WAR OF THE FUTURE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3811, 28 June 1928, Page 1

WAR OF THE FUTURE

AN EXPERT’S VISION

DEATH-DEALING MACHINES

A CONTEST OF SCIENCE

Military experts and ail those who were in close contact with the enemy during the war will lie stirred by Colonel ,J. E. C. Fuller’s new prophetic book, “On Future Warfare.” Controversy will be raised by his vision of a war of scienee, small man-power and death-deal-ing niaehinos. Colonel Fuller, a General Staff officer, recognised as one of the'eleverest brains in the Army, has specialised in the study of the mechanised force, its effect on tactics, and on the morale of military and civilian population. “On Future Warfare,” with its cold, hard reasoning, its unemotional references to the casualties of war, its descriptions of mobile heavy-gun platforms moving to five offensive, tanks in action, airplanes in operation, and gas attacks, will prove as discouraging to one section of the public as it must inspire to further effort the mechanically minded among the professional soldiers, says a London reviewer. The small army is foreshadowed for 1946 by Colonel Fuller. Sixty thousand officers and men, with 2,000 fighting machines, is his*estimate. “A microscopic force when compared to the horde armies of 1914-1918,” he concludes. “Yet, though during the last year of the war we used up as many tanks as the number I have just quoted, can it be doubted that if the organised force outlined had existed we could not have decimated these hordes as surely as Alexander decimated the Persians at Issns and at Arbela?” *

“A CHAOS OF EARTHWORKS.” Colonel Fuller describes and explains mechanised force at battle strength. He says: “The Great War ought by rights to have been

an engineers’ war. From the autumn of 1914 until that of 1917, on the western front, it was purely a series of siege operations. In place of being a, w'ar run by professional engineers, it was a war run by amateur pioneers, and the result was a chaos of earthworks.” Elsewhere the writer refers to mistakes in the control of the Great War. The army of the future will he “based on petrol ... it will be able to advance 100 miles a day. It must be comparatively small . . . its organisation must be simple. It must, however, be able to find the enemy, to hold him when met with, and when held to hit him and to pursue him. The finding of an enemy will largely depend on air veconnaissanre, and air power depends on landing facilities. . . . Without air superiority surprise will be gravely restricted, and surprise in mechanical warfare is obviously all-important.” So the mechanised army will move forward by road and cross country, but there will be obstacles bred out of the nations’ appreciation of tanks. Colonel Fuller says:—“Fortifications are likely to he numerous and small . . Shellproof and gasproof. Zones of modernised Martello towers suggest • themselves. Towers sunk in antitank moats, and possibly encircled and connected by minefields. The top of the tower . . . Will only just appear above the level of the ground, crowned by a small revolving steel cupola, containing one anti-tank gun, its garrison numbering about ten men. They should be . . . provided with some hidden means of exit which will allow their garrisons retiring should their gun be put out of action. A CHANGE IN TACTICS. “The tactical outlook has changed,” Colonel Fuller remarks. “We have light tanks fighting light tanks, which pre-supposes that i each will he equipped with antitank machine guns, and on sides these machines will he supported by heavy tanks. “Somewhere in the offing will cavalry be, sticking panic-stricken enemy riflemen routed by the cavalry light, tanks,* while, well in rear, on some anti-tank hilltop, will be congregated the infantry, loudly applauding this excellent sport. Such, I believe, is what a battle will look like in the near future.”