17. Format for Area Analysis

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Address, University of Pennsylvania
September 20, 1940

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S REMARK WAS WELL SAID WITH REGARD TO THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL, CULTURAL, and political-military geography on military plans, programs, and operations at every level, because the significance of any given area fluctuates in response to seasonal, cyclical, and random changes that commanders and staffs must evaluate in consonance with missions, situations, forces available on both sides, and technological proficiencies. Computer-assisted intelligence collectors amass, sort, and disseminate much of the data needed for area analyses, but accurate interpretations and sound conclusions depend on incisive minds. Most professionals follow a format similar to the one briefly described below.

Data bases that deal with all pertinent geographic facts lay the foundation for the analysis of each area in much the same way that Parts One and Two of this document underpin Parts Three and Four. Salient considerations such as spatial relationships, topography, oceanography, weather, climate, demography, urban patterns, transportation networks, and manmade structures indeed parallel the Table of Contents herein (see table 25).

Cultural Geography
Population Patterns Races Ethnic Groups Tribes and Clans Religions Public Health	Cities Towns Military Bases Military Facilities Fortifications	Roads Railways Airports Seaports Canals Pipelines

Offensive Combat
Defensive Combat
Peacekeeping
Reconnaissance
Logistical Support
Search and Rescue

Unconventional Warfare
Counterinsurgency Counterterrorism
Civil Affairs
Psychological Operations
Humanitarian Assistance

Strategic Analyses Tactical Analyses Logistical Analyses
Geopolitics Core Areas Strategic Mobility Coalitions Infrastructure	Critical Terrain Observation Fields of Fire Cover and Concealment Obstacles Avenues of Approach	Supply Maintenance Transportation Construction Medical Care

Effects on Friendly Courses of Action Effects on Enemy Courses of Action

The full significance of basic geographic intelligence begins to emerge only when put into context with military missions. Distinctive requirements, for example, rippled down chains of command as soon as the U.S.-British Combined Chiefs of Staff on February 12, 1944, instructed General Eisenhower to "enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with other Allied nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces." A U.S.-British-Canadian coalition thereupon prepared to land on the Normandy coast, consolidate five beachheads, then drive inland. The First U.S. Army prepared airborne and amphibious assaults to seize lodgments along its stretch of invasion coast, U.S. V Corps prepared to land on Omaha Beach, the 1^st and 29^th U.S. Infantry Divisions prepared to hit respective subsections at H-Hour on D-Day. Battalions, companies, platoons, and squads prepared to accomplish ever more detailed missions within ever smaller AORs.¹ Each organization required a formal or informal area analysis slanted specifically to meet its unique needs.

Land, sea, and air force commanders in this day and age additionally must prepare to accomplish such diversified missions as peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, nation building, hostage rescue, counterterrorism, drug interdiction, and other operations short of war. Mission-oriented area analyses in each instance are essential.

Detailed diagnoses occupy strategic, tactical, and logistical categories that respectively serve national policymakers and planners, combatant commanders, and support forces that specialize in supply, maintenance, transportation, construction, and medical care.

Area analyses at the national level concentrate on political-military matters much like those that Part Three of this document addresses, together with lines of communication needed to reach distant areas of responsibility, abilities to form coalitions after arrival, and the availability of militarily useful infrastructures.

Strategic analyses also assess enemy core areas that contain targets of great political, economic, military, or cultural value, the seizure, retention, destruction, or control of which would afford marked advantage. U.S. analysts during the Cold War identified several agglomerations in European Russia that would have been vitally important to Soviet national security in the event of a general nuclear war: Moscow, Leningrad, heavy industries in the Donets Basin and Ural Mountain complex, oil fields and refineries around Baku. Subsidiary cores centered around Tashkent, the Kuznetsk Basin, Lake Baikal, and Vladivostok were regionally important, but the Soviet Union could have survived as a strong state without them (map 56).²

Area analyses developed for combat forces emphasize critical terrain, avenues of approach, natural and manmade obstacles, cover, concealment, observation, and fields of fire. A few words about each suffice.

Critical Terrain. Marked advantages accrue to armed forces that hold, control, or destroy critical (sometimes decisive) terrain, which is a lower level analog of strategically crucial core areas. Typical examples range from commanding heights and military headquarters to geographic choke points, telecommunication centers, logistical installations, power plants, dams, locks, airfields, seaports, railway marshaling yards, and road junctions. Features that qualify differ at each echelon, because senior commanders and their subordinates have different perspectives. Three- and four-star officers, for example, might see an entire peninsula as critical terrain while successively lower levels focus first on one coastal city, then on the naval shipyard therein, the next layer down on harbor facilities, and finally on pierside warehouses.

Avenues of Approach. The value of avenues on land, at sea, and in the air also varies with levels of command. Field Marshal Graf von Schlieffen, who was Chief of the German General Staff at the turn of the 20th century, visualized a single high-speed corridor between Saxony and France, adequate for 34 divisions abreast if "the last man on the right brushed the English Channel with his sleeve,"³ whereas haggard platoon leaders at the bottom of his heap felt lucky when they found a suitable stretch 1,000 meters long. Approaches that are attractive to friendly armed forces seldom suit enemy schemes of maneuver and vice versa, but useful avenues in neither event need follow the most obvious paths--on the contrary, savvy commanders occasionally pick inauspicious routes precisely because they facilitate surprise.

Obstacles. Representative obstacles along land avenues of approach include mountains, unfordable streams, swamps, steep slopes, deep snow, dense forests, flooded lowlands, reefs, shoals, urban centers, minefields, antitank ditches, roadblocks, blown bridges, cratered airport runways, and "dragons' teeth." Distance and overland accessibility don't always correlate closely, as evidenced by Tibet, which is reached more easily from Chongqiang, China, north of the Himalayas than from Calcutta south of that awesome wall. Impediments perpendicular to avenues of attack cause offensive ground forces to lose forward momentum and temporarily bunch up, which increases vulnerabilities. Polisario guerrillas in Western Sahara, for example, never were able to mount large-scale assaults across the huge berm that Moroccan troops built as a defensive barrier.⁴

Solid obstructions are absent in the air and uncommon on sea surfaces (ice, islands, reefs, and shoals are important exceptions), but underwater topography inhibits submarines, bad weather commonly interferes with operations aloft and afloat, rugged terrain limits flight paths, and intangible obstacles such as the denial of overflight rights for political reasons may impede the use of airspace.

Observation and Fields of Fire. Ground forces for millenia have spilled countless buckets of blood in efforts to seize, hold, or destroy observation posts in church steeples, on water towers, or atop dominant peaks such as Monte Cassino (Italy) and Mount Surabachi (Iwo Jima). The loftiest perches, however, provide the best visibility only if lines-of-sight are unobstructed by terrain masks, dense vegetation, rain, drizzle, swirling snow, dust, fog, smoke, smog, mirages, or other obscurants that also limit aerial surveillance. Darkness reduces visibility for land, sea, and air forces alike unless they possess night vision devices. Topographic features, vegetative cover, and buildings commonly restrict air-to-ground as well as surface-to-surface weapon systems. North Korea is a cogent case in point, because low-hanging clouds often cover mountain tops, valley winds blow strongly, and many lucrative targets are deeply buried in tunnels at the bottom of shadowy, steep-sided ravines that face north. Contour-flying aircraft, "smart bombs," and terminally-guided missiles assuredly would be hard-pressed to make sharp, high-speed turns in such close quarters.⁵

Cover and Concealment. Military personnel, command posts, weapon systems, and installations benefit more from cover, which connotes protection, than from concealment, which merely prevents observation. Camouflage nets and lilac bushes, for example, may frustrate prying eyes, but provide no better shields that buttons on battle jackets. Foxholes and folds in the ground that stop bullets and flying shards afford scant security against chemical warfare agents that seek the lowest levels.

Logisticians get little satisfaction from area analyses that emphasize critical terrain, avenues of approach, obstacles, observation, fields of fire, cover, and concealment. Their interests in supply, maintenance, transportation, construction, and medical care instead demand up-to-date data concerning such diversified subjects as the effects of weather and terrain on needs for specialized food, clothing, and shelter; the availability of stone quarries and lumber yards needed to construct or maintain roads, airfields, seaports, cantonments, depots, and other military installations; bottlenecks along, and throughput capacities of, potential main supply routes; the presence or absence of plentiful water supplies and the location of alternative sources; indigenous sanitation problems and endemic diseases; quantitative and qualitative characteristics of local labor forces. Civil affairs and psychological operations forces similarly require area analyses prepared expressly for their purposes.

The culmination of each area analysis evaluates and compares geographic influences on friendly and enemy courses of action. Results give the clearest possible views of advantages versus disadvantages before staff officers make recommendations and commanders make decisions. Chapters 18 and 19 present two dissimilar area studies that show effects on U.S. and enemy courses of action in the relatively recent past. Case 1 investigates influences on airborne and amphibious assaults that opened a second front in Western Europe during World War II. Case 2 explores the geographical antecedents of logistical problems that plagued plans to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos during President Lyndon Johnson's administration. Key findings are instructive, because geographical facts of life will similarly confront future statesmen, who must determine whether armed force is the most appropriate instrument in any given instance, and military commanders at every level, who must decide where, when, how, and in what strength to apply power most effectively given assigned missions.