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Thread: Army Doctrine Reengineering and the Loss of Any Historical Perspective

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    Default Army Doctrine Reengineering and the Loss of Any Historical Perspective

    Within the Army there is a project underway to manage doctrine more effectively by redefining what is doctrine; then producing, maintaining, and making doctrinal material more accessible to the user. This involves both reducing the number of field manuals (to less than one hundred, perhaps fifty), and reducing the size of field manuals to facilitate ease of use, ease of maintenance and clarity.

    To help reduce the size of each manual (arbitrary goal of not more than 200 pages) the use of quotes and historical vignettes will likely be discouraged. I think this is a mistake. Doctrinal manuals should not become just a series of checklists.

    Doctrinal manuals should establish fundamental principles (as a common frame of reference) and explain their application in current military operations. The use of quotes from key leaders past and present together with a series of historical vignettes should be used to illustrate how these fundamental principles have been applied during military operations in the past -- a point of departure from which the current practitioner can gain some insight into how to deal with situations that may arise in future operations.

    The recently published Army counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24) is a case in point -- the quotes and historical vignettes that it contains both reinforce its stated principles and make it come alive (it is a very good read that is not only a valued cornerstone in the library of current military practitioners but one that also remains on the bedside table of many in Congress). Lets not throw this baby out with the bathwater.

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default I agree with you to an extent but

    am unsure that FM 3-24 is a good example on several counts. It does have a certain appeal to many due to its essentially College 101 Textbook approach to military writing. It did assemble a broad based historical perspective to remediate errors of omission over a 30 year period. I have also heard complaints from the field about undue complexity and trivial information; it is not designed for the "doers."

    It simply is too large and unwieldy for the practitioner at Battalion level and below -- and that's the bulk of the force.

    Thus we have FM 3-24.2 Tactics in Counterinsurgency designed to remedy that error -- and which suffers from the same fault; too much backgrorund information and too lengthy at 307 total pages including extracts of Kilcullen and Lawrence among others. It is no real help to the Bn and below worker bee.

    Such volume is possibly helpful in a doctrinal sense but I believe it is very disadvantageous in a Field Manual which should be concise, 100 pages or less, designed for the user in the FIELD to rapidly get to the 'how-to' issues that are of concern to him and of pocket size.

    The history that must be an interest of any thinking soldier is easily found in many places -- the aforementioned Kilcullen and Lawrence items are widely available. I'd almost be willing to bet that copies of both authors books which are cited would be available in the average deployed BCT ...

    What's need are Doctrinal Manuals, in loose leaf binder and .pdf format (everyone may not always have AKO access) which can and should be limited to less than 100 and of less than 200 pages but including background and historical material -- easily achieved by tighter writing and elimination of redundancy -- and Field Manuals, limited to less than 100 of no more than 100 pages that are the operators manuals for the technical publications that are the Doctrinal Manuals which contain all the amplifying detail and the references.

    Doctrine is doctrine, it is what should be done and an explanation of why is beneficial. How-to-do-it is rarely the same thing and generally, the 'why' is not necessary and can, in fact, impede understanding.

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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    What's need are Doctrinal Manuals, in loose leaf binder and .pdf format (everyone may not always have AKO access) which can and should be limited to less than 100 and of less than 200 pages but including background and historical material -- easily achieved by tighter writing and elimination of redundancy -- and Field Manuals, limited to less than 100 of no more than 100 pages that are the operators manuals for the technical publications that are the Doctrinal Manuals which contain all the amplifying detail and the references.

    Yes...Yes...Yes!!!!busy now but more later......this absolutely should be done.

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    Default FM 22-100 was the greatest manual I ever read

    There have been many great manuals, but I think that the stories and vingettes serve not only to illustrate a manual but to make it readable. However, the previous authors are right that the most important problem to overcome is just poor writing. A good writer can make almost anything interesting. The problem with many manuals is that they read like the army decided to test the infinite monkey theorem.
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    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    I have here a book written by Eike Middeldorf in the 50's. He was later responsible for the early FMs of the Bundeswehr in our Ministry of Defence.
    The book is quite general - about all relevant facets of land warfare (context Germany 50's).

    It has less than 500 pages and could easily replace a dozen manuals of that time. There's not the same degree of detail, but taken together it's the best in military writing that I've ever seen.
    Sadly, it's in great part not timeless at all - much was outdated already in the late 60's (the leadership-related parts were outstanding, though).
    (An earlier work of him was equally great (Taktik im Russlandfeldzug - tactics in Russian campaign) and claimed to have been translated in three languages (most likely including English), but I never saw any English copy.


    I personally see little problem in plenty background info. Officers should sit together with more experienced officers and most senior NCOs at times (no uniform, no rank insignia, casual and civilian atmosphere) and just discuss/interpret manuals as if they were beautiful literature.
    It would be worth two afternoons per month.



    A good example for great FMs at the vehicle/NCO level were the German Tigerfibel, Pantherfibel and Schiessfibel (fighter shooting guide) of WW2. They're almost fun to read.
    http://www.panzerlexikon.de/hinter/Tigerfibel/menu.htm
    http://www.panther1944.de/Panther/fibel/fibel.htm
    http://www.rafiger.de/Homepage/Pages/Schiessfibel.html

    They're way better than the usual weapons-specific FMs.
    Last edited by Fuchs; 08-18-2009 at 09:53 PM.

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    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    When I see text length requirements I think that there is either an extensive over-writing problem or a poor reading problem. On the former concision is a skill not wrought by bureaucrats or dinosaurs. On the latter reading in serial is a flaw of the under-understood. The expectation a reader should or will read everything word for word is a passing futility that shouldn't be or expected of the reader. That density of the material should be arbitrarily set is also a failure. Pithy, lengthy, laborious passages give depth.

    I would suggest that we need to teach officers how to read at all ranks. It is a skill lost to many. I am not talking about grammar but an innate skill learned specifically to cover vast amounts of information with high conceptual understanding rapidly.
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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    Yes...Yes...Yes!!!!busy now but more later......this absolutely should be done.
    There should be one manual with 10,000 chapters/topics on a computer/online/ CD,etc. and you could download the individual chapters/topics and make/customize the manual you need for the situation instead of writing a whole new manual each time. Have a 3 ring binder with page protectors and slide in the new or relevant pages/chapters needed for the situation and/or remove older ones. Example in A'stan you may need a chapter on mules but you may not need it in.....Estonia

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    Council Member Ron Humphrey's Avatar
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    Question Excellent idea

    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    There should be one manual with 10,000 chapters/topics on a computer/online/ CD,etc. and you could download the individual chapters/topics and make/customize the manual you need for the situation instead of writing a whole new manual each time. Have a 3 ring binder with page protectors and slide in the new or relevant pages/chapters needed for the situation and/or remove older ones. Example in A'stan you may need a chapter on mules but you may not need it in.....Estonia
    How would you go about creating something like that, with todays tech?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey View Post
    How would you go about creating something like that, with todays tech?
    Easy load all the current FM's into a data base and edit for duplication.....example how many FM's have the same material on the Troop Leading Procedure? should be a chapter/topic by itself and downloaded as need instead of being repeated in a bunch of manuals over and over.

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    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey View Post
    How would you go about creating something like that, with todays tech?
    Pretty simple actually. A few companies do exactly this kind of on demand publication for academia. You chose the chapter from a few different books (or many) and they create either a pdf or actual print book for what you need. You can do this all the way down to "book modules" like exercises. Pretty simple once the content is electronic.
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    Council Member BayonetBrant's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Such volume is possibly helpful in a doctrinal sense but I believe it is very disadvantageous in a Field Manual which should be concise, 100 pages or less, designed for the user in the FIELD to rapidly get to the 'how-to' issues that are of concern to him and of pocket size.

    It's interesting that the Marines have 1 T&R manual (equivalent of an ARTEP) where the Army has about 7. I know it's not exactly the same as the doctrinal manuals, but it's a close comparison.
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    Default TTPs/Doctrine in Binders

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    What's need are Doctrinal Manuals, in loose leaf binder and .pdf format (everyone may not always have AKO access) which can and should be limited to less than 100 and of less than 200 pages but including background and historical material -- easily achieved by tighter writing and elimination of redundancy -- and Field Manuals, limited to less than 100 of no more than 100 pages that are the operators manuals for the technical publications that are the Doctrinal Manuals which contain all the amplifying detail and the references.
    Ken-

    Not sure what the current format is for the Army manuals (I mainly end up looking at them online), but the most commonly used Air Force doctrine (TTPs) are in this format. The AFTTP3-XX series provides the main foundation for AF employment at the "doer" level, and are usually in a binder with page protectors. They also have some pretty good illustrations and usually a summary at then end that brings together the biggest points in an appendix.

    Anyway, seems to work pretty good.

    V/R,

    Cliff
    Last edited by Cliff; 08-23-2009 at 12:17 AM.

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Thanks, Cliff. Good to know

    Big Blue didn't lose the bubble. The Army used to do it that way, then the educators got involved...

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    Default Why not do both?

    Might it not be possible to not only as one Ursus H. posts and produce a pocket manual of useful info for Bn and below--perhaps with very short quotes, and separately produce a reading list of relevant books for those with time and interest? Perhaps e-books for some or links to the relevant library?

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