Assessment of Effects Based Operations

[SWJED]

Assessment of Effects Based Operations

14 August 2008

MEMORANDUM FOR U.S. JOINT FORCES COMMAND

Subject: Assessment of Effects Based Operations

1. Attached are my thoughts and Commander’s guidance regarding Effects Based Operations (EBO). The paper is designed to provide the JFCOM staff with clear guidance and a new direction on how EBO will be addressed in joint doctrine and used in joint training, concept development, and experimentation. I am convinced that the various interpretations of EBO have caused confusion throughout the joint force and amongst our multinational partners that we must correct. It is my view that EBO has been misapplied and overextended to the point that it actually hinders rather than helps joint operations.

2. Therefore, we must return to time honored principles and terminology that our forces have tested in the crucible of battle and are well grounded in the theory and nature of war. At the same time, we must retain and adopt those aspects of effect based thinking that are useful. We must stress the importance of mission type orders that contain clear Commander’s Intent, unambiguous tasks and purpose, and most importantly, links ways and means with achievable ends. To augment these tenets, we must leverage non-military capabilities and strive to better understand the different operating variables that make up today’s more complex operating environments.

3. My assessment is shaped by my own personal experiences and the experience of others in a variety of operational situations. I’m convinced we must keep the following in mind: First, operations in the future will require a balance of regular and irregular competencies. Second, the enemy is smart, and adaptive. Third, all operating environments are dynamic with an infinite number of variables; therefore, it is not scientifically possible to accurately predict the outcome of an action. To suggest otherwise runs contrary to historical experience and the nature of war. Fourth, we are in error when we think that what works (or does not work) in one theater is universally applicable to all theaters. Finally, to quote Sherman, “Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.” History is replete with such examples and further denies us any confidence that the acute predictability promised by EBO’s long assessment cycle can strengthen our doctrine.

4. The joint force must act in uncertainty and thrive in chaos, sensing opportunity therein and not retreating into a need for more information. JFCOM’s purpose is to ensure that joint doctrine smoothes and simplifies joint operations while reducing friendly friction. My goal is to return clarity to our planning processes and operational concepts. Ultimately, my aim is to ensure leaders convey their intent in clearly understood terms and empower their subordinates to act decisively.

5. While NATO and many Partner Nations have adopted the EBO nomenclature, NATO’s policy focuses on the whole of government/Comprehensive Approach. In short, NATO’s Effects Based Approach to Operations (EBAO) does not fully mirror U.S. EBO. NATO’s use of EBAO is left unaddressed in this USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance.

6. A pre-decisional working draft of this document was prematurely circulated and should be discarded. I regret any confusion resulting from the unintended early release of this draft document.

J. N. MATTIS
General, U.S. Marine Corps

Commander’s Guidance Regarding Effects Based Operations - US Joint Forces Command (PDF)

[Steve Blair]

Very nice! Good to see someone actually thinking about these things and then writing coherently about them.

[William F. Owen]

Baruch Ha Shem! I can die happy. Common sense at last, and not before time. It's only taken 5 years to reach this point!

[Ski]

Good news! One less thing I have to learn about at CGSC!

[davidbfpo]

Excellent letter and I'm dazed by the "punches". Will this led to a debate here, let alone within the US military? Can we (UK police) borrow him to administer some sense here!

davidbfpo

[Cavguy]

EBO is dead. Long Live EBO!!!

Be assured, the systems guys will be pushing EBO under another name shortly. The original (leaked) draft was also interesting, because it dismissed several other terms such as "net-centric warfare", "attack the network", "system of systems", and a few others as being jargon that confuses rather than enlightens the picture.

However, it was obviously spiked in the final, probably so as not to shut down research along those lines, perhaps to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[SWJED]

Colonel David Gurney (USMC Ret.), Editor of Joint Force Quarterly and Director of National Defense University Press, has again kindly permitted SWJ to post a Point - Counterpoint that will appear in the January 2009 issue of JFQ.

First up; from SWJ, this 14 August 2009 memo by General James Mattis, Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Attached are my thoughts and Commander’s guidance regarding Effects Based Operations (EBO). The paper is designed to provide the JFCOM staff with clear guidance and a new direction on how EBO will be addressed in joint doctrine and used in joint training, concept development, and experimentation. I am convinced that the various interpretations of EBO have caused confusion throughout the joint force and amongst our multinational partners that we must correct. It is my view that EBO has been misapplied and overextended to the point that it actually hinders rather than helps joint operations.

This brings us to January's JFQ Point - Counterpoint in reaction to General Mattis's memo. First, from Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC, (ret.) - EBO: There Was No Baby in the Bathwater.

We should not be surprised that one of our most combat-seasoned and professionally informed leaders, General James Mattis, USMC, who commands U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), recently issued a memorandum that calls for an end to the effects-based operations (EBO) nonsense that has permeated much of the American defense community for the past 6 years. Nor should we be surprised that other leaders with similar operational experience promptly applauded General Mattis’ actions. They all saw effects based operations as a vacuous concept that has slowly but surely undermined professional military thought and operational planning. One can only hope that the general’s action, coupled with a similar effort by U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in 2007,will halt the U.S. military’s decade-and-a-half decline in conceptual thinking.

U.S. Air Force Colonels Paul M. Carpenter and William F. Andrews take issue in Effects Based Operations - Combat Proven.

The USJFCOM directive to “turn off” EBO concepts is not well advised. Although the command has vigorously pursued development of EBO concepts, over time efforts have rendered a valuable joint concept unusable by promising unattainable predictability and by linking it to the highly deterministic computer-based modeling of ONA and SoSA. Instead of pursuing a constructive approach by separating useful and proven aspects of EBO and recommending improvements, USJFCOM has prescribed the consumption of a fatal poison. General Mattis declares that “the term effects-based is fundamentally flawed... and goes against the very nature of war.”

We disagree. EBO is combat proven; it was the basis for the success of the Operation Desert Storm air campaign and Operation Allied Force. A very successful wartime concept is sound and remains an effective tool for commanders. It is valuable for commanders to better understand cause and effect - to better relate objectives to the tasks that forces perform in the operational environment. While there are problems associated with how EBO has been implemented by some organizations, they can be easily adjusted. As a military, we must understand the value of EBO, address concerns in its implementation, and establish a way ahead to gain the benefits and avoid the potential pitfalls of the concept.

The current issue of the U.S. Army War College’s Parameters also reprints the General Mattis memo in article format with a counter by Tomislav Z. Ruby entitled Effects-based Operations: More Important Than Ever.

Whether effects-based operations (EBO) and the effects-based approach to planning have led to negative warfighting results is a topic well worth our collective time and study. In fact, it is a healthy activity of any defense institution to question and evaluate its doctrine, policy, and procedures. The current debate on EBO brought about by General James N. Mattis’s memorandum to US Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) directing the elimination of the term from the command’s vocabulary has not put the issue to rest. Quite to the contrary, the Mattis memo reinvigorated the debate, and this article aims at being part of that debate. Effects-based operations are not dead. No one individual can kill a concept, and this concept has staying power. When the underlying rationale for General Mattis’s decision is analyzed, one can see that EBO as a concept for planning will be around for some time.

[William F. Owen]

As Van Riper says, there was no baby!

EBO is shape shifter concept that always stays just out of reach, and alters in the face of criticism. Success are, in hindsight, chalked up to EBO, and failures were "poorly done" EBO.

EBO endures because it's many and varying definitions are so general and so non-specific, that anything good can be attributed to it, and anything bad can be denied as being part of it. It abuses history in the same way Manoeuvre Warfare, and 4GW do.

That to me, indicates that it's real utility is to promote agendas, secure budgets and make reputations. It's no good for the practitioner.

[Ken White]

as the kid...

Sayeth Defenders:

We disagree. EBO is combat proven; it was the basis for the success of the Operation Desert Storm air campaign and Operation Allied Force.

Neither of which accomplished much until folks went in on the ground thus 'success' is a highly relative term...

The importance of this principle is particularly relevant to ongoing operations in Iraq, where General David Petraeus declared the Iraqi people as the “key terrain.” Our actions are seeking lasting changes in their behavior.

Heh. Good luck with that search.

Practically made for mission-type orders, EBO is not locked to any specific level of conflict and may be used by commanders at any level . . . Mission-type orders are essentially an application of EBO at the tactical level.

This from the service that demands control off all air assets in theater and issues Air Tasking Orders. Sorry, their statements are beyond counter intuitive.

... the revisionist “slap” at the value of precision aerial attack is oddly out of place . . . If “precision fires alone” are judged by USJFCOM to have been “ineffective” in 1991, 1999, and 2003, we must wonder what standard is used to make this provocative judgment.

Nothing revisionist about it; even the USAF has acknowledged many times that air effort alone is not enough and USAF bombing campaign assessments have found shortfalls.

I suspect the standard for the judgments revolves around the fact that troops moving into Kuwait in 1991 found most of Saddam's men and equipment demoralized but still largely intact and functional; Post war assessments in Kosovo showed the USAF and its coalition partners had bombed a large number of decoys and missed a large number of real vehicles plus little changed until the KLA went in on the ground...

The effort in 2003 combined the flaws of both earlier wars -- and compounded the failure to deliver by being called "Shock and Awe." Embarrassing.

I'll also echo what Wilf said...

[reed11b]

As Van Riper says, there was no baby!

EBO is shape shifter concept that always stays just out of reach, and alters in the face of criticism. Success are, in hindsight, chalked up to EBO, and failures were "poorly done" EBO.

EBO endures because it's many and varying definitions are so general and so non-specific, that anything good can be attributed to it, and anything bad can be denied as being part of it. It abuses history in the same way Manoeuvre Warfare, and 4GW do.

That to me, indicates that it's real utility is to promote agendas, secure budgets and make reputations. It's no good for the practitioner.

Amen to that. I'll further that by saying that nearly all strategic planning outside the tactical realm equals philosophy and is every bit as improvable and untestable as philosophy in any other realm is. If it had merit, it could be tested and it can not. It can't even use the standby of previous "strategic" constructs like maneuver warfare and use historic patterns.
Reed