Lines of Operation

**jcustis** · 03-07-2008

I am bringing this post from the dead instead of open a new one because I need to know (from a USMC perspective hopefully) what the current nomenclature is out there for Lines of Operation in Iraq.

I've recently read a unit AAR about its last rotation, and LOOs are mentioned in loose terms. The overall number of LOOs and area concerned within each LOO are not addressed, so I have no frame of reference (and I'm headed to the unit in question

).

I shouldn't have been surprised, but when I ran a google string on "lines of operation", this SWC thread was the very first hit. Amazing...

**Tom Odom** · 03-07-2008

Originally Posted by jcustis

I shouldn't have been surprised, but when I ran a google string on "lines of operation", this SWC thread was the very first hit. Amazing...

Yes we are aren't we?

Seriously I believe the term remains the same for us Army types

Best

Tom

**jcustis** · 03-07-2008

I guess that was a poorly written RFI. I was looking for the various LOOs that are out there. If Army LOOs and Marine Corps' LOOs (that sound silly

) are the same, should I refer to the pubs referenced above?

**Surferbeetle** · 03-08-2008

Jcustis,

FM 3-0 has 26 listings for 'lines of operation'

F 3-24 has 41 listings for 'lines of operation'

FM 3-05-40 has 1 listing for 'lines of operation'

FM 3-05-401 has 2 listings for 'lines of operation'

My copy of JP 3-57 is corrupted, so I can't do a search at the moment, but it's worth rummaging through.

FM 5-0 has 1 listing for 'lines of operation'

FM 6-0 (I have the 03 version looks like I need to update my pubs library) has 0 listings for 'lines of operation'

***TC 25-20 AAR's

Anything you can share on the USMC side would be appreciated

**Presley Cannady** · 07-01-2010

Just so I'm clear, we're promoting a stencil for use in Powerpoint presentations to a concept?

**ChrisPaparone** · 07-01-2010

Presley, not sure what you are asking. Please rephrase.

Seahorse,

Whilst EBO seems to be dying a slow death, I think logical lines are still going to hang around; albeit, they seem to encourage linear thinking (one-direction causality) and fail to appreciate sufficiently the interactive complexity at hand.

My opinion is that LLOOs are rather arrogant (right word?) attempts toward "social engineering" change in groups/societies/political-economic systems abroad. The idea that US interagency operations and advisory methods can be deterministic in changing complex social systems is highly questionable -- there is no "science" and these LLOOs suggest a false sense of scientific-like causality (and lead to setting expectations that are unfortunately as illusory as a shaman rain dance).

I think the efficacy of a more philosophical approach to complexity (found in the "DESIGN MOVEMENT" led primarily by the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies) may offer some better hope. Yet joint doctrine has not yet insitutionalized these alternatives that (in my opinion) consitute a worldview shift. I wrote on this in SWJ a few weeks ago: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...9-paparone.pdf. I also know there is a group at JFCOM J7 working on a design handbook and that SAMS has published a student text: http://www.cgsc.edu/events/sams/ArtofDesign_v2.pdf.

**Presley Cannady** · 07-01-2010

Originally Posted by ChrisPaparone

Presley, not sure what you are asking. Please rephrase.

Literally that. It's an arrow (or arrows) through things you intend to do to achieve something, an arrow that invariably pops up in diagrams. Represent it with different stencils and you've got a flowchart. With none at all, you've got a to do list. Draw it on a map you've got your old-school LOO. Use a string and post it notes...well, you get the picture.

Just seems like it's little more than synonym proliferation is all.

**PhilR** · 03-08-2008

Someone with an Army (SAMS?) background can better recount the development of the LOO concept, but it preceded the present conflicts and, I think, has its origins in the complex contingencies of the 1990s. In looking at older briefs and documents, there was a very rigorous and thoughtful way for planners to look at the problem and see if LOOs were necessary, and if so, what the LOOs should be. I think it had to do with complex problems not having single identifiable COGs, but possibly multiple COGs--each requiring actions along a seperate "Logical Line of Operation" (the conceptual equivalent of Jomini's physical line of operation--we dropped the "logical" piece to the title as no one remembers the physical origin and no one wants to associate our current COIN doctrine with a guy named Jomini). The commander had to arrange and coordinate all his actions across the LOOs to achieve his objective.
The Marine Corps never really embraced this doctrine until the early Irregular Warfare pubs--which to me looked largely like expansions of Chiarelli's article on LOOs in Baghdad in Military Review--a seminal piece, to my mind. From having no doctrinal background on LOOs, all of a sudden Marines were identifiying specific LOOs for COIN. Now LOOs pop up everywhere. The Marine Corps has still failed to grapple with them in any of our base doctrinal pub (the MCDPs). I look forward to that happening someday, because I think for LOOs to be useful, they can't be some template that commanders/planners just fill in the blank and start executing. Not every conflict porblem requires LOOs.
In many cases, even in complex scenarios like COIN, I see LOOs used as the equivalent of expanding the warfighting functions (maneuver, fires, logistics, etc.) into the "non-lethal" sphere. This tends to drive units to assign different parts of their forces to the various LOOs and they become almost separate commands at the higher echelons. I thought that the utility of the orginal way of thinking about LOOs was that it forced more synergy--a "kinetic action" was not relegated to a "combat action" LOO, but could affect multiple LOOs (information, enemy destruction, etc.). For the Marine Corps, its well worth looking hard at the LOO (and tell me, what is our 1-2 sentence definition of a generic LOO and what USMC or joint pub we use for it?).

**Spud** · 03-17-2008

We've gone with five interdependent LOOs as part of our Adaptive Campaigning concept.

Joint Land Combat
Population Protection
Public Information
Population Support
Indigenous Capacity Building

http://www.complex07.org/online-edition/files/426.pdf

While at the moment they're words we are starting to use them in synching our IO effects. Of course the hardest bit has been to teach everyone that information effects occur in each LOO ... not just the Public Information one.