Effects Based Operations (EBO) - is it valid?

[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

[ChrisPaparone]

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.

[Eden]

Cavguy, one of the hardest things about COIN planning or execution - really the core of what you are struggling with, I feel - is how to measure progress.
How do we know we are winning (or losing, or merely treading water)? In my time as a COIN planner this was one of the things that I struggled with constantly.

You can't simply count standards captured or ground gained. What indicators are there that you can monitor, that are genuine measures of progress, and (perhaps most importantly) that you can brief to the boss?

Our tendency is to measure those things that are measurable: number of attacks, number of schools built, number of weapon caches discovered. But these don't always serve as reliable measures of effectiveness. We tend to discount professional military judgment because it doesn't brief well and is not quantifiable. But experienced counterinsurgents learn to judge progress by using a whole range of subtle indicators; sometimes they may not even be able to articulate what it is that informs their judgment, but that does not necessarily make it any less accurate. Again, you may be doing ten things and may not be sure which are effective and which are not - you can only judge the end product.

So how do you articulate that in a form that is understandable and briefable?

Another problem is the slow pace of counterinsurgency. Even when you are doing the right things, progress can be glacially slow, or even invisible. The little arrows that we placed along red-yellow-green spectra to brief our progress barely moved during my tour in Afghanistan. Does that mean we were doing things wrong? Or that we just needed to be patient to see the fruits of our labor? The glacial pace, unfortunately, means an incorrect strategy can be defended and a correct strategy abandoned prematurely with ease. It takes a great deal of moral courage to be convinced you are doing the right thing when the progress reports don't support you.

I think this is why the debates about COIN theories are so much more virulent and inconclusive than the corresponding 'conventional' theories. You get much clearer and quicker feedback in 'big wars'; in COIN you often have to take it on faith that you are doing the right thing.