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Doctrine that Works - Dr. Douglas Johnson II. US Army Strategic Studies Institute commentary, August 2006. The publication of FM 100-5, 1982 edition, changed things. That manual revived the centrality of offensive action and recognized the growing reality of the Big-Five in the reequipping of the Army, giving it the potential to conduct offensive operations at the tactical and operational level. The AirLand Battle concepts that underlay the 1982 edition of FM 100-5 frightened NATO Europe, partly because it demonstrated this offensive character which was so at odds with the basic concept upon which NATO rested its existence. But it made the U.S. Army happy, and the years that followed demonstrated that the U.S. Army could revive itself and recreate itself as a genuinely professional military force without equal in the tactical and operational realms. Operation DESERT STORM validated the AirLand Battle concept, the Big-Five reequipping choices, and the Training Revolution that had taken hold during those two preceding decades. Then hubris set in. It was evident at nearly every level in the institution. Read U.S. Army doctrine today, and you will see a struggle to trump each successive set of superlatives —Full Spectrum Dominance is a good example. The Quality of Firsts—See First, Understand First, Act First, Finish Decisive—is another. These may be neat slogans, but they reflect a sense of sophomoric chest-pounding totally inappropriate as doctrine and reflect shallow thinking about the present realities now confronting us, or more importantly the future. Too much current doctrine is self-congratulatory nonsense written to deal with tank armies on the plains of central somewhere. It fails to partake of the relatively clear directive qualities of the above two cited FMs. Doctrine should set forth principles and precious little more.

Military Doctrine and Counterinsurgency: A British Perspective - Gavin Bulloch. Parameters article, Summer 1996. The experience of numerous "small wars" has provided the British army with a unique insight into this demanding form of conflict. Service in Northern Ireland has given the present generation of soldiers their main firsthand source of basic experience at the tactical level, but this also tends to constrain military thinking on the subject because of the national context and political connotations. There are of course many lessons to be learned because of the similarities between the campaign in Northern Ireland, which is designated as Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) and those counterinsurgency campaigns which may be conducted elsewhere. But there are also significant differences. Tactics such as jungle patrolling and convoy anti-ambush drills--which from the perspective of Northern Ireland seem to be relics of a colonial past--may be very relevant in a different operational setting.

Doctrine for Asymmetric Warfare - Colonel Clinton Ancker (USA - Ret.) and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Burke (USA Ret.). Military Review article, July - August 2003. While asymmetric warfare encompasses a wide scope of theory, experience, conjecture, and definition, the implicit premise is that asymmetric warfare deals with unknowns, with surprise in terms of ends, ways, and means. The more dissimilar the opponent, the more difficult it is to anticipate his actions. If we knew in advance how an opponent planned to exploit our dissimilarities, we could develop specific doctrine to counter his actions. Against asymmetric opponents, doctrine should provide a way to think about asymmetry and an operational philosophy that would take asymmetry fully into account.

Emerging Doctrine and the Ethics of Warfare - Dr. Tim Challans. US Army School of Advanced Military Studies. Military doctrines are often expressions of current practices. A doctrine will attempt to codify the practice, giving it a vocabulary and a set of concepts in order to help indoctrinate the practitioner more fully into abiding by that particular practice. The alignment of doctrine with the military’s training and practice makes doctrine very important, and this important doctrine business continues to grow, influencing in turn our training and practice. The joint world of the American military is articulating a doctrine that describes its current practice, and this doctrine is gaining momentum at such a rate that we will hardly notice when its unofficial status becomes official. This doctrine is referred to as the effects-based approach (EBA), and operations within this approach are called effects-based operations (EBO). As I intimated up front, we have been training and practicing along these lines for some time. The doctrine is going to formalize what we have developed informally. More and more commanders and headquarters across the services are adopting the language of this doctrine; the doctrine writers are working hard so that our doctrinal literature can keep pace with the development. I want to offer a critique of EBA by starting with my most important claim. The effects-based approach is morally bereft, and our moral challenges will only increase as we continue to embrace this doctrine. EBA lacks any moral quality because it fails in every sense as a theory. The theory of the effects-based approach rests on several mistakes, and I will deal with them in turn. EBA rests on metaphysical, epistemological, and logical mistakes. We should expect mostly mistakes as a result of a practice resting on a mistaken theory, for only by accident and not by design could anything good come out of it.

Campaign Planning: Tools of the Trade (2d Edition) - Dr. Jack Kem, US Army Command and General Staff College. This monograph is designed to be used as a handbook for initially developing campaigns at the US Army Command and General Staff College. This work provides working definitions of campaign concepts and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) for campaign planners. Key concepts included in this handbook include critical reasoning and creative thinking; ends, ways, and means; center of gravity analysis; developing distinct courses of action; logical lines of operations; targeting techniques; and wargaming.

The Need to Validate Planning Assumptions - Lieutenant Colonel Peter Woodmansee (USMC), Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Faulkner (USA) and Major Wayne Blanchette (USAF). Military Review article, January - February 2005. We need to rewrite the current joint definition and the planning doctrine on assumptions to stress the importance of continually validating assumptions. In addition, current doctrine needs to stress the importance of how to validate assumptions, and the joint community should address the following issues concerning planning assumptions. First, planners must address assumptions concerning U.S. access to a foreign country. Diplomatic considerations are crucially important given the expeditionary focus of the U.S. Armed Forces and the need for access to basing or overflight. Second, no formal mechanisms are in place early in the planning process for validating planning assumptions. We recommend using a validation matrix that provides a forcing function to visually focus planners’ intellectual energy to establishing assumptions and revisiting them. Third, planners should establish validation points for every assumption to test the assumption’s validity. We define a validation point as an event that directly affects an assumption the commander must validate or invalidate. Changes in such events require a revalidation of the assumption, branch plan, or change in the plan.

Fighting Terrorism and Insurgency: Shaping the Information Environment - Major Norman Emery (USA), Major Jason Werchan (USAF) and Major Donald Mowles, Jr. (USAF). Military Review article, January - February 2005. Over the past decade, various high profile terrorist groups have demonstrated a sound knowledge and coordinated use of information operations. Their ability to successfully achieve objectives by shaping their battlespace in the information environment, coupled with willingness to conduct nontraditional warfare, make them a significant threat to the United States. Although the initial Joint Publication (JP) 3-13, Joint Doctrine for Information Operations, addresses a traditional IO approach against conventional forces such as China or North Korea, it does not sufficiently consider nonstate threats such as terrorists and insurgents. The joint staff is currently updating JP 3-13 by incorporating the October 2003 revised Department of Defense (DOD) IO policy, informally known as the secretary of defense’s (SECDEF’s) “IO Roadmap.”3 To succeed in the new security environment, JP 3-13 must provide an IO approach that better defines and shapes operations in the information environment (IE) to enable victories over nonstate actors in the physical environment (PE).

United in Fact? A Critical Analysis of Intent and Perception in the Application of American and British Army Doctrine. - Major A. D. Firth, British Army. US Army School of Advanced Military Studies monograph, 2003. The primary research vehicle for this work was a survey conducted amongst American officers attending the US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, and UK Army officers at their Joint Service Command and Staff College, Watchfield. The study examined the two armies’ respective approaches to some fundamental components of operational design, asking whether their perspectives betrayed physical or conceptual foundations. The responses to this survey were set against the intent of respective doctrinal publications, the US Army Field Manual 3-0 and the British Army Doctrinal Publication 1, both of which are entitled Operations.

Use of the "Ethical Triangle" in Military Ethical Decision Making - Dr. Jack Kem, US Army Command and General Staff College. Public Administration and Management article, 2006 (Volume 11, No. 1). The United States Army's current doctrinal ethical decision making model is unsuited for current military operations and provides little basis for ethical challenges in military operations today. This paper describes the current doctrinal ethical decision making model and proposes a pragmatic model that integrates three approaches to ethics: principles based ethics, consequences based ethics, and virtues based ethics.

Lessons Unlearned: Somalia and Joint Doctrine - C. Kenneth Allard. Joint Force Quarterly article, Autumn 1995. As the Armed Forces prepare for new peacekeeping assignments, the lessons learned from operations in Somalia continue to have cutting-edge relevance. Some of those lessons were clearly learned and applied in Haiti, while others dominate planning for any Bosnian deployment. These specific insights are important for current and future operations, but our experience in Somalia also highlighted the enduring problem of effectively integrating joint operations. Despite the difficulties of working with the United Nations and coalition partners in a new, demanding class of missions, U.S. forces were beset by deficiencies in joint operations which persist ten years after passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act.1 The larger lesson of the book on which this article is based, Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned, is that we must forge closer links among three processes: the way we plan operations, the way we draw lessons from those operations, and the way we apply the lessons in formulating joint doctrine.

Cultural Intelligence and Joint Intelligence Doctrine - Lieutenant Commander John P. Coles, USN. Joint intelligence doctrine focuses too much on traditional adversaries in combat situations and does not adequately address issues of foreign culture. Current doctrine does not adequately direct the joint force commander’s (JFC) intelligence establishment to prepare estimates on the characteristic features of foreign peoples that includes items such as their civilizations, beliefs, and social institutions. In order to better support the commander across the range of military operations, we must expand joint intelligence doctrine to include cultural intelligence. To develop the best courses of action for mission success, the JFC must understand the cultures of the foreign groups with which he, his staff, and his forces will interact. In Iraq, U.S. leaders and forces must interact every day with all segments of the local population. Iraq is an obvious example, but operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, the Philippines, and Somalia highlight only a few of the many places where U.S. and U.S. led coalition forces have recently had troops, airmen, and sailors on the ground conducting operations. These operations included the local peoples in the joint operations area as well as foreign forces in coalitions.

An Adaptive Methodology for Developing Enemy Courses of Action - Dr. Jack Kem, US Army Command and General Staff College. Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (MIPB) article, Jan-March 2005. One of the key responsibilities of intelligence staff officers is the development of enemy courses of action (ECOAs) as part of the military decision making process (MDMP). As part of the wargaming process, it is essential that S2s develop at least two different ECOAs: the most likely ECOA and the most dangerous ECOA. These two products provide the realistic enemy for the wargaming process; however, the problem is that we have no standard methodology for developing ECOAs that is adaptable and assists in maintaining a "running estimate" of the enemy once operations begin. This article describes a methodology to address this shortfall.

Links for Further Research:

Joint Doctrine

US Army Doctrine and Training Publications

US Marine Corps Doctrine Publications

Navy Warfare Development Command

Air Force Doctrine Center

Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre (UK)