air battle manager, coup d’œil is not about possessing perfect information. It is about recognizing emerging opportunities and risks quickly enough to maintain operational tempo despite uncertainty and incomplete data.
Although air battle managers must be masters of tactical execution, they must also strive to understand the why behind their actions. Technical proficiency enables execution. Understanding why tactical actions support the operational objective enables mission command. For example, beyond just understanding asset fallout has occurred, the air battle manager must be able to assess the implications: is the strike package still able to execute within the acceptable level of risk and/or what alternative target(s) achieves the desired effect of the mission? By relentlessly striving to understand the why, air battle managers cultivate the autonomy necessary to make dynamic decisions in the absence of communications with a command element.
Repetition of complex scenarios in training develops the intuition needed to rapidly prioritize and act upon inputs to execute desired outputs in a high-stakes, time-compressed environment through the development of a sizeable mental database of experiences to draw from. Experience compresses decision time, allowing operators to devote more cognitive capacity to judgment rather than procedure. More than just “reps and sets,” air battle managers should prioritize training with high-tempo simulations and live events that deliberately inject friction. Forcing an air battle manager to make sense of chaos and incomplete information is the fire necessary to forge an effective coup d’œil.
Unfortunately, training events are often at a premium, making it difficult for air battle managers to receive all of the training events they would like to help sharpen coup d’œil. Self-study can help close the gap between what is available and what is necessary/desired. Through focused self-study, air battle managers can begin to recognize patterns in execution, allowing them to sift through the “noise,” anticipate likely next actions, and plan accordingly. Although no two situations ever truly unfold in exactly the same manner, a world governed by the laws of physics is both defined by and navigable by patterns. Understanding pattern adherence allows air battle managers to begin to lift the veil of the fog of war. Focused study that includes subjects like analysis of both historical and modern engagements, adversary capabilities and limitations, doctrine, motivations, etc. can build the schema necessary to effectively navigate novel situations that may take decades of experience to develop.
Targeted debrief ensures an operator’s intuition does not remain uncorrected through internalizing wrong lessons, thus preventing coup d’œil frombecoming a liability. While reviewing playback, air battle managers should evaluate not just their mistakes, but what drove them to make these mistakes—why they made the decision(s) they made that resulted in a sub-optimal outcome(s). As air battle managers evaluate their own performance and specifically extract why they committed errors, their cognitive databases will essentially rewire to safeguard against similar mistakes occurring in future scenarios. Thus, targeted debrief enables an air battle manager to calibrate intuition against analytical rigor and hard telemetric data and develop an effective coup d’œil poised for the next event.
Conclusion: Looking Forward While Looking Backward
When discussing air battle manager history, heritage, and lineage, conversations often nod to the Royal Air Force’s Chain Home early-warning radar station system of World War II. However, the C2 principles that underpin air battle management have their roots much earlier in Napoleonic warfare. Although technology has and will continue to change, victory in modern warfare hinges upon C2 that can rapidly make sense from chaos, maneuver dispersed forces, and mass effects at the decisive point and time. Technology will continue to evolve, but the command and control challenge remains remarkably consistent: translating a commander’s intent into synchronized action across dispersed forces at the decisive time and place. In that respect, today’s air battle managers are the modern-day marshals.
Lt Col Joshua “Tater” Williams, USAF, is a Master Air Battle Manager and has served in a variety of Air Force operational, instructional, and staff roles. He is a graduate of the United States Air Force Weapons School, the United States Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting, and the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. government.
Photo by Czapp Arpad on Pexels
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