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DaveDoyle
03-07-2009, 11:46 PM
At the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth, KS, 96 SAMS students, faculty and contractors recently finished a six week experimentation period using “design” to approach military operations. Students from the US Armed Forces, USAID, FBI and international militaries applied design theory to future scenarios templated in CENTCOM, EUCOM, PACOM, and NORTHCOM. The design principles concentrated the student’s efforts not on solving “the” problem, but first on defining the “correct” problem set and developing a methodology to manage the environment through application of all elements of national power. The most recent experiment took the design efforts and focused on producing information to be used by planners. The interface for designers and planners in this case was a campaign directive.

If the GWOT is a problem set, and we have been dealing with it as a government for nearly eight years, perhaps design is a useful approach for military leaders.

I would like to hear from the SWJ community, many with experience in developing campaign plans, about what might be a useful product for planners from a design team. I would also appreciate engaging in a dialogue about the utility of design in general. Links to two recent Military Review articles about design are posted below.

Thanks,
Dave

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090430_art015.pdf

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090430_art016.pdf

Surferbeetle
03-08-2009, 12:33 AM
These are very interesting papers, thanks for posting the links.

From a USAR perspective accessibility to this type of training, availability of infrastructure (hardware and software) needed to bring this back to the unit so that geographically dispersed staff/units can use it (cloud computing - ako based?), and structured real world case studies/training packages for 'train the trainer' type situations are the first things that come to my mind.

Effective operationalization of these concepts will require that active and reserve military (officers/warrant officers/ncos) and our other DIME partners have access (I noted that the 1st article mentioned that DIME personnel to include contractors attend SAMS).

I enjoy many of the CALL products due to their practicality, accessibility, and teach-ability: Battalion Planning Process (No. 07-3) and others seem to reflect a familiarity with some Operations Research concepts. Perhaps CALL would be a vehicle for some of the products from this proposed process?

Ron Humphrey
03-08-2009, 01:14 AM
At the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth, KS, 96 SAMS students, faculty and contractors recently finished a six week experimentation period using “design” to approach military operations. Students from the US Armed Forces, USAID, FBI and international militaries applied design theory to future scenarios templated in CENTCOM, EUCOM, PACOM, and NORTHCOM. The design principles concentrated the student’s efforts not on solving “the” problem, but first on defining the “correct” problem set and developing a methodology to manage the environment through application of all elements of national power. The most recent experiment took the design efforts and focused on producing information to be used by planners. The interface for designers and planners in this case was a campaign directive.

If the GWOT is a problem set, and we have been dealing with it as a government for nearly eight years, perhaps design is a useful approach for military leaders.

I would like to hear from the SWJ community, many with experience in developing campaign plans, about what might be a useful product for planners from a design team. I would also appreciate engaging in a dialogue about the utility of design in general. Links to two recent Military Review articles about design are posted below.

Thanks,
Dave

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090430_art015.pdf

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090430_art016.pdf

My initial response was -yipeeee
unfortunately followed by the realization that I have absolutely no idea what it would actually equate to by the time it works its way through all the levels required to really utilize it on a larger scale.

I have the greatest confidence that those serving in todays military would be able to do amazing things if given the chance to really design COA' s and look at operational environments in a learning environment such as presented.

The question that's still eating at me is can we actually get ourselves or those in the political realm to let the reigns that loose. Although it might not seem that risky up front; when those at the top start getting the kind of input that would result it may seem a lot less controlled (or perhaps better stated- risk averse than they might be comfortable with)

IMHO it is where we really need to be but having spent a lot of time trying to look at it from every angle its likely to have some big fans and some pretty important leaders not so excited about it.

Finger's crossed/ Ducking for cover:D

Bob's World
03-08-2009, 12:57 PM
We've actually been applying design at USSOCOM for about a year now in the Strategy Division, and not only is the command allowing us tremendous freedom of intellectual maneuver, the products that we have developed are having a major impact far outside out Command. The Chairman, other GCCs, Key Partner Nations, throughout the interagency community.

Not everyone agrees with everything, but that is the point. It is driving new discourse, and breaking down some of the long held, misconceptions of what we are dealing with and how to move forward from here.

We do not follow some rigid doctrinal approach to design, but have combined elements of a variety of proposed processess out there. In simplest terms it insert a step in the front end of Mission Analysys that takes a holistic look at what exactly the problem is that you have been asked to address, and how it really functions, and then through that understanding being able to better see second and third order effects from various COAs, and also to be able to better advise the commander.

Takes MDMP out of the hands of the intel guys focusing the effort on a very threat-centric approach right up front. That part doesn't go away, it just has a better context to understand how that "threat" fits into the larger system. Often the solution lies somewhere other than by targeting the "threat" directly.

We met with a couple of the SAMS seminars and left some products with them to help them grasp this new concept. They were getting a lot of "you have to always bring the Commander answers." With Design, often you bring him questions as well. And that's a good thing.

William F. Owen
03-08-2009, 01:08 PM
The question that's still eating at me is can we actually get ourselves or those in the political realm to let the reigns that loose. Although it might not seem that risky up front; when those at the top start getting the kind of input that would result it may seem a lot less controlled (or perhaps better stated- risk averse than they might be comfortable with)

IMHO it is where we really need to be but having spent a lot of time trying to look at it from every angle its likely to have some big fans and some pretty important leaders not so excited about it.


Good point. Some old Prussian General actually wrote about this a good deal. Can't remember his name, but he produced a book that dealt with this very issue. Carl something, I think... ;)

DaveDoyle
03-08-2009, 10:27 PM
Bob's World posted - We've actually been applying design at USSOCOM for about a year now in the Strategy Division, and not only is the command allowing us tremendous freedom of intellectual maneuver, the products that we have developed are having a major impact far outside out Command.

Where does the Strategy Division fit within the staff and how often do you interact with planners?

Also, when you say "outside the command" are you referring to IA partners? Are they finding design opportunities more acceptable than JOPP and MDMP planning tools?

Thanks,

Dave

Bob's World
03-08-2009, 11:43 PM
Bob's World posted - We've actually been applying design at USSOCOM for about a year now in the Strategy Division, and not only is the command allowing us tremendous freedom of intellectual maneuver, the products that we have developed are having a major impact far outside out Command.

Where does the Strategy Division fit within the staff and how often do you interact with planners?

Also, when you say "outside the command" are you referring to IA partners? Are they finding design opportunities more acceptable than JOPP and MDMP planning tools?

Thanks,

Dave

We are quickly becoming the foundation for everything the command does, and probably work with the planner as much as anyone. They have been using design as well within their shop as they attack revisions on the various plans we work.

As to interaction with the interagency community, they really like our products, we don't spend a lot of time talking about the process that got us there. I think you'll find that Army planners even withing the military are way more wrapped around the axel on process than other military planners (did you do it right over did you get a good result), and civilian planners much less so again.

My one fear as TRADOC works to codify this "art" of war process, that they inadvertantly squeeze the life out of it in converting it to a repeatable "science." Guard against that, please. This is definitely something where it is far more important to apply some broad concepts than to rigidly execute a specific process.

J Wolfsberger
03-09-2009, 01:39 PM
From the stand point of Systems Analysis/System Engineering, I've got some problems with the papers cited. It could simply be the way concepts are expressed/presented, but I don't think so. As an example, in the second paper, the concept of "Reframing" is discussed:


"Reframing is an intellectual activity to identify new opportunities and overcome obstacles to progress when interactions with the real world situation or new sources of information reveal issues with a current problem. Reframing shifts attention from trying to solve the current problem right to asking whether the right problem is being solved. It is a way for designers to pull back and reassess the operational environment, allowing them to challenge their situational understanding and review expectations of actor behavior against the evidence.12 When operators consciously and critically select theories and hypotheses that help to structure their view of reality, they gain the freedom to operate beyond the limitations of any single perspective." (Emphasis added.)

Asking whether your tackling the right problem should be done at the beginning. (That's pretty much old school SE 101.) If you wait until you're trying to implement a solution, or in trouble, you're already screwed.

The intent is solid. But there look to be some serious tweaks needed in the implementation. I'd suggest a DTIC search on "Missions and Means Framework." I think it will give a much more solid starting point, and one that dovetails with some other activities.

DaveDoyle
03-11-2009, 02:15 AM
J. Wolfsberger,
The reframing offers the design team opportunities to re-examine the problem set throughout the effort. Attempting to get the best picture of the problem set early is important, but the reality is that in almost every case the design team is not going to get it all the way right at the beginning.

Reframing happens throughout the design effort and gives the team the chance to see what has changed in the environment. Simply studying the environment changes it, and if the organization introduces any energy into the environment or system then it definitely changes.

Reframing does give the design team the chance to consider measures of performance and measures of effectiveness during the process. We have had difficulty getting this realistically accomplished in our experiments, so it doesn't seem that we've fully tested the feedback loop.

I'll check out the DTIC search and see what it brings up. Thanks for the recommendation.

Dave

USMCTanker
03-11-2009, 03:50 AM
Dave et al,

I am a US Marine attending SAMS with Dave. Reading through this thread, I have just a few comments on some things that I found interesting.

First, I would like to second Dave's description of reframing. Of course we need to ask the question if we are looking at the right problem in the beginning of planning as stated by Mr. Wolfsberger. But once you apply a solution, you have to evaluate the system you applied it to see the results. Those results help answer the question if your initial problem is still valid, or if a new one has presented itself. The situation continually changes within the action, reaction, counter-action cycle. Reframing is simply taking a holistic viewpoint of the situation within each step of this cycle.

The second thought I would like to comment on comes from "Bob's World". Specifically,

We do not follow some rigid doctrinal approach to design, but have combined elements of a variety of proposed processes out there. In simplest terms it insert a step in the front end of Mission Analysis that takes a holistic look at what exactly the problem is that you have been asked to address, and how it really functions, and then through that understanding being able to better see second and third order effects from various COAs, and also to be able to better advise the commander.

I think this misses the point of design. In my humble opinion (backed up by MCDP 1-2 Campaigning and MCDP 5 Planning, design is not a process or a step to be added to MDMP, MCPP, JOPP or any other planning process. Instead, it is a MINDSET. It is nothing more than considering as many variables and factors that affect the ability for a unit to MANAGE, not SOLVE, complex adaptive problems. If you could understand and solve a complex adaptive problem, then I posit you were faced with a problem that was neither complex nor adaptive. Bottom line, I believe the Army is trying to "doctrinalize" a thought process/problem management methodology into an MDMP process. I don't think this is the right approach.

This leads to my third point. Yes, I think Army officers focus way too much on developing a product, and are slaves to the processes that produce them much more than the other services. It's a cultural thing that I have gotten over a long time ago (this is my fourth resident Army school). Does it affect the Army's ability to plan and manage problems? Absolutely not. Does it make coming to a solution much harder than it had to be? Absolutely yes. Whether you climb over a wall or run into it as hard as you can a hundred times over, you eventually get to the other side....

But what do I know? I'm just a dumb Marine tanker.....

S/F,
John

slapout9
03-11-2009, 04:11 AM
Link to another thread that is related to Design and Systems Analysis as it relates to the GWOT or any Violent System.



http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=67990#post67990

Ron Humphrey
03-11-2009, 04:18 AM
Dave et al,

I am a US Marine attending SAMS with Dave. Reading through this thread, I have just a few comments on some things that I found interesting.


I think I get what your saying.
If you take any situation and examine it you always have three known points and one unknown-
Where you were, Where you are, and where you want to be

What actually happens has to constantly be adjusted to in relation to the last(where you want to be). This may be where design methodology actually comes in most useful since it generally helps one to do what you speak of


Instead, it is a MINDSET. It is nothing more than considering as many variables and factors that affect the ability for a unit to MANAGE, not SOLVE, complex adaptive problems.

as to that last part



But what do I know? I'm just a dumb Marine tanker.....

S/F,
John

Considering what it takes to do your job not sure thats possible:D

Ken White
03-11-2009, 04:41 AM
...I think Army officers focus way too much on developing a product, and are slaves to the processes that produce them much more than the other services. ... Whether you climb over a wall or run into it as hard as you can a hundred times over, you eventually get to the other side...and you even used my simile... ;)

Er. Well, almost. I do usually specify 'brick' for the wall -- process thing, I guess :D

J Wolfsberger
03-11-2009, 12:59 PM
J. Wolfsberger,
The reframing offers the design team opportunities to re-examine the problem set throughout the effort. Attempting to get the best picture of the problem set early is important, but the reality is that in almost every case the design team is not going to get it all the way right at the beginning.

Reframing happens throughout the design effort and gives the team the chance to see what has changed in the environment. Simply studying the environment changes it, and if the organization introduces any energy into the environment or system then it definitely changes.

Reframing does give the design team the chance to consider measures of performance and measures of effectiveness during the process. We have had difficulty getting this realistically accomplished in our experiments, so it doesn't seem that we've fully tested the feedback loop.

I'll check out the DTIC search and see what it brings up. Thanks for the recommendation.

Dave

I seem to be stuck in a rut of expressing myself poorly. :(

I should not have come across as critical of reframing - it is a Good Thing to rethink the problem, see if it's changed, reevaluate whether the solution you're executing is still effective or even appropriate.

What I was driving at was the situation, which I have to contend with way too often, of poorly structured and understood problem statements. The most common issue I've encountered over the years is solving the wrong problem.

pvebber
03-17-2009, 12:59 PM
Dealing with the desgin issue in developing the Navy's Maritime operations Center concept, there are several points I think need to be brought out. USMC tanker gets to one with his point about the design "process" vs "mindset" (I might use "philosophy"). The more well structured a problem, the less difficulty there identifying hte problem and moving to attacking the solution. The more ill-structured the problem, the less amenable to systems engineering solutions and more one needs to "manage" (I would use "evolve") a solution.

The USMC criticism (I can't find the Marine gazette article ...but there was one recently) of "operational design" and the "Commaders Appreciation and Campaign Design" pamphlet seems to be rooted in the idea well stated by USMCtanker

"It is nothing more than considering as many variables and factors that affect the ability for a unit to MANAGE, not SOLVE, complex adaptive problems."

I think that is on the face of it a true statement. The problem comes in defining what "manage" vs "solve" means. Looking at the types of issues that an operational level Echelon II -III command faces, we have found that different mission situations can have different scales of "structuredness".

An ASW problem may be "moderately well structured" at the operational level, where the problem of protecting assets from adversary submarines is fairly straight forward - while the tactical level tasks that deter or seduce, or distract or engage particular adversary submarines becomes a very ill-structured, information poor problem.

MIO on the other hand can be an operational-level ill-structured problem, trying to ferret out the fact that you think someone is trying to "get lost in the noise" of busy shipping lanes, that you do not have near enough assets to fully seach. Without piecing together and parsing out who may be of interest, you don't know who to apply the straighforward tactical solution of boarding and search to.

In both cases, I would argue, no current doctrine in any service adequately offers concrete "best practicces" to perform the "management" of illstructured problems. While the USMC criticsm of CACD and "Design" I think has a point that the "problem requiring design as a solution has been framed poorly" - i don't think that necessarily means that design is not the answer to a slightly dofferent problem - that of how to "manage" ill-structured problems.

This management infolves a "design" that includes not just "the fron end of a good planning effort" but a cyclical and iterative approach that one can argue is implied in some current doctrine (like the MCWD on "Campaigning"), I have not found anything that "completes the circle" in a holisitc fashion that includes the posibility of "nested" degrees of structured-ness in a problem, and how you integrate the managment of such a problem set - "mess of interconnected problems" from planning, to execution, to assessment, back to replanning - all within an framework that includes an explicit "mental model" of how tasks acheive desired effects and are assessed to advance toward a desired endstate.

WE state in numerous places that that is what we want commanders to do - but we say very little on HOW they are to proactically accomplish it.

So we have a situation where we tend to take "messes" of interconected problem sets of various degrees of "structured-ness"; abstract much of the complexity out in order to "simplify them for flag-level briefs"; then solve the remaining well structure problem through heirarchical decomposition of objectives into MOEs and MOPs, which we spend enormous manhours collating and scoring, but then simply "add up" and abstract again into stop-light charts or thrmographs that (in at least one occasion i saw personnally) summarily changed by senior leadership before being shown to the commander.

To me the "design philosophy" indeed is "what good planners should be doing" - but in the over a dozen exercises and experiments I've seen in the last 5 years, we just don't do - at least in training.

The design philosophy ensures that one "builds in" explicit "theories of action" to quote one of the papers above - a mental model of how causes (tasks performed) translate in effects achieved - too often we rely on "correlation equals causality" - or worse - "we are doing a lot of activity, therefore we are accomplishing what we intend".

Design philosophy - whether a precursor "step" or whether integrated into planning and assessment needs to be explored in the maaner inwhich the SAMS folks are doing. We can argue about where to "hang" it in doctrine once we have a better undersatding of what you actually do to "manage" a complex problem set. But should not throw the idea out becasue of a disagreement over where it belongs.

selil
03-17-2009, 01:41 PM
I get concerned any time I see the military re-purposing a fairly well understood field of study and then referring back to internal military documents to support contention. The Air Force has produced some worthy documentation on systems analysis and design. I understand the scope of what is being attempted is further afield than simple mechanical, electrical, hydraulic systems. That does not mean the fairly well understood principles from engineering design will not serve.

It seems like two field of study are being mixed; design and decision science.

slapout9
03-17-2009, 01:45 PM
IMO we are just learning that you can manage a "Process" but there is no "End" to it, you can improve the process but when you deal with living systems there is no end to reach at least as long as the system is alive.
This is why I hate the term War On Drugs. Crime involves people and as long as people are alive you will have crime. There is know "End" or "Solution" to it, but you can certainly improve the LE process that controls or dampens the "Criminal Process". This has huge implications for COIN type operations.

In the case of wicked problems the process is more important than the end. And just as criminals will adapt so should the COIN/LE control process. It needs to be deigned from the start with the ability to adapt and recognize that "Continuous Improvement" is the only thing that you could really say is the "End".

George L. Singleton
03-17-2009, 01:47 PM
...Since USSOCOM is mentioned, the Strategy Division, a little background and "what we did" that may, or may not, be helpful re Doctrine & TTPs.

As a formerly (reserve) Purple suiter, organizationally we were the wargamming section of J4 of the old US Readiness Command.

We hired civilian programmers and our team, made up of active duty and reservists, all services, sat down with the design programmers to think tank existing war plans for the Folda Gap (sort of a dead item today) and Korea, among others.

Our biggest problems came from an Army Major General (active duty) who hated computers and limited exercises combined with computerized wargamming...which back then we did at Ft. Lewis, Washington, later we moved the war gamming center to Hurlburt Field, FL.

Our problem was "fixed" by retiring the General, and as we changed over from being USREDCOM into USSOCOM we brought in reservist US Coast Guard folks onto our formal computer driven wargamming team.

Civil Affairs was a key driver and decision tree maker...considerations of
(1) if we go into X country (2) what do we upset and how do we replace it to keep basic necessities going on such as power, water, sanitation, etc. (3) Whatever we do for ourselves for medical care, how does this compliment or how could it improve X nation's existing, or virtually non-existing health care.

Civil Affairs (to include unique religious considerations as could/would/did impact intended operations inside or of the nation to be invaded) would have been theoretically mapped out within the existing political process. How the displaced government would be reformed and a new government plan with some reusable indiginous government officials kept on hand to keep continuiting in basic operability of services, police/security services to try to maintain a semblance of law and order, etc. was a basic ingredient of our wargamming/planning.

The biggest problem we used to have (I hope this is resolved today) was lack of in common C4, communications, both among our own branches of the service and with and among our allies. The Grenada war experience was a huge C4 black eye for us. I had just joined USREDCOM as a reservist only a couple months before Grenada happened and was promptly thrown into the CAT and then tasked to do the after action report for the J4, then Brigadier General (retired as a Lt. General) Sam Wakefield, USA.

Yes, this is an oversimplified commentary. But, basics of who, what, and where to go into any foreign nation with a civil affairs plan that is nation specific instead of generic...was all to often the problem for us using largely Army "standardized" plans...I hope civil affairs and overall planning is much done much better and more specifically today as you younger guys carry the ball.

We eventually formed computerized wargamming teams from within old USREDCOM/replacement USSOCOM and did team wargamming studies on site with USCINCLANT to focus on strategic and tactical air, land, and sea factors (focused then on the Folda Gap from the beaches of France, Holland, etc, inland). I individually did wargamming visits and field exercises with FORSCOM, focused on the drug wars in Latin America. You guys have a "world" of plans to improve, create from scratch, whatever.

To me, sitting back and taking the know it all arm chair coach viewpoint, people have to know and understand people to be effective. Trying to make sense out of the archaic, tribal chaos of Afghanistan is tough. Ditto the tribal areas of northern Pakistan.

I concur or agree fully with the sharp point that the Army gets too caught up in trying to standardize the planning process, when today's world begins with unconventional warfare, stateless fighters, and our traditional concepts and "process" are as often as not destructive instead of being constructive.

Which I why I wrote recently here on SWJ that being loose and improvising is "the" key ingredient today, not so much old style "by the book." It is damn hard to codify chaos.

Sorry for the long input, but lessons learned does sometimes help, even if just in a ballpark, generalized fashion as is offered here.

Bob, as you are in USSOCOM you have the good experience now of working with the SEALS whose use in Afghanistan has broken new ground for a formerly parochial water based outfit.

Ski
03-17-2009, 11:03 PM
As someone who is headed for SAMS in the summer, I've been trying to get smart on "operational design" the last few months, and am taking an elective at CGSC to understand the current theory in greater depth and detail before SAMS.

So far, and please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong, this is what I've been able to discern from "operational design":

1. Frame the problem(s) associated with a specific potential conflict
2. Have a wide focus on the problem, do not limit yourself to military threats, but incorporate history, ethnicities, culture(s), political entities, tribal issues, religious issues, etc...
3. See what problems are easily solvable by military force, what problems are not easily solvable by military force, what problems are unsolvable by military force and what are the conditions for success in each scenario (perhaps an endstate, perhaps not)
4. Identify issues that require other elements of national power that must be integrated with the campaign
5. Pass the design over to the planners so they can develop plans for the forces involved in the campaign

This is probably an oversimplification of the theory...can someone (preferbaly a SAMS attendee or graduate) add any other insights?

Bob's World
03-18-2009, 12:07 AM
I get concerned any time I see the military re-purposing a fairly well understood field of study and then referring back to internal military documents to support contention. The Air Force has produced some worthy documentation on systems analysis and design. I understand the scope of what is being attempted is further afield than simple mechanical, electrical, hydraulic systems. That does not mean the fairly well understood principles from engineering design will not serve.

It seems like two field of study are being mixed; design and decision science.

http://www.operationaldesign.net/default.html

“A key distinction is that the Cold War-era use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works. In order to effectively deal with the increased levels of complexity that we are now faced with today, we need to adopt a more robust method for understanding our environment, with all the inherent relationships, tensions and barriers to security, so to develop well thought out, adaptive solutions to the complex problems that we face.”


BG (Retired)
Huba Wass de Czege
June 18, 2008


More about understanding a problem vs a more linear systems targeting process. Why something is vs how something is. I'll need to dig up a more official definition to help clarify.

slapout9
03-18-2009, 04:00 AM
Also a lot of "Statistical Analysis' was portrayed as "Systems Analysis" during the Cold War and the two ain't the same thing.

pvebber
03-18-2009, 12:41 PM
Unfortunately, it was not just in the Cold war era - we are still seeing a lot of it, at least on the Navy side. Statistical analysis confused with decision theory too.

Even worse is the idea that you can put number labels on subjective opinions, and then "do math on them" and get results that make sense. You can't average 5 "yes-no" questions, 5 "1-5 scale good to bad" questions, and 5 "agree - disagree 1-5" questions and get "a quantitative answer". We see that kind of thing all the time.

And then there is the numerical confusing of activity with progress - see that all the time with "averaging" MOPs to get the "quantitative" result of the MOE the MOPs are filed under. When the question is asked "how does the performance of those activies achieve the objective" the answer is usually "we briefed the MOEs and MOPs to the Commander and he didn't push back on it" And the "if these were really problems, the TTP would warn not to do that."

The Navy desperately needs a cadre of ORSA - specialty folks like the other services have.

selil
03-18-2009, 01:29 PM
Unfortunately, it was not just in the Cold war era - we are still seeing a lot of it, at least on the Navy side. Statistical analysis confused with decision theory too.

When I teach decision science to my graduate students they expect a lot of statistics. When I start in on game theory on one end, and OODA loops on the other end their eyes get really wide. The MBA program was fairly horrified at the idea of game theory being used. I'm not really sure why. One MBA student kept muttering about alphas. On the other hand SIPDE, IPDE, OODA, and half a dozen other strategies were lapped up whole heartedly.

Murph
03-31-2009, 04:18 AM
At the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth, KS, 96 SAMS students, faculty and contractors recently finished a six week experimentation period using “design” to approach military operations. Students from the US Armed Forces, USAID, FBI and international militaries applied design theory to future scenarios templated in CENTCOM, EUCOM, PACOM, and NORTHCOM. The design principles concentrated the student’s efforts not on solving “the” problem, but first on defining the “correct” problem set and developing a methodology to manage the environment through application of all elements of national power. The most recent experiment took the design efforts and focused on producing information to be used by planners. The interface for designers and planners in this case was a campaign directive.

If the GWOT is a problem set, and we have been dealing with it as a government for nearly eight years, perhaps design is a useful approach for military leaders.

I would like to hear from the SWJ community, many with experience in developing campaign plans, about what might be a useful product for planners from a design team. I would also appreciate engaging in a dialogue about the utility of design in general. Links to two recent Military Review articles about design are posted below.

Thanks,
Dave

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090430_art015.pdf

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090430_art016.pdf

Although my experience with design is limited to the context of an academic setting, I have had the opportunity to read and discuss design with several military & interagency partners; a step up (perhaps) from having stayed at a Holiday Inn. The attached pdf contains my thoughts regarding its utility.

While I’m aware of, and have observed, some systems frames created by command-level staffs, I’d like to echo Dave’s thoughts in soliciting feedback from strategists/planners who are currently engaged in design efforts to address contemporary issues. What has been your experience? Is design being embraced, accepted, discussed, shunned… Is their practical utility?
v/r

Murph

Bob's World
03-31-2009, 04:42 PM
Although my experience with design is limited to the context of an academic setting, I have had the opportunity to read and discuss design with several military & interagency partners; a step up (perhaps) from having stayed at a Holiday Inn. The attached pdf contains my thoughts regarding its utility.

While I’m aware of, and have observed, some systems frames created by command-level staffs, I’d like to echo Dave’s thoughts in soliciting feedback from strategists/planners who are currently engaged in design efforts to address contemporary issues. What has been your experience? Is design being embraced, accepted, discussed, shunned… Is their practical utility?
v/r

Murph

Just the SOCOM framing of the the global environment alone drew great interest and provided leaders with a fresh perspective. Since then the "big ideas" that have come from that in the Strategy Development process are producing concepts that are generating a great deal of interest across a wide range of disciplines as well. From this new perspective we are going to go back in and re-frame the original Strategic Appreciation, and take the whole process to the next level.

Meanwhile we (and be "we" I mean everyone from the President on down) get the same old stuff from the intel guys: AQ here and everywhere, look out for these big scary cold war states, etc. No big ideas there, just old thinking applied to the latest information. Sadly so much of what we do is based on these lame intel products. I will remain a harsh critic of the intel community until they evolve. Not because I don't like them, but simply because they deserve it.

Ken White
03-31-2009, 04:56 PM
however, I'll also defend them by pointing out that risk aversion is a bureaucratic side effect.

Their risk aversion is part and parcel of that affecting all of DoD and the majority of the Armed Forces -- that is, regrettably, unlikely to be changed and is a function of the same phenomenon affecting society worldwide. It is most noticeable in western democracies and is likely to get worse instead of better. :mad:

The solution for that phenomenon in nature is death and new birth. Except for a few things that have developed the capacity to regenerate...

They always told me that doing the same thing over and over and achieving the same result was not smart and that if I discovered an obstacle, bypassing or flanking was better than a frontal assault. So it seems to me if the designated organization isn't doing the job, it should be flanked...

Bob's World
03-31-2009, 05:25 PM
They always told me that doing the same thing over and over and achieving the same result was not smart and that if I discovered an obstacle, bypassing or flanking was better than a frontal assault. So it seems to me if the designated organization isn't doing the job, it should be flanked...


We're leaving bread crumbs for them to follow.

Actually to be fair and expand a bit on what they can't seem to grasp: The guy with stars on his chest/collar in the rear doesn't need the same tactical lay down that the guy actually on the ground with oak leaves or bars. Raise your game. How about some strategic analysis and perspective??? And that does not mean simply providing world wide tactical info.

J Wolfsberger
03-31-2009, 08:24 PM
“A key distinction is that the Cold War-era use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works. In order to effectively deal with the increased levels of complexity that we are now faced with today, we need to adopt a more robust method for understanding our environment, with all the inherent relationships, tensions and barriers to security, so to develop well thought out, adaptive solutions to the complex problems that we face.”


BG (Retired)
Huba Wass de Czege
June 18, 2008

Would you know anything about where this quote came from? My initial response is extremely negative, but I'd like to know the full context and all the reasoning before I comment.

slapout9
03-31-2009, 09:59 PM
Would you know anything about where this quote came from? My initial response is extremely negative, but I'd like to know the full context and all the reasoning before I comment.


Jay it is in this months issue of Military Review which has a couple of articles on design. You can link to it through SWJ rsearch links. but you probably already new that;)

Ken White
03-31-2009, 11:45 PM
logical thinker. He hesitates to criticize the quote until he has full knowledge of the context. Admirable trait that. Seriously.

I, OTOH, read that and thought: "That systems engineering jazz never worked during the Cold War no matter how hard some tried to push it. Plus, the problems we face today are not more complex, they're just different."

I'd add we'd be much better off with some bright, intuitive solutions than with the well thought out adaptive solutions from a lot of really smart people that we've tried thus far...

Ron Humphrey
04-01-2009, 01:15 AM
Considering the good BG(retired) is one of my favorites I usually find what he says pretty informative and thus I'm keepin hope alive that somebody talks him into taking the the new chair at the college.





I'd add we'd be much better off with some bright, intuitive solutions than with the well thought out adaptive solutions from a lot of really smart people that we've tried thus far...

I have actually heard that same thing from quite a few so at least there's hope that maybe it'll stick.

Bob's World
04-01-2009, 05:18 AM
Huba is a great American. You don't need to agree with everything he says, but you're a fool if you don't listen. I think I gave the poor guy an ulcer during the week he tried to mentor me when I was tasked to lead a group in a SOD course.

I understood the concept, because it is basically how I think about things anyway; but the SOD material was so convaluted and complex in the way it was presented I was struggling to lead a team to do something "right" that none of us could figure out from the half day presentation we were given prior to being told to apply it. Huba is a patient man.

William F. Owen
04-01-2009, 01:29 PM
"That systems engineering jazz never worked during the Cold War no matter how hard some tried to push it. Plus, the problems we face today are not more complex, they're just different."
Right! The COIN avant-garde seem to keep using the word "complex" to cover for "ignorance". Nothing we see today is new. We just haven't seen it for a while , or we haven't seen it around "here".

To paraphrase a senior civilian instructor at the IDF staff collage "we need less systems theory and more military history."


I'd add we'd be much better off with some bright, intuitive solutions than with the well thought out adaptive solutions from a lot of really smart people that we've tried thus far...
I am very much for the bright intuitive stuff if it stands up to examination. A lot of the really smart stuff is falling apart faster than chocolate breech blocks, once the shooting starts.

EG: As much as I like and respect Frank Hoffman, I still can't see why "Hybrid" is deemed useful or even an accurate description of the phenomena it seeks to describe.

William F. Owen
04-01-2009, 01:37 PM
Huba is a great American. You don't need to agree with everything he says, but you're a fool if you don't listen.
Shaken his hand, and talked with him for 10 mins in a taxi queue, but the one time I heard him speak publicly, he lost me.


I understood the concept, because it is basically how I think about things anyway; but the SOD material was so convaluted and complex in the way it was presented I was struggling to lead a team to do something "right" that none of us could figure out from the half day presentation we were given prior to being told to apply it. Huba is a patient man.
SOD is flawed. It briefs well, but it doesn't stand up to real world conditions. In war on the simple survives! - and SOD is, as you point out, bizarrely complex.

Bob's World
04-01-2009, 03:36 PM
SOD is flawed. It briefs well, but it doesn't stand up to real world conditions. In war on the simple survives! - and SOD is, as you point out, bizarrely complex.

I suspect that Einstein began with a much more complex eqauation, and certainly an overvwhelming amount of raw information, before he identified what was really important and boiled it down to "E=MC2"

Similarly in any environment like Iraq (and yes this was and is much more complex than any homogenous COIN where there is only one cause and one rebel group to address) you have some base theories and an overwhelming amount of information to sort through. Insurgent forces from a dozen states experiencing poor governance that see the US as the source of legitimacy of those poor governances so they take their show on the road to try to break US support (foreign fighters). States and non-states conducting UW to incite and facilitate insurgency (Iran and AQN), and multiple local insurgents working for all three brands of insurgency (some separatist, some revolutionary, and some resistance).

To simply walk into a mess like that with a copy of "how the British did it in Malaysia" or "how the French did it in Algeria"; or even the US COIN manual under your arm; and you are likely doomed to flounder.

What SOD is intended to do is to identify all of the various actors in the drama, their inter-relationships, motivations, etc. It is a journey to work out what info is important and then to understand that which is important in ways that derive or support development of solution sets aimed at root causes. Otherwise you simply follow the intel guys assessment of who the threat is ( here's your deck of cards) to execute the mission that you were originally given.

I will say this though. I don't follow SOD or CACD in my work. It is all commonsense driven free flow (think Jazz with Chord changes, not sheet music) with an eclectic team of guys. The three senior guys are a Navy Sub driver, a Marine F-18 jock, and an SF guy who was conducting jury trials in Portland on 9/11.

So, don't try to memorize and overly apply any of these processes. But do take the time to try to truly understand what the problem is before you rush off to try to solve it. My opinion, SOD will fade away simply because Nave is such a proud father that he refuses to compromise the intellectual purity of his product. Ok, that's his right; but too bad, because understanding and applying the basic logic of this is critical to take planning to the next level.

Ken White
04-01-2009, 03:45 PM
Huba is a great American. You don't need to agree with everything he says, but you're a fool if you don't listen...He says a lot I agree with and I always listen -- but I have no problem telling the world when I do not agree with him or anyone else if there is or seems to me to be a reason to do so.

In this case, I'm pointing out that I was a participant as we tried a number of systems engineering ideas in the 1949-95 era with virtually no success.

Further, I am stating that in my opinion none of the 'problems' we face today are more complex or dangerous than were many of our earlier 'problems' though they are undeniably different.

I made the comment because I'm firmly convinced based on observation in peace and war that our many efforts to make all commanders, leaders and managers equal through 'systems engineering' do not work and can give a false sense of security. Such a sense is dangerous and inimical to a smoothly functioning and competent armed force. It also prolongs an unsustainable quest for total fairness in promotions and assignments which cannot happen and which puts many wrong people in the wrong position at the wrong time. I can name and have named persons who are examples of that.

I also wanted to point out that complexity of problems is in the eye of the beholder and that belief that one's problems are unique is an invitation to the strategic miscalculation you often mention here. As you have said, history is a broad guide and we ignore it at some peril. I know Huba is aware of that and I also know that he writes for a mass audience -- unfortunately, in doing that he can inadvertently write things he does not mean to be taken literally and without context some statements can be misconstrued (Hat Tip to J. Wolfsberger). Thus I was just providing my own 'context' to his statement on 'problems.'

We've been in worse shape, economically, politically, geostrategically, militarily and even educationally. Maybe not in media competence or domestic automobile quality, tho'... :D

Surferbeetle
04-05-2009, 05:28 AM
I made the comment because I'm firmly convinced based on observation in peace and war that our many efforts to make all commanders, leaders and managers equal through 'systems engineering' do not work and can give a false sense of security. Such a sense is dangerous and inimical to a smoothly functioning and competent armed force.


Ken,

CT Lab has Antoine Bousquet's comments (http://www.terraplexic.org/ctlabsymposia/2008/12/5/the-scientific-way-of-warfare-some-opening-considerations.html) on his book The Scientific Way of Warfare (http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Way-Warfare-Battlefields-Modernity/dp/0231700784):


Finally, I would like to briefly comment on what progressively emerged from my study as a central dynamic at the heart of both military practice and scientific theory and did eventually structure much of my thinking: the relationship between order and chaos. The human psyche, the organisation of human society, and the production of knowledge all strive for order and regularity and to keep at bay what threatens to bring disruption and meaninglessness into them. However, not only does chaos inevitably resurface with the capacity to upset the most stable and established of arrangements but it seems to be in fact a necessary condition of creativity and even order itself. Science has recurrently needed to concede to chaos and indeterminacy to permit the development of its understanding of the natural world, notably through the introduction of probabilities or non-linear dynamics. Throughout the development of the sciences I have charted, this tension between their drive for predictability and the limits they consistently encounter has been a perennial constant, even if the ways in which these tensions are navigated are never quite the same. What one might characterise as an on-going dialectic between chaos and order (I tend to privilege Edgar Morin’s notion of dialogic understood as the simultaneous competition, antagonism and complementarity of distinct logics and for which there exists no possible higher synthesis that might resolve this tension) is echoed in the forms taken by the organisation of military force. Indeed, all attempts to bring complete control and predictability prove to be inherently self-defeating while a tolerance for (and capacity to profit from) chaos and contingency seems an enduring necessity.

Regards,

Steve

Ken White
04-05-2009, 06:34 PM
This is human nature:
"The human psyche, the organisation of human society, and the production of knowledge all strive for order and regularity and to keep at bay what threatens to bring disruption and meaninglessness into them."This, OTOH, is history:
Indeed, all attempts to bring complete control and predictability prove to be inherently self-defeating while a tolerance for (and capacity to profit from) chaos and contingency seems an enduring necessity.and should allow us to over come the natural inclination...

Intuitive leaders and commanders versus metrication... ;)

Stevely
04-06-2009, 02:12 AM
This is human nature:This, OTOH, is history:and should allow us to over come the natural inclination...

Intuitive leaders and commanders versus metrication... ;)

Unfortunately Ken I believe that of all societies in human history, we are the most obsessed with quantification (metrication - great word). Every last redoubt of the intuitive in the end gets overwhelmed by the statisticians, the analysts, and the systematizers. Experience rarely ever triumphs over the numbers, unfortunately.

Ken White
04-06-2009, 02:54 AM
mine even more gray by wanting things I cannot have... :o

Still, I have faith -- some day, some way, we'll figure out how to measure talent and competence, fine tune ego and ambition and achieve military perfection.

Briefly. Then Congress will change the rules. :eek: :wry:

William F. Owen
04-06-2009, 04:07 AM
CT Lab has Antoine Bousquet's comments on his book The Scientific Way of Warfare:

Quote:
Finally, I would like to briefly comment on what progressively emerged from my study as a central dynamic at the heart of both military practice and scientific theory and did eventually structure much of my thinking: the relationship between order and chaos. The human psyche, the organisation of human society, and the production of knowledge all strive for order and regularity and to keep at bay what threatens to bring disruption and meaninglessness into them. However, not only does chaos inevitably resurface with the capacity to upset the most stable and established of arrangements but it seems to be in fact a necessary condition of creativity and even order itself. Science has recurrently needed to concede to chaos and indeterminacy to permit the development of its understanding of the natural world, notably through the introduction of probabilities or non-linear dynamics. Throughout the development of the sciences I have charted, this tension between their drive for predictability and the limits they consistently encounter has been a perennial constant, even if the ways in which these tensions are navigated are never quite the same. What one might characterise as an on-going dialectic between chaos and order (I tend to privilege Edgar Morin’s notion of dialogic understood as the simultaneous competition, antagonism and complementarity of distinct logics and for which there exists no possible higher synthesis that might resolve this tension) is echoed in the forms taken by the organisation of military force. Indeed, all attempts to bring complete control and predictability prove to be inherently self-defeating while a tolerance for (and capacity to profit from) chaos and contingency seems an enduring necessity.

It is worth pointing out, that the meaning and essence of nearly every sentence above was originally said by Clausewitz in some shape or form - back when warfare was "simple" and before it become "complex."

Ron Humphrey
04-06-2009, 04:21 AM
It is worth pointing out, that the meaning and essence of nearly every sentence above was originally said by Clausewitz in some shape or form - back when warfare was "simple" and before it become "complex."

One has to heavily complexify things in order to learn how to simplificate them -

Thereby being able to refer back to the greats for verification and /or validation of the aforementioned processes:D

Surferbeetle
04-06-2009, 02:31 PM
It is worth pointing out, that the meaning and essence of nearly every sentence above was originally said by Clausewitz in some shape or form - back when warfare was "simple" and before it become "complex."

Wilf,

Clausewitz certainly has something to say, for me however his is not the only business model when it comes to warfare.

I am interested in chasing down a copy of his work to reread but this time I want to try it in German. Any suggestions?

Best,

Steve

Old Eagle
04-06-2009, 02:42 PM
Don't screw w/the German. The language used is almost impossible to put in context due to evolution of the German language.

Get the Paret/Howard annotated translation, even if just from the library. It is the touchstone of Clausewitz translations. It also has great interpretive notes by two of the world's great military historians.

Hacksaw
04-06-2009, 04:04 PM
Old Eagle, as usual, is correct... Paret/Howard...

In this case so is Wilf

William F. Owen
04-06-2009, 04:20 PM
Old Eagle, as usual, is correct... Paret/Howard...


I'd also recommend H.R. Smiths (http://www.amazon.com/Clausewitz-Study-Military-Political-Ideas/dp/1403935866) work on Clausewitz. It is excellent.

pvebber
04-06-2009, 07:49 PM
Just finished an interesting book called "How We Decide". One of the key insights of the book is that we have eveolved BOTH rationalmodes of decision-making, and emotional (intuitive) modes of decision making. People whose brain's lack rational components (Due to accident or illness) can't make good decisions, those whose brains lack emotional components can't make ANY decisions. Seems we need BOTH to be effective.

I think the same is true of the debate between systems theory and design inspired theory. There are cases where one or the other approach should be emphasized, but always preferring one over the other leads to trouble.

From what i have seen out working with 2 and 3 star level staffs, we have over-emphasized systems thinking and 'metrication' within the staffs, and only the Commanders (and perhaps his council of colonels) add the intuitive approach.

The methodology that reserves the balancing of system thinking with intuitive thinking at the highest levels of command creates a false sense of certainity implied by staff focus on numerics, and an unfortunate atmosphere of the staff efforts being more to create a "valid" justification for things the commander intuitively decides, rather than to be proactively engagged with the commander improving the quality of deisions...

A stereo type yes, and obviously not universal, but seems particulalry true in exercise/experiment circumstances...

The value of the design approach is not that it should replace a systems thinking approach (which has proven invaluable in appicable areas like logistics and communications) but in re-emphasizing the value of the intuitive and "non-metrical" approaches in supporting decision - making.

Design and systems analysis CAN live together!

Stevely
04-07-2009, 01:10 AM
Don't screw w/the German. The language used is almost impossible to put in context due to evolution of the German language.

Bonus points if you read an old German copy printed in Fraktur. :D

William F. Owen
04-07-2009, 05:09 AM
Don't screw w/the German. The language used is almost impossible to put in context due to evolution of the German language.


Verily, I say that these words, speak the most solemn and considered truth, though they be little known and thus most surprising.

William F. Owen
04-07-2009, 05:13 AM
Just finished an interesting book called "How We Decide". One of the key insights of the book is that we have eveolved BOTH rationalmodes of decision-making, and emotional (intuitive) modes of decision making. People whose brain's lack rational components (Due to accident or illness) can't make good decisions, those whose brains lack emotional components can't make ANY decisions. Seems we need BOTH to be effective.


This is the THE cornerstone of Robert Leonhard's book (http://www.amazon.com/Principles-War-Information-Age/dp/0891417133). You'll either love it loathe it. It's about the only work I think even comes close to the CvC in modern times.

J Wolfsberger
04-07-2009, 02:03 PM
“A key distinction is that the Cold War-era use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works. In order to effectively deal with the increased levels of complexity that we are now faced with today, we need to adopt a more robust method for understanding our environment, with all the inherent relationships, tensions and barriers to security, so to develop well thought out, adaptive solutions to the complex problems that we face.”


BG (Retired)
Huba Wass de Czege
June 18, 2008

System Engineering, Operations Research and Systems Analysis are highly structured, formal processes for problem definition and system development. Having read through his paper Systemic Operational Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions (http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090228_art004.pdf) (and thanks for the pointer, Slapout), I agree with his thinking completely. In fact, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone could have thought this would be a good idea.

However, when he states "use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works," it should be understood the type of problem he is referring to. I very much doubt he intended the statement to apply to material development. Referring back to an earlier post from selil: "I get concerned any time I see the military re-purposing a fairly well understood field of study and then referring back to internal military documents to support contention. " Absolutely. Using System Engineering to develop operational plans, knowing that the "system" is human centric, which makes it a messy system, that the problems are all wicked, well ... that's just wrong.

slapout9
04-08-2009, 05:10 AM
What I found confusing was the concept that somehow Design had become separated from systems analysis or systems engineering!!! It used to be called Brain Storming (I think) but it was the first step and progressed through planning and engineering to make sure it was feasible. Anyhow here is the entire process that Colonel Warden teaches for over 10 years now. Design is the first and hadest step.

Short version: is Design-Target-Campaign-Finish.

Long Version: is Design The Future-Target for Success-Campaign to Win-Finish with Finesse.

Bob's World
04-08-2009, 03:15 PM
Maybe some of this helps (From a briefing on SOD):

Strategic Appreciation and Design is a New Approach
Relies on an open-ended critical method.
Strategic Appreciation generates an improved understanding of the larger system in any situation with any scope or depth.
Design is concerned with creation of systems-of-actions designed to exploit identified tendencies and potentials, in order to change existing situations in desired directions.

Why is Strategic Appreciation and Design needed?
We often act before we understand our situation well enough.
As a result, we define our problems incorrectly, which leads us to apply the wrong solutions.
Ill-conceived solutions for ill-defined problems actually create greater problems.
This new approach encourages the free movement of good ideas and makes the reasoning of our actions more transparent, helping us to see how to improve what we are doing.

What is different about Strategic Appreciation and Design?
Challenges and improves our normal thought processes and decision procedures.
Focuses on a more robust form of intellectual leadership defined as the ability for an organization to move good ideas around.

Before, during, and after imposing solutions to solve problems.
Strategic Appreciation and Design is time intensive, and works best when considering future action. It is also a sound method for assessing current operations, and evaluating past actions.

The goal of Design is the creation of more favorable, self-sustaining situations.
Assessment shifts away from learning about any single action to a focus on monitoring transformation of the system itself and sustaining sensitivity to the need to make adjustments by reframing both system understanding and operational approaches to better deal with emerging conditions.

As the diagram shows (I know, what diagram? If I can figure out how to paste it in I will), reframing can occur at any point where new knowledge is developed that challenges existing understanding of the system.
As understanding increases, formulate actions to transform the system to meet our aims; identify potentials, opportunities, risks to these actions; identify how to ensure self-regulation of system after our inject in the system.
Pay attention to the creation of a learning structure to enable observation of the system during action.

Bob's World
04-08-2009, 03:24 PM
701

J Wolfsberger
04-08-2009, 03:42 PM
What I found confusing was the concept that somehow Design had become separated from systems analysis or systems engineering!!! It used to be called Brain Storming (I think) but it was the first step and progressed through planning and engineering to make sure it was feasible. Anyhow here is the entire process that Colonel Warden teaches for over 10 years now. Design is the first and hadest step.

Short version: is Design-Target-Campaign-Finish.

Long Version: is Design The Future-Target for Success-Campaign to Win-Finish with Finesse.

In the 1970s, I was taught that the first step in addressing a problem was "qualitative system analysis." (The text I was given to get a handle on the technique was On Thermonuclear War by Herman Kahn.) The process consisted of expanding the problem as given to include "the whole world." After doing so, you began to shrink it back down. The purpose of the exercise was:


Make sure you were solving the right problem. On several occasions the SA/SE group would be tasked with optimizing X, only to come back with the answer that "X" wasn't the issue.
Account for the non-quantifiable dimensions of the problem. It's possible to come up with a count of victims of the Rwanda Genocide. But the event and aftermath are governed by the hate of the perpetrators and the anger and grief of the survivors. Those are thing that cannot be quantified, but they will dominate any attempt at resolution. Failure to do this leads to such stupidity as suggesting the survivors should "just get over it," which actively and strongly prevents resolution.
Ensure you've accounted for everything. That goes beyond declaring something relevant, to explicitly determining what isn't relevant with an explanation as to why. I know of at least one combat system (actually a subsystem) under development today that will never see production because the proponents and developer refuse to account for the fact it will be used in combat. (Yes, it really is that bad.)


I think the paper you attached as well as the paper by BG Czege are advocating exactly this kind of approach. I'm really glad to see people getting back to it.

William F. Owen
04-15-2009, 11:36 AM
http://www.operationaldesign.net/default.html



OK, I dl'd that link, read it, (twice) and I can't understand what the article is about. It just leaves me confused. Can anyone explain it to me?


The goal of Design is the creation of more favorable, self-sustaining situations.
Assessment shifts away from learning about any single action to a focus on monitoring transformation of the system itself and sustaining sensitivity to the need to make adjustments by reframing both system understanding and operational approaches to better deal with emerging conditions.

...and while we are about it, I don't understand this either. It doesn't even seem to be good English.

Hacksaw
04-15-2009, 12:39 PM
To be clear... I'm not exactly a proponent or critic of Design... Always thought I did design to support my commander's understanding of the situation so that he could provide adequate guidance, but if it helps some from jumping to solutions before they understand the situation/problem... I can live with another construct for what I consider common sense...

translation of text in question...

Adopt approaches that create conditions on the ground that allow military forces to conclude full spectrum operations and what remains is an environment that is self governing (as in self regulating system) that Coalition members can live with...'

or

leave a situation that doesn't necessarily smell like a bouqet of roses, but doesn't smell like a heaping pile of pig turds

Live well and row

PS: I'm in the midst of an exercise design to, in part, determine the applicability of design in a time constrained tactical environment... I think its nuts

Ken White
04-15-2009, 04:03 PM
...PS: I'm in the midst of an exercise design to, in part, determine the applicability of design in a time constrained tactical environment... I think its nutsHowever, I know you'll try to adapt it to the, umm -- faster moving? Er, yeah, those are okay words; faster moving -- No. More rapidly evolving, tactical situations.

I truly wish you success...

DaveDoyle
04-21-2009, 11:37 PM
I think I am familiar with the scenario Hacksaw referenced in his post. Unfortunately, if the team is applying "design" to an isolated event, rather than an evolving environment it probably won't seem that useful.

We've been applying design against several long term scenarios that require planning teams to take our construct and develop plans and orders for events while we continue to apply design as the environment changes.

Apparently ARCENT is using design for a series of complex problems and link their design team into planning cells within the staff to deal with a series of plans and orders. This seems to me to be a beneficial method for keeping design useful. The earlier posts about the USSOCOM Strategy Directorate also indicate a useful use for design.

One additional comment - the current SAMS version of design has elements that would seem to come from SOD, but links more closely to some of the academic components of design theory.

My impression is that with the different schools of thought out there regarding design (SOD, CACD, USMC doctrine, SAMS Art of Design, FMI 5-2) that design is getting a bad reputation.

I'm still interested in hearing from folks that are out there using design in its various forms.

Appreciate the input from our senior council members too. Thanks.

Cavguy
04-22-2009, 09:50 PM
All,

Some interesting comments on design from the CAC blog - read down.
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/BLOG/blogs/why_i_serve/archive/2009/03/06/design-and-the-art-of-battle-command.aspx

William F. Owen
04-23-2009, 07:35 AM
All,

Some interesting comments on design from the CAC blog - read down.
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/BLOG/blogs/why_i_serve/archive/2009/03/06/design-and-the-art-of-battle-command.aspx

OK, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that these guys seem to think that operational planning is how you plan to conduct operations.

I have always assumed that operational planning was how you "prepared" for operations. You can't produce a plan for how you will conduct a battle. No one who has ever been successful against a competent enemy ever has. It's far more to do with freedom of action, than realising objectives.

That was why Patton, Slim and a few others were able to plan major operations in 24 hours and issue Op Orders on one page. None of these guys even tried to anticipate everything. It was all about preparation, not prediction.

Ken White
04-23-2009, 04:07 PM
That was why Patton, Slim and a few others were able to plan major operations in 24 hours and issue Op Orders on one page. None of these guys even tried to anticipate everything. It was all about preparation, not prediction.Because they were smart enough to realize it is impossible to predict the future in excessive detail and to try is to waste time and effort. It's a fool's game.

Serious questions, two of them:

How much of all this emphasis today on 'planning,' IPB, MDMP and Design is due solely to the fact that overlarge staffs can afford to expend the effort?

What is going to happen in a major conflict when those large staffs are unaffordable due to casualties and other personnel issues -- and the time to do all that is simply not available?

Hacksaw
04-23-2009, 04:22 PM
I suppose you could say I spent the better part of 8 of my last 9 years in the Army as a planner of one sort or another...

1. The most, and probably only, important step in MDMP is Mission Analysis... done correctly - it greatly resembles what Design proposes is missing... ergo Mission Analysis is routinely done poorly which is why anyone thought Design was necessary in the first place.

2. As a tactical-level planner... All I really have to do is get resource allocation (Task Org), logical BCT areas of operation, fire control measures, and task/purposes correct. Subordinate commanders (the U.S. Army almost always puts pretty smart guys in command of BCTs... If I do much more, I unnecessarily constrain warfighters

3. A good wargame (no one is allowed to violate the realities of the time-space continuum) will identify all the Dec Points you need and give you good triggers for when changes are needed in TASKO, boundaries, FC measures, and task/purpose.

The tyranny of the orders process will not allow us to issue one page orders no matter how attractive the idea, but the shorter the better, not to mention a good set of graphics is all most commanders need...

Live well and row

DaveDoyle
04-23-2009, 04:34 PM
Ken,
Great point. Pulling a design team out costs people and wouldn't be possible without overages in manning. Pulling planners out to join a design team to assist in "parallel planning" also requires additional people. I suppose that's why design takes place at divisions and above...

Do more minds looking at something automatically make it better? If all of these people are planning and designing what are they not doing?

Playing devil's advocate though, design theory (at least as we study it at SAMS) acknowledges that you can never "predict" the future completely, but you can use design to understand potential futures to be better prepared to make decisions.

Hacksaw may be best suited to talk about shortfalls in design for results in crisis action planning. Ongoing design efforts can complement decision making and planning for immediate requirements. But, you probably would have difficulty starting a design from a cold start for an emergency unless you have the patience to build understanding while dealing with the crisis.

Got to go, but I do want to comment on the differences between design and thorough mission analysis in a planning process.

Dave

William F. Owen
04-23-2009, 05:20 PM
The tyranny of the orders process will not allow us to issue one page orders no matter how attractive the idea, but the shorter the better, not to mention a good set of graphics is all most commanders need...


Then the tyranny needs to be opposed! It might be good if someone could work out why this is the case.

Ken White
04-23-2009, 05:28 PM
Hacksaw, having also done some planning here and there, I agree strongly with your first two items. Mixed emotions on the third, it is certainly correct but I have strong reservations about the ultimate benefit of war games. They can be beneficial -- they can also breed bad habits for several reasons. Pre 2002 BCTP, for example, turned off the computers and the lights as final 'victory' was achieved by the US. Nobody bothered with Phase IV...

I am, however, confused by the fact that your second point seems to contradict your final paragraph. I have seen a basic, not too voluminous plan converted to an order and then a series of Frags control unit operations for many days on more than one occasion in fairly intense combat. I think I'm suggesting that the "tyranny of the orders process" is a self imposed constraint -- and a massive plan or order is a constraint -- and one that need not exist...

Dave Doyle, thanks for the answer. However, your answer calls for a follow on question. You have explained the use and benefits Design -- which I do not really question -- and of having the very large staff (which I do strongly question) my first question remains -- how much of the bureaucratic staff procedure followed today is a result of overlarge staffs as opposed to a real need (not the same thing as the benefits of) for much of the effort? IOW, did overcapacity lead to excessively detailed processes simply because that excess was available and not otherwise employed?

I'd also point out that my second question is far more important than my first one.

Hacksaw
04-23-2009, 05:43 PM
With regard to your confusion... Note I didn't say you can't issue a short order, I said the orders process won't allow you to...

maybe I should say the culture... but, I can't see being allowed to issue a one-page order... frago yes, order no... at least not an operational order... call me pessimist:(

Live well and row

Ken White
04-23-2009, 06:03 PM
recall I'm easily confused...:o

Thanks for the clarification and yes, I do now see what you meant and acknowledge the process as it has grown is the culprit -- but that was sort of my overall point, the process is the problem. it might also have been perhaps your 'culture' point. Have we not allowed process to take over?

Sounds like form over function to me.

What happened to products -- usable products, not perfect products... :confused:

Ron Humphrey
04-23-2009, 10:39 PM
recall I'm easily confused...:o

Thanks for the clarification and yes, I do now see what you meant and acknowledge the process as it has grown is the culprit -- but that was sort of my overall point, the process is the problem. it might also have been perhaps your 'culture' point. Have we not allowed process to take over?

Sounds like form over function to me.

What happened to products -- usable products, not perfect products... :confused:

Part of the larger issue may be simply the fact that as more and more ways of leading, learning, defining, designing the goals and specific objectives leave many sifting through mountains of possibilities with less than explicitly defined forms, knowing which forms are supposed to be used for which functions becomes less static and more dynamic.

For those who are used to quickly discerning their objectives and then using whatever forms are available interchangeably to achieve it this isn't a big deal. For others it seems to be a much more difficult or at least painful process.

Ken White
04-24-2009, 12:06 AM
It was that because in war, simple things work best; the more convoluted the processes, the more people involved, the more headquarters involved, the greater the chance for error. Those kinds of errors do not result in production glitches or shortfalls -- they kill people. Unnecessarily.

I think your first point is very accurate and it certainly describes what we have done and some of the logic behind that. It also shows just how badly we have muddied the waters -- but I don't think it answers either of my questions.

Your second item is correct also. It leads to two new questions. Could that mean we should be more selective about who gets what job? For those who have difficulties doing that synthesis, could more pressured, graded practices in the field in simple easily organized TEWTs improve their capabilities?

(As an aside, exercises run in a garrison environment develop sloppy tactical and operational habits)

I understand the imperative of training everyone in the military basics; educating all to do things in a standard way; the importance of teaching methodologies to organize thoughts and efforts; and the statutory requirement of fairness in entry, opportunity and promotions. Recognizing all that, I still believe my two questions are valid. We are doing things the way we do them only because we have chosen that approach. There are others.

I'll again say that my second question in the 04:07 PM post above is more important than the first one. Perhaps I should insert the word 'far' between 'is' and 'more important.' ;)

Ron Humphrey
04-24-2009, 12:29 AM
Although I'm sure this will automatically draw fire from many it does seem that one of the best answers to your question is simply good information management, sharing, and well developed interagency KM efforts should help facilitate more reach back groups more than sufficiently manned and informed to do much of that. Even if comms get knocked out whats the chance they all are? Also If that were to happen how much operational and strategic planning would be being done in that particular AO vs tactically continuing the fight and addressing the conditions at hand.

Is it too much to believe that the days of groups of leaders getting very little sleep and under constant pressure having to bear the sole burden of all things happening in their AO should be gone? They have visibility and accountability for it but they should darn well be able to get some of the heavy lifting done by those not knee deep in the fight.

:confused:

Ken White
04-24-2009, 01:25 AM
Old Asian proverb. Still, that's one approach. Many today will agree.

However, your excellent comments still do not answer either of my questions. Your first point is an approach -- but I suggest that over reliance on communication means that failed has been the downfall of entirely too many Commanders. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that knowledge management will adequately do the job in a major conflict when we will have smaller staffs. That size factor is a given; the current size will not be sustainable in a war with even moderate casualties (as opposed to the light casualties overall in both theaters today). Given smaller staffs and a rapid tempo of combat with casualty rates above 10% per day at times and movements of one-half to ten or more miles day -- in one direction or the other -- I strongly question whether that reach back will be adequate. Nor do I believe it can be sustained. Perhaps some day, though I would question the wisdom of it, we aren't there yet.

You ask
"Also If that were to happen how much operational and strategic planning would be being done in that particular AO vs tactically continuing the fight and addressing the conditions at hand."That's the issue. That's exactly what will -- and does -- happen. I'm not sure we're ready to do that. Nor am I sure that our sophisticated networking capability is -- particularly against a near peer enemy who targets it to disrupt and confuse.

As Schmedlap said elsewhere; "...The most essential skill is comfort operating amidst ambiguity and uncertainty and adapting to it. That cannot be quantified or tasked. It requires mission-oriented orders, significant trust in subordinates, decentralized execution, and solutions that are too creative, complex, and varied to quantify. It is not nearly as amenable to metrics and quantifiable tasks as the preferred leadership technique of micromanagement."

That's combat reality. All that sophisticated planning takes place at Corps or higher; at the Bde level, it's all about execution; at Bn it's even simpler. At both levels, there is planning but there is no time for the sophistication and detail prevalent in both theaters at those levels today. Time is a bigger problem than staff size; time and enemy disruption. Neither of which is a significant problem now.

With regard to your second question, I'll point out that I for one not only do not think those days should be gone, I'll bet big money they will not be. The solution to the valid problem you cite (and which is induced by that "tactically continuing the fight and addressing the conditions at hand" you mentioned) is simply to build in a rotation of combat elements plan -- something the Army has only rarely done because it's 'too complicated.' It isn't but that's another thread. The Marines used to do it pretty well.

As for involving those not knee deep in the fight, it's been my observation in a bunch of fights that those who are not knee deep in it aren't nearly as interested in that fight as those that are...

Ron Humphrey
04-24-2009, 03:00 AM
Rely on black boxes cause black days



Serious questions, two of them:

How much of all this emphasis today on 'planning,' IPB, MDMP and Design is due solely to the fact that overlarge staffs can afford to expend the effort?

Without getting into the specifics although that may be one piece of it the enablers both digital and otherwise available to commanders has to be seen as a part of it as well. Comparing to the stuff available when I first joined one or two fairly good soldiers can keep tabs on more stuff then 5 or six of us before.

Although I accept the wisdom in the proverb above does that mean you still don't find ways to work those capabilities available into the standard procedures for staffs. The expectation that the enemy gets a vote and that that will be one of his targeted areas may affect how dependant on it you are but isn't that where you focus countering through mutually assured limitations(ex: make sure the only way they knock out comms is to knock em all out thus your both fighting with hands tied behind your back. )?




What is going to happen in a major conflict when those large staffs are unaffordable due to casualties and other personnel issues -- and the time to do all that is simply not available?

That really tough question is made all the tougher by the fact that I'm young and dumb and as such have a somewhat hard time imagining how exactly something like that is going to happen in any context that is not equally as detrimental to ones opponents.

Also because as I look at plans now compared with plans from back then-



That was why Patton, Slim and a few others were able to plan major operations in 24 hours and issue Op Orders on one page. None of these guys even tried to anticipate everything. It was all about preparation, not prediction.

It's hard to see how it's actually any different in its less digitally supported form. IF you have C2 and full staffs you plan with what you have for what you can. IF you run low on either you plan with what you have for what you can. On papyrus if necessary and with a bunch of grunts and new officers instead of 16 -20 highly educated 0-6 and aboves.



Old Asian proverb. Still, that's one approach. Many today will agree.

However, your excellent comments still do not answer either of my questions. Your first point is an approach -- but I suggest that over reliance on communication means that failed has been the downfall of entirely too many Commanders. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that knowledge management will adequately do the job in a major conflict when we will have smaller staffs. That size factor is a given; the current size will not be sustainable in a war with even moderate casualties (as opposed to the light casualties overall in both theaters today). Given smaller staffs and a rapid tempo of combat with casualty rates above 10% per day at times and movements of one-half to ten or more miles day -- in one direction or the other -- I strongly question whether that reach back will be adequate. Nor do I believe it can be sustained. Perhaps some day, though I would question the wisdom of it, we aren't there yet.

Knowledge management only in the sense of what soldiers that have been empowered to share and learn from each other, history, academia, and especially you old guys and are able to perform this with or without static enablers.

The one thing the younger generation has going for it that even my generation only slightly gets, is that everything they learn comes without restrictions as to how it happens. You can build all the infrastructure you want in order to facilitate it but regardless with or without it they will network, collaborate, research, wargame, etc. They will use whatever is available to do that and more often than not it may even be more efficient and or productive then what you provide them. Unfortunately it's also a major opsec problem so there you have the why on what we need to provide them.

No matter what happens on the battlefield it seems to me we have to understand that those coming into the future leadership are not going to end up doing it the way many in the past may have.

The same lessons may apply but how they address them will probably be as radically different as they way cars are built today compared with the Model T.

Look at the enemies we face today, even they manage to come up with remote controls, sat phones, and virtual trainers.





As for involving those not knee deep in the fight, it's been my observation in a bunch of fights that those who are not knee deep in it aren't nearly as interested in that fight as those that are...


While unfortunately true enough and for understandable reasons there should be ways to help address that. One of them is getting those who support you involved in supporting you. Occasionally that means making them a part of the solution. Most that I've met care they just don't necessarily see or feel the impact they can and do have on those on the line. (for good and bad):(

Ken White
04-24-2009, 04:28 AM
Without getting into the specifics although that may be one piece of it the enablers both digital and otherwise available to commanders has to be seen as a part of it as well. Comparing to the stuff available when I first joined one or two fairly good soldiers can keep tabs on more stuff then 5 or six of us before.True -- and that's good. the real issue though is how much of that stuff -- the staff products -- being tracked is really necessary versus nice to have...My experience from early days in Viet Nam forward until my second retirement in 95 was that I had way too much data; far more than I needed and the guys that were supposed to sift through it for me in the later years did the job with varying degrees of success. A lot of it was useless and too much more of it was the result of make-work programs (at which GO Hq excel...).
...(ex: make sure the only way they knock out comms is to knock em all out thus your both fighting with hands tied behind your back.)I agree we should try to do that -- and may be able to. I also suggest we cannot rely on the fact that we can do that. If we could now say that we could do so; we have no assurance that will be true in 90 days or a year. Technology changes rapidly and we aren't the only inventive folks about.
That really tough question is made all the tougher by the fact that I'm young and dumb and as such have a somewhat hard time imagining how exactly something like that is going to happen in any context that is not equally as detrimental to ones opponents.Well, you aren't dumb and that's proven by your very valid observation. The answer is that it will be as you say -- then it's an issue of who's the better trained sharper more operationally or tactically competent Commander (and the one with the better staff and / or connectivity... ;) ).
...IF you run low on either you plan with what you have for what you can. On papyrus if necessary and with a bunch of grunts and new officers instead of 16 -20 highly educated 0-6 and aboves.True -- and one should train to do that. If you only train to always win, you're going to miss something. That is part of my point in raising the issue. Training must be aimed not at ideal situations but to cope with worst case. To do less than (which we mostly now do) is to invite disaster.
...They will use whatever is available to do that and more often than not it may even be more efficient and or productive then what you provide them. Unfortunately it's also a major opsec problem so there you have the why on what we need to provide them.True and that's a real plus. The problem is that all you sharp young guys have a bunch of old guys who are not so adaptable in charge. :wry:
No matter what happens on the battlefield it seems to me we have to understand that those coming into the future leadership are not going to end up doing it the way many in the past may have.I would certainly hope not. I went to two fair sized wars and three or four little incursions. One of the latter was screwed up due to a Commander who should not have had the job; the others worked out real well.

The problem is both the fair sized wars were completely screwed up due to command failures, poor (and oversized) staffs, and, more importantly, political bickering in the middle of a war -- political bickering in Theater by folks in uniform, not the DC stupidity. And poor training. We fouled up badly in Korea and we were worse in Viet Nam -- we only did as well as we did because the competition was, fortunately, worse than we were.

So, yeah, I sure hope you guys don't do it the way we did -- you deserve better.
While unfortunately true enough and for understandable reasons there should be ways to help address that. One of them is getting those who support you involved in supporting you. Occasionally that means making them a part of the solution. Most that I've met care they just don't necessarily see or feel the impact they can and do have on those on the line. (for good and bad):(three problems intrude, minor one - parochialism (it does not stop in combat; CSS guys who get called Fobbits will pay you back. Plus, they believe they have their own problems..).

Middling one - inadequate training. We are poorly trained for many reasons. That creates in combat the problem that what should happen often does not. That can include support. Having a support system designed for a 1945 Army does not help.

The big problem is the impact of fairly rapid movement on support; it's not like peacetime. I have literally been supported by three different maintenance units in less than a week. That factor and the casualties and the resultant personnel turnover in operating and supporting units -- far more than most today have ever seen -- preclude those kinds of relationships. That, as you say, precludes their realizing or caring too much what's happening on the line. Way of the world and cannot be relied upon to change.

You cannot best case stuff in a war; you HAVE to worst case it.

Then if it ain't that bad, you can enjoy your success...:D

DaveDoyle
05-09-2009, 02:41 PM
Ken,
A lot of discusion by our military's "gray beards" at Carlisle, PA this week about some of the topics we've been discussing.

One interesting point was that not too long ago "information operations" was the new craze. One senior gentlemen said you could walk down the hallways of the Pentagon and get high off the smell of all the varnish on the new signs painted to designate offices as related to info ops. People saw that if they were plugged into the new idea they could get funding and continue their projects.

Is design in danger of following that path?

Also, if you do take a set of people and put them in an office and hang the "Designers are In" sign over the door do you risk relegating the function to a fringe element that can be marginalized or ignored?

What do you think?

Ken White
05-09-2009, 03:26 PM
Came right after I entered the Army in 1956. 'Pentomic' was the money word. That lasted until 1961 after Kennedy got elected; 'Counterinsurgency' became the word -- and I literally discovered that things I had previously not been able to obtain, even simple things like tow ropes for all ten Scout vehicles appeared if the requisition was resubmitted with 'Countrinsurgency training requirement' on it. :D

That was followed by ROTAD, Organizatial Design, Organizationatiol Effectiveness, Total Quality Management and a few others I've purged from my memory (as being mildly annoying to recall). So, yeah, we do tend to hop on to the latest fad.

That said, all those things had some merit -- not one of them was the panacea that a few wished to believe. I suspect the same thing will be said of both IO and Design. Both have merit, both are important, both have been around for years but are now couched with a name and a few new operating parameters to drag them back into the mainstream and encourage their use.

Both require emphasis because -- as was true with all the others -- they bring to the fore the fact that we have neglected those parts of the total effort. That said, neither is the full answer to any problem, much less warfighting.

Your specific question:
"Also, if you do take a set of people and put them in an office and hang the "Designers are In" sign over the door do you risk relegating the function to a fringe element that can be marginalized or ignored?"is certainly answered with "it's possible." That, however is wishy washy and I suspect that the answer is quite complicated -- most things asking what humans might do are usually complex.

Your possibility will occur with some people, most will adapt those principles or facets of design that work for them -- and that they had not already intuitively adopted. Some will reject all or most of the concept. My belief is that many people instinctively do design (as I understand it) modeling, much of it in their head, and that others will never grasp the reason or the utility of the methodology. As long as the two talk, they'll work it out.

It's another tool in the box. It is not 'the' tool -- nor are IO 'the' tool. The successful commander will pick and choose and merge to come up with what works for him. He will also try to pick Staff Officers that can apply all the tools in the order and to the degree needed and that includes Design or the ability to do Design-like things in another fashion...

Cliff
07-09-2010, 04:11 AM
This seemed to be the least stale design thread, hence I am asking here. Got my first intro to design (well other than reading stuff here on SWJ) from the SAMS folks today... Sounds like it is going into the joint doctrine but in a slightly modified form.

One question that came up was at what levels it is actually being used. The instructor didn't have a firm answer, so I figured this might be a good place to ask:

1. Is design now commonly used in the Army?

2. At what level is it used- Theater/JTF, Division, BCT, Battalion?? I assume not at the company/PLT level?

3. Anyone have comments on its effectiveness?

Any thoughts would be appreciated- CGSS summer start students aren't here yet so no Army Staff Group folks to poll...

Fred Bernh
07-09-2010, 10:57 AM
Campaign design is for sure a useful tool for planners. I read the two Military Review articles, and my first impression was that the art of design seems intuitively obvious. But then I tried to question exactly my own confidence in understanding how it works. My attention was paricularly drawn by the definition of “metacognition”. In phylosophical terms, metacognition is what is widely recognized as “universal knowledge”, separated for what can be addressed as competent or professional knowledge. For instance, military, economic, political arts are part of a competent knowledge. But they share a common ground, which we can assume is the cultural environment in which they grow and develop, including what is known as the insitutional culture predominant in a particular field of human activities. This is not yet universal knowledge, it is still another competent framework commonly understood as culture. To reach the universal knowledge ground, where the most powerful ideas live, we must try to rise above ourselves and look a much wider horizon of conceptualization. Let me set an example. Gen. Formica, the former commander of CSTC-A, once during a conference at ISAF HQ pointed out that his favourite book was “3 cups of tea”, and he recommended the reading to all his officers. It is intuitive that the book is really far away from giving the professional tips to train and equip a foreign Army. But if you scratch beneath the surface of competent knowledge, what he saw in the book was what he needed, precisely what was beyond his immediate horizon. In “Go Rin No Sho”, Miyamoto Musashi clearly explains this idea through “The Book of the Void”: “What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void”. Needless to say, we are talking about problem setting and not problem solving. The difference between the two is clearly stated also in the FM 3-24 “Counterinsurgency”. In other world, the first and the most essential task of a problem setting thinker is ask to himself what he doesn’t know of a problem. And here comes the problem inherent to his competent knowledge, both cultural and professinal, which are still two implicit and immanent frames of his thinking, with their subsequent boundaries and limits. So what is the catch from all this? One could be that how you decide the composition of your design team will inexorably affect your result from the beginning. Take for example the team of expert called by Gen. McChrystal to frame the new US strategy for Afghanistan last year. They were among the most brilliant think thankers in the US, people who studied the conflict and the afghan social environment with all the knowledge sources available and with a comprehensive perspective. But none of them was non-US, non of them was at least Afghan or Asian, let’s say part of a different cultural background (1st impicit frame). The result was that they came out with the most effective strategy to put in place from a single perspective, which decided also what the enemy was thinking about the whole issue, I would say, as the enemy was an American Afghan Taliban. It is important to stress the fact that how we think the world, the logic we put in place, is the most dangerous trap we could face setting a problem. From a universal knowledge perspective, campaign design is in danger to become another fascinating formal application of Euclidean geometry and will never get far from its axioms, propositions and logical system. Even the best design solution, if it is affected by the implicit frames mentioned above, will never goes far from being only another inertial coordinate system which satisfy Newton’s laws of motion, thus becoming nothing new. Here is where our current enemy find its strenght and where our intellectual maneuver finds its limits. Is like having freedom of movement in a given topographical map, where it is “intuitive” to find out our own position through a system of coordinates: you feel free to move wherever you want but you are using an implicit set of rules to define where you are. And that is precisely where your enemy always finds you.

William F. Owen
07-09-2010, 11:21 AM
it is still another competent framework commonly understood as culture. To reach the universal knowledge ground, where the most powerful ideas live, we must try to rise above ourselves and look a much wider horizon of conceptualization.
Sorry, but the US has grabbed design because it no longer understands Campaign planning. if it did, "Design" would go in the bin. Nothing about Campaign design is anything to do with culture or "meta-cognition". Ask the men who could do it well.

But if you scratch beneath the surface of competent knowledge, what he saw in the book was what he needed, precisely what was beyond his immediate horizon. In “Go Rin No Sho”, Miyamoto Musashi clearly explains this idea through “The Book of the Void”: “What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void”.
OK, and how do I use this dubious insight to train a Divisional Staff? Bill Slim, and Allenby did not read Miyamoto Musashi, yet were masters of their art.

In other world, the first and the most essential task of a problem setting thinker is ask to himself what he doesn’t know of a problem. And here comes the problem inherent to his competent knowledge, both cultural and professinal, which are still two implicit and immanent frames of his thinking, with their subsequent boundaries and limits. So what is the catch from all this?
Sorry you've lost me, as does most the writing on "Design." The inability to clearly and simply state the problem and answer the exam question is why "Design" is pseudo-intellectual twaddle.
However, I am not closed minded, and remain open to other points of view, simply and clearly set forth.

Bob's World
07-09-2010, 11:37 AM
For those who want to learn about design, they really need to travel to a little backwater office on the corner of the USSOCOM campus, where a dozen or so guys spit ball concepts around in a little mini think tank of a strategy shop.

No recent manuals on design are going to be found laying around, and no rigid process is either sought or adhered to.

The products produced, however, are sophisticated, professional, and insightful. They are no more and no less than an additional input to the Mission Analysis process; to provide the Commander more than just the threat-centric products his Intel shop produces for him. The role is not a direct one, but rather an indirect one. To provide the commander with additional input to help build his perspective on the nature of the problem, the environment, his mission, etc, to employ in the shaping of his guidance to the planners and his subordinate commanders.

This is at the 4-star level. To employ this process, other than informally, at lower levels is to risk making MDMP even more onerous and dogmatic than it already is.

Presley Cannady
07-10-2010, 02:20 AM
...aren't there a ton of engineering shops littered throughout the military? What do they have to say about "design?"

Fred Bernh
07-12-2010, 11:17 AM
Thanks for your thoughts, I would try to explain better my point of view.

1.
Sorry, but the US has grabbed design because it no longer understands Campaign planning. if it did, "Design" would go in the bin. Nothing about Campaign design is anything to do with culture or "meta-cognition". Ask the men who could do it well.

I was referring to meta-cognition because Col. S.J. Banach in his article "The Art of Design" (Military Review March-April 2009) put it at the base of critical thinking:
"Reflective thinking. Reflective thinking draws on research in developmental psychology on the topic of metacognition. Metacognition is defined as “knowledge that takes as its object or regulates any aspect of any cognitive endeavor.”14 This involves two separate kinds of knowledge. The first is knowledge
about cognition—what do I know, what cognitive
abilities do I have, and how does this help me to learn about the situation at hand? The second is knowledge about how to regulate and control cognitive
activity—how do I avoid falling into commoncognitive traps, and how should I balance my cognitive
resources among understanding the environment,
the problem, and the solution? Designers need both types of metacognitive knowledge to become reflective thinkers. Through reflection, designers can continue to improve both their knowledge of their own ability and their capacity to regulate the cognitive focus of themselves and their team.

2. OK, and how do I use this dubious insight to train a Divisional Staff? Bill Slim, and Allenby did not read Miyamoto Musashi, yet were masters of their art.

I completely agree. Design seems to be a human-engineering effort to replicate the genius of Commanders like the ones you mentioned, and make it a "scientific" tool to organize a collective intellectual effort. Nothing bad so far, but the military professionals who are trying to develop and use it should understand the logical framework of this tool, that is the Complex Adaptive Systems Theory. There are thousands of papers already produced to explain this theory, and we are now assisting at the development of this theory in the military thinking. The "void" tells us that changing the name to things does not change their nature. For example, the Santa Fe Insitute, has developed a CAS perspective, the so called "3rd Culture", which could be understood as a way of viewing things between the social scienses and mathematics (for example, using biology to understand social behaviours within a living system). As you can appreciate, meta-cognition and culture matter, expecially in Design, because you can loose the point of origin of what you are talking about.

3. Sorry you've lost me, as does most the writing on "Design." The inability to clearly and simply state the problem and answer the exam question is why "Design" is pseudo-intellectual twaddle.
However, I am not closed minded, and remain open to other points of view, simply and clearly set forth.

To simply state the problem, I would say that Design is a matter of selecting creative people to do it, rather than to believe that it is possible to teach someone to be creative. And, as Bob's World clearly stated, to standardize the tools for creative thinking is simply irrelevant. Gen. Maxwell Taylor once sais that the most important thing for a commander to do is to protect the "mavericks" inside his organisation. Once again, commanders should focus on people rather than Design procedures.

William F. Owen
07-12-2010, 11:32 AM
I would say that Design is a matter of selecting creative people to do it, rather than to believe that it is possible to teach someone to be creative.
OK, but the US Army teaches design as a "Process" to be "taught."

Gen. Maxwell Taylor once sais that the most important thing for a commander to do is to protect the "mavericks" inside his organisation. Once again, commanders should focus on people rather than Design procedures.
So basically Commanders should seek to have skilled people on their staff and skilled men as subordinate commanders. When did anyone ever suggest otherwise?

Fred Bernh
07-12-2010, 01:10 PM
OK, but the US Army teaches design as a "Process" to be "taught."

So basically Commanders should seek to have skilled people on their staff and skilled men as subordinate commanders. When did anyone ever suggest otherwise?

Owen, thanks for your focused comments.
I believe teaching design as a process is not a bad idea per se, it could be a valid tool to promote critical thinking. But people who master the art of war sometimes simply cannot always have a clear understanding of the overall picture. That's the reason why they need also different perspective, from people who have completely different backgrounds. The UK is one of the most brilliant example of this way of creating a common operational picture from different sources. During WWI and WWII there where thousands of UK citizens living and working oversea. Most of them were not in the military, but contributed through their direct experience to give a better understanding of the human terrain in the different Theaters of Operation, and in some cases they were integrated in an extended net of informal "operational cells" in support of the British Army. The point may be to be able to create focused and ad hoc Strategic or Operational Advisory Group tailored to the specific crisis you need to tackle, rather than create a "one size fits all" process. A basket of human capacity that goes beyond the military domain. It is my understanding that "design" should be careful in determining its relationship with strategy, which is where the operational level finds its roots. And, last but not least, it should try to go beyond the classical and formal organizational structure the military use for their problem solving. This web site is the best example of that.

William F. Owen
07-12-2010, 01:56 PM
And, last but not least, it should try to go beyond the classical and formal organizational structure the military use for their problem solving. This web site is the best example of that.

Fred, I'm all for stuff that works, but "Design" simply does not have lineage and there is actually no need to have it. We end up with things like "Design" because soldiers simply do not study their profession, and then end up grappling with the basics. - I could cite 100's of examples.

No one seems to have asked what "Design" brings to the party. If there is no need for it, why does it exist?

Fred Bernh
07-12-2010, 02:43 PM
Fred, I'm all for stuff that works, but "Design" simply does not have lineage and there is actually no need to have it. We end up with things like "Design" because soldiers simply do not study their profession, and then end up grappling with the basics. - I could cite 100's of examples.

No one seems to have asked what "Design" brings to the party. If there is no need for it, why does it exist?

I would say, let's give it a try. It's my understanding there's a lot of confusion out there, but if it brings more people to read books on military history is a good thing.
Once General von Moltke divided his officer corps into four distinct types, depending on their mental and physical characteristics. He ended up with 4 types:
type A: mentally dull and physically lazy,
type B: mentally bright and physically energetic,
type C: mentally dull and physically energetic, and
type D: mentally bright and physically lazy.
Which brings us to type D officers; these were the mentally bright who Moltke felt could and should take the highest levels of command. This type of officer was both smart enough to see what needed to be done but was also motivated by inherent laziness to find the easiest, simplest way to achieve what was required. Put in a more positive way they would know how to be successful through the most efficient deployment of effort.
I hope "Design" could be at least a valid tool to select type D officers within the Army education system.

Ken White
07-12-2010, 03:43 PM
Put in a more positive way they would know how to be successful through the most efficient deployment of effort.

I hope "Design" could be at least a valid tool to select type D officers within the Army education system.I suspect that such an effort would select people not in consonance with 'the Army ethos.' :D

That would be, in my observation, 'do something even if its wrong' (I will not go so far as 'especially if it's wrong...').

Fortunately, the existing selection process picks some Type Ds and thus they will be available when needed. Unfortunately, a flawed personnel system and OPMS XXI dictate equitable selection of Types A-D and while the system generally rids itself the A Models, it sometimes allows those B and C types to be in charge. Regrettably. They really do not like the Type D folks... :wry:

Fred Bernh
07-13-2010, 09:50 AM
I suspect that such an effort would select people not in consonance with 'the Army ethos.' :D

That would be, in my observation, 'do something even if its wrong' (I will not go so far as 'especially if it's wrong...').

Fortunately, the existing selection process picks some Type Ds and thus they will be available when needed. Unfortunately, a flawed personnel system and OPMS XXI dictate equitable selection of Types A-D and while the system generally rids itself the A Models, it sometimes allows those B and C types to be in charge. Regrettably. They really do not like the Type D folks... :wry:

I would say that we are assisting at the overuse of fancy words such as adaptability, flexibility, living systems, learning institutions etc....In Germany the Whermacht (and maneuver warfare theory) came out from the ahses of WWI thanks to Von Seekt in the 20's but expecially thanks to the Allies who disbanded the General Staff, thus permitting a new generation of officers to grow in a completely different environment. Stalin was much more rough eliminating physically the old mentality. The problem with the existing conflicts is that they don't engage systems as a whole but just part of them, thus allowing the main body to resist the changes. Moreover, I would insist on the fact that Design is at risk of becoming a surrogate of strategy, in precence of a lack of strategic guidances. For example: what if Campaign Design leads to the conclusion that , for a particular crisis, the military option IS NOT the best solution?

William F. Owen
07-13-2010, 12:51 PM
I would say that we are assisting at the overuse of fancy words such as adaptability, flexibility, living systems, learning institutions etc....
Strongly concur.

In Germany the Whermacht (and maneuver warfare theory) came out from the ahses of WWI thanks to Von Seekt in the 20's but expecially thanks to the Allies who disbanded the General Staff,
Strongly disagree. No German Officer of the 1920's would have given "maneuver warfare theory" space in his rubbish bin. It's twaddle of the worst sort.

I would insist on the fact that Design is at risk of becoming a surrogate of strategy, in precence of a lack of strategic guidances. For example: what if Campaign Design leads to the conclusion that , for a particular crisis, the military option IS NOT the best solution?
Strongly agree. This is because the bunnies behind design have never adequately studied the problem from a "so what perspective." There is no such thing as the "Operational Level of War." It simply does not exist.

Fuchs
07-13-2010, 01:36 PM
In Germany the Whermacht (and maneuver warfare theory) came out from the ahses of WWI thanks to Von Seekt in the 20's but expecially thanks to the Allies who disbanded the General Staff, thus permitting a new generation of officers to grow in a completely different environment.

The Reichswehr actually had a similar situation as the U.S.Army in the late 40's; the demobilisation allowed only the really good officers and NCOs to day, at typically lower rank than they deserved.
The combination of war and wartime experience plus demobilisation also meant that only those would stay who saw the officer corps as their home and the military as their trade.

There didn't really grow a new generation, though. The Entente (not Allies!) only allowed 12-year soldiers in order to prevent short-time service trickery as exercised in Prussia 1806-1812.
This meant that there was no real new generation of soldiers in the whole 20's. It also meant that there was an awful lot of very experienced company NCOs (Spieß) and Colonel+ qualified officers when the expansion began in 1933 (based on plans and preparations from the late 20's).

The Reichswehr (and also the Wehrmacht) was quite conservative. This shows in examples such as the aversion against submachineguns and assault rifles. Submachineguns were developed & procured at first as PDWs for the armour branch and Hitler became a fan (and champion for it). An assault rifle was ready for production by 1938 (Vollmer M35), but it took another five years (mostly wartime) till assault rifles were introduced.

Polarbear1605
07-13-2010, 01:37 PM
Strongly concur.

Strongly disagree. No German Officer of the 1920's would have given "maneuver warfare theory" space in his rubbish bin. It's twaddle of the worst sort.

and I have to disagree with you but I want to hear your side. The Germans of WWI changed both their defensive and offensive doctrine in the middle of a war (because of a great necessity BTW). Yes, it was never call Maneuver Warfare but if you look at the "Storm Trooper" changes, for example, all the elements are there. Maneuverist also use the German opening offensive in France as another example. Compare that to the 1990 Kuwait plan (Boyd.s finger prints are all over that one)...???

Ken White
07-13-2010, 02:30 PM
Compare that to the 1990 Kuwait plan (Boyd.s finger prints are all over that one)...???or simple common sense? One can only do so much with a given piece of terrain... :wry:

Fuchs
07-13-2010, 03:13 PM
and I have to disagree with you but I want to hear your side. The Germans of WWI changed both their defensive and offensive doctrine in the middle of a war (because of a great necessity BTW). Yes, it was never call Maneuver Warfare but if you look at the "Storm Trooper" changes, for example, all the elements are there. Maneuverist also use the German opening offensive in France as another example. Compare that to the 1990 Kuwait plan (Boyd.s finger prints are all over that one)...???

Actually, the Italians did very similar things with their Arditi shock troops.
The Hutier tactics / shock troops / Stoßtruppen thing could also be described as:
"Finally, infantrymen were trained to be infantrymen, not line infantry."

The greatest difference to more general infantry was in my opinion the fact that these troops got trained against dummy fortifications. Most if not all else followed quite naturally (see Arditi for quite the same effect).

The opening offensive against France in 1940 can easily be explained with the classic German Schwerpunkt idea (19th century), classic German emphasis on encirclement (19th, too), specific political circumstances and the idea of one particular general who was known as a operational level wunderkind even before the war.


German officers of the 20's and 30's were driven more by long-cherished tenets and the effect of training and army culture than by Maneuver theory-like theories.

They had their offensive school vs. defensive school debates and an emerging one - the armour school as modern evolution of the offensive school - won long after von Seeckt had prioritised (iirc) the offensive school.
The armour school didn't score a breaktrough before the May 1940 when it proved its ideas in practice, though.

Wartime practice included elements from all three schools - but all three had to be disfigured in 1943-1945 because of the circumstances. The defensive people hadn't enough infantry strength to man a deep 10 km defence, the offensive school had to acknowledge that infantry needs assault gun support on open ground and the armour school had to acknowledge that it lacked the trucks and tank strength for large-scale offensives after Kursk (armour was then increasingly mis-used as quick reaction reserve to fend of one crisis after another while assault guns were turned into tank destroyers mostly).

Fred Bernh
07-13-2010, 03:44 PM
"Finally, infantrymen were trained to be infantrymen, not line infantry."

I believe you got the point, especially in an era dominated by power point rangers.

William F. Owen
07-13-2010, 05:14 PM
and I have to disagree with you but I want to hear your side. The Germans of WWI changed both their defensive and offensive doctrine in the middle of a war (because of a great necessity BTW). Yes, it was never call Maneuver Warfare but if you look at the "Storm Trooper" changes, for example, all the elements are there. Maneuverist also use the German opening offensive in France as another example. Compare that to the 1990 Kuwait plan (Boyd.s finger prints are all over that one)...???
StormTrooper tactics were just the German expression of various forms of infantry tactics being developed at the time forced upon armies by the trenches. They didn't use the word Manoeuvre and they didn't even think in a way that could be thought distinct or even notable.
Manoeuvre is not a distinct form of warfare, therefore it cannot have distinct tactical behaviours attached to it.

The 1990 "left hook" would have meet and potatoes to any WW2 Div Staff Officer. It was only meant to fool Saddam and fooled no one else. It is nothing to do with a distinct form of warfare. It is completely rooted in the teachings of the French, German and British Staff Collages of 1880-1914.

Polarbear1605
07-13-2010, 07:39 PM
StormTrooper tactics were just the German expression of various forms of infantry tactics being developed at the time forced upon armies by the trenches. They didn't use the word Manoeuvre ...
Agree…but let’s not get hung up on the word maneuver here. If we assume the goal of “Boyd Warfare” (Maneuver Warfare defined by Boyd) is to: “Diminish our adversaries freedom –of-action while improving our freedom-of-action so that our adversary cannot cope – while we can cope-with events/efforts as they unfold.” And we accomplish that by “observes-orient-decide-act more inconspicuously, more quickly and with more irregularity as basis to keep or gain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort or other efforts that-tie-up, divert or drain away adversary attention (and strength) else where.” …how is that different from the German WWI Strom Trooper tactics?…or any good infantry tactics or even any good tactics infantry, armor, or otherwise?


The 1990 "left hook" would have meet and potatoes to any WW2 Div Staff Officer. It was only meant to fool Saddam and fooled no one else. It is nothing to do with a distinct form of warfare. It is completely rooted in the teachings of the French, German and British Staff Collages of 1880-1914.

Again, agree… with at least the “rooted in the teaching part” because the Boyd Theory is just that, a synthesizing of those teaching and in order to understand what they were teaching Boyd had to go back to the folks they were studying and talking about, e.g. Rome, Napoleon, Clausewitz, Jomini, Moltke, Schlieffen, Mongols and anyone else he could read about.
I also believe the Desert Storm “Plan” was distinct when compared to something like attrition warfare. I emphasize plan because the execution was lacking especially in the initiative arena.:D

William F. Owen
07-14-2010, 04:29 AM
If we assume the goal of “Boyd Warfare” (Maneuver Warfare defined by Boyd) is to: “Diminish our adversaries freedom –of-action while improving our freedom-of-action so that our adversary cannot cope – while we can cope-with events/efforts as they unfold.”
So Boyd was just saying what every competent military commander has taught for 3,000 years. It was a banal statement of the obvious.
MW was based on fashion and being sexy. It was not based on rigourous examined military history.

And we accomplish that by “observes-orient-decide-act more inconspicuously, more quickly and with more irregularity as basis to keep or gain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort or other efforts that-tie-up, divert or drain away adversary attention (and strength) else where.”
That's a very odd way of saying that surprise is valuable (the result of action for which the enemy is unprepared.) Additionally, the OODA loop does not explain pr assist the activity it supposedly supports.

Again, agree… with at least the “rooted in the teaching part” because the Boyd Theory is just that, a synthesizing of those teaching and in order to understand what they were teaching Boyd had to go back to the folks they were studying and talking about, e.g. Rome, Napoleon, Clausewitz, Jomini, Moltke, Schlieffen, Mongols and anyone else he could read about.
OK, but there is no Boyd Theory. There are some Boyd slides. Boyd was a very bad historian. His "version" of WW1 is simplistic and inaccurate and his analysis of many other events was way off. MW is based in accurate history. It was concept that used arbitrary historical events to push a bad idea. If you knew nothing about warfare and tactics, it all appeared new and wonderful - I personally fell for it. It was a con. We've been conned. We need to get over it.


I also believe the Desert Storm “Plan” was distinct when compared to something like attrition warfare. I emphasize plan because the execution was lacking especially in the initiative arena.:D
What is attrition Warfare? It doesn't exist. There were times when warfare was done badly, but that's nothing to do with MW v Attrition. It could very well be argued that the so-called "The Storm Troopers" - Operation Michael - failed because of bad tactics and planning. One trick pony. The British Counter-attacks in contrast pushed on and never stopped until the armistice.

Polarbear1605
07-15-2010, 04:03 PM
:D
So Boyd was just saying what every competent military commander has taught for 3,000 years. It was a banal statement of the obvious.
MW was based on fashion and being sexy...

No, what Boyd was saying is that despite “what every military commander being taught for the last 3000 years” there is always a winner and a loser (now that is the obviously part)…and what he is presenting are the elements that ensure you are the winner in a very competitive environment. I say competitive because in combat the loser is either dead (my personal preference), captured or headed for the next set of high ground or river as fast as his little enemy feet will carry him.


It was not based on rigourous examined military history...
My only defense here is to review the bibliography of Patterns in Conflict…it is extensive.
and I can only speak for my time in service…in my opinion MW was never “sexy” and if it was ever fashionable, it certainly did not extend outside of Commandant Grey’s tenure… (and shame on you for letting anyone ever convince you to use the words sexy and fashionable.)


That's a very odd way of saying that surprise is valuable (the result of action for which the enemy is unprepared.) Additionally, the OODA loop does not explain pr assist the activity it supposedly supports...

If all you can see is in that statement is “surprise is valuable” … then you must also have trouble seeing the front sight on your weapon. Surprise is very important but I see much more in that statement…it is an entire system that (by US organizational standards) encompasses everyone from the President and Combat Commander to the squad leader and down to the individual Marine/Soldier. It is all the wheels of that system working against the enemy while preventing his wheels from working at all. Idealistic! Yes, but why not. MW requires a system view and that is why they kept saying that no matter where you are in the chain of command, you should be thinking two levels up and two down.


OK, but there is no Boyd Theory

Your right…and I should not use the term Boyd Theory, it is way too sexy and fashionable:p. Let’s call it what it is “A Discourse on Winning and Losing”.
He provides no version of WW1 but what he does provide is a limited analysis (limited by his thesis) of the von Schlinffen Plan, WW1 German infiltration tactics, and WW1 guerrilla tactics in accordance with Lawrence and von Lettow-Vorberk. Specifically, he observes that we went from a war of movement to stagnation and discusses the reactions to that stagnation, its exceptions and what worked and didn’t work in those reactions via infiltration and guerrilla tactics.



If you knew nothing about warfare and tactics, it all appeared new and wonderful – I personally fell for it. It was a con. We’ve been conned. We need to get over it.

Sorry you feel conned but my personal experience was there were a lot more people telling me MW was a bad idea, compared to the folks encouraging me that it was a good idea. Were you conned or did you have bad teachers?


What is attrition Warfare? It doesn’t exist.

It is exactly that statement that convinces me that attrition warfare does exist. In my mind, attrition warfare is trading resources with the enemy knowing (or at least hoping) you have more resources than you opponent. It does work…Grant in the Civil War and as you stated the British (and American;)) counter-attacks at the end of WW1…but I also think that the historians of Verdun would also think that it does not works.

At this point, I am waiting for the next salvo to hit:)

slapout9
07-15-2010, 04:15 PM
Compare that to the 1990 Kuwait plan (Boyd.s finger prints are all over that one)...???

This is a good example of why I think Combined Arms is really selection of the Main Effort. The War started as the ME being the Air Force and once they were finished with all they were going to be allowed to do, the ME switched to the Army/Marines for the ground offensive. Maybe Boyd had his fingerprints on it, but is was Warden's hands that planned it;)

slapout9
07-15-2010, 04:19 PM
It is all the wheels of that system working against the enemy while preventing his wheels from working at all. Idealistic! Yes, but why not. MW requires a system view and that is why they kept saying that no matter where you are in the chain of command, you should be thinking two levels up and two down.



Quote of the week nomination:)

Polarbear1605
07-15-2010, 05:51 PM
This is a good example of why I think Combined Arms is really selection of the Main Effort. The War started as the ME being the Air Force and once they were finished with all they were going to be allowed to do, the ME switched to the Army/Marines for the ground offensive. Maybe Boyd had his fingerprints on it, but is was Warden's hands that planned it;)

Regarding the main effort … true, it started with the air and then switched to the ground. Now…and I don’t want to take anything await from General Warden…because the air campaign was very good…and extensive. (I still remember a B-52 strike waking me up in the middle of the night the second or third day of the air campaign and the strike was almost a 100 miles away. As a grunt getting ready to “cross the line” into Kuwait, I was probably yelling the loadest to “Do that again!”) … but here are the “buts”… the Air Force PR machine kicked in right after the war…with little analysis. They had perfect air superiority and could bomb whatever they wanted with very little risks for 35+days…the Iraqies and Sadam did not give up …it still took a ground attack to do that. It also took some effort for the ground guys to get the Air Force to stop bombing the bridges of Baghdad and start bombing the Iraqi artillery in front of the supporting attack (2 Marine Divisions+) just before the ground attack. The “Effects Based” bombing also had its issues…for example, we could be easily accused of a major war crime when we took out the Iraqi power grid with the justification of paralyzing their command and control…(lets ignore the fact that most command centers carry their own power generators). What no power meant, was no fresh water (no power, no pumps)…no fresh water meant disease …we about wiped out a generation of Iraqi kids. The numbers vary greatly but the smallest ones I saw were significant. http://www.cesr.org/downloads/waterundersiege.pdf
BTW…Boyd was there (at CENTCOM) physically and helping with the planning.

slapout9
07-15-2010, 07:36 PM
Regarding the main effort … true, it started with the air and then switched to the ground. Now…and I don’t want to take anything await from General Warden…because the air campaign was very good…and extensive. (I still remember a B-52 strike waking me up in the middle of the night the second or third day of the air campaign and the strike was almost a 100 miles away. As a grunt getting ready to “cross the line” into Kuwait, I was probably yelling the loadest to “Do that again!”) … but here are the “buts”… the Air Force PR machine kicked in right after the war…with little analysis. They had perfect air superiority and could bomb whatever they wanted with very little risks for 35+days…the Iraqies and Sadam did not give up …it still took a ground attack to do that. It also took some effort for the ground guys to get the Air Force to stop bombing the bridges of Baghdad and start bombing the Iraqi artillery in front of the supporting attack (2 Marine Divisions+) just before the ground attack. The “Effects Based” bombing also had its issues…for example, we could be easily accused of a major war crime when we took out the Iraqi power grid with the justification of paralyzing their command and control…(lets ignore the fact that most command centers carry their own power generators). What no power meant, was no fresh water (no power, no pumps)…no fresh water meant disease …we about wiped out a generation of Iraqi kids. The numbers vary greatly but the smallest ones I saw were significant. http://www.cesr.org/downloads/waterundersiege.pdf
BTW…Boyd was there (at CENTCOM) physically and helping with the planning.


Didn't know for sure if Boyd was there but I had suspected it. Warden retired a Colonel. Yes the AF machine kicked in and there were certainly problems with the targets, what most people generally don't know is less then 50% of the targets from Warden's original plan survived the cut list. There were and may still be articles about taking down the electrical grid and the problems and some of the advantages it provided.

William F. Owen
07-16-2010, 08:09 AM
and what he is presenting are the elements that ensure you are the winner in a very competitive environment.
I do not agree. I do not think Boyd accurately or usefully understood what creates success in combat. If he did, he could not explain it in a coherent way.

My only defense here is to review the bibliography of Patterns in Conflict…it is extensive.
For insurance purposes I have just had to catalogue my library. I have about 20+ meters of bookshelf space on military history, theory and thought. Not saying I know more than Boyd.

Surprise is very important but I see much more in that statement…it is an entire system that (by US organizational standards) encompasses everyone from the President and Combat Commander to the squad leader and down to the individual Marine/Soldier.
Yet from Korea to Somalia that coherency and understanding was noticeably lacking. I see no good evidence that Boyd really understood the linkage between Policy, Strategy and tactics.


Your right…and I should not use the term Boyd Theory, it is way too sexy and fashionable:p. Let’s call it what it is “A Discourse on Winning and Losing”.


Specifically, he observes that we went from a war of movement to stagnation and discusses the reactions to that stagnation, its exceptions and what worked and didn’t work in those reactions via infiltration and guerrilla tactics.
Yes but he cannot explain why, and his observations are inaccurate. He completely side steps why "infiltration" often fails, and why the British system of operations developed in 1917, persisted, successfully, into the 1950's.

Were you conned or did you have bad teachers?
Bad teachers, like Boyd. I was Boyd Groupie from 1985 onwards. In about 2004, I realised I had been conned.

It is exactly that statement that convinces me that attrition warfare does exist. In my mind, attrition warfare is trading resources with the enemy knowing (or at least hoping) you have more resources than you opponent.
That is merely mutual attrition symptomatic of any sustained engagement of closely matched enemies. It is not a "Style" of Warfare. The Battles of Trenton and San Jancinto leveraged surprise. They were not distinct in tactical style. Surprise works. Its not a style.

It does work…Grant in the Civil War and as you stated the British (and American;)) counter-attacks at the end of WW1…but I also think that the historians of Verdun would also think that it does not works.

Which credible historians? The MW crowd cherry pick history and ignore the any of the facts that undermine their theory.
MW contains no technique or idea that defines it as unique of distinct.
To do that it has to invent stuff that fails to withstand rigour - Recce Pull being a good example.

Fred Bernh
07-17-2010, 06:01 PM
I do not agree. I do not think Boyd accurately or usefully understood what creates success in combat. If he did, he could not explain it in a coherent way.

I would say it could be useful to put Boyd's works, as well as Lind's MW handbook and so on, in the right historical context. It is my understanding that MW grew up mostly in the late 70's - early 80s in contrast with the Revolution in Military Affairs. From this perspective, it is well true that it does not represent, per se, something new in the military thinking panorama, but at least it helps kicking the .... of the war-zero-defect, manager-officer RMA supporters by promoting the human factor as still the core of the combat proficiency of an Army. And this fight is still on, right?