Effects Based Operations (EBO) - is it valid?
Since coming to my most recent job I've been a witness to some heated statements about Effects Based Operations from lots of intelligent people. It seems there are three camps - those who think it is the best thing since sliced bread, those who think it's a concept that briefs well but is intellectually bankrupt in application, and those (like myself) who get lost because we don't understand the arguments.
I will state up front I have done no detailed reading or research on EBO and understand only the outlines of it. I understand it competes with and/or is compatible with Center of Gravity analysis, which I am very familiar with.
What intrigues me is that a number of the smartest COIN thinkers I know are completely opposed to EBO as a model, usually spouting extremely dismissive comments. I also noticed that EBO proponents tend to argue that if we all just moved to EBO, the war would be over.
So I'm asking the community the following:
- Is there a good overview/primer (short) on EBO?
- Where has EBO been effectively used? Are there case studies? Why do the advocates think it is superior?
- What are the intellectual/application flaws of EBO? I see a lot of complaints, but no one has explained to me why it is the devil's creation.
- Should or should it not be used by forces as a planning model?
Genuinely interested in the feedback.
EBO is OBE and other things
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tom Odom
Cav,
For reading look at:
CALL Newsletter 03-23 Targeting CMO
CALL Handbook 04-14 Effects Based Operations from Brigade to Company
CALL Handbook 05-19 A Special Study on the Effects based Approach to Military Operations
CALL Special Study 07-02 The Brigade Planning Process
CALL Special Study 07-03 The Battalion Planning Process
Tom,
I think CALL was directed to yank anything with EBO in it... May or may not apply to last two, but the first three ought not be available unless i'm mistaken. The reason being the directive CAV guy notes...
CAVGUY... In response to did I get it about right Yes grasshoper
Live well and row
Effects based operations is in the same paradigm as MDMP
I would argue that EBO is another variation of the "rational actor model" (RAM) that has been under attack for decades by those arguing from a different worldview. GT Allison published a seminal piece on "explaining how we explain" about how things really are decided in complex situations. The full citation of the article length version is:
Graham T. Allison, CONCEPTUAL MODELS AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, The American Political Science Review, VOL. LXIIIn No 3., 1969, 689-718.
The "updated" book version is: Allison, G. T. & Zelikow, P. (1999). Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, (2d Ed.). New York, NY: Addison-Wesley.
RAM has the classic neorealist assumption that nations [and organizations] are unified actors that behave rationally. The process of decision-making involves problem recognition based on relevant values and objectives, developing alternatives, estimating the consequences of each of the alternatives, calculating the net valuation of the consequences, and making the choice of the alternative that value-maximizes. RAM is derived around a theory of constraints. However, that if the organizational goal is...plural and complex, there is no definitive basis for weighting or assigning values to the varied dimensions of constraint; thus, making the otherwise rational decision (what can also be approaching linear programming) more interpretive and value-laden, so more political in nature than we give it credit for.
The problem with this RAM paradigm is that it dominates our military mindset to the point we cannot consider alternatives as to how decisions really happen. The rational economic model of cost-benefits falls apart when we try and template its step-by-step structure onto unstructured (complex) situations.
I could have fun with that but I'll just say that you
didn't provide a metric. :D
OTOH, if a married couple decide they wish to buy a McMansion and they only bring in a combined $65K a year and figure it'll take 'em 10 years to save up enough to buy their dream house; you may think them stupid -- but it's their goal and they believe the wait and effort worth the payoff, you can deride them but it's still gonna happen.
Oh -- and quickies aren't always besties. ;)
I have to agree with Bill
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
Steve, with all due respect to a brother Soldier, counterinsurgency is not business management. Furthermore, bean counting (amount of fuel on hand) is a not a MOE. The one argument you made that I concur with is that metrics can be useful for justifying resources, but they sure as heck don't reflect the reality of the insurgency.
Not everything can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -Albert Einstein
in that Metrics when concerning COIN are pretty much useful more for directed learning in how to approach it rather than any actual solutions.
That said one requires some form of metrics with which to develop training which works across the spectrum of educations and personalities which exist.
Embrace your inner bean counter
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
Steve, with all due respect to a brother Soldier, counterinsurgency is not business management. Furthermore, bean counting (amount of fuel on hand) is a not a MOE. The one argument you made that I concur with is that metrics can be useful for justifying resources, but they sure as heck don't reflect the reality of the insurgency.
Not everything can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -Albert Einstein
Bill,
I appreciate what you do and the risks you take (as a ca –bubba I am happy for the opportunities to learn from my sf brothers). I do not claim to know much, in fact the more I travel and the longer I live the more I see how little I know.
Foco-ism as I understand it is creating conditions that are so bad that the citizenry is forced to act against the government/authority structure. Mao felt foco-ism was the wrong method, Che thought it was the right one. Successful government/authority structures are able to provide secure and stable conditions to the citizenry such it is in the citizenry’s best interest to support and protect the government/authority structure. By targeting security infrastructure and key leaders, electricity infrastructure and key leaders, water/wastewater infrastructure and key leaders, etc. either side can influence the citizenry. I would argue that the appropriate use of metrics (which leaders must change as the situation warrants/changes-they are fluid ) gives both sides a targeting tool and an insight to what is going on.
Consider embracing your inner bean-counter. I came to the quantitative path fairly late in life as compared to my kids, but I can say that it’s powerful stuff. I have not forsaken the joy of being outside, fingerspitzengefuhl, and all the benefits of qualitative/intuitive thinking and bean-counting does not take the place of making the jump from theory to reality. It’s just a tool I use to get things done, not an end in itself.
Metrics are required in most aspects of hard science
and, as nearly as I can determine, in all engineering. They are quite beneficial in all fields of business and can frequently aid in ordinary life decisions. Every one should be able to apply then to situations where there is some benefit.
As Sureferbeetle said:
Quote:
...It’s just a tool I use to get things done, not an end in itself.
Human conflict is, like it or not, an instinctive and visceral endeavor. Proper conduct of it on an organized basis is intuitive -- and it's most emphatically an art, not a science or a business. Metrics can be somewhat useful in some instance but extremely careful selection of WHAT metrics is critical; metrics for metrics sake solve nothing and not only do not add value, they may well detract from the effort. When they become an end in themselves, they invariably will do more harm than good.
My experience with the Armed forces of the US is that we rarely got what metrics were important correct and that far too frequently, they became an end in themselves. Hopefully, everyone else here had -- more importantly, will have -- better experience with 'em.