By Ann Roosevelt
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.–The Army Feb. 28 unveiled FM 3.0 Operations, describing how the service conducts operations, elevating stability operations on a par with offensive and defensive operations, a top service official said.
[It is] “the first time since 9/11 that the Army has republished this very important manual and a manual that is informed by nearly six years of warfighting,” Gen. Scott Wallace, commanding general of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, at the Association of the United States Army winter symposium here.
As TRADOC officials said, there is a “price” for the new operational concept. FM 3.0 will drive requirements, thus affect budgets, the Program Objective Memorandum and ultimately programs as the service shapes the execution of the manual.
“We believe this FM is the blueprint for the future,” he said. The last one was published June 14, 2001, three months before the global strategic environment changed in New York City and Washington, D.C.
It was time, Wallace said. The Army chief of staff’s discussion of a future of persistent conflict, is driven by local trends–none of which suggest that the next few decades will be any less turbulent that this one. There will be conflict among people, information will be pervasive. It will need to be parsed. Disinformation will mix in, and that will need to be understood. Soldiers and leaders will have to note disinformation and the persistence of the media in the environment. Threats will be unpredictable, sometimes asymmetric, frequently irregular and “the true resolution of conflict needs a whole of government approach.”
This operational concept focuses on initiative, risk and opportunity and specifically emphasizes the simultaneity of offensive, defensive and stability operations. The stability piece is not new. Simultaneity is, and was informed by current operations, Wallace said.
Other major ideas put forth in FM 3.0 include that it will take a whole of government approach to resolve a conflict–the military can not do it alone. Another idea is the power of information and finally the central role of the commander in 21st century operations.
The operational concept is full spectrum operations, which means simultaneously balancing offensive, defensive and stability operations while “part of an interdependent joint force to seize, retain and explain the initiative, accepting prudent risk to create opportunities to achieve decisive results,” FM 3.0 says. This means using lethal and non-lethal action.
Essentially, the field manual is the core of doctrine, which must be uniformly known and understood within the service, Wallace said.
The whole of government approach recognizes that diplomatic, information, military and economic (DIME) efforts are all necessary for a decisive end to conflict.
The military effort dominates at the high end of conflict, but the purpose of military operations is not to stay in high intensity conflict, but to drive the conflict down toward a stable peace, to reach peacetime engagement
Transitioning down toward peace means engagement and the use of the other elements of government–the diplomatic, information and economic part of DIME.
FM 3.0 also is to ensure soldier tasks such as civil security and civil patrols are “mapped directly into those stability sectors that are outlined by the State Department.
Measures have also been taken to ensure the way the military speaks is understood by the other elements of government, there is “a common understanding of tasks and goals and so can talk coherently and not past each other,” Wallace said.
The Army’s obligation is to fight and win wars, and Wallace said the service tries to reach a balance of what it can do.
Information also is recognized as an element of combat power. The joint definition of information operations discusses things such as computer network attack and computer network defense, and psychological operations, while soldiers talk about “informing” and “influencing their environment.”
Thus, the manual introduces “information engagement,” Wallace said. Soldiers exert the most powerful influence in contact with the population, and in the information environment actions and messages must be consistent.
Exercizing battle command visualize, decide, direct and act. During the Cold War this was easier to understand the end state to be achieved. Today, commanders must understand the environment and the problem to be solved before going about solving it. This is crucial to the role of the commander, Wallace said.
“One cannot visualize if one does not first understand,” he said.
There’s also the recognition that operating in a particular environment is likely to change, perhaps change it enough to change the commander’s solution to the problem.
Commanders must continually reassess the environment, and ensure that soldiers understand.
The FM 3.0 is probably the most senior-leader reviewed and vetted doctrine document since perhaps the days of Air-Land Battle, the post-Vietnam era change that brought air and ground operations into focus, he said.
The manual will also be updated more quickly than the previous five-year cycle.
Given today’s operational environment today, “national security is inextricably linked to global security like it never has been in the past,” Wallace said. “It seems to me that global security does indeed require a whole of government approach to ensure that decisive results are achieved, lasting results are achieved. But it seems to me that whole of government doesn’t necessarily show up unless there is a strong local security component. Not just American soldiers, but those of our friends and allies. And that local security requires land power. And that land power if employed needs to dominate the environment in which they operate. That indeed requires a full spectrum modernized force.”
At the end of the day, “the most precise precision weapon we have in our arsenal in our service is the soldier,” Wallace said. “Our business is to provide soldier delivered precision effects.”