Assessment of Effects Based Operations

[Ken White]

...I lke the story of Mullah Omar escaping death, as a AGM was aimed at the front of the building he was in and he exited the rear door after impact.

davidbfpo

many times. IIRC, took too long to go all the way to CentCom to get a decision the guys on the ground should have made so he arrived at the house and entered before the Navy JAG Captain and Franks announced their flawed (IMO) decision.

That's one of the major EBO problems; it doesn't consider the second and third order effects of gross stupidity on our part...

[pvebber]

The debate over how effects should influence our thinking about warfare is fundamentally a philosophical (epistemology) one. Unfortunately some seeming semantic arguments over "effects-based thinking" vs "effects-based operations" belie a much more fundamental debate in philosophical world view. This is the same argument that is currently being debated in scientific circles. One characterization is the "physics-based" worldview vs the "biology-based" worldview.

What this boils down to is a disagreement over what is "knowable" and how we go about "knowing". Can we break everything into components (analyze) to understand how the world works, or must we also understand how some "wholes are greater than the sum of their parts" and conceptualize how things work together (synthesize).

This may seem a long way from warfighting effects - but TheLapsedPacifist dives in head first on the "physics-based" logical positivist side with the statement:

Chaotic and complex systems can be analyzed, their behavior can be predicted. This is a fact –...

Only if you are a logical positivist and its underlying assumptions of "knowability" are true. That indeed you can understand all you need to about how things work by breaking it apart to see how the pieces operate (analyze) and them just aggregate them back together.

Prediction requires an understanding of causes and effects. So this statement "is a fact" if and only if, one has the required understanding of the relationship between cause and effect. Logical positivism (and related empiricism) are based on a "glass is half full" assumption that we can only say what we know, and can't say what we can't know, (because we may discover new knowledge that allows to understand what we previously thought was unknowable).

The use of weather used as an example of predictability is also an example of what many who question the optimism of logical positivism point to as a counter-example. Yes we can predict the weather a few hours ahead for a given location well, and we can 'forecast' (ie set probabilities on a range of possible outcomes - different from prediction) a few days out. But what hope is there for predicting the weather in your backyard 1 million years from now? Those working on complex system theory and philosophy would say that predictability has a horizon and that there is a "predictability horizon" beyond which we can't know.


So how do we know where the "predictability horizon" is for say, a military campaign? We know we don't know, but don't know if it is even knowable - because to know it is to be able to predict up to it - and know somehow your prediction just past it is false.

If we believe that we can predict the "predictability horizon" for a complex system - or we don't believe that such a thing exists, then indeed, it would logically follow that Chaotic and complex systems can be analyzed and predicted. Theoretically it would be possible to predict the weather in my back yard 1 million years from now, you just lack data of sufficient granularity. Just like the EBO, ONA and SOSA advocates say about adversaries "as systems" - the only thing preventing accurate prediction is data.

What we are learning about complex systems appears to be challenging that worldview. The physics-based worldview says if you understand the fundamental building blocks of nature that you can aggregate them together, establish all the causal chains that define the effects they produce, you can understand nature. Deus ex machina. Even Einstein didn't think "god played dice with the universe" - yet the implications of quantum mechanics put a chink in the notion of a possibly unimaginably complicated, not by provably unknowable universe. But increasingly physicists are learning that there seem to be an infinite regression of "fundamental particles" - that exist in an infinitely regression of dimensions. The universe increasing appears "fractal" - some even say "holographic" in its construction. If there is no fundamental building block" how do you win the knowlede game by breaking it down (analyzing it) ad infinitum?

Like relativity came in to address where Newtonian, mechanistic physics failed, biology inspired conceptualizations of how the universe work are increasingly coalescing. Truly complex systems are indeed more than the sum of their parts, and the implication of that is that in truly complex systems may not be analyzable and may not be predictable.

TheLapsedPacifist writes:

2. The paper asserts that the nature of warfare is unknowable...that war is a chaotic and complex system, you can’t predict second or third order effects. Therefore war is impenetrable to scrutiny via scientific approach ergo EBO is fundamentally flawed. Now I can disagree with this, it’s a fallacy.

Not if the what we think we are learning about complex systems stands up to be true. There are deterministic complex systems that one can create that are unpredictable and unanalyzable (Cellular automata like Conway's Game of Life are a good simple example - there is no way to predict the future state of a system of Cellular automata except by "executing the ruleset" ie the rules constitute the simplest algorithm to find a future state - there is no simpler "model" that allows a short cut - the essence of a "predictive model". In other words "the earth itself is the only absolutely accurate map of our planet".

If we believe Godel's incompleteness theorem, the implications for more complex rulesets with indeterminism is more bleak. We can't say impossible, because we 'don't know what we don't know' so the debate moves out of the theoretical into the useful. As my sig line says "All models are wrong" - meaning no predictions are perfect - but some models - hence their predictions - are useful. SO how do we determine the usefulness of prediction?

Understanding they are all to some extent wrong is the first step. That means that we can never have accurate initial conditions, and ultimately will have "a predictability horizon" - which we will only have an educated guess at. Enter the pragmatists into the philosophy of science - that science is not about "truth" - which appears if not unachieavable - at best a long, long, long way off. In the mean time (or as a basic epistemological concept) lets not worry about truth in science, but usefullness.

As for second or third order effects, "predict" is a strong word, it would have been preferable for EBO to be less gung-ho about this and look to "identify" and "anticipate" second or third order effects and develop branches and serial to deal with them.

This gets to where proponents of EBO have been their own worst enemy. The notion that we can "know what the enemy is going to do before he does" and other claims of ONA in particular that are tantamount to precognition are such an intellectual reach that one wonders how they ever got into our concept documents. "Usefulness" would have been good enough, but in their zeal to carry the "Physics-based" worldview to its logical conclusion they seem to take the deus ex machina to extremes not seen since the days of "epicycles of celestial spheres". The problem is that in order to "deal with something" you have to know it is a possible outcome - a form at least forecasting, but one that requires identification of specific chains of events, and an implies reducibility of the causal network. More on that...

Wrap all this mumbo jumbo up and you have the school that The LapsedPacifist and many others ascribe to that the ideas of EBO, ONA and SOSA may be "data-challenged" but represent a goal to strive for that may have limited 'usefulness' today, but will become increasingly 'useful' as we understand it more completely and foomd ways to acquire the required data.

In the other corer you have Gen Mattis and the EBO critics who have an intuition that, at best, the day when we will have the required data (assuming the above school is correct in its assumptions) is so far off and the relative 'usefulness' so marginal that its a waste of time to pursue; at worst the degree of indeterminancy in the basic data, together with an indecipherable nexus of causes and effects in all but the most academic SOSA problems (like power grids and logistics chains) means that the promises of EBO, ONA, and SOSA are in the realm of "not knowable".

The "trajectory of knowledge" to my analysis is in favor of Gen Mattis and the skeptics. In the systems we are interested in, the complex causal networks are irreducible by analysis and thus the are not usefully predictable. TRADOCs recent booklet "Commander's appreciation and Campaign Design",

http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/p525-5-500.pdf

mentioned in Gen Mattis memo, takes the term "wicked problems" from Barry Watts

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publicati...t_Training.pdf

and discusses the implications of this on military planning. It discusses some of the fundamental distinction between cases where the engineering oriented notions of EBO, ONA, and SOSA work (simple but extremely complicated to those of limited - 'reducible' complexity) and cases where there are no "scientific solutions" (irreducible complexity) where operational art and it takes a design (some might argue a biologically inspired) plan of attack.

THe bottom line is - "effects-based thinking" from the design-based or biological worldview is likely "useful". Effects-based Operations, ONA and SOSA - derived from a physics-based engineering inspired wordview is at best far in our future, and at worst, not possible to make 'useful'.

[William F. Owen]

To conclude that Israel’s EBO approach to the operation was one of the primarily reasons for their defeat is a fig-leaf to hid the fact that their land component had morphed into a counterinsurgency force, no longer capable of all-arms action. Hezbollah judged correctly that IDF would be forced to employ tactics that limited casualties, ie air-centric, and they develop a response to this.

Yes, the IDF had a multitude of problems, most associated with launching a war at less notice than the US Army had for Hurricane Katrina, but that does not let EBO off the hook.
The IDF brigade staffs certainly feel that EBO was responsible. Almost all unit commanders complained of not being given clear precise orders, and a ground manoeuvre operational concept was also lacking. This was caused by the General Staff buying into EBO.

It would have been interesting to see how Hezbollah's strategy would have fared against a well-equipped, well trained, and well-organised armed-force - take your pick, US, UK, French, Russian, etc.

I'd be interested to hear your thinking on this. How for example is a French all Arms Formation better organised than an IDF?
How are Russians better trained or equipped?
What UAV coverage can a UK Formation commander rely on, compared to an Israeli, and how many helicopters does he have available?

This may be of interest http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...6&postcount=30

[Bill Moore]

Slapout that was a good article, and for the most part good examples of effective uses of air power. However, I didn't see any reference directly or indirectly to EBO, which is probably why it was good. The entire article was well worth the read, but I want to focus on objectives and endstates to further my argument against EBO (as practiced today).

LTC Wolusky, USAF writes:

Objective determination involves deciding what to accomplish in a campaign, thereby allowing one to focus on the desired end state. A good air campaign objective is clear, concise, attainable, measurable, and directly supportive of the JFC’s and president’s national security goals.

later in the article he uses our Operation in Somalia as an example,

The UN’s desired end state called for creating “an environment in which the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations can assume full responsibility for the security and operation of the Somalia humanitarian relief efforts.” Under this vague guidance for the political objectives, Maj Gen Steven L. Arnold, military commander of Army forces in Somalia, could neither develop discrete military objectives nor a clear exit strategy other than “to be able to eventually leave.”

Shifting directions from policy makers and a fatal deficiency of tenable objectives forced the military to improvise from day to day and just “muddle through.

In a different article, MG Fastabend made a similiar argument when he wrote,

EBO advocates a strict planning focus on outcomes isolated from actor or method, and this in turn leads to operational planning that rapidly devolves into a ridiculous essay, a listing of aspirations: ‘let us eliminate corruption, isolate the border, prevent sectarian tension.’ Such aspirations, with no consideration of who must do what by when are worse than useless; they are damaging because they conceal the need to make hard choices.

My stance is that effects based thinking has some utility, but the effects based operations process is critically flawed exactly because it does lead to these vague ideas. Do we really have to eliminate corruption and isolate borders to achieve our military objective? If that is the case our country would have fallen years ago. Those are nice long term goals, but not for our military. What is our task and purpose? What does winning look like? What do we need to do to get there? The EBO process doesn't get us there at the operational and tactical level. I'm not yet convinced it gets us there at the strategic level.

LTC Wolusky, USAF adds, the

Chechnya occupation, and Vietnam War are all examples of military operations without workable end states. Every party to a conflict has its own desired end state, but unless it is achievable, protracted and interminable warfare results.

GEN Mattis's memo may have been harsh, and may result in temporarily throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but at the same time we urgently need clear and useful guidance today if we're going to make progress in Afghanistan. The academics can resurface the son of EBO later, right now we need a functional warfighting doctrine.

[reed11b]

I am always dubious of using Somalia as an example. Somalia was the first and AFAIK the only time that a president has pulled troops from a mission while there was still signifigant public support for the operation. I feel that failure of Somalia falls directly into the lap of Mr. Clinton and nowhere else. I do not feel the "mission" was impossible, or counter to our security needs (today Somalia is a hotbed for Islamic radicalism). IMNSHO We should have stayed on mission.
Reed

[slapout9]

[QUOTE]=Bill Moore;55689]Slapout that was a good article, and for the most part good examples of effective uses of air power. However, I didn't see any reference directly or indirectly to EBO, which is probably why it was good. The entire article was well worth the read, but I want to focus on objectives and endstates to further my argument against EBO (as practiced today). [QUOTE]

Hi Bill, that is a big reason why I posted it, also because it ties in with an earlier criticism on this thread of 5 rings analysis where I pointed out in campaign design the 5 rings analysis would take place in step 3 of the air campaign planning process behind Operational Environmental Research and Objective determination. It was pre EBO but still Systems Analysis based.

Solving a crime is recreating the past. To do that you must find and understand the history that led up to the crime or predicament.

EBO has become a mental crime it claims to have a process of knowing something that can not be known. pvebber's post explains this in a most eloquent fashion. EBO has become a WMD attack (Words of Mass Disruption) and to fix it as Mattis is trying to do he wants to conduct an RMA (Bill I think you invented this) Regression in Military Affairs or a Forensic Analysis to find out what went wrong and fix it.

Analyzing and understanding situations as systems is sound....predicting the future is not. What you can do is project forward in time an estimate of the situation and plan for various contingencies. Systems thinking and analysis will certainly help you do it because it is fractal, a pattern the repeats itself at all levels and situations, thus giving you a common or joint planning template for both miliary/govenment and non-government agencies, in both conflict and non-conflict environments.

[Ken White]

It can fall off the steps unless pointed precisely...

Solving a crime is recreating the past. To do that you must find and understand the history that led up to the crime or predicament.

I'd say that was arguable, partly in view of the many crimes that are solved by confessions, tips and being caught in the act or with the goods...

Regardless and accepting your statement as correct, that gets us only to the present. As you further say, it doesn't predict the future. The problem is that some adherents will attempt to use EBO to do just that as you sort of point out here:

Analyzing and understanding situations as systems is sound....predicting the future is not. What you can do is project forward in time an estimate of the situation and plan for various contingencies. Systems thinking and analysis will certainly help you do it because it is fractal, a pattern the repeats itself at all levels and situations, thus giving you a common or joint planning template for both miliary/govenment and non-government agencies, in both conflict and non-conflict environments. (emphasis added / kw)

I can agree with that last sentence -- however, only with respect to a non-conflict environment (if I correctly understand how you're using that phrase). Given conflict; i.e. an armed confrontation, you're faced with multiple variables dependent upon the terrain (human and otherwise) -- all the METT-TC factors -- and your and the opponents moves which can both range from stupid to brilliant and thus favorably or unfavorably affect each other and thus modify outcomes in unpredictable ways.

Systems thinking has a place, even in combat -- but its use must be very carefully watched lest the systems lovers get carried away and foresee things that won't occur or fail to react to those that do due to linear thinking and target fixation. On balance, EBO offers more potential for harm in ground combat than it offers benefits. Painstaking police work has solved a lot of crimes, it's also failed to solve many. Conversely, intuitive cops have some successes -- experienced and intuitive combat commanders have even more...

[Bill Moore]

posted by Reed11B,

Somalia was the first and AFAIK the only time that a president has pulled troops from a mission while there was still signifigant public support for the operation. I feel that failure of Somalia falls directly into the lap of Mr. Clinton and nowhere else. I do not feel the "mission" was impossible, or counter to our security needs (today Somalia is a hotbed for Islamic radicalism).

Reed, we agree wholeheartedly on this one, but I believe you took the example out of context. Somalia indicated the need for a clear objective and end state, which was notably absent. If the military had a clear obtainable objective they could have achieved it. One can make argument that Clinton's weak kneed withdrawal from Somalia shaped OBL's perception of America being weak, which was further reinforced by a lame response to the Kenya and Tansania Embassy bombings, which led to 9/11, etc. No need to respond, I don't want to derail this thread, but I didn't want to leave that out there hanging.

[Entropy]

This discussion finally prompted me to read a bit more on EBO. Even though I'm in the AF, I had ignored EBO for the most part. So here's my take:

First, EBO sounds very familiar to me. In my early career in the Navy, I used to do a lot of analysis and support to targeting against integrated air defense systems (IADS). The analytical techniques and targetting decisions against an IADS look remarkably similar to EBO as a general concept. I'm speculating here because the research I've done is limited, but it appears to me EBO is based, at least in part, on the same sorts of analytical and targeting techniques we use(d) against IADS and other systems.

There are many things the Air Force and Navy are good at, but one in particular is taking down an enemy's air defense system. So, ISTM that some in the AF who are EBO proponents have taken a methodology that's been very successful in one area and attempted to apply it as a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT) for targeting and operations in general. I think it's only natural for people who've used a successful tool to advocate its use in other areas. Some have suggested that EBO is simply an attempt by the AF to dominate the other services or to justify itself or its programs. While there may be a small bit of truth to that in some specific cases with some specific individuals, I think for the most part EBO advocates honestly believe in it as an effective approach. Regardless, I think there is quite enough material to make a case against EBO without resorting to speculation about a proponent's motivations.

That said, I don't have any issues with taking a successful model and attempting to apply it elsewhere, but in this case I think EBO proponents have gone a bit overboard and have failed to consider the very important differences across the spectrum of military operations - differences that make it unlikely any analytical/planning tool can or will be a GUT, including EBO.

I see two principle problems with EBO as a GUT for analysis/planning. To begin with, the factors that make EBO-like planning a great success for things like IADS are not simply present in other areas. IMO EBO will work well in technical areas - by technical, I mean those areas of warfare where technical limitations are a primary factor constraining an opponent's options. Using an IADS as an example again, the capability of any IADS is limited by technical factors that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to overcome no matter how skilled its operators are. (For instance, Iraq in the 1990's poured billions into special projects, many of which were designed to modify Iraq's existing air defense equipment to make it more effective against coalition aircraft. Of course none of those efforts even marginally improved Iraqi capabilities - you simply can't take an SA-2 and give it the capabilities of an SA-10. It was lucky for us Iraq wasted so much money on those efforts instead of improving other capabilities.) The US intelligence community is very very good at discovering those technical limitations. So in the case of an IADS, a planner will have a pretty good understanding of the upper limit of an adversary's capability even if we know nothing about their training, doctrine or even the number of systems an opponent may posses, which is never the case. This factor lends itself to EBO planning for reasons others have already discussed.

By contrast there are many areas of conflict where technology is not a significant limiting factor. A group of motivated individuals with ubiquitous technology (guns, explosives, cell-phones, etc.) simply have a lot more options available and are limited more by the operating environment and human factors than technology. And I think that the human factors are really the Achilles heel of EBO as a universal planning tool for a number of reasons, many of which others have already discussed.

The second problem I see with EBO stems from my experience with analytical methodologies in intelligence. There are literally dozens and dozens of different methodologies, several of which are purported to be universally applicable to any intelligence problem. The reality, however, is that while analytical techniques are helpful, they cannot substitute for a lack of information or data, nor the most powerful analytical tool there is - the human mind. Analytical techniques are useful for exposing bias, they can reveal roadsigns that point toward unconsidered possibilities and they can serve to check assumptions. IMO that is pretty much the limit of what any analysis technique can do and in my mind that applies to EBO or any other "universal" planning tool. So when some "new" technique comes along that promises to be the GUT for intelligence, then I am there raising the BS flag because I don't believe that at GUT is possible in the first place.

With EBO, or really any analysis/planning methodology, I believe the same is true. EBO certainly has utility in certain instances and it may be useful in others if applied and tested and validated, but for the reasons stated above, it is not a GUT and should not be treated as such.

[wm]

[S]ome in the AF who are EBO proponents have taken a methodology that's been very successful in one area and attempted to apply it as a "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT) for targeting and operations in general. I think it's only natural for people who've used a successful tool to advocate its use in other areas.

The above is an extremely astute observation, IMO. OODA is another example of trying to find a "one-size fits all" silver bullet. And, in order not to be accused of AF-bashing, I think that MDMP and Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IBP) also have fallen into that category. None of them need to have become such, except for the human tendency to over-generalize and -simplify, which leads to falsification and misapplication.

My personal take, as I have suggested in many other posts, is that developing solutions requires that one first assess things in terms of METT-TC and then plot a course of action based on that assessment. Since some (or all) of the components of METT-TC are likely to be different in every new operation, some intuitiveness needs to be applied. I think USMA had it right when they named their 2 semester survey course "History of the Military ART" (caps intentional) . By seeing how others have practiced the Art in various situations, we may be able to hone our intuitions about what might be the best way to proceed when thrust into a new situation. If nothing else, this study may refine our sense of the kinds of things that need to be considered before acting. I suspect that, with practice, this "sorting and evaluating" process may happen so fast that it appears to be an unthinking/intuitive response to a situation.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by wm,

I think that MDMP and Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IBP) also have fallen into that category. None of them need to have become such, except for the human tendency to over-generalize and -simplify, which leads to falsification and misapplication.

Agreed, but failure to simplify very complex situations into a comprehenable modelor models may result in operational paralysis due to the complexity of the problem. The goal of MDMP, OODA, EBO, etc. is to make a complex problem understandable (hopefully a correct understanding), enabling a commander to act. Unfortunately, these models frequently provide the wrong answer, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Is the model broke or is the information fed into it wrong? We may never know, but I think we should use multiple models when time permits to provide a broader context to inform our intuition.

[wm]

Agreed, but failure to simplify very complex situations into a comprehenable modelor models may result in operational paralysis due to the complexity of the problem. The goal of MDMP, OODA, EBO, etc. is to make a complex problem understandable (hopefully a correct understanding), enabling a commander to act. Unfortunately, these models frequently provide the wrong answer, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Is the model broke or is the information fed into it wrong? We may never know, but I think we should use multiple models when time permits to provide a broader context to inform our intuition.

I suspect that many attempts to simplify will result in distortion. And distortion is a form of falsification. Being able to distill a complex problem into a series of sound bites may be great for after action reporting to the media, but I'm not sure that it helps in planning to execute a mission. I'm reminded of the final rehearsal scene around the model of the chateau in "The Dirty Dozen." Each step has a catch phrase--"8-Jimenez has a date"--that summarizes and sequences an extensive set of steps to complete a mission that has been rehearsed many times. This process is the capstone not the beginning of the activity to plan the mission. The 12 can execute from these catchphrases because, having learned the complete set of steps to take as part of their mission training effort, they "know" the whole story behind each of the short-hand phrases.

Having and employing more than one model for investigating options is ideal. I also seem to remember that part of at least the Army's planning process is to have 2 sets of planning going on simultaneously--1 by the CDR, 1 by the staff--which can serve as checks/devil's advocates for each other. The final plan, one would hope, represents a fusion of the best parts of these two efforts.

[pvebber]

Agreed, but failure to simplify very complex situations into a comprehenable modelor models may result in operational paralysis due to the complexity of the problem.

The book "Simplexity" by Jeffery Kluger makes a valiant effort to frame the problem of getting to Einstein's "Everything should be amde as simple as possible, but no simpler". Whenever we model something we introduce abstractions that simplify, but must be careful that such do not produce a representation that diverges too much from the reality we are trying to understand.

Too often I've seen senior decision makers demand over-simplification, with the full knowledge that the answer they get will be wrong (to the point of not being useful) and have actually said essentially "It is better to have a wrong answer I can defend with some sort of analysis, than say I don't know, or waste time I don't have polishing a turd."

"Operational paralysis do to the complexity of a problem" is generally more about not wanting to accept a limit on what is "knowable" in the time available. When faced with a situation where complexity overwhlems us, we have two choices - "paralysis by analysis" or accepting we don't know something and planning to minimize the impact of that unknow on our plan.

The goal of MDMP, OODA, EBO, etc. is to make a complex problem understandable (hopefully a correct understanding), enabling a commander to act.

And this is where it has oversold itself. One of the significant "unintended consequences" of EBO-ism is to give commanders a false sense of the knowable, and a planning construct that assumes "Assuming an answer (that oh by the way is known to wrong) and forging ahead" is better than admitting an unknown. These assumptions by higher headquarters become "facts" down stream and before you know it, the "planning world" is in a major disconnect fromo reality.

Better in my opinion to plan to take maximum advantage of what you know, and try to minimize the impact of what you know you don't know. The unknown unknowns will be bad enough without adding assumptions that are taken as facts by lower echelons who will then be blindsided by their turning out to be untrue...

Unfortunately, these models frequently provide the wrong answer, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Is the model broke or is the information fed into it wrong? We may never know, but I think we should use multiple models when time permits to provide a broader context to inform our intuition.

The goal of planning - whether 'effects-based' or not is NOT to "make a complex problem understandable", but to "understand what you know and don't know about a complex problem". You will never be able to "make complex problems understandable" by their very nature - the causal network in such cases is "irreducible" past a certain point. You have to judge how far you can use abstraction to reduce it, accept that you will not be able to accurately predict that point, and take steps to be prepared for the impact of bothe "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns".

Models always give "wrong answers" - the issue is when they give (or do not give) USEFUL answers. "Beleiving the pretty computer display" is one of the worst pathologies we have in our thinking. "Multiple models" may indeed help shed different lights on what we think we know, and what we are unsure of, but "adding more models" just "touches the elephant" some extra times, it will never "gives us the answer", or give us "the ironclad assurnace many decision-makers want, that they have made the correct decision.

This is where the framework in "Commanders Appreciation and Campaign Design":

http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/p525-5-500.pdf

really gets to the meat of what efects-based thinking can provide us, without the "reading our FITREPS and believing it" that occurs too often now...

[Ski]

I agree with Bill Moore 100%.

As much I hate to admit it, the US Army works off simple processes and models. It has to for a number of reasons that can be expounded on later. The complexity of the MDMP, OODA, etc...makes them unwieldy to use in any situation outside of deliberative planning. Ask anyone who was a company commander in OIF or OEF if they used MDMP....almost all will say the same thing "We never had time, and were lucky to use TLP's."

The pace of modern operations, combined with the immense cloud of information that has resulted in the information revoulation and the natural micromanagement of commanders, has led to the destruction of most planning models from what I have seen. Perhaps they exist at higher levels, but I worked in the CJ3 at a 3 Star Command in Afghanistan, and we never used any sort of MDMP or deliberative planning process. Not enough time, not enough qualified people, too much desire for information "right now" or even "yesterday."

[TheLapsedPacifist]

Pvebber,

I appreciate that your response (3rd Sept) is well researched, but I should like (if I may) to take issue with a few points.

I am not a positivist and I do not as a general rule subscribe to or spout forth "mumbo-jumbo". I do believe in using the broadest range of tools to crack a problem - which to me includes looking at the strengths and weakness of philosophical approaches be that positivist, post-positivist, or whatever and evaluating how they all might help. I am a scientist by trade, but mostly I find myself surrounded by colleagues who are only too aware of the limits of reductionist scientific thinking, but rather than choosing to abandon a problem because it is too difficult they seek to incorporate a broad range of thinking into their problem solving.

I am pointing out that the paper informs us that because war is chaotic complex it is unknowable. As I said this statement is wrong...some chaotic and complex systems can be predicted. You can argue the toss if you like, but it doesn't change the fact that the original paper does nothing to identify (or reference to some work that does) war as a class of chaotic and complex systems that are ultimately unpredictable. War MAY be unknowable, but it isn't being pedantic to argue that no one has even come close to proving this.

I think that if you believe that "The earth itself is the only absolutely accurate map of our planet" then you are obviously finding it difficult to rationalise what an atlas is: a simplified version of earth, lacking in all sorts of important details, which may allow us to get from A to B. We should not reduce arguments for or against "modeling" ad absurdum - this is not helpful. As you say, some models are useful, and so I say that the jury is still out on EBO and that the prosecution have made a poor case against the defendant (or perhaps Judge Mattis has decided on trial without jury?!)

EBO thinking, its fundaments, are to think before you act. EBO has been poorly represented in its US-implemented form and (typically in the USA inter-service melee) been over-sold in order to win funding. So my real fear here - and the inspiration for my original response - is that EBO-thinking will become an anathema in the US - any bright, forward-thinking soldier that has career aspirations will want nothing to do with it. I don't think that this what Mattis wants, but it might be what he gets.

Please, a point of clarification on wicked problems Rittel and Webber 1973 - not Watts 2008!
[http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+W..._Planning.pdf]

[Eden]

I am also a believer that effects-based thinking can be a valuable tool for planners. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense is not a community of thinkers/scientists, it is a bureaucracy. To implement change in a buraucracy, one must wield blunt instruments freely. This is why - I assume - GEN Mattis has used his sledgehammer to crack walnuts. Anything less simply wouldn't get the message across.

Those who are smart enough to use effects-based thinking without allowing it to undermine their analysis with false precision - a minority, unfortunately - are free to do so.

[Ken White]

Mattis, as you said, is simply trying to prevent misapplication by those not in that minority you cite...

[William F. Owen]

EBO may or may not be a good tool for planing. The problem is that EBO has not been advocated in a useful and responsible way. What is EBO anyway?

EBO constantly morphs in the shape criticism. It's a wooly imprecise thing, which is why it has persisted for far longer than it should. It's like fighting a cloud. It's "effect" has been confusion. No one seems prepared to defend one constant definition, as they were with Manoeuvre Warfare for example - of which it is a direct descendant.

Many of us were EBO sceptics long before Mattis, and don't need senior officers to share our opinions for validation, but he makes all good points. My guess is that he wants a return to a re-set point where there can be greater scrutiny of the ideas, before people who are not Marines, impose ideas upon them.

In the IDF EBO is dead and buried. As I have been told, missions statements will now use a very limited number of words, with precise and unambiguous meanings.(hold/block/search, etc.) Terrain objectives and timings will be given. It's a re-set to 1967.

[Bill Moore]

am also a believer that effects-based thinking can be a valuable tool for planners. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense is not a community of thinkers/scientists, it is a bureaucracy. To implement change in a buraucracy, one must wield blunt instruments freely. This is why - I assume - GEN Mattis has used his sledgehammer to crack walnuts. Anything less simply wouldn't get the message across.

Those who are smart enough to use effects-based thinking without allowing it to undermine their analysis with false precision - a minority, unfortunately - are free to do so.

Eden, simply because some folks disagree with you doesn't make them stupid. I don't know what your level of military experience is, if any, but I have found the military to have numerous intelligent problem solvers, and many of them, if not most, tend to reject EBO for the reasons Mattis stated and others. The concept is painfully simple, unfortunately it is too simple to mesh with the reality of life.

EBO thinking, its fundaments, are to think before you act.

If this statement is true, and it isn't, what exactly is new? Military planners have always had to think before they act. All you need to do is review some historical case studies on WWI and WWII strategy, where what we now call PMESII systems of systems (political, military, economic, etc.) were considered in detail before acting.

Does EBO provide a helpful framework? The jury is still out, but I'm glad it is being pulled from doctrine until we determine how to best apply it (if there is a way). Does that mean folks won't experiment with it? Absolutely not, the Jennie is out of the bottle for better or worse.

As for your comment about the military being too bureaucratic to use EBO, I would counter that arugment with the "fact" that EBO has made us more bureaucratic with the constant demand for measures of effectiveness and measures of performance, we further strengthened upper level management to the point that EBO has become sufficating. I was a former EBO advocate, and I'm still in the 12 step rehab program. EBO is like beer, you can drink one or two and still function (you think you're functioning better and looking better), but once you drink three or more, you start getting a little stupid, and unfortunately we created staffs of EBO'holics.

[wm]

I submit that EBO is what a junior accountant would come up with if asked to develop a system/methodology for planning high level strategic operations. The bad news is that the system does not seem to have any Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to back it up. If it does, then either the average practitioner has no clue what the GAAP is or the body of "rules" that make up the GAAP is so dynamic as to be nearly useless as foundational operating principles. (Calvin ball again rears its head.)

WARNING: Metaphor shift ahead

Based on the accounting/GAAP analogy, I agree with Bill Moore that General Mattis has taken action to switch a runaway train on to a siding before it causes a lot of damage to the rest of the line. If/when someone is able to figure out how to keep the locomotive's governor/speed regulator/brake system from malfunctioning (create/stabilize the GAAP of EBO), maybe the EBO train will be allowed back on the main line.
(Sorry for mixing metaphors )