Nothing speaks like results....
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
I have thought about your post for the past couple of days. On the surface it appears logical, but then when I tried to think of practical applications the idea of predictive model based on math fell apart.
Bill,
Good post, you cut straight to the heart of the matter. If I may paraphrase I take your post as 'show me the money'. The campaigns in Tal-Afar and Mosul and some of the HTT, 95th, and PRT work in Afghanistan are the best 'concrete' results I can think of at the moment that used/are using EBO and its derivatives. Some of my friends getting back from Afghanistan felt the German PRT approach is effective. I will look for references documenting TTP's used in each of these cases.
The big caveat attached to EBO is that measuring the effectiveness and performance of operations focused upon social systems and then analyzing systems that underpin these social systems is not the same as building a well, clinic, school, road, or installing a micro-hydro-turbine and then analyzing over time the existence, effectiveness, and performance of the infrastructure system.
FM 3.05-40, chapter 4 may be of interest to you as a doctrinal answer for applied EBO in addition to the CALL references previously cited.
Here is are some articles I ran across this weekend that speak to why/how EBO or some of it's derivatives are being applied:
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/C...ngMarApr08.pdf
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/C...ngMarApr08.pdf
This month's Special Warfare has an interesting article about CA that covers some of these 'how to'.
Jeffery Sachs has some interesting ideas about adapting the medical concept of 'differential diagnosis' to economics. His work in Latin America and Eastern Europe has some clues about 'how to' .
Regards,
Steve
Half out of the closet with EBO
""Finally, and to me most importantly, EBO is far too complex to be anything other than an aid to planning. The JFCOM version you are using, Bill, is an attempt to systematize, bureaucratize, and infantilize EBO. As such it offers false precision - much desired by headquarters staff but a bane to useful employment of EBO". Bravo!
I just had an opportunity to quickly read over everyone's posts, and found the constructive criticism and comments helpful. I need to dwell on this until this weekend, and then I can hopefully respond intelligently.
A few off the hip comments in the meantime:
1. Selil: I think I agree with you for the most part, if not entirely. My beef isn't with science, but the attempt to infantize it as Eden stated in the quote above. Another scientific theory is complexity"", which EBO (in its infantile form) completely disrgards. That is the essence of my beef with the JFCOM EBO process.
2. By way of illustration, and admittedly us snake eaters tend to view the world through a different set of lenses, but when an EBO devotee (a contractor) told me that you don't even have to worry about coming up with a solution, just tell us the effect you want and we have all the nodes and actions in the computer database, so presto we'll have a plan for you. I was waiting for the punch line, but he was serious, so we asked for a couple of examples so we could discuss them. In short, we came up with a number of unique activities that we could employ (as could of any you) that the contractors haven't thought of. To me, it was terrorifying that EBO was actually restricting thought versus enabling creative thinking and problem solving.
3. For all those who mention using EBO for targeting, I have a lot of heart burn with the idea that EBO is targeting. Targeting is a small subset of EBO (or it should be). We now tend to lump everything into lethal and non-lethal fires, which results in a narrow minded approach to problem solving. Bottom line, we're still attempting to use a standard conventional approach to solve an unconventional problem, but we are calling it something else, and we added non-lethal fires, not really understanding how to employ them very effectively. EBO was originally designed to integrate and synchronize the interagency, but I don't think the other agencies bought into it (hell, they may actually have to do something), and you won't garner USAID and DoS support talking about targeting. I'll start this debate during the next post.
Still massively underwhelmed by EBO
I still don't see us getting anywhere here.
a.) The USAF targeting based concept of EBO - what it was originally- is simplistic and not useful.
b.) A lot of the sensible stuff being talked about EG: matching information to/ with actions, is mind numbing common sense. So why call it EBO? What I see chaps like Tom Odom talking about (and making sense) is not the EBO of the USAF, Singapore Air Force, or UK Doctrine Centre.
c.) The problem here is the use of language. Why are things that are clearly not EBO, as in how EBO was originally defined, now called EBO?
The amount of useful and insightful work on military thought is actually tiny. In general terms, 85% of what works was committed to paper by 1937, and even in COIN I don't see much original after 1960.
Commander's Appreciation and Campaign Design
One promising alternative to EBO is the Army's newest concept associated with "CACD." It is available at http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/p525-5-500.pdf
It is based on a seminal piece by Rittel and Webber in Policy Sciences (1973?) and roughly in Donald A. Schon's concept of reflective practice (he defines as "design" using the "artsy" part of architectural design as the metaphor in his book "Educating the Reflective Practitioner." It is an amazing book.