NOD Doctrine and Tactics.
To describe NOD as having a unified doctrine is an exercise in delusion. NOD, despite presenting itself as a unified organization, is riven through with intercine internal disagreements. Most of the time, NOD is organized into a series of fiefdoms, with lesser leaders serving those closer to Kane in return for technological and material favors. This structure means that to attempt to define a single unified doctrinal, strategic, operational, and tactical methodology is a waste of time at best, and actively counterproductive at worst.
Part 1: The Grand Vision
NOD has rarely had a unified goal. However, when it is unified, there is a common trend in their planning and operations. The Brotherhood trends towards a masterstroke, relying on the chaos and destruction sown by mostly independent local commanders to distract and pin down enemy forces, while some larger program is carried out.
This plays into the structure of the Brotherhood. Kane and his disciples act as essentially feudal overlords, passing favor, the blessing to hold a piece of land, and most importantly technology down, while NOD warlords and other leaders pass service and more importantly men into Kane's hands. Broadly, the forces of the Brotherhood can be divided into rates. The first rate is best defined as Kane and Company. Qatar, Slavik, etc. In terms of equipment, these are the groups that have plentiful supplies of Avatars, stealth tanks, Vertigos, Shadow Teams, Black Hand, and all of the other paraphernalia of war. Second is generally the mainline body of the brotherhood. Mostly various warlords either pledging themselves to one of the first rate members, or can otherwise support themselves. To generally describe their position, they have substantial quantities of Scorpion tanks and Venoms and often have some part of their force with more elite hardware. Third rate are people who are generally indirectly NOD, either in the form of an "independent" warlord, or claiming some national/state position. They tend to rely heavily on handouts from higher positioned members of the Brotherhood, or on what they can produce locally. These provide the bulk of NOD's militant forces. Fourth and finally are the small warlords and warbands. Generally speaking they exist on the sufferance of and in the liminal zones between the larger warlords. While some do manage to establish themselves it is often temporary.
As much as NOD has a strategic doctrine, it is formed by the structural and systemic needs of its least valuable, the thousands of smaller, disfavored militant cells and chapters. While the Brotherhood's elite is broadly capable, it lacks in two key areas. It cannot be everywhere at once, and it cannot survive in the face of GDI's overwhelming material superiority. In light of this, they must rely on the thousands of other leaders within the Brotherhood to ensure their victories. However, at the same time, they cannot entrust the grand strategy to them. This has lead to the doctrine of the masterstroke, single, critical strikes, carried out by elite assets, intended to confuse, distract, and cripple GDI response and force the use of GDI assets against relatively expendable NOD units.
The opening moves of the Third Tiberium war exemplify this doctrine. The strike against the Goddard Space Center presaged global attacks against GDI positions, and offered an opportunity to destroy GDI's central command and control position with a nuclear device. However, the Third Tiberium War also shows the weaknesses of the doctrine. While it can work on the offensive, it struggles to maintain positions, allowing GDI to strike against NOD strongholds in daring deep penetration invasions, such as happened in Egypt and the Balkans.
Part 2: The Tools of War
In war, as in almost all activities, one of the most valuable tools is the supply of trained manpower. Before the First Tiberium War the Brotherhood of Nod spent decades building an army of highly trained, well-equipped, infantry and the technical and material basis for a diverse high tech global military. The developments after the First tiberium War began to diversify them away from that. Those carefully tended trained men were squandered in decades of civil war and internecine strife. By the Second Tiberium War, NOD's professional soldiery was a pale shadow of its former self, which was then thrown into the meat grinder battles of the war, and by 2034, it was effectively wiped out.
From 2034 onward, the professionalization of the Brotherhood's military was heavily reliant on the religious aspects, and was increasingly forced to specialize, and theologize their positions. Rather than training a particularly knowledgeable force, NOD has tended to rely heavily on rote learning and technical assistance. While both have their consequences, they have produced forces that are both extremely compact in terms of valued members, and one that can stiffen masses of relatively untrained militants.
