The Evolution of Operational Art. From Napoleon to the Present

adaptability in all wars. Robertson had begun the proceedings by arguing that the job of a general staff was to lay down general ...

irregular wars were subsumed within the same general framework. At its most basic level, this was shown by the incorporation of ...

These principles, even if they were the basis for instruction at the Staff College, were not reflected in theField Service Regul ...

advance guards in detecting the enemy’s line of advance and in screening one’s own. These were the key themes of French doctrine ...

at the time. Instead, the focus lay in creating an army that in terms of both size and organization was better fitted for Europe ...

‘operational art’ in a creative sense. Corps headquarters focused on planning before action rather than command during it. The s ...

own lack of foresight, were reduced to the position of human cattle’, Fuller fulminated inThe Reformation of War, published in 1 ...

Enemy’ said that in such operations ‘the normal application of the principles of regular warfare’ should be ‘considerablymodifie ...

more than a knowledge of the principles of painting will, without steady practice and natural aptitude, enable an artist to pain ...

would have to embrace the high tempo of the action, and would have to realize that ‘the idea of the plan must be flexible, that ...

and, after all, in December 1926 Milne gave Fuller charge of the Experimental Mechanised Force created precisely to test his the ...

army with colonial responsibilities. Paradoxically, however, it competed with a top-down approach to command which served all to ...

military policy, and that ‘civilian strategists’ focused on nuclear deterrence. 79 It made no mention of operational art, and no ...

BAGNALL AND BRITISH MILITARY DOCTRINE The external pressures forcing the British Army of the Rhine to think about the operationa ...

This too was what gave unity to NATO thinking in the 1980s. The enemy could be clearly identified, his own methods of fighting w ...

operational level of war, because it had its own mission; it is ‘a dynamic, closed- loop system, characterised by speed and appr ...

conventional capability to make it credible’, and ‘a visible capacity to wage war if it fails’. 92 The end of the Cold War confr ...

discussion. Led by technology rather than debate, its view of war neglected the social and political conditions which could shap ...

It seemed to work. The army established a reputation for excellence which appeared to have a historical pedigree but which was a ...

Doctrinelisted the principles of war in an appendix). 100 Its discussion of the operational level of war was bracketed with the ...