# Discussing Battle Procedure & SMESC in a civi-u: Breaking OPSEC?



## Smackimus (18 Oct 2012)

I'm taking an Organizational Behavior course as part of a commerce undergraduate program at a civilian university. We will soon be doing a module on how different organizations apply strategies & manage change within a company. Would it be appropriate to discuss & share concepts such as SMESC & the 16 steps of BP from my P.Res BMOQ experience? Or would this be a breach of OPSEC & the Controlled Goods Act?

Thanks for your input!


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## CombatDoc (18 Oct 2012)

SMESC and BP are not OPSEC by themselves, they are just processes that we follow to plan and communicate our operations.  

Although this does not likely apply in your case, it is the "content" of an op order that has the potential to breach OPSEC e.g. the radio frequency that we will use for a particular op, timings, etc.  I see no harm in discussing BP in the context of organizational behaviour.


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## vonGarvin (18 Oct 2012)

Check this out, from an old page here on army dot sea eh.

LINK


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## FJAG (18 Oct 2012)

I wouldn't be too concerned. If you do an internet search on both these issues you will find quite a bit of information on it. Effectively these concepts have long been in the public domain.

I'd be a bit more cautious about how relevant they may be to the subject matter of the lesson. 

Battle procedure and mission order formats are more a way of using check lists and an orderly planning process to analyse a situation and move through a process to developing direction for others. In effect its very dictatorial: you analyse, you formulate, you direct, they do.

Change management deals more with business transformation: the process by which you take a business organization (and particularly its people) from a present state to a desired future state.  

I've done both. While there are some similarities and overlap, believe me BP is a much simpler process. Change management also requires education, consensus building and motivation, education and training, tracking and verification, enabling an environment conducive for change etc etc.  

Have fun and Cheers


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## Shamrock (18 Oct 2012)

Discussing opsec is now opsec. The new buzzword is release of controlled goods.


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## FJAG (19 Oct 2012)

That legislation really needs a new title


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## Kirkhill (19 Oct 2012)

I just saw ERC's posting on the old thread where he discusses "appreciation" vice "estimation".  I believe in the bad old days the other form was not SMESC but SIESC where Intent replaces Mission.

Does that mean that historically a Junior could Appreciate the Intent while not Estimating the Mission?

"Your pardon Sir, 

While I appreciate your intent I estimate that the mission is well beyond my scope of employment and outwith the skill sets of my command.  Please further additional advice at your earliest convenience. 

Yours Aye, 


The Right Honourable,  2nd Lt Farthingale-Smythe, Baronet."


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## Kat Stevens (19 Oct 2012)

Wasn't SMEAC in vogue for a while too?


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## Fishbone Jones (19 Oct 2012)

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> Wasn't SMEAC in vogue for a while too?



I think that's the acronym I learned in the 60's. Much simpler times back then.


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## Occam (20 Oct 2012)

FJAG said:
			
		

> That legislation really needs a new title



It doesn't need a new title, it needs people to use the correct one(s)!   

The government's Controlled Goods Program deals with legislation such as the Defence Production Act, the Controlled Goods Regulations, and the Export Control List.

There is no "Controlled Goods Act".


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## FJAG (21 Oct 2012)

You're bang-on OCCAM. Must have been watching something interesting on TV when I shot that one off.

The right legislation to have been worried about would be the Security of Information Act which replaced the old Official Secrets Act


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## Infanteer (21 Oct 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> I just saw ERC's posting on the old thread where he discusses "appreciation" vice "estimation".



Some of my readings suggest a difference between the two.  An appreciation was a command driven process where, usually, a commander and/or his key staff officer conducted an appreciation of the situation, issued the plan and the staff filled in the details.  The estimate, coming from the American big-staff system (and now NATO standard) is where the staff executes most of the analysis with a bit of guidance from the Commander and gives him all the information and potential courses of action to make a pick from.

Reading about the command approaches of past commanders is illuminating.  Simmonds would have never sat through a Decision Brief - he issued the plan and had the staff make it work.  Some other commanders like Foulkes were a bit more collaberative, but not by much.  I suspect not much has changed these days - although the current methodology is quite collaberative (with CIMIC Plans O having to chip in to the OPP and provide an Annex), research on decision making suggests that 60% of the decision making process is intuitive; commander's don't care what the staff churns out because they've made their mind.  And why should this be a bad thing?  The Commander is the senior guy, generally selected ahead of his peers, and possessing the most experience.


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## FJAG (21 Oct 2012)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> Some of my readings suggest a difference between the two.  An appreciation was a command driven process where, usually, a commander and/or his key staff officer conducted an appreciation of the situation, issued the plan and the staff filled in the details.  The estimate, coming from the American big-staff system (and now NATO standard) is where the staff executes most of the analysis with a bit of guidance from the Commander and gives him all the information and potential courses of action to make a pick from.



My recollection is quite different.

When I started off, we were very much using British terminology for all of our staff and officer training. At the time the term of "Appreciation of the Situation" was in use to provide you with the checklist and process by which any officer at any level would analyse the mission's aim, the relevant factors, the courses open and the eventual plan. 

Some time in the 70's we had a terminology change whereby the process was called the "combat estimate" or just plain old "estimate". I recall at the time that effectively nothing had changed but the title - the process and its components remained essentially the same.  

At about the same time we had numerous other terminology changes (such as the old G staff and Q staff going to the continental G1, G2 etc) the whole thing was driven by attempts to get more terminology and organizational standardization within NATO headquarters.

There clearly are differences as to how appreciations or estimates are done at different command levels. A platoon commander's estimate will be different from that of a Division commander. However the key elements in the 'old' army appreciation was essentially 'todays' army estimate.

None of these systems are ever static. They are constantly being tuned and tweaked - sometimes with a good rationale behind them - sometimes not so much.


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## Blackadder1916 (22 Oct 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> I just saw ERC's posting on the old thread where he discusses "appreciation" vice "estimation".  I believe in the bad old days the other form was not SMESC but SIESC where Intent replaces Mission.



While there may have been different iterations of the orders format in the years before a NATO standard was accepted, the British (and Canadian) sequence at the beginning of WW2 (the pam I use as reference dates from 1940) was:

1.  Information
      i.   Regarding the enemy
      ii.  Regarding our own troops

2.   Intention - State clearly and briefly _what you_ intend to do with the troops under _your_ command, but do _not_ give details of how you intend doing it.

3.   Method - Describe clearly how you are going to carry out your intention

4.   Administrative Arrangements

5.   Intercommunication


Movies are not usually very good about properly recreating the details of military life, but one of my favourites, "Tunes Of Glory", does have the lead character using this format during the final major scene of the film.  During the O Group, while giving orders as to how they will bury their colonel (who committed suicide), the Acting CO/DCO gets halfway though the orders process before breaking down.



Appreciations vice Estimates

When I joined (mid 70s) I believe that "appreciation" was the terminology in use, but as a private soldier back then the only things we truly appreciated were cold beer and attractive women with loose morals.  The only thing that we had to estimate was how many cold beers we had to consume (and provide to a potential female companion) before they became adequately attractive and morally loose.

The standard references during that time used "appreciation" (I have a couple that I kept after they were superceded and continued to use them, changing terminology as necessary, because they were better written).  When the terminology changed there was little change to the actual process.

In my 1940's reference, it has the following about appreciations:

"An appreciation is a military review of the situation, based on all available information, culminating in a statement of the measures recommended to meet it.   . . . . .

The accepted sequence is : -

1.  The object.   State it briefly and do not confuse it with the "Objective".

2.  Considerations which affect the attainment of the object.  . . . .

3.  Courses open to both sides.   . . . .

4.  The plan.


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## Old Sweat (22 Oct 2012)

There is a short summary of the appreciation process followed by an examination of Simond's appreciation for Op Totalize starting on p. 69 of _No Holding Back: Operation Totalize, Normandy, August 1944_.


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## Infanteer (22 Oct 2012)

Douglas Delaney's "Corps Commanders" also gives some good examples of commander's approaches to planning.  Needless to say, planning by committee seemed very rare - I don't think the time existed for it, nor were there enough staff officers to sit around wargaming.  This is probably more concerned with OPP, which is a collective form of the Estimate.


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## Kirkhill (22 Oct 2012)

Blackadder1916 said:
			
		

> While there may have been different iterations of the orders format in the years before a NATO standard was accepted, the British (and Canadian) sequence at the beginning of WW2 (the pam I use as reference dates from 1940) was:
> 
> 1.  Information
> i.   Regarding the enemy
> ...



Thanks Blackadder.

I made up the SIESC form. I knew that "Mission" had previously been "Intention" and interpolated.  I Appreciate your Intention to square me away.

Cheers.


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