(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Ukraine: Doctrine v Political v Strategic v Operational v Tactical [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-03-28 The terms strategic and tactical are frequently misused which is not surprising as they are related but differ in subtle (and not so subtle) ways. It doesn’t help when many people use them interchangeably in everyday life. But they do have particular meanings when used in a military context. There are numerous articles explaining the differences so I will simply begin by linking to a few. From Wiki A strategy is a set of guidelines used to achieve an overall objective, whereas tactics are the specific actions aimed at adhering to those guidelines. From Forbes on business definitions. From Fandom And many more… So the goal of this article is to quickly list some simple definitions and provide some quick examples related to Ukraine. I will most likely screw something up so I’m relying on the comments to set me straight. I’m also adding in a few related terms to further confuse the heck out of everyone understand how these interact in real life. Doctrine Military doctrine is a set of baseline principles and procedures on how a military is going to approach conflicts in general. Our favorite “combined arms” doctrine is one example where the doctrine lays out the importance of different weapon systems and units acting in concert to achieve results beyond the sum of the parts. Russia is the example of not applying combined arms DOCTRINE. All the components of combined arms are present in Russian forces (at least initially they were), but Russia has never put in the training and procedures to make it happen. The closest they get is infantry and artillery working together (sort of). They may have tanks or IFVs around, but they don’t really cooperate except by mistake. Russian doctrine is to overwhelm the enemy with infantry and artillery in such quantities that no defense can withstand it forever. Not a very original or complex doctrine, but one in which Russia has had some success with in the past. The United States has mastered combine arms and the textbook conflicts versus Iraq in 1990-91 and 2003 are perfect examples. The US in both cases used highly choreographed tanks, infantry, artillery, air power, and more to systematically take apart the Iraqi army on both occasions. The US trains heavily on it and puts the resources in to make it happen. Ukraine is learning this style and we’ll see this year how far along the path to mastery they are. They did okay in the Kharkiv offensive though details are hard to come by. Political The political stipulations are the set of ideas driving a conflict forward. They may or may not be decided with military strategy in mind. Here we have Putin making a political decision to take over Ukraine because he sees himself as a Russian emperor “taking back” Russian land. Obviously crap history, but no one said the political is correct. Currently Putin’s political objective may simply be to remain in power and as such continues the war for political survival reasons rather than any true hope of accomplishing the initially stated goal of taking Kyiv. Ukrainian political strategy is to both protect its populace and to achieve a conclusion which improves their long term security. The defense of Bakhmut may be an example of Ukraine following a political objective to prevent Russia from getting closer to more populated cities. The end of the war will be determined politically. At this point neither country can or in Ukraine’s case desires to take the enemy capital and occupy the entire enemy country. Hence it must end politically after the military conflict reaches a point where both sides wish to stop either through success or exhaustion. Both sides also have international political objectives which greatly affect their abilities to continue the conflict. (note, this is NOT an appeal to Ukraine to concede any territory whatsoever, just an acknowledgment that should Ukraine reach their proper borders without invading Russia they will need to reach an agreement for the hostilities to be officially over). Strategic Strategies are the principles and concepts the two sides use to guide their actions towards victory. A strategic goal is a goal, which if achieved, should greatly contribute to defeating the enemy on a large scale. Strategies can and do change. They can be mistaken and poorly thought out, or brilliant and insightful. Military histories for the general audience often focus on these strategies as they are they key drivers of understanding why certain things happen. Strategies typically focus on some sort of “lynchpin” where victory in that spot or removal of a critical resources causes the rest of the enemy forces to collapse (quickly or slowly). A strategy might be to focus on taking out the enemies leadership. The initial Russia strategy was a “decapitation” strategy of capturing Kyiv and removing the political leadership from power. Now Russian strategy is simply attritional attempting to grind Ukraine down banking on Russia’s larger population to outlast Ukraine’s will to go on. Strategy can revolve around a critical resource. In World War 2 the Allied “Strategic Bombing” was ostensibly about removing key components of the German war economy, primarily fuel and ball bearings. By removing something critical to the enemies economy it creates the conditions for weakening the enemies ability to continue fighting effectively. In the case of oil, no fuel for your vehicles means no using trucks, tanks and planes. In the current war, the closest we have to a strategic denial of resources would be the trade embargoes on Russia reducing their ability to get advanced computer chips to make advanced weaponry. Strategy can revolve around superiority in a certain aspect of the war zone. US doctrine is to use air power to achieve Air Supremacy denying the enemy the ability to use air power themselves and allowing US planes the ability to attack most any point. At the start of the main invasion, Russia attempted to do this in Ukraine attacking Ukrainian air defenses in the first waves of missile attacks. The Russians had some success, but not enough to achieve dominance and achieve Air Superiority. The skies above Ukraine remain contested with either side only having temporary localized air superiority at times. Strategy can also revolve around key points on a map. This is probably what most people think about in terms of strategy. But what makes a point on the map strategic, versus merely important for other reasons is situational and easily confused. Generally, a strategic map location is one in which it denies the enemy a key resource or makes their other positions impossible to defend. Starobilsk is a strategic location because it would cut a major rail line for Russia and those supplies would have to go through other, already busy rail lines elsewhere. Kherson is strategic for being near a key bridge over the Dnipro, a difficult to cross obstacle. Bakhmut is not strategic. It’s important for operational or political purposes, but the loss of the road network there does not cause a major deficiency in logistics for either side. If Russia’s entire strategy revolves around taking Bakhmut for taking over all of Ukraine, then it’s a bad one. The fall of Bakhmut does not impact Ukraine in the same way the fall of Kherson did. Early in the war when Kherson fell with the bridges intact, it was a strategic victory for Russia. They had a foothold on the west bank of the Dnipro in the south which threatened both Odessa and Kyiv from the south (if the Russians had had the logistical ability to take advantage, which they didn’t). If Russia takes Bakhmut, they move forward a little. But they could also throw those resources into another location and move forward there. That they do so at Bakhmut is less about good strategy and more about it being the best Russian can do with their limited logistics. We frequently use the phrase “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” While this phrase conveys the importance of logistics, I think sometimes it confuses people into thinking strategy and logistics are more apart than they are. GOOD strategy uses knowledge of logistics and incorporates the logistical challenges into itself. Ignoring logistics leads to BAD strategy unless you get lucky. Russia crossing at Kherson could have been good strategy IF they had the logistics to back it up and push further, which they didn’t. Instead it became a very bad strategy partially isolating their forces when Russian logistics couldn’t cash the check their strategy was writing. Operational The concept of operational objectives arose to fill the middle ground between tactics and strategy. Strategy is used to determine that Force A wishes to take City X for whatever purpose. Getting to city X will require multiple other cities to be taken in order to succeed. Those “on the way” cities are operational objectives. The operational objective is too large to be considered a tactic, but doesn’t qualify as a strategic objective outside of the context of it being on the way to City X. If a different city, City Y, was chosen for the strategic objective all the “on the way” cities might change. However, should a “on the way” city start cropping up on each and every strategic plan that city might morph into a strategic objective as it is required for all those other plans to succeed. Bakhmut is an “on the way” city. Some people make the claim that due to its central location it acquires the importance of strategic as it would be required for achieving so many different strategic objectives. My contention is that I can trace reasonable supply routes through many other cities that Bakhmut could potentially be bypassed by the Russians if needed. The Russian control of Kupyansk and Izyum makes this point. If Sloviansk is the Russian objective, they could have gained control of it through Izyum, Lyman, and perhaps taking Siversk without ever threatening Bakhmut. Bakhmut was thought to be a southern pincer of this attack earlier, but is currently the only pincer. Attacking Sloviansk solely from the direction of Bakhmut puts Russia into a salient, making the attack weaker, not stronger. Bakhmut doesn’t add anything to that attack which couldn’t be provided by rail through Izium, Lyman and Siversk. In fact, Siversk begins to sound much more critical to an attack on Sloviansk than Bahkmut does. Tactics I think most people understand tactics. Tactics are the battlefield techniques used to achieve an objective. Often informed by doctrine, a good army will train on multiple tactics using whichever is best for the situation. Russia running a few guys forward to identify targets for artillery is a tactic stipulated by their doctrine. I won’t belabor tactics any more than this. I’m sure some of you already have some bones to pick with me as it is. ;) [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/28/2160677/-Ukraine-Doctrine-v-Political-v-Strategic-v-Operational-v-Tactical Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/