DImE, PmESII and now MIDLIFE
At a SO/LIC conference sponsored by NDIA in DC last Winter, a SOCOM brief introduced a new acronym MIDLIFE as an expanded version of DImE to illustrate the instruments of national power that SOCOM considered using against terrorism and insurgencies.
The additional letters L, I, and F stand for Law Enforcement, Information Warfare and Financial actions.
This makes sense. You need Law Enforcement to take down cells and support structure in nations where military force is inappropriate. Information Warfare is certainly valid. And actions in, with, and by Financial institutions are necessary to detect, track and act against the enemy's finances.
The Effects Based Approach
I admit to a revulsion of RMA (I'm a closet Luddite) but a strong affinity for EBO applied to MDMP and targeting. I spent eight months in Afghanistan at the CJSOTF as its Strategic Planner using EBO to kill/captue the TB and AQ and HiG leadership. PMESII and DIME or MIDLIFE are all good tools for analysis. PMESII works every time its tried.
RW
EBO as a crystalization of targeting
IO and EBO have been thrown around at the strategic and operational level as terms for some time. At the tactical level, we have seen a definitive shift toward targeting as the driving force behind tactical planning, especially in a pre-9-11 scenario. We also developed tremendous expertise in the IO realm at the tactical level among the fire support community as they were the main players in the Balkans tactical IO effort.
After 9-11 and especially after OIF I, the fire support guys here looked at gettinbg their arms around tactical IO in a systematic way that could exported and trained. The result was the Effects Based Operations Brigade to Company Level handbook, CALL Pub 04-14. It blends targeting, IO concepts, lethal and non-lethal effects and lays them out in a staff process as part of MDMP.
Are effects based operations new? As a main contributor to the EBO hand book, I would say, no. In fact I used Marshall's orders to Esienhower as a effects driven mission statement in the handbook as an example.
Then again EBO is new in its application at the tactical level to ensure that lethal and non-lethal effects are the drivers behind all operations. If that is not the case, if the IO effort is separate from the Ops effort, then the two are inevitably desynchronized in short order. We have seen that born out in rotation after rotation as well in actual ops.
But I also agree with Dave D here in the emphasis is on humans versus ice cream cone licking technical or "network" centric babble that ignores the fact that Soldiers and Marines are the guys that do the job on the ground, not some iconclastic PPT slide concept that has morphed into something like a transformational 10 Commandments handed down mysteriously which must be accepted without hesitation. We train Soldiers and we train Marines; we don't train networks or computers because they don't kick doors and they don't interact on the ground.
As a joke I was attempting to write a song, "Virtual Soldiers from the Sky" set to the music of the Ballad of the Green Beret as a not too gentle reminder that "force multipliers" only work when you have a base line force (real Soldiers and Marines) to multiply against. If I get it right, I'll post it.
Best all,
Tom