a war and a battle

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Greg Chalik, 35 years reading military, economic and cultural histories

Answered Nov 3 2015

This is an excellent question, and one in my humble opinion fairly central to study of Military Theory and Military History in a comparative way using operational research methodologies.In terms of military history literature many common English terms have been, and still are, used by writers almost indiscriminately to refer to military events: war, campaign, operation, battle, mission, engagement, action, task &combat.Yet these words have a meaning, and they ought to have a more focused definition within the disciplines of Military Theory and History to help contextualise the events they describe.My personal scheme is to identify a war as a prolonged strategic conflict with a duration exceeding at least two theatre seasons.A single season military activity, commonly about three months, is a campaign.A campaign can include several multi-week operations that can be strategicand/or operational in scale and scope.Operations are completed via several, perhaps days-long battles that are intended to produce operational outcomes. Battles are always tactical.Battles are constructed from missions which may last about a day (24 hours) in a modern technological setting.Engagements are those parts of the battle which, lasting up to several hours, can describe different phases of the battle progress.Actions last about an hour, and are generally short and sharp contacts between opposing forces, including at minor-tactical echelons.Tasks are those micro-parts of actions that are required to resolve the actions, usually requiring well under an hour.Combats are the lowest descriptors of warfare, conducted interpersonally in minutes, such as hand-to-hand combat, formerly described by the French term melee.As examples of comparative analisys this offers, it is possible to say that the proverbial 'battle of David and Goliath' was a combat, and the Battle of Britain was a two-campaign phase of the Second World War's West European Theatre, the Battle of Waterloo was indeed a tactical battle within an Allied operation to bar Napoleon's advance towards Brussels. Operation Desert Shield was in fact a multi-campaign war culminating in Operation Deser Storm, a number of concurrently fought battles over an operational depth with strategic outcomes. Operation Neptune Spear was executed in 38 minutes making it an action, though the larger logistic considerations that took days may make it a 'battle' that culminated in a single action. What Wikipedia terms Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy, was neither, but rather a Summer-long campaign. On the other hand while most people think of the beach landings (D-Day) as battles for the beaches, in fact the beachhead security was not establised for a week (an operation), and breakout not for just over a fortnight (a separate operation).

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-war-and-a-battle

※ Operation Deser Storm => Operation Desert Storm,