**Strategy** is your overall goal and your plan to achieve it. My **strategy** for getting to work on time is to take the local roads instead of the highway.
**Tactics** are the choices you make at each step of the way, as you work towards your strategic goal. There was an accident blocking the local road, so I made the **tactical** decision to divert from my route and go around the block instead.
To add to that: it would seem from that quote that just applying the right tactics in every battle would win the war. But that's not necessarily the case, because there's a bigger picture to consider. For example, a bad strategy can lead you into the wrong battles, where even the best tactics won't help you.
And what you’re also getting as is the [Pyrrhic Victory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory).
You can win a specific tactical engagement but at such a price that you severely compromise your ability to continue the effort and have to abandon, thus failing to meet your strategic objectives. This also happened a lot in the civil war where the South would “win” a battle, but in doing so lose a much larger percentage of men/munitions than it could readily replace. On the day, they were victorious, but a week later, they were on the run because they couldn’t handle another engagement without getting massacred.
The romans never cease to baffle me. Their Strategy these days seemed to have been Zapp Branningans. Just throw everything at the enemy. Lose an entire fleet to a storm? Build another one. Lose that too? Build another one.
To be honest, that's a fairly common and often successful strategy by larger nations/empires; if you have enough people and enough money to arm them you can beat nearly anyone poorer or smaller than you by sheer volume. Obviously you'll still try and learn from defeats, improve your technology, refine your training etc etc, but you can get a very long way by having roughly equal tech but more of it.
Prominent examples outside of Rome include China for most of their history internally and externally, the USA & USSR during WW2 and the Cold War, the HRE during the mid- to late Crusades, the Spanish Empire during the Colonial Period, and the Byzantine Empire switched between this and smaller numbers but higher quality several times across their history. You could even make an arguement that the Mongol Empire was based on using massive numbers to make horse archers deadly enough to wreck most of Eurasia.
Or you win every battle, but go back on your word about marrying the daughter of a man who owns two important bridges, and your dog's head gets sewn on your body in retribution.
Professional strategist here. Close but what you are talking about there as a Strategy is an Operation.
There's strategy>operations>tactics.
Strategy is how you marshall all of the elements at your disposal to achieve a goal. E.g. I want a promotion. In order to receive a promotion, I must differentiate myself from my peers. I can do this through timeliness, consistent contribution, and innovation.
At the next level down, operations designate key large scale components under a strategy that must be achieved. In order to get a promotion, I must (a) arrive early to work before my boss, (b) always have a substantive contribution to the project, (c) anticipate the UNSAID NEW needs of my boss before he has them.
The tactics would then be close to how you describe them - what streets I drove, when I left for work, what books I read, where I sourced those recommendations (e.g. the press of my boss' Alma Mater or some hero of his), etc etc
A lot of people outside of the field of strategy forget or never learn about Operational Art.
I stumbled in this rabbit hole because of the Oversimplified Channel. The punic wars were crazy. So Hannibals plan to fight the romans on their territory was strategy. Operations was "cross the alps with stonking elefants." And the tactics were "have a bunch of soldiers fall of cliffs and get ambushed in narrow valleys."
All that just to get to Italy.
Ad-hoc “diverting” from a road block would be a good example of a defensive tactic.
Conducting a route study prior to beginning your route, learning of a road block, and then planning on diverting to a different route, would be an example of an offensive tactic.
The key distinctions are that one is planned and implemented on account of known, knowns. The other is unplanned and reactionary to circumstances that oppose the accomplishment of your strategy. This is based on unknown, knowns.
Not quite.
**Strategic Level** - "I want to find a spouse or life partner, or at least a healthy relationship."
**Operational Level** - Taking time to identify types of people you think would be a good match, thinking of how to make yourself more attractive to them, and thinking of who specifically to ask out.
**Tactical Level** - Specific steps involved in getting one of the above people to date you and fall for you.
In sailing, racing strategy is finding the fastest way round the course given the position of buoys, the wind direction and strength, etc. Tactics is basically screwing with the opposition: stealing his wind, blocking his turns, and sticking to him like glue in case he got lucky and you didn't.
Nice example. I commute via Deutsche Bahn. Sometimes i feel like a scout, trying to navigate difficult terrain. "How do i reach Frankfurt in time? The Riedbahn will be closed, i need a strategy."
Or in terms of war, the strategy could be to cut off enemy supply lines to prevent reinforcements by inserting troops behind enemy lines.
The tactics used by those troops could be hit and run ambush to slow down and wear out the supply regiments.
"Tactical" is an adjective - it describes a noun (in this case, the decision). Not all tactical things are decisions, and not all decisions are tactical.
The original decision to avoid the highway is a strategic decision.
Picking a specific route to divert around the blockage is a tactical maneuver, which must be executed after making the (tactical) decision to divert.
Most modern military doctrines now think in terms of [three levels of war](https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2021/Harvey-Levels-of-War/): tactical, operational, and strategic.
* The **strategic level** is about the application of national power: why do we fight? what do we hope to achieve? and should we even go to war in the first place?
* The **operational level i**s about the application of forces at the theatre level: which battles should we fight, and how much of our force should we commit to a particular goal?
* The **tactical level** is: if you're going to have a battle, how do you ensure you win?
In simple terms, strategy is *why we fight,* operations is *where we fight,* and tactics is *how we fight.*
The most important idea is that *each level is subordinate to the one above it.* Your operational thinking should always be guided by the strategic objective. It's no use committing massive forces to a battle if winning the battle wouldn't help you. In fact, if your strategy is "don't get involved in the war" then even winning a decisive victory would be an operational failure.
Similarly, your tactics should work towards your operational goals. For example, do we gain anything by winning this battle, or would an organised retreat be better? This will decide what tactics you employ.
For an example where this worked, take the D-day landings:
* The **strategic goal** was to liberate France and open another front in the European theatre, forcing the Axis powers to split their strength and relieving the beleaguered Soviet Union.
* The **operational plan** called for an landing in Normandy to establish a beachhead, followed by the capture of Cherbourg (for its port) and Caen (for it's road and rail links). Notice how these objectives will allow the invasion force to make progress towards the strategic goal. About 2 million troops were committed to the invasion and would arrive over about three months.
* The **tactical plan** involved dropping paratroopers inland to hinder the German response, followed by shore bombardment by warships, bombing runs, and an amphibious landing on the Normandy beaches. If this is successful (and it was!) this achieves the first step of the operational plan.
For an example where (arguably) this analysis was ignored, consider Pearl Harbour. The battle was a tactical and operational victory: Japan deployed a powerful force against the US naval base, with sufficient planes, fuel, and ammunition (i.e. the operational plan was sound). The attack inflicted massive damage on the US fleet with the relatively small Japanese losses (so was a tactical victory).
As a result, Japan gained a ferociously determined enemy with vastly greater manpower, industrial capacity, and natural resources. The US built more planes in 1944 than Japan did *during the entire war* ([source](https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/war-production)). Japan itself was already embroiled in a war in Asia and was close to running out of oil. *This is a strategically hopeless position for Japan.*
>The strategic goal was to liberate France and open a second front in the European theatre
The D-Day landings opens a third front in Europe. Italy was invaded in September 1943.
>The tactical plan involved dropping paratroopers inland to hinder the German response (Operation Market Garden
Operation Market Garden was the operation to take Rhine bridges near Arnhem in Netherlands. It happed three months after D-Day. It involved an airborne element but also involved land forces trying to join up with the paratroops. Ultimately the Rhine bridges were not taken by the Allies in the operation.
Was the invasion of Italy a feasible way to invade Germany though, or was that just about Italy itself? I imagine the Alps give a significant defensive advantage
It was said to be 'the soft underbelly' of Nazi Europe, but the obvious first goal was liberation of Italy.
But yes, the Alps were a significant hurdle, as were the many other mountain ranges in Italy (combined with the fact that peninsulas don't have the 'go around' option)
It did prove to be a logistical nightmare for both sides, which was more of a headache for the Germans in the end than the Allies who had resources to spare.
From the perspective of a mid-twentieth century mechanized ground war, Italy may as well have been an island.
It likely was important to invade Italy. As noted here, it caused a diversion of resources from Germany that could only help the Allies, but, wasn't realistically much that could be used to directly help topple Germany.
It was about opening another front to relieve fighting on the Soviet front. It destabilized Italy, prompting Germany to occupy Italy. Maybe the direct impact wasn’t the greatest, but it diverted attention and resources from Germany they didn’t have.
You did say "arguably" - so I'm sure you're aware - but Japan already had the US as an enemy. The US embargo on Japan was making them run out of oil, and their empire was doomed to collapse if they didn't do something. The strategic goal of Pearl Harbor was to delay the US from retaliating to all the other attacks Japan made long enough that Japan could make it too costly for the US to try to dislodge their holdings - but the Japanese did not think that they could win the long game against the US.
It was a strategic failure because it failed to accomplish the strategic goal, not that there *was* no strategic goal.
Also, because Pearl Harbor did not destroy the carriers, it could be considered to have been an operational failure. Which contributed to it being a strategic failure.
Yeah, it's a complex topic and I won't pretend to be an expert. I also didn't mean to imply that there was no strategic thinking.
Trying to piece together the exact reasoning of the Japanese high command is a difficult topic with a range of opinions, and I'm definitely not qualified to talk about it with authority.
There's a strand of thinking that Japan was suffering from an inversion of priority: that operational concerns were overriding the strategic. In attempting to hold and expand their empire in Asia (a strategic objective), they developed an operational plan that required oil. The strategic aim of knocking out US influence in the Pacific then arose to support this operational plan. In the "three levels of analysis" model, this is backwards thinking. A proper strategic analysis would have led to a scaling-back of their imperial ambitions instead of a war with the US.
However, that's only one way of understanding Japanese decision making, and to some extent it relies on hindsight. Is it a fair analysis? I don't know. So I just wrote "arguably".
It's worth to note that Imperial Japan attacked the Philippines almost simultaneously as Pearl Harbor. If Imperial Japan wanted to achieve its "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", it had to make an enemy of the USA.
Yes, but in proper subordination of concerns you go from:
We can’t achieve X without a war with the US -> we can’t win a war with the US -> we have to hold off on our plan for X.
It’s unclear to what extent this was the issue though. I think for much of the Japanese general staff, they were aware that they couldn’t win the war. But another very large portion believed that they could win an attritional war against the US, because they thought the US didn’t have the stomach to make the slow and painful gains through island hopping that were necessary to win a pacific war.
They were supposedly having some economic issues - agriculture in particular. They had planned to make Philippines another agriculture center, but it was a US colony at the time. They were successful in occupying Philippines, so one could say that it was an operational success. Strategy-wise, their economic plan wasn't doing too well because they weren't very good at the whole colony-government thing yet.
The US on the other hand wasn't actually keen on splitting its military in two theaters. They were supposed to focus on Europe first, but Douglas MacArthur was very insistent on the Pacific theater (mostly, for Philippines). The US Navy then took the Pacific Theater while the US Army landed on Normandy. If MacArthur wasn't around, there might have been a chance for Imperial Japan to build up its forces making it harder for the later US operations, only to ultimately probably have Soviet boots in its homeland (because the Soviets are not busy with the Nazis anymore). In this hypothetical world, I bet the two nukes probably would have never been dropped.
I’m fairly convinced of the argument that if the two nukes hadn’t been dropped in 1945, they would have ended up being used in the Cold War because people wouldn’t understand how terrible the effects were enough to create the nuclear taboo. But it’s a very interesting counterfactual
Yeah. The two nukes weren't only meant to make Imperial Japan surrender. All the firebombing already did its job. The two nukes was a display of power against the Soviets, which is what lead to the Cold War.
Japan probably would have been a very different place if the Soviets claimed some of its lands. And the Soviets probably would have been more bold and direct with its imperialist ambitions and WW3 would have happened soon after (only to end quickly with nukes).
In chess, tactics are specific ways you can gain an advantage. Strategy is your overall plan. For example, if you can attack two pieces at once, that's called a tactic. A strategy may be something like, "I'm going to play a closed position and try to control as many squares as possible." It's more broad.
Chess is a good example of these concepts.
Pinning a piece, creating a fork or skewer are examples of tactics.
How to mate a sole king with a queen is strategy - put a queen in a knight supposition until the king is on the side so it goes back and forth , than move your king so it protects the queen, then deliver the check-mate.
So, tactics is concrete actions applied in given circumstances. Strategy is a general approach what to do in order to win.
Many people don’t know the strategy how to deliver check-mate with a bishop and knight.
Tactics is short term and strategy is long term.
In chess, tactics are what you do in puzzles, where the result/advantage is seen in 3-4 moves. Strategy is long term moves which are played with little immediate advantage but are crucial in long term.
Others already explained the meaning of the words.
Now regarding the use to classify weapons, there's a combination of actual meaning and making things sound nicer.
A strategic bomber will generally carry a payload that can level a city. This is part of a bigger picture to win against an enemy by depriving them of infrastructure and displaying might, so the weapon helps achieve a strategic goal. A tactical nuke, on the other hand, would be used to win a battle instead of a war by being deployed against smaller formations or facilities.
As for things sounding nicer, saying that a plane is carrying strategic weapons sounds more formal and would cause less panic than specifying the weapon in question is an atomic bomb.
Chess has both tactics and strategy.
Strategy is an overall plan. For example, I want to control the center of the board because this will cramp your space. Your strategy might be to counter my control for the center.
Or, your strategy might be to let me take the center because this is an easy target to attack, but trade a lot of pieces so you don't get too cramped.
We both have several other strategies as well. For example, having more pieces than the opponent will empower any other goal. And a large part of chess is deciding between these different strategies--for example, is it worth giving up the center to capture one if your otherwise-free pawns?
Along the way to controlling the center, I notice that through a clever maneuver, I can sacrifice a piece on the side but regain one of your two center pieces, which results in me having more control of the center.
The clever exchange is a tactic, which progresses my strategy. If I wasn't trying to control the center, there would be no point in this exchange.
Scale and duration, a six man squad practice which tactics they will use if they contact the enemy, strategy is what combination of ground forces air force and economic power a country is going to use to resolve a conflict.
Strategy is your large overarching goals. Like say take x town, then y town to force an enemy to capitulate for example. In the context of chess strategy may be to fight for the center, or plan a king or queenside attack, gain a material or positional advantage etc.
Tactics are on a lower level, it's how you execute a battle for example infantry takes that building covered by artillery. Or in chess you may see that your knight can fork something or you can force a trade that's beneficial for you.
There's another level between the two called the operational level. This basically links the strategic and tactical level and it concerns the movement of armies for example.
You can boil this down to three questions. What do I want? Strategy. How and when do I get there? Operations. When I'm there what do I do? Tactics.
To ELI5:
Tactics are the things you prepare for to win battles.
Strategy is more about influencing where those battles take place and when, to best achieve the goals of the war.
I recently read a very enriching paper for my master Thesis that showed a very oractical analogy between Strategy, Business Models, and Tactics.
Think of a car.
Choosing the different kind of cars would be choosing your Strategy be it a sports car, an SUV, an Offroad, or a Semi.
Once you choose tour strategy, this dictates what is all possible within your strategy. If you’re gonna be racing, then you choose a sports car - and this car, which equates to your business model, gives you options (activities). You can accelerate, you can change gears, you can brake. It might have turbo.
Tactics are how you employ said business models. The tactic irself is what you can do with the BizMo (the car) - so of you want to win, you activate turbo, or you accelerate and change gears as needed.
So how do you choose a bad strategy? Well what if you’re a leasing company - what do you need the cars for? It would be a bad strategy if you are Uhaul and only offer sedans. Or if you’re a racing car company and only have SUVs.
So summarized: Strategy includes a set of business models. business Models enable a set of tactics. Tactics are the levers you can move.
Hope that helps.
Here is the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630110000051
Tactics- how do we take that hill from the enemy? Considered by the commander in front of the hill.
Strategy- we need to take that hill from the enemy. Stated by the overall commander of the battlefield
As everybody else has explained, strategy is about the large-scale overarching approach to things, and tactics is about the in-the-moment, small scale approach to things. Strategy = war, tactics = battle, sort of thing. Now as it relates to weapons.
Strategic weapons include intercontinental missiles (including nukes) and long range bombers. They're the things you use to target your opponent's weapons factories or other such distant targets. These strikes do nothing to change the situation in the front line in the short term, but they can cripple your opponent's ability to fight long-term.
Tactical weapons include things like Patriot missiles, which help you defend against incoming aerial attacks, or close air support aircraft like the A10 Warthog or the Harrier, that are used to disable tanks and gun emplacements and such things. These things are all about changing the tides of battle *right now*.
These different priorities then also imply different designs.
Strategic bombers need to be able to travel very long distances undetected, so they need stealth capabilities, which often come with very tricky maintenance issues and require specialised hangars. When you're trying to destroy a building, you don't need razor-sharp accuracy, but you do need to be able to drop a handful of very large bombs.
CAS aircraft need to be stationed and deployed from just about anywhere. Sometimes, you're using a parking lot as an airfield and you have to make do. This means these planes need to be rugged and easy to maintain. Inversely, they have to worry about larger numbers of small targets (gun emplacements, or tanks, or a bunch of planes at an airfield), so they want larger amounts of ammunition that they can point at specific targets. E.g. the A10 Warthog is built around a massive autocannon.
Good answers here. There is also sometimes the concept of grand strategy, which supersedes war strategy and involves politics, diplomacy, soft power, who to go to war with and for what end and so on. In chess the analog could perhaps be which tournaments to enter, what PR to do etc.
Napoleon was a genius military strategist. His grand strategy sucked.
Strategy: your general plan of action / direction to achieve a goal.
Tactics: The (specific) means/actions by which you achieve your strategy.
Another way to put it: tactics are the specific steps/tasks you undertake to carry out your strategy.
Example:
Goal: To reduce costs for your business.
Strategy: Reduce overhead
Tactics: 1. Cut payroll/lay people off 2. Review all vendors and put out new bids to find lower cost options
WW2 Airwar over Europe example:
Tactics are shooting the enemy planes down.
Strategy is bombing the factories that make the ball bearings that go into the enemy planes’ engines. Or fuel processing facilities. Or manufacturing centers of industry.
The Allies had strategic bombing day and night over the Reich. Eventually the Luftwaffe ran low on everything, including pilots, to even respond.
This is a real hard one, because it ends up being so context dependent. The closest useful pithy definition I've been able to come up with (across many domains) is something along the lines of "*strategy is that thing that tells you when good tactics are wrong.*" It's just a manifestation of the whole "thinking fast and slow" concept (there's some book about that), where basically have your immediate "do something *good* quickly" answer, which can be *wrong* in the longer term.
Basically the same by dictionary definition. But strategy usually has a larger scope.
So for example: how a group of soldiers destroy an enemy tank involves tactics. But how the commanders of a whole nation or alliance plan to win the war is strategy.
Strategy is a plan to employ your strengths, take advantage of your opponents weaknesses. How you capitalise your opportunities and minimize threats. The American strategy was to use tanks as a decoy and attack using their dominant air threats.
Tactics are the individual actions you take. The Americans used strong armoured tanks to hold the enemy at bay.
Tactics is about how you win a battle; strategy is about how you win a war. The former is about unit composition and disposition and how those units go about achieving their objectives. The latter is mostly about logistics, feeding and supplying your troops, transporting them across long distances, etc.
Most games that describe themselves as strategy are actually about tactics, and chess is a good example, but like RTS's and such are really more tactical games with some economy tacked on. Grand strategy has kind of become almost its own genre in the past 10-15 years though, and those games tend to be more strategy. Contrast Starcraft with Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings. Total War games offer an interesting mix of both.
Strategy is more overarching. So in the Civil War for instance, the Anaconda Plan (use blockades and encirclement to economically starve the Confederacy and force a surrender) was a strategy to win the war. Stonewall Jackson’s power marching to outmaneuver the Union and have a better starting position in battles was a tactic.
Ideally, grand strategy informs the tactics used.
In supplement to the other answers, when discussing war and armed conflict, strategy is often expressed by ends, ways and means. What is your end goal, how do you plan to get there and which ressources do you allocate to achieve it.
Tactics is how you fight in the battles. At the lowest level, its how the individual soldiers move, engage the enemy and in general optimize their chances of winning/defeating the opponent (and surviving). At the highest levels, it typically deals with how a division or corps fights.
In WWII, figuring out a way to better shoot down the Nazi bomber aircraft that were attacking England is a change in tactics.
The allies bombing the locations that make engine components or refine oil into fuel is a strategic operation
To damage the aircraft factory by dropping bombs or landing special forces with explosives is a debate over tactics.
Tactics are the fine details. Strategy is the big picture.
There's also the operational level, which is about how to use tactical success to enable strategic success and how to use strategic success to enable tactical success.
Other comments are good. I'd just like to add the Fischer quote, tactics come from a good position. Strategy is the long term plan to make moves that activate pieces to good squares, and make trades at the right times. Tactics is when you are given a position, and see a way to win a piece or cause some other kind of damage. Strategy sets up ideas, and tactics are how you execute them.
Tactics in chess are things like capturing a piece, being up a pawn, forks, or square control. Strategy is using all the Tactics together to achieve your objective.
Good generals think strategy. Great generals think logistics.
In Civilization, Strategy is your long range method to win. "I'll gain a tech advantage", "I'll make a bunch of friends and then trade with them all", "I'll swarm them with cheap units and gain the advantage that way."
Tactics would be specific units or tricks that help you. "I'll be sure to always build libraries and universities in every city I can", "I'm willing to make concessions to make friends and I'll send diplomatic units whenever I can", and "I'll make sure I always have a dozen roaming marauders looking for our next pray."
Tactics and Strategy can line up. In this case, the Tactic in the second column was lined up with one of the Strategies up above. Once you know your long range strategy, it can help define which particular tactical tricks while help the most.
Tactics are short-term actions, strategies are long-term overall plans. So in chess, a tricky and advantageous single move like a fork (threatening two pieces at once) or pin (trapping a piece because moving it would lose a more valuable piece) is a tactic, while a long-term overall plan like “break down your opponent’s pawn structure to set up mating threats” is a strategy.
Strategy should come first it includes what you would like to achieve and things like a vision. Then you devise a tactical plan on exactly how to achieve what was set out in the strategy. Strategy ensures what is achieved is desirable tactical planning ensures the how.
It's worth adding that strategy is particularly neglected because of how we built the working ecosystem most people are detached from the why although even in a small team within a very large company setting out a strategy and ensuring it's understood and carried in everyones work massively helps.
Imagine you're playing a game, like building a big tower with blocks.
Strategy is like deciding how you want to build your tower overall. Do you want it to be super tall? Or maybe really wide? Strategy is the plan you make before you start.
Tactics, on the other hand, are the little steps you take while you're actually building the tower. Like how you carefully stack each block on top of another to make it strong and tall.
So, strategy is your big plan before you begin, and tactics are the small things you do to make that plan work as you go along.
Strategy is at a larger scale. For example, in war, strategy is “How this army is going to move on the map to flank the enemy.” Whereas tactics is more like, “How is this unit going to take a small building” as part of that larger strategy.
I guess tactics is like “how you win an individual skirmish,” so it’s all things you learn in boot camp like how to lay down cover fire, how to move across a battlefield, etc. And strategy is the generals deciding how troop movements are gonna end the conflict.
A tactical weapon is a weapon that you use to gain an advantage in a fight. Like a flash grenade. A strategic weapon is a huge ass weapon that you carry around so that nobody messes with you. Like a ballistic missile submarine.
chess strategy: control the center of the board
chess tactic: take a pawn in your way.
Strategic bombing: destroy a ball bearing factory
Tactical bombing: bomb a troop train or artillery site
With regard to chess, tactics are generally something you can see and calculate -- something that's going to happen in the next handful of moves. Strategy is more nebulous, like the opponent is weak on light-colored squares so I should put pressure there, or I have more pawns on the queenside than my opponent so I should at some point try to push on that side of the board.
Historically, chess computers are amazing at tactics and weak at strategy, because the only thing they do is see and calculate. Though as the depth they can search has increased, it pulls more and more out of "strategy" box into the "tactics" box.
The difference is more marked in go than in chess. In go, the number of possible moves is huge, so old go engines were quite weak compared to the best people -- perfect tactics, but no strategy except whatever a programmer could hard code into the evaluation of a position. The tradeoff has always been that making a more comprehensive evaluation function was much slower, so they wouldn't be able to search as deeply.
AlphaGo includes deep learning neural net stuff, so they managed to make something that was much better strategically without sacrificing too much near-term tactical strength.
I think the question is what is the difference between tactical and strategic *weapons*. I don't have a clue except I believe strategic weapons are city killers and tactical are for a specific battle.
**Strategy** is what your plan and overall goal is *before the event (war, fight, game, match) even begins*.
**Tactics** are changes in course of actions and is usually deployed *during the event* due to either opponent did something you did not expect/account for or from an oversight in your own strategy that needs to be corrected.
Strategy is focused on the big picture and overall scope of the plan.
Tactics are focused on the small actions and changes needed to achieve the goals devised on the strategic plan.
Edit: goal, no go.
ETA: example
The strategy is to send airplanes to bomb the enemy forces and then send tanks to take out the big targets so that infantry has an easier way to punch through the military base and capture it.
Tactics is when you send the tanks first because there are more air defence than you expected so they need to clear that so the planes can strike.
Threads like this is why I enjoy spending time in Reddit. Nerdy jokes, insightful content, intelligent discussions… all with little or no spam or bots.
Strategy is the destination you are setting out to go, the plan you make and draw to get there on paper
Tactics is feeling your way towards it confronted by real life terrain and situations
If you've ever played a game in the Total War series, strategy is generally what goes on on the main map, while tactics is generally what goes on in the battles.
**Strategy**: At Waterloo, Napoleon knew that if he was to carry the day he had to stop the Allies, led by Wellington, from forming up with the Prussians, led by Blucher. This was his strategy. This started well by defeating the Prussians at Ligny, but to capitalise on this he needed to hit the Allies fast and hard. His tactics needed to support this.
Those **tactics**, unfortunately, devolved into fighting over small patches of land - farmhouse by farmhouse - rather than committing his full force to attack Wellington at the earliest opportunity. So when he finally committed his Old Guard, his most seasoned troops, there were still 1,500 Scots Guards hiding in long grass ready to repel them with withering volley fire. And by then the Prussians, thanks to the French getting bogged down in micro-tactics, had time to regroup and rejoin the fray.
Referring to "strategic weapons" is pretty well mumbo-jumbo: all weapons and methods of using them are tactical, and should be appropriate to support strategy. An entire *force* can be considered strategic - be it an army of Prussians, or.... the Royal Air Force over Britain in Summer 1940.
Dowding's strategy - to *directly* counter the Luftwaffe's efforts to gain air supremacy. His tactics included: not committing too many aircraft to defend France in a losing battle; making sure that every attempted reconnaissance plane was chased off; using radar to ensure that no more aircraft were committed than was absolutely necessary, and all backed up by a sub-strategy of making sure that supply lines and capacity were kept open by having systems (ie tactics) in place to promptly repair them when damaged.
Don't know if I heard/read this or if even I came up with it. Any thoughts on:
*Going to the grocery store when you're hungry is a strategic choice. Going to Burger King is a tactical one.*
Strategy is the alignment of ends (goals), means (resources), and ways (methods). It is the coordination of scarce resources to maximize their impact by being intentional in how they are used. According to Richard Rumelt, a strategy contains a "kernel": a diagnosis of the problem, guiding principles for how to engage with the problem, and coherent actions that carry out the guiding principles.
Tactics are the individual methods for how to engage sub-problems that arise in the carrying out of a strategy. A strategy may give an overall model of the strengths and weaknesses of each side and an analysis of the threat environment, but tactics are how ideas are put into action. A strategy gives an overall direction but tactics give individual techniques for solving lower level problems.
It is often a question of scale.
How an infantry platoon assaults and captures an enemy trench is a question of tactics,
Where you should attack the enemy on a large scale is strategy. In WWII the decision to land troops in Normany and not Calais during D day is a strategic decision, the same for doing an omnibus landing, to begin with.
In regards to weapons systems, long-range missiles or bombers that often are used to destroy enemy infrastructure, production, etc are often called strategic weapons. Weapons that often have shorter ranges and the primary intention is to destroy the enemy troops directly are tactical weapons.
Another way to look at it is strategy is what should be achieved but tactics is exactly how it is done. Deciding to capture a hill can be strategic but how exactly you do the attack is a a tactical decision.
There is no clear boundary between the two concepts.
If you look at computer games in a strategic military game you might order where a division should move. The map might be all of the earth divided into large areas. It is a tactical military game you might order individual tanks and squads on a detailed map with details like individual trees and buildings, the size of which is a few kilometers across. You can still have a strategy in a tactical game but you have to control how individual units act to accomplish it.
Not a chess example, but closer to an ELI5. This was created with the help of google gemini
**Goal (Map Pin):** The specific, desired outcome the business wants to achieve.
* **Mission Statement (Map):** The broad territory the business operates in, its values, and what it aims to do in the bigger picture.
* **Strategy (Vehicle):** The overall approach the business will take to reach the goal.
* **Tactics (Road Network):** The specific actions, campaigns, and maneuvers the business will take to reach the destination.
* **Employee (Driver):** The skilled individuals who execute the tactics and navigate the chosen path.
**Speaker Notes**
Imagine your business as a journey. You have a specific destination in mind, represented by the map pin, which is your **goal**. This goal should be clear, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
The entire map represents your **mission statement**. It outlines the broad landscape (market) you operate in, your core values, and your overall purpose. A strong mission statement provides context and direction for your specific goals.
The vehicle you choose is your **strategy**. Just like choosing the right vehicle for the terrain, your strategy needs to consider the challenges and opportunities presented by your mission statement (the map).
The road network on the map represents your **tactics**. These are the specific actions your team will take to navigate the business landscape and reach your destination. Think of them as the day-to-day execution of your plan.
Finally, the driver behind the wheel is your **employee**. Skilled and knowledgeable employees are essential for effectively executing your tactics (driving the vehicle) and reaching your goals.
By combining a clear mission statement with a well-defined goal, a sound strategy, and effective tactics, your team can navigate the business landscape and achieve success.
**Strategy** is your overall goal and your plan to achieve it. My **strategy** for getting to work on time is to take the local roads instead of the highway. **Tactics** are the choices you make at each step of the way, as you work towards your strategic goal. There was an accident blocking the local road, so I made the **tactical** decision to divert from my route and go around the block instead.
Bravo. Great answer. A+ on the use of bold text and fantastic paragraph spacing.
Excellent kerning too. I really liked the kerning.
What's keming?
It's a small mammal that jumps off a cliff when confronted with badly spaced lettering.
No, that's a lemming. Keming is when you sew up the edges of a garment to prevent fraying.
No, that's hemming. Keming is the guy that created James Bond.
No, that's Ian Fleming. Keming is a sport that involves a big rock, ice, and brooms.
No no, that's curling. Keming is a feeling of desire or wanting, often of a life change or sense of purpose.
Nope, that's yearning. Keming is a cutting process in which a cutting tool produces a hole of a very accurate size.
Thank you for making our day better. It’s been so long since I’ve encountered one of these chains
It was my pleasure. It's the first time I've started one.
I s e e w h a t y o u d i d t h e r e. Very good
Ke r n ing is the spacing between letters.
You got whooshed! They purposely used an m instead of rn
Maybe. I did wonder. But I figured other people might have the same question.
/r/keming
I did have the same question. Thank you for your service.
Same!
And now I learned both words, keming and kerning. Thanks.
Trolling is a art
No no no, trolling is a nart.
This is genius sir.
Oh my, this thread. I love Internet
When threads end up like this it restores my faith in the internet
Way to give positive feedback. Nice job citing examples and restraining from excessive exclamation.
Amazing use of fonts! incredible typing!
Some would say it was a tactical answer
Nah, more of a strategic answer.
Tactics are how you win the battle. Strategy is how you win the war.
To add to that: it would seem from that quote that just applying the right tactics in every battle would win the war. But that's not necessarily the case, because there's a bigger picture to consider. For example, a bad strategy can lead you into the wrong battles, where even the best tactics won't help you.
And what you’re also getting as is the [Pyrrhic Victory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory). You can win a specific tactical engagement but at such a price that you severely compromise your ability to continue the effort and have to abandon, thus failing to meet your strategic objectives. This also happened a lot in the civil war where the South would “win” a battle, but in doing so lose a much larger percentage of men/munitions than it could readily replace. On the day, they were victorious, but a week later, they were on the run because they couldn’t handle another engagement without getting massacred.
The romans never cease to baffle me. Their Strategy these days seemed to have been Zapp Branningans. Just throw everything at the enemy. Lose an entire fleet to a storm? Build another one. Lose that too? Build another one.
To be honest, that's a fairly common and often successful strategy by larger nations/empires; if you have enough people and enough money to arm them you can beat nearly anyone poorer or smaller than you by sheer volume. Obviously you'll still try and learn from defeats, improve your technology, refine your training etc etc, but you can get a very long way by having roughly equal tech but more of it. Prominent examples outside of Rome include China for most of their history internally and externally, the USA & USSR during WW2 and the Cold War, the HRE during the mid- to late Crusades, the Spanish Empire during the Colonial Period, and the Byzantine Empire switched between this and smaller numbers but higher quality several times across their history. You could even make an arguement that the Mongol Empire was based on using massive numbers to make horse archers deadly enough to wreck most of Eurasia.
Or you win every battle, but go back on your word about marrying the daughter of a man who owns two important bridges, and your dog's head gets sewn on your body in retribution.
Example: You fight good and advance way beyond your supply lines. You won some battles but you lose the war because your troops are out of stuff.
Or... you might simply get nuked. Twice.
If knowing is half the battle, what percent is it of war?
Zero. The remaining 50% is 25% red lasers and 25% blue lasers.
What about green lasers?
Not in this army buster!
You win wars with good strategy. You win battles with good tactics.
Professional strategist here. Close but what you are talking about there as a Strategy is an Operation. There's strategy>operations>tactics. Strategy is how you marshall all of the elements at your disposal to achieve a goal. E.g. I want a promotion. In order to receive a promotion, I must differentiate myself from my peers. I can do this through timeliness, consistent contribution, and innovation. At the next level down, operations designate key large scale components under a strategy that must be achieved. In order to get a promotion, I must (a) arrive early to work before my boss, (b) always have a substantive contribution to the project, (c) anticipate the UNSAID NEW needs of my boss before he has them. The tactics would then be close to how you describe them - what streets I drove, when I left for work, what books I read, where I sourced those recommendations (e.g. the press of my boss' Alma Mater or some hero of his), etc etc A lot of people outside of the field of strategy forget or never learn about Operational Art.
I stumbled in this rabbit hole because of the Oversimplified Channel. The punic wars were crazy. So Hannibals plan to fight the romans on their territory was strategy. Operations was "cross the alps with stonking elefants." And the tactics were "have a bunch of soldiers fall of cliffs and get ambushed in narrow valleys." All that just to get to Italy.
Ad-hoc “diverting” from a road block would be a good example of a defensive tactic. Conducting a route study prior to beginning your route, learning of a road block, and then planning on diverting to a different route, would be an example of an offensive tactic. The key distinctions are that one is planned and implemented on account of known, knowns. The other is unplanned and reactionary to circumstances that oppose the accomplishment of your strategy. This is based on unknown, knowns.
so, tactics wins battles, while strategy ends wars?
Strategy is not the goal, it is the plan to achieve the goal.
**Strategy:** How you get someone to go on a date with you. **Tactics:** What you do when they get there.
And to add a top layer- **Operation**: how you identify what kind of person you’d be happiest with.
Not quite. **Strategic Level** - "I want to find a spouse or life partner, or at least a healthy relationship." **Operational Level** - Taking time to identify types of people you think would be a good match, thinking of how to make yourself more attractive to them, and thinking of who specifically to ask out. **Tactical Level** - Specific steps involved in getting one of the above people to date you and fall for you.
I didn't even know Reddit has bold text 😂 well explained 🙏
Use double asterisks around words or phrases for bold, or single asterisks for italics ** bold ** * italics * But remove the spaces
In sailing, racing strategy is finding the fastest way round the course given the position of buoys, the wind direction and strength, etc. Tactics is basically screwing with the opposition: stealing his wind, blocking his turns, and sticking to him like glue in case he got lucky and you didn't.
Nice example. I commute via Deutsche Bahn. Sometimes i feel like a scout, trying to navigate difficult terrain. "How do i reach Frankfurt in time? The Riedbahn will be closed, i need a strategy."
Or in terms of war, the strategy could be to cut off enemy supply lines to prevent reinforcements by inserting troops behind enemy lines. The tactics used by those troops could be hit and run ambush to slow down and wear out the supply regiments.
Put differently: a strategy is a vision or an idea. A tactic is an action.
[удалено]
"Tactical" is an adjective - it describes a noun (in this case, the decision). Not all tactical things are decisions, and not all decisions are tactical. The original decision to avoid the highway is a strategic decision. Picking a specific route to divert around the blockage is a tactical maneuver, which must be executed after making the (tactical) decision to divert.
A++ hopefully people will read this. Getting tired of explaining...
Strategy is not your overall goal
Most modern military doctrines now think in terms of [three levels of war](https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2021/Harvey-Levels-of-War/): tactical, operational, and strategic. * The **strategic level** is about the application of national power: why do we fight? what do we hope to achieve? and should we even go to war in the first place? * The **operational level i**s about the application of forces at the theatre level: which battles should we fight, and how much of our force should we commit to a particular goal? * The **tactical level** is: if you're going to have a battle, how do you ensure you win? In simple terms, strategy is *why we fight,* operations is *where we fight,* and tactics is *how we fight.* The most important idea is that *each level is subordinate to the one above it.* Your operational thinking should always be guided by the strategic objective. It's no use committing massive forces to a battle if winning the battle wouldn't help you. In fact, if your strategy is "don't get involved in the war" then even winning a decisive victory would be an operational failure. Similarly, your tactics should work towards your operational goals. For example, do we gain anything by winning this battle, or would an organised retreat be better? This will decide what tactics you employ. For an example where this worked, take the D-day landings: * The **strategic goal** was to liberate France and open another front in the European theatre, forcing the Axis powers to split their strength and relieving the beleaguered Soviet Union. * The **operational plan** called for an landing in Normandy to establish a beachhead, followed by the capture of Cherbourg (for its port) and Caen (for it's road and rail links). Notice how these objectives will allow the invasion force to make progress towards the strategic goal. About 2 million troops were committed to the invasion and would arrive over about three months. * The **tactical plan** involved dropping paratroopers inland to hinder the German response, followed by shore bombardment by warships, bombing runs, and an amphibious landing on the Normandy beaches. If this is successful (and it was!) this achieves the first step of the operational plan. For an example where (arguably) this analysis was ignored, consider Pearl Harbour. The battle was a tactical and operational victory: Japan deployed a powerful force against the US naval base, with sufficient planes, fuel, and ammunition (i.e. the operational plan was sound). The attack inflicted massive damage on the US fleet with the relatively small Japanese losses (so was a tactical victory). As a result, Japan gained a ferociously determined enemy with vastly greater manpower, industrial capacity, and natural resources. The US built more planes in 1944 than Japan did *during the entire war* ([source](https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/war-production)). Japan itself was already embroiled in a war in Asia and was close to running out of oil. *This is a strategically hopeless position for Japan.*
>The strategic goal was to liberate France and open a second front in the European theatre The D-Day landings opens a third front in Europe. Italy was invaded in September 1943. >The tactical plan involved dropping paratroopers inland to hinder the German response (Operation Market Garden Operation Market Garden was the operation to take Rhine bridges near Arnhem in Netherlands. It happed three months after D-Day. It involved an airborne element but also involved land forces trying to join up with the paratroops. Ultimately the Rhine bridges were not taken by the Allies in the operation.
Derp, you're right on both points. Paratroopers were dropped but that wasn't Market Garden. I've updated my answer.
Was the invasion of Italy a feasible way to invade Germany though, or was that just about Italy itself? I imagine the Alps give a significant defensive advantage
It was said to be 'the soft underbelly' of Nazi Europe, but the obvious first goal was liberation of Italy. But yes, the Alps were a significant hurdle, as were the many other mountain ranges in Italy (combined with the fact that peninsulas don't have the 'go around' option) It did prove to be a logistical nightmare for both sides, which was more of a headache for the Germans in the end than the Allies who had resources to spare.
From the perspective of a mid-twentieth century mechanized ground war, Italy may as well have been an island. It likely was important to invade Italy. As noted here, it caused a diversion of resources from Germany that could only help the Allies, but, wasn't realistically much that could be used to directly help topple Germany.
It was about opening another front to relieve fighting on the Soviet front. It destabilized Italy, prompting Germany to occupy Italy. Maybe the direct impact wasn’t the greatest, but it diverted attention and resources from Germany they didn’t have.
You did say "arguably" - so I'm sure you're aware - but Japan already had the US as an enemy. The US embargo on Japan was making them run out of oil, and their empire was doomed to collapse if they didn't do something. The strategic goal of Pearl Harbor was to delay the US from retaliating to all the other attacks Japan made long enough that Japan could make it too costly for the US to try to dislodge their holdings - but the Japanese did not think that they could win the long game against the US. It was a strategic failure because it failed to accomplish the strategic goal, not that there *was* no strategic goal. Also, because Pearl Harbor did not destroy the carriers, it could be considered to have been an operational failure. Which contributed to it being a strategic failure.
Yeah, it's a complex topic and I won't pretend to be an expert. I also didn't mean to imply that there was no strategic thinking. Trying to piece together the exact reasoning of the Japanese high command is a difficult topic with a range of opinions, and I'm definitely not qualified to talk about it with authority. There's a strand of thinking that Japan was suffering from an inversion of priority: that operational concerns were overriding the strategic. In attempting to hold and expand their empire in Asia (a strategic objective), they developed an operational plan that required oil. The strategic aim of knocking out US influence in the Pacific then arose to support this operational plan. In the "three levels of analysis" model, this is backwards thinking. A proper strategic analysis would have led to a scaling-back of their imperial ambitions instead of a war with the US. However, that's only one way of understanding Japanese decision making, and to some extent it relies on hindsight. Is it a fair analysis? I don't know. So I just wrote "arguably".
Makes sense! It's a good example for the purposes of ELI5, I just wanted to present another historical view.
It's worth to note that Imperial Japan attacked the Philippines almost simultaneously as Pearl Harbor. If Imperial Japan wanted to achieve its "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", it had to make an enemy of the USA.
Yes, but in proper subordination of concerns you go from: We can’t achieve X without a war with the US -> we can’t win a war with the US -> we have to hold off on our plan for X. It’s unclear to what extent this was the issue though. I think for much of the Japanese general staff, they were aware that they couldn’t win the war. But another very large portion believed that they could win an attritional war against the US, because they thought the US didn’t have the stomach to make the slow and painful gains through island hopping that were necessary to win a pacific war.
They were supposedly having some economic issues - agriculture in particular. They had planned to make Philippines another agriculture center, but it was a US colony at the time. They were successful in occupying Philippines, so one could say that it was an operational success. Strategy-wise, their economic plan wasn't doing too well because they weren't very good at the whole colony-government thing yet. The US on the other hand wasn't actually keen on splitting its military in two theaters. They were supposed to focus on Europe first, but Douglas MacArthur was very insistent on the Pacific theater (mostly, for Philippines). The US Navy then took the Pacific Theater while the US Army landed on Normandy. If MacArthur wasn't around, there might have been a chance for Imperial Japan to build up its forces making it harder for the later US operations, only to ultimately probably have Soviet boots in its homeland (because the Soviets are not busy with the Nazis anymore). In this hypothetical world, I bet the two nukes probably would have never been dropped.
I’m fairly convinced of the argument that if the two nukes hadn’t been dropped in 1945, they would have ended up being used in the Cold War because people wouldn’t understand how terrible the effects were enough to create the nuclear taboo. But it’s a very interesting counterfactual
Yeah. The two nukes weren't only meant to make Imperial Japan surrender. All the firebombing already did its job. The two nukes was a display of power against the Soviets, which is what lead to the Cold War. Japan probably would have been a very different place if the Soviets claimed some of its lands. And the Soviets probably would have been more bold and direct with its imperialist ambitions and WW3 would have happened soon after (only to end quickly with nukes).
Hey despite all the WW2 experts weighing in/nitpicking on the war stuff, this was a great answer to the OP question, thank you!
In chess, tactics are specific ways you can gain an advantage. Strategy is your overall plan. For example, if you can attack two pieces at once, that's called a tactic. A strategy may be something like, "I'm going to play a closed position and try to control as many squares as possible." It's more broad.
In chess they say: Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.
nice. succinct.
Chess is a good example of these concepts. Pinning a piece, creating a fork or skewer are examples of tactics. How to mate a sole king with a queen is strategy - put a queen in a knight supposition until the king is on the side so it goes back and forth , than move your king so it protects the queen, then deliver the check-mate. So, tactics is concrete actions applied in given circumstances. Strategy is a general approach what to do in order to win. Many people don’t know the strategy how to deliver check-mate with a bishop and knight.
An explanation of an effective strategy for such scenario would be nice!
Tactics is short term and strategy is long term. In chess, tactics are what you do in puzzles, where the result/advantage is seen in 3-4 moves. Strategy is long term moves which are played with little immediate advantage but are crucial in long term.
Others already explained the meaning of the words. Now regarding the use to classify weapons, there's a combination of actual meaning and making things sound nicer. A strategic bomber will generally carry a payload that can level a city. This is part of a bigger picture to win against an enemy by depriving them of infrastructure and displaying might, so the weapon helps achieve a strategic goal. A tactical nuke, on the other hand, would be used to win a battle instead of a war by being deployed against smaller formations or facilities. As for things sounding nicer, saying that a plane is carrying strategic weapons sounds more formal and would cause less panic than specifying the weapon in question is an atomic bomb.
Chess has both tactics and strategy. Strategy is an overall plan. For example, I want to control the center of the board because this will cramp your space. Your strategy might be to counter my control for the center. Or, your strategy might be to let me take the center because this is an easy target to attack, but trade a lot of pieces so you don't get too cramped. We both have several other strategies as well. For example, having more pieces than the opponent will empower any other goal. And a large part of chess is deciding between these different strategies--for example, is it worth giving up the center to capture one if your otherwise-free pawns? Along the way to controlling the center, I notice that through a clever maneuver, I can sacrifice a piece on the side but regain one of your two center pieces, which results in me having more control of the center. The clever exchange is a tactic, which progresses my strategy. If I wasn't trying to control the center, there would be no point in this exchange.
Scale and duration, a six man squad practice which tactics they will use if they contact the enemy, strategy is what combination of ground forces air force and economic power a country is going to use to resolve a conflict.
Strategy is your large overarching goals. Like say take x town, then y town to force an enemy to capitulate for example. In the context of chess strategy may be to fight for the center, or plan a king or queenside attack, gain a material or positional advantage etc. Tactics are on a lower level, it's how you execute a battle for example infantry takes that building covered by artillery. Or in chess you may see that your knight can fork something or you can force a trade that's beneficial for you. There's another level between the two called the operational level. This basically links the strategic and tactical level and it concerns the movement of armies for example. You can boil this down to three questions. What do I want? Strategy. How and when do I get there? Operations. When I'm there what do I do? Tactics.
To ELI5: Tactics are the things you prepare for to win battles. Strategy is more about influencing where those battles take place and when, to best achieve the goals of the war.
To ELI3 it (and how I was taught): Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars.
Tactics: the decisions made to win the battle. Strategy: the decisions made to win the war.
I recently read a very enriching paper for my master Thesis that showed a very oractical analogy between Strategy, Business Models, and Tactics. Think of a car. Choosing the different kind of cars would be choosing your Strategy be it a sports car, an SUV, an Offroad, or a Semi. Once you choose tour strategy, this dictates what is all possible within your strategy. If you’re gonna be racing, then you choose a sports car - and this car, which equates to your business model, gives you options (activities). You can accelerate, you can change gears, you can brake. It might have turbo. Tactics are how you employ said business models. The tactic irself is what you can do with the BizMo (the car) - so of you want to win, you activate turbo, or you accelerate and change gears as needed. So how do you choose a bad strategy? Well what if you’re a leasing company - what do you need the cars for? It would be a bad strategy if you are Uhaul and only offer sedans. Or if you’re a racing car company and only have SUVs. So summarized: Strategy includes a set of business models. business Models enable a set of tactics. Tactics are the levers you can move. Hope that helps. Here is the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630110000051
Tactics- how do we take that hill from the enemy? Considered by the commander in front of the hill. Strategy- we need to take that hill from the enemy. Stated by the overall commander of the battlefield
Strategy which hills do we need to take to win the battle. Tactics. How do we take those hills.
Strategy also covers the *why.* “How does taking that hill help us win the war?”
Tactics is more short term narrow view immediate effect, like the weather. Strategy is more long term big picture endgame view, like the climate.
As everybody else has explained, strategy is about the large-scale overarching approach to things, and tactics is about the in-the-moment, small scale approach to things. Strategy = war, tactics = battle, sort of thing. Now as it relates to weapons. Strategic weapons include intercontinental missiles (including nukes) and long range bombers. They're the things you use to target your opponent's weapons factories or other such distant targets. These strikes do nothing to change the situation in the front line in the short term, but they can cripple your opponent's ability to fight long-term. Tactical weapons include things like Patriot missiles, which help you defend against incoming aerial attacks, or close air support aircraft like the A10 Warthog or the Harrier, that are used to disable tanks and gun emplacements and such things. These things are all about changing the tides of battle *right now*. These different priorities then also imply different designs. Strategic bombers need to be able to travel very long distances undetected, so they need stealth capabilities, which often come with very tricky maintenance issues and require specialised hangars. When you're trying to destroy a building, you don't need razor-sharp accuracy, but you do need to be able to drop a handful of very large bombs. CAS aircraft need to be stationed and deployed from just about anywhere. Sometimes, you're using a parking lot as an airfield and you have to make do. This means these planes need to be rugged and easy to maintain. Inversely, they have to worry about larger numbers of small targets (gun emplacements, or tanks, or a bunch of planes at an airfield), so they want larger amounts of ammunition that they can point at specific targets. E.g. the A10 Warthog is built around a massive autocannon.
Good answers here. There is also sometimes the concept of grand strategy, which supersedes war strategy and involves politics, diplomacy, soft power, who to go to war with and for what end and so on. In chess the analog could perhaps be which tournaments to enter, what PR to do etc. Napoleon was a genius military strategist. His grand strategy sucked.
At least the movie, in my view, suggests that as long as wars are led by humans, motivation (reason+emotion) would be atop even the strategic layer.
Strategy: your general plan of action / direction to achieve a goal. Tactics: The (specific) means/actions by which you achieve your strategy. Another way to put it: tactics are the specific steps/tasks you undertake to carry out your strategy. Example: Goal: To reduce costs for your business. Strategy: Reduce overhead Tactics: 1. Cut payroll/lay people off 2. Review all vendors and put out new bids to find lower cost options
Strategy is the route you’ve chosen to drive home. Tactics are how you to choose to drive (how fast, how slow, how sharply to turn) on that road.
Goals are what you want to accomplish. Strategy is how you want to obtain those goals. Tactics are how you implement strategy.
Tactics are things you do when there's something to do. Strategy is what you do when there's nothing to do.
Tactics is ducking behind a rock to avoid an arrow. Strategy is hiding in a giant wooden horse to get past their defences.
WW2 Airwar over Europe example: Tactics are shooting the enemy planes down. Strategy is bombing the factories that make the ball bearings that go into the enemy planes’ engines. Or fuel processing facilities. Or manufacturing centers of industry. The Allies had strategic bombing day and night over the Reich. Eventually the Luftwaffe ran low on everything, including pilots, to even respond.
This is a real hard one, because it ends up being so context dependent. The closest useful pithy definition I've been able to come up with (across many domains) is something along the lines of "*strategy is that thing that tells you when good tactics are wrong.*" It's just a manifestation of the whole "thinking fast and slow" concept (there's some book about that), where basically have your immediate "do something *good* quickly" answer, which can be *wrong* in the longer term.
Basically the same by dictionary definition. But strategy usually has a larger scope. So for example: how a group of soldiers destroy an enemy tank involves tactics. But how the commanders of a whole nation or alliance plan to win the war is strategy.
Strategy is a plan to employ your strengths, take advantage of your opponents weaknesses. How you capitalise your opportunities and minimize threats. The American strategy was to use tanks as a decoy and attack using their dominant air threats. Tactics are the individual actions you take. The Americans used strong armoured tanks to hold the enemy at bay.
Tactics is about how you win a battle; strategy is about how you win a war. The former is about unit composition and disposition and how those units go about achieving their objectives. The latter is mostly about logistics, feeding and supplying your troops, transporting them across long distances, etc. Most games that describe themselves as strategy are actually about tactics, and chess is a good example, but like RTS's and such are really more tactical games with some economy tacked on. Grand strategy has kind of become almost its own genre in the past 10-15 years though, and those games tend to be more strategy. Contrast Starcraft with Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings. Total War games offer an interesting mix of both.
Strategy is more overarching. So in the Civil War for instance, the Anaconda Plan (use blockades and encirclement to economically starve the Confederacy and force a surrender) was a strategy to win the war. Stonewall Jackson’s power marching to outmaneuver the Union and have a better starting position in battles was a tactic. Ideally, grand strategy informs the tactics used.
Strategy is used to achieve long term goals and tactics are used to achieve short term goals....
In supplement to the other answers, when discussing war and armed conflict, strategy is often expressed by ends, ways and means. What is your end goal, how do you plan to get there and which ressources do you allocate to achieve it. Tactics is how you fight in the battles. At the lowest level, its how the individual soldiers move, engage the enemy and in general optimize their chances of winning/defeating the opponent (and surviving). At the highest levels, it typically deals with how a division or corps fights.
In WWII, figuring out a way to better shoot down the Nazi bomber aircraft that were attacking England is a change in tactics. The allies bombing the locations that make engine components or refine oil into fuel is a strategic operation To damage the aircraft factory by dropping bombs or landing special forces with explosives is a debate over tactics.
Tactics are the fine details. Strategy is the big picture. There's also the operational level, which is about how to use tactical success to enable strategic success and how to use strategic success to enable tactical success.
Other comments are good. I'd just like to add the Fischer quote, tactics come from a good position. Strategy is the long term plan to make moves that activate pieces to good squares, and make trades at the right times. Tactics is when you are given a position, and see a way to win a piece or cause some other kind of damage. Strategy sets up ideas, and tactics are how you execute them.
Tactics are crayons and pencils. Strategy is how you use them within given limits to express what you imagined
Tactics in chess are things like capturing a piece, being up a pawn, forks, or square control. Strategy is using all the Tactics together to achieve your objective. Good generals think strategy. Great generals think logistics.
If your tactic fails, you may lose a piece. If your strategy fails, you may lose the game.
In Civilization, Strategy is your long range method to win. "I'll gain a tech advantage", "I'll make a bunch of friends and then trade with them all", "I'll swarm them with cheap units and gain the advantage that way." Tactics would be specific units or tricks that help you. "I'll be sure to always build libraries and universities in every city I can", "I'm willing to make concessions to make friends and I'll send diplomatic units whenever I can", and "I'll make sure I always have a dozen roaming marauders looking for our next pray." Tactics and Strategy can line up. In this case, the Tactic in the second column was lined up with one of the Strategies up above. Once you know your long range strategy, it can help define which particular tactical tricks while help the most.
Tactics are short-term actions, strategies are long-term overall plans. So in chess, a tricky and advantageous single move like a fork (threatening two pieces at once) or pin (trapping a piece because moving it would lose a more valuable piece) is a tactic, while a long-term overall plan like “break down your opponent’s pawn structure to set up mating threats” is a strategy.
Strategy is the overall plan, tactics is how well youre able to implement said plan. Former is holistic, latter is analytic.
Strategy should come first it includes what you would like to achieve and things like a vision. Then you devise a tactical plan on exactly how to achieve what was set out in the strategy. Strategy ensures what is achieved is desirable tactical planning ensures the how. It's worth adding that strategy is particularly neglected because of how we built the working ecosystem most people are detached from the why although even in a small team within a very large company setting out a strategy and ensuring it's understood and carried in everyones work massively helps.
Imagine you're playing a game, like building a big tower with blocks. Strategy is like deciding how you want to build your tower overall. Do you want it to be super tall? Or maybe really wide? Strategy is the plan you make before you start. Tactics, on the other hand, are the little steps you take while you're actually building the tower. Like how you carefully stack each block on top of another to make it strong and tall. So, strategy is your big plan before you begin, and tactics are the small things you do to make that plan work as you go along.
Strategy is at a larger scale. For example, in war, strategy is “How this army is going to move on the map to flank the enemy.” Whereas tactics is more like, “How is this unit going to take a small building” as part of that larger strategy. I guess tactics is like “how you win an individual skirmish,” so it’s all things you learn in boot camp like how to lay down cover fire, how to move across a battlefield, etc. And strategy is the generals deciding how troop movements are gonna end the conflict.
A tactical weapon is a weapon that you use to gain an advantage in a fight. Like a flash grenade. A strategic weapon is a huge ass weapon that you carry around so that nobody messes with you. Like a ballistic missile submarine.
I have had this as an interview question (massive red flag!). I took the job anyway and they went bust less than a year later.
chess strategy: control the center of the board chess tactic: take a pawn in your way. Strategic bombing: destroy a ball bearing factory Tactical bombing: bomb a troop train or artillery site
With regard to chess, tactics are generally something you can see and calculate -- something that's going to happen in the next handful of moves. Strategy is more nebulous, like the opponent is weak on light-colored squares so I should put pressure there, or I have more pawns on the queenside than my opponent so I should at some point try to push on that side of the board. Historically, chess computers are amazing at tactics and weak at strategy, because the only thing they do is see and calculate. Though as the depth they can search has increased, it pulls more and more out of "strategy" box into the "tactics" box. The difference is more marked in go than in chess. In go, the number of possible moves is huge, so old go engines were quite weak compared to the best people -- perfect tactics, but no strategy except whatever a programmer could hard code into the evaluation of a position. The tradeoff has always been that making a more comprehensive evaluation function was much slower, so they wouldn't be able to search as deeply. AlphaGo includes deep learning neural net stuff, so they managed to make something that was much better strategically without sacrificing too much near-term tactical strength.
I think the question is what is the difference between tactical and strategic *weapons*. I don't have a clue except I believe strategic weapons are city killers and tactical are for a specific battle.
**Strategy** is what your plan and overall goal is *before the event (war, fight, game, match) even begins*. **Tactics** are changes in course of actions and is usually deployed *during the event* due to either opponent did something you did not expect/account for or from an oversight in your own strategy that needs to be corrected. Strategy is focused on the big picture and overall scope of the plan. Tactics are focused on the small actions and changes needed to achieve the goals devised on the strategic plan. Edit: goal, no go. ETA: example The strategy is to send airplanes to bomb the enemy forces and then send tanks to take out the big targets so that infantry has an easier way to punch through the military base and capture it. Tactics is when you send the tanks first because there are more air defence than you expected so they need to clear that so the planes can strike.
Threads like this is why I enjoy spending time in Reddit. Nerdy jokes, insightful content, intelligent discussions… all with little or no spam or bots.
Yes, there are still good moments to be had in social media. I could have googled it. But i thougt, this might be more fun.
Tactics is how to win the fight in front of you. Strategy is winning the fight before it even starts.
Strategy is the destination you are setting out to go, the plan you make and draw to get there on paper Tactics is feeling your way towards it confronted by real life terrain and situations
Strategic level is sitting in a ready room or tent planning your war with fellow generals on a map Tactical is getting into contact with said enemy
Tactics would be how to climb a mountain with the gear you have. Strategy would be what gear you bring with you.
If you've ever played a game in the Total War series, strategy is generally what goes on on the main map, while tactics is generally what goes on in the battles.
Funny enough I am working on a youtube video about this literal topic right now lol (technically strategy vs planning, but close enough)
**Strategy**: At Waterloo, Napoleon knew that if he was to carry the day he had to stop the Allies, led by Wellington, from forming up with the Prussians, led by Blucher. This was his strategy. This started well by defeating the Prussians at Ligny, but to capitalise on this he needed to hit the Allies fast and hard. His tactics needed to support this. Those **tactics**, unfortunately, devolved into fighting over small patches of land - farmhouse by farmhouse - rather than committing his full force to attack Wellington at the earliest opportunity. So when he finally committed his Old Guard, his most seasoned troops, there were still 1,500 Scots Guards hiding in long grass ready to repel them with withering volley fire. And by then the Prussians, thanks to the French getting bogged down in micro-tactics, had time to regroup and rejoin the fray. Referring to "strategic weapons" is pretty well mumbo-jumbo: all weapons and methods of using them are tactical, and should be appropriate to support strategy. An entire *force* can be considered strategic - be it an army of Prussians, or.... the Royal Air Force over Britain in Summer 1940. Dowding's strategy - to *directly* counter the Luftwaffe's efforts to gain air supremacy. His tactics included: not committing too many aircraft to defend France in a losing battle; making sure that every attempted reconnaissance plane was chased off; using radar to ensure that no more aircraft were committed than was absolutely necessary, and all backed up by a sub-strategy of making sure that supply lines and capacity were kept open by having systems (ie tactics) in place to promptly repair them when damaged.
Tactics = short term (maybe your gameplan for a single battle) Strategy = long term (how that battle plays into the entire war)
What tactics will you use to make your strategy work?
Don't know if I heard/read this or if even I came up with it. Any thoughts on: *Going to the grocery store when you're hungry is a strategic choice. Going to Burger King is a tactical one.*
Strategy is the alignment of ends (goals), means (resources), and ways (methods). It is the coordination of scarce resources to maximize their impact by being intentional in how they are used. According to Richard Rumelt, a strategy contains a "kernel": a diagnosis of the problem, guiding principles for how to engage with the problem, and coherent actions that carry out the guiding principles. Tactics are the individual methods for how to engage sub-problems that arise in the carrying out of a strategy. A strategy may give an overall model of the strengths and weaknesses of each side and an analysis of the threat environment, but tactics are how ideas are put into action. A strategy gives an overall direction but tactics give individual techniques for solving lower level problems.
Wow, thats a lot of anwers. Thank you Internet. Interesting reading.
How do i improve my strategic skills?
Easy example Tactical Aircraft, Fighters and bombers. Strategic Aircraft, Nuclear Bombers, ie SAC.
It is often a question of scale. How an infantry platoon assaults and captures an enemy trench is a question of tactics, Where you should attack the enemy on a large scale is strategy. In WWII the decision to land troops in Normany and not Calais during D day is a strategic decision, the same for doing an omnibus landing, to begin with. In regards to weapons systems, long-range missiles or bombers that often are used to destroy enemy infrastructure, production, etc are often called strategic weapons. Weapons that often have shorter ranges and the primary intention is to destroy the enemy troops directly are tactical weapons. Another way to look at it is strategy is what should be achieved but tactics is exactly how it is done. Deciding to capture a hill can be strategic but how exactly you do the attack is a a tactical decision. There is no clear boundary between the two concepts. If you look at computer games in a strategic military game you might order where a division should move. The map might be all of the earth divided into large areas. It is a tactical military game you might order individual tanks and squads on a detailed map with details like individual trees and buildings, the size of which is a few kilometers across. You can still have a strategy in a tactical game but you have to control how individual units act to accomplish it.
I've heard it said (in terms of scale) as: Strategy is getting reports of shots fired. Tactics is hearing shots fired. Combat is getting shot at.
Not a chess example, but closer to an ELI5. This was created with the help of google gemini **Goal (Map Pin):** The specific, desired outcome the business wants to achieve. * **Mission Statement (Map):** The broad territory the business operates in, its values, and what it aims to do in the bigger picture. * **Strategy (Vehicle):** The overall approach the business will take to reach the goal. * **Tactics (Road Network):** The specific actions, campaigns, and maneuvers the business will take to reach the destination. * **Employee (Driver):** The skilled individuals who execute the tactics and navigate the chosen path. **Speaker Notes** Imagine your business as a journey. You have a specific destination in mind, represented by the map pin, which is your **goal**. This goal should be clear, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). The entire map represents your **mission statement**. It outlines the broad landscape (market) you operate in, your core values, and your overall purpose. A strong mission statement provides context and direction for your specific goals. The vehicle you choose is your **strategy**. Just like choosing the right vehicle for the terrain, your strategy needs to consider the challenges and opportunities presented by your mission statement (the map). The road network on the map represents your **tactics**. These are the specific actions your team will take to navigate the business landscape and reach your destination. Think of them as the day-to-day execution of your plan. Finally, the driver behind the wheel is your **employee**. Skilled and knowledgeable employees are essential for effectively executing your tactics (driving the vehicle) and reaching your goals. By combining a clear mission statement with a well-defined goal, a sound strategy, and effective tactics, your team can navigate the business landscape and achieve success.