What is Tactic Force?

A tactic is a conceptual action or short series of actions to achieve a short-term goal. This action can be implemented as one or more specific tasks. The term is commonly used in military, business, and protest contexts and sports, chess, or other competitive activities. The word originated from the Ancient Greek that means "art of arrangement".

A strategy is a set of guidelines to achieve an overall objective, whereas tactics are the specific actions aimed at stick to those guidelines.

Military tactics encompass the art of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefield. They involve applying four battlefield functions related to kinetic or firepower, mobility, protection or security, and shock action.

Tactics are a separate function from logistics, command and control. In contemporary military science, tactics are the lowest of three warfighting levels, the higher levels being the strategic and operational levels.

Tactical Functions

Here are the following functions of tactic force, such as:

1. Kinetic or firepower

Beginning with melee and missile weapons such as clubs and spears, the kinetic or firepower function of tactics has developed along with technological advances. The emphasis has shifted over time from the close-range melee and missile weapons to longer-range projectile weapons.

Kinetic effects were generally delivered by the javelin, sword, spear, and bow until the Romans introduce artillery.

2. Mobility

Mobility, which determines how quickly a fighting force can move, was for most human history limited by a soldier's speed on foot, even when beasts of the burden carried supplies.

With this restriction, most armies could not travel more than 32 kilometers (20 mi) per day unless traveling on rivers. Only small elements of a force such as a cavalry or specially trained light troops could exceed this limit. This restriction on tactical mobility remained until the latter years of World War I when the tank's advent improved mobility sufficiently to allow decisive tactical manoeuvre.

Although full tactical mobility was not achieved until World War II, armoured and motorized formations achieved remarkable successes. However, large elements of World War II's armies remained reliant on horse-drawn transport, limiting tactical mobility within the overall force.

Tactical mobility can be limited by the use of field obstacles, often created by military engineers.

3. Protection and security

Personal armour has been worn since the classical period to provide a measure of personal protection, which was also extended to include the mount's barding. The limitations of armour have always been weight and bulk and its consequent effects on mobility and human and animal endurance.

By the 18th and 19th centuries, personal armour had been largely discarded until the re-introduction of helmets during World War I in response to artillery's firepower. Armoured fighting vehicles increased during World War II, and after that war, body armour returned for the infantry, particularly in Western armies.

Fortifications, which have been used since ancient times, provide collective protection, and modern examples include roadblocks, minefields, entrenchments, and barbed wire. Like obstacles, fortifications are often created by military engineers.

4. Shock action

Shock action is a psychological function of tactics as a physical one and can be significantly enhanced by surprise. It has been provided by charging infantry and chariots, war elephants, cavalry and armoured vehicles, which provide momentum to an assault.

For example, it has also been used defensively by the drenching flights of arrows from English longbowmen at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, which caused the French knights' horses to panic.

During early modern warfare, the use of the tactical formations of lines and columns had a greater effect than the firepower of the formations alone.

During World War II, the combined effects of German machine guns and tank gun firepower were enhanced by accurate indirect fire and air attack.

In both the early modern and World War II examples, the enemy's cumulative psychological shock effect was often greater than the actual casualties incurred.

Development over Time

The development of tactics has involved a shifting balance between the four tactical functions since ancient times, and changes in firepower and mobility have been fundamental to these changes.

Various models have been proposed to explain the interaction between the tactical functions and individual fighting arms' dominance during different periods.

Combined Arms Tactics

The synchronization of the various fighting arms to achieve the tactical mission is known as combined arms tactics. One method of measuring tactical effectiveness is the extent to which the arms, including military aviation, are integrated on the battlefield.

A key principle of effective combined arms tactics is that all combined arms teams need the same mobility level and sufficient firepower and protection to achieve maximum potential.

Costly and painful lessons have dogged the history of the development of combined arms tactics. For example, while German commanders in World War II clearly understood from the outset, the key principle of combined arms tactics outlined above, British commanders were late to this realization.

Successful combined arms tactics require the fighting arms to train alongside each other and be familiar with each other's capabilities.

Tactical Bombing

Tactical bombing is aerial bombing aimed at targets of immediate military value, such as combatants, military installations, or military equipment.

This is in contrast to strategic bombing, attacking enemy cities and factories to cripple future military production and enemy civilians' will to support the war effort, to debilitate the enemy's long-term capacity to wage war.

A tactical bomber is a bomber aircraft with an intended primary role of tactical bombing, even though strategic bombers have been used in tactical bombing operations.

Tactical bombing is employed for two primary assignments. Aircraft provides close air support attack targets in nearby proximity to friendly ground forces, acting in direct support of the ground operations. Air interdiction attacks tactical targets that are distant from or otherwise not in contact with friendly units.

Tactical Wargame

Tactical wargames are a type of wargame that models military conflict at a tactical level, i.e., units range from individual vehicles and squads to platoons or companies.

These units are rated based on types and ranges of individual weaponry. The first tactical wargames were played as miniatures, extended to board games, and they are now also enjoyed as video games.

The games are designed so that knowledge of military tactics will facilitate good gameplay. Tactical wargames offer more of a challenge to the designer, as fewer variables or characteristics inherent in the simulated units are directly quantifiable.

Modern commercial board wargaming avoided tactical subjects for many years, but since initial attempts at the subject appeared, it has remained a favorite topic among wargamers.

Perhaps the most successful board wargaming system ever designed, advanced squad leader, is set at the tactical level.

Difference between Tactics and Strategy

Below is the difference between Tactics and Strategy into the following breakdown, such as: