Eaton fires broadside at Cheney

[slapout9]

As to "Defeat" on AQSL. This is a debate that I continue to irritate the "Capture/Kill" gang with. C/K can never be more than a supporting effort to any defeat strategy, and that true "defeat" of a political, non-state UW HQ like AQ comes when you rob them of their base of support by out competing them to take away the rationale for their existence.

Which is exactly what you would learn if you did Warden's ring analysis. In his theory there are always at least 2 systems that have to be analyzed, they are your system and the larger environmental system in which the enemy operates. The larger system is where you can affect(cause) the smaller system to achieve the desired effect(result). That is why in older versions of his work you will see 5 ring charts placed side by side or one on top of the other to see possible collision points between the systems. And you will also learn that often the best way to affect one system is by acting through another system which at first glance may appear unrelated.

[Bob's World]

Slap, I'll take your word for it. I'm happy to make strong postions on things I have spent a lot of time doing or thinking about, but Warden's rings are something I am merely aquainted with.

Any tool that help visualize and break down a complex problem is good. I just caution that the best tool applied incorrectly or to any problem that happens to come up, is likely to fall short. So, "proceed with caution," but by all means proceed!

[slapout9]

Slap, I'll take your word for it. I'm happy to make strong postions on things I have spent a lot of time doing or thinking about, but Warden's rings are something I am merely aquainted with.

Any tool that help visualize and break down a complex problem is good. I just caution that the best tool applied incorrectly or to any problem that happens to come up, is likely to fall short. So, "proceed with caution," but by all means proceed!

Bob, much of what you say is in direct alignment with Warden.....you just use different terminology. The problem goes to his original article "The Enemy As A System" people naturally just jump to thinking that if they just analyze the Enemy that everything will work out. It want.

To expand a little the largest system to be analyzed is he what he calls the Market system as opposed to calling it the environmental system. If you think of it that way you will begin to see just how big and complex the support structure can be for an insurgency. Most war theories never dreamed of having to contend with the fact that somebody could get a wire transfer over the internet and order supples and have them shipped to them by UPS and then go blow somebody up and report back to a higher authority over a cell phone.

Which is why I say the moment you begin to think of A'stan as a country as opposed to part of a larger Market System and develop a strategy based upon that thinking you have already lost.

[Bill Jakola]

Which is exactly what you would learn if you did Warden's ring analysis.

Colonel John Warden's use of five concentric rings to represent relative importance of targets associated with each ring from inner to outer as Leadership, System Essentials, Infrastructure, Population, and last the Fielded Military is an arbitrary model that has two fatal flaws.

First, it ignores the enemy—in Clausewitzian speak it ignores the “clash of wills”; the enemy always gets a vote, so targeting only five elements in a rigid prioritized format allows the enemy to take advantage of our predictability and does not provide for those enemies (like al Qaeda) who refuse to organize to support this model.

Second and more critically, the Warden five rings model does not support achieving the political goal. Colonel Warden tells us always to target these same five categories irrespective to the political goal.

Major Bill Jakola

[slapout9]

Colonel John Warden's use of five concentric rings to represent relative importance of targets associated with each ring from inner to outer as Leadership, System Essentials, Infrastructure, Population, and last the Fielded Military is an arbitrary model that has two fatal flaws.

First, it ignores the enemy—in Clausewitzian speak it ignores the “clash of wills”; the enemy always gets a vote, so targeting only five elements in a rigid prioritized format allows the enemy to take advantage of our predictability and does not provide for those enemies (like al Qaeda) who refuse to organize to support this model.

Second and more critically, the Warden five rings model does not support achieving the political goal. Colonel Warden tells us always to target these same five categories irrespective to the political goal.

Major Bill Jakola

Hi Bill,
Point 1: Glad you brought that up because this where most people get stuck.......You never ever just choose one ring!!!! You want to attack all 5 if possible. You want to attack the Whole System in Parallel for the simple reason that the enemy will respond....in an uncertain environment and unpredictable environment.......so your best option to reduce the uncertainty is to attack the whole system and reduce his future options.

Point 2: It assumes the Politcal Objective will be given to the military arm of government at which time you choose military targets that will support the Polical Objective. Which is step one of his system "Design The Future".

[Bill Jakola]

Hi Bill,
Point 1: Glad you brought that up because this where most people get stuck.......You never ever just choose one ring!!!! You want to attack all 5 if possible. You want to attack the Whole System in Parallel for the simple reason that the enemy will respond....in an uncertain environment and unpredictable environment.......so your best option to reduce the uncertainty is to attack the whole system and reduce his future options.

Point 2: It assumes the Politcal Objective will be given to the military arm of government at which time you choose military targets that will support the Polical Objective. Which is step one of his system "Design The Future".

Slap,

There is not one scintilla of proof that attacking the whole system in parallel will cause the enemy to "respond" or "reduce his future options"?
Also again Colonel Warden's model is arbitrary and is not the “whole system”.

Major Bill Jakola

[slapout9]

Slap,

There is not one scintilla of proof that attacking the whole system in parallel will cause the enemy to "respond" or "reduce his future options"?
Also again Colonel Warden's model is arbitrary and is not the “whole system”.

Major Bill Jakola

We did it almost perfect in Afghan invasion one and then we never finished the job.....we went to Iraq.

Point 2 What would you consider the whole system? Did you read my previous post about how you have to start with the larger system, not the enemy system?

[Bill Jakola]

We did it almost perfect in Afghan invasion one and then we never finished the job.....we went to Iraq.

Point 2 What would you consider the whole system? Did you read my previous post about how you have to start with the larger system, not the enemy system?

Yes, I read your systems approach; and, you’re your fine conclusion “I don't see how that can be in our long term best interest.”
Here, you perfectly capture the flaw in Colonel Warden’s line of thought. He does not tie our interests with a strategy. He simply provides a check list that we are to use for all situations; very similar to “invading countries because their terrain was used as a launching platform”. Why target things that do not support our interests?

Major Bill jakola

[slapout9]

Here, you perfectly capture the flaw in Colonel Warden’s line of thought. He does not tie our interests with a strategy. He simply provides a check list that we are to use for all situations; very similar to “invading countries because their terrain was used as a launching platform”. Why target things that do not support our interests?

Major Bill jakola

Point 1:The tieing of interest with strategy happens in step 3 Campaigning.

Point 2: Why target things that do not support our interest......you shouldn't! At least not in a lethal way, you may very well want to target them in a non-leathl way.
Don't blame the model because of poor political judgement. In fact Warden and the Air Force in general have warned about Terrain Centric Thinking.

[Ken White]

Any tool that help visualize and break down a complex problem is good. I just caution that the best tool applied incorrectly or to any problem that happens to come up, is likely to fall short. So, "proceed with caution," but by all means proceed!

Couldn't agree more...

[Ken White]

We did it almost perfect in Afghan invasion one and then we never finished the job.....we went to Iraq.

had we not gone to Iraq?

[slapout9]

had we not gone to Iraq?

Nothing.

[Ken White]

Not very illuminating though. I only asked because you said "...we never finished the job." implying we should have done something different. I agree with that, I just wondered what you thought should have happened...

[Surferbeetle]

...throwing out the bathwater.

Colonel John Warden's use of five concentric rings to represent relative importance of targets associated with each ring from inner to outer as Leadership, System Essentials, Infrastructure, Population, and last the Fielded Military is an arbitrary model that has two fatal flaws.

Just because are no grand unified theories of physics, engineering, or war for that matter does not mean that discrete models of system components fail to a provide a certain utility. Many of us make a good living understanding when and when not to apply various models to describe various circumstances. Clearly stating assumptions and limitations up front is one way to define the parameters under which models apply and allow for the benefits resulting from peer review as to the applicability of the model to the circumstance.

I would be interested to hear if you are advocating for the silver bullet CvC solution or...

Major Bill Jakola

Bill,

I, like many here, prefer it when posters keep their military rank to themselves when presenting ideas and opinions in this forum; doing so allows the poster's contributions to stand or fall upon merit without the undue influence that rank brings to a post. Places like BCKS are examples of how posting rank can stifle discussion, and believe it or not there is life beyond our rank

Best,

Steve

[slapout9]

Not very illuminating though. I only asked because you said "...we never finished the job." implying we should have done something different. I agree with that, I just wondered what you thought should have happened...

Ken, wasn't trying to be flip. Didn't know what else to say. Warden thought it was a mistake(Iraq) from the beginning so he would not have gone. Relative to A'stan he thought and thinks Pakistan is the real issue.

My personal view, it (911) should have been handled as an LE problem.....go after the people that caused the problem, regardless of where they are. Which in many cases would have to have envolved the Military, but I would have done something as described in Killing Pablo in which the DEA 5 rings model was used, which was one of the first LE adaptions of Warden's model which is how I found out about it in the first place. And later how I adapted the model to domestic violence/stalking cases.......which I posted here several years ago (gee long time) you was here, you saw it......I think? Fits right in with Bob's World post a lot.

[Bill Jakola]

...throwing out the bathwater.




Bill,

I, like many here, prefer it when posters keep their military rank to themselves when presenting ideas and opinions in this forum; doing so allows the poster's contributions to stand or fall upon merit without the undue influence that rank brings to a post. Places like BCKS are examples of how posting rank can stifle discussion, and believe it or not there is life beyond our rank

Best,

Steve

Steve,

Thanks for the tip; I will drop the rank.

Bill Jakola

[Steve the Planner]

Surfer's comment:

"Just because are no grand unified theories of physics, engineering, or war for that matter does not mean that discrete models of system components fail to a provide a certain utility. Many of us make a good living understanding when and when not to apply various models to describe various circumstances. Clearly stating assumptions and limitations up front is one way to define the parameters under which models apply and allow for the benefits resulting from peer review as to the applicability of the model to the circumstance."

Five concentric rings??? Let's see. A lot of this looks like Christhaller's Central Place theory and Gravity Models routinely used to establish retail real estate locations based on intersecting background competitive demand factors over a non-isotropic plan, offset by intersecting resource and transportation patterns.

Let's see? Maybe like a regional transportation systems dynamics model showing the interaction of influences like land use/population, demand, feedback loops, optimizations, and causal factors across a metropolitan area over, say a decade, with linkages to resource, political and environmental factors on a jurisdictional basis?

Whether modeling weather, flow characteristics, traffic, demographics, or resource planning, we all have seen plenty of models that can indicate plenty of things. At grad school (Hopkins), I had a professor for Quantitative Methods that insisted we develop multi-factor input/out models with a calculator and show your work. He was not trying to teach us to do the math, but to understand the elements, structure and interaction of the model. GIGO.

And all that is without the complexity of human factors.

Steve

[slapout9]

STP, looks alot like ASCOPE in the COIN Tactics FM to.

[jmm99]

If Jakola is Finnish, just sign Bill the Finlander. Finlanders are never wrong, even if they are only half-Finlanders.

If Finnish, Kippis; if otherwise, Cheers

Mikko

[Surferbeetle]

Five concentric rings??? Let's see. A lot of this looks like Christhaller's Central Place theory and Gravity Models routinely used to establish retail real estate locations based on intersecting background competitive demand factors over a non-isotropic plan, offset by intersecting resource and transportation patterns.

Let's see? Maybe like a regional transportation systems dynamics model showing the interaction of influences like land use/population, demand, feedback loops, optimizations, and causal factors across a metropolitan area over, say a decade, with linkages to resource, political and environmental factors on a jurisdictional basis?

Whether modeling weather, flow characteristics, traffic, demographics, or resource planning, we all have seen plenty of models that can indicate plenty of things. At grad school (Hopkins), I had a professor for Quantitative Methods that insisted we develop multi-factor input/out models with a calculator and show your work. He was not trying to teach us to do the math, but to understand the elements, structure and interaction of the model. GIGO.

And all that is without the complexity of human factors.

Steve,

Greatly appreciate the post; as always you add interesting things to consider. Complexity...

Some of my reading this week has included a paper by Andreas Sandburg (Models of Development, January 21, 2003)

The central question of development is: how does structure emerge from a structureless state without an external organizing force? The answer
seems to be that self-organizing processes are able to produce complex
structures from simple initial states. In biological systems a major factor
appears to be diusion of chemical factors guiding growth or dieren-
tiation. The interaction between dierent diusible factors can create
pattern forming instabilities giving rise to dierentiation of initially ho-
mogeneous tissue. By following gradients axons can connect with the right
target cells, setting up neural networks. This paper is a review of models
of biological pattern formation and development.

USAID Value Chain Analysis Case Studies (Date Sector report and value chain development program, by Rocky Walsborn)

Iraq is now in a position to modernize the date industry by moving up the value chain, from production to the end market. The value chain divides into four key elements or stages in the handling of dates:

...and QEPM modeling...

Do you have any how to reference links for using your cited models in GIS?