Wisdom of the ages. Plus a couple of questions...
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Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
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?
Over large staff organizations
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
Thanks for the answers...
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.
We may be talking past each other --
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:
All true. My question was simplistic.
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.' ;)
Rely on black boxes cause black days...
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
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"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...
There's some good stuff out there, no question.
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Originally Posted by
Ron Humphrey
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...).
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...(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.
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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... ;) ).
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...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.
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...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:
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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.
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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
Going back to an earier thought
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?
My first notice of that effect - a new program...
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:
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"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...
design as a topographical map
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.