Digital Commons Network^™

Crafting Naval Strategy: Observations And Recommendations For The Development Of Future Strategies, Bruce B. Stubbs, Sam J. Tangredi

Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies Black Books

The “great captains” of military history have described the contradictions between rigorous, formal, institutionalized planning and the commonly chaotic results and necessary readjustments through a series of pithy aphorisms that by now have become clichés. The Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder is cited—routinely, exhaustingly, almost annoyingly—as having said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Yet perhaps Moltke captured the challenge more succinctly in a lesser-known but more apt quote: “Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline.”