There are lessons learned compiled - check the CALL database.Originally Posted by Bill Moore
I have seen two major headquarters use - or try to use - effects based thinking. One was ISAF, the other CJTF-76. They used different intellectual and organizational approaches, but both failed for the same generic reasons:
1. They couldn't properly integrate an effects-based approach with targeting, planning, and the execution of operations. In both headquarters, you had 'effects guys' who were seen as primarily responsible for the application of actions to achieve effects and/or the formulation of effects. Don't get me wrong, people recognized this as a problem and worked to overcome it, but there simply wasn't a deep enough grasp of the principles throughout the headquarters to allow for a solution.
2. Both headquarters did things that were not aimed at achieving the desired effects. In some cases, this was forced on them by higher, by policy, or by local politics. In others, they chose to do things that did not contribute to achieving desired effects. Why? Because some of them didn't take EBO seriously, or they saw a list of desired effects as unneccessarily constraining their freedom of maneuver. Many times I saw an action selected, and then a perusal of the Priority Effects List to see which one it might support. This is backwards, of course.
3. Finally, and to me most importantly, EBO is far too complex to be anything other than an aid to planning. The JFCOM version you are using, Bill, is an attempt to systematize, bureaucratize, and infantilize EBO. As such it offers false precision - much desired by headquarters staff but a bane to useful employment of EBO. As a planner I found EBO very useful, but I approached it with humility. After all, we couldn't find two Afghanis who agreed on how their culture works - how are we supposed to be able to apply EBO with any hope of precision?
This debate will not die easily, however. You will always have EBO's detractors saying that it doesn't work in practice - which it doesn't - while its defenders will claim that the detractors didn't understand its tenets - which is generally true. If we would see it as a form of mental discipline that offers the staff a common approach to planning, rather than as a system that can be used to conduct operations, we would all be much better off.
Concur. The more I study (rather than pontificate) the basics of military science and thought the more I see the need to keep things "iron bar" simple. That was what the Wehrmacht did.
‘Im Krieg, nur was einfach ist hat Erfolg.’
In war only that which is simple succeeds
A bit more useful simplification in COIN theory could go a long way.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Nothing speaks like results....
Bill,
Good post, you cut straight to the heart of the matter. If I may paraphrase I take your post as 'show me the money'. The campaigns in Tal-Afar and Mosul and some of the HTT, 95th, and PRT work in Afghanistan are the best 'concrete' results I can think of at the moment that used/are using EBO and its derivatives. Some of my friends getting back from Afghanistan felt the German PRT approach is effective. I will look for references documenting TTP's used in each of these cases.
The big caveat attached to EBO is that measuring the effectiveness and performance of operations focused upon social systems and then analyzing systems that underpin these social systems is not the same as building a well, clinic, school, road, or installing a micro-hydro-turbine and then analyzing over time the existence, effectiveness, and performance of the infrastructure system.
FM 3.05-40, chapter 4 may be of interest to you as a doctrinal answer for applied EBO in addition to the CALL references previously cited.
Here is are some articles I ran across this weekend that speak to why/how EBO or some of it's derivatives are being applied:
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/C...ngMarApr08.pdf
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/C...ngMarApr08.pdf
This month's Special Warfare has an interesting article about CA that covers some of these 'how to'.
Jeffery Sachs has some interesting ideas about adapting the medical concept of 'differential diagnosis' to economics. His work in Latin America and Eastern Europe has some clues about 'how to' .
Regards,
Steve
Sapere Aude
Is this the son of EBO? Still maintains a Systems oriented perspective but is a great deal simpler.
http://calldp.leavenworth.army.mil/e...CUR_DOCUMENT=1
Oh yea, it has the Ends,Ways and Means thing to.
Last edited by slapout9; 04-09-2008 at 02:33 AM. Reason: add stuff
Half out of the closet with EBO
""Finally, and to me most importantly, EBO is far too complex to be anything other than an aid to planning. The JFCOM version you are using, Bill, is an attempt to systematize, bureaucratize, and infantilize EBO. As such it offers false precision - much desired by headquarters staff but a bane to useful employment of EBO". Bravo!
I just had an opportunity to quickly read over everyone's posts, and found the constructive criticism and comments helpful. I need to dwell on this until this weekend, and then I can hopefully respond intelligently.
A few off the hip comments in the meantime:
1. Selil: I think I agree with you for the most part, if not entirely. My beef isn't with science, but the attempt to infantize it as Eden stated in the quote above. Another scientific theory is complexity"", which EBO (in its infantile form) completely disrgards. That is the essence of my beef with the JFCOM EBO process.
2. By way of illustration, and admittedly us snake eaters tend to view the world through a different set of lenses, but when an EBO devotee (a contractor) told me that you don't even have to worry about coming up with a solution, just tell us the effect you want and we have all the nodes and actions in the computer database, so presto we'll have a plan for you. I was waiting for the punch line, but he was serious, so we asked for a couple of examples so we could discuss them. In short, we came up with a number of unique activities that we could employ (as could of any you) that the contractors haven't thought of. To me, it was terrorifying that EBO was actually restricting thought versus enabling creative thinking and problem solving.
3. For all those who mention using EBO for targeting, I have a lot of heart burn with the idea that EBO is targeting. Targeting is a small subset of EBO (or it should be). We now tend to lump everything into lethal and non-lethal fires, which results in a narrow minded approach to problem solving. Bottom line, we're still attempting to use a standard conventional approach to solve an unconventional problem, but we are calling it something else, and we added non-lethal fires, not really understanding how to employ them very effectively. EBO was originally designed to integrate and synchronize the interagency, but I don't think the other agencies bought into it (hell, they may actually have to do something), and you won't garner USAID and DoS support talking about targeting. I'll start this debate during the next post.
Still massively underwhelmed by EBO
I still don't see us getting anywhere here.
a.) The USAF targeting based concept of EBO - what it was originally- is simplistic and not useful.
b.) A lot of the sensible stuff being talked about EG: matching information to/ with actions, is mind numbing common sense. So why call it EBO? What I see chaps like Tom Odom talking about (and making sense) is not the EBO of the USAF, Singapore Air Force, or UK Doctrine Centre.
c.) The problem here is the use of language. Why are things that are clearly not EBO, as in how EBO was originally defined, now called EBO?
The amount of useful and insightful work on military thought is actually tiny. In general terms, 85% of what works was committed to paper by 1937, and even in COIN I don't see much original after 1960.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Commander's Appreciation and Campaign Design
One promising alternative to EBO is the Army's newest concept associated with "CACD." It is available at http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/p525-5-500.pdf
It is based on a seminal piece by Rittel and Webber in Policy Sciences (1973?) and roughly in Donald A. Schon's concept of reflective practice (he defines as "design" using the "artsy" part of architectural design as the metaphor in his book "Educating the Reflective Practitioner." It is an amazing book.
Wow
Slap,
I was happily cruising through the article and then spilled my coffee upon reaching this....
Ran across this USAID Handbook of Democracy and Governance IndicatorsLet’s suppose that Madonna wants to become president of the United States. Her end, then, is “become president of the United States.” Possible ways she might accomplish her end are by coup, purchase, miracle, or via election. Madonna rules out the first three because she doesn’t have the means, that is, the military backing, sufficient funds, or faith, respectively, to accomplish those ways. She therefore makes the strategic decision to get herself elected. So the verb or action is “to elect.”
http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democr...s/pnacc390.pdf
The handbook examines the topics of Rule of Law, Elections Index, Civil Society Index, and Governance Index and provides tables of indicators, definition of unit of measurement, relevance of indicator, data collection methods, and target setting/trendline issues within each of the previously mentioned topics...The important point here is that if indicators are developed without a careful look at data collection methodologies, a mission may end up with a list of indicators requiring several
different methodologies— aggregate statistics of court case data, surveys of lawyers, surveys of businessmen, and so on. Multiple methodologies will make data collection expensive and timeconsuming. Sometimes settling on one data collection approach means that some of the indicators are less direct than might be desirable, but the trade-offs between cost and quality issues are important to examine.
Chris,
The TRADOC Pam 525-5-500 has some interesting USMC planning references among others that I will have to chase. Thanks for the reference.
Regards,
Steve
Last edited by Surferbeetle; 04-10-2008 at 10:32 AM.
Sapere Aude
Not printed it out or read it in detail, but a quick acid test revealed,
a.) No mention of the core functions. Not sure how you can have a campaign planning guide without them.
b.) Effects is mentioned precisely 4 times. - as military doctrine and thought is defined by language, this is somewhat telling!
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
[QUOTE=Surferbeetle;44483]Slap,
I was happily cruising through the article and then spilled my coffee upon reaching this....
Hi Surf, yea I wondered about that myselfthen I saw that the author he was a Colonel
I remember reading this
[QUOTE=slapout9;44488]when it first came out. I don't agree with everything but he did a good job of breaking down the pieces into something most can actually get their head around. That is a good thing considering how often the process becomes so convoluted many outside of it choose not to give it the attention it deserves.Slap,
I was happily cruising through the article and then spilled my coffee upon reaching this....
Hi Surf, yea I wondered about that myself
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
Stand by everyone I am trying to make some arragements to have Colonel Warden respond to that himself. Hope to be done by this friday.
I'll be waitin' and all ears, slap.
I'll be waitin' and all ears, slap.
Hi Norfolk, just one step closer a few minutes ago. My day job has been really busy so I am having to do this in pieces
Well this is not doctrine, it is an experimental concept. It is an attempt to make decision making more of a continuous and highly collaborative learning process than an episodic process, punctuated by a "best COA" commander's decision.
It suggest something quite different and I admire the Army for testing out what might seem a bit "irregular." It is more of a subjective (interpretive) approach than what EBO and traditional MDMP would at least give the pretense for an "objective" approach.
Excellent. I think he has heard me say this before though, or at least former members of his staff have.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I concur. I am just surprised at how it did not use some of the more tested concepts, that have proven useful over time.
Even some of the un-tested stuff, like Leonhard would have had application, and I am not aware of any other competing material in this area.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Hi all, sorry for the delay but sh@@ happens, should be able to give the details on questions for Colonel Warden later to day. I talked with him late Friday afternoon and he is looking forward to this, so I will be back in just a little while. Slap
OK he we go.
I thought about this long and hard and this is what I have come up with. First I do not now nor have I ever had any financial interest in Colonel Warden's present business ventures. So in order to remain impartial I have been trying to figure out some way for the SWC members to ask the Colonel questions directly. As of the first of April he has started a his own Blog. The link is published below. Just like SWC you have to register a very short and painless process. How ever they are new at this and are still learning. I had a few problems myself but nothing major.
When you register there is a brief bio section and if you list that slapout sent you I can call them from my day job about any problems you may have and they will be handled promptly. The pain part is you will have copy the questions and answers back to this thread to keep everyone informed here. That is if you want to do that which I hope everyone does but again that is your choice. Also next week the Colonel is teaching a week long class so there may be some delay in there response so don't get concerned he will respond.
The Colonel only made one stipulation and this is part of his personal and business teachings. He believes Strategy is Strategy and there is no distinction between war and business. The only difference is the means used! So he may use a business example to explain his point of view.
When you go to the link below you will see one of my posts by me
http://venturist.com/wordpress/index.php
Just curious, something preventing him from establishing a SWC ID and joining in here? Was good enough for Kilcullen, Nagl, Vandergriff, Caldwell, etc...
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