Blowing up Bridges in Vilnius: The Tactical Lit Review
Our very own LTC Griffiths in MWI
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Here at The Harding Project, we love to highlight our own! Our Director, LTC Zach Griffiths, published a piece with the Modern War Institute on May 1st discussing tactical literature review.
Please check out a teaser below and find his full piece here!
You defend Vilnius by blowing the bridges.
A few years ago, during a warfighter exercise, my battalion was tasked to delay Donovian forces assaulting through Vilnius into the Suwalki Gap. While poring over the maps, I paused to wonder: Has Vilnius been fought over before? A quick search on Google and Google Scholar turned up examples from 1655, 1812, and 1944—all pointing to the same solution: blow the bridges. We did. It worked.
This is the power of what we might call a tactical literature review. In academic writing, literature reviews discuss and analyze “published information in a particular subject area.” A tactical literature review, then, systematically reviews historical accounts, today’s articles, and archives relevant to a specific mission or problem. Just as you might borrow the order for a rifle range from your sister platoon leader, the tactical literature review uncovers what others have already learned, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
LTC Zach Griffiths is a Special Forces Officer and the Director of The Harding Project.
Well done, terrain and the human factors are two of the more constant aspects of combat. This reminds me of a 1974 road movement in the Mekong Delta where we frequently found three “bridges” at each crossing - the remnants of the French colonial era masonry bridge, the remnants of a steel “Bailey” bridge, and the then currently in place and functioning “Bailey”