Military campaign

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In the military sciences, a military campaign is a term applied to large scale, long duration, significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of inter-related military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called a war. The term derives from the plain of Campania when it was a place of annual wartime operations by the armies of the Roman Republic.

1 Definition
2 Conduct of campaigns
3 Campaign evaluation
4 References
5 Sources
6 See also

Definition

A military campaign denotes the time during which a given military force conducts combat operations in a given area (often referred to as AO, area of operation). A military campaign may be executed by either a single Armed Service, or as a combined services campaign conducted by land, naval, air and space forces.

A military campaign is conducted with the purpose of achieving a particular desired resolution of a military conflict as its strategic goal, usually within a clearly defined resource, geographic and time limited criteria. Although the duration of a campaign may be as short as a few weeks, due to the nature of campaign goals, they usually last several months, or even a year as defined by Trevor N. Dupuy.

A campaign is a phase of a war involving a series of operations related in time and space and aimed towards a single, specific, strategic objective or result in the war. A campaign may include a single battle, but more often it comprises a number of battles over a protracted period of time or a considerable distance, but within a single theatre of operations or delimited area. A campaign may last only a few weeks, but usually lasts several months or even a year.^[1]

Conduct of campaigns

Like all military operations, the military campaigns are conducted as large military projects that include the phases:

Initiating – clear idea of the campaign's military, political, economic, social or environmental goals
Planning – where the General Staff define objectives, time, scope and cost of the campaign
Executing – the coordination of forces and resources in logistic and combat operations
Controlling – the monitoring of the progress of the campaign when compared to its baseline plan
Concluding – acceptance or rejection of the campaign outcomes by the directing command structure

Many historical campaigns are so named as misnomers to either increase or reduce the perception of operations for other than military reasons.

Campaign evaluation

The success of a military campaign is evaluated based on the degree of achievement of planned goals and objectives through combat and noncombat operations. This is determined when one of the belligerent military forces defeats the opposing military force within the constraints of the planned resource, time and cost allocations. The manner in which a force terminates its operations, often influences the public perception of the campaign's success. The end of a campaign is either followed by the transition of military authority to a civil authority and the redeployment of forces, or a permanent installation of a military authority in the occupied area.

Military campaigns, inside and outside of defined wars, may exceed the original or even revised planning parameters of scope, time and cost. Such stalled campaigns, for example the western front in World War I, were formerly called "stalemates" but in the late 20th century themetaphor of a quagmires was often applied. Such a situation may arise of various factors such as:

a small hope for victory
poorly-defined objectives
no clear exit strategy

It is used pejoratively to describe operations alleged to have failed to achieve their goals. The use of "quagmire" in reference to military campaigns in political debates emerged during the Vietnam War where campaigns were promised, but failed to deliver victory. In the United States it may specifically refer to that conflict and the Iraq War.

References

^ p.65, Dupuy

Sources

Dupuy, T.N., Understanding war: History and Theory of Combat, Leo Cooper, London, 1992