Chris jM - Your views are hoew the originators of it envisaged it, in their writings. They are real turgid read. One view I wa stold by an Australian practicioner/theorist is that the Operational Art is the art of winning wars as opposed to battles.

The Russian originators fought multiple conficts on different fronts juggling forces between several large fronts across the whole of the Soviet Union - eight time zones. It involved both internal and external threats, conventional manoeuvre warafre, counter insurgency operations, indeopendent groups like the Czech Legion, foreign intervention, juggling its forces on separate fronts involving offensives, retreats, withdrawals whiulst rying to secure a working government.

The theories held up in the period 1941 - 1945. The operational arts looks at a series of fronts inside the whole conflict.