Logotyp: till Försvarshögskolans hemsida

Israel has been successful in the majority of the conflicts they participated in, but after the second Lebanon war against Hezbollah, the outcome was a loss. The United States Marine Corps have achieved many victories throughout history. However, during operation "Vigilant Resolve" in Fallujah, Iraq, the result was a loss when the Marine Corps failed to seize the city.

How can regular armed forces have such difficulties to achieve military success against irregular armed forces, despite its technological and numerical superiority? The aim in this paper is to see if another possible explanation to the difficulties lies in insufficient use of manoeuvre warfare.

The paper examines two negative cases. The examination takes place with the analysis of open written documents of a mainly descriptive nature. 

Both Israel and the United States Marine Corps used manoeuvre warfare, but inadequately. With that said, it is not clear that the loss of operations can be explained entirely by insufficient use of manoeuvre warfare. It is close to the assertion that inadequate use of manoeuvre warfare can to some extent explain the loss.