AnantD wrote:
Blitzkrieg - combined arms concept
Concept of bridgeheads in military doctrine
Blitzkrieg (German, "lightning war").
It is sudden and surprise attack of your enemy bases with lighting speed. It takes advantage of relative unpreparedness of enemy troops and their inertia. It is done with a highly mechanized and highly mobile combined forces concentrating on a small part of enemy troops. It is just giving a death blow to your enemy before they could fully mobilize and of course as said combined arms concept. Blitzkrieg strategy involves dsirupting enemy communications first, massive air strike to arrest the enemy movement and defences second, assault by fully mechanized army so deep inorder to encircle massive enemy forces and achieve a rapid victory third.
This techniques demands few things, fully mechanised army in terms of quality to win over quantity.(For instance if you take Sino-Indian situation we need to get that quality in army so as to gain over quantity which is very difficult beacuse No.1 It requires huge amount of Money. No.2 It requires quality in army men in other words their selection will be more time consuming. No.3 It is really time consuming to bring super quality in armour. No.4 Once produced such an troop should not be idle!!! ...). Second thing it demands is the terrain, it can be fully and easily used only in battlefeild which is flat in surface, in other words it is completely not usefull in Mountain Warfare( The best examples are the taliban war, where militants hideout where in mountains and no army could reach them effectively, the Predator drones evolved from such a situation because they remain airbrone long time they could trace their hideouts.. in analogy like a eagle hunts a rat or snake which is hidden in a tunnel).
A much detailed note is in Wikipedia, especially the mode of operation part for now i will describe about countermeasures-
1. Terrain specialized army depolyment- Since Blitzkrieg is not effective in other than flat terrain; the woody forest(this concept was failed in one of the part of france by germans) , river beds(?) and mountains could be used for depolying the troops in strategically important parts.
2. Air dominance- The Blitzkrieg demands air superiority which if failed can lead to ineffective conquest and an effecient air to ground attack can make the whole raid ineffective.
3. Anti-tank and anti-air warfare- If effective it can make Blitzkrieg vulnerbale!!!
4. Extensive minefield with combination of defense forces by soviet gave a very hard time for Germans in Battle of Kursk.
Bridgehead:
The bridgehead is a area near river beds wherein the army has to fight to gain the control over bridge. So as to conquer a bridge(that is what i understand), it is interesting because conquering the bridge can allow one to gain access to the other side of bank of river. In essence it is the gain of easiest transport route for passage of troops from one bank of river to the other side, it may apply to huge rivers only. The bridgehead is a typical area around both the side of banks of river with a bridge in between and the bank should be flat and of neraly 30 sq.kms( anonymous source..).
There are several Bridges aroung Indus river in pakistan to name few Chilas bridge(~300 Km from srinagar), Astor and Alam bridges. Some are having a favourable terrain and other do not. Dont know about chinese part.