Hi Bill,

Quote Originally Posted by Bill Jakola View Post
I don't mean to be pedantic but, uncertainty and complexity are different.
No worries . Yes, I know that they are different, but that wasn't my point. I probably should have spelled it out better, but what I was trying to say was that a change in focus, such as that put forward here and in other documents (such as the ACC etc.) which argues that factors X, Y and Z are changing (increasing, decreasing) is different from saying that those factors are part of the "nature" of something.

Quote Originally Posted by Bill Jakola View Post
The use of growing uncertainty in the foreward seems to reflect the failure of our earlier assumptions like, if we build a force that can prevail in major combat operations then we will inherently have a force that can prevail in other types of operations; or that our technology will negate the fog of war.
I'm still working through how many different meanings I can find for how "uncertainty" is used in FM 5.0 (3 different meanings so far ). Still and all, reflecting the "failure" of earlier assumptions certainly is one of the meanings I've seen in it. But were they "failures" at the time they were made, and is "uncertainty" now being used as a catch phrase for "drat, don't know what will happen ?".

What I believe, and it's only a tentative hypothesis, happened was that the US military "got" "conventional" warfare down so well that everyone else said "nuts to this, we ain't playin' that game". The "failure of earlier assumptions" was, IMHO, a conflation of our old conceptualization of conventional warfare as "Warfare" (the Ideal Type). When our opponents said "nuts, we ain't playin' that game" and started to play another one instead, we were so locked into our mindset of "convention warfare" = "Warfare" (a logical error of confusing the specific with the general), that we started to look for convenient ways to say "Drat, we don't know what they are playing!" and glomed onto "complexity" and "uncertainty" because they are cool, hip and happening terms out of science (and they will sell to the politicians). As an indictaor of the plausibility of this, I would point to how GEN Van ripper was treated during Millennium Challenge.

I just did a search through FM 5.0, and do you realize that there is not a single reference to one of the most important concepts stemming from complexity science - emergence? as far as "uncertainty" is concerned, it is defined (1-7) as

Uncertainty is what is not known about a given situation or a lack of understanding of how a situation may evolve. Effective leaders accept that they conduct military operations in operational environments that are inherently uncertain.
Umm, that is way too limited and based solely on the perception of individuals. For example, an individual may be certain that X is Y and they may be totally wrong in that assumption. A truly effective leader also recognizes that they may well be mistaken in their assumptions about what is "true" - a point raised later on, but not included in the definition. The current definition places a "lack of understanding" only in the future....

Look, I'm getting exceedingly picky about implications of language and definitions, implications, etc. Probably over picky if truth be told . I know that one of the reasons I'm doing this is because I am dealing with a truly horrid piece of work right now (see my previous posts' pps), but another reason is that I "feel" (thumos or "gut knowledge") that this FM is setting people up to fail by trying to linearize a process that is inherently not linear. I need some time to figure out and be able to communicate where that "feeling" is coming from. Unfortunately, I am running ragged with other things (organizing a symposium, multiple concerts, writing, supervising theses, etc.) and I just haven't had the time to put that feeling into a coherent argument.

Cheers,

Marc