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In the military sciences, a military campaign encompasses related military operations, usually conducted by a defense or fighting force, directed at gaining a particular desired state of affairs, usually within geographical and temporal limitations.

Contents 1 Campaign variations 2 Evaluations 3 References 4 See also

Military campaigns are usually a connected series of battles (or instances of combat in warfare between two or more parties wherein each group seeks to defeat the others) and the maneuvers that is conducted by a military force (regular or irregular) seeking victory in a war. Military campaigns are more often undertaken by permanent, professional force of soldiers or guerrillas—trained units as distinguished from the operation by militia or other temporary forces. A military campaign can be, more loosely though, any designated military operation in a geographical theater.

Military campaigns are guided by strategy, taking account of various actions undertaken in arctic warfare, ski warfare, desert warfare, jungle warfare, naval warfare, sub-aquatic warfare, mountain warfare, urban warfare, air warfare, and space warfare. As air power has become an increasingly powerful element of military campaigns, air superiority is increasingly focus on by military planners. The order of battle is a tool used by military planners to list and analyze enemy military units.

A military campaign, technically, is a series of related individual military operations. A military campaign here is used predominantly to refer to what one side does, and is useful for distinguishing between "the war" as a whole, and "the parties" to the war. The end of a military campaign predominantly results in one of the belligerent entities being successful in the struggle against an opponent entity (such as the removal of a regime, occupation of territory, and/or the end of hostilities). In a conventional war, the end of a military campaign sometimes lead to smaller armed conflicts (often called riots, rebellions, insurgencies, coups, etc.).

It can alternatively connote a connected series of military operations forming a distinct phase of a war. ^[1] A military campaign here is series of battles linked by a defined time, action, and geography within a larger timeline or framework (i.e., the North Africa Campaign of World War II).

A military campaign is judged successful if the desired state of affairs were brought about through combat and noncombat operations. This is usually determined when one of the belligerent entities defeats the opposing entity. The manner in which a force terminates it's operations, though, influences the perception of the campaign's success. The end of a campaign is mostly followed by the transition of military authority to a civil authority and the redeployment of forces.

Ongoing military campaigns, inside and outside of individual wars, are sometimes metaphorically characterized as quagmires, because of various factors (such as a small hope of victory, poorly-defined objectives and/or no clear exit strategy). It is usually used pejoratively to describe, in the user's opinion, ill-fated operations. Its use in political debates emerged during the Vietnam War. Activists, commentators, and pundits that use the term may choose it specifically to allude to the Vietnam conflict and the Iraq War.

• ^  "campaign". Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. 2005.

General

• Military operations other than war - concept that encompass the use of military capabilities across the range of military operations short of war.
• Campaign desk - used by officers and their staffs in rear areas during a military campaign.
• Military strategy - collective name for planning the conduct of warfare.
• War cycles - the theory that wars happen in cycles.

Military decorations

• Campaign medal - a military decoration which is awarded to a member of the military who serves in a designated military operation or performs duty in a geographical theater.
• Campaign clasp - an attachment to a military award consisting of a metal bar which is pinned to the upper cloth portion of an award medal.
• Campaign streamer - a long streamer attached to the headpiece of a military flag, denoting participation of that military service in a particular campaign.

Lists and examples

• List of wars - contains military campaigns.
• List of battles - part of larger military campaigns.
• List of sieges - part of larger military campaigns.

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