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TACTICAL THOUGHT
2014 September 29 th
1.7 Demarcations
Tactics as an area of War Studies is strongly connected to operational art and strategy,
particularly from the perspective of command levels. 62 A connection exists from a
purely rational and practical sense; one has to have the tools and methods suitable for
certain tasks so as to fulfil strategic goals at hand. In turn; they need to be organized by
operational art over the whole operational area.
However, the study does strictly focus on tactical thought and preference, involving
operational art and strategy first in the discussion part of the study. The motive for the
focus on tactics is the limited research in this area. The current view of declining
knowledge and coherent understanding of tactics in the Swedish Armed Forces
contributes to making this area particularly interesting to investigate.
A scientific result of the character of tactical thought is regarded as yet another missing
dimension, important to include in the more frequent discussions and critiques regarding
strategy. Operational art is seen as a highly interesting and challenging area in Irregular
Warfare, different from within a Regular Warfare context, not least for the absence of
mechanized warfare. Certain aspects of operational art are highlighted in the discussion
part; nevertheless, such focused research is regarded necessary for dealing with this vast
area. The focus for investigating tactical thought has been on articulations of tactics
from land force and amphibious force field unit commanding officers. These officers
are argued to be the very ones that most profoundly have to understand and deal with
military theory, parallel with the ability to command units in the most practical way,
when choosing tactical concepts in different conflict contexts. They are therefore
viewed as representing the unity of military theory and practice in the military trade
craft. Command levels below company command are argued to deal less with theory,
whereas levels above battalion command are argued to deal less with practice,
according to my experience.
A demarcation regarding the historical framing has been made with a start from the
early part of 1800. The motive has been that Clausewitz is commonly understood and
recognized as an icon of the start of relatively modern thought and philosophy on war
and warfare. Irregular Warfare, seen as a particular form of warfare to be used in
combination with one’s own regular troops, or as an Insurgency or Counterinsurgency
method, can however be argued to have been an extensive area of modern military
thought and practice already during the 17 th and 18 th century. 63
62 Michael James Brennan and Justine Kelly, Alien – How Operational Art devoured Strategy (Carlisle
PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2009). The authors present a sharp critique on
how Operational Art, which they argue is wrongly interpolated from military theory, has been developed
since 1982 diverging and splitting strategy from tactics.
63 Johan Ewald, Treatise on Partisan Warfare, transl. and annot. Robert Selig and David Curtis Skaggs,
(Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), Introductory Essay, p. 14. In 1692, the French introduced the
first experiences of light troops drawn from Eastern Europe, p. 12; a first account of this form of modern
Irregular Warfare tactics is addressed to Antoine de Villes, Memoires sur la Guerre from 1711.
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