Actually, the near-final draft of the new Army Capstone Concept is pretty good--especially when one considers the stultifying Army bureaucracy that it hopes to shape. Brigadier General H.R. McMaster is shepherding it through the process and is helping to add some intellectual heft as well as contemporary combat experience to a concept intended make Army leaders think more adaptively under conditions of great uncertainty.

Also, far too little attention has been paid to TRADOC’s pamphlet on “Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design.” Released in January 2008, this publication attempts to shift Army planning processes from the lock-step routine of the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) to a more collaborative, discourse-based approach that recognizes the emergence of a class of challenges known as “wicked problems” that do not lend themselves to solutions via the engineering-like processes of the MDMP. (See http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/p525-5-500.pdf)

It has yet to be effectively institutionalized, but the “design” approach represents a quantum change in the Army’s approach to problem solving. It could prove extremely useful in current and future conflicts requiring counterinsurgency and irregular warfare. Additionally, it could be the means to translate civilian and military planning/strategy efforts into a common, collaborative framework that would more effectively integrate interagency activities.

--Christopher M. Schnaubelt

Part of the issue is that doctrine writing is one of the areas that has been largely handed over to contractors. In the early years of TRADOC, GEN Dupuy sought officers of intellectual heft to both formulate the doctrine the Army needed and write it. Now, the Army does not decide who actually does the writing, Booz Allen (which has an office just outside the gate at Ft. Leavenworth, in part for this function) or another contractor does. Outsourcing a function is an indication that it is not considered a core competency. In this case, outsourcing indicates that what ought to be a key intellectual function for TRADOC and the Army is in fact something that can be farmed out.

Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, was prepared by the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Combined Arms Center is a TRADOC command, and Gen. Petraeus commanded it while the manual was being written.

John Nagl was a U.S. Army armor officer when he served on the writing team that prepared the counterinsurgency manual. He is also the author of "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam." He is now president of the Center for a New American Security.

RAS brings good points regarding outsourcing, which is generally frowned upon for good reason. However, in this case I think it can be defended b/c of the non-American personalities that are involved in conceptualizing future doctrine.

As Christopher Schnaubelt mentioned above, Commander's Appreciation and Campaign Design is a new TRADOC initiative, one that seeks to concretize the otherwise amorphous concept known as Operational Design. While developed under TRADOC, that Command's association with Booz Allen Hamilton provides additional intellectual weight to the Design project. Booz Allen employs Dr. Shimon Naveh, retired Brig. General from the IDF.[1] Naveh headed the Operational Theory Research Institute in Israeli prior to retiring. He also is an intellectual partner of retired Brig. General Huba Wass de Czege, who has written about Operational Design in Military Review.[2] Given Naveh's experience with Operational Design and current employment with Booz Allen, I'm not dismayed with Booz Allen's potential influence in the writing of doctrine, as it provides the military with added intellectual firepower which can be devoted to a complex subject such as Operational Design. In the end, the military must retain the final writing and codification of doctrine. However, this doesn't mean that third party consultant firms like Booz Allen should excluded. Their intellectual talent may be useful in this case.

Adam Elkus has also recently written a short brief on the history of Operational Design WRT to American strategy. [3]

[1] http://www.operationaldesign.com/staffbios.html#
[2] http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20090228_art004.pdf

[3]http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/adam-elkus/operational-art-and-modern-american-strategy

"...to concretize..." What the hell is that? Is this example of the English language as understood in the US Army? If so, much is explained.

Cut the guy some slack. The word has a better ring to it than "asphaltize."

that is where the money is...the opportunity to enhance the meager annuity that comes after 20-30 years of service. TRADOC sets the Requirements that must be met by those who win the prize in contrived source selection processes, who offer board seats and advisory positions and who will provide the means for expensive suites and club memberships beyond those available for mere strategic thinkers who must worry about stoic enemies.

By & large Gen. Dempsey is correct. There were some prescient people (you mention a couple) but within the intelligence community there was little willingness to credit information that contradicted the "business as usual" consensus about our once & future peer competitor. Until quite late in the game -- even in August 1991 there were more than a few who saw the coup as the Big Red Comeback.

Good day and hope all of you are well. For transparency, I need to identify that I am a Booz Allen Hamilton consultant working in the Future Warfare Division at TRADOC. I have been doing futures work since my arrival at TRADOC as a LTC in 2005. These are my personal views and do not reflect any policy or position of either organization I serve.

Over the past four years, I've gained an appreciation for the monumental task before the Army and TRADOC in reshaping a predominantly human organization--that is, the tools of warfare are the mind and body not machines. This is not to denigrate my brothers in arms that fight and live in different domains--air, sea, and space. Rather, there is an important environmental distinction of where each service operates, and how they interact with their environment.

While there is a wide range of points throughout this thread that I could address, I'll focus my first post on the original comments by Tom. What is an "intellectual powerhouse," or for that matter "intellectual heft?" In today's world does that "intellectual power" need to reside on-site at Fort Monroe? Serve in the Army? Work as a DA or DoD civilian? I'm not sure that anyone can answer the question in a quantitative and qualitative way.

The point is that "intellect" does not reside inside any one individual or organization. TRADOC and GEN DePuy, and to a large extent GEN Starry, played significant roles in successfully rebuilding the post-Vietnam Army and in shelving the experiences and skills sets developed in a counter insurgency war. I cannot state with any certainty that the decision to shelve the counter insurgency memory of the post-Vietnam Army was a personal decision by these leaders—it’s irrelevant to the discussion. What is important is the significant difference in the way the Army is being used in defense of national security. I can only assume, since I was in high school at the time, that writing a new doctrine for how the Army would fight was a difficult task. In discussions and conversations with BG (R) Huba Wass de Czege there was a singular focus on how to defeat a numerically superior Soviet threat in depth—hence AirLand Battle doctrine was born.

Today, the Army and TRADOC do not share the advantage of a singular focus. The JOE, OE, and every other future forecast show a requirement for the Army and to a lesser extent the other Services to operate across the spectrum of conflict from peace to war. How do you write an all encompassing how to fight concept for a 360° problem? How do you remove the less than optimal ideas of the “revolution in military affairs” without limiting the importance of interdependency, information, and advances in technology? My limited experience shows that it takes time and a collaborative environment.

TRADOC and its subordinate Commands, Centers of Excellence, and Schools are leading this effort. Whether CAC or CASCOM publish a manual, an FM, or white paper the ideas contained within these documents will be the result of an extensive and sometimes frustrating process to create the best intellectually sound material available. The list of contributors to Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design, the current work on the Army Capstone Concept, and the upcoming Army Operational Concept reflect a wide and varied audience that provide the “intellectual power” and thought required to defend the nation in the 21st Century. Skeptics abound. Dissenters will bark. Everyone will not be happy.

Look forward to what others have to say and invite all of you to become involved. Visit the TRADOC website at http://www.army.mil/info/organization/unitsandcommands/commandstructure/tradoc/

This discussion ignores a lot of the innovative efforts by TRADOC to capture current battlefied learning and bring it back into the doctrine and training bases. Particularly in organizations like CALL and AWG. Counterinsurgency is a nice tactical manual, but it is hardly a unifying theory for the current and future Army. Some of the biggest factors gutting TRADOC are three basically unfunded mandates:

1. the AC/RC requirements post Gulf War I, where generations of senior CPTs fill staff positions formerly executed by guardsman.

2. the MTT requirements for CPTs and MAJs that drain OPM fill to the institutional Army

3. the massive excess staffs like MNFI that exist outside MTOE and TDA -- carrying hundreds of field grade officers in wartime billets; most are underemployed, and generally produce more work for subordinate units than add value.

There are a lot of smart, capable MAJs, LTCs, and COLs out there -- many of the best and brightest are working on non-MTOE GO "Strategic Initiative Groups." Count the FGs on the personal staffs of GOs of all ranks. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it begs the question of whether the ad hoc and idiosynchratic "think tanks" reduce the capability of TRADOC.

Thomas Ricks is certainly a brilliant writer. However, he has seemed to overlook the fundamental analytic rigor that he has used in previous works. When it comes to providing logical attacks against other speaker’s statements, this article lacks the basic facts. Public discourse cannot rely on anecdotal evidence to substantiate justifiable positions since it generally affects policy, with secondary and tertiary impacts to all of our detriment.

First, the prediction of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, was not a generally accepted position within the Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, most military circles, and most academics. The majority of academicians discounted the perspective that the former Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. Even the prominent dissident Andrei Amalrik, in his book “Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984” got it wrong since he predicted that the collapse would certainly occur between 1980 and 1985. By biblical standards, and to many who depend on reliable frameworks of time for survivability, capability accuracy and critical program investments, he got it wrong. Soldiers in the military cannot rely on experts who miss the time period by five or more years. By today’s standards, the cycles of warfare would have changed several times in the same period.

Second, Mr. Ricks provides no evidence to counter the TRADOC’s intellectual position that the pace of change is accelerating. Anecdotal evidence of 19th century improvements during the industrial age, can hardly compare to the hard facts that lethality, precision, speed in warfare have dramatically improved, in an exponential fashion, over the past 10 years. Didn’t the world just witness in 2003, a sole division attack against the city of Baghdad, accompanied with joint enablers from air, special ops, naval components, which resulted in the complete decimation of the conventional Iraqi Army? Do we call that incremental change? Since when is that incremental change from the industrial age inaccuracies of barrage weaponry (rocket artillery, B17 bombardments, atomic area weapons) so prevalent up until the 1980s. Compared to our past decade of warfare, the 20th Century weapons technologies associated with lethality, precision, and speed have moved at a snail’s pace.

Third, the author has failed to recognize the ground breaking intellectual work evident in the Army’s FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency manual. In this 2006 TRADOC publication, a short three years ago, there were landmark distinctions that broke completely with the Army’s previous views of contemporary warfare. Several counterinsurgency writers, to include Dr. Con Crane, Dr. Clint Ancker, and Dr. John Nagl were assigned to TRADOC. Are we to assume that no great intellectual work has come out of TRADOC and accept this view without scrutiny? Has the author also overlooked the recent “Army Capstone Concept,” the “Operational Environment” and the “Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design” … which are not intellectually lightweight documents. From this perspective, the author needs to start from a fundamental position of gathering facts before leaping into the realm of unsupportable conclusions.

Another piece that I think was talked around a bit but not directly addressed in the commentary is a recognition of the Army's current OPTEMPO and the demands being placed on the Generating Force to support the Operating Force. People can bemoan our "intellectual outsourcing" to contractors, but I believe some of that is a simple fact of life because of our current OPTEMPO. By the way, IRR Soldier, you raise excellent points but again, I believe most of those decisions you discuss were a result of necessity.

What is the current uniformed manning strength across TRADOC (Active, Reserve, etc)? I'm willing to bet it's not 100%. The question is where are those missing uniforms? My hope is that they are downrange focused on winning our current fight.

The other issue I'd like to point out is that the vast majority of the contractors that tend to be a bit demonized in these types of discussions are retired military. Most of them are former green-suiters that spent the last few years of their military career working in TRADOC, retired, and then returned to the same job (or a similar one) as a contractor or GS employee. I'm not going to touch on the ethical questions recently raised about the senior mentor model here although I believe many of those concerns are certainly valid. However, I find attempts at making an argument portraying the Army as outsourcing our intellectual efforts to an uninformed civilian contractor force to be misleading at best.