On Operations: Operational Art and Military Disciplines. Brett A. Friedman. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2021.
In On Operations, Brett A. Friedman simultaneously—and successfully—tackles two interconnected challenges. The first is to advance the notion that an operational level of war needlessly and counterproductively severs the connection between strategy and tactics.[1] The second is to provide a new and practical definition of operational art. To accomplish these tasks, Friedman essentially breaks his work into two sections: a destructive section that examines the operational level of war and its various points of origin. The second is a constructive section that cogently defines operational art and offers insights into its practice. Connecting both sections are the author’s frequent references to ideas described in Carl von Clausewitz’s On War. For readers schooled in the “three levels of war” model with the so-called “SOT Snowman” depicting the strategic, operational, and tactical (SOT) levels of war as circles stacked upon one another, Friedman presents something of a modern heresy.
For readers schooled in the “three levels of war” model with the so-called “SOT Snowman” depicting the strategic, operational, and tactical (SOT) levels of war as circles stacked upon one another, Friedman presents something of a modern heresy.
In considering the operational level of war, Friedman argues it is “problematic at best and ruinous at worst.”[2] To support this proposition, Friedman cites scholars tying differing definitions of the operational level of war to such diverse components as level of command, scope of personnel or materiel involved, or geographic distances.[3] He observes that recent U.S. military experience demonstrates the failure of the operational level of war as useful in linking strategic objectives and tactical actions in America’s various campaigns in the Global War on Terror. Specifically, Friedman writes the U.S. “finds itself unable to translate tactical success to strategic effect, the false idea of an operational level of war as a necessary linkage between the two being shattered by contact with the reality of warfare.”[4] Tragically, recent events tend to prove this point.
This is nothing new, according to Friedman. While brief, Chapter 5, “The Operational Level and the Civil-Military Relationship,” explores German, Russian, and American experiences with civil-military relations. Friedman’s observations of the American experience are rather damning. He notes that Vietnam poisoned this relationship, and that post-war “policy malfeasance and military mythmaking prevented a proper diagnosis of what went wrong…as both sides failed.”[5] In part, this stemmed from “apolitical operational thought” (the operational level of war) offering “a convenient lever to shift blame entirely onto the political side of the civil-military relationship.”[6] The failure of the American military to understand or appreciate the inherently political nature of war meant it attempted to strip away political considerations from war’s calculus. In Friedman’s words this allows the “U.S. officer corps [to use] the operational level as a shield behind which it deploys ‘best military advice.’ But no military advice can be beneficial if it is stripped of its inherent political nature.”[7] Little wonder Friedman describes the operational level of war as ruinous.
While useful in deconstructing the operational level of war as both artificial and unnecessary, it is in describing operational art and its disciplines that Friedman shines. Friedman observes that operational art, “as a description of what military staffs do—is useful and does not suffer from the same defects as the notion of an operational level.”[8] Simply stated, operational art is “the planning, preparing, conducting, and sustaining of tactics aimed at accomplishing strategic effect.”[9] Friedman also describes this as “actualizing tactics.”[10] Actualizing tactics comes from practicing six discrete disciplines with roots in the Army’s warfighting functions. Friedman names these disciplines: administration, information, coordination, fire support, logistics, and command and control.[11]
Importantly, Friedman identifies these disciplines not as a means of tactically organizing forces, but as both necessary intellectual scaffolding and describing practical staff functions.[12] The utility of this approach becomes clear as he describes elements of each discipline. Chapters on each discipline not only address defining aspects of the discipline, but also include historical examples and arguments that contextualize his arguments and justify the inclusion or exclusion of components within the discipline.
Perhaps the book’s greatest strength resides in these chapters because Friedman does not content himself with broad philosophical arguments about each discipline. Instead, he succinctly addresses key aspects or components of each discipline while grounding his work in the practical world in which staff officers work. Chapter 8, “Information,” provides an example. Within this chapter, Friedman provides a model of information warfare that includes reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance, public affairs, cyberwarfare, electronic warfare, and military deception. This represents a far more encompassing universe than that described by the warfighting function of Intelligence in the Army’s current edition of Operations.[13]
Friedman also considers a taxonomic approach to understanding conflicts. In chapters 14 and 15, he argues a new model based on their own internal nature, and not on external considerations.[14] Drawing concepts from Carl von Clausewitz (offense and defense to define space), Archer Jones (persisting or raiding to define time), and Hans Delbrück (annihilation and exhaustion to define forces), Friedman articulates eight different types of campaigns.[15] In doing so, he offers an approach for characterizing both strategy and political aims and, thereby, the means for understanding the associated requirements of operational art in a campaign.
Drawing concepts from Carl von Clausewitz (offense and defense to define space), Archer Jones (persisting or raiding to define time), and Hans Delbrück (annihilation and exhaustion to define forces), Friedman articulates eight different types of campaigns.
Rounding out On Operations, Friedman provides case studies of five campaigns: Austerlitz (1805), Königgratz (1806), the Atlantic Campaign (1914-18), the Battle of Britain (1940), and Operation Watchtower (1942). The six disciplines of operational art and the performance of combatants in executing those disciplines provide the final arguments for operational art as the purview of competent staff officers effectively discharging their duties. Austerlitz saw a nascent staff facilitate victory against an opponent with no staff, while Königgratz found an efficient staff helping defeat a foe lacking one.[16] The Atlantic Campaign saw the British better executing the disciplines of information, operations, and logistics than their adversary, with this playing a major role in Britain’s victory. Similarly, British performance in these same disciplines coupled with superior command and control enabled by the Chain Home radar and their management of fighter aircraft tipped the balance in the Battle of Britain. Finally, Operation Watchtower, the campaign for Guadalcanal, saw the United States emerge victorious. Without effectively executing the disciplines of operational art, however, it is likely the Japanese would have won. Operations at the far end of a tenuous supply line placed a premium on effectively employing administration, information, command and control, and logistics to facilitate fire support and operations.
The Battle of Austerlitz, 2nd December 1805 (François Gérard/Wikimedia)
In his preface, Friedman describes this book, a companion to his earlier On Tactics, as one of theory rather than history. Despite this, Friedman both covers a tremendous amount of historical ground and gets most of it correct. Where errors appear, they are minor and do not materially detract from the work. To his credit, Friedman acknowledges two major weaknesses in his bias—the focus on Western military thought and a focus on land warfare.[17] This is hardly surprising given Friedman’s professional background as a U.S. Marine Corps officer. A third, and minor, weakness is his Marine Corps background appearing in some of his historical vignettes.
In summary, On Operations is both well-written and a solid work of theory supported by strong historical research. One may argue against Friedman’s conclusions on the utility of the operational level of war as a valid concept, and a much smaller and more logical SOT Snowman, but one cannot argue that the arguments are not well constructed. Similarly, his articulation of operational art and its constituent disciplines are both logical and clear. Operational art represents something of a niche topic, but for those studying it, Friedman’s work is the proverbial must read.
Paul J. Cook retired from the U.S. Army. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Temple University, a master’s degree in theater operations from the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies, and a master’s degree in military history from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
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Header Image: Marines with II Marine Expeditionary Force conduct a Rehearsal of Concept Drill, Camp Lejeune, N.C., May 4, 2016. (Lance Cpl. Samantha Barajas/U.S. Marine Corps Photo)
Notes:
[1] Brett A. Friedman, On Operations: Operational Art and Military Disciplines (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press, 2021), 4, 54.
[2] Friedman, 1.
[3] Friedman, 3.
[4] Friedman, 140.
[5] Friedman, 49.
[6] Friedman, 49.
[7] Friedman, 50.
[8] Friedman, 52.
[9] Friedman, 56.
[10] Friedman, 57
[11] Friedman, 57-58.
[12] Friedman, 57.
[13] Department of the Army, ADP 3-0, Operations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 2019), 5-4.
[14] Friedman, On Operations, 118.
[15] Friedman, 118,
[16] Friedman, 164.
[17] Friedman, ix-x.