Systemic Operational Design

**Strickland** · 07-22-2006

Should the Army and USMC adopt Systemic Operational Design (SOD) as doctrine for planning?

**SWJED** · 07-22-2006

Emerging Doctrine and the Ethics of Warfare by Dr. Tim Challans.

... Of the two general approaches to explore human activity, the scientific approach has had as its project the goals of explanation and prediction while the philosophical approach has worked toward understanding. One general strategy is the scientific one, maintaining that reason explanations could also be causal explanations. Adopting this first strategy, of which the effects-based approach remains a part, are the disciplines of social science that want to render human action under scientific regularities, such as empirical political science, economics, and so on. The other general strategy moves away from a scientific view of human activity remains philosophical. An alternative to the effects-based approach is emerging in some circles. That alternative is called systemic operational design (SOD). SOD is very much more philosophically sophisticated than EBA, and has its roots in modern science and philosophy. EBA remains medieval—pseudo-scientific and pseudo-philosophical.

EBA is an unsuccessful attempt at being scientific while SOD is philosophical. The former is an attempt at gaining a level of certainty and control through a decision procedure, while the latter is a critical method. Decision procedures are closed, complete, decidable, while critical methods remain open, incomplete, and acknowledge uncertainty. The first is pseudo-scientific because one of the features that differentiates between science and pseudo-science is the concept of falsifiability. No matter how much contrary evidence appears in front of EBA advocates, they can deny that the evidence falsifies their pursuits. The model can be completely backwards from ground truth, yet the model can persist—this is how we have failed to recognize or acknowledge something as significant as the current insurgency (as of a year ago at JSCOPE the military was denying one). The former doctrine begins with assumptions and the latter approach begins with questions, thereby revealing their relative stances on knowledge. Even though SOD is philosophically interpretive—not pretending to be scientific—it remains consistent with modern scientific practice and understanding.

Some are skeptical of SOD because they think it is rooted in Israeli history and culture and practice. While these states of affairs may have influenced and motivated the primary theorists, nobody, not even the Israeli theorists, see SOD as being a uniquely Israeli artifact without application outside of the Middle East. They like the theory because it is more reliable as a theory, and they recognize that because of their philosophical frame of mind. Many also resist this alternative because of practical problems facing the implementation of the idea: the vocabulary is different; U.S. military culture obviates dialogue, and so on. This paper is more about the theory than about the practice. We should get the theory right first. The medical community did not give up on germ theory because of the difficulties associated with operating in a clean environment. The practical matters will emerge naturally, and the military will adapt after the theory is right.

SOD has to do with capitalizing on emergences rather than teleologies, recognizing the way humans act in an open system in the real world rather than misrepresenting human behavior through a flawed representation, as EBA does. Force is not ruled out in the SOD concept, but force is not the first resort either, so SOD opens the door for considerations within the moral domain as a necessary feature of the system. Understanding SOD is difficult, though, for it requires one to be able to understand scientific evolution, the way systems change naturally forward through time rather than systems (particularly systems of systems) being made to change artificially backwards through time based on some preconceived plan. Advocates of SOD understand the power of the theory of evolution as a scientific theory, and many EBA advocates do not. It is no accident that many EBA advocates prefer intelligent design over the theory of evolution and that many of them live in Kansas.

**SWJED** · 07-22-2006

Discoursive Command – Operators – Systemic Operational Design: A New Framework for Strategic Epistemology by Dr. Brigadier (Res.) Shimon Naveh.

... In the realm of military strategy, paradigms are conceptual systems or structures of knowledge that are produced through systemic study of actual and virtual contexts, alike. However, since strategy is primarily concerned with shaping of future realities through the operation of policy, strategists rely on concepts as tools for both interpretation of circumstantial contexts, and design of future realities. Therefore, by its very nature, strategy evolves in the dynamic learning environment of praxis, which is a spatial reflection of the tensions between the ontological analysis of reality and the epistemological understanding of institutional knowledge, between conceptualization and application, theorizing and performance, institutionalization and change. On the one hand, it is concerned with scientific construction of paradigmatic structures of knowledge, and their institutionalized assimilation in the organization. Whereas, on the other hand, it employs these very same conceptual systems as a basis for designing and effectuating policies which generate, in their turn, new realities. Thus, strategy is a constant dialectical play transforming political situations and producing new states of knowledge, simultaneously. Moreover, constituting a fundamental characteristic of the nature of strategy, the complementary tension between transformations of political-strategic realities and changes in the state of operational-strategic knowledge imply that paradigmatic revolution is the essential mechanism for development of strategic thought.

Culturally, one can therefore argue that the dialectical relations or interplay between revolution, as a subversive intellectual trajectory, deconstructing an existing conceptual frame and defining new space for perceptual exploit, and anti-revolution, as a sisyphean effort to net (straiation) and administer the new mental territory, express the property of an ever changing expansion or the constant flux of development of strategic knowledge. A conceptual revolution emanates from an ongoing practice of "normal science" or institutionalized discourse, as a result of a cognitive crisis, or a realization of the irrelevance between the prevalent conceptual system and a certain strategic context. The revolutionary trend is driven by the cultural and political logic of subversion, whereas, anti-revolution deriving from the need for organizational stability and conceptual steadiness is characterized by institutionalization and doctrinal inclinations.

Attempting to rationalize a chaotic or ambiguous situation, and outline some operational directions for implementing coherent initiatives in the future, the revolutionary trend breaks the conceptual boundaries of the established paradigm, thus, opening unexplored territories for new strategic discourse. The development of new conceptualization, the dissemination of new ideas, the expansion of a consensus basis among the various schools of thought in the organization, through vigorous debate, the assimilation of new concepts, and finally, the institutionalization of subversive approach within the boundaries of a new paradigmatic structure, lead, almost naturally, from revolution to anti-revolution. Thus, together, revolution and anti-revolution constitute the organic cycle of development of organizational knowledge or strategic cognition...

... The constructing concepts constitute, in fact, the core of the discoursive system for knowledge creation in context. Since they represent the cognitive components of systemic reasoning, their combined application in course of the systemic operational design practice produces the holistic architecture of the application of military force.

The relations between the constructing concepts are not hierarchical, but dialectical and dynamic. The systemic method of design is not linear-sequential, but rather spiral-associative. The initial definition of a conceptual framework for the specific circumstantial context removes a principal cognitive barrier for the systemization of the conflict. The rationalization of the rival system, or rather the systemic conceptualization of the opposing entity in the conflict provides a cognitive reference for the framing of the operation. And the conceptualization of the operation in spatial terms renders the systemic architecture for the definition of its logical and mechanical components.

The operator uses this structure, or system of constructing concepts as an intellectual road map for cognitive orientation in the circumstantial labyrinth of the actual context confronting him. This structure serves also as a logical framework for systemic representation of the complex of insights and abundance of concepts, which have been created in the course of the discussion. Likewise, it serves as a network for representation of the map of generic operational knowledge, which results from the cultivation and refinement of the contextual conceptual maps. And finally, it serves as a logical framework for the construction of conceptual documents, and operational doctrine papers....

**slapout9** · 07-22-2006

Ret. Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper has a audio download called "how to be in command and out of control" at http://www.sageadvisory.com/pg/media...a/riper/1.html
He talks about SOD on this and he is very much for it. Also CGSC school of advaned military studies has 3 recent SOD releases 1 deals with hurricane Katrina. I would find them but I have a meeting to go to. I am very interested in this so all the brains on the SWC talk this up so when I get back I can learn some of the basics. I was at a disater plan meeting an this came up but nobody know much about it. With the help of you guys I should be an expert in no time. later.