A little cud to chew - bringing back reality.

[Haven]

Something to get your brains working:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.H._Liddell_Hart

• Direct attacks against an enemy firmly in position almost never work and should never be attempted
• To defeat the enemy one must first upset his equilibrium, which is not accomplished by the main attack, but must be done before the main attack can succeed.

In Liddell Hart's words,

In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there; a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance.
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He also claimed that

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

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[Taffy]

Then theres moral to consider. If I knew that I was going to die on the battlefield for a team that was inevitably going to lose anyway, I wouldn't be too happy about it, thats for sure.

Blitzkrieg has to be one of the best tactics ever developed, yet suprisingly simple to use with a little communication, cohesion and co-operation (the 3 C's)

 

[Gopha]

He also claimed that

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

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True, so very true, especially in the case of World War 1

 

[Ronin Storm]

Modern warfare revolves, at the strategic and operational level, around undermining and ultimately breaking the enemy's "centre of gravity". Decide what that is, how to destroy it, and then your forces work on that.

Admittedly, a CoG can be "the will of the people to support the regime" and is only rarely "the Republican Guard", or so I understand.

Just as an aside to that, planning for conflict appears to take place at three separate levels:

1. Strategic -- political direction, grand plan, e.g. "remove Saddam Hussein from power"
2. Operational -- how the grand plan needs to be achieved, e.g. "allied military offensive against Iraq using repeated airstrikes to destroy key infrastructure to demoralise the forces, while simultaneously spreading propoganda to demoralise the people"
3. Tactical -- how forces actually operate in order to implement the operational plan, e.g. "1 Armoured Division advances on elements of the Republican Guard using attached artillery support to suppress hardened positions as necessary"

Battlefield 2, as with most (all?) first person shooters, works at the tactical level without real consideration for the higher level concerns. I raise that thought because it could be a mistake to apply strategic and operational planning concepts directly to tactical environments.