St r a t e g ic St ud i e s I ns ti t ut e S SI
Sp e c i a l Re por t
Learning to Cope with
A s ymmet ry’s U ncertaint ies
D. Robert Worley
U.S. Army War College
Pre-Publication Draft
DRAFT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. 1
ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE COLD WAR..................................................................................... 2
CHANGES IN THE ENVIRONMENT .................................................................................................................. 3
RESPONDING TO THE CHANGED ENVIRONMENT .......................................................................................... 4
DEFINING ADAPTIVE COMMAND .................................................................................................................. 6
TEACHING, TRAINING, AND LEARNING ........................................................................................................ 6
LEARNING AT THE TACTICAL LEVEL ........................................................................................................... 8
LEARNING AT THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL ...................................................................................................10
LEARNING AT THE STRATEGIC LEVEL ........................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................13
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF THE
AUTHOR
D. ROBERT WORLEY recently joined the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
where he serves as a senior research fellow in the Center for Emerging Threats and
Opportunities. His defense analysis career began at the RAND Corporation in 1985
through 1992 and continued at the Institute for Defense Analyses from 1992 through
2000. Analytic activities have been concentrated in higher echelon command and control
but include wargaming, training exercises, and experimentation at the national command,
Allied Command Europe, US unified command, and joint task force levels, as well as at
Army corps and division level through the battle command training program. Prior to
becoming a defense analyst, Dr. Worley managed and directed research and development
efforts at the Hughes Aircraft Company, NASA, and UCLA. He served in the United
States Marine Corps from 1967 to 1971 with one tour in Vietnam. Dr. Worley earned a
PhD in Engineering and an Engineer Degree from UCLA in 1986 and 1985, respectively.
He earned a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of
Southern California in 1980 and a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Computer Science
from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978. He earned a Masters in
Government from Johns Hopkins University in 1995 and a Master of Arts in National
Security Studies from Georgetown University in 2000. He formerly served on the
computer science faculty at UCLA and is now a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University
Washington Center for the Study of American Government and a member of the adjunct
faculty at the George Washington University Elliot School of International Affairs.
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PREFACE
Through a process of accretion, the US military developed an impressive
capability optimized for the requirements of large-scale, conventional warfare against
known enemies in specific theaters of war. The organizational patterns of behavior that
evolved specifically to support this capability are ill suited to the uncertain and diffuse
nature of the present geo-strategic environment. These behaviors are based on a number
of premises that are no longer valid but, institutionalized, they persist. This article
identifies those earlier premises, shows them false in the current environment, and offers
a more responsive learning process that shifts emphasis in and boundaries between the
existing processes for training, planning, and adapting.
This document is the output of The Army-Marine Corps Warfighter Working
Group, Task 4 on Asymmetric Approaches. Army lead is the Office of the Deputy Chief
of Staff for Operations (ODCSOPS) with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for
Intelligence (ODCSINT) in support. Marine Corps lead is the Deputy Commandant for
Policy, Plans, and Operations (DCPP&O) with the Commanding General Marine Corps
Combat Development Command (CG MCCDC) in support. The views contained in this
document do not necessarily represent official Department of the Army, Department of
the Navy, or Department of Defense policy.
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DRAFT
LEARNING TO COPE WITH
A S Y M M E T R Y ’ S U N C E R TA I N T I E S
by D. Robert Worley
INTRODUCTION
There is nothing new about asymmetry. Strategists and tacticians have always
sought to pit their strength against their opponent’s weakness. During the Cold War, the
Western Allies adopted an “offset strategy” relying on their perceived technological
superiority to offset their numerical inferiority. Both Eastern and Western powers found
acceptable responses to the asymmetry. The nature of the asymmetry has changed
dramatically; an acceptable response has yet to be found. This article describes the
organizational processes that were developed and institutionalized in response to the
realities of the Cold War, explains how they inhibit appropriate responses to the new
asymmetries, and prescribes the actions necessary to overcome those impediments.
Some aspects of government behavior are best understood as “outputs of large
organizations functioning according to standard patterns of behavior.”1 These standard
patterns develop over time and become routine and institutionalized. Habitual relations
and practices become part of the unquestioned way of doing business. They are often
honed and optimized for efficiency, effectiveness, safety, or other measure. When
tasked, an organization’s response is generally limited to its existing patterns of behavior.
Planning, training, and adapting are three complementary ways by which a
country prepares for war. A strong deliberate planning culture developed during the Cold
War in large and important segments of the military, particularly in Europe, Korea, and
Washington. In parallel with or in addition to the methods of deliberate planning, equally
strong processes were put into place that supported intelligence preparation of the
battlefield. A sophisticated training method developed to complement the deliberate
planning process. The output of deliberate planning (the operations plan) was input to
training events that began when the first shot was fired. Plan execution—including daily,
tactical planning—was the focus of training. Decisions made at the strategic and
operational levels of war were made as part of the deliberate planning process. If made
during the exercise, higher-level decisions typically caused no observable effect during
the real-time, weeklong exercise. The doctrine, organization, and equipment of NATO
and Warsaw Pact forces remained constant during the time frame of training events
oriented on warfighting commands. Throughout the Cold War, however, equipment and
Graham T. Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American Political Science
Review, Vol. 63, No. 3, September 1969, 689–718.
1
1
DRAFT
doctrine did change, and US forces did adapt. The locus of adaptation to these changes
was in combat development organizations, part of the producer chain of command
separate from the chain of command governing the use of military force.
In short, one intangible but pronounced Cold War legacy is the existence of
separate organizational responses for plan development, plan execution, and adaptation to
change. This article begins with a review of each of these responses and the underlying
premises and rationale that made them the right choice for the Cold War. Second, trends
following the Cold War are shown to undermine the significance of the original premises.
Third, a learning event and a learning process are recommended that are more responsive
to the present and future environments.
ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE COLD WAR
The legacies of the Cold War are many. The Soviets provided us with a
formidable force to contend with, and we studied it continually for decades. We knew,
with a reasonable amount of certainty, the enemy order of battle, its methods of
operations, the equipment it could bring to bear, and the terrain upon which the war
would be fought. The Soviets were doctrinaire, their doctrine based on solid theoretical
foundations, and they were known for their centralized planning and for the concomitant
lack of latitude afforded their tactical commanders. Much was fixed; if and when the war
would be fought remained a variable.
The US response was a complex deliberate planning process that was repeated
every two years. The typical output was a lengthy operations plan including a timephased force deployment data list (TPFDDL) specifying movements of units in great
detail. In theater, our knowledge of the enemy and the environment was so detailed that
we produced voluminous catalogs of targets matched to preferred means of target
destruction and doctrinal templates that aided in the prediction of enemy intent. The
response to the wealth of available information was a sophisticated, in-place process
called intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB). Deliberate planning became
institutionalized in US defense culture—in Washington and in the field.2
Plan development being the purpose of the deliberate planning process, a training
methodology developed separately that exercised plan execution. The classic training
event3 is conducted in real time, begins when the first shots are fired, runs 24 hours per
day for five to seven days, executes a previously constructed plan, and traverses a single
2
Deliberate planning is the subject of an 18-month Joint Strategic Planning process that is repeated every
two years. Deliberate planning is distinct from crisis action planning that is commonly practiced by naval
expeditionary forces, XVIII Airborne Corps, and special operations forces, for example. Products of the
Joint Strategic Planning process range from the very specific and detailed to the non-specific. The most
specific and detailed operations plan are prepared for the country’s major regional conflicts and include a
variety of annexes and time phased force deployment data (TPFDD) that specify specific units and their
movements. More vague and less threatening scenarios result in operations plans in concept format and do
not include TPFDDs. In between are operations plans in concept format with TPFDDs.
3
This description is characteristic of the exercises conducted by the European Command’s Army and Air
Force components at the Warrior Preparation Center, by the Army’s Battle Command Training Program,
and more recently by the Joint Forces Command in its Unified Endeavor series.
2
DRAFT
path in detail through a very bushy tree of possibilities. Typically, two full echelons of
command and staff constitute the primary training audience. If the training audience is
sufficiently tactical, real forces and equipment are in the field, in the air, or at sea. If the
training audience is of a higher echelon, then some form of simulation represents
echelons below the training audience. The primary values of such an event include
integration of the force elements that usually train separately in garrison and the
opportunity to practice daily decision making and staff procedures.
Perhaps the most insidious consequence of training focused on plan execution is
that strategic, operational, and tactical echelons all are trained in the tactical time frame.
Strategic and operational thinking were the domain of deliberate planning and not the
domain of training. Training in the tactical time frame does not provide senior
commanders the opportunity to be trained in strategic and operational decision making.
In addition to the deliberate planning and training responses, a third response
solidified—adapting to change. The combat development process was implemented
separately by the services in garrison. A long-term intelligence process focusing on
developments in the Soviet Union supported combat development. The unified
commands nominally generated the requirements that drove the combat development
process. But, as often as not, technological opportunity, the need to replace aging
weapons, and visions within the various organizations in the producer chain of command
drove combat developments. Deterring and defeating the threat was the responsibility of
the warfighter. Adapting to the changing threat was the responsibility of the combat
developer.
The result of the past several decades is a complex of sophisticated processes
spread across the Department’s bureaucracy, each office operating in a different time
frame and with specialized skills. One element of the larger process is deliberate
planning with voluminous plans output each two years. A separate training process
produced units trained to doctrine, and to doctrinal standards, to accomplish the specific
missions derived from operations plans. The combat development process is the third
element. Each service implements this process in a way suited to its unique functions.
Combat development dealt with the continual challenge of absorbing new technology and
weapon systems into the force and of responding to advances in the Soviet force. The
products of combat development include doctrine, organization, and equipment. Each of
the planning, training, and adapting functions remains relevant, but the implementing
process needs to change and roles need to be assigned differently across the bureaucracy.
Warfighting commands were trained to execute tasks doctrinally in real time; they were
not trained to adapt in real time at the strategic, operational, or tactical levels of war.
CHANGES IN THE ENVIRONMENT
Many of the assumptions of the Cold War are now violated, for example, the
existence of a known threat, known doctrine, and known order of battle. Our
organizational responses are based on those assumptions, and we must reconsider them in
light of asymmetry.
3
DRAFT
One of the most dramatic trends following the Cold War is the trend from
permanent to temporary commands, for example, from the dominant role of the unified
commands and their component headquarters to a reliance on ad hoc joint task forces. A
corollary trend is from a CINC’s area of operations (AOR) to a joint task force
commander’s joint operations area (JOA), the former characterized by an established and
familiar support infrastructure and the latter by immature and unfamiliar infrastructure.
A second corollary trend is from forward deployed forces assigned to a specific unified
command to deployable forces apportioned to multiple commands. The trend in
planning, already covered in detail, is from deliberate planning to time-sensitive, or crisis
action, planning. The final, and related, trend is from war (mid intensity conflict between
conventional forces) to military operations other than war (low intensity conflict
involving conventional, unconventional, and irregular forces).
Future conflict likely will bring together the elements of both war and operations
short of war. Asymmetric actors that subscribe to the displacement principle of
combined arms theory will engage US forces in complex terrain—including mountain,
jungle, forest, and urban settings—with small bands of dedicated warriors using low
technology weapons. They will attempt to defeat US forces before destroying them by
attacking the C4ISR systems that give unity to dispersed forces. They recognize that the
United States cannot employ forces that they cannot deploy, and they will attack
deployment capabilities at points of embarkation and debarkation and at all points along
our lines of communications.
There is always uncertainty in war, but the overriding trend following the Cold
War is a dramatic increase in uncertainty. So much of what was known and could be
planned for is now unknown and will remain unknown. A useful way to summarize the
changed environment is the dramatic shift in balance between what is fixed (relatively
certain) and what is variable (relatively uncertain).
The natural tendency is to apply familiar and institutionalized processes and
procedures to the new environment. But adapting to the new threat environment is not a
matter of replacing the Soviets with a different enemy that we may come to know as well
as our old foe. Some of the opponents we may face may not exist today as formal
organizations. Some unforeseen precipitating event may bring together disparate groups
into a new, loose coalition. We can know neither the actors nor the conditions in
advance, as we did during the Cold War, but instead must develop organizations and
processes capable of adapting, in real time, to cope with these situations and actors.
Adaptation must continue throughout a military mission. As US forces succeed at
countering a recently recognized method, the asymmetric foe will adapt to find a more
suitable method out of design, out of necessity, or out of desperation. US forces must
have adaptation as a standard component of their culture. They must be trained,
organized, and equipped to adapt.
RESPONDING TO THE CHANGED ENVIRONMENT
The United States and its allies had decades to understand the Cold War problem
and to put forward solutions in the form of war plans. All that remained was to execute.
We trained execution. Against a world of asymmetric actors, we must be prepared to
4
DRAFT
learn as we go. That does not mean that we shouldn’t plan for what we can, but we must
build organizations that can improvise. Those that can only execute a plan according to
fixed doctrine will fail in the new environment. We must build organizations that can
perform improvisational jazz, not organizations that can perform symphonies from sheet
music.
A proper response to the changed environment is to adopt a different command
model—adaptive command. Upon close examination, it is not so much a new command
model as much as it is a shift in emphasis between existing models that parallels the shift
in emphasis between what is fixed and what is variable in the environment. Von
Clausewitz and Van Creveld have made distinctions between different models of
command, but Czerwinski’s taxonomy is the most lucid and easiest to grasp: commandby-plan, command-by-direction, and command-by-influence.4
The pervasive Soviet model was clearly command-by-plan. The air tasking order
is another example, as are many of our Cold War deliberate planning processes.
Command-by-direction brings to mind an oil painting of Napoleon sitting atop his white
horse, surveying the entire battlefield, directing a cavalry charge at the decisive point in
space and time. It also conjures up pejorative images of the so-called “four-star squad
leader.” The third model, command-by-influence, is the preferred model of maneuver
warfare theorists and involves broad, mission-oriented orders and maximum initiative at
the lowest echelons.5
Any real command employs a hybrid of the three. For example, the Navy often
describes its model as command-by-negation. Ship captains exercising independent
command at sea subject to occasional interventions from above constitutes a hybrid of
command-by-influence and command-by-direction. The real-time command provided by
AWACS is an example of a command-by-plan and command-by-direction hybrid.
These command models are distinguished by who exercises command and when
that command is exercised. Command-by-plan centralizes command in the higher
echelon commander where it is exercised in advance through the creation and
promulgation of plans. Command-by-direction also centralizes command at the top, but
it is exercised through real-time orders. Command-by-influence distributes command to
lower echelon commanders where it is exercised by on-scene leadership. The
characterization does not deal with adaptivity, although adaptive command is most
consistently aligned with command-by-influence. Adaptive command is not about who
commands or how, but what constitutes the command function; adapting doctrine,
organization, and concept of operations to the situation must be a function of all levels of
command.
Maneuver warfare theorists make the distinction between command-push and
reconnaissance-pull. Planning avenues of advance prior to contact, fed by intelligence,
characterize the former. The latter is characterized by selecting avenues of advance
Thomas J. Czerwinski, “Command and Control at the Crossroads,” Parameters (Carlisle, Penn: US Army
War College, Autumn 1996), 121–132.
5
Robert R. Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand Battle (Novato,
Calif: Presidio Press, 1991).
4
5
DRAFT
during contact, fed by reconnaissance. US forces must adapt their doctrine—including
tactics, techniques, and procedures—as asymmetric opponents evolve their own. This
response, too, will be driven more by contact with the enemy than by intelligence
gathered in advance. Adaptive command will require different and tighter integration of
intelligence and operations functions. Intelligence functions that monitor the enemy’s
physical disposition before contact and assess battle damage after contact will be
inadequate. The intelligence function must include monitoring enemy behavior during
engagement and recognizing its evolution. Rather than training to doctrine, US forces
must learn to anticipate, recognize, and adapt on the fly.
DEFINING ADAPTIVE COMMAND
Van Creveld is often quoted as saying that, “from Plato to NATO, the history of
command in war consists essentially of an endless quest for certainty.”6 Van Creveld
offers an accurate description, however, he does not offer the quest for certainty as a
prescription for the future. Adaptive command accepts the underlying uncertainty of war,
and the even greater uncertainty of asymmetric warfare, and builds on it.
The purpose of command, according to Depuy is to achieve “unity of effort from
a diversity of means.”7 That remains true. We recommend the adoption of an initial
definition of adaptive command as follows.
Adaptive command derives from a shift in emphasis between the various
command models existing today that reflects the shift toward greater
uncertainty. Adaptive command favors configuration of forces in
operational and tactical commands over configuration of forces in
garrison; it favors combined arms over branch- and service-pure
organizations; it favors decentralized over centralized command; it favors
command-by-influence over command-by-plan and command-bydirection; it favors execution pulled by reconnaissance during contact
over execution pushed by a plan fed by intelligence gathered in advance of
contact; and it favors learning to adapt over training to standards.
As more is learned about asymmetry, the above definition should evolve.
The implementation of adaptive command is bottom up from the smallest tactical
units practicing combined arms. Configuring and reconfiguring forces into combined
arms teams appropriate to the evolving environment should dominate small unit doctrine
and training. Doctrine at the higher echelons must remain variable and emerge from the
interaction of tactical forces.
TEACHING, TRAINING, AND LEARNING
For purposes of this paper, specific meanings are used for the words teaching,
training, and learning. Teaching and training assume an existing body of knowledge.
6
Martin L. van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
General William E. DePuy, “Concepts of Operation: The Heart of Command, the Tool of Doctrine,”
Army Magazine, August 1988.
7
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DRAFT
Teaching is about imparting an assembled body of knowledge, often through traditional
classroom methods including reading and lecture. Training applies knowledge and is
about improving the performance of a particular skill set through practice. Learning is
about creating new knowledge over a problem space through a process of exploration and
discovery.
Both training and learning rely on multiple iterations and observation. In training,
repetition is key to making performance second nature. Observation and feedback is
necessary to diagnose shortfalls and to correct them in the next iteration. A student needs
first to be taught what to do and how to do it before he or she is prepared to practice it. In
learning, multiple trials are conducted to explore alternatives; recognition of unexpected
outcomes may be more important than measurement of expected outcomes.
Learning produces insight into a problem space and generates possible approaches
in the solution space. Knowledge must be discovered; solutions must be invented.8 In
training, the student develops skills under the watchful eye of the master. In learning, the
student attempts to discover and master new knowledge. The learning process is an
investigation into the unknown guided by questions.9 Learning is at the nexus of training
and experimentation.10 Learning is training … for adaptive command. Coincidentally,
the learning event is a better “training” event for the higher echelons than is the classic
training event described earlier.11 Teaching is the responsibility of the teacher, learning
is the responsibility of the student, and training is a shared responsibility.
A learning event, in contrast to a training event, would be conducted in fast or
skip time12 and run eight hours per day for several days engaging the command and
principal staff of only a single echelon. Students would prepare sketchy plans, construct
alternative doctrine and organization, and execute the assemblage. The process would be
repeated, traversing as many paths as possible through a complex decision tree. Only one
course of action is selected for execution in a training event. Several alternative courses
of action are explored in a learning event. Doctrine and organization are necessary inputs
to a training event; candidate doctrinal and organizational concepts are possible outputs
of a learning event.
8
These two words—discovery and invention—should not be used as synonyms. A process that provides
an opportunity for intuition and insight may facilitate discovery. The trial and error process that follows
initial inspiration most often facilitates invention. Messing about in a problem space leads to discovery.
Messing about in the solution space leads to invention.
9
This pedagogical technique is commonly referred to as heuristically guided investigation, a process
driven seeking answers to questions rather then by testing hypotheses.
10
D. Robert Worley, Defining Military Experiments, IDA D-2412 (Alexandria, Va: Institute for Defense
Analyses, February 1999).
11
D. Robert Worley, Michael H. Vernon, and Robert E. Downes, Time and Command Operations: The
Strategic Role of the Unified Commands and the Implications for Training and Simulations, IDA-3222
(Alexandria, Va: Institute for Defense Analyses, October 1996).
12
An event conducted in fast time would represent more than one hour of real-world time in every hour of
event time. An event conducted in skip time might represent decision making in slower than real world
time to allow greater deliberations, adjourn for the evening, and resume the next morning as if weeks or
months had passed.
7
DRAFT
Learning events don’t replace the classic training event that integrates and offers
opportunities for practice. They don’t replace planning, but the shift from fixed to
variable requires moving the sites where planning, training, and adapting are conducted.
Individuals and collectives still must master the basics through education and training.
Dave Brubeck was a classically trained musician before he became a master at
improvisational jazz.

Strategic and operational decision making will continue to be manifest in the products
of deliberate planning but must also be present in higher echelon commands and thus
must receive greater training emphasis.

Deliberate planning must continue, but crisis action planning will play a stronger role
and thus must receive greater training emphasis.

The combat development process must continue to evolve the force by exploiting the
many advances in technology and to adapt to emerging threats, but commands at all
levels must be capable of adapting as well and thus adapting to change must receive
significantly greater training emphasis.

Intelligence will continue to feed the combat development process and the deliberate
planning process, and intelligence will continue to feed operational commands at all
levels, but intelligence must support adaptation to an evolving enemy in real time and
thus the process must receive greater training emphasis.
These sum to a training shortfall or, more properly, a learning shortfall.
The appropriate method to prepare for a relatively certain threat environment is
through deliberate planning and IPB, by training to doctrine, and with a separate, longterm combat development process. The appropriate method to prepare for a relatively
uncertain threat environment is through crisis action planning, reconnaissance, and
adaptive command—learning to anticipate, to recognize, and to respond to change.
To help clarify the meaning of a learning event, examples are given below from
the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war. Learning events are anchored in a
problem space and are designed to produce better recognition of the breadth and depth of
a problem and to generate possible solutions. The list of examples given is intended to be
suggestive, not exhaustive.
LEARNING AT THE TACTICAL LEVEL
Commanders and leaders at the tactical level must be prepared to adapt. The
asymmetric actor may apply low-technology means and methods against US
conventional forces. The asymmetric actor must continually adapt through trial and
error, and the opposing tactical commander with limited doctrinal responses will be the
victim. General Montgomery Meigs, Commander of US Army Europe and US 7th Army,
puts it this way.
We have become adept at replicating a set-piece enemy for our units. We
do a good job of giving them an opponent that fights with consistent,
predictable doctrine and tactical procedures. We must now move to the
next level and present an enemy that uses asymmetrical approaches and
8
DRAFT
who learns from our Blue Force, adapting to avoid our strengths and to
exploit our tactical weaknesses as he moves from battle to battle. … Units
must learn to anticipate the enemy’s actions, find him, assess what he is
doing, preempt him, and reassess… .13
Greater emphasis needs to be placed on forming combined arms teams in
response to an evolving threat. The evidence from military operations in urban
environments, for example, consistently shows that combined arms teams are required at
the lowest tactical levels to deal with this asymmetric environment.14 These small
combined arms teams are formed not just of the combat arms, but also include combat
support and combat service support elements. They are not found in garrison or in
doctrine. The unit that experiments with new combinations (methods of employing a mix
of arms) is more likely to adapt to an evolving enemy than is a unit that trains to design
standards against a doctrinal opponent. The problem then becomes learning and training
combined arms warfare—across branches and across services—at the lowest tactical
echelons against asymmetric actors.
There are a host of impediments to exploring new combinations at the tactical
echelons. In garrison, units are pure, for example, tank or artillery battalions, or fighter
squadrons. Efficiency is achieved through homogeneous branch and service units.
Effectiveness, on the other hand, is achieved through combined arms teams. Training
opportunities and ranges, such as the National Training Center, are optimized for a
specific type of force and range of operations. Peacetime efficiency militates against
combined arms learning opportunities.
The problem extends well into the hierarchy. Division tables of organization and
equipment, like their battalion counterparts, are designed for a specific range of
operations. The range of possible combined arms operations in an armored division is
limited. The same is true of light infantry, airborne, or air assault divisions. Oddly, the
somewhat defunct infantry division may offer the widest range of combinations to be
explored. Today’s divisions were designed and optimized for a specialized range of
missions. Training opportunities, for example, the Battle Command Training Program,
are designed accordingly. The force, at all levels, must be designed to be competent
across a broad range of missions, but optimized for none.
Chechnya and Mogadishu offered harsh learning laboratories. Still, the combat
development process must absorb those lessons learned. These lessons must be reflected
in new systems, doctrine, organization, and training. Combat developers may be in the
catch up role, documenting doctrine created at great cost in the field. Worse yet, lessons
learned in the field are not necessarily observed by combat developers and may be lost.
Centers for lessons learned must not be black holes of information.
The combat development process must respond with a richer set of systems
(means) and, more importantly, a richer set of ways to combine them (methods).
General Montgomery C. Meigs, “Operational Art in the New Century,” Parameters (Carlisle, Penn: US
Army War College, Spring 2001), 4–14.
14
D. Robert Worley, Alec Wahlman, and Dennis J. Gleeson, Jr., Military Operations in Urban Terrain: A
Survey of Journal Articles, IDA D-2521 (Alexandria, Va: Institute for Defense Analyses, October 2000).
13
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DRAFT
Unfortunately, combat developments are typically branch specific and not combined
arms oriented. System acquisition is an important function of branch-specific combat
development, and money flows to system acquisition, making methods of secondary
interest. Interesting combinations can and should be pursued now; there is no need to
wait for new systems.
LEARNING AT THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL
What is the operational level of war in an asymmetric environment? There are
some interpretations of the operational level that focus on picking the point in space and
time for the decisive battle—the school of close-with-and-destroy-the-enemy. Another
school of thought focuses on geography, the seize-and-hold-terrain school. Yet another
focuses on penetrating a linear defense to move deeply to the enemy’s soft rear area, the
maneuver warfare school. None of those may be relevant in the asymmetric
environment. This article proposes coping mechanisms as a dominant characteristic of
the operational level of war in asymmetric environments.
A JTF’s mission may be dominated by long periods of making and maintaining
peace while responding to sporadic flare-ups. Or, responding to asymmetric incidents
may be an integral part of larger, conventional operations. In either case, insufficient
resources will be available to prevent the many potential asymmetric attacks. They must
be detected and dealt with as they emerge. Preparation means emplacing coping
mechanisms in advance.
Urban emergency services—including police, paramedics, and firefighters—offer
a useful model for the operational level of war in asymmetric environments. There are
insufficient resources to prevent accidents, crimes, and fires, and city managers can’t
plan to be in the right place at the right time in advance, but they can and have
implemented mechanisms in advance that enable them to monitor and respond with the
critical resources necessary. These are the bases of coping mechanisms.
Coping mechanisms at the operational level of war are not new. One was
implemented after the October 3-4 incident in Mogadishu. That small, independent units
in the city would come under attack could be known in advance; which and when could
not. A monitoring network and quick response force was implemented to cope with what
could be anticipated but not prevented. Air mobility as employed in Vietnam could be
considered as an operational level coping mechanism. US forces could neither prevent
enemy troop concentrations nor predict and plan for them. They could, however, detect
them and respond rapidly. Close air support, when tightly integrated with dynamic
ground operations, can also be seen as a coping mechanism.
Law enforcement may offer instructive insights for intelligence as well. Rather
than conventional force templates, mug shots, family trees, and telephone and bank
records may be the appropriate intelligences products. Intelligence staffs will learn to
provide different products, and operators will learn to ask for them.
Learning will certainly continue to take place in the unforgiving laboratory of
ongoing operations. JTFs will be created for real operations offering opportunities to
experiment with a wide range of combinations and coping mechanisms. JTFs are not part
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DRAFT
of standard military organizations in garrison. Just the opposite is true; garrison forces
are pure and rarely join as heterogeneous forces. Again, efficiency in garrison is the
enemy of effectiveness in the field. Without standing JTF’s, learning in garrison will be
weak—limited by single arms thinking.
Adaptive command is a daunting task for a good team and perhaps an impossible
task for a “pick-up team” of players assembled at the last minute. Yet, we plan to form
our command team at the last minute. The newly appointed commander must build a
team at the same time the team is building a response to an emerging crisis. The ad hoc
JTF headquarters will defy adaptive command, or any type of command, until the
command team is built. The learning curve will be slow and costly. US forces and
objectives will be vulnerable at the operational level of war until the joint command team
is formed.15
LEARNING AT THE STRATEGIC LEVEL
Learning issues at the strategic level are the most wide ranging and daunting.
Asymmetric tactics may be applied out-of-area as part of a larger strategy during regional
conflicts or they may be applied as the sole elements of a long-term strategic offensive.
Force protection, in and out of the principal area of conflict, will continue to be a
strategic issue. Protecting the joint deployment system, including the supportedsupporting relationships between commands, will also continue to be a strategic
imperative. Learning to cope with these strategic issues will likely have implications for
force structure balance. For purposes of this paper, learning at this level focuses on
developing a strategic response that subordinates means to ends.
Force Protection. Full dimension protection around the clock for all of our
forces is the objective. Sites at risk include command centers, operating bases, DoD
schools, family housing, and embassies. At one extreme, resources can be statically
allocated in advance to protect the force against all potential threats. Such a prevention
strategy is exhaustive and cannot be sustained. A strategy that subordinates means to
ends would dynamically allocate resources to the part of the force most critical to mission
accomplishment. Additional resources would be allocated to monitor threat conditions
and to respond accordingly. Coping mechanisms—resources organized to monitor and
respond—underwrite this second strategy. If intelligence and operations detect a rising
threat condition and can respond in real time, then coping mechanisms can be effective in
implementing a prevention strategy. If this real-time stimulus-response cycle cannot be
built, then coping mechanisms should be designed to deal with the after effects. The realtime interaction of intelligence and operations is critical and should be a focal point for
both learning and training.
Joint Deployment System. The US military has become accustomed to playing
away games—we fight on foreign soil. That reality provides a certain psychological
Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft, America’s First Battles, 1776–1965 (Lawrence, Kans:
University of Kansas Press, 1986). Mark T. Goodman and Richard M. Scott, “Standing Joint Task Force:
Opportunity Lost,” Marine Corps Gazette, September 1998, 38–39. D. Robert Worley, “Joint Task Forces:
Options to Train, Organize, and Equip,” National Security Studies Quarterly, Winter 1999, 31–48.
15
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DRAFT
tranquility in the homeland, but it also presents an enduring strategic vulnerability that
will be exploited by the asymmetric actor. How might the United States learn to
anticipate, prevent, and cope with out-of-area attacks?
In the event of a crisis, a JTF commander will be appointed and assigned a joint
operations area (JOA) within a unified command’s area of operations (AOR). There will,
of course, be significant opportunities for attack by asymmetric actors outside the JOA
and even outside the AOR. For example, another Middle East scenario might involve
bombers and strategic airlift operating out of Rota, Spain. An asymmetric actor might be
willing and able to either disrupt operations there or to raise Spain’s cost of providing
basing. The mere potential for asymmetric attack caused significant problems to planners
of Operation Eldorado Canyon. Spain and France denied overflight rights to American
FB-111s flying from Great Britain to Libya. The mere potential of an asymmetric
response was an effective deterrent to potential European allies. Asymmetric attacks may
be less direct than physical destruction of facilities or personnel. They may include
incitement of locals to riot or strike. Throughput capacity will be seriously degraded if
forklift operators, railroad engineers, and stevedores don’t show up for work.
Designed as a learning event, attention would be focused on the joint deployment
system, including ports of embarkation, lines of communication, ports of debarkation,
and forward operating bases. The objectives of a learning event would be the exploration
of as many potential asymmetric attacks as possible and to determine how to cope with
the most dangerous and the most likely. No doubt there will be inadequate resources to
prevent them all by static allocation. Resources may be allocated to prevent the most
dangerous; coping mechanisms must be devised for other potential attacks.
Neither the JTF commander nor his CINC will be positioned to deal with all outof-area attacks, but the total system must anticipate and prepare for them; the JTF
commander must be prepared to cope with their effects. The value of potential
asymmetric attack outside of the JOA must be evaluated in terms of the JTF
commander’s theater priorities and the country’s strategic priorities.
It may be necessary to assign a force as a coping mechanism. For example, an
amphibious ready group with marine expeditionary unit, a special operations task force,
an air-assault based task force, a chemical-biological incident response force, or a fleet
antiterrorist security team might be assigned the mission to respond to out-of-area-attacks
in the Mediterranean region during a Middle East scenario.
Supported-Supporting Relationships. One set of issues to explore is the
complex supported-supporting relationships between unified commands. In the Rota
example, EUCOM could enter into a supporting relationship with a CENTCOM JTF and
perhaps even support TRANSCOM. A series of learning events may be usefully applied
to learn enough for a joint publication on the matter. More importantly, the learning
process needs to be applied as real crises emerge and unfold. A classic training event,
traversing exactly one path through the problem space, would be of little value. Another
shortcoming of the classic training event is that it assumes away the myriad of
deployment problems further assuring that our JTF commanders and staffs are under
trained to respond to asymmetric environments.
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DRAFT
Force Structure. Force structure is another issue to explore in this learning
process. Specifically, the need for (a) standoff capabilities to destroy physical targets, (b)
forces to close with and destroy conventional forces, (c) forces to seize and hold bases in
contested areas, (d) forces to protect bases in permissive but potentially vulnerable areas,
(e) forces to respond after the fact, and, most importantly (f) the mix of those forces
available.
CONCLUSION
The balance has shifted between what could be known and planned for in advance
and what could not—between what was fixed and what was variable. In the post-Cold
War era, less can be planned for and more must be dealt with through in situ interaction.
Increasingly, being prepared is less a product of deliberate planning, training plan
execution to doctrinal standards, and long-term combat development processes, and more
a product of warfighting organizations that are trained in crisis action planning and
adaptive command.
Simply put, the user chain of command must learn how to deal with the uncertain
geo-strategic environment, and must not wait for the producer chain of command to
produce a solution that can be taught and trained. There is evidence that adaptive
command, as defined here, is becoming more common. Coping mechanisms can be
found in past military action, but may become central doctrinal concepts in asymmetric
environments.
Centering learning in the user chain of command will produce commands that can
more readily adapt on the fly, as well as lead the long-term combat development process
more effectively, rather than be its belated recipient. Learning is taking place in
operational commands, and combat developers must more actively transition those
lessons learned into doctrine, organization, and training. The combat developers must
produce a more diverse “playbook” of combined arms at the lowest tactical levels and
coping mechanisms at higher-level commands.
Combat development is principally conducted by the services and by branches
within the services. Scarce defense dollars go for equipment, and branches acquire
equipment. Accordingly, branches dominate over combined arms organizations in
combat development. Only leadership, another precious resource, can overcome the
imbalance accompanying the flow of money.
This article began with a reference to Allison’s classic work explaining the Cuban
Missile Crisis. If he is correct that government action is often limited by its standard
patterns of behavior, then adaptation must become a standard pattern of US military
behavior. Improvise, persevere, and overcome.
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DRAFT
REFERENCES
Allison, Graham T. “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American
Political Science Review, Vol. 63, No. 3, September 1969, 689-718.
Czerwinski, Thomas J. “Command and Control at the Crossroads,” Parameters.
Carlisle, Penn.: US Army War College, Autumn 1996, 121-132.
Heller, Charles E. and William A. Stofft. America’s First Battles, 1776–1965.
Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas Press, 1986.
van Creveld, Martin L. Command in War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1985.
Worley, D. Robert, Michael H. Vernon, and Robert E. Downes. Time and Command
Operations: The Strategic Role of the Unified Commands and the Implications for
Training and Simulations, IDA P-3222. Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense
Analyses, October 1996.
Worley, D. Robert. “Joint Task Forces: Options to Train, Organize, and Equip.”
National Security Studies Quarterly, Winter 1999, 31-48.
Worley, D. Robert, Alec Wahlman, and Dennis J. Gleeson, Jr. Military Operations in
Urban Terrain: A Survey of Journal Articles, IDA D-2521. Alexandria, Va.: Institute
for Defense Analyses, October 2000.
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