Guard Doctrine analyses

[sonofccn]

Okay this thread is inspired by the Spacebattles thread Mr. Oragahn was gracious enough to link to. Specificly this post by Open Sketch book wherein he attempts to justify/explain why Guard doctrine primarly seemed to peak circa 1918ish. A clearly thoughtful post which presumbly took some time to write,rather than most of the posts in the thread IMHO, it caught my eye when I was skimming through. One which multiple members expressed their admiration/like for the post. So I thought it was worth taking here letting us go over it/ letting me prattle on like I have a bloody clue what I'm doing. Now before I start I do wish to apologise for the lenght of the quote but I think its needed to see the entire thing to get fully what his idea is:

Basically it seems to me that the tech in 40k sort of flips the Inverse Square law; the biggest something is, the more protected you can make it. This is probably because they don't hit diminishing returns on power generation until, like, capital ship size, so a larger vehicle, for example, has a disproportionately more powerful engine than a smaller version in excess to the exponential mass increase caused by it's greater dimensions, so a super-heavy tank can beat the normal dynamic of a vehicle's linearly increasing size multiplying it's mass by the fact that the greater internal volume allows for exponential power generation, thus allowing greater density of armour (as the engine will be powerful enough to move it) and increasingly esoteric and overpowered energy shielding and other active defense measures. However, this also means that complexity and manufacturing costs likewise increase even more than would be expected just in terms of scale, to the point where you could make a hundred times the mass of standard tanks than super-heavy tanks because the super-heavy requires forgotten or closely-guarded power generation systems to move it's massive bulk.

So we end up in a situation where, as you move up the scale, stuff gets both exponentially more dangerous and more expensive, and a large mobile system or a heavy fixed emplacement is essentially invulnerable to anything less powerful than itself. At the same time, such systems cannot be everywhere; just due to logistics you have an order of magnitude more infantry than tanks, more tanks than superheavy tanks, and more superheavy tanks than mobile fortresses and titans.

If we accept this dynamic is true for both sides of the conflict (which seems to be the case for humans, tyranids, and to a lesser degree eldar and orks) than it is pretty clear what is happening. It is very much a World War One situation where an emplaced weapon is simply vastly superior to it's mobile counterpart, meaning that once a piece of ground is taken and reinforced it will require a disproportionate amount of force to shift them, but disproportionate force is disproportionately rare for logistical reasons. Even after the tank was introduced, trenches remained because the tank could not be everywhere. A similar situation exists here; a planet in rebellion might have hundreds of thousands of soldiers armed with artillery, machine-guns, lascannons and a so forth, and less than a dozen tanks to their name, and the Imperial Guard who land to meet them will likewise probably be mostly infantry simply because few worlds can manufacture these technically-advanced vehicles and most of them have such excess of population that they will still raise vastly more infantry. It is not as though you could simply make cheaper tanks; if they tried to build tanks with more conventional power sources and materials in the style of modern vehicles, they would simply be ripped apart by infantry-scale weapons. Notice how the Imperial Guard will use local trucks, cars and half-tracks for utility purposes, but never, ever fields a tank unless it's a Russ. The tanks have to adhere to the exponential power gain for mass increase that characterizes 40k technology or they wouldn't survive.

So what we see over and over again is an Imperial Guard whose preferred tactic is to use mass tank tactics and shock attacks, but the logistical reality is they will always have more infantry than tanks and they cannot concentrate enough force to make a decisive attack with anything less than an overwhelming force of armour. So what happens is the inevitably infantry-dominated forces of the Imperial Guard are forced into positions where they must amass their vehicle forces to crush the enemy line in weak points and cause the enemy's defensive positions to become untenable before they attack, otherwise it is futile, but at the same time if they do not put some form of pressure on the enemy, they will simply increase the quality of their emplacements and keep their forces in reserve to defeat such a tactic. So the strategy ends up being to engage the enemy's infantry with your own and drag them into a quagmire; sometimes trench warfare, but also Stalingrad-like urban combat, deep jungle fighting, and other sorts of engagements where mobility is limited. They even engage in a form of it with mechanized regiments; the Steel Legion seemed to rely on a reactionary mobile defense rather than offense for much of the Armageddon War. The Imperial Guard's numerical advantage isn't used purely for attrition; rather, it lets them string the enemy out along long fronts and forces them to commit reserves to secure their endlessly increasing flanks or match the density of troops in an area, thus lining them up to be knocked down by the tanks. Hence the weapon-festooned design of the Imperial tanks; they are explicit linebreakers and are not designed to fight their own kind head-to-head because if you have to have a fair fight with a similar-scale foe you have already lost. Notice that all Imperial vehicles specialized for anti-tank work, like the Vanquisher and the Laser Tank Destroyer, are fielded in a highly defensive nature, and they have no mobility-based tank destroyer. The MTB as a concept is dead and gone in the year 40,000, because the MTB isn't as good a linebreaker as Russ-style infantry tanks and can't beat specialized defensive tank destroyers.

As wars get bigger and stakes get higher, the process gets recursive. If you are fighting an enemy who can field tanks and tank-scale fortifications in numbers enough to blunt the advantage of massed armour, using armour in this way becomes futile the same way infantry on the offensive becomes futile. So the Guard escalate; they spread their tank forces out to force the enemy to do the same, and they amass super-heavy armour which can break the line; regular-scale tanks are as helpless against super-heavies as infantry are against mass tank assaults. Likewise, they maintain a stable of defensive super-heavy vehicles and bastions to prevent the enemy from doing the same to them. Enemy have super-heavies and super-heavy fortifications? Spread your super-heavies out and escalate again: call the titan legions.

If I understood his idea, and I apologize if I do not, he is arguing the Guard use X doctrine because Y tech makes it advantagious. That is slow tempo attrition with mass waves of infantry/ heavy entrenchment works better with available technology than manuver warfare would. So to that end I want to look at doctrine in relation to the speculated tech predominatly in vacuum, obviously I realize there are a series of logistical issues besetting the IOM which effect doctrine but since that overly complicates and possibly obscures the matter, as well being incidential to what I sense is the main thrust of the argument, I'll be dealing with ideal/naked assumptions.

Now I am not a soldier just a loud mouth Civvie who wouldn't know his arse from an entrenchment shovel and talk of MRLs, PGMs, SPGs and the rest of the alphabet soup makes my brain hurt rather than illuminates but supposing my tech made defense A number one and attack a distant second would not it be advantagious to get in and hit my enemy before he can set up these elaborate defensive lines. Should not mobility be the king in such battles to bypass my stactic foe when possible and marshal overwhelming strenght when it isn't?

To me spreading out a man intensive entrenched line works against you since it drains and disperses your strenght across untold miles of front when units of fully mechanized infantry, all in Chimeras, supported by Russ tanks and basiliks, or some lighter more manuverable variant, with proper intel and scouting units could swing and "blunt" your enemy's push more effectively with less comitment. Conversely you could more easily marshal and deploy greater strength against any one point in your enemy's line effortlessly breaching it then, with your greater mobility, dictating the engagment with any of your enemy reserve forces.

Further would it not be effective to instead of employing mass infantry, which are bulky requiring relatively mammoth support, to focus on more highly trained/innovative soldiers to increase their effectivness allowing you to hit the same "strength" while being vastly easier to transport to and from battle? And thus easing your logistics concerning Chimeras and freeing space which could be used elsewhere such as that many more Krak missiles to keep your infantry "fanged" against armor pushes.

A push to better intergrate your airforce in supporting your armies tactically, ie flying artillery, and strageticly, destroying fuel refineries far in the enemy rear, would also be of benifite through I realize the IOM has cultural reasons for keeping air, and various other war components, organicly isolated.

In conclusion I would argue that against static high powered fortifications/units the best approach is not emulation but avoidance/outmanuvering by tacticaly flexible forces pressing the enemy faster than they react. Such thought, as I dimly grasp it, is what was birthed to deal with the quagmire of WWI which is what Open_Sketchbook, as he said, is essentially advocating in terms of doctrine. But like I said I'm a loud mouthed Civvie and I could be going about this all backwards.

I of course expect and welcome any thoughts on the matter. If I'm being all blinkered or overlooking some crucial point please feel free to drop it over my head.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Infantry isn't helpless against tanks. He may define the doctrine from rules conforming to WWI, but lots of the armour used by the IG is beyond WWI leaps and bounds.
Deadguy's OP concluded in a more appropriate fahsion. The trench warfare happens if both forces nullify each other.

Berlin during WWII with SS against the Red Army or Lebanon in 2006 Hesbollah against Tsahal has proven how mobile infantry could ruin legions upon legions of tanks, be they mass produced or top quality. The whole of WWII required tanks to be protected by infantry. The sponsons on the sides are not going to help a great deal against waves of cheap infantry armed with crude rocket launcher or even better stuff.
40K just doubles or triples the density of infantry and tanks and makes it ridiculous.
In Ralson's older thread, you would find proof that the IG isn't so "modern".
Ralson made a few mistakes but there's a vast bulk of elements taken from a Codex that you cannot handwave, no matter how much rabbid hammies wish they could.
The bit about the commissars being "universally feared, and often hated by those around them" just cannot be unread, for one. It's a general rule. In a good army, you're not led to often hate your platoon commander.

Probably Ralson and Deadguy can be made to agree in that infantry is tightly packed around the tanks as the IG pushes forth, with the first wave and then the second one, the ponderous bulk. The first wave therefore manifests as a little and more flexible arm of the heavy beast of burden that the whole local IG forces are. When all comes to a stop, all waves get merged and we get the attrition war. It seems to be best portrayer in the Epic Armageddon rulebook.

A super heavy tank may be strong, but then all is need to take one down is trade a tank meant to engage other tanks for a mobile system which favours firepower that is enough to hurt a super heavy.
Same goes with the fortress, which can only hit a limited number of units at a time.

Now the problem is that if the forces are equal, both in numbers and unit type spread, they can't really concentrate forces at a point without opening themselves elsewhere.
Moreso, their doctrine is excessively dogmatic. They produce types of weapons and hardly try to adapt their industry to the situation. They don't use Russes because they're adequate for all situations. They use them because the IG puts themselves in a situation where only the Leman Russes are adequate.

Any army that would adapt its industry could probably crush the IG. You could rely on a fortress but stop wasting ressources on Leman Russes and use instead an amount of very light vehicles equipped with long range rocket launchers, supported by a proper radar system.

The Imperial Armor XI argues that the shock troop regiments bring the level of required flexibility.

Commissars being dicks, as per Cain and Gaunt:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/ ... st-5140502

[sonofccn]

In Ralson's older thread, you would find proof that the IG isn't so "modern".
Ralson made a few mistakes but there's a vast bulk of elements taken from a Codex that you cannot handwave, no matter how much rabbid hammies wish they could.

Just to clear away any misunderstanding I am not arguing the Guard is a modern, mobile force. They are instead something far more 30's if not even more regressed. My argument was that mobility would be advantagious to the Guard rather than slower tempo trench warfare and would pursue it if they had the ability.

Deadguy's OP concluded in a more appropriate fahsion. The trench warfare happens if both forces nullify each other.

I'm sorry where did Deadguy do this? The posts of his I read his arguments, such as they were, were that the Guard is a high mobile "modern" army. I remember him arguing with I think FBH about how stactic "meatgrinder" defense was valid on Cadia because of demons or something but I don't recall him saying trench warfare happens because of forces nullifying each other.

[General Donner]

Let's see if I can be of any use, here ...

I don't have time to give a detailed commentary on everything he says there at the moment, so I'll restrict my contribution to a few brief points for now. Bear in mind that I'm no veteran or staff officer myself, either, so I might get things wrong, but from what I hear from people who do know this stuff, none of what follows below should be particularly arcane. (Which, of course, makes my error all the greater if I do manage to get some of it backward...)


First, I'd say 40k doctrine isn't quite so uniform that we can pin the Guard down in any set decade. Some of their tactics are very WWI, or even Napoleonic at times. (Fighting in literal infantry squares in some fluff.) Others can be more modern, ranging into WWII at times. (e.g., Elysian drop troopers fighting the Tau on Taros.) Very rarely, though, if ever, do we see the "modern" tactics people on SB are talking about. (First Gulf War seems to be a common point of reference.)

The Guard has nothing like the emphasis present-day forces put on C4I; despite some nifty tools (comm-beads) their communications and chain of command are very WWI-ish at the better end. Tactical decisions are typically made on regiment level (which in our terms generally means division level) or even higher up (which is a very bad thing, as it results in far slower response times and poorer situational awareness). Staff work is underdeveloped, to say the least; I don't think I've ever even seen a battalion-level staff in any 40k novel. And it can be worse; in some stories (such as Storm of Iron), the regimental colonels lead the charge from the front like medieval knights. (To be sure, staff work is poorly depicted in the vast majority of military scifi; even Starship Troopers is an offender in this regard, if not quite to the same degree.)

At the same time, their technological level is considerably ahead of WWI, even if their doctrine isn't. They clearly do have tactically useful tanks and -- more rarely deployed, but sometimes available -- mechanized formations, APCs/IFVs and even effective close ground support aircraft. Their radio communications have every potential to be far superior to those enjoyed by WWII forces, if only they would use them competently.

It's hard to be consistent in how to judge it -- the material itself not being consistent -- but the "typical" Guard formations we see in the novel fiction are probably somewhere between the world wars, roughly speaking. But then there are also many that are more primitive, and a few that are somewhat more advanced.


Second, his theory is at odds with the depiction of super-heavies and tanks in the fiction, in which they carry only marginally heavier armor than the standard tank-type AFVs and are quite vulnerable to commonly available weapons. (Although somewhat less so than a typical Russ.) Or at least, that's true for the tanks. Titans might be another matter.


Third, I think he rather underestimates the roles of mobility and communications in his firepower-centered analysis. These are every bit as important as brute firepower to how a war is conducted, or so the books I read would have me believe. If you can outrun and outthink your opponent, you most likely will win the battle even if he can outshoot you, as you can concentrate your forces against his in such a matter to negate even a fairly hefty firepower advantage. It's more important that you're there and can hit at all than how hard the hitting is. (Up to a certain point, obviously.)

For example, the German armies of WWII scored their greatest victories against Soviet forces which severely outnumbered and outgunned them. Operation Barbarossa pitted 3,000 German tanks against maybe 20,000 Russian ... and the Russian designs were often superior to the German ones, as well. The heavy KV-1, for example, was utterly immune to the guns of any German tank at the time, and all their common antitank guns. Yet, the Red Army suffered crushing defeat upon crushing defeat for half a year until the Germans ran out of momentum due to weather, overextended supply lines and sheer attrition.

In spite of facing a numerical disadvantage and superior firepower that would -- with some exaggeration -- give Space Marines pause, the Germans actually advanced faster in Russia than Coalition troops did in the Gulf War. A large part of the reason why is usually attributed to superior German training, troop morale and (above all) vastly superior organization and doctrine. Emphasis on flexibility, mobility and initiative is usually singled out for particular praise. These qualities can go a long way toward offsetting a purely material advantage. A force with inferior weapons should be more concerned with getting the most out of what they do have, and especially their manpower.


Finally and most importantly, I think there's a glaring non sequitur in his argument. Focusing on the last paragraph:

As wars get bigger and stakes get higher, the process gets recursive. If you are fighting an enemy who can field tanks and tank-scale fortifications in numbers enough to blunt the advantage of massed armour, using armour in this way becomes futile the same way infantry on the offensive becomes futile. So the Guard escalate; they spread their tank forces out to force the enemy to do the same, and they amass super-heavy armour which can break the line; regular-scale tanks are as helpless against super-heavies as infantry are against mass tank assaults. Likewise, they maintain a stable of defensive super-heavy vehicles and bastions to prevent the enemy from doing the same to them. Enemy have super-heavies and super-heavy fortifications? Spread your super-heavies out and escalate again: call the titan legions.

This touches on a detail I already noted, on concentration of force. Abbreviating a little, as this post is already far longer than I intended at first, the one essential of war which everyone has recognized since Clausewitz is to achieve local superiority over the enemy through concentration of force. In essence, make sure you hit first and hit hard if at all possible, and as hard as possible even if you don't hit first. This is done by amassing hard-hitting force elements (armor, air support, artillery) in greater numbers than the enemy can muster at the point (or points) you choose to attack. The enemy may well have more tanks, air assets, etc than you in terms of total numbers, but for the purposes of the battle that doesn't matter if you have 100 tanks in the assault and he has only a dozen there and two hundred more spread out elsewhere.

Further, communications and situational awareness, along with logistics, are the real bottleneck on concentration of force in war as I understand it. Not really the firepower of the enemy itself, unless we're talking a nuclear battlefield or the equivalent. (In which case some of what I've said no longer applies, but then, 40k uses tactical nukes very rarely, if ever.) And even there, a qualitative change in firepower will not invalidate the principle of concentration of force (though it will affect its application). Even allowing that open_sketchbook's model is correct, it makes no sense to disperse such assets as tanks and artillery. In no way does that follow from his overall argument. You'll still want to concentrate them as much as your doctrine and tech base allow for, even if you're fighting defensively.

You can't "force" your opponent to spread his hard-hitting forces out by doing so with your own. You get the exact opposite result from what he intends: Far from compensating for a perceived weakness on his own part, the enemy (assuming he's remotely competent and has roughly equal doctrine and tech) will take advantage of a glaring one of yours. He will concentrate his forces, running roughshod over your individually weaker points and cutting off your frontline formations to finish off piecemeal. In fact, this is exactly what happened in real life in WWII: In simplified terms, the Germans started out with more concentrated armored forces while everyone else fought with their armor dispersed, and then the others had to adapt and copy that because it was a method far superior to the classical way of using tanks as support for the infantry. (As in, far more effective at achieving local superiority.)



Whew ... That became a huge wall of text. If anyone survives long enough to read this far, sorry. Both for the length of the post and anything I might have gotten mixed up or described wrong. :D

I was going to add a few words of my own thoughts on what doctrine for a force with the Imperial Guard's respective strengths and limitations "should" look like (i.e., my own half-assed attempt at imagining one I think should be more effective), but I think that'll have to wait for another time. Out of universe, of course, the explanation for the WWI/WWII doctrine is the same as for the schizo-tech and exaggerated uniforms: the esthetic of the setting.

[General Donner]

Now I am not a soldier just a loud mouth Civvie who wouldn't know his arse from an entrenchment shovel and talk of MRLs, PGMs, SPGs and the rest of the alphabet soup makes my brain hurt rather than illuminates but supposing my tech made defense A number one and attack a distant second would not it be advantagious to get in and hit my enemy before he can set up these elaborate defensive lines. Should not mobility be the king in such battles to bypass my stactic foe when possible and marshal overwhelming strenght when it isn't?

To me spreading out a man intensive entrenched line works against you since it drains and disperses your strenght across untold miles of front when units of fully mechanized infantry, all in Chimeras, supported by Russ tanks and basiliks, or some lighter more manuverable variant, with proper intel and scouting units could swing and "blunt" your enemy's push more effectively with less comitment. Conversely you could more easily marshal and deploy greater strength against any one point in your enemy's line effortlessly breaching it then, with your greater mobility, dictating the engagment with any of your enemy reserve forces.

You have it perfectly right, or at any rate as far as this fellow civvie understands the matters which military men call operational art.

A push to better intergrate your airforce in supporting your armies tactically, ie flying artillery, and strageticly, destroying fuel refineries far in the enemy rear, would also be of benifite through I realize the IOM has cultural reasons for keeping air, and various other war components, organicly isolated.

There's an important difference between close air support (i.e., direct support of units in combat) and the destruction of rear elements (or even better, strategic assets) by air, as you say. The Guard and their Navy air support do poorly at both -- to my knowledge, at least -- but seemingly a little better at the latter. (Not too surprising, even in terms of "realistic" war, as it requires less air/ground coordination, which should be atrocious when these forces haven't been trained to work together and have poor communications in the first place.)

In conclusion I would argue that against static high powered fortifications/units the best approach is not emulation but avoidance/outmanuvering by tacticaly flexible forces pressing the enemy faster than they react. Such thought, as I dimly grasp it, is what was birthed to deal with the quagmire of WWI which is what Open_Sketchbook, as he said, is essentially advocating in terms of doctrine. But like I said I'm a loud mouthed Civvie and I could be going about this all backwards.

And again, from my POV I can only agree.

[Mr. Oragahn]

In Ralson's older thread, you would find proof that the IG isn't so "modern".
Ralson made a few mistakes but there's a vast bulk of elements taken from a Codex that you cannot handwave, no matter how much rabbid hammies wish they could.

Just to clear away any misunderstanding I am not arguing the Guard is a modern, mobile force. They are instead something far more 30's if not even more regressed. My argument was that mobility would be advantagious to the Guard rather than slower tempo trench warfare and would pursue it if they had the ability.

It seems our thoughts crossed each other's path. We agree that it is far from being modern, as are our current armies.
It would seem that although the IG tries to apply a textbook blitzkrieg whenever possible, they don't seem to have evolved beyond that and they still do it with level of sophistication that leaves to be desired. Therefore, the lack of use of modern tactics is largely compensated by multiplying their numbers while using WWII stylized moves.
Once this proves to be insufficient, they start grinding in the trenches.
That is probably part of the problem of their units not being modified. They use advanced weapons, but in a lousy way. And as they know that they have numbers and their military doctrine seems good enough when it comes to WWI trench warfare and siege warfare, they follow the idea that if it's broke, why fix it?
Especially when they can't really fix it anyway, with all the problems inherent to the use of lost STC and all sorts of accusations of heresy regarding advances in technology.
Their construction templates are so inadequate that they include inside their missile launchers some unstable rebellious AIs, ready to have a tamper on a whim.
It is quite obvious that when you include the admech's techs and their damn AIs, the tyranny of commissar nutjobs, the extreme variety of worlds where they get their troops from, their fixed STC models, the "problems" of the administration and all sorts of other oddities, they are not equipped for any kind of modern warfare.

Deadguy's OP concluded in a more appropriate fahsion. The trench warfare happens if both forces nullify each other.

I'm sorry where did Deadguy do this? The posts of his I read his arguments, such as they were, were that the Guard is a high mobile "modern" army. I remember him arguing with I think FBH about how stactic "meatgrinder" defense was valid on Cadia because of demons or something but I don't recall him saying trench warfare happens because of forces nullifying each other.

Deadguy used more sources, and obviously the newer ones try to bring a level of dynamism to the IG. Ironically, one of them is the Imperial Armour, which is often dismissed by the same gang of hammies because it low balls the abilities and firepower of their Guard's toys.
I don't have any problem with Deadguy's conclusion in his first post. But it's one based on theory, and one you'd find in a military book which author tried to filter out the esoteric shit.
Therefore, in the end, the strategies of WWII and WWI which Deadguy recognized in the sources he cited are correct. It's a best case scenario and the IG has the equipment for that kind of war maneuvers.
But there would be a severe problem if the IA book for example had used modern US war college books as the prime source of inspiration, for it would not fit with the material and logistics of the IG.

The Imperial Guard is the meat grinder by excellence. Its tech has plateau'd and compensates with numbers, which it can throw at abandon at the enemy.
As pointed out by the posters in either threads at SBC (Deadguy's or Ralson's), the enemies the IG faced for eons hardly are examples of networked field warfare in application. They're, in fact, quite inferior. Other species are either too scant to require a drastic change in the ways of the behemoth that the Imperium is, or they openly use inferior tech to cause more damage and suffering rather than clean one, and don't even aim at running proper warfare, as per the Dark Eldars.
The Tau are a local and new threat, and they don't really are the most violent of all. They are much more modern in their style, although they also have their caveats. Like small mechas.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I wonder if there are any cases of the application of the elastic defense strategy. By all means, cultural bias and cumbersomeness of the IG would seem to prevent that kind of thinking.

[Mr. Oragahn]

If you check out the Malcador tank, the shape will obviously reveal the importance of trench warfare in the IG's doctrine.

[sonofccn]

Deadguy used more sources, and obviously the newer ones try to bring a level of dynamism to the IG

I'd have to disagree. The bulk of his sources are quite older than Ralson's Guard codex. He even cited a snippet from the 2nd edition if I'm not mistaken.

Further most of his "evidence" did not support his conclusion. The 5th edition Rulebook for instance described the guard as relying on devastating firepower and attrition not mobility. What he posted of the Imperial armor simply stated Cadian regiments typically were intergrated with armor/artillery elements which is far and away from supporting his contention of a fast, mobile force. The only explicit source he posted which supports him was the 2004 armor company piece, older than the 5th edition Guard Codex, and even it bluntly states the penertration of the lines is really just to draw in reserves so the Guard can whittle them away in a set piece battle of attrition. Simply put I find his evidence insufficent to prove his thesis.

Therefore, in the end, the strategies of WWII and WWI which Deadguy recognized in the sources he cited are correct.

Even accepting that there is still the issue that isn't what Deadguy was arguing. He didn't point out "textbook blitzkrieg" as evidence of what the Guard could do on a good day with an experianced, top tier regiment. He did it as part of a foundation of shaky evidence to argue the Guard was a high mobile, tactically flexible fighting force by default. I mean your conclusion is almost completely anathema to his but yet you say you agree with it.

@General Donner

Once more you say what I wanted but make it sound intelligent and coherent rather than the mad pounding of a monkey* at a typewriter. ;)

You can't "force" your opponent to spread his hard-hitting forces out by doing so with your own. You get the exact opposite result from what he intends: Far from compensating for a perceived weakness on his own part, the enemy (assuming he's remotely competent and has roughly equal doctrine and tech) will take advantage of a glaring one of yours.

Well, if you forgive me playing devil's advocate, the thinking appears to be if I amass my tanks at any one point my enemy will simply amass a deterent but if I strike at ten points he has to divide his forces or I'll push through. As well he did mention a reserve force, presumbly first tanks then heavy tanks than titans, elsewhere in his post so its possible that a "rearguard" is waiting in the wings to halt a drive through his own lines should the enemy not take the "bait" in which case your unopposed thrusts should pierce through presenting multitude of targets for the enemy reserve force can't engage all of without splintering and weaken themselves further. Or at least that's how I'd "understood" or "imagined" the sequence playing out.

So yes Commander Rommel of the 7th Panzer Division will rip through the above like a tank buster through kleenex but I could see where it might work with the correct tempo of war and ponderous iniative.

* There used to be more monkeys but...budget cuts. You understand.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Deadguy used more sources, and obviously the newer ones try to bring a level of dynamism to the IG

I'd have to disagree. The bulk of his sources are quite older than Ralson's Guard codex. He even cited a snippet from the 2nd edition if I'm not mistaken.

Further most of his "evidence" did not support his conclusion. The 5th edition Rulebook for instance described the guard as relying on devastating firepower and attrition not mobility.

Not "and", but "or".
Although the IG's understanding of mobility, to a modern force, still falls into the category of attrition, or let's say, is a premise to attrition in the modern strategic sense.
The simplistic mobilization of armour into smaller units, or into massed groups, is typical of WWII and the doctrinal transition between WWI and WWII. Any sufficiently prepared battaillon in WWII could stop such units for they had no element of surprise going for them. Sooner or later it always came to a comparison of force. Surprise really did the difference, but nothing indicates that the IG goes for surprise first. Otherwise they wouldn't be so loud about their firepower. Eldars, yes, but not the IG. But the IG also rarely has to fight conventional enemies either. Turtling and moving forth seems to work better, against Orks, Chaos, Tyrannids, etc.
Now if we take the construction of defensive lines prior to WWII between France and Germany, and if we also take a look at each country's respective industries, we see that with hypothetical equal numbers (i'm throwing the bases of a scenario here, bear with meas one cannot pull resources out of thin air), with no glaring holes in the Maginot line (which was very advanced for its time), and without the dismissal of good information straight from the Belgian horse's mouth, the theater of war could have turned into a stalemate.
And there's still an example with the Gustav line which postponed the Allies' advance by four months. Or the quite tougher Pomerania Wall.
Regarding action, the Germans didn't expect the "blitzkrieg", a heavy handed element of propaganda at first, to work so well. They hadn't expected French HQ to be so outdated (retarded?). Quite obviously, since a lot of their new doctrine, as shared with the Soviets, was partly if not largely inspired from two books written by DeGaulle himself. Simply put, if the German forces had met a similar level of preparation and power, they'd have found themselves precisely stuck in a sort of redux of WWI, but with more armour, on each side, each army with a series of armoured fortress in a row to back them up in case of an urgent fall back. It would have basically been a watered down Warhammer 40000 right there imho (if you forget for one moment the concrete bursting shells of late). Heck, even the M-4 Sherman should be considered a French tank in most of its constituents, but "outsourced". The whole thing could have been "epic".

Side note: the two tanks we see on the left of the 5th edition of the IG Codex's cover really look like the char B1, or at least one of the early prototypes.

All the sources cited by Deadguy in his second post, where he concludes on the doctrine's core strategies and tactics, back up his claim of WWII tactics being used and some form of mobility. I've been reading through two pages and a half and I'm yet to see some extravagant claim from his, for a change. He may have not understood, though, that mobility is just not charging forth, but even that I cannot guarantee yet without having read more.
It is clearly stated that the bulk of reserves is spearheaded by lighter and mobile groups, armoured companies, that concentrate firepower. They don't use subtlety, they don't try to outmaneuver anything (at first, but we have examples of them trying to when possible, if the enemy's position is static enough); they just advance and try to steamroll their foe with copious amounts of firepower. It is noted that if the enemy doesn't oppose an equal amount of powerful armour, the spearheads cannot be stopped. But due to the nature of the IG's enemies, it often ends in gripped situations and turns into attrition wars.

Where it meets Ralson's claims is here. The IG is nowhere modern. It's stuck in the 20th century interwar period, with designs which are built from templates that obey the doctrines of that time.
They compensate with firepower and numbers.
This works because the IG more often that not fights on worlds where there are not workable networks aside from any chain of communication from a central command platform. Any extra vision they can get of the battlefield is what they get to deploy on site in terms of radar. Meaning that when they're dropped on a planet and fight to control, hoping neither side is going to torch it, they can't rely on satellites and all the jizz. Even network could potentially be heavily jammed.
It is possible that millennia ago, they had a fluid combined-arms doctrine which used every possible mean of communication and detection. But such a doctrine was soon observed to be fragile and hard to enforce when all the necessary infrastructure couldn't be deployed properly, therefore rendering more delicate systems rather useless because under used and unable to be exploited to provide the advantage they were meant to have on other tactics. So the Imperium's army most likely reverted to a more robust system, more polyvalent, which would benefit from the use of space capable crafts for recon, and other long range ballistic to clean a place. I suppose that system still was more advanced than what they have now, but the degenerate empire keeps getting worse millennium after millennium.
The IG does not really do subtlety. It has massive industries to squish an opponent and that's all they're left with now. It obviously has its drawbacks on isolated worlds where they can't output enough assets of war and would meet forces much more organized, but that's the case for any kind of strategy.
The IG, like the whole of the Imperium, is regressive, for a variety of reasons. You could say but they should deploy drones or, when they have established a stronghold, deploy a large range of radars and even platforms to launch locally kitbashed satellites. But they can't do stuff like that anymore.
The problem of Deadguy is that he refused to take into consideration the facts Ralson highlighted, the over the top grimdark flavour (admech techs' rituals, commissars, stupid bureaucracy, etc.).
Ralson, on the other hand, didn't really deny the interwar style at all.

What he posted of the Imperial armor simply stated Cadian regiments typically were intergrated with armor/artillery elements which is far and away from supporting his contention of a fast, mobile force. The only explicit source he posted which supports him was the 2004 armor company piece, older than the 5th edition Guard Codex, and even it bluntly states the penertration of the lines is really just to draw in reserves so the Guard can whittle them away in a set piece battle of attrition. Simply put I find his evidence insufficent to prove his thesis.

He has quotes that allude to the rapidity of the IG in certain circumstances. What Deadguy didn't consider though is that the IG aircrafts aren't stellar in combat (no matter what they can say about top speed and weapons, we have examples in IA books which lowball all of it, and they're clearly not aerodynamic enough to be considered efficient). But when needed, they can deploy large amounts of troops at a far distance way faster than any modern aircraft for example, so they don't even need to engage enemy fixed positions with AA missiles. They can even go up to orbit, circle the planet some, and come down farther. And they can carry armour that way as well. The problem being that they cannot move the whole of an entire massive IG force, and even the elements which they can deploy fast and far away come with limitations.

Therefore, in the end, the strategies of WWII and WWI which Deadguy recognized in the sources he cited are correct.

Even accepting that there is still the issue that isn't what Deadguy was arguing. He didn't point out "textbook blitzkrieg" as evidence of what the Guard could do on a good day with an experianced, top tier regiment. He did it as part of a foundation of shaky evidence to argue the Guard was a high mobile, tactically flexible fighting force by default. I mean your conclusion is almost completely anathema to his but yet you say you agree with it.

He has the quotes. There are smaller armour companies and infantry groups which can be moved around rapidly, by the help of dedicated transport ships. And in universe, they indeed are fast.
People like Ford Prefect manage to misread a direct quotation, and thinks the IG uses initiative to grind down to a battle of attrition (as total attrition in the bluntest way), while it's written that the initiative is taken to achieve that objective only as a result of the enemy launching an equally large amount of armour at the IG, and generally it's to actually force the enemy to put a dent in his mobile reserves.
It's exactly what Deadguy argues for.
What that text forgets, though, is that one force doesn't need to send tanks to meet tanks. Modern warfare will take care of those advance columns of tanks and infantry with minimal casualties by being mobile and sniping those tanks with smart ammo, all of which requires one or two launch systems on wheels at a distance, a radar, said smart ammo and a fluid chain of information treatment.
Which I suppose is what the Tau are closer to, and even that I'm not sure. They seem to have the same WWII limitations, but use drones (UAVs) which grants them a better local view. I'm not sure they have implemented it as far as to work as a network-centric force. That's not the topic though.

The IG really is interwar doctrine given better tech in some departments and yet crippled with design flaws and silly procedures.

That is why both Ralson's and Deadguy's point of views need to be merged, because they both hold a piece of the truth.

Here, DG also refers to something interesting, which would explain a lot of the actual IG doctrine:

"The Chapter Approved 2004 and other sources literally say that defensive technology is more powerful relative to offensive combat systems. Random 500 lb guided bombs won't cut it against shit like the Palace of Thorns of the Imperial Palace."

It's a thing really to think that some local, small radius mobile theater shields would actually completely make sense. Unfortunately, they're only found on Titans and only protect them.

[General Donner]

Well, if you forgive me playing devil's advocate, the thinking appears to be if I amass my tanks at any one point my enemy will simply amass a deterent but if I strike at ten points he has to divide his forces or I'll push through. As well he did mention a reserve force, presumbly first tanks then heavy tanks than titans, elsewhere in his post so its possible that a "rearguard" is waiting in the wings to halt a drive through his own lines should the enemy not take the "bait" in which case your unopposed thrusts should pierce through presenting multitude of targets for the enemy reserve force can't engage all of without splintering and weaken themselves further. Or at least that's how I'd "understood" or "imagined" the sequence playing out.

A (truly, this time) brief response, for now: Essentially, you're right again. Force concentration doesn't mean you take every single force element and put it in one place. Only that where you do concentrate forces, you do so enough to overwhelm the enemy then and there, whether at one or multiple places. (Though from what I understand, you'd still try to limit the points of concentration in most cases, due to available resources, as well as aforementioned command and control issues.) How much splitting you should allow is determined by your objectives and the relative resources of the enemy.

You need significant concentration of force for penetration in-depth -- enough to not merely defeat the units at the immediate front, but also the reserves and counter-attacks you're likely to encounter, and then hold the ground until reinforced -- or else any advance is likely to be a purely tactical one. But you don't necessarily need as big a superiority as possible in any one place, but rather one sufficient to comfortably overwhelm the enemy's local resources in as many places as the plan calls for you to attack. We're still talking local superiority for tactical and operational purposes. And, as you say, if the enemy has concentrated superior forces in one place and strikes at you, and if you play your cards right, you might even let his attack run on for a while and then strike at his weaker flanks to cut off his own armored spearhead, turning the tables on him. (Both Germans and Soviets did a fair bit of this in WWII.)

However, open_sketchbook seems to be arguing in favor not of multiple lesser points of concentration, but of doling out armor at the company level to support the infantry like the Guard does. Which still makes no sense, if fighting opponents with somewhat equivalent equipment.

(Edit -- formatting)

[Mr. Oragahn]

It doesn't make sense when you have the capacity to innovate, use networks and a form of reliable technology.

The IG has launching systems (basilisks) with their own AI which can go crazy and neutralize their own ammunition.
They build any machine with systems which need activation rituals, meaning that no matter if they were faithful to a modern warfare doctrine, they'd still be losing stupid amounts of time because of those damned admech rituals.
Their STC templates are precious and some of them piss poor excuses for the models the Imperium once built, like it happens to be for the super heavies.
They're total lunatics with too much superstition working against them. Yet all the Chaos and monsters in the universe keep reinforcing their faith. That leaves even less room for reason.
The IG is the Red Army gone batshit crazy and turned into religious zealots beyond anything imaginable. A combination for sheer madness, tactical efficiency be damned.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'm also wondering what the average "stamina" of a Leman Russ is.
WWII tanks on all sides suffered many many mechanical failures and, above all, the lack of training or even presence of trained personnel to repair the tanks and know all the tricks about their hardware resulted in French and British forces to lose many tanks. The Germans also had to face that problem, but as they were winning, advancing, and as they had planned a lot and had the initiative, they could cope with the technical issues of their motorized forces.

The IG probably has an advantage over current armies though, being that the admech tech know their stuff. There's no information being retained in order to keep tech secret. The IG tech hasn't advanced in millennia. So although the average IG bloke probably couldn't even know how to use anything more elaborate than a hammer, the admech techs would provide a considerable support when maintaining the war engines. The question being where the techs are found in all that mess. Considering that machines have to be activated, there has to be a number of them anywhere tanks are vehicles are found, somehow.
I admit I know quite nothing about the logistical support branch regarding the role of the techs here.
If the tanks were very robust and if there were at least one skilled tech per tank, knowing all the stuff by heart, it would make the IG armoured companies more efficient than the WWII ones I suppose.

[sonofccn]

Not "and", but "or".

Well want to be technical:

Relying on devastating firepower first and attrition second, the Imperial Guard fights wars for decades if it must.

its first and second rather than "or". ;)

Although the IG's understanding of mobility, to a modern force, still falls into the category of attrition, or let's say, is a premise to attrition in the modern strategic sense.

Mobility and attrition based tactics should not be mutually exclusive, through the former should change and dictate the latter, but attrition has nothing to do with wars of manuver nor does attrition demand mobility.

The simplistic mobilization of armour into smaller units, or into massed groups, is typical of WWII and the doctrinal transition between WWI and WWII. Any sufficiently prepared battaillon in WWII could stop such units for they had no element of surprise going for them.

While certainly surprise is vital, at least on the strategic level, I have seen nothing to indicate mass spearheads, such as to initiate blitzkrieg/ deep battle, were so trifelly easy to halt. Hell Kursk was the first time the Nazi's were stopped cold and the Soviets had rather extensive time to prepare defenses.

Now if we take the construction of defensive lines prior to WWII between France and Germany, and if we also take a look at each country's respective industries, we see that with hypothetical equal numbers (i'm throwing the bases of a scenario here, bear with meas one cannot pull resources out of thin air), with no glaring holes in the Maginot line (which was very advanced for its time), and without the dismissal of good information straight from the Belgian horse's mouth, the theater of war could have turned into a stalemate.
And there's still an example with the Gustav line which postponed the Allies' advance by four months. Or the quite tougher Pomerania Wall.
Regarding action, the Germans didn't expect the "blitzkrieg", a heavy handed element of propaganda at first, to work so well. They hadn't expected French HQ to be so outdated (retarded?). Quite obviously, since a lot of their new doctrine, as shared with the Soviets, was partly if not largely inspired from two books written by DeGaulle himself. Simply put, if the German forces had met a similar level of preparation and power, they'd have found themselves precisely stuck in a sort of redux of WWI, but with more armour, on each side, each army with a series of armoured fortress in a row to back them up in case of an urgent fall back. It would have basically been a watered down Warhammer 40000 right there imho (if you forget for one moment the concrete bursting shells of late). Heck, even the M-4 Sherman should be considered a French tank in most of its constituents, but "outsourced". The whole thing could have been "epic".

And I would disagree. The moment one side starts dispersing his forces across he'll be at a disadvantage against his more mobile, concetrated opponet. Further as is mentioned in the thread the Maginot Line was pierced in our timeline so at best all you do is slow your opponet down as he goes around it or concetrates his forces to drill through it.

And I don't see where Deadguy alluded to anything like this. I've checked his first and second post and I see nothing like the above. As well I'd like to know how the M-4 Sherman is remotely a "french" tank.

All the sources cited by Deadguy in his second post, where he concludes on the doctrine's core strategies and tactics, back up his claim of WWII tactics being used and some form of mobility.

Beyond the 2004 chapter approved article which pieces of evidence are you suggesting support mobility in the Guard forces?

been reading through two pages and a half and I'm yet to see some extravagant claim from his, for a change.

If you say so. However how do you square fights sort of WWIIish on a good day with this:

There's not much difference in large unit strategy between Soviet Deep Battle and modern doctrines. Unless you want to tell me that modern tactics eschew concentration of force, rear echelon disruption, continuous operational tempo, defeat in detail, and mechanized combined arms units. If so. The US Army War college's dreary PDF's have lied to me all this time.

That being said, the Games Workshop shit isn't exactly detailed or well fleshed out, but it gets the basics right, which is all we can ask for a table top war games geared towards teenagers and college students (and unfortunately as of 5th edition, little kids). However, if you're looking for a detailed TO&E's, after action reports, and strategy documents from a Science Fantasy miniatures war game, you need to get your head checked out.

Insinuating comparability with modern military doctrine. As taken from here.

It is clearly stated that the bulk of reserves is spearheaded by lighter and mobile groups, armoured companies, that concentrate firepower. They don't use subtlety, they don't try to outmaneuver anything (at first, but we have examples of them trying to when possible, if the enemy's position is static enough); they just advance and try to steamroll their foe with copious amounts of firepower. It is noted that if the enemy doesn't oppose an equal amount of powerful armour, the spearheads cannot be stopped. But due to the nature of the IG's enemies, it often ends in gripped situations and turns into attrition wars.

Ah but the question is of course why. You are arguing its parity of foe which causes the slower tempo. I'm arguing its because the Guard can't fight at the higher tempo due to cultural/doctrinal/training issues. That they have only a hazy, vague idea of what "blitzkrieg" is and internal issues which keep them from truly exploiting it.

Where it meets Ralson's claims is here. The IG is nowhere modern. It's stuck in the 20th century interwar period, with designs which are built from templates that obey the doctrines of that time.
They compensate with firepower and numbers.

Not arguing with you there.

This works because the IG more often that not fights on worlds where there are not workable networks aside from any chain of communication from a central command platform. Any extra vision they can get of the battlefield is what they get to deploy on site in terms of radar. Meaning that when they're dropped on a planet and fight to control, hoping neither side is going to torch it, they can't rely on satellites and all the jizz. Even network could potentially be heavily jammed.

No. Firstly considering they posses kilometer long starships which ferry armies across the galaxy bring along a network of satilites would not be overly troubling. Nor does a lack of satilites explain the lack of UAVs, motorized transport for the bulk of their army, etc.

It is possible that millennia ago, they had a fluid combined-arms doctrine which used every possible mean of communication and detection. But such a doctrine was soon observed to be fragile and hard to enforce when all the necessary infrastructure couldn't be deployed properly, therefore rendering more delicate systems rather useless because under used and unable to be exploited to provide the advantage they were meant to have on other tactics.

Well Modern doctrine is not "fragile". Its high maintenence, maintenence the Imperium of course can't provide due to its inherent flaws and issues, but more than pays for itself allowing a smaller force to hit far above their "wieght" in comparison to the stactic army. Not to mention the Germany army which steamrolled France and the low countries would make mincemeat out of the slow tempo Guard and they hardly posses "advanced" technology.

So the Imperium's army most likely reverted to a more robust system, more polyvalent, which would benefit from the use of space capable crafts for recon, and other long range ballistic to clean a place

Is there is evidence spaceships are used for Recon? Like planetary bombardments its a feature which seldom if ever crops up. And where are you getting "long rang ballistics"? The Guard have DeathStrikes which are capable of intercontinental but they are rare and their forces of a whole are dispositioned for close combat.

The IG does not really do subtlety. It has massive industries to squish an opponent and that's all they're left with now. It obviously has its drawbacks on isolated worlds where they can't output enough assets of war and would meet forces much more organized, but that's the case for any kind of strategy.

Yes the Guard rely on sheer numbers to "swamp" their opponet. And that works as long as it is a million world empire picking fights against isolated planet but it is extremely wasteful in terms of manpower/material/man-hours. And quite "fragile" if your enemy doesn't play by the exact same handbook as you. Such as the Taros campagin showed quite brilliantly.

The IG, like the whole of the Imperium, is regressive, for a variety of reasons. You could say but they should deploy drones or, when they have established a stronghold, deploy a large range of radars and even platforms to launch locally kitbashed satellites. But they can't do stuff like that anymore.

No they can't. Nor have I ever claimed the Guard could do any of it. My argument is they should do if they were capable and that static warfare is never optimal.

He has quotes that allude to the rapidity of the IG in certain circumstances.

If you can cite them please.

But when needed, they can deploy large amounts of troops at a far distance way faster than any modern aircraft for example

Could but don't. They drop down, secure a landing zone and expand outward from what I've seen. There are airdrop regiments but I don't recall any fluff they break orbit. Indeed from the Imperial Guard Codex, 5th I believe, we have this concerning the Valkyrie the premire vehicle for "air mobile" regiments IIRC:

The Valkyrie Assault Carrier is a Twin-engine attack craft used for aerial insertions and drop missions. Screaming across a battlefield, a valkyie aircraft deploys its cargo into the fray...

Which sounds very traditional minded.

so they don't even need to engage enemy fixed positions with AA missiles.

Considering the number of times Guard slogs across the ground and the static nature of their warfare air to ground missiles would be a boon.

He has the quotes.

Even allowing for that he still reaches a different conclusion. A conclusion you claimed to agree with.

There are smaller armour companies and infantry groups which can be moved around rapidly, by the help of dedicated transport ships.

Deadguy posts absolutely nothing to support that. I've read his first post and his second neither talk about dedicated transport ships.

And in universe, they indeed are fast.

And this is based on?

People like Ford Prefect manage to misread a direct quotation, and thinks the IG uses initiative to grind down to a battle of attrition (as total attrition in the bluntest way), while it's written that the initiative is taken to achieve that objective only as a result of the enemy launching an equally large amount of armour at the IG, and generally it's to actually force the enemy to put a dent in his mobile reserves.

Thats not misreading. Thats exactly what the quote says. They perform concetrated spearheads primarly to draw in enemy forces in and grind them away. That is not Blitzkrieg. That is not manuver warfare. Further considering it states flatly the bulk of the Guard is slow it is highly doubtful in the extreme this atrittion is going to be of any mobile nature. So simply put this is the sole piece of evidence that supports Deadguy and it shows a crude, simplistic grasp of "deep battle" rather than a textbook case of it.

What that text forgets, though, is that one force doesn't need to send tanks to meet tanks. Modern warfare will take care of those advance columns of tanks and infantry with minimal casualties by being mobile and sniping those tanks with smart ammo, all of which requires one or two launch systems on wheels at a distance, a radar, said smart ammo and a fluid chain of information treatment.

Actually the whole point of manuver warfare is that you are not trying to take care of them persay. Your trying to get behind their lines, destroy supply columns, take objectives, surrond and cut them off ect. Yes having all the stuff you talked about makes it easier but the Germans did it without that fancy stuff.

The IG really is interwar doctrine given better tech in some departments and yet crippled with design flaws and silly procedures.

I do not have issue with that.

That is why both Ralson's and Deadguy's point of views need to be merged, because they both hold a piece of the truth.

I'm sorry. I see nothing woth noting in Deadguy's posts. He has a single bit of evidence, four to five years older than Ralson's, which points to the Guard even understanding what Blitzkrieg is. That's it.

DG also refers to something interesting, which would explain a lot of the actual IG doctrine:

"The Chapter Approved 2004 and other sources literally say that defensive technology is more powerful relative to offensive combat systems. Random 500 lb guided bombs won't cut it against shit like the Palace of Thorns of the Imperial Palace."

Well 1) this is trending towards Sketchbook idea of good defense bad offense. 2) All he actually cites is the chaper approved article which is speaking in terms of tanks. Far and away from defense tech is super great in comparison to offensive combat systems.

[sonofccn]

Condensing the rather mammoth post above:

1. I would like to see what posts of Deadguy lead you to believe he is indicating rough parity in WWII doctrine or that trench warfare breaks out due to parity of forces.

2. Reason or evidence why you feel dispersing your forces along static defense would be a effective allocation of resources between two roughly equal foes.

3. Evidence it is this parity of forces which prompts the Guard to fght WWI style rather than internal issues which hinder them. Poor training, crippling bureacracy, poor logistics etc.