A central task in Counter Insurgency, peace keeping, and post conflict stabilization that the revised U.S. Army Operations Manual and FM 3-24 state as essential is the ability to execute assessments. However, what both the Army Operations manual and FM 3-24 do not provide Commander's and Staff's is the training, methodology, format, and skills to conduct a thorough assessment. Assessments, of any type, are complex undertakings that require a thorough degree of training and staff work in order to execute correctly.

In order to conduct a proper counter insurgency assessment, the assessment process needs to have good clean data; common, well understood definitions; a well structured understanding of what the commander is trying to achieve and what success looks like; and the ability to incorporate non-quantative assessments (i.e. personal opinion, etc) in a systematic fashion. Finally, the hallmark of a good, systematic assessment process is an understanding of its overall usefulness and limitations. Personal opinion, the commander's perspective of the battlefield, and quantative assessment all are part of the counter insurgency assessment process.

At the macro level, the discussion of COIN assessments has revolved around which methodology to use: PMESII, Line of Effort based scorecards, my own developed Combat Analytics Balanced Scorecard. However, the high level, end product counter insurgency assessment scorecard is merely the result of a good assessment process that use quality data; common definitions; a systematic, repeatable process; common sense data gathering; and the ability to systematically incorporate non-quantative opinions into an overall commander / staff assessment of the progress of the counter insurgency campaign.

On a note of caution, I would not combine the obvious short comings of Effects Based Operations (EBO) as a short coming of using a systematic, well defined, repeatable, and well understood assessment process to help drive counter insurgency operations. FM 3-24, in order to be a good document to truly help commanders and staffs in the counter insurgency fight, needs a well understood, documented, and step-by-step assessment process to help military organizations track their progress, determine their successes, target their shortcomings, in order to provide counter insurgency operations a compass towards successful conclusion.
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