Strategy, tactics and ...operations??

[Screeny]

Hey all historians out there....I heard of strategy and about tactics and what i understand is that (simply said) strategy is how to get your army/armies to the battlefield and tactics is is how to go about during battle/on the battlefield. (ok very simple definition, I know). However I'm reading lately a lot about "operational thingie" or somefink like that. doing some reading on that and it seems to be some kind of level between strategy and tactics.... Well intiutivily I think I understand this 3 concepts but I can't really grasp it yet...could any one help me out here?? Some explanation? preferably with a example ?

thanks in advance

gr

[Firefly]

To put it in wargames terms a game which covered one engagement, such as CM, is tactical, a game in which you command al the troops is a single operation auch as Stalingrad or Operation Bagatrion would be operational (games such as The Operational Art of War or the recent Korsun Pocket). A game where you replay the entire war in Russia or Europe would be strategic, games like Strategic Command or Hearts of Iron would fit in here.

No doubt some grog will turn up shortly and start quoting David Glantz and Soviet Operational Theory and you'll get a much more detailed definition .

[Sergei]

'Strategy' is something a country draws up to define their overall objectives and how to do it (like "let's outproduce the enemy in tanks and airplanes and then push them over"). Grand objectives are not necessarily reached in one stage, but rather through 'operations'. Like, Allies might have decided to defeat Germany first, and to implement this, the western Allies invade Normandy, aka. Operation Overlord, followed by other operations which ultimately lead them to victory in Europe. As these operations probably run into enemy resistance (the Germans might not want to give up the French coast voluntarily), 'tactical' gunfights ensue.

[JasonC]

Tactics is commonly used to refer to actions taking place within the maximum range of the available weapons, or sometimes within lines of sight, or sometimes anything at the level of a single division or below. Another way of looking at it is that it includes everything directed or determined by officers below the rank of general. It also has a looser, more general meaning of "anything you try".

Strategy usually means a consideration of goals and plans that leaves nothing out above, the top level of decision making. It can include topics related to military matters but not directly military, like decisions about war and peace, alliances, economic mobilization, technological research, production plans, control of resources and manpower and their allocation.

It can also be used to refer to overarching military methods, integrated military theories, or the top level of directly military plans. It can be seen as the things decided by heads of state or by whole political regimes, sometimes extending to the very top level of officers or a general staff.

Operations refers to moves on maps, the decisions about direction of forces here or there in this or that sequence, against these or those enemies. It is the stuff most generals do, directing divisions and corps and armies and army groups around. (Note that what a division does "in place", how it fights e.g., is typically tactics, while where it goes can be operations).

Staffs usually contain an operations officer whose job is to write out orders to all the subordinate units telling them their respective missions, especially which place they are to go, by when. The term is essentially a generalization from that function. How you get your subunits to dance, how you orchestrate their movements, and how those choices interact with enemy actions, is the subject. The "chess play" of war.

What are some simple examples of each?

Germany made a strategic decision to attack Russia, employing a strategy of blitzkrieg, led by deep attacks by concentrated armor groups and designed to destroy the Russian army in one quick campaign.

At one point they made an operational decision to send Guderian's armor south to close the Kiev pocket instead of east toward Moscow.

They used tactics that included massing a battalion or more of tanks on a few kilometers of front, backed by supporting forces of all arms, to overwhelm local antitank defenses and punch through Russian lines.

I hope this helps explain the different terms.

[ August 26, 2003, 03:05 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Screeny]

Thanks guys, yes Jason it does makes things more clear: Previous Strategy in my understanding was how you guys described operations, so hence my confusion, apparently what I understood more or less as Strategy is referred to as operations and Strategy is even a level higher concerning more then just military issues....Thanks mates, sure did help me out.

[Michael Emrys]

B. H. Liddell Hart in one of his books, Strategy I believe, had a neat set of definitions which regretably no one else seems to have taken up. I've never been able to find the quote again, so I can't recite it as well as I like, but I do remember the hierarchy. It went from the most local to the most global:

</font>

• Tactical</font>
• Operational</font>
• Grand tactical</font>
• Strategic</font>
• Grand strategic</font>

He defined tactical pretty much as it has been here. He would have said that it spans the activities of individual men up through squads, platoons, and companies.

Next up the ladder is operational, which would involve maneuvering and fighting battalions and regiments.

Grand tactical would involve divisions, corps, and possibly armies.

Strategic would be army groups, theaters, or as in WW II the military actions of the entire nation all over the globe.

Grand strategy involves the entire resources of the nation, not only the military but industry, science, politics, propaganda, whatever can be mobilized and brought to bear against the enemy.

There, I hope I haven't misrepresented the good Captain's thought too badly.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

One further thought. Two actually. The first I can't recall where I came where I came across, but it goes like this:

"Tactics is the art of winning battles. Strategy is the business of arranging battles to win a war."

The second is in my sig and is of my own contriving.

Michael

[Screeny]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

One further thought. Two actually. The first I can't recall where I came where I came across, but it goes like this:

The second is in my sig and is of my own contriving.

Hehe still again then the question: WHAT THE H&^$%# is Operatonial level dating?

But serious I did read B. H. Liddell Hart's "Strategy" so I'm familair with the terms. Personnaly I think he goes a little to far in general in subdivided in 5 levels (they are good however in understanding what he is explaining i his book which I found btw pretty excellent, then again who doesn't?? ) Anyway the "definitions" you use aren't they a little too much quantitive?? In your definition the differnece in tactics, grand thingie, operational, strategy etc is just in the amount/numbers of troops/units we are talking about, somehow I have the feeling there is also a more qualitative component in the terms.....But thanks anyway..maybe I just should start reading Hart's book again...

[Redwolf]

For me, operational planning in the Soviet sense of deep strikes is defined by one or more of the following:

1) non-committed tactical units with subsequent orders:

- there is a primary tactical fight

- there are additional units in the vicinity, but not involved in this fight

- these additional units have preplanned orders for another tactical fight

- the fighting of the units in the primary tactical fight try to free these additional unts to move to their next tactical fight

2) premade plans to strike deep

Tactical units attack in layers, but the subsequent echelons are not free to join existing fights, they are committed to go elsewhere if at all possible

3) fights which violate the principle of mass

This is essentially a consequence of the former points: instead of concentratuing all available units on a primary task, to overcome resistence by application of most possible mass, a decision is made that it is more worthwhile to do primary fights with less mass, in exchange for freeing units to exploit suspected weaknesses in areas opened by these primary fights.

%%

It should be pretty clear that this is just one of several ways to fight and not by definition superiour.

It only works for the offense, only with superiour numbers and it breaks down if the defense is soft, flexible and deep enough.

A half-succeeding deep strike is worse than an early breakdown, because the cream of your combat units is cut off.

[Grisha]

Interesting you should bring this up, Screeny. We just launched a site on this very subject at:

Red Army Studies

But to directly answer your question here's some concise definitions:

Tactical

The level of battle where troops are employed in combat engagements. Generally limited to division level commands or lower.

Operational

The level where operations are used to further strategic aims. Operations are traditionally defined as a collection of linked, successive tactical missions. This definition was first put forth by the Soviets in the 1920s, but they then went on to expand this definition to all levels of military art. Namely, operations are a collection of linked, successive missions or operations directed towards a larger goal. Thus, operations - and operational art - have applications from the tactical to the strategic. This is probably more than you needed to read, but there you go.

Strategy

Based on political, social, and technological parameters of a nation strategy determines the military direction and goals for fulfilling political objectives.

The study of operational art is indeed complex. It was first recognized by the Soviets and effectively developed and practiced against the Germans in WWII. Since operational art is essentially an art, it is dependent upon the characteristics of a nation and their armed forces. For example, Soviet operational art is different from US operational art. The reason operational art, and the operational level, are so little known is that it wasn't until the 1980s that the US recognized this level of military art. In fact, before this the US military considered the term "operational art" as nothing more than propaganda.

[ August 26, 2003, 12:52 PM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Screeny:

Hehe still again then the question: WHAT THE H&^$%# is Operatonial level dating?

Weeeelllll... I once knew a guy (many years ago) who described to me what might be termed an operation. He would drive his new date far up a lonely mountain road and park. Then, putting his arm around her shoulders, he would murmur in a confidential tone, "You know, I can prove that there is a hereafter."

She, wondering what the hell he was on about might reply, somewhat nervously, "Oh yeah?" (Very articulate, those Southern girls.)

"Yeah," he would continue. "If you ain't here after what I'm here after, you're gonna be here after I leave."

Not very PC, is it? But that's what the man told me.

But serious I did read B. H. Liddell Hart's "Strategy" so I'm familair with the terms. Personnaly I think he goes a little to far in general in subdivided in 5 levels (they are good however in understanding what he is explaining i his book which I found btw pretty excellent, then again who doesn't?? ) Anyway the "definitions" you use aren't they a little too much quantitive?? In your definition the differnece in tactics, grand thingie, operational, strategy etc is just in the amount/numbers of troops/units we are talking about, somehow I have the feeling there is also a more qualitative component in the terms.....But thanks anyway..maybe I just should start reading Hart's book again...

I did make two qualifications in my original post. One was that his definitions were not widely adopted and the second that my recall of them might be less than perfect. believe he expanded on them at much greater length than I presented, but I do not trust my memory to give it as he did. Actually, the part I did retain is very useful in categorizing various types of wargames, which is probably why it stuck in my memory.

I understand that you are at the moment more concerned with how the terms are applied in the real world. Grisha provides a pretty good summation of how the term 'operational' is applied in Soviet usage. I have read somewhere that the Germans use of the term to mean approximately the same thing predates Soviet usage, but I presently have no hard sources for that.

Michael

[ August 26, 2003, 04:39 PM: Message edited by: Michael Emrys ]

[Grisha]

I have read somewhere that the Germans use of the term to mean approximately the same thing predates Soviet usage, but I presently have no hard sources for that.

Michael, to a degree this is true. Under the influence of von Schlichting (pre-WWI) the Germans flirted with operativ, but it was never expanded upon. I believe part of the reason has to do with the German development of Auftragstaktik, or "mission-dependent tactics." Basically, this was the Germans' development of subunit command initiative where large units, now dispersed over a wide area, were kept under C&C through the assignment of mutually supportive missions. This concept was a response to the increasing difficulty commanders were having with ever larger and widely dispersed units. And, incidently, Auftragstaktik has its origins in the Prussian reforms of 1806.

The development of Auftragstaktik was a response to a tactical problem primarily. It had obvious applications at the higher levels of military art, but this was not seen as such by most of the world. So, while it could be said the Germans had an understanding of the operation it was from a perspective that was heavily biased toward the tactical.

The reason the Soviets were unique in seeing the wide applicability of the operation as a tool for larger things is generally agreed to have been due to their experiences during the Russian Civil War, as well as their limited capabilities immediately following this war. Successive operations was a response to the limited means at hand during the Soviet Union's birth and early years.

[ August 27, 2003, 02:43 PM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

[JasonC]

"just in the amount/numbers of troops/units we are talking about, somehow I have the feeling there is also a more qualitative component in the terms"

There is. Different principles enter, different logics are at work. It is not simply a seamless continuum of nothing but scale. One can plausibly argue for inclusion of something like a grand tactical level of analysis, between small unit tactics and operations, as a real forth. But that is about it.

There are real divisions. You can see this pretty clearly in examples, though formulating all of the principles at each level is a larger task.

Consider the decision to send Guderian south to close the Kiev pocket. What was the German understanding of their overall *strategy* at that point?

The plan was to destroy the Russian army inside European Russia before it could withdraw into the interior of the country. The goal of the campaign was to defeat the existing, standing Russian army in one campaign, so rapidly they would not have time to recover. The primary means was offensive maneuver by armor groups in corps size or larger, acting according to a definite doctrine of all arms support but tanks in the driver's seat. The key maneuver according to German doctrine was encirclement, with flank attack a distant second. In German doctrine, the destruction of the fielded forces of the enemy was always to be regarded as the decisive means.

Now, that is a whole bunch of military thought. A lot goes into it. And it certainly suggests what you should do if you are given a choice between encircling a million men and driving on an enemy capital. But all of it is *strategic*. All of it applies to the *whole* campaign. Whether Guderian goes this way or that, it is going to remain fixed. Nobody was considering revising German doctrine on any of the above points, or the basic goal of the campaign, on the fly.

Notice also that each of the things above may depend on various assessments of what generally works in warfare, or about how strong the Russians are overall. But none of it is directly dependent on any immediately preceding thing the *Russians* have done. You can construct such a strategy without looking at the enemy side of the hill, really - certainly without exhaustively considering his choices.

You can say the decision to turn south fit the strategy. But you can't say it was dictated by the strategy or planned into it from the outset or was the only way to proceed.

It was a matter of an opportunity created by the flow of the campaign. The Russians put up unexpectedly tough resistence in the south, first on the borders of the marshes and then in front of Kiev. They had been driven back elsewhere with very high losses. But AG south had been held up.

This created a kind of mismatch in the Russian line, which took on a zig-zag shape. They were holding much farther west south of the marshes than north of them. As long as the Germans hadn't yet cleared the marshes, the north flank of the southern Russian force was masked by terrain. Without needing to be strongly held.

Then Guderian won his fight at Smolensk and was clear. He had freedom of action. The Russians hadn't bothered to construct a line west to east through the marshes. But now Guderian was east of the marshes. If he turned south previously, he would have run into them and gone nowhere. But if he turned south now, he had hard surface going clear to Kiev. This was new. The Russians weren't prepared for it.

So the Germans had to decide what move to make with Guderian's force, next. The original operational plan called for sending it straight at Moscow, to avoid any delay, in keeping with the strategic idea of overall speed. He wasn't scheduled to go south.

But the Russians were especially vunerable to a move south. Their strong grouping around Kiev was naked to a thrust down from the north, east of the marshes. Annihilating the existing Russian force was the mission the strategy said would win the war. Encirclement as a means was working splendidly, wiping out enourmous hunks of the Russian army (at Minsk and Smolensk already). And here was an unexpected opportunity to close a new pocket around a million Russians.

Now, notice, nothing about that decision is going to change German doctrine. They aren't going to decide here and now that flank attack is preferable to encirclement, or that the campaign is going to be a long one, or that armor must be held in reserve for defensive uses - nothing of the kind.

A different operational decision here, has no direct repercussion upward to German strategy. They still want to take Moscow in the same campaign. They are thinking about move order. Will the Kiev opportunity wait? They don't think so. Will Moscow fall anyway if they spend a month wiping out another million Russians? They do think so; they think those million Russians not being around to help will make it much more likely Moscow will fall too.

They may or may not be wrong about any of the above. But what they are considering is quite different. It is a question of order of events. It depends on things the Russians did and didn't do. It is fleeting, a temporary opportunity given a particular configuration of forces. It is a free choice.

Now, also notice the difference "downward", the way this decision differs from tactical ones. Nothing involved is seriously beyond the control of the commanders. They may not know the remote casual implications of either side of the choice, but they know pretty well what the immediate result will be. They won't send Guderian south and have him bounce westward against their will. (In tactical cases, such things can and do easily happen).

Also, they are not lost in a fog of war so thick they can't even tell what is happening at the moment. They are not considering something that readily generalizes, as a principle, to a hundred other similar situations likely to arise in different battles. They have no chance to try both courses of action in different times and places and see which tends to work. They get one shot at a unique decision. Pick your move.

So you are right, it is not just different force sizes. What factors are under the commander's control, what can be planned and what can't, how important enemy actions are, the role of time in the decision, how general the problem is - all sorts of basic variables are different.

You might think the same will be true at every level. But it isn't really so. You can use the principles involved in moving divisions about to move armies about, and they work. Similarly within the other levels of analysis. They do each cohere, while having real differences one compared to the others.

Incidentally, you should not confuse operations as a military subject matter and level of analysis, with particular Russian doctrines about its role or importance. Russian *strategy* accorded a specific and well defined place to the *operational art*, which is distinct from any given operation.

A given operation is a set of actual moves on a map, a real history of unit locations and missions. It is not a doctrine. Just as the history of the US civil war is not a theory of history in general. To an historian, a theory of history may inform how he understands the history of the US civil war. But it isn't that war.

To a general, a doctrine about the operational art may inform how he goes about conducting operations. But when a general actual conducts an operation, he does not do so by writing treatises about the operational art. He makes specific decisions about which corps to send to which location on which day, to attack which enemy division.

His theory of operations could be silly or shallow or not terribly conscious. If his moves on the map are brilliant, that doesn't matter. And conversely - he could have the finest theory of operations ever conceived, and still send Army A to exactly the wrong place at the wrong time and lose the campaign. His ideas about how to make decisions are not his decisions. It is his decisions that count. And they interact with enemy decisions before producing their result.

[JasonC]

Incidentally, if you want to develop a lively sense of what operations thinking is and how much it matters, an excellent place to start is reading Manstein (Lost Victories), particularly about the post Stalingrad and post Kursk periods.

You don't need any of the doctrinal boilerplate and sales pitching of a full blown Russian doctrine. Just watch a master of the art trying to deal with huge military problems at that level of analysis.

After that if you want to dig deeper, read Glantz's series of Russian general staff studies of major operations from their side of the hill. The actual preparations and moves made convey a much more vivid sense of the subject than any amount of dry jargon.

Operational level wargames also help...