How Operational Art Devoured Strategy

[Tukhachevskii]

...of my days at Uni came flooding back after reading some of the above posts (I had a particular fondness for Soviet Military Thought; hence my moniker). I understand, wholly, the confusion around the Operational level of war; even my lecturers had trouble defining this one. Personally, I prefer Svechin's definition because of its pragmatic rather than dogmatic/doctrinal bent;

"tactics makes the steps of which operational leaps are assembled; strategy points out the path"

In Soviet military science and strategic thought any physical combat between units of any size was defined as a "tactical action" regarding boi (combat /fighting in the literal sense). Operations loosely refered to all the competencies, manoevres, resource allocations, planning and logistics required to get a particular unit to a particular location to secure a particular objective or acheive a particular mission. Soviet Divisional, Army, Army Group and Front level forward detachments (anything from coy to Reg/Div in size) regardless of the manourvere they were conducting (tactical forward reconnaissance, seizure of a bridge, an OMG, etc) were considered to be engaged in tactics once in actual contact with the enemy.

Confusingly, Edward Luttwak defined operational art and the operational level of war as that doman within which units tasked with strategic objectives conducted "relational manouvre" prior to their units shaking out and engaging in tactical level actions to attain their missions. (I have a pdf if anyone is interested enough to bother requesting it)

The way I figure it, Operational art, concerns the unification of tactical actions and their harmonisation with strategic requirements through the campaign. Operational art, therefore, (or, at least from what I was taught) concerns campaigns (multiple battles and objectives) whereas tactics concerns singular engagements. The old school definition for what we now call the operational level was "grand tactics". I think there's a clue in there somewhere.

Anyway, here are some other texts which may help/hinder/cloud further understanding;

David Jablonsky, "Strategy and the Operational Art of War: Part I" and "Strategy and the Operational Level of War: Part 2" in Parameters, 1987.

J. J. Schnieder, "Origins of Operational Art" in Parameters, 1987.

John Kiszely, "Thinking about the Operational Level", RUSI.

Col. M. R. Matheny, "The Roots of Modern American Operational Art".

See also, Martin Dunn, "Levels of War: Just a Set of Labels?", who defines operational art as ...

...The Operational level of war is concerned with the planning and conduct of campaigns. it is at this level that military strategy is implemented by assigning missions, tasks and resources to tactical operations.

This has probably confused things terribly but then again, in the spirit of my namesake, why not?