Army doctrine and its Implementation

[Infanteer]

There's a lesson in that somewhere.

Don't march through the Teutoburg forest?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Don't march through the Teutoburg forest?

Well played, Sir.

 

[Old Sweat]

We used to refer to the statue that makes the spot as "Herman the German" back in the 60s. I used it in a resection for a battery survey scheme once, along with two or three church steeples in nearby villages. That was nearby for us; Herman was a long way off, and my BRO crew (yours truly, Sgt Simmoins, Gnr McNeil, and Gnr Wood) did it so we could say we did without our noses growing.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

An example of doctrine being implemented very painfully in practice is the Israeli experience of Systemic Operational Design (SOD) in the 2006 Lebanon War. There are many reasons why the Israelis were not successful, but fuzzy new doctrine that was not understood by the people trying to execute it was one of them. "We were caught unprepared" is a good read on the subject. The father of SOD proclaimed that it "was not intended for ordinary mortals." Unfortunately, wars are fought by ordinary mortals at 0300 hrs without the time or inclination to read French post-modernist philosophy (apparently SOD was informed by post-modern French philosophy). Whether or not it could be understood was also moot as Hezbollah proved a little more resilient.

While this was part of what compelled Mattis to reject EBO, others doubled down as true believers are wont to do.

When someone tries to sell me on the virtues of design I back away very slowly.

Here is a little tidbit from a Canadian Army Journal article regarding Design (specifically the use of semiotic squares ) and the Canadian Military: "the design team must must have a thorough understanding of paradigms, as well as a familiarity with the sociological/philosophical notions of ontology, epistemology and methodology (the rules, principles and procedures nested within the implicit ontological and epistemological choices of the home paradigm.)"

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Here is a little tidbit from a Canadian Army Journal article regarding Design (specifically the use of semiotic squares ) and the Canadian Military: "the design team must must have a thorough understanding of paradigms, as well as a familiarity with the sociological/philosophical notions of ontology, epistemology and methodology (the rules, principles and procedures nested within the implicit ontological and epistemological choices of the home paradigm.)"

What. the. ?

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

What. the. ?

Yup.

To be fair, though, I suppose this thread is kind of a venture in epistemology - we are talking about our knowledge and beliefs about warfighting. I prefer plain language, though, as the point of communicating is, well, to communicate!

 

[Brad Sallows]

Well, in for a penny...

"The Design team must have a thorough understanding of Politics and the English Language, and apply its ideas always and everywhere."

 

[OldSolduer]

Yup.

To be fair, though, I suppose this thread is kind of a venture in epistemology - we are talking about our knowledge and beliefs about warfighting. I prefer plain language, though, as the point of communicating is, well, to communicate!

ABC
Accurate, Brief, Clear

That statement fails badly. Not yours, the original one.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

ABC
Accurate, Brief, Clear

That statement fails badly. Not yours, the original one.

Indeed - imagine using that phrase with "ontology etc" at a unit? Talk about losing your audience. Maybe that was the point?

Part of what makes me wary of the design-community is their tendency to use flowery language, perhaps in an effort to make their sales pitch. It would also be helpful if they had some real-world successes. The same article refers to "planners" in contrast to "designers." I don't think a military "planner" needs a Philosophy degree to participate in campaign design. A planner does need an understanding of how their military/alliance fights and how their opponent fights along with a deep understanding of the situation. I am all for proper "framing" of the problem, but we don't need to become designers to do so.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Indeed - imagine using that phrase with "ontology etc" at a unit? Talk about losing your audience. Maybe that was the point?

Part of what makes me wary of the design-community is their tendency to use flowery language, perhaps in an effort to make their sales pitch. It would also be helpful if they had some real-world successes. The same article refers to "planners" in contrast to "designers." I don't think a military "planner" needs a Philosophy degree to participate in campaign design. A planner does need an understanding of how their military/alliance fights and how their opponent fights along with a deep understanding of the situation. I am all for proper "framing" of the problem, but we don't need to become designers to do so.

Everyone has a plan or a “design”, right up until they get punched in the face.

At that point, you have had a simple, robust and easily adapted concept of operations or you are lost.

 

[FJAG]

Here is a little tidbit from a Canadian Army Journal article regarding Design (specifically the use of semiotic squares ) and the Canadian Military: "the design team must must have a thorough understanding of paradigms, as well as a familiarity with the sociological/philosophical notions of ontology, epistemology and methodology (the rules, principles and procedures nested within the implicit ontological and epistemological choices of the home paradigm.)"

So, I finally found the article and read it. Actually not as obtuse as it looked at first blush but not so sure it develops a design methodology any better than what was used in the past. It strikes me that the issue isn't so much the process in use (or suggested) but the thorough understanding of the inputs needed by the team in order to do the suggested, or any other, analysis.

Does make me wonder why the author, with all his education and experience, retired as a major after 22 years of service in the army (not that there's anything wrong with that ).

For those in the know; have we adopted this process other than as a staff college experiment?

 

[daftandbarmy]

So, I finally found the article and read it. Actually not as obtuse as it looked at first blush but not so sure it develops a design methodology any better than what was used in the past. It strikes me that the issue isn't so much the process in use (or suggested) but the thorough understanding of the inputs needed by the team in order to do the suggested, or any other, analysis.

Does make me wonder why the author, with all his education and experience, retired as a major after 22 years of service in the army (not that there's anything wrong with that ).

For those in the know; have we adopted this process other than as a staff college experiment?

From over 20 years of doing this stuff I've learned that it's not rocket science but there are various vested interests out there who want to make you think so.

Any military organization is already really good at this stuff. Anyone here ever mark a map, make a model, draft up a prototype and mess around with it until it gets better, use hand gestures to describe an activity (I'm looking at you, aircrew) scrawl on a flipchart, update an ops room board with grease pencil/pixels or, as I have done occasionally draw right on the side of an APC/Tank?, they just don't know it, sadly.

We're in good company though. Most of the planet has had the visual learning aspects of life beaten out of them over the years by the education system, prevailing corporate culture etc:

Design Thinking: 5 Things I Learned from Putting Pulp on Paper​

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Steve Jobs

To paraphrase Tim Brown, IDEO founder and a globally recognized thought leader on the subject “design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with a) what is technologically feasible, and b) what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.” In other words, it’s ‘Design Doing’: engaging people, pictures, prototypes, and other practical, team based learning approaches to solve tricky business problems.

Berlineaton employs Design Thinking principles and methods in all of our practice areas. My area, the Continuous Improvement practice, tends to use it more often in connection with the business process improvement work that forms the core of our offerings to clients. Over many years of delivering these types of projects I have noticed that the more client teams engage their largely latent, yet powerful, visual learning strengths, the more enduring and effective are the project results.

Recently, we have had the opportunity to work with one of Canada’s largest forest companies, and their pulp division, to help them prepare for a large information system implementation program. Working closely with a cross enterprise Design Team, using big flipchart wall charts and sticky notes, we mapped out and redesigned the full span of their corporate processes from ‘Chip truck to China’. During this experience we introduced them to a variety of process mapping and other visual and team oriented activities to help develop a redesigned and improved business process, as well as a guiding vision, mission, values and goals.

The results have been inspiring. For them, because they have worked diligently to develop a strong, shared understanding of the future and how to get there from here using simple but effective tools they’ve never been exposed to before. For us, because this client took to our somewhat unorthodox approach to problem solving like the proverbial duck takes to water.

Why is it that these simple visual tools can be so powerful in helping people solve complex business issues? How can they be utilized more often to crack tough problems? Here are five things that struck me as important takeaways from the experience of helping my clients put ‘pulp on paper’:

1. Design thinking and visual problem solving skills come naturally to just about everyone

Ever seen or heard of cave drawings? That’s at least how old design thinking approaches are: about 40,000 years. That’s not to say that humans weren’t solving problems visually in other ways within the three million year period before that, and I’m sure that the Neanderthals were probably explaining themselves to their peers by drawing in the dirt with sticks just like we do now, there just isn’t a lot of evidence right now to support that theory. Regardless, design thinking principles are deeply, naturally embedded within the human condition. If you don’t think that you have those skills, just check out your last doodle.

What I have learned is that anyone can draw and given 1) the right opportunity and creative freedoms, and 2) some simple tools, just about every one of the thousands of clients we have engaged with over the past 20 years shows a natural affinity for explaining themselves using drawings or visual cues of one kind or another. We should leverage that innate skill more often to solve tough issues.

2. To get the best out of Design Thinking we must overcome the fear of ridicule

Here’s a bold statement for you about our prevailing workplace culture based on years of observation: those who try to solve problems using simple drawings are often thought of as simpletons.

Sadly, the modern workplace encourages us to try to impress our colleagues by demonstrating great feats of complexity, presented in a polished and professional manner, to prove how much smarter we are than everyone else. PowerPoint, an invaluable visual learning tool, has come to be derided by many largely as a result of many of us who try to pack a thesis load of information onto each slide. Because of this unintended connection between perfection and design thinking, many are afraid to engage in explaining themselves visually for fear of ridicule by their colleagues. Conversely, some of the most important ideas conveyed during many of our projects could literally be described as enhanced stick man drawings. Facilitated the right way, it’s the ideas that become the most important output, not the drawing itself.

What I have learned is that the atmosphere you establish for any continuous improvement effort is even more important than the more technical tools and resources provided for solving problems. If you can do your work within an open and judgement free environment, you will always get better results with a Design Thinking approach. Conversely, overly critical work environments can crush the visual, and other kinds of, creative juices out of any team.

3. Walls and windows are more important than tables and chairs

As I have described in a related article ‘Spaced Out: Put the Room Back into Meetings’ bad meeting rooms can kill creativity, fast. When deploying a Design Thinking approach it’s important to ensure 1) enough room to move about freely, as well as sufficient wall space for flipchart maps, and 2) natural light. In my experience this is one of the toughest paradigms to overcome when working with new clients who don’t really ‘get’ us yet. The prevailing workplace culture is one that reflects workplace based command and control relationships developed in the Industrial Age. In most meeting rooms this culture shows up in the form of a giant table in the middle of a dark, windowless room featuring high backed wheeled chairs, or, as I like to call them, straightjacket chairs.

I have learned that, to get the best out a Design Thinking approach, it’s critically important to get rid of the big tables and chairs, put a lot of flipchart maps on the walls, then, looking outwards versus inwards, doodle your way to business improvement.

4. Apply the Rule of Threes

Another paradigm inflicted upon us from the Industrial Age is the perception that it is really, really important to get something right first time, or don’t even bother trying (see above re: ridicule). Because you are deploying highly creative approached to problem solving during Design Thinking activities, I find it’s more important to plan to redesign three times.

First, draw out what the current process looks like, literally, from the point of view of you, your staff, your clients and other key stakeholders. Then develop Redesign Version 1. I call this ‘Status Quo Plus’ because, although it’s usually a step in the right direction, it’s not usually a big enough improvement to achieve client goals. Challenge yourself to do even more during Redesign Version 2: the ‘Evolutionary’ redesign and, following that, on to Version 3: The ‘Revolutionary’ redesign. During this process you will find that the Design Team gradually become better at describing future, possibly unknown, improvements and how those could play out within the business successfully. Concurrently, you will have designed a step by step approach to implementing your future vision from the current reality to the Revolutionary future.

5. Have some serious fun

Unhappy people don’t tend to be too creative. As a result, I believe that it’s important to have some fun to get the best out of Design Thinking projects. There are a myriad of things that you can do to introduce some kind of fun during what can be long and tiring Design Team meetings. It helps if the activities are aligned to project deliverables in some way, but it’s not critical: design a brave new world using giant sized Lego blocks, act out your future vision in small teams, or design a coat of arms to brand your project.

The most important part about having some serious fun is to provide a break, of course, but to also formally introduce one of our most basic human bonding behaviours to a potentially arduous and dry, really valuable, project.

Design Thinking: 5 Things I Learned from Putting Pulp on Paper

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

www.linkedin.com

 

[Kirkhill]

From the Wavell Room - Its time to democratise doctrine.

Short form seems to be that it takes too long to chisel stone tablets. Its like the difference between the OED and the Academie Francaise. One accepts new words, and new definitions for old words, readily.

It’s Time to Democratise Doctrine

Doctrine needs to be more like Wikipedia and less like stuffy old pamphlets. It's time to democratise doctrine.

wavellroom.com

It’s Time to Democratise Doctrine
by Steve MaguireDecember 3, 2021

General Erwin Rommel famously said ‘the British write some of the best doctrine in the world; it is fortunate that their officers do not read it’. This quote is now routinely (mis)used to demonstrate how British military attitudes to doctrine have changed.

Despite its common use, Rommel’s quote is more interesting because of what it does not say. It excludes the majority of the Defence workforce; Civil Servants and ‘other ranks’. Defence needs to think beyond the broadest consumption of doctrine. It’s time to move from reading doctrine to considering who is writing it.

This article makes the case for greater democratisation of doctrine. If Defence dares to think differently about exploiting ideas then it can utilise a wider talent pool and create faster feedback loops. Many modern organisations are more complex than the military and do this already. The article firstly shows why doctrine needs to be democratised. It then looks at two organisations that do it already to discuss the positives and negatives of each approach.

What is doctrine, how is it created, and why is it important?

Doctrine is the written record of how a force wishes to operate. The British Army Doctrine Primer describes it as ‘the fundamental principles that guide how military forces conduct their actions, and provides military professionals with their body of professional knowledge’.

Doctrine is the product of analysis conducted in centralised doctrine centres such as the Defence Concepts and Doctrine Centre. It is separated into four levels: philosophy, principles, practices, and procedures. Each layer has a distinct purpose which deals with everything from nuclear deterrence to foot drill. In both peace and war, doctrine is at the very heart of the conceptual component of fighting power.

IN BOTH PEACE AND WAR, DOCTRINE IS THE HEART OF THE CONCEPTUAL COMPONENT OF FIGHTING POWER.

The staff who write doctrine are a mix of specialist officers, generalist staff officers, and Civil Servants. Defence is increasingly assigning higher quality officers to these jobs, however the positions remain rotational. This means that individual interests, biases, and other undesirable behaviours, drive the character and development of doctrine. The core problem, however, is less about those who are charged with writing it and more fundamentally about how corporate knowledge is used.

The problem with centralisation

The reliance of centralised teams acting as the primary source of doctrine disregards the vast pool of divergent thought and experience available to Defence. This centralisation privileges a small cohort of writers who become critical decision-makers. One analysis of such centres in 2006 concluded that they ‘increasingly appear to lack foundations of professional principles and theory that would help them discriminate the practical from the impractical’. A senior doctrine writer made similar, albeit less critical, arguments in 2021 by arguing the doctrine had become too complicated to understand. By implication this means that the practical and the impractical aspects of corporate knowledge are separated. The net result is the production of thousands of pages of words that few will ever read in full. Fewer still will fully grasp the interlocking nature, or notice key changes.

Doctrine is organic

Professor Richard Holmes adds ‘doctrine is not just what is taught, or what is published, but what is believed’. To Holmes, doctrine is alive and evolutionary. It is more than the written word and includes what practitioners think doctrine says. This is best described as ‘espoused [or written and recorded] doctrine’ and ‘theory in use [how forces operate in reality]’. The gap between the written record and how a force operates is often the evolutionary step needed for future success. To exploit this, feedback loops need to be standardised, accessible to all, and fast enough to maintain the pace of thinking.

To produce effective doctrine it needs to be managed as an organic process. Darwin observed that ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, it is the one that is the most adaptable to change’. Much like evolution causes organisms to react to survive, the profession of arms needs to be more adaptive to its environment if it is going to keep pace with adversaries.

…THE PROFESSION OF ARMS NEEDS TO BE MORE ADAPTIVE TO ITS ENVIRONMENT IF IT IS GOING TO KEEP PACE WITH ADVERSARIES.

As an example of the need for faster evolution, David Kilcullen offers an assessment based on dragons (state actors) and snakes (insurgent groups). His model shows some forces evolving to achieve success whilst others, often with significantly more resources, stagnate and cannot win on the battlefield. The snakes have been able to find effective ways to fight; their doctrine has moved with more speed and determination. This friction is well understood with some arguing that ‘success tomorrow relies on disruption today’ but feeling unable to act because of the limitations imposed by centralised structures. The current system loses ideas because of its restrictive nature.

In 2009 Patrick Little, went further and argued that there was hubris in the British Army which was not changing fast enough. Similar trends have been identified in the Royal Navy with one writer arguing in 2019 that the organisation lived in a ‘post Cold-War fantasy’. High level space doctrine was released in 2017 but hasn’t been renewed; this is too long given the speed at which the domain is changing and how thinking has developed. British doctrine doesn’t appear to be meeting the operational challenges deployed forces face. Can our doctrine really be considered the best in the world?

Indeed, against a backdrop of new thinking, even the ‘successful’ rewrite of counterinsurgency doctrine during operations in Afghanistan has been questioned as achieving little in reality. Why, for example, has doctrine not evolved faster to consider ‘hybrid’ warfare, uncrewed vehicles, or to review the baseline assumptions about the manoeuvrist approach? People are asking these questions; doctrine is not.

Practical problems

Defenders of the orthodoxy point to existing processes with lessons learnt reports (et al) measured in months or years. Doctrine writers argue that change is complex and takes longer to codify than many accept. It also takes time to disseminate and apply changes. Given the life and death implications of this decision-making, it is right that there is scrutiny. On the other hand, the sheer range of open-source professional military education writing shows the appetite for involvement and interest in making it faster. If Defence dares to think differently about creating corporate knowledge it can exploit this thinking.

In democratising doctrine, there will need to be a clear point of arbitration and established processes to quickly prove or disprove ideas. This must merge both the art and science of war, be rank agnostic, and be open to a new audience; a stovepiped centralised structure is best placed to do this. And that means a system that can manage a variety of inputs while still having central controls to stop questionable ideas from being endorsed. Modern businesses offer models to follow and point to ways in which doctrine could be democratised.

Wikipedia: The extreme of democratised information
Wikipedia is a free to use online encyclopaedia which anyone can edit. Its strength is the enormous range of contributors and extensive citations. Its weakness is that anyone can edit information. Articles are often changed to alter public perceptions known as hot edits or vandalism. Whilst there are control measures in place for contentious articles, the information held can be as questionable as the intentions of those who write it.

For Defence, uploading doctrine into a similar online system would allow a community of interest easy access and the ability to suggest changes. Hyperlinking texts would increase understanding when interweaving the multitude of written material together. This would expand the community of interest while harnessing relevant knowledge.

Having said that, Wikipedia is at the extreme end of democratised information and a fully open source model is unlikely to work for Defence.

The ‘Remote Manifesto’: A model to follow?

GitLab is a successful multinational software company that has no offices. It works from a document called the Remote Manifesto. A military reader would understand it as ‘doctrine’. GitLab codifies their processes and anyone, anywhere, can access it. All staff are expected to use the latest ‘doctrine’ when conducting their work and to use the latest procedures. They are also expected to write it and consider suggestions from outside the company. All of this is done remotely utilising digital teams.

There are dangers in this approach. From a security perspective not all doctrine can be open to the public. Yet, a cross-government community of interest could be defined in order to allow input and a broad range of selected contributors. This could be flexibly opened to experts when required and closed once input was complete. Technology allows Defence to control who and when access is granted.

If Wikipedia is the extreme of democratised information, GitLab is the pinnacle of how to evolve complex and interlocking ideas with a high level of assurance. Their ‘doctrine’ evolves daily. They exploit the future today. Because of its ability to evolve quickly their staff are culturally inclined to use it. They both read and write it. They are empowered and have ownership. Their employees are involved and engaged in a way which seems incomprehensible to Defence.

Conclusion

Doctrine is both a written record and a living set of ideas. Defence can do more to exploit it if it can democratise the processes surrounding it.

Centralised writing cells, however well informed, will never be able to capture the wealth of thinking taking place in the Defence community. As a result, it is likely that battle-winning ideas will meet staff-created barriers (sometimes called ‘complexity”) or worse, be lost. Democratisation of doctrine would allow Defence to make this process transparent. Companies such as GitLab have proved that democratised processes can be effective. Defence needs to think differently about generating corporate knowledge; but does the organisation have the courage to do so?

 

[FJAG]

An interesting article. I tried to float the concept of a Wiki-ized knowledge management system for JAG under the JAGs Comprehensive Information Management Project and received a significant amount of pushback based mostly on the ongoing time required to build the system (and we in fact had funding for three paralegals to manage the content). The expressed issues were 1) data input would come primarily from a small number of radical "posters" who thrive on getting their "knowledge" into the system; and would take an inordinate amount of senior management time to separate the wheat that meets "corporate" approval from the chaff that would litter the system with misleading and even false information.

I had a second thought while reading this article in that I think the author has a relatively limited concept of what doctrine is or should be.

In my research on the state of the Army at the turn of the century I came across an interesting paper published in the Army Doctrine and Training Bulletin by LCol Ian Hope titled "Misunderstanding Mars and Minerva: The Canadian Army's Failure to Define an Operational Doctrine" (it starts at pg 16. (I think I cited this article elsewhere in the forum some time ago)

Ian makes a good argument that:

Doctrine is the unifying force of a military. It is more than just principles of warfare: it also involves application, which includes method, structures, procedures and even rules. To view doctrine as “a mindset” is to perceive only its conceptual or cognitive quality: doctrine in its proper form must be much more comprehensive. It has cognitive, procedural, organizational, material and moral components. The cognitive elements are dedicated to the articulation of a particular concept of operations relevant to a specific time and which forms the basis for a common understanding of war. The cognitive elements include the army’s attitude to the higher purposes of operations—their relationship with strategy and national policy—and also the army’s philosophy of command and control. The procedural elements of doctrine guide teaching and practice of the operational concept: this is often presented in field service regulations and includes tactics taught and applied. Doctrine also has an organizational component that ensures that army structures are commensurate with the operational approach. Also, doctrine has an element that is material that considers the proper equipping of an army to conduct operations in accordance with the operational concept (making the most of fielded technologies or driving experimentation in new technologies). Finally, doctrine has a moral (including the psychological) component that is concerned with how best to make soldiers fight, the ethical use of force, and army morale. The moral includes the leadership practices in the army. Doctrine then is multifaceted— cognitive, procedural, organizational, material and moral: the purpose of each facet is to provide standardization and a common high quality to an army. None of the components can stand alone as a complete basis for doctrine. The components must be to some degree integrated—binding them into a more coherent whole. It is the underlying point of this thesis that the best doctrines in history were those which were the most integrative of all of these factors. With this broad definition the relevance of doctrine in history is more easily understood.

Hope then analyses several examples of doctrine-based armies and makes a strong argument that as of the time of the article 2000-2001 that Canada's Army fails to meet the mark:

Canadian Army doctrine is now predicated upon an understanding of an attrition-manoeuvre dichotomy that leads to explicit acknowledgement of manoeuvre warfare as a superior style of war. This understanding is independent of Canadian strategic imperatives and current operational realities. The doctrine is not derived from an overarching operational concept that focuses planning to achieve specific strategic aims. Therefore the linkage between strategy and doctrine is tenuous. Furthermore, because manoeuvre warfare doctrine is regarded merely as a conceptual tool, and does not serve as comprehensive doctrine for force management, the linkage between it and other components of the Army’s Strategic Planning Process (ASPP) is also tenuous. Manoeuvre warfare cannot be used for doctrine-based force development or doctrine-based operations planning. Its utility to the Canadian Army is limited. The armies studied above were ‘doctrine-based’: in peacetime they used written doctrine as a link between strategic vision, a coherent operational concept, and tactical combat development, and in war as a link between strategic war plans and tactical actions. The Canadian Army in contrast is ‘capabilities-based’.108 Its organization and equipment reflects the stated requirement for the maintenance of a small multi-purpose and combat capable force. The multi-purpose capability rests within the six combat functions (command, information, manoeuvre, firepower, sustainment, and protection), extant within certain army units that can be task-organized any number of ways to suit the requirements of a specific mission. These are tactical level functions, the assumption being that function of echelons higher than brigade will be fulfilled by Allied armies (namely British, US, or within a multinational division structure).109

The last two decades have not generated much progress and if anything have leaned the Army further into being "capabilities-based" rather than "doctrine based". Close Engagement is put forward by the Army as being "nested within Canada's defence policy Strong, Secure, Engaged and the CAF Joint concepts" as the "capstone operating concept to guide the development of the Canadian land forces for the next 10-15 years". It is difficult to discern the integrated cognitive, procedural, organizational, material and moral components that are required by a doctrine within SSE right through to Close Engagement. One can argue that funding issues so greatly drive the Army's organizational and material components that it will remain "capabilities based" and will never be able to properly develop or integrate the cognitive, procedural or moral components required to form a true "doctrine based" one.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The main problem with developing and maintaining doctrine is that there aren't enough opportunities to test it.

 

[daftandbarmy]

The main problem with developing and maintaining doctrine is that there aren't enough opportunities to test it.

Good point.

Although I completed several tours in Northern Ireland, with the relevant work up training of course, I never read or saw anything material entitled 'Counter-Insurgency/ Terrorism Doctrine for Northern Ireland'. It was all simply grouped under the title 'Northern Ireland Training', some of which had nothing to do with shooting people.

The 'doctrine' we used was a living thing and, beyond fairly broad strategic and operational direction, changed continually to keep up with a highly adaptive enemy and ever shifting political landscape. It was continually tested and changed if found wanting.

Good leadership was proactive and sensitive to the needs of the moment and flexed and adapted accordingly. Where it reared its ugly head, bad leadership could generally be described as reactive, inflexible/ rule bound and siloed.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

The US Army has continued to develop doctrine around the shift to Divisions for large scale combat operations with a short and sharp White Paper on the Army 2030 Division Fight. Divisions, supported by Corps and Theatre, will be the decisive tactical formations. They will adopt five types of divisions: Armor Divisions (Reinforced); Armor Divisions, Airborne Divisions, Air Assault Divisions and Light/Motorized Divisions. The Armor (Reinforced) Division will be the corps de rupture, so to speak, and will be enabled for wet-gap crossings. These were signaled in early 2022 and some terminology has changed. (no more Penetration Division for instance - now its Armor Division (Reinforced).

Divisions will have their tube artillery centralized (three SP artillery Bns plus an extended range artillery bn) while MLRS will be held at Corps. By design, Corps will dismantle enemy integrated fires commands while Divs mass their tube artillery at the main effort. So maybe only a single ABCT gets the artillery support. What is old is new again! Divisions will have layered cavalry and we see the return of the Div Cav. The battlefield framework sees a Division with an 18 to 25 km frontage and 25 km forward and back of the FEBA. This is much closer to Cold War battlespaces and definitely a shift from some of the very wide and deep AOOs assigned in recent times on operations and on exercises.

The White Paper has two vignettes to show how a Armor Division (Reinforced) and an Airborne Division would fight an engagement. Its not doctrine on its own, but it certainly shows how they envision their army fighting in a few years.

For what it is worth I agree with the premise that the Division is the decisive tactical formation and that dispersing all the combat support does not work in large scale combat operations. I like where they are going.

 

[KevinB]

For what it is worth I agree with the premise that the Division is the decisive tactical formation and that dispersing all the combat support does not work in large scale combat operations. I like where they are going.

If you have Divisions...

 

[dapaterson]

I am a strong proponent of pulling base functions out of the RCN, CA, RCAF, CMP & VCDS and vesting them in a support Command, while simultaneously culling the Res F structure, so that the CA will consist of hybrid Reg / Tes formations:

One Armd Bde
Two Inf Bde
One Engr Bde
One Arty Bde
One SIGs Bde
One CSS Bde

All under a single Div.

 

[KevinB]

I am a strong proponent of pulling base functions out of the RCN, CA, RCAF, CMP & VCDS and vesting them in a support Command, while simultaneously culling the Res F structure, so that the CA will consist of hybrid Reg / Tes formations:

One Armd Bde
Two Inf Bde
One Engr Bde
One Arty Bde
One SIGs Bde
One CSS Bde

All under a single Div.

I think you can cull a slew of GO/FO's there too