Officer of Engineers

Sir,

FM 3.0 - OPERATIONS - By far, this is the most important document in the USArmy. It details the strategic intent. Without this document as a reference, the rest of the articles would be of little use.

FM 3-06 URBAN OPERATIONS

FM 3-06.11 -COMBINED ARMS OPERATIONS IN URBAN TERRAIN

FM 3-21.38 PATHFINDER OPERATIONS, 01 OCT 2002 , SS FM 57-38

Stryker Bde Field Manuals also known as the Interim Brigade Combat Team. These FMs provide the basis to which the OBJECTIVE FORCE is the derive from. Since the OBJECTIVE FORCE is still in development and thus still alot of theory, the Stryker Bde provides the practical insight to their effectiveness.

I will use this thread to provide further articles.

__________________
Chimo

Officer of Engineers

Please refer to this link for the following articles

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/engl...3/indxja03.asp

Proper file viewers can be accessed through here

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/viewers.asp

Ray

Colonel,
Thanks. Good articles.

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Officer of Engineers

Sir,

You might be extremely interested in Ethics and the New War by Dr. Ignatieff.

I disagree with the doctor in that we are constraint by our ethics as warriors. On the contrary, we hold the upper hand. The terrorist can see us coming and there's nothing they can do to stop us, even hiding behind women and children.


Canadian Military Journal

Vol. 2, No. 4 Winter 2001

Ray

Thanks.



:TY!

Officer of Engineers

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'If I Had It To Do All Over Again, I'd...'
March 2001


By Col. Kevin C. M. Benson


So there I was, standing with my wife and daughter on the concrete division patch on the parade field. The change of command ceremony was over, and all the folks in the reviewing stand were going to meet the new commander. Clichés whirled through my mind: "Hero to Zero" and "Just another [expletive deleted] LTC!" I just spent two wonderful years in battalion command, and now it was over. So, since I faced a permanent change of station (PCS) move in a few weeks anyway, I decided to write about what went on during my command, a personal after-action report.

The after-action review (AAR) process is so ingrained in us by now that the questions came to mind easily: What had we accomplished, where had I failed, and what could I have done better? The purpose of this essay is not self-aggrandizement or a public mea culpa. The Army allows most of us command only once as lieutenant colonels. Once we complete that one chance at command, I believe, it is incumbent upon us to share ideas, pratfalls and the like with those who will follow us.

So, if I had it to do all over again...

I'd restate the command philosophy every six months; restate the guidance to staff members every six months; restate the delegation of authority to the executive officer (XO), staff officer for operations (S-3), command sergeant major (CSM) and operations sergeant major (OPS SGM) every six months.

The personnel turnover in our battalion, and I suppose most others, was between 5 and 8 percent per month. It took me till my last six months in command to realize we had at least a 30-percent fill of new troopers every six months. In our Army's history and doctrine units, 30-percent losses are considered combat-ineffective and taken off the line.

To ensure that your command philosophy lives within the outfit, you must repeat your philosophy to the troopers and leaders on a regular basis. It goes without saying, too, that you must also live the philosophy.

Building on a previous tour as a regimental executive officer, I had also written staff guidance. Throughout the two years of command, I had five staff officers for personnel (S-1s), three personnel and administrative center noncommissioned officers-in-charge (PAC NCOICs), two staff officers for intelligence (S-2s), two S-3s, four staff officers for logistics (S-4s), two signal officers (SIGOs) and three battalion maintenance officers (BMOs). We also had a captain in the S-3 section only once, for four months. Given similar turbulence in the life cycle of any battalion because of PCS, resignation, other jobs -- aide-de-camp, brigade (headquarters and headquarters company) (HHC) XO -- you need to restate staff guidance, if you have given any, every six months. In a battalion you must reinforce that the staff works for the company commanders. The guidance then tells the staff what constitutes a crisis, your particular critical information requirements and how you want them to operate vis-à-vis the company commanders and brigade staff. The enforcement function involves issuing and reissuing the guidance at a command and staff meeting in the presence of the company commanders.

In the two years of command, our battalion had three XOs, two CSMs, two S-3s and only one OPS SGM, who also served as the CSM for two months. There was, is and always will be some confusion when new senior battalion leaders come into the rhythm of battalion life. Given the turnover of personnel, staff turbulence and company changes of command, again I recommend that the commander restate the senior leader's authority and zones of action every six months. Delegation of authority is best done in person and in the presence of both the leader who will receive it and the folks with whom the battalion senior leader will work. You would do well to tell your fellow battalion commanders, brigade commander and staff what the zones of action are and on what matters these leaders can take decisions in your name.

The magic point, again upon reflection, is restating staff guidance every six months. Your message and vision, stated in your command philosophy, will then take root in the battalion because your longer service troopers will hear it repeated time and again as the new troopers hear it for the first time.

Upon assuming command I quickly learned that the platoon leaders in the outfit thought that if they moved their platoons, our battalion budget would break and they would get blamed. I was amazed. I immediately required all the companies to push platoons out into training areas every week even if it was out the back gate. What I failed to do was put my finger into every company commander's chest, and those of my S-3s, to ensure that they really heard what I said.

The toughest part of command, and I assume that this applies everywhere given the perceived and real operating tempo of the Army, is the fact that while we always have time for consideration of others' training or for hosting a neighborhood school or the local Special Olympics, we can never seem to find time to train for war-related tasks. I realize that is a bold statement; I also realize that all of the activities I mentioned are worthwhile. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, we will all acknowledge that the activity that gets canceled quickest is training, other than scheduled major events like gunner training. This is easy advice to give but tough to execute. Push platoons out the back gate, and do not take excuses at all. When the alert comes, no one will care how well you accomplished the red-cycle tasks. Write the training schedule first, and then let the CSM and the first sergeants figure out how we will take care of the battalion police area. I did not do a good job in this area, and this leads to the second point.

I tried to visit at least one company training meeting a week -- emphasize tried. Our young company commanders all believe that what they put on the training schedule is not worth the paper we use to produce it. I heard this argument for two years. I tried to teach the commanders that if they would go through the effort of really applying the military decision-making process (MDMP) to training meetings, they would reinforce the MDMP in their heads and the heads of the lieutenants and would have real on-the-shelf training packages developed if their training were canceled or diverted by higher headquarters. This effort on their parts would also give me the ammunition to show brigade or division the cost of the latest good idea or late-tasking. Sadly, this was a fight I lost. You must visit training meetings. Insist they be run to standard and in accordance with Field Manual (FM) 25-100. Be ruthless about it. You don't want to go to the staff officer for operations (G-3) meetings anyway.

Tied to going to training meetings and being ruthless about training, if I had it to do all over again, I would insist that the companies, HHC especially, in the battalion fire small arms more often. Our troopers joined the Army to fire weapons and blow things up. We hear that small-arms training is individual training and, therefore, sergeants' business. I say, "So what!" Empower the NCOs through FM 25-100 enforcement to plan for, forecast and then execute the training. All of us have driven past miles of unused ranges.

The larger problem here is dealing with G-3 and Range Control. In my experience these folks are not that hard to work with. This does not mean at the last minute grab a range. You'll never get ammunition that way unless you cache it in the motor pool. I do not recommend that as a course of action, by the way.

Scheduling of target practice can be done through close coordination with the people in G-3 and Range Control. Go to their offices and share a cup of coffee. Take some doughnuts, and I guarantee you will always have a sympathetic ear and advocate in that staff section. If I were going into command, the first question I would ask my master gunner is whether he knew the names of the key players in Range Control and then ask him to take the CSM and me to meet them. It is worth the time spent.

As to platoon leader notebooks, I am not sure when we got away from the great idea that platoon leaders should carry notebooks. I carried one when I was a platoon leader. I knew all sorts of things, from my troopers' wives' names to shoe sizes of platoon members, to Trooper Smith's last leave. I am sure one could do all of that now with a Palm Pilot. The point is I was not ruthless enough in ensuring that the platoon leaders learned that essential part of taking care of soldiers. They were all quick to learn that taking care of soldiers meant getting time off. The real hard part was the face-to-face counseling requirement, how to build a case against the inevitable dud through painstaking counseling and recording of that counseling, the part of taking care of soldiers that meant making them clean their weapons to standard and getting all the mud off the tanks before leaving the motor pool. Having read a few books about war, I tried to convince the lieutenants that "I'm okay, you're okay" is not appropriate when you must lead soldiers into fire. The notebook came to mean an investment in personal leadership, the kind of leadership we still must have in the digital age.

Likewise, I kept a journal when I was a company commander; I've kept a journal most of my career. When I was a company commander, the staff judge advocate (SJA) at Fort Polk, La., told me journals were admissible as memory aids in courts-martial. Over time this journal grew into a collection of what I wanted to do when I was an S-3, XO or in command of a battalion. It served to remind me how tough it was when planning for training was a little on the shoddy side. Part of commanding is preparing those young company commanders to become battalion commanders.

If I had it to do all over again, I would encourage my commanders to record their daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and lessons learned as they watch lieutenant colonels, colonels and flag officers operate. They will watch, think, write and retain these lessons for later on in their careers.

If I had it to do over again, I'd make time for staff and command photographs, take time for more officer professional development sessions, take time to explain the why of standards, missions and tasks. Anyone who served in Germany during the Cold War remembers the walls covered with photographs of previous commanders and staffs. You could track the career of some of those men as they went from platoon leader to company commander, then after some years went back as the S-3 or even commander. We took the time to build a history of those who served before we did, as well as a record of accomplishments. Right now in my memorabilia I have candid photographs of my officers, yet while we tried, we never got around to actually taking the command and staff photograph. I heartily recommend that anyone going into command take the time to do this. This priceless record of the officers and soldiers who served in the outfit will help you build esprit de corps.

Officer professional development sessions -- sure, those were on the training schedule so the inspector general (IG) could see them. We had these in our battalion, but now I wish I would have had more of them. I mean both more of them with more of a focus on battalion-level problem solving -- interpersonal, tactical, technical and conceptual. I should have conducted more of these to train young officers in the battalion to understand how I operated and expose them to how I made decisions. I do not mean "my way or the highway" but, rather, as a means of exposing young officers to the concerns of battalion-level command as opposed to company-level command. This will broaden the experiences of the younger officers and allow them to incorporate parts of how you and others operate. The better we prepare the younger officers, the better off our Army will be later on. What if you do leave command and the junior second lieutenant does end up in command of the battalion?

I spent lots of time explaining the why of actions we performed. At times I found this extremely annoying, but I realized that the better the officers, NCOs and troopers understood what we were doing, the better off the execution would be in the long run. I recommend that those going into battalion command spend time explaining the reasoning behind standards, such as why it is necessary to make sure that everyone running on Battalion Avenue wears a reflective vest, even when running in formation. This one is relatively easy, yet someone out there at some time will have to explain a really hard issue. Explaining the why is powerful, and I recommend all commanders take the time to do this. Gen. Baron von Steuben allegedly said of American soldiers at Valley Forge that they performed best when they understood the reason for action.

If I had it to do over again, I'd listen to the music the troopers enjoy, do new-guy briefings sooner, have the command financial specialist really brief me on what he does, be more careful with e-mail and take more time to explain a career path and what a career means.

The music our troopers listen to is important. Rap is mostly incomprehensible to me, but I tried to discern the words and feelings behind the words to get a picture of how to motivate the young troopers we have in today's Army. The same goes with Spanish lyrics. The CSM had to translate for me. What the troopers listen to gives clues to behaviors to encourage or discourage. Showing an interest also demonstrates to the troopers that the big Army is their Army, as well. Indeed it was our Army. You might also discover some pretty good rock and roll.

I strongly recommend that any incoming commander talk to his officers about e-mail. Indeed you owe it to yourself to think about what you write and to whom you send it. A part of my AAR was a series of pictures of a Fort Hood tank mishap. We knew about it because we were there at the time. My point was that I had not received these pictures from my fellow battalion commander at Fort Hood but from friends all around the world. Open communication is essential to supporting reasoned debate within the service. It can also be very dangerous, as you cannot call back a message written in the passion of the moment once you hit the send button. As we all mature and gain experience in this electronic information age, I am sure this challenge will diminish. Until then, however, emphasize to your officers, think before you send.

My final recommendation is to take the time to explain what a career is and how to map one out. This covers both the "how to deal with branch" topic as well as why we serve. I had five captains leave the service while I was in command, each one a valuable member of the battalion. Altruism wears thin at times, especially in the face of friends on the outside making "big bucks." Today's Army places large demands on young captains and expects a great deal from them. We senior officers must reinforce to these great young officers what I hope they want to hear, that is, the value of their service and the excitement of facing the challenges we give them. It is our task as battalion commanders to point out the rewards, especially the intangible ones.

We all want to leave a legacy; that is human nature. Your true command legacy is what the unit does and how well it performs after you have gone. The other part of your legacy is how well people who have been touched by your leadership style accomplish missions after they work for or with you.

My purpose in writing this article was to share some of my own shortcomings with those going into command. "If I had it to do all over again, I'd..." is a common theme among fiction writers, but we never get that chance. I hope that by pointing out my own shortcomings, I can light the paths of the men and women who follow me into that great job in the Army, command at the battalion level.


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COL. KEVIN C.M. BENSON commanded 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, at Fort Hood, Texas, from April 1998 to May 2000. He is now the director of plans at the Transformation of the Army Brigade Coordination Cell at Fort Lewis, Wash. Col. Benson has served in armor and cavalry units in the United States and Germany and as the chief of plans of XVIII Airborne Corps and Third U.S. Army.

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

Officer of Engineers

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Classical Fire Support vs. Parallel Fires
April 2001


By Lt. Col. Robert R. Leonhard


The captain peered through his binoculars and scowled.
"Papa three six, alpha one one. Immediate suppression. Over."
"Papa three six. Immediate suppression. Out."
"Bravo victor 48613288. Troops in wood line; at my command. Over."
"Bravo victor 48613288. Troops in wood line; at your command. Out."
"HE delay. Over."
"HE delay. Out."
"Direction 088 ... fire!"
"Direction 088 ... shot. Over."

Way back when, I used to be able to integrate artillery fires with the maneuver of my mechanized infantry company team. No longer. The kind of precise control and coordination of fires depicted above is a thing of the past. We have replaced classical fire support with a system of parallel fires. Our Army's fire-support doctrine and practice has migrated in the course of the last 15 years, and much has been gained and lost as a result. We must now determine whether the gains outweigh the losses.

In the early 1980s, the Army employed a doctrine that I shall refer to as classical fire support. The direct support artillery in a brigade combat team existed to fire in support of maneuver task forces and companies. The system was simple: The brigade commander designated a main effort, typically a battalion task force. Normally, that task force commander was assigned priority of fires. The task force commander would plan his concept of operations and designate three or four priority targets along his expected route of advance. As the task force advanced, the artillery would lay on the next priority target when not otherwise engaged. Hence, the main-effort commander could order immediate responsive fires within seconds.

Fire-control radio nets were voice networks, sometimes encrypted, sometimes not. Although the encrypted nets occasionally restricted accessibility, the commander could nevertheless rely on fairly easy access to his fire-support teams (FSTs), fire support officer (FSO) and even to the fire detection center (FDC) itself, if necessary. When the mission called for it, the maneuver commander could direct shell and fuze combinations and control the lanyard pull for precise timing of fires.

Under this system of classical fire support, the maneuver commander was the judge of what would be fired. He could unleash a barrage on a suspected enemy position in a wood line, if he felt it was necessary to facilitate the advance of his maneuver units. On the defense, battalion and company commanders were trained to adjust their close supporting fires, including the frightening and devastating final protective fire, so that those fires were intimately tied to the ground maneuver plan.

All this is ancient history. Our doctrine no longer emphasizes close coordination between task forces and fires, and the technology and the tactics, techniques and procedures we employ in the field absolutely banish the maneuver commander from the now-mysterious world of fire support. Our new doctrines may work better than classical fire support, but this is by no means proven.

To understand today's dilemma, we must first understand why our fire-support doctrine changed. The forces that combined to destroy classical fire support were the advent of AirLand Battle, technology advances and the culture of the artillery branch.

One of the best things that ever happened to the U.S. Army over the past several decades was the advent of AirLand Battle. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Army was contemplating the problem of the central battle in Europe. Close studies of the potential battle between the Warsaw Pact and NATO revealed a horrifying conclusion: We could not win -- at least not if we allowed Soviet echelonment and mass to hit us on the enemy's time schedule. Even if we had a really great day of battle and all the intangibles and incalculables went our way, we would eventually lose. We needed a way to extend the fight deep into the enemy's rear.

AirLand Battle was a concept that had as its centerpiece the concept of deep battle and eventually deep operations. The idea was that, rather than wait passively for Soviet echelonment to overwhelm us, we would instead extend the violence deep into the enemy's vitals, finding and destroying critically important targets to slow, disrupt and wear down the enemy before it could close on us with its mass.

To accomplish this deep fight, we had to develop new ways of planning and controlling our fire-support assets. Traditional fire support relied on a simple maneuver-based concept of "detect, decide, deliver": The maneuver commanders would detect a threat; then they and the fire supporters would decide to engage the threat; finally, they would deliver the fires. This method works in close battle but not in a deep fight.

We discovered that to prevail in deep battle, we could not wait passively to detect something. To do so would put the initiative in the hands of the enemy and would structure our fire support upon accidentally finding the enemy. Instead, we chose to revise our doctrine for the deep fight according to the idea of decide, detect, deliver: We would decide which targets in the enemy's array would give us the best payoff; then we would go after them with our collection assets (radars, Special Forces, reconnaissance aircraft and so forth); finally, we would destroy the target. The means of destruction in AirLand Battle's deep fight was primarily the U.S. Air Force, with some participation from Army aviation, missiles, rockets and some long-range tube artillery.

It was an ingenious system that worked. As we perfected the art of the deep fight, we structured our equipment, doctrine, organization and training toward more efficient operations. The deep fight would begin with a careful analysis of the enemy's order of battle. A high-payoff target list (HPTL) described the most critical targets in the enemy's array. The fire-support planners would then develop target selection standards and an attack guidance matrix to ensure the most efficient use of fires. The system worked very well.

Then something terrible, yet virtually unnoticed by most of us, happened: Deep battle doctrine was imported into the close battle, a doctrinal disaster from which we have never recovered.

The decide, detect, deliver concept does not work in close battle for several reasons. The most important point to understand about deep-battle doctrine is that it does not matter who finds the target. As long as the radar or soldier who found the target is reliable, we can engage the enemy and achieve our desired results. In deep battle, the only important issue is the nature of the target itself.

In the close fight, however, the question of who finds the target is the most important issue. Hence, if the main-effort battalion commander desires to fire upon a single antitank guided-missile team, then that target is more important than the 20 main battle tanks spotted by the supporting effort's task force scouts. This is true because the defeat mechanism in the close fight is getting the main-effort unit into the enemy's rear where it can cause confusion, disruption and defeat. That is called maneuver warfare.

In maneuver warfare, we attempt not to destroy the entire enemy force but to render most of it irrelevant. We do this by getting tanks and infantry into the enemy's rear, where they can overrun artillery, supplies and headquarters. Most often, maneuver units infiltrate the rear by attacking through weakness and massing fires on that weak spot to speed other units through the enemy's lines.

If artillery, supplies and headquarters are the targets, why not just use fires instead of maneuver? In fact, that is the script of battle simulations and war games. These fictional scenarios and the doctrines developed from them, however, fail to replicate the moral dimension of warfare. In real battle, conflicts do not end with complete destruction of an enemy force. More often, the destruction level is about 10 percent or less, followed by a moral collapse or weakening. Thus, most successful battles end with retreats, surrenders or routs. The role of maneuver forces is to facilitate, exploit and multiply that phenomenon. Indirect fire cannot take prisoners or hold a piece of terrain.

As a maneuver commander, I do not want my FSO showing up with an HPTL in hand. That list of targets indicates that the FSO is serving two masters and has intentions beyond putting fires where I want them. In the close fight, there are no such things as high-payoff targets. In their place we have a main effort, and everything opposing it should be the priority targets, regardless of the threat type.

It is clear that our forces have lost capability in the integration of fires and maneuver that underpin maneuver warfare. In place of classical fire support, there is a system I call parallel fires.

The current system is parallel because the maneuver system and the fires are operating in the same direction and seeking the same goal, but they are not working together. Modern close combat, American-style, features two groups of people both trying to beat up the bad guys. Yet like two parallel lines, they never intersect. If a fire mission happens to aid a ground movement, it is a coincidence. Maneuver commanders cannot make it happen intentionally.

Today, digital fire control nets have utterly banished the maneuver commander from the mysterious world of fire support. Tactical fire-detection system and the advanced field artillery tactical data system have increased the efficiency of parallel fires while rendering tactical synchronization impossible. The old days of time-on-target fire missions closely supervised and coordinated by the ground commander have been replaced by the greater mass of parallel fires. Most maneuver commanders today do not understand artillery as their predecessors did, and most no longer even try to coordinate artillery fires with maneuver. It is common practice today to allow the fire support coordinator and FSOs to control FSTs. Battalion and company commanders often totally lose control over what their FSTs are doing.

As a mechanized infantry battalion S-3, I remember sitting in my Bradley turret looking south toward the Whale Gap and seeing the enemy's AT5s sitting on a little hilltop plinking away at our tanks. I called on both the fires net and the command net to the FSO but could not get him to respond. I leaped from my Bradley fighting vehicle, climbed onto his vehicle and pulled him up through the cargo hatch. He had a combat vehicle crewman mask on and a handset/headset jammed into each ear. After disconnecting him from his web of communications gear, I pointed to the AT5s and shouted, "Fire that now!" Eventually, we brought serious fires down on them, but I thought it was absurd how unresponsive the fires were.

Another illustration of the disconnect between maneuver and fires is the infamous fire support rehearsal. I sat through one once and will never do so again. I sat up all night next to my FSO while the fire support coordinator (FSCOORD) choreographed a perfect parallel-fires scenario over the radio net. It took hours. Basically the FSCOORD worked his way down the HPTL and assigned FSTs to fire the target list. I was aghast -- a fire-support system divorced from the reality of maneuver, with the FSTs clearly taking their cues from the artillery chain of command.

It may well be that parallel fires actually work better than classical fire support. It depends in large measure on how better is defined. For sheer volume of fires or tons of burning enemy steel, then parallel fires is a clear first pick. If, on the other hand, we are looking at increasing the speed and momentum of maneuver units' attacks, then classical fire support is better because synchronized suppressive fires make maneuver units advance faster.

Whichever option we decide is higher priority, we must at least arm ourselves with an accurate understanding of how artillery fires affect maneuver forces.

Long-range weapons are inherently desynchronizing. For example, suppose you are a division commander with three brigades, each of which is supported by a direct-support artillery battalion. Suppose also that the tube artillery constituting those support battalions can fire a mere 20 kilometers. This close-range capability satisfies the close-support needs of the brigade commander and his battalion commanders, and as a result, the brigade combat team develops tactics that closely integrate fires with maneuver.

Now suppose that a technological innovation has increased the range of artillery tenfold. The guns can now fire 200 kilometers, yet this new capability can cause problems. First of all, the brigade commander can now fire at ranges that exceed his ability to see the battlefield. Secondly, fires at such extended ranges will almost certainly cross unit boundaries and affect the operations of other brigades or units. To solve this problem, the division commander, working through his division artillery commander, takes greater control of those guns. The longer a weapon's range, the more likely control of that weapon will go to a higher headquarters.

The benefits of this option, however, are mixed. On the one hand, the division-supporting artillery can mass fires in a way they never could before. On the other hand, this is desynchronizing for the brigade because the brigade has lost fire support. Longer-range ability diminishes capability. For although longer-range and massed fires help destroy the enemy, the close integration of artillery fires and ground maneuver stands alone as the most difficult tactical task and the one most likely to atrophy. To the maneuver commander, most of those distant explosions are irrelevant and do not positively affect his ground maneuver.

We can conclude that we should not eschew long-range weapons. There are enormous advantages to extended-range capability. Yet while we employ improved technologies, we must not neglect the close fight. Until proven otherwise, close combat requires classical fire support in most mission, enemy, troops, terrain and time conditions. Before abandoning this concept of tactics, then there must be proof that the system of parallel fires actually works in real combat.

There is a profound cultural issue at work here. The artillery officer who is conducting classical fire support is clearly in the customer support role: The maneuver commander says, and the artillery officer acts. In this system, the consummate artillery officer is a master of ballistics and positioning, and he excels at assisting the maneuver commander in fire planning.

In the parallel fires system, the artillery officer is in the driver's seat. He plans, directs and controls the fires. He conducts his own assessments and rehearsals. He controls his own FSTs. He is a major player in determining what will be fired.

A branch of professional artillery officers that has self-actualized with the system of parallel fires will not desire to return to the ignominy of customer support. The artilleryman of today clings to the HPTL because it is a device of his own making and a symbol of his authority. Warfighting culture within the artillery branch is as powerful a force as it is within the infantry and armor communities, and it will almost certainly resist a perceived reduction of its authority.

The Army must ask whether the efficacy of parallel fires is worth the cost in close-combat capability. If so, then we should continue to move forward and perfect the art of our new doctrine. But if not, then restore the art and science of close supporting fires responsive to the maneuver commander.

To answer this essential question, the Army must not rely solely upon computer simulations. Such simulations lack the command and control aspects as well as the moral dimension of warfare, which have an impact on the issue. Experimentation on the ground is a bit more accurate, but even the combat training centers lack the moral aspects critical in close combat. Instead, the Army must look primarily to the lessons of real battle.

The most obvious answer to the dilemma of diminished fire support is to encourage the maneuver commander to rely on organic mortars. Many commanders admit that mortars are the only reliable fire support available.

Unfortunately, with only four tubes of heavy mortars and a restricted choice of munitions, as well as limited range, mortars cannot do it all. Supporting artillery fires bring powerful capability to a battalion task force or brigade, and their absence is keenly felt.

Recognizing a problem is the first step toward solving it. Maneuver commanders today do not have the capability to plan, control and synchronize fires, as their predecessors did 20 years ago.

Can the Army recover this lost art?


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LT. COL. ROBERT R. LEONHARD, professor of military science at West Virginia University, has published articles and books on military strategy and land warfare.

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

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