Officer of Engineers

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That Elusive Operational Concept
June 2001


By Col. David A. Fastabend


"What's wrong with this picture?" To answer this question, we look for a broken pattern: the unmatched color, the ill-fitting shape, the illogical shadow. If the variant breaks the pattern, we can readily solve such problems. It is far more difficult, however, to detect -- perhaps unwittingly -- what is "out of picture" rather than merely "out of place." When attempting to identify a missing element, our perceptions offer few clues, and the potential solutions are infinite. Such problems are difficult to detect, let alone solve.

Just this kind of undetected problem confronts us today. There is a missing element that handicaps our view of the future. It is our fundamental image of future combat: our operational concept. It may seem paradoxical to label as "missing" a term so prominent in the military media. Query the Internet for "operational concept," and your average search engine generates hundreds of responses, ranging from scores of Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) operational and organizational (O&O) concept documents to all the scenario summaries for the Mars Attacks! comic book series. Therein lies the problem: These documents lay equal claim to the title "operational concept." The term operational concept pervades the media as a colloquial expression but is sorely missing as a rigorous legitimate term of military art.

Although we lack a definition for this phrase, we do not lack enthusiasm. A typical reference breathlessly assures us that "mature combinations of advanced technologies and innovative operational concepts result in new military doctrine and organizational reconfigurations that have the potential to transform the military at its core, fundamentally altering the way U.S. forces conduct the full range of military operations."

Wow! -- but exactly what is an operational concept? What are its key characteristics? What makes for a good one? By the way, what is our operational concept? Although the phrase operational concept pervades our dialogue on future strategy and force structure, these questions go both unasked and unanswered.

It was not always so. That elusive operational concept is not undiscovered, merely lost. Napoleon, Grant, Rommel, MacArthur and many others understood operational concepts. We must rejoin their ranks.

OPERATIONAL CONCEPTS IN REVIEW
Lacking a rigorous definition, operational concepts are best described through a survey of historical examples. Writing in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings in 1915, Lt. Cmdr. Dudley W. Knox observed:

The army manuals of a first-class power are written by the general staff, which prepares itself for the task first by an exhaustive study of history and war, as well as of the material, political and other conditions which confront their country. From the results of this study is evolved a conception of war as it should in its opinion be best conducted. When this broad, comprehensive work of information and that of reflection is completed, and not before then, the general staff, having evolved its conception of war, formulates its fundamental major doctrines of war, which are made to flow logically from the reasoned conception.

As early as the eve of World War I, military observers understood that a fundamental conception of war should inform military thinking. Many of them had studied what Napoleon characterized as mon système: the approach movement over multiple routes, carefully calculated to converge at the decisive point at the decisive time, in a decisive battle, ideally astride an opponent's line of communications. The Napoleonic operational concept informed Robert E. Lee's quest for a battle of decision throughout our Civil War, but it was Grant's understanding of distributed warfare -- a series of battles distributed over vast distances and time, linked in the framework of an overarching campaign -- that proved to be a better match for the emerging era of industrial warfare.

The Europeans dismissed the American experience as butchery at the hands of amateurs. They developed idealizations of warfare that sought to meld the flexibility of Napoleon's approach with the classical flank and envelopment victories of antiquity. The essence of German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke's operational thinking featured meticulous deployment planning to support the approach on a broad front with the aim of destroying an opponent's field force. He emphasized maximum freedom of action to his subordinates, all of whom were trained to look for opportunities to effect large envelopments and encirclements. Von Moltke's success in the wars of German unification, as well as in the Franco-Prussian War, greatly colored German thinking in the run-up to World War I. Alfred von Schlieffen believed that "the flank attack is the gist of the entire history of war" and banked everything on it. With unfortunate intellectual disdain the British railed against "a cult of any particular form of action," and many advocated a "doctrine of no doctrine." French doctrine proclaimed, "The French Army recognizes no law save that of the offensive."

The German operational concept proved to be overreaching, and the Allies found that operational concepts -- or the lack thereof -- really do matter. Disaster ensued in the trenches of World War I. In the intellectual ferment of the interwar years, competing operational concepts shaped the debate. The Germans, shaken by their loss in World War I, developed both a methodology and an intellectual atmosphere conducive to reform. They first began to capture their operational logic in Army Regulation 487, Leadership and Battle With Combined Arms, in 1921. The German operational concept sought innovative means to integrate rapidly evolving combined arms capabilities into mobile formations, the primacy of tactical flexibility and independent action, and retention of the traditional German focus on Kesselschlacten -- battles of encirclement and annihilation. As the interwar debate unfolded, Hans von Seeckt strongly criticized the von Schlieffen School, restoring balance to the German operational concept by relaxing the focus on encirclement to include considerations of breakthrough, thereby completing the basis for blitzkrieg.

In the Soviet Union, the struggle for Soviet interwar military doctrine was a contest of operational concepts. Gen. Mikhail Tukhachevsky argued for widespread mechanization, a shift of the war to foreign territory and victory "with little blood and a powerful blow" to operationalize a strategy of destruction. Tanks were to be used en masse, and mechanized combined arms formations were expected to make deep penetrations to outflank and encircle enemy forces. Aleksandr A. Svechin argued for an operational concept that facilitated a strategy of attrition in which protracted wars would entail prolonged initial defensive operations characterized by withdrawals on multiple axes and supported by total mobilization of Soviet society. Operational concepts evolved rapidly as participants were drawn into the maelstrom of World War II. It was a war of such unprecedented scope that one single operational concept did not suffice.

In the Pacific theater, Gen. MacArthur developed an effective joint operational template wherein land forces established operational bases for the air and sea forces, which in turn extended umbrellas of sea and air superiority, thereby isolating the next land objectives for the amphibious invasion of land forces and the subsequent extension of the air and sea umbrella. The conditions of the European theater were totally dissimilar, and even within this theater several operational concepts were applied. The penetration concepts of German and late-war Soviet operations were balanced by the Allies' "broad front" approach on the Western Front. The Soviets entered the Cold War with a vast compendium of European Theater experience and a military-industrial society on a permanent war footing. They developed a robust operational concept characterized by the echelonment of units and formations. They employed first-echelon forces to create ruptures and breakthroughs, while succeeding echelons exploited the successes of the first echelons to execute high-speed multiroute advances to destroy or fix opposing forces. This conceptual framework effectively framed all Soviet doctrine, equipment and resourcing decisions.

After an abysmal experience with the pentomic division in the early years of the Cold War, the United States developed airmobile operations, an innovative operational concept for the employment of helicopters on the battlefield. It was highly effective in Vietnam, but it was applied against dau tranh, the comprehensive conception of war of the People's Army of Vietnam that integrated the political, economic, informational and military dimensions of conflict. Bereft of an effective theater strategy and operational campaign, the U.S. revolution in tactical mobility was not enough.

Although much of today's Army is familiar with the post-Vietnam development of Army doctrine, epitomized by the evolution of Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, there is less common understanding of the parallel evolution of operational concepts that underwrote this process. In the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, TRADOC Commander Gen. William DePuy advanced a debate arguing for the inherent superiority of the defense in modern war, the prospect of being outnumbered and outgunned, the new parity in opposing weapons and the superiority of the tank on the modern battlefield. The resultant operational concept of the active defense was the basis for the 1976 version of FM 100-5. Although the Army ultimately rejected the active defense as an operational concept, DePuy's work restored doctrine and FM 100-5 to primacy in Army thinking. In reaction to the active defense, a series of operational concepts emerged with a clear focus on heavy operations against a Soviet opponent in the European theater. From modern armor battle sprang the corps battle, the central battle, the integrated battlefield, the extended battlefield and, finally, AirLand Battle. The 1982 FM 100-5 explicitly presented its underlying operational concept as follows:

The Army's basic operational concept is called AirLand Battle doctrine. This doctrine is based upon securing or retaining the initiative and exercising it aggressively to defeat the enemy. Destruction of the opposing force is achieved by throwing the enemy off balance with powerful initial blows from unexpected directions and then following up rapidly to prevent his recovery. The best results are obtained with initial blows struck against critical units and areas whose loss will degrade the coherence of enemy operations, rather than merely against the enemy's leading formations.

In its joint application, the AirLand Battle operational concept encouraged commanders to see deep and attack deep with all available resources, using the joint capabilities of both the land and air forces. The 1982 version of FM 100-5 was the high-water mark of the overt, specific elucidation of an effective operational concept in Army doctrine. Although the 1986 version of FM 100-5 completed AirLand Battle through an emphasis on seizure and retention of the initiative, particularly through an operational reserve, the 1986 FM 100-5 and all subsequent versions have been mute in reference to the actual term operational concept.

THE OPERATIONAL CONCEPT TODAY
In light of this rich legacy, where is the operational concept today? Although Army capstone doctrine fell silent on the term after 1982, that did not signal its demise. In fact, there has been a veritable explosion in the proliferation of operational concepts. In the aftermath of Desert Storm, the U.S. military attributed much of its success to the efficacy of AirLand Battle doctrine, and this brought about increased attention to doctrine in the other services and the joint community. A capstone document in this doctrinal renaissance was Joint Vision (JV) 2010, which listed not one operational concept but four: precision engagement, dominant maneuver, full-dimensional protection and focused logistics. The Army's corresponding Army Vision 2010 very awkwardly attempted to show the correspondence of these four joint operational concepts to five patterns of operations: project the force, decisive operations, shape the battlespace, protect the force and sustain the force. Concept proliferation still continues unabated. There are umbrella concepts, functional concepts, capstone concepts, overarching concepts and integrating concepts.

Even the Joint Tactical Radio (JTR) operational requirements document touts an operational concept: "The JTR operational concept is to provide warfighters with digital radio communications throughout the battlespace." That uneasiness you are feeling is the realization that the only element of commonality in these operational concepts is that they have very little utility in helping us visualize the future of warfare. They are typically functional categorizations, useful for listing dimensions of the problem but virtually worthless in actually solving the problem. For over a decade there has been too much word processing and PowerPoint slide building, accompanied by far too little thinking and real debate. We have an irrepressible penchant to declare intellectual categorizations and invoke terminology, all blissfully unconstrained by the rigors of definition or potential utility. The consequence is that the more we communicate, the less we understand -- and we communicate quite a lot.

OPERATIONAL CONCEPTS: COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
Given this cursory review of operational concepts in recent military history and the present, what are its dominant characteristics?

An idealization of war.
It is hard to improve on Knox's 1915 description: A military power views an operational concept as "a conception of war as it should in its opinion be best conducted." The operational concept is the "Aha!" idea that answers the question "What is the current problem of warfare, and how do we solve it?" The operational concept is an image of combat: a concise visualization that portrays the strategic requirement, the adversary and his capabilities, and the scenario by which that adversary will be overcome to accomplish the strategic requirement. It is a governing idealization that addresses those activities necessary to link tactical activities in a purposeful way to address the goals of strategy. As an idealization, operational concepts are rarely realized in their actual application, but the extent to which the operational concept matches actual execution is closely correlated to strategic success.

A reflection of strategic context.
Operational concepts vary between nations and over time because they must reflect the wide range of strategic environments for those who would employ them. Svechin noted that "the great commanders, as with all successful practitioners, were first of all sons of their age. In the epoch of Napoleon, the techniques of Frederick the Great were utterly defeated, and now the application of the techniques for the Napoleonic epoch lead only to failure. Successful action most of all must be proper to its place and time, and therefore it must agree with the contemporary situation."

Roger Spiller has noted that "any armed force operates in accordance with a conception of war that has been formed as a consequence of its history, the state of military knowledge available at the time, the material and technical assets at hand, the objectives to which the force expects to be committed and, certainly not least, the caliber of those who must attempt to give it life in battle." Thus it was that Svechin, in light of the limited development of Soviet industry and its large population and territory, argued for an operational concept of attrition.

Strategic factors can vary widely even among allies in the same theater. The United States in the World War II European theater enjoyed vast superiority in strategic resources but was less confident of its operational and tactical prowess vis-à-vis the Germans. Gen. Eisenhower, consequently, favored a conservative broad-front approach. The British, on the other hand, their limited manpower bled white, favored a rapid end to the war via a single thrust. Whether the British actually enjoyed operational or tactical superiority was irrelevant to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who had a limitless capacity for self-confidence. In the end, the economic, political and even interpersonal challenges of maintaining the Anglo-American alliance carried the day for the broad-front operational concept.

A link among theory, strategic context and doctrine.
Although the strategic context is constantly evolving, military theory, such as the principles of war, is generally constant. Theory is not specific to a military force or nation. Military forces, however, must apply theory within a specific strategic context: their nation's economic strength, geopolitical position, culture, history and state of technological development. The operational concept filters theory through the lens of geopolitical circumstances, national culture, historical context and technology to frame a doctrine of war -- the codification of practice. An operational concept may or may not be explicitly set forth in doctrine, but it drives doctrine nonetheless. Doctrines that can demonstrate their basis in a clear and widely understood operational concept are far more effective than those that cannot.

A clear choice.
Most important, an operational concept comprises a fundamental choice: a clear decision that selects, from the endless array of potential approaches, the preferred technique for success. It is a specific articulation of the fundamental components of military action and the interdependence of those components. For Army operations in particular, an effective operational concept has a spatial dimension, a scenario that proposes how forces will be distributed in space and maneuver to positions of relative advantage. It is not merely a generic list of the various functional dimensions of military action. Many current operational concepts are afflicted in this way, offering fractal definitions that merely enumerate a list of subordinate operational concepts. If an operational concept can articulate how it differs from the idealization of war that came before it, all the better. Part of the genius of the 1982 AirLand Battle operational concept description was the simple phrase "rather than against the enemy's leading formations." That simple phrase spoke volumes: no more obligingly concentrating in the path of the Soviet breakthrough effort, no more pseudoscientific exchange ratios, no more "win the first battle." No more active defense.

A component of conflict.
Operational concepts are essential components of conflict because they compete with those of our adversaries. In actual combat, the competition of concepts rapidly accelerates. Operational experience pushes everyone up the learning curve, but winners tend to reinforce the status quo while losers accelerate the search for new solutions. In World War II, the results of the early German blitzkrieg victories diminished rapidly as the Allies got the measure of it.

Operational concepts compete in peacetime as well. Kimberly Marten Zisk defines reactive innovation as a major change in thinking about, and preparation for, future war that occurs because of a change in war thinking or preparation made by a potential opponent. This phenomenon was evident in the closing years of the Cold War as Soviet planners, assessing the efficacy of the U.S. AirLand Battle operational concept, increasingly emphasized operational maneuver groups as the antidote that could wrest the initiative from NATO's deep-attack assets. It is further evident today.

The success of AirLand Battle in Operation Desert Storm signals the probable demise of this form of operations, as potential adversaries eschew head-to-head confrontation and seek asymmetric means to engage U.S. forces. They are actively seeking anti-access strategies, means to ensure U.S. casualties and ways to engage the U.S. homeland, perhaps with weapons of mass destruction -- and so it goes. The war of operational concepts does not wait for the bullets to fly. It is ongoing every day, and therefore we can never rest, doomed to continual adaptation in pursuit of the operational concept that will best that of our adversaries.

OPERATIONAL CONCEPT CHALLENGES
As today's Army sets itself on a course for transformation and we are renewing our focus on the operational concept, several challenges loom:

Ideas matter.
First of all, the operational concept is fundamentally an idea, and ideas matter. Svechin put it succinctly: "In strategy, prophecy may only be charlatanism, and even a genius is incapable of seeing how a war will unfold. But he must put together a perspective in which he will evaluate the phenomena of war. A military leader needs a working hypothesis."

The operational concept, our working hypothesis, frames all developments in doctrine, organization, training, material acquisition and leader and soldier development. We have to get this right. We cannot assume that our current technological superiority will last or that, even if it endures, a technological edge will outweigh a competitive operational concept. The decisive German victory over the British and French in 1940 cannot be attributed to superiority in technology, equipment or numbers. The German advantage was in their operational concept and the training of their forces in accordance with that concept. With the British wading through the surf at Dunkerque and his own army in collapse, the French army chief of staff was called before his prime minister to account for his failure. Gen. Maurice-Gustave Gamelin blamed "our very conception of war."

Ideas matter, and joint ideas matter the most. The Army's operational concept must be subordinated to a joint operational concept. The challenge here is doubly daunting because we must not only put forth a good idea but also must first throw out a bad one. The bad idea is that the current Joint Vision (JV) 2020 list of operational concepts -- precision engagement, dominant maneuver, full-dimensional protection and focused logistics -- constitutes a coherent operational concept. It does not. A list of concepts is not an image of future combat; they offer no real choice. Therein lies the challenge for a real joint operational concept, for the history of U.S. joint cooperation has been one of peaceful coexistence rather than the hard delineation of interdependent roles. That is why in Joint Vision 2010 and JV 2020, we find it more comfortable to pretend that four nonintegrated operational concepts, vaguely correlated to the primary functions of various services, are preferable to a solid assignment of specific service roles.

Debates matter.
Because ideas matter, good ideas cause good debates. Without debates, in fact, good ideas may fail. It is no exaggeration to state that the quality of the AirLand Battle operational concept and associated doctrine had its origins in the debates induced by the ultimately rejected 1976 active defense concept. The absence of internal debate of the pentomic concept, handed down by fiat of Headquarters, Department of the Army, was a significant factor in its failure. Debates are the crucible wherein ideas are refined, accepted or rejected. Debates identify flaws and generate consensus. Absence of debate is a warning sign, a signal that a real idea has not been put forward, that a real choice has not been proposed, that there is really nothing worth arguing about.

Svechin and Tukhachevsky dominated the interwar attrition/annihilation debate during a remarkable interlude in Soviet military thought when ideas mattered and debate was acceptable. Although both participants perished as Stalin's purges closed out this era on the eve of World War II, they both found historical justification. Trading casualties and space for time, the Russians blunted the German onslaught with Svechin's attrition approach until total mobilization made practicable the mechanized army that could execute Tukhachevsky's deep-battle operational concept. Their debate brought balance to doctrine, enabling the Soviets to adjust their operations to strategic realities. Debates defeat dogma. Pre-World War I German military planners, driven by an operational concept hinged on strategic envelopment, convinced their political leaders to ignore Belgium's neutrality in order to facilitate an end run around French defenses. This turned the relationship between war and politics on its head, with unfortunate strategic consequences. Operational concepts that are unchallenged to the point of dogma can bring catastrophe.

Clarity matters.
Debates matter, but they are not possible if the disputed ideas lack clarity. It would be disingenuous to propose that the numerous concepts described in this article were originally articulated with equal clarity. The truth is that some of these concepts are recognizable only through the lens of historical retrospect. They were not equally apparent to planners and practitioners at the time. In some cases, the operational concept was widely understood, but in others it was not. Every military force is shaped by an operational concept, consciously or unconsciously. Consciously is better. It is not enough if the composite elements of an effective operational concept are unrecognizably buried in doctrine. We have noted that the 1982 FM 100-5 was the last capstone Army manual to cite explicitly an operational concept. Yet a very similar passage was in the 1986 FM 100-5, Operations:

AirLand Battle doctrine describes the Army's approach to generating and applying combat power at the operational and tactical levels. It is based on securing or retaining the initiative and exercising it aggressively to accomplish the mission. The object of all operations is to impose our will on the enemy -- to achieve our purposes. To do this, we must throw the enemy off balance with a powerful blow from an unexpected direction, follow up rapidly to prevent his recovery and continue operations aggressively to achieve the higher commanders' goals. The best results are obtained when powerful blows are struck against critical units or areas whose loss will degrade the coherence of enemy operations in depth and, thus, most rapidly and economically accomplish the mission. From the enemy's point of view, these operations must be rapid, unpredictable, violent and disorienting. The pace must be fast enough to prevent him from taking effective counteractions.

This statement omits the reference to the phrase "operational concept" and expands the 1982 language. Its legacy in the 1982 manual, however, is indisputable. Then in the 1993 FM 100-5, buried within the combined arms discussion, we have:

Modern combined arms warfare puts added stress on maintaining dispersed and noncontiguous formations. Army forces overwhelm the enemy's ability to react by synchronizing indirect and direct fires from ground and air-based platforms; assaulting with armor, mechanized, air assault and dismounted units; jamming the enemy's communications; concealing friendly operations with obscurants; and attacking from several directions at once. The goal is to confuse, demoralize and destroy the enemy with the coordinated impact of combat power. The enemy cannot comprehend what is happening; the enemy commander cannot communicate his intent, nor can he coordinate his actions. The sudden and devastating impact of combined arms paralyzes the enemy's response, leaving him ripe for defeat.

To compare these operational concept-like statements end to end -- from 1982 through 1986 to 1993 -- is to see an Army that is progressively "losing it." Each attempt at the articulation of an operational concept is progressively more vague, more jargonized and more compromised by genuflection to the Army's numerous stakeholders. Our 1982 "Army" becomes in 1993 "armor, mechanized, air assault and dismounted units." Our 1982 "blows" become in 1993 "indirect and direct fires from ground and air-based platforms." One can discern the logical lineage of the ideas, but not one in 10 officers would be able to locate the U.S. Army operational concept in the 1986 manual, and not one in 100 would be able to in the 1993 version. Ironically, the 1993 statement tells us that "the goal is to confuse" -- mission accomplished!

We must have clarity. Without clarity there is no idea and no meaningful debate. The first step is to establish some rigor for the definition of an operational concept. The term is absent from Joint Publication 1-02, The DOD Dictionary of Military Terms. Technically, the Army once defined the term. Writing in his Commanders Notes, No. 3 in February 1979, TRADOC Commander Gen. Donn Starry stated:

All professions have vocabularies of professional terms. Over time, many such terms become establishment "in-words" and are so ill-used that their original meaning is lost. Often it is only necessary to use the words to evoke affirmative head nodding; even though no meaning is conveyed, everyone professes to understand what is meant... Among them is the word concepts... There is visible nodding of heads when the word concept is used. However, it is apparent that the word means different things to all too many of us... I have the impression that concepts are being created, not to describe the Central Battle, but to justify some individual weapon or other system... If this is true, we have got the concept of concepts just exactly backwards.

Starry went on to define the operational concept as "a description of military combat, combat support and combat service support systems, organizations and tactical training systems necessary to achieve a desired goal" and added that "concepts are and must be the first agreed-upon part of any project."

Although this definition of the operational concept never migrated from Starry's Commander's Note to doctrine, TRADOC has published scores of Organizational and Operational (O&O) concepts since 1979. TRADOC O&O concepts generally do well at addressing the complete range of combat, combat support and combat service support systems. These are the charters of the various branch schools, and our branch schools weigh in with abandon. The result, however, is that most TRADOC O&O concepts are tomes of many pages that overlook Gen. Starry's explanatory comment that "a draft concept statement should be brief, a page or two." We generally omit a concise, elegant super synopsis that describes our conception of war as it should be best conducted.

Brevity is the soul of clarity, and there is an acute shortage of brevity in our current thinking. We can easily understand why. The means of combat have expanded dramatically over the last several decades. Armies must now account for a full spectrum of operations, with diverse employment roles. An army with global responsibilities, like ours, must envision operations in a vast array of environments. Add to all this the fact that ground forces operate meaningfully only within the context of a robust joint operation, and the challenge is daunting indeed. Can one operational concept suffice? Even in World War II, U.S. forces exercised fundamentally different operational concepts in the Pacific and European theaters. If clarity matters, then much thought must go into balancing brevity, specificity and scope to depict the image of combat for an Army facing such an ambiguous future.

Resources matter.
There is a common thread linking the history of operational concepts: Resources matter. The British had a rich reservoir of interwar thinkers -- Fuller, Liddell Hart, Martel and others -- but they did not garner resources for their ideas. Even once developed, operational concepts must be fielded and embedded in the force through training. Operational concepts require widespread understanding, the kind that cannot be put together on the fly. Gunther Roth's ("Operational Thinking in Schlieffen and Manstein") account of the French response to the German blitzkrieg in 1940 illustrates this peril:

The French wanted to block the breakthrough head-on, as they had done in the first world war, so as to crush the attacker with artillery fire. Just when they tried to cut off the German panzer wedges, which had pressed far forward, by counterattacking in the flank of the breakthrough corridor, they realized that they had no instructions, no means of communication. Their staffs were not trained in this kind of operational employment of mechanized forces because, so far, it had not even been played through in map exercises.

The Germans sliced through the Ardennes in 1940. However, in 1944 the Wehrmacht was at a fraction of its previous personnel and material readiness. German air superiority was nonexistent; ammunition and fuel shortages were severe, and training levels were substandard. Resourcing tipped the balance between success and failure during the Battle of the Bulge.

Today's austere resource environment is crippling. Outside observers may encourage the Department of Defense to "create slack for innovation," but such slack is not on the horizon. In today's constrained resource environment, each service must compete to show its relative worth to national security, and experiments are not allowed to fail. Experiments become demonstrations doomed to success. The real test is deferred to the crucible of war.

Leaders matter.
For good or bad, operational concepts are typically associated with key leaders. Schlieffen had no personal confidence in the ability of a modern industrial society to sustain protracted war and, in the pursuit of a rapid decisive victory, developed an almost maniacal focus on the Cannae-like flank envelopment writ large: the strategic envelopment. This focus, together with his legendary powers of persuasion and influence, shaped German operational thinking even beyond his deathbed. Von Seeckt ruefully remarked: "Cannae; no other catchword has been as disastrous for us as this one." Von Seeckt himself, on the other hand, offers a more positive example. As the commander of the German Army in the wake of World War I, he fostered reforms and debates that shaped the foundations of blitzkrieg. Operational concepts need leaders who recognize ideas that matter, refine those ideas through effective debate, distill them with clarity and bring resources to their implementation.

Getting the picture.
"What's wrong with this picture?" We lack the picture itself. The term operational concept has been hijacked and colloquialized. At the joint level, pseudoconcepts occupy the place of something far more important -- a real visualization of the future of joint combat. Some service proponents seek to fill the vacuum by advancing self-serving ideas under the rubric of potential operational concepts, and some professional defense critics advance ideas that are downright silly. Everyone is looking for the big picture.

The Army has never been in a better position to fill in the big picture. Having set its course for transformation to the objective force, the Army senior leadership understands the value of an operational concept and has expended tremendous institutional effort in its development. All the elements of a truly revolutionary operational concept are at hand: strategic responsiveness and maneuver on unprecedented time lines, the bypassing of traditional seaport and airhead choke points, Army-wide vertical envelopment capabilities, fighting noncontiguously over vast areas, decisive close combat that directly engages enemy decisive points and centers of gravity -- the width and breadth of change is unprecedented. The challenge that remains is simply the articulation, the picture.

The Army must distill this tremendous effort into a clear message that informs the joint operational concept and shapes our continued transformation efforts. The Army's picture of future war is intuitively obvious to those who have immersed themselves in this effort for the last two years, but it consistently eludes those who restrict their military education to what they read on the Washington Metro every morning. If we do not offer a simple, clear picture of how we will fight, our concept will be supplanted by simpler, narrower images that are easy to sell but impossible to execute. A good picture beats a good concept every time. We can have both; the future demands it.


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COL. DAVID A. FASTABEND is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He received master's degrees in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Military Art and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

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Copyright © 2004 by The Association of the U.S. Army Back

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