Combined arms/task force detachments in the Ottoman field army corps (1860-1897)

Having insufficent manpower for the Ottoman regular field army corps had been a chronic issue from the very beggining of the emergence of the regular army in 1826. As a consequence of this, especially from the year of 1843 in which regular army units as regiments, brigades and corps were constructed as a model of their European equivalents, it had been impractible to fill up regular army units with the regular/drilled recruits even though these units might have been seen on the military blueprints as if thoroughly composed of pure regular rank and file. Therefore, it presents a different aspect on the operational field that to overcome aforementioned inadequacy, irregular and militia forces were mobilized and assigned to complete the deficiency of the regular army corps which is in another description; hybrid combined arms/task force detachments were built by this way. Nonetheless, the detachments that were deployed for both counter-insurgency operations and conventional battle fields would have been on the scale of company, battalion, brigade and corps level would have indicated incompetency between its combined regular and irregular forces under its roof. Notwithstanding that incompetence, if those hybrid forms were to be given under the command of qualified officers, it would have been accomplishable to exploit them to the very end. As these forms include irregular elements in their forms, it is thus suitable to mention and analyze them in the concept of compound warfare. Moreover, not that it only sheds light on the Ottoman irregular warfare experience and is significant for that, but also for nowadays combined arms concepts and their 20th century contemporaries. In final words, this hybrid form should not be confused with traditional detachments that embody regular infantry, cavalry and artillery in themselves; the former includes irregular component and the latter not.