Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
I saw some incredibly irrelevant U.S: field manuals. There's for example on about Distributed Operations (USMC). I wanted to read it because I was interested in learning about DO and there was absolutely nothing of interest in it. Page after page irrelevant bureaucratic stuff, it sounded like a "make up work for the hierarchy and staffs" paper, not like a paper about dispersed small team actions. -.-

Well, that's what I remember about it, maybe I'm unfair.
You are probably being kind.

Here's an example:

In "On War" a guy named Carl von Clausewitz briefly discusses a broad concept to help commanders focus on what is most important in a battle or campaign. He calls it a "center of gravity" (or whatever the German for that is, I defer to you on that)

In Army doctrine we adopt this concept and write a half a page or so to describe it. Then guys like Dr. Strange at the USMC university started to do some really fascinating work on various ways to dissect and analyze the concept. Soon the doctrine evolved to be nearly an entire chapter prescribing a rigid set of bins one must fill in a set order, etc. Any thinking on COG from that point forward was either "doctrinal" (followed the prescription) or "non-doctrinal" (dares to actually apply a little creativity and color outside the lines a bit). CvC would roll over in his grave.

I never did well in Kindergarten art class. I just couldn't color inside the lines very well.