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It's also untrue to say that Al-Qaeda participated in the Afghanistan Campaign against the USSR; many of the same people who were in the Mujahideen, including Osama bin-Laden, were later in the leadership of AQ, but as an organization it's distinct.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Although it is not as well publicised, the Byzantines do have a similar war manual where they tailored their tactics for each particular enemy they fight with. The Byzantines also employed very Sun Tzu like tactics against the Sassanids in the last war against them. Might provide quite a good read, especially with regard to empire vs empire wars.

"one should not be satisfied with merely driving the enemy back. This is a mistake made by inexperienced leaders who do not know how to take advantage of an opportunity, and who like to hear the saying: 'Be victorious but do not press your victory too hard.' By not seizing the opportunity, these people only cause themselves more trouble and place the ultimate results in doubt. There can be no rest until the enemy is completely destroyed. . . . One should not slacken after driving them back just a short distance, nor . . . should one jeopardize the success of the whole campaign because of lack of persistence. In war, as in hunting, a near miss is still a complete miss."

A general who takes nothing for granted is secure in war.

Darth Wong wrote:at one point, one of them even says they have gone mad; surely if they had truly gone mad, they would not be able to determine that they had gone mad

Interestingly enough, given the fact that suppression or prevention of internal dissent is a national security matter of paramount importance, it is possible to argue that an adversary with sufficiently effective subversive propaganda and no other military forces could still be considered a threat. Of course, this is not a popular viewpoint, particularly in nations that pride themselves upon their guarantees of certain freedoms, such as
freedom of speech.

"The ends for which we fight are changing from the hard objectives that decide a political outcome to those of establishing conditions in which the outcome may be decided."

"We fight amongst the people, not on the battlefield."

"Our conflicts tend to be timeless, even unending."

"We fight so as to preserve the force rather than risking all to gain the objective."

"On each occasion new uses are found for old weapons and organizations which are the products of industrial war."

"The sides are mostly non-state, comprising some form of multinational grouping against some non-state party or parties."

Simplicius wrote:Isn't Mahan still of the Clausewitz/Jomini school of decisive battle and concentration of force, though? His focus was different, but his overall method was much the same, no?

Sea Skimmer wrote:The division of planning into strategy, operations and battles/tactics isn’t really abstract. Strategy is basically “we will invade North Europe, and occupy the Ruhr to utterly destroy the Nazi war making potential.” Operations planning would go along the lines of “we shall land in Normandy with seven divisions in the first wave and three army groups behind, this, this and this beach will be assaulted.” Then you get to planning the specific battle and the tactics, and that’s like ‘these squads flank that strongpoint so we can overrun the mortar battery behind the seawall to open the beach for follow on forces.” Logistics affects all levels of planning and even small unit tactics. Obviously, the better your logistics, the more options planners have.

Darth Wong wrote:Couldn't you say that everything prior to the operations phase is strategy? The decision to go to war in the first place is strategy.

DEATH wrote:That Depends if you make the differentiation between military strategy and Grand strategy (politics and the non military echelons).

Darth Wong wrote:Couldn't you say that everything prior to the operations phase is strategy? The decision to go to war in the first place is strategy.

MKSheppard wrote:"Basic Concepts: Identifying Threats"

Threat definition is very fundamental to what a military is. It drives procurement and R&D; as well as force levels. You cannot just say "I want a tank"; you need to define what that tank is meant to fight against.

Of course, if you screwup your threat definition, you're in trouble. Best example is the Royal Air Force up to the very late 1930s/early 1940s. During the late 20s and early 30s; the British government had to define a threat, so that aircraft designers and military airfield construction could be put out logically. So they picked France as the most likely threat.

This meant that when Germany re-armed and became a very strong credible threat in the late 1930s; the RAF had all of it's major airfields arrayed where they would do best in a war against France, and all of it's heavy bombers and fighters were designed around a war with France; e.g. it's only a 200 mile round trip (400 miles total) from the south of England to Paris; whereas to hit Berlin, you have to do a 500 mile round trip (1,000 miles total) on the most direct route.

This mainly was why Britain completely folded in 1938 when Germany invaded/annexed Czechslovakia; Chamberlain had been hearing the horror stories about what the Luftwaffe could do to Britain, and the RAF was still re-arming to fight the German Threat. A year later, the RAF had been improved sufficiently for Chamberlain to declare war on Germany following the invasion of Poland.

Well, the decision to go to war is generally almost always political than strategic

In "The Art of War", written some two and a half millennia ago, the Chinese military author Sun Tzu promoted a strategic doctrine based on deception, misdirection, and the judicious use of force against enemy weak points, bypassing his strong points. In the modern age, his theories find application in the strategies of unorthodox forms of warfare such as guerilla warfare, armed insurgencies, and terrorism.

Generally speaking war ocurs on three levels, four if you consider the totality of circumstance which leads to armed conflict. Note this is talking about conflict itself, the decision to go to war lies on the fourth level. The other note i would add is that most folks onlyreference three levels and I think it misses the distinction between the decision making amongst various agencies in government and the larger socio-political issues in regards to whether to wage war and also how to achieve the economic position to be a war winner.

Tactical: This is the battle level where small units engage in direct conflict. This would be gun on gun with supporting arms. Tactical focuses on utilizing resources which are available and does not deal with HOW to make those resources available or why resources are in a certain place. Rather tactical is the level devoted to taking a given set of tools and resolving an immediate action.

Operational: This is the level at which most military campaigns take palce. It deals more with positioning available resources so that tactical commanders are best placed to achieving limited objectives. The operational level is principally concerned with moving units and supplies to appropriate places in appropriate times to maximize tactical flexibility. Notice this still focus almost exclusively on actual combat and direct support of combat operations.

Strategic: At this level it becomes a matter of integrating not just operational plans but the supporting establishment which supplies the operational commanders including the logistics chain from supplier to end user, resource allocation to given operational commands, and the intellgence/diplomatic/propoganda/etc support for various operational commands. This would be the first level at which non-military policy makers would be expected to play a part regulalry. The strategic is essentially the level at which policy decisions are executed (note not where they are forumlated). Essentially the strategic level is where resource planning meets resource allocation (and then the operational level takes the resource allocation and distributes it to the appropriate tactical situaiton who, in turn, uses it to engage in action).

Socio-economic/political: This is the level of national strategy and it ceases to be a purely military matter at this point. Once you reach this level it becomes a matter of the political leadership (whomever it may be) identifying threats and establishing long as well as short term goals for which force (military, diplomatic, intelligence, and socio-economic) will be brought into play. This is also the level at which the decision is made for how to both maximize resources available for the nation and then how to divy those resources amongst competing groups of which the general populace (and its socio-economic health) tends to compete against the resource demands of the diplomatic and military establishments.

So in a nutshell it boils down to this:

Political: Figures out how to generate resources and then how they should be allocated amongst economic, diplomatic, and military users
Strategic: Identifies the goals for achievment within the scope of the policy laid out at the political level including how to allocate resources amongst operational commands
Operational: Utilizes the resources allocated and directs where they will go and when they will go there in order to acheive the goals directed (and both when and as directed by the strategic decision makers)
Tactical: Utilizes the resources given by the operational commander to achieve goals dicated by the operational commander.

Pelranius wrote:I don't mean to be anal, but shouldn't the Empire have used Intelligence instead of the ISB for gathering data on their military enemies in "Identifying Threats"?