Mass Insanity: Latest Trend in Army Doctrine

[Bob's World]

It's not just doctrine that is becoming overly prescriptive and overly influenced by what we believe the "lessons learned" of the past 10 years to be; we have an equally dangerous situation developing in the area of plans and planning.

Plans are managed by geographic combatant commanders in large part. Regional perspectives on regional issues. But what, in today's emerging environment, is truly "regional"?

Increasingly, regional problems demand global perspectives and solutions; equally, regional actions can have global implications. GCCs and GCC-driven planning do not serve this emerging reality very well. Similarly, a "plan" tends to lock one into a certain perspective and sequence of events. Particularly when those doctrine-loving Army boys break out their sequentially numbered phases and start filling in the blanks.

How then, do we evolve in how we think about and write doctrine and plans?? This is a question we need to put some serious energy into. If we are to evolve to be as effective as we need to be, and equally as quick, flexible and agile as we need to be, we must first address how we think about the things we do or believe we might do; and how we balance the need for detailed preparation with the need for flexible execution.

[Fuchs]

I never thought of doctrine as something for the very high levels, such as theatre command.

Doctrine or 'similar lines of thinking' are good for company to corps command, where there are great benefits to be found in having trust and reduced frictions because officers know that other officers think alike (just imagine Guderian working with a chief of staff or subordinate division commander who's of the French artillery school!).
(Another example, from small wars: Think of one battalion CO following a rough cordon + search + demolish + arrest approach while the next CO in the rotation follows a hearts + minds + indigenous militia approach. It won't work, it wouldn't work even if both approaches were correct!)


You better get your doctrine right and be ready for quick adjustments if much of your officer corps thinks along its lines, of course.