The Reconnaissance Battle & Levels of War

The Reconnaissance Battle is fought at all three levels of war:

• the Tactical
• the Operational
• and the Strategic

“The reconnaissance battle begins before the first operational stage and continues until the culminating point is reached. These continuous reconnaissance battles are carried out ceaselessly before, during and after all military campaigns. "The first phase of every battle is a battle for information. Reconnaissance is the active measure of acquiring information, so the recon battle is one side fighting to get information while the other attempts to deny it..." Main force maneuver, which usually occurs after the reconnaissance phase, is possible during the reconnaissance battle. Victory will be jeopardized if the reconnaissance battle is lost.”

From Fast-Moving; Hard-Striking War:


In WWI the German Army discovered there were three levels of war: The tactical; the operational; and the strategic.

In WWII, many German Army and Soviet Army victories were predicated on the knowledge of those three levels. In the meantime, the Americans, British and French did not know there was anything but the tactical and strategic levels of war until the 1980s. In that decade, the US Army discovered the connecting link between tactical and strategic level warfare, known as the operational level. Then they learned from the Soviets the fact that all wars are won at the operational level, which requires the practices of the Operational Art.

The Levels Of War

• Strategic: Overall war plan and direction that might be applied to separate theaters of war (i.e. large geographic divisions where either independent or multiple army groups are deployed), or strategic directions. Operational Art is responsive to strategic dictates.
• Operational: The arena where campaigns are planned and led in order to achieve theater goals. Campaigning requires the practice of Operational Art, the essence of maneuver warfare. Operational Art consists of the integration of tactical efforts into major operations, subsets of campaigns, and campaigns. Force employed at this level ranges from combined arms reinforced corps to several armies or army groups. Campaigns are multiple maneuver mixes of deception, maneuver, battles, and pursuit. Tactics is responsive to Operational Art's dictates.
• Tactical: The building blocks of campaigns where small corps, divisions and below, fight engagements, subsets of battle, and battles.

From Center of Gravity a QuikManeuvers.com publication