Expeditionary warfare
Expeditionary warfare is a military invasion of a foreign territory, especially away from established bases. Expeditionary forces were in part the antecedent of the modern concept of rapid deployment forces. Traditionally, expeditionary forces were essentially self-sustaining with an organic logistics capability and with a full array of supporting arms.
The World Wars[edit]
First World War[edit]
The period of the First World War and its aftermath in the 1920s saw expeditionary warfare established as a systematic and planned type of operations with larger scope than simple transportations of troops to the theatre, such as the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, Russian Expeditionary Force in 1916, and the American Expeditionary Forces in 1917, and the beginnings of development in true combined operations at strategic, operational and tactical levels with the unsuccessful amphibious landing at Gallipoli. Not only did this operation combine the elements of overall war planning context, multinational deployment of forces as part of the same operation, and use of troops prepared for the landings (as opposed to disembarkation), as well as naval gunfire support that was limited during the era of sailing ships, but also included extensive use of combat engineering in support of the infantry. One of the most extensive and complex of expeditionary operations that followed the war was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War that saw forces deployed in the Baltic region, the Arctic region, along the Black Sea coast, and in the Russian Far East.