Tactics is a term used to describe the art of fighting on or near the battlefield. Ever since man began to organize armed groups for the purpose of combat, the way in which warriors have been organized and employed—as much as their personal bravery and the arms and armour they carry—has to a large extent defined their effectiveness in war. In ancient times an increasing diversity and sophistication of weaponry led to differing structures to optimize the efficiency of each arm. Associated tactics arranged, disposed, and integrated these arms in contact with the enemy. In this way the actions of variously equipped infantry could be combined with each other and with those of assorted cavalry on the battlefield, and these joined by artillery, broadly defined. Until the 20th century added the aerial dimension (with a mention for earlier naval gunfire), these were the core tactical factors.
Over the ages the tactical military art has been concerned with four closely related battlefield functions: hitting (or firepower), mobility, protection (or security), and shock action. Command (involving leadership, decision-making, and control—including information gathering and communications) is a separate function in combat. The standing requirement for timely and accurate intelligence drives the need for reconnaissance. In battle, troops fight by a combination of firepower and manoeuvre; tactics regulate the sequence and balance. Manoeuvre is defined in NATO as ‘the employment of forces on the battlefield through movement in combination with fire, or fire potential, to achieve a position of advantage in respect to the enemy in order to accomplish the mission’. Forms of manoeuvre can be grouped into the broad categories discussed under manoeuvre warfare. The co-ordination of forces in time and space is known as synchronization, which is one of the essential requirements of successful tactics. ‘Grand tactics’—a term largely gone out of use—refers to the planning and conduct of large formations in or between battles, in the pursuit of campaign objectives. Nowadays this level of conflict is subsumed by the operational level of war.
Supporting military activities such as supply, transport, and the provision of medical care that provide the means to fight and to sustain forces in battle are covered under the general rubric of logistics. In contrast to the more glamorous combat arms, the vitally necessary logistic organizations are known as supporting services. But if insufficient account is taken of them in the planning or conduct of a campaign, no tactical, operational, or strategic scheme of manoeuvre is likely to succeed. Both Napoleon's and Hitler's disastrous forays into Russia demonstrate this point, illustrating the Clausewitz concept of ‘culmination’, whereby an attacking force is no longer able to sustain its offensive and the pendulum of advantage swings to the defender.
Military engineering, a combat support arm, straddles both arm and service functions in providing armies with the ability to live, move, and fight on the battlefield. The enduring roles of the military engineer to overcome natural and artificial obstacles in the offensive and to create them in delaying and defensive operations have remained an important adjunct to tactics for thousands of years. Indeed, one of the most complex military operations on land, and that at which engineers are always at a premium, is the breaching or crossing of an opposed obstacle. Special equipment, tactics, techniques, and procedures involving ‘all arms’ need to be developed, as demonstrated repeatedly during the 1944-5 Allied campaign in North-West Europe.
The development of tactics has reflected a shifting balance between the complementary functions of hitting power, mobility, protection, and shock action; between ‘dominant arms’ represented on the battlefield and, perhaps more fundamentally, between firepower and manoeuvre. Various models have been proposed to illustrate the connections between these factors. In The Dragon's Teeth, Fuller maintained that in each of the classical and Christian epochs there were three great tactical cycles. For the Christian period he argued that a ‘shock’ cycle took place c.650-1450, a ‘shock and projectile’ cycle c.1450-1850, and a ‘projectile’ cycle from c.1850 onwards. In 1943, Tom Wintringham proposed six chronological periods linking the development of armour, mobility, and protection. This methodology can be developed to indicate the dominance of particular arms and to highlight associated tactical trends.
| Period | Dominant arm | Tactical trends |
|---|
| First unarmoured period, to Plataea (479 bc) | None, both infantry and cavalry are relatively lightly armed, chariots provide a measure of shock | Egyptian, Persian, and Greek armies become better organized and equipped |
| First armoured period, to Adrianople (ad 378) | Infantry, phalanx, and Roman Legion. Use of elephants for shock not a success | Armies and casualties increase significantly, introduction of siege and field artillery by Romans |
| Second unarmoured period, to Charlemagne's victory at Pavia (774) | Light cavalry, horse archers, and shock action defeat infantry | Mobility rules until checked by armoured cavalry |
| Second armoured period, to Morgarten (1315) and Crécy (1346) | Heavy cavalry, the effect of the stirrup and armour | Expense limits numbers of armoured cavalry, Swiss infantry and English longbow redress the balance |
| Third unarmoured period, to Cambrai (1917) | Infantry, through steadily increasing firepower | Combined arms, with artillery becoming increasingly dominant |
| Third armoured period, to the present | Armoured forces restore mobility | Armoured combined arms countered by air power and infantry anti-armour weapons |
Close-range striking or longer-range missile or projectile weapons provide tactical hitting or firepower. With advances in technology, the emphasis has shifted from the former to the latter with steady increases in the range of missile and projectile weapons. However, it would be a mistake to overrate the contribution of missile or of infantry-delivered firepower in battle until the mid-19th century. Despite the introduction of more flexible tactical formations such as the French column, the limited range, poor accuracy, and low rate of fire of muskets in the early 19th century precluded decisive engagements by fire alone. The shock effect of well-controlled volley fire on a formed body of troops, coupled with the often far more devastating impact of artillery, more often than not swung the battle. In
Forward into Battle, Paddy Griffith concluded of the
Peninsular and
Hundred Days campaigns:
The real secret of the British volley was not that it was delivered particularly well or accurately, but rather that it could be delivered at all at such close range; almost at bayonet range, in fact. Waiting without firing until the enemy came close enough to charge must have been a nerve-racking business which tested the coolness and discipline of the troops to the limit. Having delivered the volley, it took yet more steadiness not to reload, but to launch immediately into the assault.
The proportion of troops armed with more accurate, but slower firing, rifles remained low.
Light troops such as the French
tirailleurs or British
rifle regiments, useful enough in finding, fixing, and disrupting the enemy, could not bring down a sufficient weight of fire to strike him hard.
The employment of the mass-produced rifled musket in the
Crimean and
American civil wars and the rifled
breech-loader in the
Austro-Prussian and
Franco-Prussian wars enabled fire that could inflict significant casualties at longer ranges. Both Pickett's charge at
Gettysburg in 1863 and the Prussian Guard's attack at Saint-Privat in 1870 were broken up by defending fire. With greater weapon ranges and therefore flatter trajectories and improving accuracy, the ‘beaten zone’ that an attacking force has to cross widened from less than 109 yards (100 metres) to 656 yards (600 metres) and further. Not surprisingly, casualties increased commensurately. Thus attacks without covering artillery fire (and later machine-gun fire) to suppress the defence became increasingly difficult. Various methods have been employed to assist the infantryman in reaching and fighting through his objective. WW I saw the introduction of the creeping
barrage, infiltration, or
storm-trooper tactics, often termed Hutier tactics after the German general who first used them at Riga in 1917, and ‘intimate’
tank support. During WW II the first generation of armoured infantry fighting vehicles appeared. Adequate fire must be employed to fix and blind a defending enemy while an attacking force can move into contact and strike him decisively. No doubt with fresh memories of WW I in mind,
Liddell Hart stressed the importance of ‘fixing’ in
Infantry Tactics Simplified: ‘The act of fixing can only be neglected if the enemy commits some mistake of supineness or the neglect of his own security by which he fixes himself without our intervention and so exposes himself to an immediate knock-out blow.’ Unfortunately this enduring tactical lesson, which applies equally well to the conduct of attacks by armoured forces, was often forgotten by Allied forces during WW II.
Mobility determines the rate at which an army and its constituent parts can move to, across, and from the battlefield. From the days of
Alexander ‘the Great’, mobility was strictly regulated by the marching pace of the foot soldier, together with his supporting trains of pack mule, horse, and bullock. Rarely could an army better an average of 20 miles (32 km) in a day. Only small bodies of specially trained ‘light’ troops and cavalry could exceed this norm. While the advent of the
steam engine and the development of a
railway network in the 19th century revolutionized strategic mobility in Europe and America, tactical mobility at the outbreak of WW I remained that of
Caesar's legions. Only the introduction of armoured tracked vehicles powered by reliable internal combustion engines improved tactical mobility sufficiently to offer the prospect of decisive manoeuvre in 1917-18. Despite the limited successes of the tank in WW I, the full promise of tactical and operational mobility was not achieved until WW II. Even then, such is the enduring myth of
blitzkrieg that it is often forgotten that during the fall of
France in May-June 1940, the seventeen German panzer and motorized divisions constituted less than a fifth of the total order of battle. This very sharp pointed lance had a long and brittle shaft, vulnerable to counter-attack.
Since the classical period, personal
armour has provided a measure—but no guarantee—of individual protection, which may also be extended to a soldier's mount (whether horse or vehicle). The tactical effectiveness of armour through the ages has been limited by its weight and correspondingly deleterious effect on mobility and human endurance. And if a heavily armoured medieval knight could protect himself against the majority of striking and missile weapons, he and his horse remained relatively vulnerable to longbowmen, and later to crude firearms. Largely discarded in the 18th and 19th centuries, personal armour made a limited comeback in WW I with the introduction of steel helmets and, on a much smaller scale, body armour. After WW II ‘flak jackets’ became commonplace, particularly in western armies. Fortifications, either ‘fixed’ or ‘field’, not only provide collective protection but also enhance the power of the defence by the formation of obstacles. ‘Field defences’ and barriers may also bring tactical advantage by compensating, for example, for a defender's shortages of manpower, providing that obstacles are adequately covered by fire, a tactical lesson often relearned the hard way.
Shock action aims as much at psychological impact as physical damage. In battle, shock effect has been provided ‘at the charge’ not only by well-trained groups of assaulting foot soldiers (whether Roman legionaries or German storm troopers) but also by heavier and speedier means. Chariots, elephants (the tanks of the ancient battlefield), cavalry, and armoured vehicles provide momentum to the assault. Shock action can also be applied by skilled forces in defence. The drenching arrow fire of longbowmen at the battle of
Agincourt in 1415 caused horses to panic and contributed to French knights turning and running down their own infantry. As we have seen, the tactical
column and line issue of the
Napoleonic wars involved a tactical effect greater than that produced by weight of fire alone. In WW II, German machine-gun and tank-gun fire, coupled with well-observed indirect mortar and artillery fire, often broke up Soviet, British, or American attacks on the ‘forming up place’ or ‘start line’ before they got moving, or caused them to break down once started through casualties inflicted on key subunit leaders. In both cases, the cumulative ‘shock’ effect on the units concerned, particularly if this course of events were to be repeated a number of times, was often greater than might be expected from the physical casualty list alone, adding a new dimension to the term ‘battle shock’ in the form of psychiatric
casualties.
The art of orchestrating various arms to work together (including ground-attack
fighters) towards a common tactical or operational objective, is known as combined arms tactics. Thus a broad measure of tactical effectiveness is the extent to which arms, including
air forces, integrate their actions on the battlefield as combined arms teams. Historically, this aim has proved easier to theorize about than to realize in practice, and the formation of effective combined arms organizations typically has had a history of costly and painful development. The contrasting experience of the German and British armies in WW II is instructive. The key organizational principle recognized by the Germans—and belatedly by the British—is that all components of combined arms teams need identical mobility and sufficient protection and firepower if their total tactical potential is to be realized. But, above all, all arms on the battlefield must train together in order to fight successfully.
In the 20th century,
air power has brought a fundamental change to tactics, the seeds of which were sown in the closing stages of WW I. By WW II, close
air support had matured and complemented greatly the striking power and shock action of ground manoeuvre. In addition to providing information through tactical air reconnaissance, indirect air support provides protection to troops by defeating hostile air forces (offensive and defensive counter-air action) and by the
interdiction of opposing land forces. Air power also brings considerable benefits in terms of troop and supply lift, enhancing the tactical, operational, and strategic range, mobility, and sustainability of land forces. The benefits and inherent risks of air supply were demonstrated in various battles in WW II. The German failure to resupply
Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-3 contrasts vividly with Allied success at
Kohima and
Imphal. Since WW II, rotary-winged aviation has become an arm in its own right in most armies. Support
helicopters provide integral tactical lift and attack helicopters offer great striking power, increasing the tactical flexibility of land forces and the tempo of operations. However, all types of aircraft, and particularly those flying at low to medium altitudes, remain to some extent vulnerable to ground-based air defences. In hostile environments, attacking aircraft must face a combined challenge from air defence artillery equipped with guns and missiles and from air defence aircraft. The vulnerability of ground-attack aircraft to air defence systems was illustrated by the crippling losses of 60 per cent endured by the RAF in attacking the Meuse bridges at Sedan in May 1940, while the Israeli Air Force suffered similarly during the opening days of the October 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Much tactical and operational flexibility is promised by vertical envelopment or ‘air assault’ operations by parachute,
glider, or helicopter-borne troops. Such operations remain at high risk in view of the inherent dangers of insertion on to the battlefield. Once landed, a lack of mobility, protection, and heavy armament may limit critically the fighting power of the troops involved, as demonstrated at the battle of
Arnhem in September 1944. In
Vietnam, the helicopter gave US forces enormous reach, firepower, and a sure means of evacuating casualties. However, ‘air cavalry’ tactics often proved costly as the North Vietnamese lured the Americans into deeper and more protected parts of the jungle, and ambushed remote landing zones.
Science and technology has made its most vital contribution to tactical communications, but the impact of the more photogenic
precision-guided munitions is in practice more limited. In particular the difficulties encountered in finding suitable strategies and tactics to employ against
guerrilla forces on their own, often close, terrain have haunted regular armies.
Callwell concluded in his famous work
Small Wars: ‘Since tactics favour the regular troops while strategy favours the enemy, the object to be sought for clearly is to fight, not to manoeuvre, to meet the hostile forces in open battle, not to compel them to give way by having recourse to strategy.’
Yet it has been the standing aim of irregular forces to avoid that ‘open battle’ and to harry regular forces and civilians at their points of vulnerability—initially targeting isolated rural outposts and lines of communication and, with growing success, bringing the war into urban centres of population: asymmetric conflict. The British and French retreats from empire after WW II show that fighting
counter-insurgency wars is a long and painful process. Tactics based on firepower alone cannot win. First the enemy has to be found, by no means an easy task; then he has to be fixed (if he does not melt away after first contact) before he can be struck. But the enemy will return to fight the long fight. As
Ho Chi Minh said to the French in
Indochina, ‘You can kill ten of my men for every one that I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.’ In this sort of small war, small-unit leaders often bear a disproportionate weight of combat. Eventual success depends on low-level tactical skills, a long-term campaign plan sustained by sufficient resources, and an overarching strategy that addresses the roots of the conflict.
In conclusion, it is a prime function of a nation's military theorists and practitioners to promote and develop superior tactics to those of its prospective opponents. Less well understood is the requirement to maintain organizational coherence between arms and services in order to provide the right balance of material and personnel resources on the battlefield and to support its activities. As weaponry, tactics, and operational methods evolve, that balance may need to shift. A failure by a party to an armed conflict to recognize that such a shift is required may herald military setback at best, or failure at worst. The experience of Polish, French, and British forces in 1939-40 in response to blitzkrieg surely demonstrates this. But while superior tactics are usually important in determining the shifting scales of engagement or battle, they are not necessarily sufficient for success in a campaign or war. A tactically or technically advantaged force may be beaten by a tactically inferior but numerically superior enemy. The tactical advantage on either side might be quite transitory, as shown by the contrasting British failure and success against the
Zulus at Isandhlwana and at Rorke's Drift on 22-3 January 1879. Disappointingly, the hard-won tactical lessons of actions in small- or medium-scale wars do not necessarily reap due rewards in larger conflicts. The professional volunteer British army emerged from the Second
Boer War and subsequent
Haldane reforms well organized for a limited war. Its infantry tactics, musketry, and organization (including cavalry and horse artillery) were second to none in 1914, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was nonetheless outclassed by a conscript German army. Quantitatively superior in numbers of troops and heavy guns, and also qualitatively in terms of grand tactics and the work of its
general staff above divisional level, the Germans had the operational advantage.
Above the tactical and operational levels, national strategy, intelligence capability, industrial resources, and not least the supply of trained manpower may contribute as much to the final outcome of any lengthy armed conflict. Thus the Allied victory over Germany and Japan in WW II was based largely on marked strategic advantages as opposed to any decisive tactical superiority at land, air, or sea. The one exception is perhaps the application of Allied air power which achieved air superiority in most theatres by 1943-4. Also, armed forces with supposedly ‘superior’ battlefield or combined arms tactics may not necessarily win in the long run, even if they achieve an initial operational advantage and win the opening campaign. ‘Easy’ tactical gains, while offering the alluring prospects of victory, may not translate into strategic success. When
Manstein rued
Lost Victories, he was concentrating on the tactical level and underplaying strategic failure. If a conflict is of sufficient scale and duration, lessons can be learned during the war and tactics can be modified accordingly, but the next conflict may be totally unexpected with little time to learn the hard way. Therefore new tactics must be anticipated, developed, and rehearsed during peacetime. The huge investment in combined arms tactics training facilities, backed up by realistic combat simulation, paid off handsomely for US, British, and French forces in the
Gulf war. Saddam
Hussein's strategic calculation that the alliance would not hold together if confronted with high casualties was not misplaced, but his forces were not sufficiently well equipped or trained at the tactical level to inflict them. This merely illustrates how tactics and strategy are inseparably interwoven. As one component of the art of war, tactics are but part of the whole; the complex, costly, and messy business of war must be seen in the round.
Bibliography
- Bellamy, Christopher, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare (London, 1990).
- Callwell, Charles E., Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London, 1906).
- Fuller, J. F. C., The Foundations of the Science of War (London, 1925).
- —— The Dragon's Teeth (London, 1932).
- Griffith, Paddy, Forward into Battle (Swindon, 1990).
- Liddell Hart, B. H., A Science of Infantry Tactics Simplified (London, 1923).
- Strachan, Hew, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London, 1983).
- Weller, Jac, Weapons and Tactics (London, 1966).
- Wintringham, Tom, and Blashford-Snell, J. N., Weapons and Tactics (London, 1973) (incorporating Wintringham, Weapons and Tactics, (London, 1943))
— Mungo Melvin
