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TACTICAL THOUGHT
2014 September 29 th
Three sub-questions were developed as follows;
Do groupings in thought exist, regarding areas of violence, which have to be
considered in the tactics of Irregular Warfare If so, regarding what areas of
violence
Do groupings in thought exist, which can be linked to a military culture that regards
Regular Warfare tactics to be sufficient even in Irregular Warfare, or is new thinking
needed
What other groupings, regarding similar or different thoughts on tactics in Irregular
Warfare can be derived from the result
The investigation was conducted using a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a
collection of open-ended questions on the phenomenon of Irregular Warfare and tactics
in general, and ten questions based on the empirical generalization from the literature
study. Thirty-two people answered the survey with an equal amount of responses from
students and teachers, mostly majors or lieutenant colonels. Twenty-one belonged to the
army, six to the air force, one to the navy, three to the amphibious units and one to the
Special Forces.
Most of them had backgrounds in operations and had mainly been serving in field units
or staffs. Over 60 % had been assigned on at least one international operation and of
these; almost 20% had participated in more than three operations. Still, there was rather
a large amount (almost 40 %) that had no international experience at all. Regarding selfassessment
of personal knowledge and understanding of Irregular Warfare; mainly a
limited knowledge and level of understanding was assessed by 56%. 31 % viewed
themselves to have a limited level of theoretical knowledge and understanding of
Irregular Warfare.
Only about 10 % assessed themselves to have deep knowledge and extensive
experience. Regarding the view of usefulness of the empirical generalizing, 75% of the
officers mainly agreed to the way the empirical generalization descriptions of traits of
Irregular Warfare and how differences compared to Regular Warfare are explained. 25
% partially disagreed.
70% of the respondents agreed with the often addressed opinion on difficulties to
communicate due to limited precision in language and symbols related to Irregular
Warfare, enhancing risks for misunderstanding and also unconscious thinking in
“regular terms”. Concerning the violence spectrum in Irregular Warfare, the officers in
general mainly or fully agreed (37, 5 % for each alternative) that one trait in Irregular
Warfare is a broadened violence spectrum that has to be understood and handled.
Subsequently, over 50% fully agreed and over 34% mainly agreed that the roles of the
military and the police have to be developed if Irregular Warfare is to be possible to be
fought successfully.
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