DImE, PmESII and now MIDLIFE

[DDilegge]

...and agree on effects. Sun Tzu did too "Shape [the enemy] with effects".

As far as new vs. old - Commander Jeff Huber summed up much of what I believe in his October 2003 Proceedings article Invasion of the Transformers. Here are several excerpts:

"Transformation" is the latest and greatest buzzword in U.S. military affairs. It may already have displaced the loathsome "robust"—though you no doubt will hear plenty of talk in coming years about "robust transformation." We should seriously question whether all this transformation talk isn't just another Pentagon/Department of Defense parlor trick. Every few years, our military expends enormous effort and tax dollars to put a new shine on its apple. Transformation has had many predecessors, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) being just one of them. Will it accomplish anything that RMA didn't, or have we, once again, simply changed "happy" to "glad"?

It is well and good to promulgate doctrine that defines the operating principles of a force or service. It also is well and good to stick with time-tested philosophies. But it is another thing altogether to dust off old ideas, rename them, and market them as new, revolutionary, or transformational.

After 11 September, a horde of military "experts" invaded the print and electronic media, telling us the war on terrorism is a "new" kind of war. "New," they explained, because it involves diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement, media, asymmetric threats, competing ideologies, and a whole menu of stuff Clausewitz and Sun Tzu would both tell you have been aspects of warfare since rocks were state-of-the-art standoff weapons.

[reluctantwarrior]

I admit to a revulsion of RMA (I'm a closet Luddite) but a strong affinity for EBO applied to MDMP and targeting. I spent eight months in Afghanistan at the CJSOTF as its Strategic Planner using EBO to kill/captue the TB and AQ and HiG leadership. PMESII and DIME or MIDLIFE are all good tools for analysis. PMESII works every time its tried.

RW

[DDilegge]

I admit to a revulsion of RMA (I'm a closet Luddite) but...
RW

Let's make sure my position is not taken out of context. I have no problems with effects.

That said - I have the occasion to interact with those tasked with writing joint concepts and conducting experimentation.

From my little corner I see much ado about repackaging tried and true doctrine and TTP under a new name - normally tied to a Cold-War (legacy) related mentality.

This leads to what many in the concept and experimentation community believe is the future of Effects Based Operations - an automated - "sees all - collects all - links all" - Operational Net Assessment. I'll take to my grave that this pie-in-the-sky ONA ‘ain't gonna’ happen.

This brings me back to the "Cold War (legacy) mentality” comment. Many proponents of this new and improved ONA seem (my experience) to be Air Force and Navy, with a spattering of Army (not the ground-pounders with recent operational experience – again my view from my small but significant corner).

For the most part, those most enamored with technological solutions to EBO through ONA have the luxury of living and operating in a world of tech-related platforms facing other tech-related platforms. This is an important point, as platforms / systems emit signatures and are easily collected on and can be linked to other tech platforms and can reveal intent.

Intent here relates to the intent of the individual platform or weapons system, not an adversary at a “campaign” level. This is especially true with an adversary like the one we are battling today and will most likely face in the foreseeable future. The thinking and adaptive terrorist – slash – insurgent – slash – asymmetric foe – slash – irregular foe is operating on a plane off the screen of our high-tech capabilities to collect, analyze, and disseminate in a timely and useful manner – i.e. actionable intelligence.

This is further complicated by the dependence on the ONA of the future’s claim to provide linkage (nodal analysis) between friendly, adversary and non-combatants to include all elements of the physical and social infrastructure in order to provide a tipper on when to use kinetic and non kinetic tools to achieve a desired effect.

For those that might argue that high-tech solutions such as capabilities to intercept cell phones and monitor Internet traffic run contary to my argument – I say good on you – useful as a collection tool but there is no technology that puts this information overload together, sorts and analyzes, and spits back actionable intelligence for planning and executing a campaign. Yea sure; when Ahmed calls Ali and says bomb the KFC at 1100 on Thursday, God willing, we can take action – but stopping one attack is not what I think we should be mortgaging our future for when it comes to significant defense expenditure.

Let’s invest in humans before we bankrupt ourselves chasing the “newest and most improved” tech solution to “all our problems.”

Already wrote more than intended – but if I were the Defense God for a day – I would invest in training and education and all those little things that our grunts seem to be buying out of hand – GPS, body armor….

If I were the U.S. Government God for a day – I would invest in all the non-military capabilities that should be resident in DoD’s sister departments and agencies when they enter a Small Wars’ environment.

If I am wrong about all this – I will invest in the first company that sells this ONA concept to any U.S. city that would purchase such a silver bullet to solve their particular problems…

[Jedi Barista]

As a dedicated IO guy myself, I found the whole EBO/EBA class rather stimulating. I actually received the 2-day JFCOM version of the class recently, and then had to turn around and give an hour-long block of instruction on this topic to my unit. What I discovered through this experience is the same conclusion most of you have reached concerning EBO; namely, it is a tech-centered concoction that is in danger of becoming yet another "TOC drill." I, and some others in my unit, felt that the ONA, as it was presented and explained by its creators, ignored the human dimension in conducting the Systems of Systems Analysis. One could argue that this would be covered during the PMESII analysis; however, like most of the Good-Idea Fairy brainchildren that end up in our doctrinal manuals, ONA, SOSA, and EBO are really tailored to strategic-level planning, and have little relevance in their current mutations at the tactical-operational level.

As I realized my audience was becoming either lost or narcoleptic, I tried to put this beast in a context I knew they could understand. Repeating several times that EBO's are enablers, I used the simple analogy of the rifle platoon assaulting an enemy position. Basically, if you had your Main Effort (assaulting element) and a Supporting Effort (SBF element), who would be conducting the EBO? By applying the KISS principle, I had hoped I could make EBO understandable to 'Joe'. I think I was successful.

One of the best ways I ever heard it put came out of CAC at Leavenworth: "IO is a thing, and EBO is a process."

Basically, we do information operations, and the Effect-Based Approach is the way we go about doing them.

Hope I didn't confuse the crap out of anyone...

[Tom Odom]

IO and EBO have been thrown around at the strategic and operational level as terms for some time. At the tactical level, we have seen a definitive shift toward targeting as the driving force behind tactical planning, especially in a pre-9-11 scenario. We also developed tremendous expertise in the IO realm at the tactical level among the fire support community as they were the main players in the Balkans tactical IO effort.

After 9-11 and especially after OIF I, the fire support guys here looked at gettinbg their arms around tactical IO in a systematic way that could exported and trained. The result was the Effects Based Operations Brigade to Company Level handbook, CALL Pub 04-14. It blends targeting, IO concepts, lethal and non-lethal effects and lays them out in a staff process as part of MDMP.

Are effects based operations new? As a main contributor to the EBO hand book, I would say, no. In fact I used Marshall's orders to Esienhower as a effects driven mission statement in the handbook as an example.

Then again EBO is new in its application at the tactical level to ensure that lethal and non-lethal effects are the drivers behind all operations. If that is not the case, if the IO effort is separate from the Ops effort, then the two are inevitably desynchronized in short order. We have seen that born out in rotation after rotation as well in actual ops.

But I also agree with Dave D here in the emphasis is on humans versus ice cream cone licking technical or "network" centric babble that ignores the fact that Soldiers and Marines are the guys that do the job on the ground, not some iconclastic PPT slide concept that has morphed into something like a transformational 10 Commandments handed down mysteriously which must be accepted without hesitation. We train Soldiers and we train Marines; we don't train networks or computers because they don't kick doors and they don't interact on the ground.

As a joke I was attempting to write a song, "Virtual Soldiers from the Sky" set to the music of the Ballad of the Green Beret as a not too gentle reminder that "force multipliers" only work when you have a base line force (real Soldiers and Marines) to multiply against. If I get it right, I'll post it.

Best all,

Tom