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TACTICAL THOUGHT
2014 September 29 th
Compared with normative standards, the space of Swedish tactical thought is argued to
be partially coherent but also partly comprising various thoughts related to normative
tactics in Irregular Warfare regarding Counterinsurgency Operations 196 . Subsequently,
there are indications of different opinions on the requirements for warfare capabilities
and officer competences, leadership and education.
The Swedish descriptive result of tactical types contains two primary aspects; military
task focus and focus on combat tasks, possibly conflicting or even contradicting
normative texts on tactics in COIN (American, British, French, Canadian and Swedish
doctrines or field manuals). Tactical type 1: Regular Warfare ranger tactics and, in
particular, type 2: Regular Warfare mechanized tactics, represent tactical thought not
corresponding to normative views of a contextual mind-set addressing military as well
as civilian task solving capabilities.
Swedish military thought on tactics in Irregular Warfare can thus be characterized as
dualistic structuring in a fourfold space of statements constructed by conceptual and
contextual preferences, only partly corresponding to normative standards. A Military
social structure is found with expected positions of ranger officers rather equally
dispersed, but a scattered result for mechanized officers, indicating a number of officers
with untraditional tactical thinking compared to what is usually the modus of
mechanized Regular Warfare.
196 p. 100. Result of the normative comparison regarding how the descriptive results of tactical thought
compare with the current normative standards for Counterinsurgency Operations.
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