Gentlemen, the intent of this thread is to clearly show the superiority of effects based planning versus using the outdated center of gravity construct.

Put your guns down, I'm only joking! Great comments, but I would still like to see how the "people's will" as the center of gravity could be useful in a functional way to a military planner?

Using an effects based approach which is intended to integrate all of our government agencies, and hopefully academia, still seems more appropriate than trying to make centers of gravity work in this situation. Sometimes there are COG's, other times the COGs are unsuitable to facilitate planning, such as the people's will.

Marc, you bring a much needed voice to the council, and I was hoping you might share some ideas on where you think you could fit into the planning process to help us get off on the right track? Let's say we were going into country X to assist the government defeat an insurgency. What would you consider must know information to facilitate you giving advice to military planners? What type of advice do you think you give that could help military planners? I use the term planner, but that isn't restricted to the future operations planners at the joint level, but inclusive of the company commander that is developing a strategy for his area of operations.