It can also be applied to diplomats, bearers of bad news, or to describe a superior ability to respond to an escalated situation.
[2] In literal terms, it means a physical skill appearing to be controlled by the nerves in the extremities, as in a machinist hand lathing steel to micrometer tolerances.
In military terminology, it is used for the stated ability of some military commanders, such as Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel,[3] to describe "the instinctive and immediate response to battle situations",[3] a quality needed to maintain, with great accuracy and attention to detail, an ever-changing operational and tactical situation by maintaining a mental map of the battlefield.
The idiom is intended to evoke a military commander who is in such intimate communication with the battlefield that it is as though he has a fingertip on each critical point.
It is cognitively related to personal possession of multiple intelligences, notably those pertinent to visual and spatial data processing.