M.L. - thank you for the response. You'll find some follow up questions below; I ask not for the sake of being difficult - I'm only trying to link personal experiences to what appears to be your very concrete definition of operational warfare.

Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
Without going into exhaustive detail, the ability to plan, conduct, and sustain campaigns and major operations which accomplish strategic objectives. This includes setting the conditions for tactical engagements and battles which link to strategic objectives or effects. Operational planners use operational concepts, such as Center of Gravity and Lines of Operation, to plan operational activities.
Well, I don't know why one would plan a campaign or major operation to not accomplish strategic objectives, so I think we can simply go with the following:

plan, conduct, and sustain campaigns and major operations.

Does this seem agreeable?

Is the scope of this limited by a minimum geographic size? How about a minimum size of friendly forces? Does a Company that builds a District Stabilization Plan which focuses on a series of operations over a extended period of time constitute conducting operational art?

Tactical warfare. This brigade is necessarily linked logistically with its home nation, however, the conduct of operational warfare has less to do with the structure of a unit than its scope of responsibility vis a vis the theater of operations. In other words, an operational headquarters has certain characteristics (joint, logistics focus, etc...) because it is doing operational planning. This doesn't mean that all joint HQ with extended logistics are working at the operational level.

Structure is an outgrowth of operational responsibilities - operational responsibilities are NOT a consequence of structure.
Ok.

So when this HQ conducts a "Provincial Stabilization Plan", focuses on identifying insurgent centers of gravity within the Province and plans along key counterinsurgent lines of operation (stability, governance, development and security sector reform) it is not doing Operational Warfare?