2006 Ad

Joint Force Quarterly, Dec, 2007 by Paul J. Judge

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True wisdom in strategy must be practical because strategy is a practical subject. Much of what appears to be wise and indeed is prudent as high theory is unhelpful to the poor warrior who actually has to do strategy, tactically and operationally.

--Colin S. Gray (1)

In the Department of Defense (DOD) today, several initiatives are emerging and have begun to converge. Adaptive Planning (AP), Capabilities-based Planning (CBP), and Global Force Management (GFM) are three prime examples. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR) reaffirms the DOD commitment to these initiatives and places emphasis on a need to "integrate processes that define needed capabilities, identify solutions, and allocate resources to acquire them." (2) Thus, it is incumbent on DOD to effectively manage the convergence of AP, CBP, and GFM in order to fully support the vision of sound decisionmaking in an uncertain defense environment.

The argument of this essay is simple: Placing tight bounds on military operational planners will effectively institute a new planning and military decisionmaking process. The purpose is to suggest a move away from open-ended strategic guidance toward explicit intent, assumptions, and constraints. Unlike today's strategic guidance, strictly limiting available force capabilities and other resources will generate more creative planning options and risk mitigation strategies. This idea may seem counterintuitive. However, it is the iterative process of setting new bounds, reformulating a plan, and providing results back to strategists that can ultimately provide insight for decisionmakers. A more meaningful and beneficial convergence of AP, CBP, and GFM will occur because the iterative process demands continuous communication and information-sharing among the strategist, force provider, warfighting planner, and out-year programmer.

To effectively merge processes and support decisionmaking, operational planning that uses AP methods must constantly interact with CBP as employed by defense analysts and programmers. In fact, the interaction must occur prior to the formal start of a DOD planning cycle to assist strategy writers in forming the detailed parameters that will then guide operational planning. Adaptive Planning must also interface with GFM as designed by the Joint Staff as a centralized force provider process. The idea is to unify operational and future force structure planning results to objectively support decisionmaking and revisions in strategy. In addition, interaction between planners at lower levels will shape the debate over tradeoffs between current and future force structure throughout the planning and programming cycle. DOD must find a way to expand CBP horizontally through functional areas, such as operational planning, and vertically from the strategic to the tactical level. In turn, the military decisionmaking process (MDMP) can have a consolidated picture for resource decisions.

Background

The Department of Defense is struggling to shed a longstanding threat-based method of planning. The method starts by estimating enemy strengths, weaknesses, and intent. From this estimate, a scenario is developed to plan against. The process essentially results in a list of required forces and assets to win decisively in the worst possible circumstances. Threat-based planning typically uses isolated (non-collaborative) analysis and, on the surface, seems adequate because it provides senior leaders a basis for justifying programs and budgets. In fact, a threat-based mindset still pervades DOD today because it is sufficient in competing for annual appropriations. However, threat-based planning is slowly giving way to Capabilities-based Planning because the former is very weak in determining an effective capability mix within resource constraints.

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After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, in-depth defense studies seeking peace dividends and force structure realignments became commonplace. In fact, during the 1990s, "there were no fewer than five major defense reviews: the Base Force (1991), Bottom-Up Review (1993), Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces (1993), Quadrennial Defense Review (1997), and National Defense Panel (1997)." (3) Concurrently, military strategy simply shifted from a Soviet-centric threat to a dual Major Theater War (MTW) threat-based system and continued to fight budget constraints based on a strategy-resource gap. (4) Focusing on the gap did little to improve standing plans, and very few if any of the lesser plans, mission sets, and military tasks were directly accounted for in this process.

The idea of laundry listing requirements as a way to achieve a grand strategy with full knowledge that the needs will be underfunded lingers. However, the seeds of change were planted during all those defense review debates in the 1990s (5) and came to fruition in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report. According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff J8 at a Military Operations Research Society CBP conference, the 2001 QDR introduced the capabilities-based strategy, but its use and implementation were formally directed in 2003. (6) The tragedy of 9/11 and lessons learned from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom accelerated the shift away from threat-based planning and toward capabilities-based planning. Since the 2001 QDR, there has been solid progress in transforming operational planning, force structure planning, and military force management. Of course, the transformation is far from complete; the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) and operational planning do not synchronize information and analysis in a valuable and comprehensive manner for the MDMP.