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From: baltuch@BINAH.CC.brandeis.edu
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: tactics basics [?]
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.034821.7736@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 15 Mar 91 03:48:21 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (william.b.thacker)
Organization: Brandeis University
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From: baltuch@BINAH.CC.brandeis.edu
This must be a FAQ big time... but here goes anyway...

Thru military history one reads of say army A beating army B
by encircling it. Encirclement seems to be almost taken as a
synonym of victory... ( cf the game of Go :-)  A attempts to
encircle B and B attempts to "break the encirclement", etc.

It suddenly became clear to me that is wasn't at all clear to
me why this should always be so.

Now my question: Is there a inherent "geometric" advantage
of encirclement?

I could see why the encircled army would have say more trouble
manoeuvering and be a more vulnerable target but on the other
hand its forces are more concentrated whereas the encircling
army has to stretch itself to cover more ground.

Is there a well known rule of thumb saying that the proportion
of encirclers to encircled should be in a p:q ratio for encirclement
to succeed? (Just like they say 3:1 = attackers:defenders ratio is
necessary for offensive to succeed...) 

Another possibility of course is that encirclement simply cuts
lines of communications and thus sooner of later the encircled army
simply runs out of ammo, fuel and toilet paper... and there's nothing
more to it.

So which is it?

Please *email* to baltuch@binah.cc.brandeis.edu

Thanks

Jacob Baltuch