204 MILITARY THOUGHT Evolution of Operational Art Maj. Gen. V.K. KOPYTKO (Res.) Doctor of Military Sciences, Professor Vasily Kyrillovich KOPYTKO was born in Minsk Region on Novem- ber 12, 1948. He finished Kazan Higher Tank Command School (1970), Armored Troops Academy (1982), and General Staff Academy (1991). He held command and staff positions with the Group of Soviet Forces in Ger- many, in Odessa Military District, and Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff. From 1992 to 2003, senior teacher, lecturer, deputy chief, professor (as of November 2003), Operational Art Department, Gen- eral Staff Academy. Doctor of Military Sciences (1994), professor with Operational Art Department (2000), Merited Scientist of the Russian Fed- eration (2007). In the theory and practice of military art, operational art is wedged between strategy and tactics. It proceeds from strategy and obeys it. In turn, it is superior to tactics and defines its objectives and development vectors. There is a feedback too. Improved tactics and new methods of combat bring influence to bear on operational art that influences progress in strategy. The nature of interconnection between the above components of military art is a constant and depends on a number of factors. These are developments in weapons and military equipment; in composition, state, and organization and establishment of troops (forces) of opposing parties; in potential adversary’s views on methods of military (combat) operations; in experience of wars and armed conflicts; in the content of national military doctrines, etc. The present-day situation in the world is characterized by the following: the more advanced nations possess nuclear and long-range precision weapons, as well as efficient reconnaissance, navigation and C&C systems; the RF Armed Forces are increasingly likely to wage local wars and armed conflicts. Under these circumstances, the role and significance of operational art grow immeasurably. As distinct from strategy and tactics that have been developing since the time armies and wars came into being, the operational art emerged much later.Evolution of Operational Art 205 Russian scientific literature does not offer any cut-and-dried answers to when the operational art took off the ground. Obviously, there is no need to look for some concrete date either: the historical process knows not any clear-cut boundaries between stages in the development of military art. Forms of employment of armed forces other than strategic but clearly exceeding the framework of tactical came into being as early as the 18th centu- ry. For example, Peter I’s 12,000-strong flying corps (Corps volant) defeated a sixteen-thousand Swedish force under General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt, who was marching to reinforce the army of the Swedish King Charles XII, in the bat- tle of Lesnaya in 1708.! This battle was not strategic in nature, and yet it later helped to win a strategic victory in the battle of Poltava. Large operational formations—field armies— Took shape in the early 19th century as the scale of warfare grew, weapons improved, and major states built up the strength of their armed forces. Before Russia’s Patriotic War of 1812, the Russian forces were divided into three armies (Ist and 2nd Western and 3rd Reserve). Napoleon I began forming armies of his own in 1913. Later these sprang up in Prussia (1866), Japan (1904), and other countries. More often than not, however, the theory of military art linked their employment with tactics. At the same time, the 1812 operations? by Admiral P.V. Chichagov’s army, for example, and by Gen. P.C. Wittgenstein’s Ist Infantry Corps, which, pursuant to the order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Amny Field Marshal M.I. Kutuzov, were due to rapidly move to the river Betez~ ina, cut the road before the retreating French troops, and help the friendly main forces to encircle them, cannot be classified as tactical. The overall objective fac- ing the Russian army (to encircle and rout Napoleon I’s army) was a strategic one, while the objectives that were pursued by Chichagov and Wittgenstein clearly exceeded the tactical framework. Even though their units were somewhat delayed on the march and failed to carry out their orders in full, they neverthe- less made an important contribution to the enemy’s defeat. That operational art was coming into its own became particularly obvi- ous in the wars of the latter half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. The capitalist mode of production that asserted itself in that period took care of what was rapid by the contemporary standards development of productive forces. This circumstance was behind the invention and mass-scale adoption in the armies of better weapons (rifled-bore artillery, machine-guns, tanks, aircraft, etc.). The strength of armed forces grew dramatically; manpower acquisition in almost all European countries was on the basis of newly-introduced conscription. Rail con- struction, advances in other types of transportation, and invention of long-range communications (radio, telegraph) made it possible to transfer forces over long distances. They also enabled concentration and deployment of large force group- ings within brief timeframes, better supplies and better C&C. In Prussia’s wars against Austria and France, and in the Russo-Japanese war, the military operations unfolded over a broad front, were staggered in time and206 MILITARY THOUGHT space, and lasted for long periods. The combat effort was echeloned in depth. The content of warfare was now a totality of a number of battles, each of which, in turn, was an armed clash between large masses of infantry, cavalry and artillery that pursued numerous engagements of different nature. The Prussian Field Mar- shal, Helmut von Moltke, for example, deployed, in 1866, a 300,000-strong force against Austria. The force was made up of three separate armies and held a front 300 kilometers long, something that inflicted upon him the censure of the then predominant supporters of Napoleon I’s theory of military art. His victory, how- ever, demonstrated that the period of wars that achieved success by one “gener- al battle” was over. Three Russian and five Japanese armies operated during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. During World War I, a number of armies reached ten in France and fifteen in Russia, Germany, Britain, and Austro-Hungary. Following the Russo-Japanese war, the more progressive military theorists in Russia were the first to suggest that military operations which exceeded the tactical framework and yet were not strategic in scale should be singled out as a distinct part of military art. They defined them as “army engagement” or “engagement by large masses.” Simultaneously the Russian military thought was again the first to substantiate the necessity of creating an intermediate echelon between the supreme command and a large number of armies which it was no longer able to control effectively. As a result, fronts were created in Russia dur- ing World War I as the top formations of the armed forces in the theaters of oper- ations. Generally, however, the early 20th-century military theory continued to be dominated by precepts clinging to the postulated “invariable principles” of mili- tary art; no in-depth theoretical investigations into how to employ fronts and armies were undertaken. Russia entered World War I with old views: a theory of military art that included strategy as a doctrine of warfare and tactics as a doc- trine on the engagement. This was indicative of a considerable gap existing, in that period, between theory and practice. Likewise, practice was ahead of theory in the years of World War I, when army operation finally took shape as a category of operational art. For example, four armies (8th, 11th, 7th, 9A) conducted operations during the offensive of the South-Western Front under the command of General A.A. Brusilov (May- August, 1916). Each of the armies advanced over a front of 80 to 130-140 kilo- meters wide at a speed of 6-7 km a day (in the history of military art this opera- tion is known as the “Brusilov breakthrough”). Thorough preparations for army operations, and the unexpectedness of simultaneous attacks launched along five axes within the 450-kilometer zone (the breakthrough was carried out in 13 loca- tions that measured a total of 35 km in width) enabled the Russian forces to ram through the strong enemy position defenses and advance 80-120 kilometers. Manpower and artillery were massed in the main attack sectors, exceeding the