ABSTRACT
Hannibal's defeat of the Romans at Cannae in 216 B.C., one of the most decisive tactical victories of all time, was an example of maneuver warfare. Colonel Boyd's development of the theory of maneuver warfare began, not with ground battles, but with a study of some mock air-to-air combat exercises that led him back to the study of air-to-air combat during the Korean war. One side had presented the other with a sudden, unexpected change or a series of such changes to which it could not adjust in a timely manner. The briefing Colonel Boyd gives to explain his theory, "Patterns of Conflict," takes over five hours. Maneuver warfare means that will not only accept confusion and disorder and operate successfully within it, through decentralization, one will also generate confusion and disorder. General Hermann Balck, one of the most successful practitioners of maneuver warfare, said: Therefore, one of the first principles has to be: There can be no fixed schemes.
