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A pincer movement whereby the red force envelops the advancing blue force.

The pincer movement or double envelopment is a basic element of military strategy which has been used, to some extent, in nearly every war. The flanks of the opponent are attacked simultaneously in a pinching motion after the opponent has advanced towards the center of an army which is responding by moving its outside forces to the enemy's flanks, in order to surround it. At the same time, a second layer of pincers attacks on the more extreme flanks, so as to prevent any attempts to reinforce the target unit.

Most infantry combat, on every scale, is based in some fashion on this military tactic and it is commonly used by aircraft as well. It was vaguely described in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but he argued that it was best to allow the enemy a path to escape, as he felt the target army would fight with more ferocity when completely surrounded.

A double envelopment by definition leads to the attacking army facing the enemy in front, on both flanks, and in the rear. If the attacking pincers link up in the enemy's rear, the enemy is encircled. Such battles often end in surrender or destruction of the enemy force, although the encircled force can attempt a breakout, attacking the encirclement from the inside in order to escape, or a friendly external force can attack from the outside to open up an escape route for the encircled force.

Hannibal's double envelopement at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC is viewed by military historians as one of the greatest battlefield maneuvers in history, and is cited as the first successful use of the pincer movement to be recorded in detail.^[1] A variation of this maneuver was also later used to great effect by Khalid ibn al-Walid against the numerically superior forces of the Sassanid Persian Empire at the Battle of Walaja in AD 633, though Khalid developed his version independently.^[2]

• Battle of Walaja
• Battle of Cannae
• Brécourt Manor Assault
• Battle of Cowpens
• Battle of Fraustadt
• Battle of Khalkhin Gol
• Battle of Marathon
• Battle of Stalingrad
• Battle of Tannenberg (1914)
• Encirclement
• Flanking maneuver
• Operation Postern
• Six-Day War

• U.S. Army training manual diagram of different modes of attack, including double envelopment
• GlobalSecurity.org essay with a section on envelopments
• Academic paper on military diagramming with diagram of a double envelopment
• Map of Georgy Zhukov's double envelopment at the battle of Stalingrad