How Operational Art Devoured Strategy

[Steve Blair]

Boy, was I ever wrong about the Small Wars Council forum. I thought it would be a place that sought to address the small wars deficiency in U.S. military doctrine. Instead, the U.S. Army's institutional response to the small wars situation, FM 3-24, has, along with the horse it rode in on, been thoroughly torn to pieces. Now you guys are complaining about a 1980s version of FM 100-5, a manual that doesn't even exist anymore under the ssame name. This place isn't reformist, it's reactionary, and really really reactionary at that, the way a discussion forum for exiled Tsarist officers would have been in the 1930s!

I think it depends on whose comments and threads you follow, Pete. I (for one) have been deeply concerned by the (strong) possibility that the Army would repeat the post-Vietnam mistake of burying Small Wars training. While mine may be a minority concern, it is one that others here do share (with their own reasons and reasoning, to be sure, as well as their own takes on the situation and possible solutions). Prolific posters do not necessarily indicate a consensus opinion on this or any other forum.

[Entropy]

Wilf,

Just because you conduct "Operations," it does not follow that there is something called an "Operational Level." What we are all talking about is reaping the benefits of success at the tactical level. That is not enabled by dreaming up something called the "Operational Level." - Sherman knew how to apply tactics to fulfil his contribution to the strategy - so he conducted an operation to make sure the tactical actions were relevant to that.

I don't really have a dog in this argument about levels of war, but to play the devil's advocate, could not the "operational level" be the coordination of various bureaucratic fighting organizations toward strategy fulfillment? In other words, "joint" and "coalition" operations may constitute an "operational level" of war - the coordination of different forces which use different equipment, tactics and doctrine all toward a common purpose?

[William F. Owen]

Wilf,
I don't really have a dog in this argument

Get a dog. Chap can't go wrong with a good dog!

about levels of war, but to play the devil's advocate, could not the "operational level" be the coordination of various bureaucratic fighting organizations toward strategy fulfillment? In other words, "joint" and "coalition" operations may constitute an "operational level" of war - the coordination of different forces which use different equipment, tactics and doctrine all toward a common purpose?

You could. How would it help? It would still fall foul of confusing strategy with tactics. IMO Operations assure that tactics take place in at the right time and place to fulfil the military contribution to strategy - so to get back the Falklands, Battle Group attacks had to take place, on the Falklands. -Thus you have "Operation Corporate."

[Pete]

It would be interesting to see how the current version of Field Manual 3-0 defines the operational level of war in relation to the other two levels. An earlier edition of the manual had a murky and verbose definition, as though the authors of the draft manual tried to use as many comments as possible received during the staff review process. Like a case of "too many cooks spoiling the broth," possibly the original definition was fairly cogent until numerous comments on DA Form 2028 were incorporated. I'd also be curious to see how the operational level is defined in Bundeswehr manual 100-100, Command and Control in Battle, since consistency with that manual is said to have been the original reason for the change to FM 100-5 many years ago. It would be a bit like knowing what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.

[Fuchs]

I'm not sure that TF has such a definition (and it's restricted anyway).
It's got (in the Dec 2000 version) rather a kind of job description for the operational leadership:

The operational leadership generates missions and orders for the tactical leadership on the basis of military-strategic demands/targets.
It then goes on about how to do that. This part is mostly about analysis and logistics.

Why did you call the "TF" (Truppenführung) "Command and Control in battle"?
That's a horrible translation. Truppenführung could be much better translated as "leading troops", "troops leadership" or similar.

Truppen = troops, Führung = Leadership

Führung is much more than command and control!

[Pete]

Fuchs, that's the translation used by an American writer in a journal article I quoted and provided a link to in Message 59 of this thread. I know what Truppenführung means, approximately, but it wasn't used in the article.

[Fuchs]

It's not only a list operational art standards as is (or was - I didn't read the recent one) FM Operations and not a military ideology statement like the "Warfighting" FM. It begins - just as the classic 30's TF - with a thorough chapter on how to lead men, the expectations for a military leader, what leaders need to take into account and the first two pages of chapter B continue with what's the art of leadership.

Only afterwards you see the standard stuff of operational art, some traces of the '96 "Freie Operationen"/"Operationen in der Tiefe" (Willmann) incl. air mechanisation fashions, standard stuff on tactics and MOOTW chapters.

There's an emphasis on leadership, and that's about the only thing that still makes TF a t least a bit special (I've got many gripes with this FM).

[ryanmleigh]

It would be interesting to see how the current version of Field Manual 3-0 defines the operational level of war in relation to the other two levels.

JP 3-0 (2008): Operational level of war. The level of war at which campaigns and major operations are planned, conducted, and sustained to achieve strategic objectives within theaters or other operational areas. Activities at this level link tactics and strategy by establishing operational objectives needed to achieve the strategic objectives, sequencing events to achieve the operational objectives, initiating actions, and applying resources to bring about and sustain these events.

FM 3-0 (2008): The operational level links employing tactical forces to achieving the strategic end state. At the operational level, commanders conduct campaigns and major operations to establish conditions that define that end state. A campaign is a series of related major operations aimed at achieving strategic and operational objectives within a given time and space.

Probably not much help or any clearer than previously discussed.