By Ann Roosevelt
CARLISLE BARRACKS, Pa.–Regional operational panels at Unified Quest 2008 are using a new way to solve complex problems as part of the game’s effort to investigate innovative operational approaches.
Under this new method, commanders create shared understanding of a complex problem, then design broad approaches to resolve problems that link tactical action to strategic aims before mission planning.
“It’s the first introduction of ideas to the broader Army and joint world,” said Lt. Col. Chris Prigge, chief, Futures Branch within the Future Warefare Div., at the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) at Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), at a briefing May 6.
TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5-500, “Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design,” or CACD, is a product of the Army’s Future Warfare Study Plan, and can be used by any service, multinational partners, the interagency organizations, and even potentially in the corporate world where complex problems need solutions.
CACD is not ready or intended to replace current Army planning processes, but is being used to see if it works as expected and what changes might be needed.
The basic idea is that commanders may be handed guidance from above that is something like, “General Sherman, we’d like you to march into Georgia,” Prigge said.
To identify the problem, it must be set in context. For example, in the AFRICOM (Future) regional operational panel, that is to describe the world as it appears to all the interested parties, friendly and hostile, in 2025. This would include historic animosities, relations among and between the people and clans, who the adversary is, the cultural context and the strategic trends affecting the area. Here, knowledge is drawn from the experts in government, academia, multinational partners and organizations.
The AFRICOM panel has four students from the School for Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., who have been studying operational design and worked up the initial framework design. They are acting as the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) staff.
The panel has the overarching goal of building partnership capacity leading to regional stability thus contributing to persistent stability.
The panel’s CJTF commander then engaged in discussion with the students and panel members to gain an “appreciation” of the situation.
The underlying problem contributing to instability and conflict in the area pointed to the global trend of overpopulation, leaving the area with famine and health problems and ineffective government.
This leads to the operational framework, which identifies areas where the military element of the total coalition effort could do the most good–shape the world as the command would like to see it in terms of reaching the strategic goals–assisting regional countries to strengthen border and maritime security, creating the secure conditions for humanitarian aid, diplomatic and interagency aid in areas such as governance to take root.
With this focus, mission-planning flows into specific capabilities needed and into the number of soldiers and their tasks and equipment can be worked out.
However, the operational design framework is not static, nor developed only as a crisis looms. It is envisioned as a living document that is adjusted as necessary and may change the operation.
Prigge described the difference what the Army has been doing and this new approach as the difference between automaker designers and engineers. A designer conceives of a car that meets customer tastes, while engineers are concerned with how to make the car.
The military is “much more grounded in the engineering kind of framework rather than the designer,” Prigge said. Thus, it can be outside the comfort zone of some.
This method also is not new. Some commanders are using a similar process in Iraq. Additionally, this type of planning has been done by Special Operations Forces practically since their inception.
The roots of CACD trace back to the Systemic Operational Design (SOD) concept developed by officers within the Israeli Defense Forces that was ultimately rejected in early 2006.
The Army has pulled out specific elements of SOD and evolved that method and combined it with work done by SAMS students at Unified Quest from 2005-2007, current operational insights, joint publications, classic operational design doctrine and even Soviet doctrine from the 1930s.
As the game progresses, ARCIC personnel are taking notes in the regional panels as the CACD method is used. While the next steps are not yet clear, there could be a second version of CAC-D, or it eventually might become a field manual.