text: Chapter 6
  survivability tasks. Leaders must consider the terrain, protection, and sustainment requirements for higher
  headquarters or joint enablers that may be located in the rear area. (See FM 3-94 for more information on the
  rear command posts.)
  6-216. Because rear operations divert combat power from other priorities, commanders must weigh the
  need for this diversion against other potential consequences, and they must be prepared to assume risk based
  upon both mission analysis and running estimates. Assuming risk may be as simple as suspending all but
  critical operations in the rear area for a time, so that units operating in the rear area can concentrate on self-
  defense at critical junctures.
  6-217. Leaders mitigate vulnerabilities associated with command posts, support areas, staging areas, and
  transportation operations by doing everything possible to limit enemy detection, harden critical nodes, and
  counter enemy attacks before they can inflict significant losses. Effective counter-UAS operations are critical
  to countering enemy reconnaissance attempting to identify high-payoff friendly targets. Electromagnetic
  protection, limited offensive space control operations, dispersion, and repositioning capabilities within the
  rear area to complicate enemy targeting, particularly of critical C2 nodes, is very important during the defense
  when a division or corps is relatively static for extended periods of time. (See ATP 3-01.81 for more
  information on counter-UAS operations.)
  TRANSITION TO OFFENSE
  6-218. The ultimate goal of defensive operations is to defeat the enemy’s attacks and transition, or threaten
  to transition, to the offense. Units must deliberately plan for transitions to identify and establish the necessary
  friendly and enemy conditions for a successful transition. As friendly forces meet their defensive objectives,
  forces consolidate and reorganize for offensive operations or prepare to facilitate forward passages of lines
  for fresh formations. Units should do everything possible to prevent enemy forces from reinforcing their
  forward echelons, consolidating, or reorganizing while friendly forces prepare for follow-on operations.
  6-219. Commanders transition to the offense when they assess they have enough combat power to maintain
  pressure on the enemy. They do not wait for perfect conditions, and they sometimes must push tired
  formations to attack because the opportunity to complete the defeat of enemy formations reduces the risk of
  future casualties fighting the same enemy formations after they have recovered. Commanders continuously
  assess the effects of battle on their formations relative to their opponents, and they let that assessment guide
  how hard they pursue enemy forces and how high of a tempo they sustain. (See ADP 3-90 for additional
  information on the defense.)
  SECTION III – OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS
  For I am convinced that one cannot win, especially outnumbered, without attacking. But
  to attack on today’s battlefield requires craft and cunning—a concept of offense that we’ve
  perhaps only begun to understand.
  General Donn A. Starry
  6-220. The key to successful offensive operations is to achieve all desired objectives prior to culmination.
  This requires the force in the offense to have some combination of relative advantage in the physical,
  information, or human dimensions. Typically, offensive operations require advantages in multiple domains,
  but commanders may achieve those advantages through deception operations and surprise rather than the
  physical means of combat power alone.
  PURPOSE AND CONDITIONS FOR THE OFFENSE
  6-221. The purpose of the offense is to defeat or destroy enemy forces and to gain control of terrain,
  resources, or population centers. Offensive operations take something from an enemy force. They are
  characterized by aggressive initiative on the part of subordinate commanders, by rapid shifts of the main
  effort to create and exploit opportunity, by momentum, and by the deepest, most rapid possible destruction
  of enemy defensive schemes and the capabilities that enable them.