The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[M.L.]

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.

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?

Very much so. I think your simple definition above trends toward an explanation of operational warfare. In my previous answer, I'd was trying to pull out some of the unique skills required to do what you state above.

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?

Operational art contains many tools for conceptualizing military operations at large. That doesn't mean we are working at the operational level. Again here, an overuse of the word "operation" contributes to our collective confusion.

There are no hard or fast rules, however, I'd have a hard time being convinced that a series of company operations would end with a strategic effect. Rather, these "operations" are more likely a series of tactical actions toward stabilizing a district. This may, in turn, serve an operational objective, such as stabilizing a key province (Kandahar, for example).

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?

Doing "Campaign Planning" is currently fashionable in U.S. brigades. This is an operational tool that helps conceptualize, frame, and link things like, security, governance, and economics. However, this doesn't mean brigades are doing operational warfare - they are just using the tools.

The size of a unit, its area of responsibility, the tools it uses to plan, etc... are not necessarily indicative of operational warfare.

They key question to ask is whether the campaign/operation being planned sets the conditions for tactical success that in turn creates a strategic effect. This is the "linking" of tactics to strategy that must be accomplished in the operational realm.