Part 2 – Strategy, operations and tactics – who really does what?
In the previous article, I argued that the command structure of the Swedish Armed Forces needs to be developed to better meet the demands of NATO membership. But before we can discuss organization, responsibility, and command relationships, we need to understand the concepts that underlie military command.
What really distinguishes strategy from tactics? What role does the art of operations play? And why are these concepts crucial to how modern defense forces lead their combat forces?
This is far from just an academic discussion. How we understand strategy, operations and tactics affects how we organize our staffs, lead our units and plan military operations. It also affects how well we can cooperate with our allies within NATO.
Strategy and tactics – two sides of the same coin
Military strategy is usually described as the direction and use of military force, or the threat of force, to achieve political ends. Colin S. Gray describes strategy as the art of combining ends, means, and methods to achieve political goals.[1]
The strategy therefore ultimately answers the question: What is to be achieved – and why?
At the military-strategic level, the state's political goals are translated into military objectives and overall directions for the Armed Forces. Strategy is not about individual operations or tactical combat, but how the Armed Forces should contribute to the state's security policy goals. At the other end are tactics. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz formulates the classic distinction between strategy and tactics:
"According to our division, tactics is the doctrine of the use of combat forces in battle, and strategy is the doctrine of the utilization of battle to achieve the purpose of war."[2]
Tactics are thus about how military units are used to win battles and achieve concrete military results. The tactical level answers the question: How are assigned units and resources used to create the effects that the operational commander demands? Military unit commanders operate mainly at this level. They lead their units to create the effects that are demanded within the framework of the operation. However, tactical successes have no intrinsic value. Their importance is determined by whether they contribute to the purpose of the operational plan and ultimately the military strategic objectives.
Between strategy and tactics there is another dimension. One that is often mentioned, but much less often explained, namely the art of operations, which forms the link between strategy and tactics. The art of operations is about how military operations are designed, organized and led to translate military strategic objectives into operational effects through the use of tactical units. The Armed Forces describe the art of operations as the thought process through which military strategic and operational objectives are translated into action.[3] NATO, on the other hand, defines operational art in Allied Joint Publications -3 (AJP) somewhat more clearly based on the use of military units.
"Operational art is the employment of forces to achieve strategic and/or operational objectives through the design, organization, integration and conduct of strategies, campaigns, major operations and battles. It is the critical link between strategy and tactics.”[4]
The definition is worth dwelling on. The art of operations is thus about determining how military goals are to be translated into action, about designing, organizing, integrating and leading military operations over time and space so that together they create the operational effects required to achieve the military strategic objectives. This means that the operational level must constantly weigh up time, space, resources, risks and the freedom of action of its subordinate commanders. It must prioritize between different operations, coordinate combat forces and ensure that tactical successes actually lead to the strategic goal. That is why the art of operations is often described as the link between the goals of politics and the soldier's battle. The art of operations is not tied to a management level, although it is mainly associated with the operational level.
"Operational art is often regarded as only an aspect of command at the operational level. However, its understanding and application are also implicit to commanders with strategic or tactical level responsibilities."[5]
This does not mean that all levels conduct operational art to the same extent. It means that all commanders need to understand the logic of operational art. The military-strategic level needs to understand how military operations can translate strategic goals into practice. The tactical level needs to understand how its own activities contribute to the overall purpose of the operation. But it is above all the operational level that has operational art as its main task. It is where major operations are designed and deployed in a context. It is where combat forces are integrated. And it is where military resources are prioritized and coordinated to create the operational effects required to achieve the military-strategic goals.
From joint operations to multi-domain operations
Historically, land, sea and air forces have often planned and carried out operations within their respective domains. Coordination has of course always occurred, but often through sequential planning where each combat force solved its part of the task. The modern operational environment looks different. Effects are now created simultaneously in all domains, land, sea, air, cyber, space and in the information environment. A cyber attack can, for example, knock out an air defence system. This enables an air operation which in turn creates the conditions for a ground offensive. At the same time, information operations can influence the adversary's decision-making, perception of the situation and willingness to act, which creates the conditions for operations in other domains. No domain seems isolated any more. It is against this background that NATO has gradually developed its approach to Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).
Multi-Domain Operations is not about replacing previous forms of warfare. It is about integrating all domains in a more effective way so that effects in one domain create freedom of action in another. The goal is to create dilemmas for the adversary by affecting several parts of the opponent's system simultaneously. In practice, this means that operations are no longer planned from a land, sea or air perspective separately, by assigning tactical commanders their own tactical areas. Instead, they are planned based on which combination of military and sometimes also civilian resources best creates the desired operational effect.
The importance of surgical art is increasing
This also changes the view of the operational level. The more domains that are to be integrated, the greater the importance of the art of operations. The operational commander does not only need to understand land combat, naval combat or air operations individually. He or she must understand how these interact over time and space, how resources should be prioritized between combat forces and how limitations in one domain can be compensated for by effects in another. The art of operations is therefore less and less about leading individual operations and more and more about orchestrating a coherent system of military activities. This is also why NATO member states have in recent years placed an increasing focus on operational planning, multi-domain integration and campaign design. The more complex the operational environment becomes, the greater the need for an operational level that can focus on precisely this.
A question for the Swedish management structure
If strategy, operational art and tactics describe different functions in military command, a natural question arises: Are these levels also reflected in the organization of the Armed Forces?
Who actually practices the art of operations in Sweden? Have we organized our staffs based on the functions described in NATO's doctrines, or has the organization grown from other starting points?
And if the art of operations is becoming increasingly important in an era of multi-domain operations – which tasks should actually be at the operational level, and which should be managed elsewhere?
These are questions that lead us to the next article, where I argue that today's peace organization is still based too largely on administrative organizational units rather than on the combat units that are actually supposed to solve the task in war.