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A tactic is a conceptual action used to implement a specific strategy to achieve a specific objective, to advance toward a specific goal. A tactic is implemented as one or more tasks. These concepts can be defined as a hierarchy:

• Goal
• Objective
• Strategy
• Tactic
• Task

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

...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.

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, although 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.

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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 tactics

• tactics - BuisinessDictionary.com definition