LESSON 2
INTRODUCTION TO BATTLE ANALYSIS
OVERVIEW
This lesson defines the concept of battle analysis and its function. The Army's battle analysis methodology format is
explained and then applied to a historical battle. The purpose of this lesson is both to introduce you to battle analysis and
to demonstrate how to conduct your own battle analysis.
LEARNING EVENT 1
WHAT IS BATTLE ANALYSIS?
According to the dictionary, the word "analysis" may be defined as:
1. The separation of a thing into the parts or elements of which it is composed.
2. An examination of a thing to determine its parts or elements; also, a statement showing the results of such an
examination.
In other words, analysis occurs when you take something apart for the purpose of determining what the parts or elements
are.
Battle analysis is the systematic examination of a campaign, battle, or other military operation. Battle analysis is
conducted by defining and studying the component parts of an action and the relationship between these parts to discover
the true nature of the event.
An analysis might be compared to bringing home a plastic scale-model airplane kit and opening it to find the manufacturer
had neglected to include the illustrated instructions. If you are going to have a prayer of assembling the model, you are
going to have to carefully study each of those myriad plastic parts, define each part's relationship to each other part and
their relationship to the whole.
Basically, the process of analyzing battles is the same. Your objective with battles is to find the relationships between the
parts rather than simply to reassemble the whole.
The value of analysis is that once you have taken the thing apart and determined what it is composed of, you can draw
conclusions about such things as:
o
How the parts or elements affect each other.
o
If one element is altered, how will the other elements react?
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