Small Wars Journal

Operational Design in Afghanistan

Sun, 09/13/2009 - 12:55pm
In the past two days, the debate has heated up at Small Wars Journal between two exceptionally brilliant officers regarding the future of NATO and ISAF in Afghanistan. On one side of the debate is Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, author of a critique of military organizational culture entitled "A Failure in Generalship". The other is noted "COINtra", Col. Gian Gentile, a history professor at West Point.

Much of the debate centers over a series of articles and rebuttals which have occurred over the past six weeks, but intensifying with George Will's exhortation to give up on nation-building in Afghanistan and pursue al Qaeda via "over-the-horizon" capabilities. Will was joined by General Charles Krulak, the former Commandant of the US Marine Corps, who also echoed many of Will's arguments in an e-mail earlier this week. Both George Will and General Krulak--as well as many within the defense community, such as Col. Gian Gentile and Col. TX Hammes--feel that Afghanistan has outlived its strategic relevance due to al Qaeda's relocation into Pakistan and the perceived futility of building a nation-state in Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Yingling, on the other hand, feels that population-centric counterinsurgency can work in Afghanistan, given the right amount of troops and time. To Yingling, building a stable nation-state in Afghanistan is a necessary step in countering al Qaeda. Other prominent military thinkers agree with Yingling, such as retired Lt. Col. John Nagl, president of the Washington-based think-tank, Center for a New American Security.

Our professional community thrives on respectful, professional debate, such as the debate that exists over the strategic and operational goals in Afghanistan. We owe it to the men and women of ISAF to decide whether or not Afghanistan warrants further involvement, and if the situation does warrant involvement, we must determine the best course towards achieving ISAF's goals.

Having said that, I would like to point to the US Army's latest manual which concerns campaign planning, TRADOC Publication 525-5-500, "Commander's Appreciation and Campaign Design". This document is designed to give senior level planners the intellectual tools they need to solve "ill-structured" problems. As David Kilcullen points out in "The Accidental Guerrilla", Afghanistan is certainly an ill-structured problem—a "hybrid war", as he calls it, which blends elements of counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, and tribal warfare.

TRADOC Publication 525-5-500 defines operational problems and discusses the three types of operational problems we, as planners, will experience. TRADOC defines an operational problem as a "discrepancy between the state of affairs as it is and the state of affairs as it ought to be that compels military action to resolve it". The document also mentions that not all operational problems require actions, and are more correctly referred to as "concerns". The implication of course is that a "concern" exists when the cost:benefit ratio regarding military action is deemed too high a price to pay.

Having said that, there are three types of operational problems which we typically experience in the military. The one most of us are familiar with from most training exercise is the well-structured problem. These are generally linear problems which have one solution, and have a predictable outcome. Examples of these problems typically include many of the planning exercises we have witnessed in our military educational courses—the defeat of a Soviet-style Division Tactical Group as it approaches a Brigade Combat Team, or the movement of material and people from point A to point B. Problems like these beg the use of the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP), which is a linear, scientifically-based process to solving problems of this nature.

Unfortunately, MDMP does not lend itself well to all situations, and comes with severe limitations. Certainly, General Moltke and the German High Command realized that, despite the meticulous planning calculations which went into the Schlieffen Plan, they failed to understand the grand strategic picture, grossly underestimating Russian mobilization. Additionally, Robert MacNamara's "whiz kids" applied mathematical formulas to Vietnam with disastrous results.

The complex operating environment of the 21st Century's "Small Wars" present decision-makers with problems which can be open-ended, ill-defined, and with no obvious solution. It is up to leaders to apply a decision making model to understand the nature of the problem, ascertain strategic goals, and formulate a plan from there. These problems are often referred to as "ill-structured" problems, or more appropriately, "wicked problems", according to TRADOC.

Although the Army has packaged this thought process into a manual and given it the name "operational design", this process has actually been practiced by leaders throughout history—TRADOC has simply given this generation of military leaders the blueprint for success.

Operational design begins by problem framing, with the first step being to establish the strategic context of the problem. TRADOC's publication recommends the following questions be asked:

What is the history of the problem? What is its genesis?

Who are the parties interested in the problem and what are the implications of likely outcomes?

What caused the problem to come to the fore?

Why is this emerging problem important to the nation's strategic leaders? Particularly consider factors such as:

Are national interests and ideals at stake?

What are the domestic political considerations for taking action?

What are the economic considerations of action?

Are there treaty obligations that require or block the ability to act?

Why do strategic leaders believe this problem requires a military solution?

To this, we might add in even more fundamental questions regarding the nature of the problem in Afghanistan:

Who are the enemies? What are their goals? Where are they located? What threat does each group pose to the United States? What effect does ISAF involvement in Afghanistan have on them?

Any "solution" to the Afghanistan problem must be well-thought out, and operational design gives us a framework for examining problems of this nature. I'd like to invite everyone to not only debate the merits of further involvement in Afghanistan, but also to participate in the Army's new operational design framework as a process for solving problems as complex as the ones we will face in small wars.

Comments

Terry Johnson (not verified)

Tue, 08/24/2010 - 3:20pm

Not so quick on canning the ideas behind design, Jon. Both the Army and the Joint community have moved away from SOD to a simpler approach that captures the goodness of design thinking. Chapter 3 of FM 5-0, the Operations Process, is an attempt to discuss and introduce design into doctrine. Not a bad effort if feeble on its own. We have been teaching and practicing Operational Design at ARCENT and SOCOM in formal workshops for about two years now. Our friends at SAMS have put a quite fine point on design as practitioners since 2006 though some disagree with some of the SAMS methodology. Design is now an elective in ILE, but that falls short of getting it into everyone's hands. I have worked with design from the draft of CACD to the aforementioned FM 5-0 writing as well as applying if during Unified Quest and leading a design workshop for the pilot Starfish Course last spring. In my estimate operational design, or simply design, has great value as a disciplined way to apply critical and creative thinking to framing the environment (first), then the problem, and then crafting how to move from the current to the desired state. Granted none of this is new and repeated applications of design to the Afghanistan dilemma have not "solved" the problem, but, that's the whole point of design, and of reframing in particular. Facts and assumptions change. Adversaries adapt. 2009's campaign plan like all past plans was obsolete or obsolescent on delivery. The essense of design is iterative depending on continual assessment--the battle command (now mission command) process. Design then is a discipline, a mind set or orientation, that breaks our usual pattern-based problem solving down and forces designers (including commanders who should be part of design) to consider factors that were not part of our PME and MDMP efforts in the past.

Zinformation

Mon, 11/30/2009 - 12:55am

Please stop the SOD madness. It is an empty academic exercise in post-modernist planning theory. That may be fine for folks writing highly esoteric articles in planning and philosophy publications, but it simply confuses and confounds the ability of a military leader and staff to address the issues at hand.

As someone who has been a professional planner - and not just in military areas - and a process designer, I have taught planning courses to many folks in and out of the military. So take the following with some grain of credibility:

1. There is no dialectic between plan and design. They are both part of the same system of thinking/learning... You need both to succeed in framing, formulating, orchestrating, executing and evaluating operations.

2. As written up by several well thought of individuals, SOD somehow is thought to be a silver bullet for collaboration. It isn't and can't be. SOD may look like a solution, but I think it's more of another CYA mechanism to enable certain weak commanders to make sure someone else can take the RPG to the chest when things go askew (as they must by a combination of natural laws.)

3. If this isn't enough to get one re-thinking the SOD paradigm, consider reading Mathews' CSI piece on the Israeli experience in the Lebanon War of 2006. The SOD doctrine they had was arcane, poorly understood and communicated, and of course not shared (how can a group truly share something they do not fully understand.) Now the Israeli OTRI folks, who sponsored the SOD doctrine, will claim it was poorly implemented and poorly communicated; that is, nothing wrong with the doctrine, just the people practicing it.
BINGO brilliant pebbles of Zion: if people can't understand something, it makes for pretty crappy doctrine.

In fact, if one follows Shimon Naveh's thinking (Naveh is the father of SOD),one quickly finds there is little or no way to evaluate or compare SOD with existing doctrine.

The core problem remains, as SWJ and other sites have aptly pointed out, the quality of commanders in highly complex operating environments. Simply good commanders are not good enough; we need extraordinary commanders and leaders. We know what this latter type looks like; we just have to nurture and develop them within our talent pools.

The nurturing and development is the key problem facing us now. Not the plan/design process.

Ken White (not verified)

Wed, 09/16/2009 - 11:27am

Jeremy:

Thanks for the response. No intent on my part to chide, I know you knew but merely wanted to make the point publicly that we had arrived where we are through an error in strategy. We are emphatically there and thus, IMO, the strategic considerations should move on to 'what's next?'<blockquote>"that doesn't mean we don't owe it to future strategy to understand the mistakes that were made..."</blockquote>Totally agree. While all you strategizers should concentrate on the future, we need to know why we did what we did and insure we do not repeat the errors.<blockquote>"... an evolution from the present to a 'feasible, accpetible, and suitable' strategy will require a holitic reframing and an answer to the debate that we think we can solve larger strategy through successful COIN."</blockquote>I'm unsure what you mean but I am not looking for an answer. I would posit that you guys wasting much if any time on Afghanistan would not seem to be a good use of your capabilities; that one may not be on autopilot yet but it's very close. The way the Operational problem that is Afghanistan today ends will have an effect of strategy going forward but it is unlikely to be a major impactor. Hopefully we will have learned that the prospect of applying the GPF to 'COIN' operations is to be avoided if possible.

The future, OTOH, as they say, beckons.

I'm far more concerned about our capabilities -- or lack thereof -- and our force application parameters and strategic aims five to ten years ahead...

Jeremy:

You can have spell check installed in your browser if you use Firefox or (I think) Google Chrome as well.

I don't think anyone here takes off points for spelling--we're all just as bad :)

Hi Jeremy. First, I'd like to tell you that I enjoyed your last article in SWJ and your posts on this thread have been good.

Second, I'll add that the systems approach is only one of several options to cope or breakthrough a wicked or ill-structured problem. Another is by redefing the problem or viewing it from another lens. I will focus on this angle. I will take the side of the Population-Centric COIN crowd. The argument is that Aghanistan is the central front of the Long War or whatever we're calling it now.

Thus, Afghanistan is my main effort and is in the national security interest of the United States.

The root cause of the problem as we have defined it is a lack of governance. If we can only establish a standing government with substantial control of the area within its borders, then we have a high degree of certainty that we can prevent another safe-haven for AQ thus stop another 9/11.

To achieve success, we will implement an operational approach using pop-centric COIN tactics learned from FM 3-24 and Iraq. We will work to stand-up the government, recruit, train, and employ a security force, and conduct operations to secure the local poplulace.

As a planner, I face several problems,

1. The Afghan gov't shows heavy signs of corruption.

2. The Afghan security forces are fragile and refuse to fight.

3. My own government lacks the capabilities of a civilian surge.

My solution is to have the US and coalition militaries fill the gap. Marines, strkyers, and paratroopers will clear and hold areas in the hopes that the security forces can eventually take over. Simultaneously, US military forces will conduct reconstruction or nation-building projects in the hopes that the government or Afghanistan will eventually pick up the slack.

Now, I will play devil's advocate. There's a lot of hope going around. Coalition Forces clearing will cause high casualties. Military personnel conducting reconstruciton operations is expensive and often counter-productive. It is hard for a commander to bring the hate one day and give the love the next day. Plus, we are entirely inefficient. One school cost us between $100K-$350K to build. Greg Mortenson can build the same school for $15K. Etc, etc..

So, I go back to the boss (President Obama) and explain the situation. Sir, in order to achieve your ends (stable nation-state), then we must develop the ways and means (revamped state department/increased use of NGO's).

That's just one very short scenario.

Thoughts?

Mike

Jeremy Kotkin (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 4:21pm

why oh why can there not be spell-check on this forum? ;o)

Jeremy Kotkin (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 4:19pm

Ken, I understand. Please don't take my inference that Afghanistan has no 'military' strategic relevance (I should have been more clear on that) to mean that we should pull out troops and not replace that 'strategy' without any other synchronized strategy using the other aspects of national power best associated with the problems in the region. I do understand that there are interests and there are problems that, for better or worse, we are on the hook to make better. Our global credibility is at stake and that *is* a vital interest; but we need to reframe and look at the continued damage we do to our legitimacy and influence by dragging the Afghans by the collar by our military into the 21st century.

So yes, I do agree that the 'earlier irrelevance is itself irrelevant now' but that doesn't mean we don't owe it to future strategy to understand the mistakes that were made. We are there and we can't cut and run. But an evolution from the present to a 'feasible, accpetible, and suitable' strategy will require a holitic reframing and an answer to the debate that we think we can solve larger strategy through successful COIN.

Jeremy Kotkin (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 3:59pm

Point taken, sir. I think I meant in the context of a Nat'l Military Strategy. The problem I see is that we initially went to Afghanistan to satisfy a set of limited strategic objectives through military means.
The fact that we are still there 9 yrs later trying with predominantly the same means for a new, undefined mission is the problem.

No strategic relevance in the sense that us killing Joe Taliban in so-and-so province simply to fill in the "white space" of an un-goverened area with an elected representative from Kabul does not make America safer.
The system framing that took place (or most likely didn't take place) to allow that conclusion to be drawn was fundamentally flawed.

As you mentioned, there are national interests in Afghanistan. But those don't need to be satisfied by the only instrument of national power that is specifically developed to protect our vital interests from harm. Our national interests in that region (stemming the flow of drugs, ensuring access to Central Asian oil, human rights, etc) can be satisfied through a national strategy of diplomacy with the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians, getting tougher with other regional state actors, leveraging orgs like Interpol, the SCO and CSTO for what they're designed to do, and economic carrots and sticks with Kabul and neighboring states. Not wholesale military occupation and a COIN strategy.

If threats from Afghanistan do pop up on our intel analysts radar screens, we can neutralize them and disrupt their networks the same way we were on the road to successfully accomplishing the initial objectives of OEF, limited, small footprint, and over the horizon kinetic action. That's what our military should be used for - securing vital interests, not building a nation and hoping its legitimacy will stick with the populace.

Ken White (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 3:37pm

Jeremy:

Listen to Gian.

This:<blockquote>"...its that Afghanistan has no strategic relvance to begin with and the way we have initially framed the problem is the cause of our current angst. We're still trying to find a military solution to a non-existant military problem."</blockquote>In <u>reverse order</u>; is true; is true; and; is wrong. Afghanistan may have had little initially but it has strategic relevance now simply because we are there. The rest of that quote is correct but that doesn't remove the relevance of presence. Rather large presence at that -- and at this point, the earlier irrelevance is itself irrelevant.

Also quite relevant is the very critical importance of <i><b>how</b></i> that presence comes to an end...

gian p gentile (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 3:22pm

Jeremy:

I disagree with this statement that you make:

"...its that Afghanistan has no strategic relevance to begin with and the way we have initially framed the problem is the cause of our current angst."

If you mean "strategic relevance" as something akin to national interest then I disagree. We do have national interests to be sure in Afghanistan but the problem is with how we have gone about the doing of strategy and aligning means to achieve the political objectives. In that regard Afghanistan does have strategic relevance for the US, but good strategy would determine the appropriate means of military and other forms of national power to accomplish it. It is the doing of "good" strategy, it seems to me, that is out of whack.

Although I do agree with most everything else that you say in your post, especially the part about Coin operations "supplant[ing]" national strategy.

gian

Jeremy Kotkin (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 3:09pm

Operational Design, or more accurately, Systemic OD (SOD), is what General Naveh of the IDF's OTRI translated into a design tool for the US Army which further translated it into CACD. Some would say its watered down and others would say it could be missapplied. Some of the complaints the IDF had against SOD are still valid today in the way we try and use it here; that it is too complex and too time-intensive to be used below the strategic level of war. In fact, where I work, we really only see its applicability to the strategic level and have translated SOD to a version of OD we use in our work there. Its not the CACD method but its not Gen Naveh's pure SOD either. We made it work to our situation and problem set and definitely see the goodness in it.

There is nothing really cosmically different than what SOD (OD) asks of a Strategist: reassessment (or 'reframing' as SOD calls it) is critically necessary when the environment changes and critical thinking (or systems thinking) is the crux of looking at a non-linear problem. It does stress Bertanlaffy or Clausewitz over Jomini, but it does require a lot of information-based and even empirical assessments to back up your hypotheses. What we've found is that different situations can require different OD methods - MDMP, SOD/OD, or maybe even, god-forbid, EBO. CACD only seems to say that the environment might warrant non-rigid thinking and doesn't really say anything different than what Clausewitz would have: political and military activities intermingle throughout these conflicts requiring unified, cohesive action; future conflict and military operations alone cannot deliver a conclusive political result; war will be more challenging and unpredictable than linear systems; adversaries will use a completely different logic in the conflict (would seem to require an understanding in an adversary's primary trinity). It allows for something other than MDMP in all situations which *is* good. But CACD might be non-applicable for certain problem sets and might also try to be too all-encompassing on the nature of war and future conflicts.

But there is still a cognitive dissonance in the debate here: the question is not whether Afghanistan has *outlived* its strategic relevance or what operations (how to do COIN or how to Surge) will allow success; its that Afghanistan has no strategic relvance to begin with and the way we have initially framed the problem is the cause of our current angst. We're still trying to find a military solution to a non-existant military problem. Just today CJCS referenced that we will need more troops in Astan to match a COIN "strategy." Trying to supplant a counterinsurgency operation for a national strategy reminds me of Napoleon's peripheral operations in Spain with relation to the War with Russia; they do dot nest with overall objectives and they detract from the primary theater (the 'theater' here being logical, not physical).

I could go on with example after example of how the fight in Astan is a strategist's nightmare because tactics and operations are driving overall policy and strategy, but I feel its enough to say that OD and CACD is valuable with the ill-structured problem that is Astan but when we needed it the most, it was sorely absent. Now we need to determine how to pick up the pieces and try and use SOD at teh strategic level to do the correct framing and assessments to develop a real strategy. It is useful at the strategic level and had it been used before the limited objectives of OEF were accomplished and then turned into full-fledged nation-building, this armchair quarterback thinks we'd be much better of today.

My $.02.

gian p gentile (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 12:54pm

Starbuck:

Thanks for this thread.

I was struck by what jimdickens said in his post:

"It is important to note that the Campaign Design was never well appreciated by higher ups (including military and civilian) as it revealed problems with the higher operational concepts and the underlying strategies. Through the 19 months of its existence, the ISAF Campaign Design did not solve for political ambiguity or the insufficiency of strategic means to achieve objectives."

Jim, can you elaborate on this? Specifically what was the mismatch between strategic means and objectives and is the latter political or operational objectives?

Is what we have here a mismatch between strategic resources of time, numbers of troops, blood and treasure, with the operational goal (and what it would entail to accomplish it) of nation building in Astan?

And, Jim, I am wondering if you are the same Jim Dickens who I spent a year with at Sams in 99/00?

Anyway, would like to hear your thoughts on these matters.

gian

Starbucks, I think you are correct for the need to get more visibility on this design approach, and the Afghanistan/AQ problem is probably a good start point.

As they say, one way you know you are in a wicked problem is if you are in a room of ten experts, and you receive ten different explanations on the definition of the problem. I think we've reached that point!

v/r

Mike

Thanks for all the responses thus far.

I wasn't accusing the military of not using design. Rather, I think that much of the debate from the pundits would do best if they applied the fundamentals of design.

Plus, I think this is a great way to get a little more attention on this process--I haven't met anyone yet that has heard of design, so I think it needs a lot of visibility.

LTC Hollonbeck (not verified)

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 12:24am

I have to concur with LTC Yingling, we can't leave. Afghanistan is clearly a nation state barely treading water. If we depart now it will most certainly become a failed state. The stategic choice was made and the premise behind it has not changed. Failed states result in ungoverned territory and al Qaeda will set right back up at Tarnac Farms and Mullah Omar will return to his home outside of Kandahar along with them. The fact that both groups are in Pakistan does not change our reality. However, leaving Afghanistan does impact us. Leaving solves nothing, nor does it reframe the problem. Leaving merely complicates it.
What amazes me is that our national leaders still don't get the topic of strategic communication on the Afghanistan issue. When in history has an insurgency or a failed nation state been resovled in five years or even ten? The average modern insurgency last ten to twenty years with troops staying for decades after, colonialism aside. Our public needs to be reminded of that in a steady resounding yet "pithy" media engagement fashion. Since the American public has a short term memory it will likely need to be frequently reminded of the reality of historical insurgencies and failed states. The public's metric of success should also include that no more building are falling down in CONUS or for that OCONUS.

jimdickens (not verified)

Mon, 09/14/2009 - 11:24am

In response to Starbuck's initial point, Afghanistan has been considered and processed through Campaign Design under successive ISAF CDRs from 2007 through 2009. Despite best possible campaign thinking at operational levels, major disconnects prevailed at the political level that precluded the design's effective implemntaiton as a viable plan. As the operational high-water mark came and went in Iraq , it seemed that the resources might be made available to service the established Afghan design, but this was not to be. Soon therafter, (and maybe regrettably)new military and political regimes rejected past thinking - including the published design. We will all have to wait and see what comes next. It is important to note that the Campaign Design was never well appreciated by higher ups (including military and civilian) as it revealed problems with the higher operational concepts and the underlying strategies. Through the 19 months of its existence, the ISAF Campaign Design did not solve for political ambiguity or the insufficiency of strategic means to acheive objectives.

Good Article Starbucks and good comments too. I'd only add one point- "wicked" or ill-structured problem solving should not be constrained to Jedi Masters.

Company-grade officers and NCO's are fighting through the same if not more complex problems on the ground. As we continue to try to refine and enhance our MDMP process for the present, I would suggests that we work on adapting our TLP's and OPORD construct.

v/r

Mike

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 09/13/2009 - 8:53pm

Dave makes a good point. Once you have pulled the strategic trigger, the level of desire attached to an object may trump everything else, and impose political constraints on otherwise valid operational options.

There are some good SAMS grads, who are well versed in design, already on those staffs - and more headed that way. SAMS runs several seminars focused on specific theaters to better prep those students for their follow on assignments.

As Dave alluded to, the opportunity to have greater operational flexibility begins with our strategic choices.

Best, Rob

DaveDoyle

Sun, 09/13/2009 - 8:23pm

The topic of operational design is not a new one for this forum. We've discussed the utility of design in military operations in the discussion board (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=6802). Students at SAMS have been applying design concepts to work topics related to Afghanistan for several years. The real question isn't whether design principles are used for the operational effort, but whether design ideas will be used for the strategic, or grand strategic perspective.