The British 1915 Dardanelles joint operation: applying the modern Australian Army’s Battlespace Operating Systems metrics to explain defeat

The 1915 Dardanelles Allied joint operation is widely regarded as an operational and tactical failure overlaid on the unstable foundation of poorly formulated strategy. At the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, the campaign can be viewed as the corresponding failure of ‘ends, ways, and means’. This article will focus principally on the ‘ways’ and ‘means’ employed by the British in 1915 but will take a completely novel approach by applying modern-day Australian Army Battlespace Operating Systems metrics to inform and clarify just how the ‘means’ were deficient. Although this may seem a somewhat risky proposition, this article will demonstrate that, despite their current use, these metrics were as valid in 1915 as they are today.