Tactical Concepts

Tactics Made Simple

“No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the textbooks know 
Will turn the bullet from your coat 
Nor stop the tulwar’s downward blow
Strike hard who dares,
Shoot straight who can.
The odds are on the cheaper man.”

Rudyard Kipling, “Arithmetic on the Frontier” 

Armies devote much time, trouble, and treasure to the teaching of tactics.  The results, alas, rarely repay the expense.

The causes of this great waste of resources are legion.  Soldiers with no talent for teaching are made instructors.  Officers with no talent for writing are set down in front of word processors and told to produce manuals.  Leaders without combat experience are asked to explain what they haven’t experienced.  As a result, much of what passes for tactical training consists of catch phrases, laundry lists, and platitudes.

Some leaders with combat experience often fall into the same trap.  Finding it difficult to explain what they have experienced, they too revert to the constructs, categories, and clichés they learned in their school days.*  Other combat veterans make the classic mistake of drawing general lessons from their necessarily particular experience.

Of late, these problems in the teaching of tactics have been exacerbated by “Instructional Systems Development.”  Also known as the “systems approach to education,” this monstrosity combines the sophistication of an 18th century “blab school” with the humanity of B.F. Skinner.  Students are subjected to lectures in which they are exposed to key words and phrases.  If they are able to recognize these words and phrases in the right context on a multiple-choice exam, they pass.  If they attempt to inject their own experience or try to think about the problem, they risk failure.

The greatest problem with the teaching of tactics, however, is the search for formulas.  Rather than teaching soldiers that tactics is an art, instructors attempt to teach tactics as if it were an exact science.  Rather than using words to communicate concepts, would-be Websters in uniform make the knowledge of definitions an end in itself.  And rather than reminding students that the solution to a given tactical problem depends heavily on the specifics of the situation, manual writers and instructors alike provide “templates.”

At least in the United States, this sad situation owes much to the mobilization experience of two world wars.  Twice in this century we have organized huge citizen armies.  In both cases, we had neither the instructors nor the time to teach tactics properly.  Tactical training, as well as most writing on tactics, therefore degenerated into what might be called “Hints from Heloise.”  Young soldiers going to war were bombarded with lists of principles, booklets full of maxims and catch phrases, as well as lots of advice on how to solve particular problems. 

Although we now have the resources to conduct proper training, the old “mass mobilization” approach is still very much with us.  Even though they are self-contradictory, the principles of war are still posted on the wall of every military classroom.  Even though they are often  pulled out of context, the maxims of Napoleon and Hohenlohe- Ingelfingen decorate the pages of manuals and student handouts.  Worse yet, they are transmitted orally, often without reference to the source, as if they were the wisdom of the tribe.  Finally, a great deal of effort is spent passing “the gouge” - tricks of the trade that, as often as not, give specific advice about how to deal with problems that no longer exist.

The solution to this problem is what 19th century Germans called the “applicatory method.”  Championed by Gerhard von Scharnhorst during the wars against Napoleon , this approach was officially adopted by the Prussian Army in 1859.

The key precept of the applicatory method is that an art should be taught by practice.  If real practice is not possible, then a suitable simulation must be arranged.  Thus, if tactics is an art it must be taught as an art - with exercises that allow the student to concentrate on essential skills.  (These exercises include tactical decision games, umpired Kriegspiel exercises, and free play field exercises.

Although the heart of the applicatory method is practice - getting out and solving simulated problems rather than talking about them, the teaching of concepts is as useful adjunct.  These concepts are not pre-formatted solutions.  Far from it, the battle-cry of the applicatory method has long been “death to the template!” (Tod dem Schema!) 

Properly understood, concepts are to the tactician what a spares box is to the model builder - a set of pieces from which something useful might be constructed.  Sometimes a concept can be used without much modification.  Sometimes a great deal of cutting and filing is needed on the spot to make it fit.  Sometimes, however, a concept doesn’t fit at all.

It therefore makes sense for the tactician to have as many concepts as possible in his “spares box.”  Not only will having many allow him to use those which best fit the situation, a surplus of concepts will make him far more willing to jettison those which aren’t useful.  After all, in life there is little that is more ridiculous (and in war, fewer things that are more dangerous) than someone trying to apply one or two ideas to all situations. 

The purpose of this series of articles is to give beginning students of tactics some concepts to get their “spares boxes” started.  More experienced students will also benefit from these articles.  Not only will they get a fresh look at things that they already know, they might also find novel ways of explaining them.