Design for military operations

[J Wolfsberger]

From the stand point of Systems Analysis/System Engineering, I've got some problems with the papers cited. It could simply be the way concepts are expressed/presented, but I don't think so. As an example, in the second paper, the concept of "Reframing" is discussed:

"Reframing is an intellectual activity to identify new opportunities and overcome obstacles to progress when interactions with the real world situation or new sources of information reveal issues with a current problem. Reframing shifts attention from trying to solve the current problem right to asking whether the right problem is being solved. It is a way for designers to pull back and reassess the operational environment, allowing them to challenge their situational understanding and review expectations of actor behavior against the evidence.12 When operators consciously and critically select theories and hypotheses that help to structure their view of reality, they gain the freedom to operate beyond the limitations of any single perspective." (Emphasis added.)

Asking whether your tackling the right problem should be done at the beginning. (That's pretty much old school SE 101.) If you wait until you're trying to implement a solution, or in trouble, you're already screwed.

The intent is solid. But there look to be some serious tweaks needed in the implementation. I'd suggest a DTIC search on "Missions and Means Framework." I think it will give a much more solid starting point, and one that dovetails with some other activities.

[DaveDoyle]

J. Wolfsberger,
The reframing offers the design team opportunities to re-examine the problem set throughout the effort. Attempting to get the best picture of the problem set early is important, but the reality is that in almost every case the design team is not going to get it all the way right at the beginning.

Reframing happens throughout the design effort and gives the team the chance to see what has changed in the environment. Simply studying the environment changes it, and if the organization introduces any energy into the environment or system then it definitely changes.

Reframing does give the design team the chance to consider measures of performance and measures of effectiveness during the process. We have had difficulty getting this realistically accomplished in our experiments, so it doesn't seem that we've fully tested the feedback loop.

I'll check out the DTIC search and see what it brings up. Thanks for the recommendation.

Dave

[USMCTanker]

Dave et al,

I am a US Marine attending SAMS with Dave. Reading through this thread, I have just a few comments on some things that I found interesting.

First, I would like to second Dave's description of reframing. Of course we need to ask the question if we are looking at the right problem in the beginning of planning as stated by Mr. Wolfsberger. But once you apply a solution, you have to evaluate the system you applied it to see the results. Those results help answer the question if your initial problem is still valid, or if a new one has presented itself. The situation continually changes within the action, reaction, counter-action cycle. Reframing is simply taking a holistic viewpoint of the situation within each step of this cycle.

The second thought I would like to comment on comes from "Bob's World". Specifically,

We do not follow some rigid doctrinal approach to design, but have combined elements of a variety of proposed processes out there. In simplest terms it insert a step in the front end of Mission Analysis that takes a holistic look at what exactly the problem is that you have been asked to address, and how it really functions, and then through that understanding being able to better see second and third order effects from various COAs, and also to be able to better advise the commander.

I think this misses the point of design. In my humble opinion (backed up by MCDP 1-2 Campaigning and MCDP 5 Planning, design is not a process or a step to be added to MDMP, MCPP, JOPP or any other planning process. Instead, it is a MINDSET. It is nothing more than considering as many variables and factors that affect the ability for a unit to MANAGE, not SOLVE, complex adaptive problems. If you could understand and solve a complex adaptive problem, then I posit you were faced with a problem that was neither complex nor adaptive. Bottom line, I believe the Army is trying to "doctrinalize" a thought process/problem management methodology into an MDMP process. I don't think this is the right approach.

This leads to my third point. Yes, I think Army officers focus way too much on developing a product, and are slaves to the processes that produce them much more than the other services. It's a cultural thing that I have gotten over a long time ago (this is my fourth resident Army school). Does it affect the Army's ability to plan and manage problems? Absolutely not. Does it make coming to a solution much harder than it had to be? Absolutely yes. Whether you climb over a wall or run into it as hard as you can a hundred times over, you eventually get to the other side....

But what do I know? I'm just a dumb Marine tanker.....

S/F,
John

[slapout9]

Link to another thread that is related to Design and Systems Analysis as it relates to the GWOT or any Violent System.



http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...7990#post67990

[Ron Humphrey]

Dave et al,

I am a US Marine attending SAMS with Dave. Reading through this thread, I have just a few comments on some things that I found interesting.

I think I get what your saying.
If you take any situation and examine it you always have three known points and one unknown-
Where you were, Where you are, and where you want to be

What actually happens has to constantly be adjusted to in relation to the last(where you want to be). This may be where design methodology actually comes in most useful since it generally helps one to do what you speak of

Instead, it is a MINDSET. It is nothing more than considering as many variables and factors that affect the ability for a unit to MANAGE, not SOLVE, complex adaptive problems.

as to that last part

But what do I know? I'm just a dumb Marine tanker.....

S/F,
John

Considering what it takes to do your job not sure thats possible

[Ken White]

...I think Army officers focus way too much on developing a product, and are slaves to the processes that produce them much more than the other services. ... Whether you climb over a wall or run into it as hard as you can a hundred times over, you eventually get to the other side...

and you even used my simile...

Er. Well, almost. I do usually specify 'brick' for the wall -- process thing, I guess

[J Wolfsberger]

J. Wolfsberger,
The reframing offers the design team opportunities to re-examine the problem set throughout the effort. Attempting to get the best picture of the problem set early is important, but the reality is that in almost every case the design team is not going to get it all the way right at the beginning.

Reframing happens throughout the design effort and gives the team the chance to see what has changed in the environment. Simply studying the environment changes it, and if the organization introduces any energy into the environment or system then it definitely changes.

Reframing does give the design team the chance to consider measures of performance and measures of effectiveness during the process. We have had difficulty getting this realistically accomplished in our experiments, so it doesn't seem that we've fully tested the feedback loop.

I'll check out the DTIC search and see what it brings up. Thanks for the recommendation.

Dave

I seem to be stuck in a rut of expressing myself poorly.

I should not have come across as critical of reframing - it is a Good Thing to rethink the problem, see if it's changed, reevaluate whether the solution you're executing is still effective or even appropriate.

What I was driving at was the situation, which I have to contend with way too often, of poorly structured and understood problem statements. The most common issue I've encountered over the years is solving the wrong problem.

[pvebber]

Dealing with the desgin issue in developing the Navy's Maritime operations Center concept, there are several points I think need to be brought out. USMC tanker gets to one with his point about the design "process" vs "mindset" (I might use "philosophy"). The more well structured a problem, the less difficulty there identifying hte problem and moving to attacking the solution. The more ill-structured the problem, the less amenable to systems engineering solutions and more one needs to "manage" (I would use "evolve") a solution.

The USMC criticism (I can't find the Marine gazette article ...but there was one recently) of "operational design" and the "Commaders Appreciation and Campaign Design" pamphlet seems to be rooted in the idea well stated by USMCtanker

"It is nothing more than considering as many variables and factors that affect the ability for a unit to MANAGE, not SOLVE, complex adaptive problems."

I think that is on the face of it a true statement. The problem comes in defining what "manage" vs "solve" means. Looking at the types of issues that an operational level Echelon II -III command faces, we have found that different mission situations can have different scales of "structuredness".

An ASW problem may be "moderately well structured" at the operational level, where the problem of protecting assets from adversary submarines is fairly straight forward - while the tactical level tasks that deter or seduce, or distract or engage particular adversary submarines becomes a very ill-structured, information poor problem.

MIO on the other hand can be an operational-level ill-structured problem, trying to ferret out the fact that you think someone is trying to "get lost in the noise" of busy shipping lanes, that you do not have near enough assets to fully seach. Without piecing together and parsing out who may be of interest, you don't know who to apply the straighforward tactical solution of boarding and search to.

In both cases, I would argue, no current doctrine in any service adequately offers concrete "best practicces" to perform the "management" of illstructured problems. While the USMC criticsm of CACD and "Design" I think has a point that the "problem requiring design as a solution has been framed poorly" - i don't think that necessarily means that design is not the answer to a slightly dofferent problem - that of how to "manage" ill-structured problems.

This management infolves a "design" that includes not just "the fron end of a good planning effort" but a cyclical and iterative approach that one can argue is implied in some current doctrine (like the MCWD on "Campaigning"), I have not found anything that "completes the circle" in a holisitc fashion that includes the posibility of "nested" degrees of structured-ness in a problem, and how you integrate the managment of such a problem set - "mess of interconnected problems" from planning, to execution, to assessment, back to replanning - all within an framework that includes an explicit "mental model" of how tasks acheive desired effects and are assessed to advance toward a desired endstate.

WE state in numerous places that that is what we want commanders to do - but we say very little on HOW they are to proactically accomplish it.

So we have a situation where we tend to take "messes" of interconected problem sets of various degrees of "structured-ness"; abstract much of the complexity out in order to "simplify them for flag-level briefs"; then solve the remaining well structure problem through heirarchical decomposition of objectives into MOEs and MOPs, which we spend enormous manhours collating and scoring, but then simply "add up" and abstract again into stop-light charts or thrmographs that (in at least one occasion i saw personnally) summarily changed by senior leadership before being shown to the commander.

To me the "design philosophy" indeed is "what good planners should be doing" - but in the over a dozen exercises and experiments I've seen in the last 5 years, we just don't do - at least in training.

The design philosophy ensures that one "builds in" explicit "theories of action" to quote one of the papers above - a mental model of how causes (tasks performed) translate in effects achieved - too often we rely on "correlation equals causality" - or worse - "we are doing a lot of activity, therefore we are accomplishing what we intend".

Design philosophy - whether a precursor "step" or whether integrated into planning and assessment needs to be explored in the maaner inwhich the SAMS folks are doing. We can argue about where to "hang" it in doctrine once we have a better undersatding of what you actually do to "manage" a complex problem set. But should not throw the idea out becasue of a disagreement over where it belongs.

[selil]

I get concerned any time I see the military re-purposing a fairly well understood field of study and then referring back to internal military documents to support contention. The Air Force has produced some worthy documentation on systems analysis and design. I understand the scope of what is being attempted is further afield than simple mechanical, electrical, hydraulic systems. That does not mean the fairly well understood principles from engineering design will not serve.

It seems like two field of study are being mixed; design and decision science.

[Bob's World]

I get concerned any time I see the military re-purposing a fairly well understood field of study and then referring back to internal military documents to support contention. The Air Force has produced some worthy documentation on systems analysis and design. I understand the scope of what is being attempted is further afield than simple mechanical, electrical, hydraulic systems. That does not mean the fairly well understood principles from engineering design will not serve.

It seems like two field of study are being mixed; design and decision science.

http://www.operationaldesign.net/default.html

“A key distinction is that the Cold War-era use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works. In order to effectively deal with the increased levels of complexity that we are now faced with today, we need to adopt a more robust method for understanding our environment, with all the inherent relationships, tensions and barriers to security, so to develop well thought out, adaptive solutions to the complex problems that we face.”


BG (Retired)
Huba Wass de Czege
June 18, 2008


More about understanding a problem vs a more linear systems targeting process. Why something is vs how something is. I'll need to dig up a more official definition to help clarify.

[slapout9]

Also a lot of "Statistical Analysis' was portrayed as "Systems Analysis" during the Cold War and the two ain't the same thing.

[J Wolfsberger]

“A key distinction is that the Cold War-era use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works. In order to effectively deal with the increased levels of complexity that we are now faced with today, we need to adopt a more robust method for understanding our environment, with all the inherent relationships, tensions and barriers to security, so to develop well thought out, adaptive solutions to the complex problems that we face.”


BG (Retired)
Huba Wass de Czege
June 18, 2008

Would you know anything about where this quote came from? My initial response is extremely negative, but I'd like to know the full context and all the reasoning before I comment.

[J Wolfsberger]

“A key distinction is that the Cold War-era use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works. In order to effectively deal with the increased levels of complexity that we are now faced with today, we need to adopt a more robust method for understanding our environment, with all the inherent relationships, tensions and barriers to security, so to develop well thought out, adaptive solutions to the complex problems that we face.”


BG (Retired)
Huba Wass de Czege
June 18, 2008

System Engineering, Operations Research and Systems Analysis are highly structured, formal processes for problem definition and system development. Having read through his paper Systemic Operational Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions (and thanks for the pointer, Slapout), I agree with his thinking completely. In fact, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone could have thought this would be a good idea.

However, when he states "use of systems engineering to solve problems no longer works," it should be understood the type of problem he is referring to. I very much doubt he intended the statement to apply to material development. Referring back to an earlier post from selil: "I get concerned any time I see the military re-purposing a fairly well understood field of study and then referring back to internal military documents to support contention. " Absolutely. Using System Engineering to develop operational plans, knowing that the "system" is human centric, which makes it a messy system, that the problems are all wicked, well ... that's just wrong.

[William F. Owen]

http://www.operationaldesign.net/default.html

OK, I dl'd that link, read it, (twice) and I can't understand what the article is about. It just leaves me confused. Can anyone explain it to me?

The goal of Design is the creation of more favorable, self-sustaining situations.
Assessment shifts away from learning about any single action to a focus on monitoring transformation of the system itself and sustaining sensitivity to the need to make adjustments by reframing both system understanding and operational approaches to better deal with emerging conditions.

...and while we are about it, I don't understand this either. It doesn't even seem to be good English.

[Fred Bernh]

Campaign design is for sure a useful tool for planners. I read the two Military Review articles, and my first impression was that the art of design seems intuitively obvious. But then I tried to question exactly my own confidence in understanding how it works. My attention was paricularly drawn by the definition of “metacognition”. In phylosophical terms, metacognition is what is widely recognized as “universal knowledge”, separated for what can be addressed as competent or professional knowledge. For instance, military, economic, political arts are part of a competent knowledge. But they share a common ground, which we can assume is the cultural environment in which they grow and develop, including what is known as the insitutional culture predominant in a particular field of human activities. This is not yet universal knowledge, it is still another competent framework commonly understood as culture. To reach the universal knowledge ground, where the most powerful ideas live, we must try to rise above ourselves and look a much wider horizon of conceptualization. Let me set an example. Gen. Formica, the former commander of CSTC-A, once during a conference at ISAF HQ pointed out that his favourite book was “3 cups of tea”, and he recommended the reading to all his officers. It is intuitive that the book is really far away from giving the professional tips to train and equip a foreign Army. But if you scratch beneath the surface of competent knowledge, what he saw in the book was what he needed, precisely what was beyond his immediate horizon. In “Go Rin No Sho”, Miyamoto Musashi clearly explains this idea through “The Book of the Void”: “What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void”. Needless to say, we are talking about problem setting and not problem solving. The difference between the two is clearly stated also in the FM 3-24 “Counterinsurgency”. In other world, the first and the most essential task of a problem setting thinker is ask to himself what he doesn’t know of a problem. And here comes the problem inherent to his competent knowledge, both cultural and professinal, which are still two implicit and immanent frames of his thinking, with their subsequent boundaries and limits. So what is the catch from all this? One could be that how you decide the composition of your design team will inexorably affect your result from the beginning. Take for example the team of expert called by Gen. McChrystal to frame the new US strategy for Afghanistan last year. They were among the most brilliant think thankers in the US, people who studied the conflict and the afghan social environment with all the knowledge sources available and with a comprehensive perspective. But none of them was non-US, non of them was at least Afghan or Asian, let’s say part of a different cultural background (1st impicit frame). The result was that they came out with the most effective strategy to put in place from a single perspective, which decided also what the enemy was thinking about the whole issue, I would say, as the enemy was an American Afghan Taliban. It is important to stress the fact that how we think the world, the logic we put in place, is the most dangerous trap we could face setting a problem. From a universal knowledge perspective, campaign design is in danger to become another fascinating formal application of Euclidean geometry and will never get far from its axioms, propositions and logical system. Even the best design solution, if it is affected by the implicit frames mentioned above, will never goes far from being only another inertial coordinate system which satisfy Newton’s laws of motion, thus becoming nothing new. Here is where our current enemy find its strenght and where our intellectual maneuver finds its limits. Is like having freedom of movement in a given topographical map, where it is “intuitive” to find out our own position through a system of coordinates: you feel free to move wherever you want but you are using an implicit set of rules to define where you are. And that is precisely where your enemy always finds you.

[slapout9]

IMO we are just learning that you can manage a "Process" but there is no "End" to it, you can improve the process but when you deal with living systems there is no end to reach at least as long as the system is alive.
This is why I hate the term War On Drugs. Crime involves people and as long as people are alive you will have crime. There is know "End" or "Solution" to it, but you can certainly improve the LE process that controls or dampens the "Criminal Process". This has huge implications for COIN type operations.

In the case of wicked problems the process is more important than the end. And just as criminals will adapt so should the COIN/LE control process. It needs to be deigned from the start with the ability to adapt and recognize that "Continuous Improvement" is the only thing that you could really say is the "End".

[George L. Singleton]

...Since USSOCOM is mentioned, the Strategy Division, a little background and "what we did" that may, or may not, be helpful re Doctrine & TTPs.

As a formerly (reserve) Purple suiter, organizationally we were the wargamming section of J4 of the old US Readiness Command.

We hired civilian programmers and our team, made up of active duty and reservists, all services, sat down with the design programmers to think tank existing war plans for the Folda Gap (sort of a dead item today) and Korea, among others.

Our biggest problems came from an Army Major General (active duty) who hated computers and limited exercises combined with computerized wargamming...which back then we did at Ft. Lewis, Washington, later we moved the war gamming center to Hurlburt Field, FL.

Our problem was "fixed" by retiring the General, and as we changed over from being USREDCOM into USSOCOM we brought in reservist US Coast Guard folks onto our formal computer driven wargamming team.

Civil Affairs was a key driver and decision tree maker...considerations of
(1) if we go into X country (2) what do we upset and how do we replace it to keep basic necessities going on such as power, water, sanitation, etc. (3) Whatever we do for ourselves for medical care, how does this compliment or how could it improve X nation's existing, or virtually non-existing health care.

Civil Affairs (to include unique religious considerations as could/would/did impact intended operations inside or of the nation to be invaded) would have been theoretically mapped out within the existing political process. How the displaced government would be reformed and a new government plan with some reusable indiginous government officials kept on hand to keep continuiting in basic operability of services, police/security services to try to maintain a semblance of law and order, etc. was a basic ingredient of our wargamming/planning.

The biggest problem we used to have (I hope this is resolved today) was lack of in common C4, communications, both among our own branches of the service and with and among our allies. The Grenada war experience was a huge C4 black eye for us. I had just joined USREDCOM as a reservist only a couple months before Grenada happened and was promptly thrown into the CAT and then tasked to do the after action report for the J4, then Brigadier General (retired as a Lt. General) Sam Wakefield, USA.

Yes, this is an oversimplified commentary. But, basics of who, what, and where to go into any foreign nation with a civil affairs plan that is nation specific instead of generic...was all to often the problem for us using largely Army "standardized" plans...I hope civil affairs and overall planning is much done much better and more specifically today as you younger guys carry the ball.

We eventually formed computerized wargamming teams from within old USREDCOM/replacement USSOCOM and did team wargamming studies on site with USCINCLANT to focus on strategic and tactical air, land, and sea factors (focused then on the Folda Gap from the beaches of France, Holland, etc, inland). I individually did wargamming visits and field exercises with FORSCOM, focused on the drug wars in Latin America. You guys have a "world" of plans to improve, create from scratch, whatever.

To me, sitting back and taking the know it all arm chair coach viewpoint, people have to know and understand people to be effective. Trying to make sense out of the archaic, tribal chaos of Afghanistan is tough. Ditto the tribal areas of northern Pakistan.

I concur or agree fully with the sharp point that the Army gets too caught up in trying to standardize the planning process, when today's world begins with unconventional warfare, stateless fighters, and our traditional concepts and "process" are as often as not destructive instead of being constructive.

Which I why I wrote recently here on SWJ that being loose and improvising is "the" key ingredient today, not so much old style "by the book." It is damn hard to codify chaos.

Sorry for the long input, but lessons learned does sometimes help, even if just in a ballpark, generalized fashion as is offered here.

Bob, as you are in USSOCOM you have the good experience now of working with the SEALS whose use in Afghanistan has broken new ground for a formerly parochial water based outfit.

[Ski]

As someone who is headed for SAMS in the summer, I've been trying to get smart on "operational design" the last few months, and am taking an elective at CGSC to understand the current theory in greater depth and detail before SAMS.

So far, and please, please, please correct me if I'm wrong, this is what I've been able to discern from "operational design":

1. Frame the problem(s) associated with a specific potential conflict
2. Have a wide focus on the problem, do not limit yourself to military threats, but incorporate history, ethnicities, culture(s), political entities, tribal issues, religious issues, etc...
3. See what problems are easily solvable by military force, what problems are not easily solvable by military force, what problems are unsolvable by military force and what are the conditions for success in each scenario (perhaps an endstate, perhaps not)
4. Identify issues that require other elements of national power that must be integrated with the campaign
5. Pass the design over to the planners so they can develop plans for the forces involved in the campaign

This is probably an oversimplification of the theory...can someone (preferbaly a SAMS attendee or graduate) add any other insights?