Photo By Staff Sgt. Richard Wrigley | Gen. David Perkins, commanding general, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command,...... read more read more
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FORT STEWART, Ga. - Gen. David Perkins, commanding general, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, traveled to Fort Stewart to serve as the keynote speaker at the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team's Reorganization Ball, held here, Oct. 24.
Maximizing his time in the 3rd Infantry Division’s footprint, he sat down with senior leaders from throughout the 2nd ABCT and the 3rd ID before the ball, and talked about the Army’s newest doctrine, TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1, “The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World.”
The purpose of the general’s brief was to put into context just what the AOC is, and what it means for the Army and those who are in it.
The general explained that the first thing you have to realize about the AOC is that it is designed to answer the “big questions” pertaining to building and operating a successful army, and is not intended to become consumed with providing small answers to every little problem.
“Really the AOC does three things,” explained Perkins. “One, it defines the level of war the U.S. Army is going to be built for; two, it describes the future environment the Army will be operating in; and three, it defines what the Army will be built to do, what problem it will solve.”
So what level of war is this AOC designed to address?
Level of war
According to Perkins, determining the level of war the Army is built for is easy, because ultimately you build it to win. However ‘win’ is a complicated term, one that the Army isn’t qualified to define. Policy makers and higher echelons of government define what ‘winning’ means. These actors are at the strategic level. Therefore according to the AOC, the Army should be built for the tactical, operational and the strategic levels of war.
This fact alone makes the new AOC a first in the long history of U.S. Army doctrine.
“We have never written doctrine and/or a concept dealing with the strategic level of war,” explained Perkins. “You can win fights and battles at the tactical and operational level, but you don’t actually win unless it’s at the strategic level.”
With the level of war that is in question clearly defined, the next big issue the AOC tackles is to describe the future environment that the Army will operate in.
Future environment
Perkins readily admits that describing the future is impossible. In fact he states no one can know the future. In other words, the future is not just unknown, but unknowable and constantly changing.
During his brief, he used the example that 50 years ago no one could have described that we would build the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, let alone that they would be attacked by a handful of radicals armed only with box cutters, who would go on to cause a catastrophic tragedy, ushering in a death toll of American lives larger than Pearl Harbor.
Fifty years ago, no one could have described that all of this would come to pass. Yet here we are.
Perkins used this example to demonstrate how never in our wildest dreams could we ever actually describe the future. So the future is unknown, unknowable, and always changing.
“This is the first time in the Army we are writing operating concepts explicitly to deal with the unknown,” Perkins explained. “Why? Because we have finally come to grips with the fact that we don’t know the future.”
To summarize, the TRADOC commanding general postulated that the world is complex. It is not the black and white battlefield of the past, with a known Soviet enemy, with known numbers, and known capabilities, on known terrain. As stated everything is unknown. It is unknowable. It is constantly changing. And these three characteristics make it so that the world that exists now, should be considered by definition complex.
Complex world, multiple dilemmas
With the first two big questions answered, knowing that we need an Army which can win at the strategic level in a complex world, the question begs: How? How are we to win in a complex world? That is the problem.
It is a complicated problem, with a complicated answer. The AOC answers this question by first establishing that the Army is already the foundation of the "Joint Force."
The AOC, and Perkins himself recognizes that while most events requiring the Army these days actually require a joint force, what and who will make up the joint force is still all but unknown. What organizations will be part of the operation? Will the U.S. use all branches of its military? Which ally nations, if any, will choose to work with us? Will there be civilian organizations and corporations involved?
There are of course a myriad of other questions in regards to joint forces, all with unknown answers. What is known is our role. In almost every situation in the past, whether it was a combat operation or a humanitarian mission, the Army served as the foundation that synchronized all the other pieces of the joint force operation.
“This means our systems need to bring in the joint forces, not push them out - we need to be built so others can plug into us and operate with us,” Perkins continued.
Being the foundation force in control of and managing a complex joint force is only the first part of the equation. The second part is the question: What is the joint force to do in order to win? The answer is: It must present “multiple dilemmas."
At this point in the brief, the General used the example of a chess player as an analogy.
“If you’re a chess player and you put someone in checkmate, what does that mean?” Perkins asked. “Really that means they can move, but wherever they move you got them; that’s checkmate - and that’s how you win at the strategic level.”
Perkins then went on to further explain just what he meant by the phrase multiple dilemmas.
“If you only present your enemy with one dilemma, they figure out how to mitigate that…and they gain freedom of maneuver,” he explained. “If you provide your enemy with multiple dilemmas, what you do is you put them into a strategic bind; now you have a chance at winning at the strategic level.”
There is one last question that needs answering, now that it is understood that the Army needs to facilitate presenting enemies with multiple dilemmas. The question is: How can the Army accomplish this? The answer lies with the utilization of power.
The outcome
To enumerate one last time, the level of war we are focused on is the strategic level, and the Army is indeed concerned with winning at that level. All that is known is that the future is unknown, unknowable, and constantly changing, i.e. it is a complex future; and that the Army serves as the Nation’s dominant land force, and in turn the foundation for the Joint Force.
It is also known that the way to defeat the enemy, and in turn to win, is to present the enemy with multiple dilemmas.
Answering the question of how the Army is to win is therefore just a matter of putting all of this together, explained Perkins.
Concepts of the past worked at the tactical level by synchronizing firepower from the land and the air against the enemy, he further explained. This model of synchronizing different sources of firepower on the battlefield in order to tactically win can be transplanted to the model of the Army as a joint force foundation, where the Army facilitates the synchronization of many different national and international powers to produce multiple dilemmas for the enemy, in order to strategically win.
“So what we are saying now is that the way you provide multiple dilemmas, and win at a strategic level, is that the Army must synchronize and deliver national power,” said Perkins.
In summation, this is how TRADOC’s newly published document, “The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World,” sets forth the framework of thoughts and ideas which will foster a new Army that is better prepared to win wars in a complex world.
| Date Taken: | 10.24.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 11.04.2014 01:27 |
| Story ID: | 146894 |
| Location: | FORT STEWART, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 1,130 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, TRADOC CG presents: How to win in a complex world, by SSG Richard Wrigley, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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