A tactic is a method employed to help achieve a certain goal. Military tactics refers to the study of actions undertaken in warfare, but due to its use describing a broad range of subjects, the term is frequently used in theoretical fields like economics, trade and games and a host of other practical fields like negotiation and navigation. Military tactics (Greek: Taktikē, the art of organizing an army) is the collective name for methods of engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. ... For other uses of War, see War (disambiguation). ... Face-to-face trading interactions among on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor Economics, as a social science, studies the production, distribution, and consumption of resources. ... A fruit stand at a market. ... Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game that requires little equipment. ... Negotiation is the process where interested parties resolve disputes, agree upon courses of action, bargain for individual or collective advantage, and/or attempt to craft outcomes which serve their mutual interests. ... Table of geography, hydrography, and navigation, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...

Strategy versus Tactics

Military usage

The terms tactics and strategy are often confused: tactics are the actual means used to gain a goal, while strategy is the overall plan, which may involve complex patterns of individual tactics. The United States Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms defines the tactical level as A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, as differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand. ... The United States Department of Defense, abbreviated as DoD or DOD and sometimes called the Defense Department, is a civilian Cabinet organization of the United States government. ...

...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.

If, for example, the overall goal is to win a war against another country, one strategy might be to undermine the other nation's ability to wage war by preemptively annihilating their military forces. The tactics involved might describe specific actions taken in a specific locations, like surprise attacks on military facilities, missile attacks on offensive weapon stockpiles, and the specific techniques involved in accomplishing such objectives.

Other usages

Referring to non-military uses of the term, in his work The Practice of Everyday Life, French scholar Michel de Certeau suggests strategy and tactics are alike in they both operate in space and time. However, unlike strategy, which inherently 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. Tactics are usually used to spoil the running context. In Business, tactical plan is designed to implement strategic objectives( usually one year or less) in a company economic decisions. Originally published as (1974). ... Michel de Certeau (Chambéry, 1925- Paris, 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit and scholar whose work combined psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences. ...

Usage in science fiction

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. Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction where interstellar or interplanetary conflict and its armed solution (war) make up the main or partial backdrop of the story. ... It has been suggested that Barbara Bancroft be merged into this article or section. ...