From the Battlefield to Digital Space: The Inspirational Significance of Su Yu's Combat Directives for a New Era Multi-Agent System Collaboration Framework

2026-01-14

Abstract: This paper aims to explore a cross-historical, methodological-level transplantation and innovation. By deeply analyzing the core characteristics and organizational logic of the combat directives used by the outstanding Chinese military strategist Su Yu in large-scale operations, this paper abstracts the universal principles of command and control for complex systems underlying them. Subsequently, these principles are applied to the design of collaborative frameworks for new-era multi-agent systems, proposing a model named the "Multi-Agent Collaborative Combat Directive Framework for Complex Tasks". This framework emphasizes global situational alignment, task structural decoupling, standardized interaction protocols, and central dynamic coordination, aiming to address current challenges in multi-agent systems regarding collaborative efficiency, intent alignment, and task reliability. This study demonstrates that exceptional traditional organizational management wisdom can provide profound insights beyond technology—specifically on "how to organize effectively"—for the development of artificial intelligence, particularly embodied intelligence and swarm intelligence.

Keywords: Su Yu's Military Thought; Combat Directives; Multi-Agent Systems; Agent Collaboration; Complex System Control; Command and Control; Prompt Engineering

I. Introduction

• Research Background: With the advancement of large language model technology, multi-agent systems have become a frontier paradigm for solving complex tasks. However, current agent collaboration often faces issues such as scattered goals, inefficient communication, and uncontrollable outcomes, which are essentially systemic engineering challenges of "how to organize effectively".
• Problem Statement: Do mature cross-domain paradigms exist that can provide high-level organizational methodologies for AI multi-agent collaboration?
• Research Entry Point: The art of Su Yu's command in large-scale operations, as the pinnacle of human practice in managing large-scale collaboration under extremely complex and dynamically uncertain environments, holds immense research value. The organizational logic crystallized in his combat directives is particularly worthy of study.
• Research Significance: Facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue between historical military wisdom and AI technology can not only provide novel inspiration for AI system design but also reinterpret and transmit classic military thought from a new perspective.

II. Deconstructing the Core Characteristics and Organizational Logic of Su Yu's Combat Directives

This chapter deconstructs Su Yu's combat directives (exemplified by orders from the Eastern Henan and Huaihai Campaigns) from historical documents into a complex system control methodology.

1. Structural Characteristics: Standardization and Modularity

   • Mandatory Format: The fixed modules of "Enemy Situation - Our Situation - Decision - Deployment - Coordination - Support" are not rigid "eight-legged essays" but rather a forcing function ensuring information completeness and reducing cognitive load.
   • Atomic Information: Directive content is highly specific (time, location, unit, task degree), ensuring executability, verifiability, and lack of ambiguity.

2. Organizational Logic: Precise Mapping from Intent to Action

   • Global Situational Alignment: Through the "Enemy Situation Assessment" section, it ensures all execution units have a unified, clear understanding of the battlefield, achieving "unified thinking".
   • Goal Layering and Task Decoupling: "Decision and Objective" clarifies primary and secondary goals; "Deployment" decomposes the overall objective into independent, specialized subtasks for each unit (main attack, blocking reinforcements, reserve force), achieving functional decoupling and responsibility focus. *. Pre-positioned Coordination Protocols: "Coordination Matters" detail rules for timing, spatial coordination, communication, and firepower cooperation, essentially pre-setting interaction protocols between units, transforming coordination from "ad-hoc negotiation" to "synchronization according to plan."
   • Resilience and Fault Tolerance Design: The setup of reserve forces and anticipation of contingencies reflect the embedding of dynamic response capabilities within a rigid plan.

3. Core Principles Extracted:

   • Principle One: Cognitive Unity First (Unify Thinking).
   • Principle Two: Structure Determines Function (Modular Division of Labor).
   • Principle Three: Protocol Over Communication (Standardized Coordination).
   • Principle Four: Distributed Execution Under Centralized Command (Division of Authority and Responsibility between Headquarters and Columns).

III. Constructing an Application Model of the "Su-Style Framework" in Multi-Agent Systems

Based on the principles extracted in Chapter II, a collaborative framework applicable to AI multi-agent systems is constructed.

1. Model Overview: Proposes the "Multi-Agent Collaborative Combat Directive Framework", viewing the task publisher as the "Headquarters", the task itself as the "Campaign", and each AI agent as a "Military Branch/Unit".
2. Core Module Design:
   • Situation and Problem Analysis Module: Generated by a Situation Awareness Agent, equivalent to "Enemy Situation Assessment", aligning all agents' understanding of the task background, difficulties, and constraints.
   • System Goals and Success Criteria Module: Clearly defines the "strategic purpose" of the task and measurable "tactical indicators".
   • Agent Roles and Task Assignment Module: Precisely defines the role of each Agent (e.g., Researcher, Analyst, Writer, Reviewer) and issues specific, atomic action instructions.
   • Inter-Agent Interaction Protocol Module: Specifies workflow sequence, data exchange formats (e.g., JSON Schema), synchronization trigger conditions, and conflict resolution rules.
   • Central Coordination and Monitoring Unit: The Command Coordination Agent acts as the "Headquarters", responsible for generating initial directives, monitoring the process, handling exceptions, and consolidating outputs, achieving "centralized command".

IV. Analysis of Su Yu's Combat Directive Examples and Their Migration to AI Agent Collaboration

1. Analysis of a Classic Su Yu Combat Directive Example

To intuitively demonstrate the paradigm of Su Yu's combat directives, we use the core parts of the operational order for the first phase of the Eastern Henan Campaign, the "Kaifeng Campaign" (June 1948) as a blueprint for structured analysis. While not a verbatim reproduction, it is reconstructed strictly based on the recorded spirit and format of the historical directive.

Simulated Reconstruction of Core Directive Parts:

East China Field Army Kaifeng Campaign Operational Order (Excerpt)

I. Comprehensive Assessment of Current Enemy Situation

1. Enemy Reorganized 66th Division main force garrisoned in Kaifeng city proper. Its 13th Brigade defends Caoguan and Songmen, the 185th Brigade defends the line from West Gate to North Gate, with division headquarters and direct units at the Longting core position. Fortifications are strong, but forces are dispersed, with gaps present.
2. Part of the Enemy Reorganized 68th Division is located in the Chenliu area east of Kaifeng; the main force of Qiu Qingquan's Corps is still lingering west of Shangqiu. It is assessed that reinforcing Kaifeng would require at least 3 days.
3. Overall Enemy Disposition: Defensive forces along the Longhai Railway are in isolated strongpoints; Qiu's Corps is hesitant. The enemy has not yet discerned our army's true intent.

II. Our Army's Campaign Decision and Objective

1. Campaign Decision: Use sudden, swift action to catch the enemy in Kaifeng off guard, aiming to annihilate the Reorganized 66th Division within the city.
2. Primary Objective: Capture Kaifeng, annihilate defending enemy forces, disrupt the enemy's Central Plains defense system.
3. Secondary Objective: Draw Qiu Qingquan's Corps westward in reinforcement, creating opportunities to annihilate enemy forces in motion in the next phase.

III. Specific Tasks and Deployment for Each Unit

1. 3rd Column (reinforced with main artillery of the Specialized Arms Column):
   • Task: Main attack. Responsible for attacking and annihilating enemy forces at Caoguan, Songmen, and South Gate. After breaking into the city, conduct deep penetration towards the enemy's Longting core position.
   • Deployment: With one division reinforced by artillery, complete concealed attack preparations against Caoguan and Songmen before dusk on Day X. After the general assault begins, must open a breach within 4 hours.
2. 8th Column:
   • Task: Supporting attack and blocking. Responsible for attacking and annihilating enemy forces in the West Gate periphery, and resolutely blocking any enemy reinforcements possibly arriving from the Zhongmou direction.
   • Deployment: Main force of two divisions for West Gate attack; one regiment-sized unit constructs blocking positions to the east. Attack initiation time fully synchronized with the 3rd Column.
3. 1st, 4th, 6th Columns (Campaign General Reserve and Reinforcement-Engagement Group):
   • Task: Concealed assembly in the area southeast of Kaifeng, closely monitoring movements of Qiu Qingquan's Corps.
   • Deployment: If enemy reinforcements move out, execute mobile blocking per Plan One (XX area); if the Kaifeng battle proceeds smoothly, join the city assault or prepare for next-phase operations as the situation dictates.

IV. Coordination Matters

1. Time Coordination: General assault initiation time set for 20:00 hours on Day X. All unit operational clocks to be synchronized with Field Army Headquarters by 18:00 hours.
2. Firepower Coordination: Initial intense fire preparation concentrated on three points: Caoguan, Songmen, West Gate, lasting 30 minutes. Signal for artillery fire extension is three red flares.
3. Communication Liaison: During the assault, primary radio channel is "Yellow River", backup channel is "Songshan". Assault forces and blocking forces to exchange daily recognition passwords.

V. Command Post Location Field Army Forward Command Post to be established at XX village southeast of Kaifeng by 18:00 hours on Day X. Locations of regimental-level and above command posts of all units must be reported promptly.

2. Migration Example of Su-Style Directive Logic to AI Multi-Agent Collaboration

We fully migrate the directive logic of the above "Kaifeng Campaign" to a complex AI task: "Generate an urgent strategic analysis report for the company's decision-making layer on 'How to Respond to Competitor A Company's Newly Launched Product X'".

Final Output Requirements: The report must include three parts: market impact analysis, our SWOT response, and specific action recommendations. Data must be latest, viewpoints sharp, recommendations actionable, within 2000 words.

Migrated "Multi-Agent Collaborative Combat Directive" (Prompt Framework)

【AI Strategic Analysis Corps】 Operational Directive: Analysis Report on Countering the "Product X" Threat

I. Situation and Task Analysis (Corresponding to "Enemy Situation Assessment")

• Core Event: Competitor A Company launched new product X yesterday, receiving enthusiastic market response.
• Key Challenges ("Enemy Situation"):
  1. Direct Threat: Product X may pose a direct impact on our main product Y in terms of performance/price.
  2. Information Fog: Public information is limited; deep excavation of its technical path, supply chain, and marketing strategy is needed.
  3. Time Pressure: Decision-makers require clear decision-making basis within 48 hours.
  4. Expected Goal ("Our Army's Objective"): Not only analyze the threat but also find our counter-opportunities and action windows.

II. Overall Report Goal and Success Criteria (Corresponding to "Campaign Decision and Objective")

• Primary Goal: Generate a data-driven, forward-looking, and actionable urgent strategic analysis report.
• Specific Criteria:
  1. Completeness: Must cover three major modules: "Market Impact Assessment", "Our SWOT Analysis", "Specific Action Recommendations".
  2. Insightfulness: Must identify at least one potential weakness of the competitor or an asymmetric advantage of ours.
  3. Actionability: Action recommendations must be divided into three tiers: "Immediate Execution (within 24h)", "Short-term Strategy (1-3 months)", "Long-term Planning".

III. Agent Roles and Task Deployment (Corresponding to "Unit Tasks")

1. 【Intelligence Reconnaissance Agent】:
   • Core Task ("Main Attack Direction"): Collect all information about Product X across the web.
   • Specific Instructions:
     • Target 1 ("Open a Breach"): Extract key parameters, pricing, and initial user feedback of Product X from tech media, social media, patent databases, and supply chain news.
     • Target 2 ("Deep Penetration"): Analyze A Company's recent financial reports, recruitment information, and partner dynamics to infer its resource allocation and strategic focus.
     • Output Requirement: Generate a "Product X and A Company Dynamic Intelligence Summary" with credibility ratings, citing information sources. Must complete within 2 hours of task initiation.
2. 【Market Analyst Agent】:
   • Core Task ("Supporting Attack and Consolidation"): Assess market impact, build analytical models.
   • Specific Instructions:
     • Based on the intelligence summary, quantify the potential market share erosion by Product X.
     • Draw a competitive positioning comparison chart between our product Y and X.
     • Analyze migration likelihood among different customer segments (high/mid/low-end).
     • Output Requirement: Submit "Quantitative Analysis of Market Competition Impact" and charts. Initiate after receiving signal from Intelligence Reconnaissance Agent, complete within 3 hours.
3. 【Strategic Planner Agent】:
   • Core Task ("Reserve Force and General Assault"): Develop counter-strategies and action plans.
   • Specific Instructions:
     • Based on prior analysis, conduct SWOT analysis, focusing on finding "Opportunities" and "Strengths".
     • Conceptualize three or more response strategies (e.g., frontal upgrade, differentiated flanking, ecosystem blockade).
     • Translate strategies into specific, phased action lists, clarifying responsible departments and resource requirements.
     • Output Requirement: Formulate "SWOT Analysis and Multiple Action Plan Drafts". Initiate after Market Analyst output is ready, complete within 4 hours.
4. 【Report Synthesis and Polishing Agent】:
   • Core Task ("Mop-up and Integration"): Generate the final report.
   • Specific Instructions: Integrate the three prior outputs into a structurally rigorous, linguistically refined, professionally formatted formal report. Ensure logical flow and meet all success criteria.

IV. Agent Collaboration Protocol (Corresponding to "Coordination Matters")

1. Workflow Trigger: Execute strictly in sequence: Intelligence Reconnaissance → Market Analyst → Strategic Planner → Report Synthesis. Downstream Agent is automatically triggered after upstream Agent's output meets standards (judged by the Central Coordinator).
2. Data Handover Format: All intermediate outputs must be passed using the following JSON format:

   {
     "Module": "Intelligence Summary",
     "CoreContent": "...",
     "KeyDataPoints": [...],
     "Confidence": 0.9,
     "OutstandingQuestions": ["..."]
   }
   

3. Conflict Resolution Rule: If different Agents have contradictory judgments on the same fact (e.g., market share prediction), the one with more authoritative data sources and higher confidence prevails, with final arbitration by the Central Coordinator.

V. Central Coordination and Monitoring (Corresponding to "Command Post")

• Central Coordinator Agent: Monitors the entire process, audits output quality at each node. If the Intelligence Reconnaissance Agent times out or provides insufficient information, immediately activates contingency plans (e.g., switching search strategies or manual input). Finally, accepts the final output from the Report Synthesis Agent and appends a "Brief Assessment of This Task Execution Process".

VI. Resources and Boundaries (Corresponding to "Logistics Support")

• Total task time limit: 8 hours.
• Knowledge base cutoff date: Latest.
• Any speculative or unsourced assertions are strictly prohibited.

3. Summary of Migration Logic

Through the above example comparison and migration, the transformation mapping of Su Yu's combat directive paradigm to AI multi-agent collaboration becomes clear:

1. "Enemy Situation Assessment" → "Situation and Task Analysis": Transforms the ambiguous fog of war into clear problem definition and constraint identification, achieving unified cognitive starting point.
2. "Force Deployment" → "Role and Task Assignment": Deconstructs the abstract "write a report" task into specific, parallelizable or sequential atomic tasks, assigned to specialized agents, achieving functional decoupling and specialization.
3. "Coordination Matters" → "Interaction Protocols": Transforms coordination reliant on ad-hoc communication into pre-set, standardized data interfaces and process rules, achieving efficient, unambiguous machine-to-machine collaboration.
4. "Command Post/Reserve Force" → "Central Coordination and Monitoring": Introduces a system-level meta-cognition and management layer responsible for exception handling, quality control, and resource scheduling, ensuring system robustness.

The core of this migration is transforming the art of human command of large formations into the "operating system-level" scheduling and management logic for machine agent clusters. This enables multi-agent systems not only to "do work" but also to "collaborate in combat" like a disciplined army to accomplish a complex strategic objective. This marks a new level for AI collaboration, moving from "tool application" to "task engineering" and "organizational management".

V. Comparative Analysis and Advantage Elaboration

Compared to traditional prompt engineering and simple linear workflows, the advantages of this framework precisely reflect the transferred value of "Su-Style Wisdom":

1. From "Heuristic Dialogue" to "Systematic Engineering": Transforms temporary, vague prompts into structured, reusable collaborative blueprints.
2. From "Simple Summation" to "Emergent Collaboration": Through pre-positioned interaction protocols, agents generate synergistic "1+1>2" effects, avoiding work overlap and information silos.
3. Enhanced Robustness and Explainability: Central monitoring and reserve mechanisms improve system fault tolerance; the standardized directive structure makes the entire reasoning and execution process white-boxed, facilitating traceability and debugging.
4. Improved Complex Task Tackling Capability: This framework is particularly suitable for complex task scenarios requiring deep research, multi-step reasoning, and strict quality requirements, achieving "campaign-level" decomposition and control of complex tasks.

VI. Conclusion and Outlook

1. Main Conclusion: The organizational wisdom embodied in Su Yu's combat directives—standardization, modularity, protocolization, and resilience—provides a highly inspiring high-level framework for solving multi-agent system collaboration problems. This proves that while pursuing technological limits, drawing nourishment from the accumulated organizational management thought of human civilization is an effective path for innovation.
2. Theoretical Value: Opens a new interdisciplinary perspective for artificial intelligence research, especially swarm intelligence and embodied intelligence: "Organizational Behavior and AI System Design".
3. Practical Outlook:
   • Short-term: A prototype of this framework can be implemented on existing agent orchestration platforms, and its efficacy validated in complex tasks (e.g., industry research report generation, competitive analysis, software project design).
   • Long-term: This thinking can be further extended to broader fields such as multi-robot collaboration in the physical world and mixed human-machine team collaboration, providing a theoretical foundation for building intelligent systems with strategic-level task execution capabilities.
4. Final Remarks: From the command post of the Huaihai Campaign to the AI laboratory, the spark of wisdom across time and space indicates that how to organize complexity efficiently is an eternal proposition faced by both humanity and artificial intelligence. Su Yu's command art is precisely a bridge connecting history and the future, shining with methodological brilliance.