Defining "Tactics," and how will it aid the discussion of tactics pertaining to SB?

[scowlmovement]

"Tactics is the art and science of employing all available means to win battles and engagements. Specifically, it comprises the actions taken by a commander to arrange units and activities in relation to each other and the enemy."

United States Army Field Manual 3-90, Tactics.

Just trying to stimulate some discussion. Feel free to chime in.

[scowlmovement]

"Tactics is the employment of units in combat.

It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain, and the enemy to translate potential combat power into victorious battles and engagements."

United States Army Field Manual 3-0, Operations.

Another definition, just a few pages later.

Edited October 4, 2011 by scowlmovement

[Gibsonm]

And not necessarily the opinion of the senior member in the syndicate/group.

[GaryOwen]

Something that I wrote a while back:

http://1stusvcav.com/Tactics/Page%201.html

DEFINITION OF TACTICS

This being a discussion on tactics, we’ll begin with a definition of term.

Here are two formal definitions of the term, one from a dictionary and the other doctrinal:

tactics n.

1. a. (used with a sing. verb) The military science that deals with securing objectives set by strategy, especially the technique of deploying and directing troops, ships, and aircraft in effective maneuvers against an enemy: Tactics is a required course at all military academies.

1. b. (used with a pl. verb) Maneuvers used against an enemy: Guerrilla tactics were employed during most of the war.

2. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) A procedure or set of maneuvers engaged in to achieve an end, an aim, or a goal.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tactics

Tactics is the employment of units in combat. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain and the enemy to translate potential combat power into victorious battles and engagements.

U.S. Army Field Manual 3-90 TACTICS

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s also said that tactics, like many other disciplines, sculpting for example, is both an art and a science. A sculptor combines his understanding of his materials and tools with his appreciation of the principles of aesthetics, such as symmetry and proportion, in order to create an object of expression. Similarly a tactician uses his knowledge of his own and the opposing forces, of the physical and temporal dimensions of the battle space, and then he applies general principles of war, such as mass and economy of force, to determine the best course of action to accomplish his mission.

　

So then, for our purposes here, the term ‘tactics’ refers to the discipline governing the decisions on how to best employ forces in the battle space in order to overcome opposition to accomplishing a mission. Tactics is a discipline governing decision making. It is goal oriented. Starting with the strengths and weaknesses of a given situation, the tactician applies general principles to determine which possible courses of action are best to achieve his goal. So, in order to achieve that goal, the tactician must take accurate stock of the situation, develop possible courses of action, and then applying the general principles determine which course is most likely to be successful. This process is recursive, in that the evaluation and decision making must continue as the situation changes and develops.

[scowlmovement]

Well said, GaryOwen. I like the website, as well. So, it could be said, in VERY simple terms, that tactics are HOW the commander (player) uses units to accomplish his assigned mission ("win" the game)?

[scowlmovement]

"The art and science of winning engagements and battles. It includes the use of firepower and maneuver, the integration of different arms and the immediate exploitation of success to defeat the enemy."

Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-3, Tactics.

Another definition, courtesy of the United States Marine Corps. Is this a consensus, or is this strictly an American viewpoint?

[GaryOwen]

Yeah, I agree about the HOW part.

[Tac Error]

"Tactics is the theoretical and practical aspects of preparation for the conduct of combat by the subunits, units, and formations of the various services of the Armed Forces, the combat arms, and the combat service support troops."

From the U.S. Air Force translation of the 1984 edition of Taktika.

"The theory and practice of the preparation and combat employment of subunits, units, and formations."

From the Dictionary of Military Terms via James Sterrett's Report on Soviet Tactics.

[Brun]

The discussion of tactics pertaining to sb is a discussion best held viewing an aar. That is where what you wanted to do and what actually happend can be analyzed and picked apart. Where the Co can ask a subordinate what was your frame of mind and how did you see things at time xx.xx when this happend or that happend. A Co can then determine if a failure was due to poor execution or poor planning or a combination. Whatever the outcome of the battle knowing exactly how that outcome was reached and learning from it will result in better tactics. In pick up games this is seen less as the players on your team change from day to day week to week and the knowledge is lost and relearned as teams change. In campaigns however where teams stay more or less the same week to week knowledge is kept and used in future battles. A co can have all the Sb tactical knowledge in the world but it is useless without teammates that are on the same page.

[AKM]

Tactics can also be divided into various levels. These distinctions are primarily academic for the sake of theorists focusing their attention, commanders tend not to make these distinctions in my experience. Micro tactics would be the instant action drills an Infantry Section performs on contact, minor tactics the battle drills performed by a platoon and arrangements made by the platoon commander when drills are not being used, with minor tactics remaining the term used up to battalion level. At the regimental, brigade, and divisional level tactics become "Grand Tactics" or simply "Tactics", particularly in Soviet thought (very operationally focused) where the primary manouevre formation is generally the Regiment or even the Division. The Germans (in WWII at least) considered the Division to be the basic tactical unit. [Truppenfuehrung 1936]

Above that level, at Division, Corps, Army, Army Group/Front level, we have operations/operational thought and strategy. At the national level, grand strategy.

In SB Pro PE, we primarily concern ourselves with micro and minor tactics, no?

[scowlmovement]

Tactics can also be divided into various levels. These distinctions are primarily academic for the sake of theorists focusing their attention, commanders tend not to make these distinctions in my experience. Micro tactics would be the instant action drills an Infantry Section performs on contact, minor tactics the battle drills performed by a platoon and arrangements made by the platoon commander when drills are not being used, with minor tactics remaining the term used up to battalion level. At the regimental, brigade, and divisional level tactics become "Grand Tactics" or simply "Tactics", particularly in Soviet thought (very operationally focused) where the primary manouevre formation is generally the Regiment or even the Division. The Germans (in WWII at least) considered the Division to be the basic tactical unit. [Truppenfuehrung 1936]

Above that level, at Division, Corps, Army, Army Group/Front level, we have operations/operational thought and strategy. At the national level, grand strategy.

In SB Pro PE, we primarily concern ourselves with micro and minor tactics, no?

I would have to agree that most discussions of tactics could be limited to platoon and company battle drills in SB.

[Tango29]

FWIW,

Strategy is how you manouevre/force the enemy to the battlefield.

Tactics is how you fight him on the battlefield.

[Tacbat]

Best discription to date IMHO.

[AKM]

Tango29, that's brilliantly succinct. Where did it come from? Somehow I'm not surprised I've never heard it before... it's simply too straightforward to be in anything I've read. Just want to know so I know who to credit it to when I repeat it later.

[Tango29]

Hello, AKM,

Thanks for your very kind comments. Actually, that is how we learned the difference as young officer cadets back in the '60's. I suppose it came from the lesson notes of our instructors at the Armour School! As an old guy now, I tend to shake my head at just how convoluted some of our concepts and definitions have become over the past decades: much more academic, much less operational. But again, this might just be the maunderings of an old retired recce guy, hopelessly out of touch with moden concepts.

But I don't think so!

[AKM]

For some reason, it's felt that the study of military history is invalid without military history being related to 'greater, more encompassing interests' in some way. Therefore what happened or happens on the battlefield is of little relevance: what is apparently much more important is analyzing the social effects of war, its impact on cultural development, and crap like that. Therefore academia loses touch with reality yet again and people who graduate with degrees in the field approach problems from some touchy-feely liberal arts perspective, rather than a tactical/operational/strategic historical perspective or a 'polymath' military-centered perspective or even just applying basic analytical techniques.

Because of the drive to shove military history into a politically correct bin, experts in the field generally start adopting all sorts of lingo to make themselves less comprehensible. The fewer people who can understand you, the higher your expertise, no? (No; that's called a communication issue. I had the same problem, but the speech pathologist cleared it up when I was six and later, I had a similar issue but my girlfriend just gave me a smack whenever I swore compulsively, solving that.) But, in academia this is often how it works. So this is self-preservation on their part. It's encouraged by the kind of people who insist it has to be in some PoliCorrect-bin because it marginalizes them and now we're at a point where Canada has only two universities that offer military history, and one of them is run by the Forces for the Forces. The other has a rather limited program and the one I attend has only a few courses available in the abovementioned "sociological" bin. Some of this terminology and splitting of hairs is also just dick-waving, plain and simple, especially when you start comparing concepts and trying to establish precedence.

So their published material reflects these attitudes, and I go twelve years without once seeing something so simple and applicable as: "Strategy is getting the enemy to the battlefield. Tactics is fighting him there." (I would then append that operations, at least in the Russian conception of the operational level, is fighting him as he tries to arrive at the battlefield.)

So no, you're not a relic or anything. Just not of the new, slightly mentally handicapped breed. Not a bad thing by any means.

The significance of all of this comes from three factors. Below:

1) Officers in most Western militaries, if not all, are expected to pursue higher education. Often, they choose to go with what they know; it's a requisite for advancement so why pick something you might not do well in? Further, its relevance is clear.

2) These officers then go back to work and end up applying concepts they learned. These concepts could be horribly wrong, or skew their perspectives on how things work over to some side that isn't concerned with effect-on-target and more concerned with the legacy of Florence Nightingale. Not completely, but enough that things might get lost in the process.

3) Because military history is now being taught this way and largely has been since the mid-1960s, it is becoming more difficult to perpetuate lessons learned. When the military is overly politicized and some retarded political "wish it better" happens resulting in a "paradigm change" and the refusal to acknowledge reality, as happened in both Afghanistan and Iraq ("It's not a popular resistance; nobody can possibly hate democracy and the West. We're like Gods to them.") until something like 2005-2006, the military ends up being forced to ignore past experience so as not to make the current crop of imbeciles in political power look bad, or so as not to make some GOC look bad.

Therefore, for example, counterinsurgency techniques that worked in Malaysia and worked in Vietnam and would work in Afghanistan/Iraq/probably anywheres else because all human beings share the desire of not wanting to be brutally murdered, are ignored. When academia pidgeonholes itself into Fantasy-istan, these lessons can no longer be transmitted outside military channels. When that happens, knowledge is generally thoroughly lost and takes much sweat, blood and tears to recover.

To use an example from something more historical, in WWII First Canadian Field Army had to re-learn how to conduct set-piece combined arms attacks with limited objectives ("bite and hold"), despite that being the mode and modus of the 1917-1918 battlefield, and these attacks being something that the four-division Canadian Corps excelled at and was repeatedly recognized for their brilliance and capability in by both allies and enemies. It was forgotten because of how the official histories of WWI were written, and because at the time academics involved in the study of military history were still processing mountains of information. Some was not yet declassified. Thus, legends like "the tanks are the end-all be-all and because we had more than the Germans, our victory in WWI was inevitable" are born, or the myth of muddling, incompetent generals in the BEF, move through military and civilian culture, and cause mistakes leading to deaths.

The redirection of military history into a supplemental study in sociology, anthropology or similar types of currently chic historical interpretation (e.g. not "kings and battlefields" style) results in lessons being lost and those who graduate into strategic studies programs or similar not having an adequate background on which to build a framework for interpreting facts in order to do their jobs.

Someone who does geography and philosophy and then 'jumps fields' to get a masters in strategic analysis (I know a guy who did this. I kinda want to smack him.) does not have the same ability in the field that someone who completes a focused study of military history and then moves into strategic studies/defence analysis/related fields has, simply because the background knowledge is not there. Likewise, someone who graduates from these corrupted military history programs is less able to recognize, retain, and disseminate history, which is itself a compilation of lessons learned. Ultimately, everybody loses.

[Big Nose Zero-Three]

FWIW,

Strategy is how you manouevre/force the enemy to the battlefield.

Tactics is how you fight him on the battlefield.

Well the most common definition of classical military strategy is "Strategy is the use of engagements for the purposes of war." - Clausewitz

It is how violence is used to gain political outcomes. For most scholars of strategy, Clausewitz remains about the best extant work is this area. Almost no war game or simulation can deal with strategy because success is dependant on political outcomes.

Tactics is how the various levels of command fight and operate. Thus "Platoon tactics" and even "Division Tactics." are how these levels of command think about their business.

It would certainly be possible to describe "Corps" tactics as well. This also covers "Operations" which many folks think are something "more than tactics". Tactics and Operations are one and the same in that all levels of command plan and conduct operations. - and Yes a Platoon can plan and conduct an operation. Today that is really limited to SF, but that does not change the theory or the facts.

If you want to define "tactics" usefully, it is how an given organisation fights and operates. Thus manuals such as "Platoon Tactics" or "Formation Tactics."

I see SB as basically being useful up to a BG+ or Formation(-) level of tactics and operations.

[AKM]

Well said. I would add that it doesn't invalidate the brief overview of 'getting the enemy to the battlefield,' because on a very pure level the enemy either joins battle to attempt to prevent the imposition of your will on him, or he acquiesces and you gain the political outcome you want anyways.

It would certainly be possible to describe "Corps" tactics as well. This also covers "Operations" which many folks think are something "more than tactics". Tactics and Operations are one and the same in that all levels of command plan and conduct operations. - and Yes a Platoon can plan and conduct an operation. Today that is really limited to SF, but that does not change the theory or the facts.

Sadly Clausewitz did not discuss operational thought because in his era, the mass army was only beginning to come into its own and it would be the sheer numbers involved there which allowed for the creation of 'another level of warfare.' When single battles were no longer decisive because it did not imply the destruction of the enemy's ability to resist, the operational comes into its own, and successive (or in Soviet parlance, sequential) operations are required to take him apart piece by piece. In the Napoleonic, often losing one battle decisively would mean the end of the conflict as it would be the shattering of an enemy's army and thus his means to resist, forcing him to accept terms.

Later, in 1870, despite constantly losing their battles the sheer numbers of the French Army allowed them to absorb defeat after defeat and it took sustained effort by the Prussian-led German Army to defeat each enemy army in detail and force Paris to capitulate. And likewise, despite their enormous loss rates the sheer size of the German Army enabled them to win in the end because of superior operational methods - something they would have referred to as 'grand tactics,' the use of corps and armies.

Operational thinking is related to but not inseparable from the concept of Operations. An operation is a combat action planned and undertaken or participated in by any level of command.

Operational thinking however, at least in Russo-Soviet thought and they are ahead of us here because we haven't done much thinking on this that I'm aware of, could be defined as the tactics of an army using corps as its primary manouevre subunit, or of a Front using armies and corps as the same, returning to the Soviet example. For us in the West, is that strategic-level thinking or is that operational thinking? The tactics of a corps would be what the subunits belonging to the corps do on the battlefield, at least in my understanding.

[Tac Error]

Here in the West at least, there's a lot of uncertainty on exactly what is "operational art". Is it grand tactics, minor strategy, or perhaps something else?

The 1986 edition of FM 100-5 calls operational art as "the employment of military forces to attain strategic goals in a theater of war or theater of operations through the design, organization, and conduct of campaigns and major operations".

Soviet specialist Charles Dick put it as "the business of successfully combining the combat activities of a large number of forces over a significant area of space and time in order to accomplish all or part of a strategic goal."

It's interesting to see how operational art is interpreted in the West, but IMO it can get a little convoluted.

[Big Nose Zero-Three]

Sadly Clausewitz did not discuss operational thought because in his era, the mass army was only beginning to come into its own and it would be the sheer numbers involved there which allowed for the creation of 'another level of warfare.'

I don't want to turn this into a military history debate, but as adherent and student of Clausewitz, I would just say that Clausewitz certainly did discuss "Operational Thought" except he called it campaigning, and talked very much about the cumulative and successive effects of engagements (battles).

Clausewitz did not believe you won wars with one battle. Nor was this often ever the case.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Big Nose Zero-Three
squeling errars

[AKM]

Big Nose: Just skimmed back over my copy of On War. You're quite right, and what's more is that I made a note on a sheet in the back of the book to this effect. This is what happens when you spend two terms immersed in the Frunz Academy's thinking. You forget things you once knew.

[Big Nose Zero-Three]

Big Nose: Just skimmed back over my copy of On War. You're quite right, and what's more is that I made a note on a sheet in the back of the book to this effect. This is what happens when you spend two terms immersed in the Frunz Academy's thinking. You forget things you once knew.

I hear you. I'll never get back the weeks I spent studying Deep Battle and Operational Manoeuvre Groups, to basically get nowhere!! :eek2: