School of Advanced Military Studies

The Pieces of a Military Chessboard School of Advanced Military Studies

This book examines Jomini's theoretical components of a theater of operations, including decisive points, lines of operations, pivots of maneuver, and pivots of operations, to determine their contemporary significance to operational design. This design involves the dynamics of mass moving through time and space in a prescribed direction to achieve campaign aims. The operational artist's task of orchestrating the employment of force-mass in time and space to achieve his aim has become more difficult in light of the expansion of the military chessboard called the theater of operations. The ratio of combat forces to space has steadily decreased from the time of Napoleon to the present because of technological advances in warfare, such as mechanization and increases in the range, accuracy, and lethality of weapons. The effect of these advances is the expansion of the theater of operations and a tendency toward nonlinear warfare. Our ability to focus force-mass in time and space will become more important as the space of the theater of operations increases and the ratio of combat forces to space decreases. The study concludes that in addition to defining the theater of operations in space, Jomini's components of the military chessboard serve to direct the dynamic of force-mass moving through time and space to achieve the aim of the campaign. The major task confronting the operational artist in a nonlinear theater of operations will be determining the vector direction of combat force application required to defeat an enemy center of gravity. Once he determines this vector direction, he can design the theater of operations to support force application in that direction. Jomini's components of a theater of operations, if used, assist with this task.