Which is better? Which should modern militaries adopt?

Examples of Deep Battle:

Operation Bagration, 1944

Soviet Invasion of Manchuria, 1945

Examples of Blitzkrieg:

Operation Barbarossa, 1941-1942

Operation Desert Storm, 1991

1707929

Blitzkrieg.

1707941
Why? Soviet Deep Battle is the superior strategy in my opinion, as the usage of multiple, simultaneous thrusts to force openings in battlelines without weak points is superior to Blitzkrieg's necessity of finding a preexisting weak point, as is the ability of Deep Battle to have a secondary tactical reserve compared to the one, concentrated thrust of Blitzkrieg.

1707959

Blitzkrieg is an extremely fast hit, and doesn't require the massive amount of units that seem to be needed for Deep Battle. The speed of the attack can easily catch a foe off guard, and can stop a battle from turning into a slogging match. Blitzkrieg is able to finish something within a few days in the weeks of time Deep Battle would seem to require. Plus, if you have a diversion to bring enemies to a weak point, dragging forces away from a strongpoint, and then Blitzkrieg the other area, you can then swing some of the Blitzkrieg force to encompass the enemy.

Plus, I'm a sucker for tanks.

Depends on the situation.

1708001

Blitzkrieg is an extremely fast hit, and doesn't require the massive amount of units that seem to be needed for Deep Battle.

You can correctly perform Deep Battle with the same amount of units as Blitzkrieg, though. It just requires two or more thrusts rather than one and a strategic reserve.

The speed of the attack can easily catch a foe off guard, and can stop a battle from turning into a slogging match.

Deep Battle doesn't exclude this. Both are strategies based in Maneuver Warfare and not Attrition Warfare.

Blitzkrieg is able to finish something within a few days in the weeks of time Deep Battle would seem to require.

Operation Bagration cut from the Russian-Ukrainian border to Warsaw in less than a month. Again, both are founded in Maneuver Warfare.

Plus, if you have a diversion to bring enemies to a weak point, dragging forces away from a strongpoint, and then Blitzkrieg the other area, you can then swing some of the Blitzkrieg force to encompass the enemy.

I don't think you're getting what Blitzkrieg means.

Plus, I'm a sucker for tanks.

A huge part of both is combined arms.

1708046

Ok. I see.

And I know Blitzkrieg is all arms, it's that tanks were the main driving force.

1708060
There is no driving force in either. Combined arms does not focus on one unit or antoher. To quote the US Army Field Manual FM-2-16 (Tactics, Terminology) states "Combined Arms is more than the combat arms working together. Each branch of the army provides unique capabilities that complement other branches."

1708089

Nice. Pretty good quotation, too.

Blitzkrieg is dependent upon tanks to punch through the weakened section, Tanks are rapidly growing obsolete as man-portable explosives become readily available to infantry. This is to say nothing of how Blitzkrieg tends to come to a grinding halt in and around cities.

Deep-battle however, I have no opinion upon.

Both Modern technology and the modern political network render the blitzkrieg-strategy almost completely useless. If a war between two sovereign states is fought it's either a so-called proxy-war, which is calculated from two superpowers. Vietnam was such a war, primary leading the U.S. against the S.U. This was, because the two powers were way too well armed to risk a direct war, in which both nations would simply be destroyed. After the fall of the S.U. most wars are fought within a single state in which it's, should a second state interfere (what's against the law of the U.N.), the biggest problem is to make out what people are soldiers of the state, who are not and mostly who the rebels/terrorists are. Even if it has many weak-spots, the network of the U.N. ensures that tensions between two nations can be spotted before a nation decides to strike. But again, if there is a fast raid going on it's often not to be seen who actually payed the troops.

In cases like the Iraq one of the main concerns you have is to end it asap. This war was against international law, led only by the U.S.A and its alliance of the willing. I would not call that blitzkrieg, as the attackers had the absolute dominance in manpower, technology and any other supplies. No matter what they did, they would win in any case, and that's the case in all strikes of that kind.

In my opinion tactics of the second world war are nowadays as outdated as the strategies of the Franco-German war were in the first.

1707929
The right tool for the right job. Even Clausewitz was flexible enough to acknowledge that one. More accurately, whichever one they're least prepared for is the way to go, taking into account the terrain, weather, intelligence gathering capability, morale, communications, and both of your entire supply chains, as well as the way all of these are likely to change over the course of the conflict and whether smaller strikes can push those in an advantageous direction before any decisive assault.

Unless your goal is actual conquest, though, (and if it is, what are you thinking!?), if you're besieging an enemy at all, something has gone terribly wrong strategically. That's like the worst way to actually get what you want out of them, and you'll be stuck with a massive resource deficit, difficult-to-administer territory, and a bad reputation. Far better to cajole and groom them into making concessions to you, or finding another goal to more frictionlessly pursue your agenda in the meantime, to begin arranging things so it looks like giving you what you want was your opponent's idea all along.

Or the other side really are fanatical aggressors who can only be defeated by armed might, in which case consolidating, securing, and stabilizing what you've recaptured is the watchword, since the liberation of those areas is ostensibly the whole prize, and the aggressor nation will have to be rebuilt, so you don't want to wreck it too thoroughly with a wild assault, since you're better off with them in the future as a happy, prosperous trading partner holding no grudge.
Anything else is just playing Risk with real-life troops. Conquest and expansionism are fun as a game, but in reality not so much, because the game doesn't end when one side is declared the winner.

1707959
The Soviets also pointlessly sacrificed thousands upon thousands of soldiers in what amounted to them as a strategy, which was really just "throw as many men at as you can until the enemy just collapses". Treating human beings as meatshields like that doesn't sit well with me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

1708046

Blitzkrieg is Lightning War.

1709342

1708183
You're talking like Escalation wasn't isn't a doctrine on all sides, like proxy wars are a new thing, and like the strategies from the Franco-Prussian (Germany didn't exist at the time) War weren't used in Poland in 1939.

A good war is a fast war. I would rather have a quick bloodbath then a long lasting war that sucks up resources and MAY have more casualties and problems then a fast war in the long run. I don't care what method is used, just make it end fast! That's my oppinion.

1707929

Which should modern militaries adopt?

Different situations call for different strategies and tactics. A good military force adapts as needed.

1707929

Which should modern militaries adopt?

They don't need to adopt either, they've inherited both. As each of these approaches are well-known and well-studied, they should be part of the toolbox for any modern commander.

Unless your intended meaning is "which should modern militaries apply exclusively?", in which case the answer is neither, silly-billy; they should use the tactic that best suits the situation and be ready to change their approach as needed, selecting from among options that include these as well as strategies incorporating the vast degree to which the nature of air support and unmanned weaponry has changed since the middle of last century.

Even on the face of the question, no answer is possible without knowing at least the following: Which modern military? Against which opposition? Following what previous mobilization, by any involved party? In what prevailing political situation? And with what objective?

1710324
It doesn't matter whether proxy wars are a new thing or not. The important thing to look at is its changed function. In the decades that followed the second world war neither the USA nor the SU dared a direct offensive move against the opponent. And that not only because both would be destroyed but also because it wasn't a fight of nations but of ideas. The US represented the idea of capitalism while the SU went with socialism. The SU fell, capitalism spread and the bipolar world order became unipolar, at least until 9/11. With 9/11 it was shown to the US that they aren't invincible, what led to a delicious chaos. In that chaos nationalism is only a minor factor. It most often causes war whenever a group isn't allowed to have its own state. The mayor factor, however, is the fight about what idea should dominate the world. And if you try to make out what region is fighting for which idea, then you'll see that this easily outgrows borders. Or it's the very opposite: it's fought within a nation.

In my opinion the strategy of blitzkrieg needs certain, valuable targets that can be precisely destroyed to actually work. And within the chaos of today's world (compared to the simple west vs east pre-90) those targets get more and more difficult to find.

Also, it's right that Germany didn't exist back then, but there was this North German Confederation (of course under the lead of Prussia), what legitimates the term Franco-German War for me.

1707929
Modern,
Unlike the blitzkrieg which is basically a massive wall of death, modern tactics are not as predictable, and if the blitzkrieg is breached, tons of casualties on both sides.

1742759 Before I begin I wish to point out I don't support Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS or any other extremist group. The days of Napoleonic Battles and great armies facing of against each other are long gone.
In some cases, its better to blitz to the capital of a country in the case of Iraq so as to not prolong the conflict. Deep battle has its place, but not in battles against small countries and it shouldn't be conducted unless the army has overwhelming numbers in the case of the Soviets in WWII. The extremists are fighting in the way that any war should be fought. Guerilla Warfare.
It is stated in "The Art of War" that armies should hit in places where the enemy is not, use spies, double agents, deception, etc. The extremists use the teachings of Sun Tzu to the fullest and that is why they can hold out for so long against an overwhelming force.
The rebels in the conquered lands of the Nazis effectively trumped the almighty blitzkrieg. While I have no examples of the Soviets' deep battle strategy being thwarted by insurgents, I argue that this is because the Soviets leader, Josef Stalin, was shrewd enough to let the Germans kill the insurgent populace so he would have less trouble.
So yea, both of the strategies that have been listed in the forum title have the time and place where they are useful, but the dominant strategy in this current age of technology is guerilla warfare.