Effects Based Operations (EBO) - is it valid?

[Tom Odom]

Cav,

I distinguish EBO at the tactical level versus what is played at the strategic and operational levels as EBO. We have been involved in this realm down here since 2001; even before then we used targeting as a way for recocking operations.

Regardless of whether you call it EBO, EBP, full spectrum operational planning, D3A, or pancakes, our goal in using it is in line with the same goals as D3A. that is to decide what to targert, find the target, synchronize lethal and non-lethal operations delivered against the target and assess the results.

The key goals are to fuze lethal and non-lethal operations and assess results against objectives to reach the desired endstate. Where and why I diferentiate between this tactical application versus strategic is that the latter is very much tied to the idea we can collapse an enemy if we just kill or bomb the right thing at the right time.

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

We now have a new targeting CD that we are developing that should be available soon to you guys.
Best
Tom

[William F. Owen]

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

Anything open source? I am very much in the market for useful ideas, but there doesn't seem to have been much new since Foch and his Staff Collage Lectures of 1911.

[Tom Odom]

They are all FOUO

[Tom Odom]

I guess the hardest part is understanding what needs to be done, and measuring the right things. If my operational goal doesn't address the root causes in COIN (i.e. approaching from my POV rather than the populations), all the EBO won't help if the enemy is playing baseball while I'm playing football. That's where COIN IPB comes in.

Absolutely and it is all about targeting the effort against the correct things. That is nothing new but when you get into the realm of non-lethal IO synchronization of that effort with lethal operations becomes critical. What happens when we separate the tactical IO effort from the tactical maneuver effort? We get a desynched result and one often working at cross purposes. that was our experience in trying to develop Tac IO TTPs separate from "real operations". They got shoved aside, marginalized, or completely ignored. As you know better than most that is not a good thing in COIN.

best

Tom

[William F. Owen]

Absolutely and it is all about targeting the effort against the correct things. That is nothing new but when you get into the realm of non-lethal IO synchronization of that effort with lethal operations becomes critical. What happens when we separate the tactical IO effort from the tactical maneuver effort? We get a desynched result and one often working at cross purposes. that was our experience in trying to develop Tac IO TTPs separate from "real operations". They got shoved aside, marginalized, or completely ignored. As you know better than most that is not a good thing in COIN.

So isn't this just ensuring that behaviours and actions do not contradict or undermine each other?

Tom. What you write makes perfect sense (and what the UK was trained to do for decades) but this is a million miles from all the EBO stuff I have read through in the last 5-7 years.

[Cavguy]

Tom. What you write makes perfect sense (and what the UK was trained to do for decades) but this is a million miles from all the EBO stuff I have read through in the last 5-7 years.

Hence my confusion every time I see "Effects Based" title anywhere. I usually have no idea what "box" to put it in. Given the negativity to EBO I have run into around here (now I understand to be the "joint" EBO) when I see "Effects Based" in front of a tactical product I assume the same systems.

I think, given the TRADOC directive, CALL's publications need to be clearer on what version of EBO it means to promote.

[Ron Humphrey]

Hence my confusion every time I see "Effects Based" title anywhere. I usually have no idea what "box" to put it in. Given the negativity to EBO I have run into around here (now I understand to be the "joint" EBO) when I see "Effects Based" in front of a tactical product I assume the same systems.

I think, given the TRADOC directive, CALL's publications need to be clearer on what version of EBO it means to promote.

When I've heard it used recently it comes down to peoples inclination to associate it to actions for which there are metrics and thus simple if not necessarily accurate ways of saying do this equals this ,etc.

That's never what I thought it to be about either.

Tom's on it with the fact that separating all the pieces of the puzzle from a process doesn't generally work to well.

[Tom Odom]

So isn't this just ensuring that behaviours and actions do not contradict or undermine each other?

Tom. What you write makes perfect sense (and what the UK was trained to do for decades) but this is a million miles from all the EBO stuff I have read through in the last 5-7 years.

I know. The war of words over EBO at the strategic level has overshadowed what has evolved at the tactical level. In some cases that war of words has interfered with continued learning. We insist so strongly that we "don't do EBO" as it is promulgated at the Joint level, that we miss applications at the tactical (which really echo what we have always done but add some clarity).

And you are correct it is not "new" in its central focus on behaviors and actions. But to audience learning it and now using it, it was indeed "new". Some of this is just plain marketing: you have to tag it with something and in today's 3-word PPT bullet mode of miscommunications, EBO, EBP, D3A, or "pancakes" works for me if I can just get them to accept the underlying concepts as they swallow their griddle cakes

Tom

[Tom Odom]

I think, given the TRADOC directive, CALL's publications need to be clearer on what version of EBO it means to promote.

They are. That list is chronological and therefore evolutionary. But I will also say that CALL does not promote EBO (or any other TTP) as we are not proponents. We are a communications pipeline for sharing of said TTPs. In the case of the EBO material, I listed it all came from here as it eveloved within the JRTC Ops Group over the past 6+ years. The TRADOC commander accepted the concepts that went into the brigade and battalion planning study. And the evolution continues here, simply using targeting as the descriptor. In that regard we have come full circle from where we were in 2000 using targeting--but we added in the tools necessary for targeting and assessing the non-lethal as well as the lethal.

Tom

[Hacksaw]

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

[Tom Odom]

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

Nope

04-14

05-19

They are no longer in print but are available online.

07-2 and 07-3 are still available in print as well as online.