Intro.
The strategy-tactics-operations triad represents a hierarchical framework for planning and execution, commonly used in military and business contexts to link high-level goals with on-the-ground actions. Wars are won, or lost, at the strategic and operational levels, not at the tactical one.
The neglect of operational art had highly negative consequences:
- British in Norway in 1940,
- British in Greece and Crete in 1941.
- The 1941-42 Allied losses in Southeast Asia,
- The japanese defeat in the Pacific War of 1941-45.
- The June 1942 Battle of Midway.
- The US conduction of the Vietnam War.
A bridge.
The operational art is concerned with planning, preparing, and conducting major operations and campaigns. Operational art links maritime strategy and naval tactics. Operational thinking, a broad vision, a perspective of all military and nonmilitary aspects of the situation in a given theater, to reduce complexities of the situation to their essentials, to connect disparate events and actions to create an operational picture of the situation, to anticipate reactions and counteract actions to achieve the end state.
Do not micromanage.
It is essential to extend the knowledge and the practice of initiative of the subordinates principle and in application until they are universal in the exercise of command throughout all the echelons of command.
Don't interfere in the responsabilities of flag officers. Don't press your combat commanders for information while an operation is in progress.
—Admiral Ernest J. King.
State what you want to accomplish and why, give certain timelines and a broad idea of what the operation would consist of. However, allow your fleet commanders full freedom of action as to how to accomplish their assigned objective.
—Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.
I have always hesitated to sit in judgment of the responsible man on the spot, unless it was obvious to me at the time he was making a grave error in judgment. Even in that case I wanted to hear his side of the matter before I made any final judgment.
A man's judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.
—Admiral Raymond A. Spruance.
Learn to think operationally.
Through sustained and systematic efforts to think broadly and far ahead of current events. Result of the dynamic interplay of political, societal, and cultural studies.
Direct experience:
- War.
- Large-scale exercises and maneuvers.
Indirect experience:
- Theory.
- Military and naval history.
- Foreign policy.
- Geopolitics.
- International economics.
Source:
- Milan Vego. Thinking Between Strategy and Tactics. 2012.
