Tactics

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For the manga and anime, see Tactics (manga).

Tactics is the collective name for methods of winning a small-scale conflict, performing an optimization, etc. This applies specifically to warfare, but also to economics, trade, games and a host of other fields such as negotiation.

Tactics and strategy are often confused:

Tactics are the actual means used to gain a goal. The US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms defines the tactical level as
the level of war at which battles and engagements are planned and executed to accomplish military objectives assigned to tactical units or task forces. Activities at this level focus on the ordered arrangement and maneuver of combat elements in relation to each other and to the enemy to achieve combat objectives.
Strategy is the overall plan.

An example of the difference:

The overall goal is to win a war against another country.
The strategy is to undermine the other nation's ability to wage war by annihilating their military.
The tactics (told to the combatants) are to do very specific things in a specific place.

Michel de Certeau writes of the differences in The Practice of Everyday Life. Like strategy, tactics operate in space. However, unlike a strategy which creates its own autonomous space, “a tactic is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. … The space of a tactic is the space of the other” (ibid., 36-37). A tactic is deployed “on and with a terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power.” One who deploys a tactic “must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them. It creates surprises in them” (ibid. 37). Tactics, then, are isolated actions or events that take advantage of opportunities offered by the gaps within a given strategic system yet the tactician never holds onto these advantages. Tactics cut across a strategic field, exploiting gaps in it to generate novel and inventive outcomes.

Frequently, in military science fiction, "tactical" is the name given over to the shipboard department responsible for the operation of a warship's weaponry and defense. The commissioned officers and non-commissioned personnel assigned to tactical duties are called tactical officers and gunner's mates respectively, and are trained to do everything from sensor sweeps to weapons control to coordination of fleet activities. In the Honorverse, the "tactical officer" career track is seen as the "fast track" to command rank.

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