Movie Clips in the Classroom

One of the earliest aspects of teaching I picked up on was the use of attention getters to begin a class. Throughout my time on the faculty at the Joint Forces Staff College I have used YouTube Clips to begin instruction on topics ranging from ethics to command and control to each step of the joint planning process (JPP). I present here my playlist, links to the video are embedded in the section title.

Ethics and Ethics and more Ethics

              One of the best recent military movies that involves ethics and morals is Eye in the Sky. Any movie with Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (in one of his last roles) is sure to capture a classroom’s attention. These three scenes from the film capture the realities of modern day conflict, the evolution of military technology, a modern day kill chain, all wrapped around the decision making of people who have to consider the ethics of what they do. Should they fire the hellfire risking one innocent life to save scores of others? There are no easy answers.

              The video is useful to bring some entertainment into what often turns into an emotional conversation. Once we move past the video the discussion turns to the implications of their readings from the previous night which include The Bathsheba Syndrome and Lying to Ourselves. The latter, an essay by Dr. Wong and Dr. Garras has a terrific video presentation by Dr. Wong at The USAHEC video site on YouTube and is worth the hour and 20 minutes to watch.

Command and Control

              Perhaps one of the most widely shared video clips from the War on Terror is a clip of Leeroy Jenkins charging into the room during a session of World of Warcraft. With over seventeen million views on Youtube, the clip is easily recognizable by students who can quote the clip just as easily as generation-X officers can quote Zoolander, or Caddyshack.

              I use this clip to introduce what can happen when there is a lack of command and control, specifically the principle of unity of command. Clearly there is nobody in charge of this group, and the initiative that Leeroy displays serves only to destroy his team. I know when I play this to lead off the discussion, there is a 32.33 (repeating of course) percent chance of a successful lesson.

Strategy = Ends +Ways + Means / Risk

              There are many definitions of strategy ranging from Clausewitz’s definition of “the doctrine of the use of individual battles for the purposes of war” to B.H.L. Hart’s definition “the art of distributing military means to fulfil the ends of policy.”  Others define strategy as a theory of victory.  One of my personal favorites comes from my daughter who told me that strategy is thinking about the future and writing a story about it. No matter how one defines strategy or develops a strategic approach, throughout the Department we communicate strategy through ends, ways, and means. Any imbalance of the three turns into risk.

              The clip from The Office is useful in that I have the students write down what the strategic guidance or given ends were (double growth from 4% to 8%), followed by identifying the ways and means through which Andy looks to attain his ends. It’s a fun exercise, and I find many of my students who tend to be in their mid-30s to mid-40s still find references to The Office relevant.

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Design

Current Conditions and Desired Conditions

In the first steps of design, the planner must consider and think deeply about the current conditions and the desired conditions. Although not a war film, this clip from Miracle serves as a nice example of Coach Herb Brooks explaining the current state of U.S. Olympic Hockey and the conditions he seeks to attain (win a gold medal and defeat the Russians). Moreover, Brooks lays out how he will accept risk of having lesser skilled players in favor of a more cohesive team that can play as a single unit. Brooks understands the problem, and has lines of effort to overcome said problem (training, schedule, style of play).

The movie in its entirety can show nearly all the elements of operational design. For example, Coach Brooks has decision points in assembling the initial team, a decision point each time he cuts a player, and a decision points for building the coaching staff. There are decisive points throughout, as the team attains unity, and achieves victories against other nations. Indeed, one can almost break down the phases of Coach Brooks’ plan on his way to the Olympics.

The Problem Statement

              This is an easy clip that plays well with the class. Like my introduction of ends, ways, and means, I have the class use this scene and analyze it through the elements of creating a problem statement. The dialog between Billy Beane and his scouts serves as an illustration of what is the proximate cause (losing Giambi) and the root cause (being 50 feet of crap below poor teams) of a problem.

However, as I use the Moneyball scene as a method to demonstrate a method to determine the problem, I use this clip from Lost where John Locke talks about Michelangelo as an opening video. The scene represents the idea that we need to think about the problem, take the time to understand it, and figure out what we need to do before we start doing it.

 Understanding Strategic Guidance

              Strategy formulation is a dialog. In the first two weeks of our class we introduce students to national strategic guidance documents such as the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and National Military Strategy. While these documents are useful for deliberate planning when time is not in a crunch, they are less helpful in times of crisis.

              This scene from the movie 13 Days is a nice example of leaders engaging in a dialog, albeit a contentious dialog. During times of crisis consistent communication from one level of war to the next is critical to avoid poor decisions in the heat of the moment. Guidance during these times can come in the form of a speech, a tweet, telephone calls, or video teleconferences. What’s interesting in this video is the disparate interpretation of strategic guidance, and the ability of standing operating procedures (SOPs) to influence events.

Commander’s Intent

At the culmination of the design phase, a commander should write (often with the assistance of the staff) a commander’s initial planning guidance. This guidance includes an intent. At a minimum, a commander’s intent should include purpose, endstate, and risk. In this scene from Generation Kill, then Major General James Mattis communicates a clear intent to his subordinate brigade commander. General Mattis recounts this story in his book Call Sign Chaos, albeit with fewer swear words.

Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA) and Homeland Defense

              DSCA is an underrated mission in the Department of Defense. However, as of 16 January, 2020, nearly 20,000 National Guard members deployed to the National Capital Region with approximately another 10,000+ deployed in support of COVID-19 relief. Combine this with the annual missions to fight wildfires, flooding, and hurricane relief, the most likely mission a national guard member will deploy for is not to fight Russian hoards coming across Europe, but to support state and local authorities and their fellow Americans in times of need. This clip from Outbreak is a wonderful example how the military must always ensure that supporting and defending the Constitution is our purpose. Moreover, it is useful to spark discussion in the seminar on what is appropriate and what is not an appropriate use of Title-10 / Active Duty military within the homeland.  

              As an aside, the actor J.T. Walsh also played Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Markinson in A Few Good Men. He is one of the best character actors of his time.

              Homeland Defense is the protection of the United States sovereignty, territory, domestic population, and critical infrastructure against external threats and aggression. If the Department is going to conduct DSCA, there is always a possibility that it will be the result of a failure in homeland defense. The clip from Spies Like Us offers an example of Homeland Defense and more specifically Ballistic Missile Defense gone awry.

Reserve Forces

At the Joint Forces Staff College, the overwhelming majority of in-residence students are active duty officers. We provide a lecture on various aspects of the Reserve and National Guard. This clip from In the Army Now hammers the point that there are specific capabilities that only exist in the reserve and guard components. The United States cannot sustain a war without these critical enablers.

The Joint Planning Process

The Joint Planning Process

              In this scene from Gettysburg, General Lee (portrayed by future president Jed Barlet) talks through nearly every step of the Joint Planning Process (JPP). From discussion of enemy and friendly forces to describing the course of action and wargaming the action as he spoke. While I don’t expect my students to plan at this pace, the scene opens discussion in the seminar on the value of planning, challenging assumptions, and the use of wargaming to find holes in the plan.

Mission Analysis

              This is where I begin to show clips from A Bridge Too Far. Mission analysis is a series of subsets ranging from facts and assumptions to identifying specified and implied tasks. Further, it is the step where the initial risk is presented to the commander. The “Landing Zone Dilemma” scene is a way to show the dialog of what mission analysis looks like at the operational level of war. Much like strategy development it is indeed a dialog where commanders and staffs can make their initial estimates and ensuing demands on higher headquarters.  

Mission Analysis 2

              A second option, and one I often play in addition to the Landing Zone Dilemma scene is the clip where “Rundstedt takes Control.” Upon assuming command of German forces Rundstedt methodically takes in the current state of his forces ranging from equipment, personnel to unit morale. Sun Tzu advises military strategists to know oneself and one’s enemy. This is an aspect of mission analysis as well, identifying the forces available and the capability shortfalls.

Course of Action Development

              Continuing scenes from A Bridge Too Far, the “Plan for Market Garden” scene shows a course of action development brief from one level of command to subordinate levels. At the end, there is a nice scene of the German planners developing their own course of action. What is nice about this clip is the display of Clausewitz’s idea that war is a dual. As one side is developing their plan or strategy, another side is doing so concurrently. Less of a dual where one side acts followed by a reaction of another, the planning and action resembles a wrestling match where both sides are acting and reacting simultaneously.

Course of Action Analysis / Wargaming

              Wargaming serves to identify weaknesses or shortfalls in the plan. In this scene General Gavin approaches the British with his identified shortfalls which include tank support and boats. I use this to display a failure of wargame prior to execution of the mission. Had a proper wargame been conducted, the capability shortfalls may have been identified beforehand. Often, commanders and staffs will skip the wargame step, or shorten the planning time at the expense of a proper wargame.

A second clip comes from Patton, and is a nice way to show two distinct courses of action. One comes from the British, the other from Patton himself who offers to attack with three divisions in 48 hours. Others in the meeting doubt the feasibility of his COA, but we all know how it turned out in the end.

Orders Development

              This is the final scene I use from A Bridge Too Far. In this scene known as “Horrocks Speech,” General Horrocks describes the plan to the British military leaders. The scene works well in that the speech presents a clear and concise description of the plan. In less than three minutes Horrocks describes a complex plan communicating the objectives of Market Garden and the ways in which they intend to accomplish the mission. Further, Horrocks describes timelines, risk, and leaves his men motivated and ready to execute the mission.

Post Combat Operations Planning (formally Phase IV)

              In both our contingency planning and planning in crisis scenarios, students in the seminar plan an operation from pre-combat and deployment to major combat operations and through post-combat operations. If the past 20 years has taught us anything, the post combat (formally Phase IV) phase can be the decisive phase of an operation.

              In this clip, Professor Terguson played by the late and great Sam Kinison leads off his class with a simple question of “Why did the United States fail to achieve victory in the Vietnam War?” The scene is recognizable by most students and offers some humor prior to the discussion of the more serious topics of post combat operations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Iraq and Afghanistan offer parallels and lessons that we apply to the operational approach for post combat operations.

Planning in Crisis (formally Crisis Action Planning)

Once again we find future President Jed Bartlet moving through the entire Joint Planning Process in a matter of minutes. Truly a mastermind in the arts and science of war.

Administrative

The Final Exam

              As a method of motivating the seminar prior to their final exam, the academic evaluation of Thornton Mellon fits the bill.

Grading Papers

              This is a clip from Canadian comedian Gerry Dee. “Mr. D. was a teacher before he turned his teaching experiences into stand-up comedy which in turn led to his own sitcom on Canadian television. Of course, this is not how I grade papers, but it serves as a humorous way to break some tension in the class after they receive feedback on their first writing assignment.

Online Delivery, Weeks 3 and 4

Week 3. 13 – 17 April

Monday 13 April: Application of Strategic Theory and Global Integration

The first lesson of the week builds upon the strategic concepts I introduced to the seminar the previous week. The application of strategic theory is a discussion on the competencies of strategic thinking. These include critical thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking, ethical thinking, and thinking in time.

For thinking in time, I once again recommend to the seminar Richard Neustadt’s book Thinking In Time. I discuss how within every planning team, there is someone who raises a comparison or uses an analogy comparing a previous operation or crisis to the problem at hand. The author of the book recommends building a simple chart to display the similarities and differences between the historical example and the current problem set. More often than not, there are more differences than similarities.

The second part of the discussion moves to national interests. I play a short clip of Representative Bachmann speaking about Libya and national interests in 2011, and a second clip of President Clinton speaking on national interests in Somalia. Politics aside, the videos serve as a moment of reflection on the term “vital national interest,” and sparks a discussion on what is vital and what is not. We layer national interests into four broad categories: 1) Survival 2) Vital 3) Important 4) Peripheral. These broad labels assist in how a strategist and planner can think about prioritization of efforts, capabilities and resources towards a problem. Where the labeling of national interests and global integration come together is through this prioritization.

Tuesday 14 April: Strategic and Operational Risk and Theater Assessment

Risk is always a fun discussion. I open the class with a short Seinfeld clip to gain their attention. We talk about strategic and operational risk by first explaining the difference between the two. We come to the agreement that strategic risk is that which affects the United States, and is inherent upon the President or the Secretary of Defense to assume. Strategic risk is more than lives and money, and can include risk to an alliance, risk to national prestige, or even risk to global and regional stability.  On the other side of the coin is operational risk. This risk is incumbent upon Combatant Commanders to assume. Typically we break operational risk into the two components of risk to force and risk to mission.

We then discuss the ideas of the 3-legged stool, and how risk is the imbalance of ends, ways, and means. Further, we talk about how planners can avoid mitigating risk by only thinking about and applying more means (troops, money, equipment, and technology) to the problem. It’s not easy, and telling a senior leader to reduce their desired ends is a hard conversation that planners must be prepared to present. Moreover, mitigating risk implies prioritization of capabilities, as we discussed the previous day.

In the afternoon is our lesson on theater assessment. Assessment is paramount to any operation, from the firing of artillery at the tactical (think Battle Damage Assessment /BDA), to the training of a local security force at the operational level. To begin the discussion I play a quick video of the failures of battlefield assessment in the Vietnam War. This short video leads to some story telling in the class based on our own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I lead off the storytelling by describing the ridiculous Transition Readiness Assessments (TRAs) that tactical units performed on the Iraq Army and Iraqi Police Forces. These flawed assessments were ridiculous, and it was obvious to leaders performing the mission at the tactical level. I will drop in a couple of quotes from The U.S. Army in the Iraq War Volume 1 and Volume 2.

“It was the reverse of body count. It was not the number of guys who we’re killing; it was the number of guys you were training,. Just like a body count that does not really tell you whether you are achieving your operational or strategic goals. The training body count, how many guys are in the ISF does not tell you anything about your strategic or operational objectives and how well you are doing towards achieving them.”

“No rating in the assessment explored the important subjective questions of readiness to fight, and unit cohesiveness. Only 1 of the 15 questions addressed training., and it assessed the percentage of mission essential tasks on which a unit was proficient.”

“as a transition team worked with an Iraqi unit, they would chart the unit’s steady progress, showing its development over the length of their deployment. When the next team arrived, with little basis to judge unit capabilities other than their own experience with the U.S. Army, they would be appalled at the state of the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi unit ratings would plummet overnight.”

“For a document that emphasized Iraqi independence,…there was little actual input from Iraqis, a fact not lost on Iraqis.”

Even worse in our assessments was the continued counting of hours of electricity, and other random measures of effectiveness and measures of performance to track progress. Most of it was meaningless drivel. I still hold a lot of anger over this. It was so obvious to anyone at the tactical level, yet so many at the operational and strategic level did not get it.

Wednesday 15 April: Discussion on Energy Security and Understanding Strategic Guidance

We spend the first 30 minutes of class discussing a video they watched last night. When we have the course in residence, one of our best speakers for the college is Dr. Sebonis Helf. She speaks on the topc of energy security. I’ve heard her pitch to the class multiple times, and still sit in on each session. As we moved the curriculum online, we had the students watch a video of a previous talk.

Following our discussion on energy, I inform the class that they are now part of a Combatant Command Staff, specifically, the USAFRICOM staff. In the previous week, we introduced the students to various national strategic guidance (NSS, NDS, NMS, etc..). Today, I split the seminar into three working groups and have each group examine specific documents to pull relevant guidance to our fictional / instructional USAFRICOM.

Understanding strategic guidance from the combatant command perspective is essential, but not as simple as copy and paste from the documents. Strategic guidance comes out at intermittent times, and does not always reflect the current situation. Strategic guidance can be ambiguous, contradictory, and at times irrelevant. For example, on February 1st, 2017, the 2015 National Security Strategy was not as germane to combatant commanders as it was on January 1st 2017. Our elected leaders change every 2, 4, and 6 years, and political appointees who help shape strategic direction can change at a faster pace. The worldviews of General H.R. McMaster and Ambassador Josh Bolton don’t exactly line up, just as the worldviews of Secretary Mattis and Secretary Esper are not one-to-one matches. Students must think critically about the strategic direction and national security documents they read and implement.

Thursday 16 April: We continue the discussion on strategic guidance.

Friday 17 April: Introduction to the Interagency, International Organizations, and Non-governmental Organizations

To close out the week, the seminar examines the various organizations that a joint force commander can expect to see in their operating environment.

Week 4. 20 – 24 April

Monday 20 April: Understanding the AOR and Operational Environment

Beginning this morning, students in the seminars pitched a short brief on the country they researched in our USAFRICOM Lite Area of Responsibility. These short overviews then combined to build a larger picture of the AOR. The seminar built a comprehensive description that included each element of PMESI. Moreover, the description includes the various state actors and non-state actors that are physical in and outside of the AOR. This task by itself can quickly overwhelm the class as they struggle to narrow down their analysis to a couple of paragraphs. This aspect challenges the students to start thinking critically about the information they gather, and to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Tuesday 21 April: Explaining the Story and the Strategic Estimate

I began the day by offering the class a different way of looking at the operational approach, and how it relates to our course flow. Often, we are mired in the daily grind, and leave off or forget the larger picture of what we are doing.

“Leaders Don’t Make Decisions from Data, They Make Decisions from the Story you Tell”

I like to explain the operational approach as a way of writing and telling a story. You begin by thinking about the end of the story, and how the good guy will win. We derive this ending to our story form higher-level strategic guidance such as the National Security Strategy, Defense Strategy, Military Strategy, the Joint Strategic Campaign Plan, and the contingency Planning Guidance.

The Operational Approach is the Story. Commanders make decisions from the story the staff tells them, and rarely from the date the staff presents

We then move to the beginning of the story where the author sets the scene and introduces the various characters that will interact in the rest of the story. This is the current environment where we talk about friendly forces, enemy forces, the terrain, and the environment. I then tell them to ensure that the beginning of the story has continuity with the ending. If a gun appears in the opening scene, it needs to be there at the end.

I see the problem statement as the villain of the story. The problem is what is preventing us from getting from where we are now to where we want to be.

Lines of Effort, and other elements of operational design (objectives, effects, decisive points, decision points, etc..) then fill out the middle of the story, and are what get the characters to the end of the story.

Wednesday 22 April: We continue work on the strategic estimate. The estimate, which the students must complete is strait out of Joint Publication 5-0, page B-2.

Thursday 23 April: Guest Speaker and The Problem Statement

The exciting part of today was a morning presentation by our Guest Speaker Gregg Easterbrook. Gregg is the author of multiple books that cover everything from football, to fiction, to national security topics. I asked him to present the themes of his recent book It’s Better Than It Looks, as a way to think differently about today’s global and operational environment. The theme of the discussion centered on how life today, (despite COVID-19), is better than at any other point in history. From life expectancy, to fewer state-on-state wars, to empowerment of women, the world is simply better today. However, this does not mean the world is perfect, nor does it mean there is not more to be done in terms of equality, global warning, or any other contemporary issue that we face. The conversation was engaging, and I like to think pushed the students outside of their comfort zone.

I mentioned this in my last post, and I want to say again that the online classroom gives more flexibility to bringing in guest speakers. There is no cost for travel, lodging, and no need to coordinate for access to the military instillation if the speaker is a civilian. It is as simple as sending a link. Moreover, I can bring in speakers who normally would be too busy to speak in person. All I have to do is ask.

In the afternoon, I discuss with the seminar the ways to develop a problem statement. I begin with a short clip from a favorite television show of mine Lost. Locke’s description of Michelangelo staring at a hunk of marble is the perfect description of why we need to spend time thinking and reflecting on a problem, rather than just jumping right into a solution, or into a course of action. If you get the problem wrong, chances are you will spend more time, effort, money, and lives cleaning up the mess than you are accomplishing the mission.  

Thinking through a problem statement should be more than a small group of planners throwing down a paragraph on the whiteboard followed by a bunch of wordsmithing. The scaffolding of a good problem statement comes from identifying tensions between the current conditions and the desired conditions (or endstate). Further, understanding what the proximate cause and the root cause of the current situation is paramount. I then ask them to break up the problem statement into three component parts, 1) the ideal, or the desired conditions, 2) the reality, or the current trends and path we are on, and 3) the consequences of not solving the problem, or why this problem matters.

Friday 24 April: The Operational Approach and the Problem Statement

We continue class this morning a by continuing our discussion of the problem statement, and thinking through how we will develop the operational approach. We do this by looking at the end state, and then developing intermediate military objectives (IMOs) or way-points on our path to the end state. We can then group the IMOs in time and space to flush out what our Lines of Effort (LOEs) will be.  

Reflections

Overall, the class is progressing better than I expected. I could sense a little burn out by the end of the week, as sitting behind a desk in the house for a couple hours a day can become exhausting.

The addition of guest speakers every other week seems to break up a bit of the monotony, but I have to balance this addition with the time it consumes from the students. As any military faculty or instructor from the basic training drill sergeant to the war college professor will tell you, the syllabus is a zero sum game. If you want to add something in, be it a speaker, or a reading, you need to take something out.

Taking the time, every couple of days to remind students of how what they are doing fits into a larger picture is paramount to the seminar. Students can become lost in the details of their assignments, and lose track of “the why.” The use of the story analogy within the operational approach seemed to help, and I plan to continue with that technique as I continue to teach other courses.

Building small group or OPT rooms on Blackboard (areas where students can collaborate), is working well. The use of OPT rooms allows students to conduct small group work, and then reconvene in the seminar room to brief their products. In the physical classroom, we tend to mix up the groups each day, but when delivering online, we are sticking with the same three OPTs to reduce friction. Each time students change groups and have to collaborate after the seminar synch session, it requires gathering new emails, phone numbers, and figuring out the best times to meet (we have students in four different time zones from California to Belgium).

During our guest speaker presentation, the director of JCWS listened in on the group. I asked him to say a couple words at the conclusion of the presentation to the students. He was kind enough to speak, and to thank the seminar for their flexibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. In my view, this was important for the students to hear from him.

In war, a commander’s place is at the front. To paraphrase Donn Starry, you don’t have to be leading the charge with your sword drawn, but you have to be there. This aspect of leadership is not limited to operational units, but applies to institutional forces and professional military education all the same. I welcome senior leadership into the classroom, be it online or in the face-to-face physical classroom.

Online Delivery of JCWS

The Joint Combined Warfighting School is a ten-week course. In early March, we graduated a class a week early, so that the students could get home as the COVID-19 crisis progressed. Further, the decision was made by the commandant to deliver our next class, JCWS 20-2, online. This gave the faculty two weeks to prepare for online delivery.

Arguably, the most important part of preparing to deliver the class online is our level of comfort with the technology we use. The first week of our preparation included instructions on Blackboard. While we used the system for assignments and grading for the in residence class, moving online means we will have synchronous and asynchronous classes on Blackboard.

On Wednesday we get the order to work from home. I make a run to the library under the assumption that I will not be in the office for a long time. You can’t go wrong with some extra reading material. Further, I take home some of my office equipment, laptop, extra screen, a small whiteboard, and all my binders of course material.  As I depart the parking lot, I think to myself that it will be a long time until I walk into the college again. As of this writing, I have yet to return.

Week 1 30 March – 3 April

30 March: Introductions and a tour of Blackboard

Our first day of class focused on getting students comfortable with use of Blackboard. We walk them through the class calendar, which is managed in Office 365. Every student and the faculty have an account, and as the seminar team lead, I manage the calendar. For the online delivery, our going in positon is two synchronous sessions per day, one two-hour block in the morning, and one two-hour block in the afternoon.

Our students are arrayed across the world. They are spread across each time zone in the Continental United States. I have one international fellow, a Brazilian student who is on Eastern Standard Time, and two students assigned to NATO, living in Belgium. There is no perfect time for everyone, but we go with 0930-1130, and 1330-1530 EST.

In the opening session, everyone pulls up their video, and I feel like I’m watching an episode of the Brady Bunch or Hollywood Squares. After about ten minutes I establish the rule that unless one of us feels it absolutely necessary, we don’t need to see each other on video. This decision pays off, as some of the verbal communication improves once the video is turned off.

To culminate the first day, each of the faculty delivers an abbreviated version of Who Am I? This Red Team technique was especially valuable to building team chemistry in the classroom, and my fellow faculty members agree that we should do our best to implement it. Instead of the normal 15-20 minutes, we present for 5-7 minutes. Following our demonstration we ask the students to develop their own, and to begin presenting the following day. This type of introduction becomes one of the exceptions to the no-video required norm we set earlier in the session.

Following our synchronous sessions on day one, the students have two requirements in Blackboard. The requirement is to post a short biography, and to acknowledge the school’s academic integrity policy. The biographies then to be a list of unit assignments, and a recital of their resumes. I ask them to include book recommendations, and what they are currently reading. These books range from Jim Mattis’s Call Sign Chaos, to Epstein’s Range, as well as a couple of Malcolm Gladwell books. I do my best to respond to each student, which brings me to my first insight of online delivery.

When students post in a discussion board, it is paramount for a professor / instructor to ask some follow-up questions. Without active participation from the faculty, students will quickly learn the lesson that nobody is reading or caring about their thoughts and ideas. 

31 March: Student Introductions and Unified Action

 We begin the morning with a slew of students providing their own Who Am I? We are able to get through nine students. What is quite clear is that each student is struggling in his or her own ways to get through the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone is working from his or her home, and most are at the point in life where they have young children. For everyone, attending JCWS as an online student will require balancing schoolwork with family demands. Complicating the matter further, the connectivity of each student varies, depending on where they live.

The balance of work and family is obvious from the start. Often we can hear a dog barking, or a child playing in the background when a student speaks. One student recently changed duty stations and is taking the class while living in a hotel. Another moved a desk into a closet to have some quiet and privacy while we have our synchronous sessions. At the very least it’s a walk in closet, so he has that going for him, which is nice.   

The second complication is the wide range of time zones that our students cover. We have officers living in San Diego, Omaha, Tampa, Miami, Washington D.C., Norfolk, as well as two students in Belgium and our international fellow who resides in Brazil. This forces us to consider more space for homework assignments and discussion boards, to ensure everyone has sufficient time to complete their work.

After morning introductions, our first class and synchronous discussion focuses on the ideas of unified action, unified effort, and global integration. One of my fears in the online delivery is quickly quashed. I feared a level of awkwardness in online discussions. However, the two-hour class is filled with professional and intellectual discussion from all students. To an extent, the discussion is deeper than what I normally am able to pull out of students while in residence in the classroom. I attribute this to students losing some of the fear of speaking up when physically in front of their peers. Almost like the Facebook effect, where people tend to let loose with their ideas and thoughts, but unlike Facebook conversations, the discussion in class is professional and well thought out.

The technique we use for the synchronous discussion is to have one instructor lead the conversation, while another manages the chat, or instant messaging on the side. This works well, but makes it clear that delivery of the course online demands more time from the instructors who are not normally in front of the podium in the classroom.

To close out the day, students have an online discussion forum. Comprising the discussion are two leading questions. I divide the class and have half answer one question, and the other half answer the second, however their responses to other students must occur in the other question. This forces students to think and reflect on both questions.

1 April: Service Culture and the Seven Joint Functions

Service Cultures: We start the day with a discussion of culture. I expect a short 60 minute synchronous session, but our conversation goes the full two hours. Of course, the first twenty or so minutes included a couple of Who Am I? introductions. The readings students did ahead of time include each of the services core values, and a couple of chapters of Edgar H. Schein’s book Organizational Culture and Leadership. Helping me through leading the discussion is a recent book I ready by Peter R. Mansoor titled The Culture of Military Organizations. It is paramount to understand the culture of each service, as biases and opinions of each will influence every aspect of joint planning. This my range from the doctrine we use to the courses of action we present to a commander, to the long-term strategy of a joint command. Discussing each culture and exposing our biases helps to build empathy within a joint staff.

An interesting aspect to the discussion is the facet of sub-cultures. For example, while the Army has it’s own culture, there are multiple sub-cultures. These include combat arms soldiers and combat support Soldiers. Heavy units, light units, and airborne units are another example. The Navy officers pointed out the difference between surface warfare officers (black shoe), pilots (brown shoe), and submariners. The Air Force officers acknowledged that as the second youngest service (Space Force is now the youngest), they may not have had sufficient time to form a distinctive Air Force culture. Indeed, Air Force culture may be the sum of all the various subcultures, from fighter pilots, to heavy lift pilots, to support and cyberspace officers.

Joint Functions: Another major change to the course is the material we use to discuss the joint functions. In residence, the students have access to the JCWS library, and we use the book Crusade in Europe as a historical case study. However, as the students do not have access to the physical library, we are using the Battle of Yorktown as a backdrop to discuss each of the seven joint functions (Movement and Maneuver, Intelligence, Sustainment, Command and Control, Protection, Fires, and Information).

2 April: Global Force Management and Introduction to Strategic Theory

Global Force Management. Within the seminar faculty, we do not have any experts on GFM. However, adjacent to the staff college is a section of the Joint Staff J35 who run Global Force Management. Each class we have a representative walk over and provide a lecture to the class. For the online delivery, students watch a 90-minute video of a recent talk. We then spend about 45 minutes in a synchronous session talking about various student experience with GFM. What the students understand from the get go is that there are only so many capabilities available to the joint force, and that each command has competing requirements for each capability. With that aspect, there must be a global perspective, prioritization, and assumption of risk that is greater than an individual combatant command.

Global Force Management also serves as a way to introduce students to some new vocabulary. Moving from the tactical level to the joint operational and strategic level of planning requires learning the language of joint planners. We stress to the students the meanings of the words assigned, apportioned, and allocated. Other phrases we use are the five layers (e.g. blunt) of the force within the global operating model (aka the GOM). It is a lot of jargon, but it is the language senior leaders in OSD and the joint community use on a daily basis. Further complicating this aspect is that services may have different meanings for some of these words. Apportionment for example, means one thing to an Air Force officer working in an Air Operations Center (AOC), which is quite different than the global force management definition of apportionment.

Introduction to Strategic Theory. In the seminar’s first lesson on strategy, I ask them to take a few minutes and complete the following sentence: “Strategy is…”  After a couple of minutes I as the seminar to read their definition. Students had their own definition, which was a pleasing result. I then displayed various definitions by some of the leading strategic thinkers in the industry.  

We talk about Art Lykke 3-legged stool concept of strategy. There are various opinions of it’s value, but we agree that the End/Ways/Means/Risk construct is how strategies at all levels come together. That is to say that we can pick up any type of strategy, from the services to joint commands and recognize the language and structure of the document.

3 April: Academic Paper, JSPS, and Ethics and the Profession of Arms

Over the past night, I created a couple extra discussion forums for the class in each of our modules. I labeled them “Water Cooler Discussion.” The purpose of these online discussion forums is for anything the students want to discuss. One of the aspects we miss in the online delivery is the offsite discussions over lunch, coffee, a beer, at the gym, or during a softball game. The first discussion in the Water Cooler forum involves Captain Crozier and the U.S.S. Roosevelt.

One of the requirements of the class that remains in place is for students to write a collaborative academically publishable paper. We start Friday off with a tour of the library. Although the physical library is unavailable to the students, they have access to the virtual library to assist them with their research.

Joint Strategic Planning System. The Joint Strategic Planning System or JSPS is a beast. Within the JSPS, the students must learn the six statutory functions of the Chairman, which are distinct from the seven joint functions. Further, the students must understand what documents are inherent within each of the Chairman’s six functions. After learning about documents such as the Unified Command Plan (UCP), the Joint Military Net Assessment (JMNA), the Global Force Management Implementation Guidance (GFMIG), and Global Campaign Plans (GCP) to name a few, students are expected to explain how each of the functions and documents work together achieve global integration. It’s not an easy task to learn or to teach. Students with CCMD and Joint Staff experience seem to grasp it faster than those who come into the course having only served at the tactical level.

Ethics and the Profession of Arms

Week 2 6-10 April

6 April: NSS, NDS, and DSCA

Reserve Forces: We begin the day with a discussion on Reserve forces. In preparation for the class, students watch a video that the in residence students normally get. We talk the composition of the National Guard and Reserves and the differences in authorities, and what it means to be State Active Duty, Title 32, or Title 10. Each comes with their own funding, their own chain of command, and their own authorities vis-à-vis posse comitatus. Unlike my last seminar where I had a reserve Army officer in the class, the composition of this class is all active duty.

Strategic Guidance: We then push on to a discussion of the 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Quickly, the discussion moves into the theoretical aspects of strategy. The students debate whether or not the United States has a true grand strategy, or if we just move along in 2 and 4 year cycles.

When talking the National Security and National Defense Strategy, we talk about some of the key ideas within each document. Primarily is the return to great power competition. Both the NSS and NDS highlight our key challenges within the 2+3 context, with Russia and China called out as our adversaries. Moreover, we talk about the primary authors of the documents, with H.R. McMaster and Nadia Schadlow as the driving force behind the NSS, and James Mattis as the force behind the NDS. What this highlights is how quickly perspectives and priorities can change, even within an administration. A national strategy is dependent upon the personality and worldview of the person writing it.

The 2017 NSS

DSCA: We make use of the afternoon synchronized session to have a discussion on Defense Support to Civil Authorities, more commonly known as DSCA. We use the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic to discuss how the Department of Defense and the military support local, state, and federal authorities in the homeland. Often, the Department finds itself in a supporting role to other agencies leading the effort such as FEMA, HHS, or the Department of Homeland Security. Critical to this supporting relationship is understanding the limits of DoD authority, especially for Title 10 or federal service which are distinct from service members in a state National Guard. There are interesting points of discussion, including the future composition of active, reserve and guard forces in light of the pandemic. Moreover, there is discussion on the ending of the 9/11 era, with it’s focus and cottage industries centered on terrorism as the main threat to America. It is a fascinating conversation and speaks to the intellect of the students in the seminar.

7 April: NMS and the UCP

One of the complications of using Office 365 and Blackboard to instruct in PME is the inability to store or share Unclassified For Official Use Only (FOUO) documents. Both the Unified Command Plan (UCP) and our Instructional National Military Strategy (the real NMS is classified Secret), are FOUO. I’m able to discuss the history, purpose, and main themes of the documents in class as part of their reading was a history of the UCP. Further, I am able to scroll through the UCP while sharing my screen view in Blackboard. Moreover, students who have CAC readers can pull up each document on official government sites. So not all of the discussion is lost. What I like to point out in the UCP is how it is the starting point for combatant commanders and their staffs to understand for what it is they are responsible. This includes their directed Area of Responsibility (AOR), and some distinct planning tasks.

The Unified Command Plan Map 6 AORs on Earth, and one AOR for USSPACECOM

To spark some intellectual discussion, I pull up some quotes from former Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates’s book Duty. In the book, Gates mentions that prior to assuming the role of SECDEF, he never took the time to read documents such as the NSS, the NDS, or other strategic guidance. Moreover, he tells the reader that he felt he didn’t lose anything by not having read them. This is a stunning revelation, as he once held the position of Director of the CIA. Just bout every student agrees that taking the time to digest each document is worth the time. And even Gates admits that once he became SECDEF, he took the time to think through and write a quality NDS to leave his mark on the department.

8 April: JSCP and Global Integration

We discuss each of these subjects, but I have nothing interesting to add. If you are a planner at the operational or strategic level, pull out the JSCP, read it, understand it, read each Global Campaign Plan, and understand them.

9 April: First Exam and First Guest Speaker

The Exam: We do not hold a class in the morning with the intent to provide specific time for the students to take the exam. Although we provide the time in the morning, the students have from 0001-2359 EST to take the test. We leave it open all day to account for the time differences that range from Europe to the American West Coast. The exam is open book, which is a change from the closed book exam that we deliver in the in residence course. I suppose we could make it a closed book exam based on the honor system. I like to think that would work, as the class is composed of senior military officers with a collective time in service of approximately 400 years. But given the circumstances, letting them look through their notes in a timed exam seems appropriate.

Guest Speaker: One aspect the online delivery leaves out is the central booking of guest speakers. The in residence class offers a variety of guest speakers to include Combatant Commanders, retired generals and admirals, most famously General Zinni, as well as a host of other experts from both the military and other government agencies. The online delivery means booking guest speakers using our own rolodex. In the afternoon, we hosted retired Colonel Scott Kendrick, who was the lead author of the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, and is leading the writing team for the next iteration of Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations. He is also the author of Vice Versa, a terrific article published by the Modern War Institute. The discussion on the future of campaigning through competition was particularly timely, as the next module of the course is three weeks of strategic campaign design. One point that we talked about is how we tend to judge our enemies and adversaries. The terms “rational and irrational actor” came up. We talked about the difference between miscalculation and acting irrationally, and tended to agree that foreign leaders are most likely rational, but tend to miscalculate in international relations. The students in the seminar were engaged throughout the discussion, and I have booked some follow-on speakers throughout the next eight weeks. They serve as a means to break up the daily routine while scratching the intellectual itch.  

10 April: Elements of Operational Design

Joint publication 5-0, Joint Planning lists 13 elements of operational design. We again use the backdrop of the Battle of Yorktown to tease out each of the elements. What further drives discussion are remnants of yesterday’s guest speaker. We concede that the current paradigm of operational design works quite well for force on force conflict, or major military operations. However, there seems to be consensus that the current doctrine is not complete for day-to-day campaigning through competition with stated adversaries such as Russia and China. 

My fellow instructor leading the discussion holds a PHD, and wrote his dissertation on the Battle of Yorktown. It’s a nice capabilities to have in the seminar, and builds more into the discussion and analysis. I make only one point at the end of the class, that it wasn’t until the Americans were able to fight as a combined (with the French) and joint (land and maritime) force, that they were able to decisively beat the British. It brings home the importance of JCWS, and the necessity of our allied and partners, many of whom send students through our class.

At the end of the discussion for the day, I offer an open invitation to any students who reside in the greater Norfolk and Hampton Roads area to accompany my seminar on the Yorktown staff ride during the next in residence course. It is truly one of the better days in the class, combining a day outside of the classroom with the sights of the birthplace of America.

Reflection on the first two weeks

Rapidly moving from an early graduation of our last class to delivering JCWS curriculum on line in lieu of our normal face-to-face in residence delivery has provided multiple lessons. These lessons include an appreciation of the time and effort required for online instruction and ideas that I can adopt for use both in online delivery and in our residence course.

Online instruction takes time. It takes time to prepare for the class, it takes time to deliver the class, and it takes time to reflect on the class. For preparation, I geared towards the use of scripts for the delivery of course work. While off moments of silence come off as natural in the classroom, the silence is uncomfortable when you can’t look around and see student’s physical reactions. This uncomfortable silence pushed me to fill dead time with scripted thoughts, ideas, and leading questions. While I prepare in a similar manner for face-to-face delivery, I now have the script sitting directly in front of me.

A second aspect of time is that the synchronous sessions that we provide the students require at least two faculty for each class. One faculty member leading the discussion, and a second to monitor the sidebar chat room to answer any questions that arise. Moreover, there is always the risk of one instructor losing communications in the middle of a lesson, forcing the second faculty member assume his duties. In residence, there are times when only one faculty member is necessary, and the other two members of the seminar team can use the time to prepare for their classes, conduct academic research and writing, or take an hour for physical fitness.

The third aspect of time is following the class. Each of us has offered our numbers and email to each of the students to reach out at any time. The students in the online delivery have more writing assignments that include online discussion boards. The discussion boards need instructor participation to guide the conversation, and to ensure the students understand that we do care about their thoughts and ideas on the topic. The workday often ends late at night.

Yorktown, Still Relevant Today

We began our current class on the 13th of January. On the 31st of January, our seminar conducted the staff ride at Yorktown. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the battle, and why it is still relevant today.

Looking back to colonial times, there are a number of events that can claim title to the birth of the United States. The signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution serve as two prime examples. From a military perspective, the events of October 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown make a persuasive argument. A deeper look at this battle reveals lessons that we can apply to today’s operating environment.

Globally Integrated Operations

From the British perspective, the American Revolution was another theater of war in a global campaign. Indeed, the North American theater of war was one of five theaters the British operated in at the time. Other theaters and operations included defending the homeland from the French in the English Channel, defending trade routes in the Caribbean, fighting for colonial interest in India, and fighting for colonial interests in Canada.

One of the tenants of today’s globally integrated operations (GIO) is prioritization. The British had to rack and stack their theaters of operations to apply resources, and to assign its military leadership. In this respect, military operations against the Americans ranked at or near the bottom. In terms of resources, quality of leadership, and funding.

Not only were the British prioritizing operations in the Caribbean, so too were the French. The French government has a large land and maritime force operating in the West Indies throughout the American Revolution. Further, any use of French maritime forces to assist Washington and his band of rebels would only occur during hurricane season, a decisive factor into why the siege of Yorktown occurred in October.   

Other ongoing battles in other theaters of war include the Great Siege of Gibraltar in April of 1781. In this battle, the French and Spanish combined forces to attempt to seize the island, and wrestle control of the Mediterranean. The siege lasted for approximately three years, and was not lifted until 1783. Settling the matter was the Treaty of Paris, the same treaty that ended the American Revolution.

The Necessity of Allies and Partners     

The maritime force fighting the British at the Battle of the Capes, and then sealing off the city of Yorktown was 100% French. On land, the majority of troops conducting the siege of Yorktown were also French. It is clear, without the help of allied forces, the United States doesn’t succeed in Yorktown, and quite possibly doesn’t attain independence.

While working with allies and partners is certainly essential to successful campaigns, the later stages of Yorktown serve as a warning in the employment multinational forces. In terms of space and time, there are two facets of risk; transitions and seams. There is a heightened risk when one unit relieves another force. And there is greater risk on unit boundaries. In the latter, the risk rises when the boundary falls between forces from separate nations.

Following the capture of redoubts 9 and 10, General Cornwallis made a last ditch effort to break out of Yorktown. He formed a force that conducted a counterattack at the seam between American and French forces. Fortunately, the attempted breakout turned out to be a minor event in the siege. However, Cornwallis was correct in his judgement in attempting to fracture the lines between the French and the Americans.

On the modern battlefield, the United States serving as the lead nation in coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq divided the battlespace of each theater of war among various contributing nations. In Iraq for example, the British were responsible for Basra throughout the war. Other nations such as Poland and the Republic of Korea would cover their own areas of operation as well. The risk in dividing the battlefield in this manner is that nations do not always share the same operational or strategic objectives. Moreover, the manner in which nations see the problem and solutions in theater may vary significantly.

Allies and partners are critical to the conduct of military operations in the 21st century. Strategically, maintaining a robust number of allies and partners is critical for the US military to impose its will on adversaries and enemies across the globe. More than just NATO, allies and partners are critical to worldwide basing of forces and equipment, as well as strategic access into zones of conflict. This strategic advantage was critical throughout the 20th century and is essential for the foreseeable future. Indeed, enemies of the US may be able to sneak an agent through customs on a commercial flight, but do not expect Iran or ISIS to stage a battalion on the US border in preparation for an invasion.

Ultimately, it was combined and joint operations that earned America her independence, and it is allies and partners that serve as our military’s center of gravity today.   

French Artillery at the first parallel at Yorktown Battlefield

The Joint Advantage

A reading of Thucydides reveals how Athens and Sparta fought for over a decade to a stalemate. Athens, a maritime power could not control territory. Sparta, the regions reigning land power could not move its armies fast enough, nor control sea lines of communication to defeat the Athenians. It was not until Sparta gained an upper hand in the maritime domain that the war could come to its conclusion.

Just as Sparta and Athens fought to a stalemate, by 1781, the Americans and the British had fought for six years resulting in a stalemate. While the British could move its armies at will, and even decisively defeat the Americans in a pitched battle, they did not have the force to control the land. In a similar vain, the Americans could gain positions of advantage over the British, but the British could move their men at will over the sea lines of communication.

The convergence of the French fleet with American and French land forces was the decisive combination of Yorktown. The French fleet under Comte’ DeGrasse had a limited window to support Washington’s combined army (until the end of October). Washington understood the importance of both land and maritime forces working together, and pressed for the siege while within this timeline. 

In the maritime domain was more than defeating the enemy fleet. Control of the waterways allowed either side to transport their land forces at will. According to Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, “This—the ability to transport the Continental and French armies by water—was, from Washington’s perspective, the key component to victory. That was how the British had taken both New York and Charleston and how Benedict Arnold had ravaged Virginia—by transporting their armies with lightning speed to wherever the enemy was open to attack.”

In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols act passed its way through Congress to enforce a joint warfighting philosophy on the US military. Jointness is an operational advantage the US holds over its adversaries and enemies, more specifically nation states who may use a military force to oppose us. The use of Joint Force Commanders in lieu of separate service commanders ensures each service contributes to the same objectives and endstates. Moreover, a system of combatant commanders allows for the formation of operational plans that do not press for service parochialism. Throughout history, there are many examples of nations whose navy or air force’s operations were de-synched from the troops on the ground. The ability to conduct joint and combined arms operations is a distinct operational advantage of the Untied States Military.

Decapitation Strikes

At the onset of the 2003 war in Iraq, the United States attempted to kill Saddam Hussein in a decapitation strike prior to commencement of ground operations. While unsuccessful, the practice of taking out strategic leadership of our enemies remains in practice. Indeed, more often than not, the strategic political and military leadership of an opposing force appears as a center of gravity.

In Yorktown, on the 9th of October, the combined force of the French and Americans opened fire with their artillery and killed the commissary general of the British force, and wounded several officers of the Seventy-sixth Regiment while they sat a dinner party drinking wine. While the strike did not lead to an immediate end of the battle, it served as a wake up call to the British that the combined American and French armies were not a rag-tag force.  

The recent killing of Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike is a more recent example. The long term effects of this decapitation remain to be seen, however, much like other targeted killings, the target is normally a symptom of the problem and not the root cause.

Terrain Still Matters

Decisive to the American victory at Yorktown was how the French and British were able to use the terrain to their advantage. The construction and completion of the first and second parallels to surround the British and put their backs to the river was the beginning of the endgame. In the maritime domain, the French sealing off the entrance to the York River denied the British any hopes of an escape or a relief by British forces in New England.

Overlooking the York River from the Victory Monument

As the geography of war expands to a battlefield that is global in nature, it is still vital to understand geographic terrain features. This applies in all domains, and is equally germane in major combat operations, counter insurgency, and humanitarian assistance type missions. In the two volume series on the U.S. Army in Iraq, the authors make the point multiple times that decisive to the battle for Baghdad and Iraq was the geographical belts around the city.   

War Termination

Yorktown provides in interesting case study on how to link the end of a battle to the broader operational and strategic objectives. Following the British surrender, for the first time in the war, British soldiers marched off to prisoner of war camps, to be held until the end of the war. In previous defeats such as Saratoga in 1777, the British were able to send their soldiers home. In reality, this meant sending soldiers to another theater of war in the global campaign, with a new force then sent to North America. The articles of capitulation at Yorktown ended this practice, and took a powerful piece, or 25% of the British Army off the chessboard.

Today, the United States finds it difficult to develop war termination criteria. Indeed, recent wars have exposed the idea of a peace treaty and a formal end to hostilities a vestige of the past, or at a minimum not an idea shared by the rest of the world. Further complicating war termination, is that the United States military trains and educates it’s officer corps to maintain a necessary separation from the political sphere. The war aims of a nation are lie in the realm of elected political leadership, and more often than not military officers are not in a position to set terms of surrender with an adversary. This was evident at the end of the Gulf War, when General Schwarzkopf allowed Saddam’s regime to fly attack helicopters within the northern and southern no-fly zones. 

As an aside on the Yorktown Articles of Capitulation, Article IV serves as a reminder, that the fight for freedom did not mean freedom for everyone. The second paragraph of Article IV states

“It is understood that any property obviously belonging to the inhabitants of these States, in the possession of the garrison, shall be subject to be reclaimed.” 

The property mentioned included people. George Washington made it a point to have his slaves returned to Mount Vernon. We celebrate the the battlefield victory at Yorktown as advancing towards our freedom from British rule, while for others, it meant future generations would continue to suffer the inhumanity of slavery.

The Siege

History is replete with famous sieges. Famous examples include go back to the the Siege of Athens in the Peloponnesian War and Siege of Masada in ~73 AD. More recent sieges include the Siege of Vicksburg in the American Civil War, the 900-day siege of Leningrad in the Second world War, and the Siege of Aleppo. In the modern era, sieges tend to come in the form of internal crisis, and focus on small pieces of terrain. More often than not the siege occurs against a specific criminal or terrorist group. Examples include the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002, and the 2012 Siege of Eker in Bahrain.

The siege of Yorktown was set at tactical distances, well within the limited artillery range of the late 18th century. The question raised in studying Yorktown is what does a modern day siege look like, and can said siege occur at strategic distances. Advancement is precision guided ballistic missiles offer one way of conducting a siege without the necessity of physically sealing off a city. A second possibility is with effects in cyberspace and space. Cutting off water and electric utilities to a major city, combined with denying space based communications.

Conclusion

We study the past to avoid making mistakes in the future. the Battle or Siege of Yorktown offers many lessons that we can apply to warfare today.

18-22 November: Purple Solace and Humanitarian Assistance, and Graduation

A USAID DART representative briefs the “Country Team”

18-20 November: Purple Solace

In the concluding week of each JCWS class, the seminar conducts a short Foreign Humanitarian Assistance (FHA) exercise. The exercise set up begins on Monday, and concludes on Wednesday afternoon, as we dedicate Thursday and Friday to administration and graduation.

More than just a planning event, the students spend time listening to a host of guest speakers, as well as reading and discussing case studies from previous FHA missions. The case studies we look at include the 2004 Indonesia Tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the Nepal earthquake in 2015.

The FHA response to the earthquake in Haiti pulls multiple discussion points. For example, the complete disaster of how the USSOUTHCOM HQ organized its staff came to light. Pulling away from the Napoleonic J-Code system in favor of a functional staff organization was a mistake, and one that USAFRICOM would later duplicate. The J-Code system has been in place for 200 years for the simple reason that it works.

Enhancing the classroom discussion is a presentation by retired Lieutenant General Blackman, who served as the JTF 536 commander during the Indonesia Tsunami relief mission. His presentation details a plethora of considerations that leaders should consider when conducting FHA. These include the arrangement of command and control, the set up of coordination mechanisms with the host nation, other nations participating, other government agencies (USAID for example), and non-government organizations (NGOs) which may include the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders among dozens of others.

An aspect I remind the seminar to bear in mind throughout planning, is that each nation, and each organization come to the table with unique capabilities, but with their specific objectives, many of which can be self-serving, and not in the best interest of the affected nation, and at odds with the United States.

It is paramount to understand that the Department of Defense is a supporting agency in every FHA mission. USAID is the lead U.S. government agency. As such, when the students discuss their mission statement, I implore them to use the language “In Support of USAID/OFDA.”

FHA is often short duration but involves intense planning and execution. Moreover, every FHA mission has a unique flavor to it dependent on the location, the geography, and the history of the affected nation. For example, Haiti is an island, which means that it does not require overflight permissions from other nations to access the island, as opposed to Nepal, which is landlocked and has neighboring states that control their sovereign airspace. Further, an island nation is receptive to maritime response capabilities such as aircraft carriers and amphibious ships, as well as hospital ships such as the USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy. Nepal on the other hand requires more land capabilities, and the use of intermediate staging bases (ISBs) in other nations supporting the effort.

The Comfort and Mercy tease out more into the intricacies of FHA and to an extent disaster relief in the homeland. Each ship maintains a skeleton crew to operate the ship. However, the medical crew that mans the ship is not full time. Medical personnel who man the ship in crisis are either reservists who require time to mobilize, or active serving at other locations such as base hospitals and medical clinics. Either way, use of the ship will pull away medical capabilities from bases, making it more difficult for service members and families, and in the case of mobilized reservists, it takes away from the communities where they are employed. IT is not an easy decision to send hospital ships on a mission, nor should it be automatic to do so. Further, the vertical lift required to transport patients to and from the ship may not be worth the effort, if the same medical capability can occur on land.

Juxtaposed against the response in Haiti is the FHA mission in Nepal. While Haiti is half of the Iland of Hispaniola, Nepal is a landlocked country sitting at extremely high altitudes. Moreover, Haiti is in America’s backyard, while Nepal is literally half a world away. Other distinctions in the two operations include the absolute destruction of the Haitian government’s and military’s ability to respond vs how Nepal was able to maintain command and control and designate it’s own military as the lead in response.

With regards to command and control, although the U.S. will work with the host and other responding nations, we often find that a parallel C2 structure works best. This is often due to the short duration of FHA missions, as well as ensuring that the CCMD maintains its supporting role. Indeed, in each of the case studies, the U.S. military operated as a JTF, and not as a CJTF.

We split the class into two distinct teams. Half the class operates as the USAFRICOM staff, and the other as the Country Team in the affected nation. We keep the two groups separated to simulate how a planning team may not have continues and direct communication with personnel on the ground. Further, I direct that the country team will not produce any PowerPoint slides, and will conduct all communication via email and word documents. Slides are for the OPT.

Given the short duration of the exercise, the products I ask for from the OPT are a mission analysis, an operational approach, and a command and control diagram. We do not go into detailed course of action development, nor do we conduct wargaming. However, both these steps occured last week in a similar exercise (with a full week of planning).

21 November:Guest Speaker and After Action Review

We begin the day with each of the students filling out their end of course surveys, as well as their faculty evaluation surveys. We followed this with an in class after action review where we went over the desired outcomes from The Chairman’s Officer Professional Military Education Policy or OPMEP. When I arrived here, this document was part of the reading during our new faculty development instruction. We further talked about how we were able to integrate the Chairman’s special areas of emphasis. Two elements we did not get to were the electromagnetic spectrum, nor did we get into detailed analysis of space or cyberspace planning and operations.

With regards to space and cyberspace, the capabilities and actions in these two domains are difficult to integrate into planning and into the overall instruction. This is a weakness in the instruction, as most of the planning and discussion over ten weeks focused on the land, maritime, and air domains. Further, the USAFRICOM AOR planning scenario leads the students to a land-centric design and course of action. Considering the recent strategic guidance from pivots to Asia, and the call-outs of China as a competitor, a USPACOM-centric scenario that involves more actions in the maritime and air domain is something to consider. The U.S. Army Decisive Action Training Environment (DATE) offers multiple options and fictional scenarios to plan from, and I am surprised we are not looking at adapting them.

Some other notable comments were the desire to have more interaction with students from other seminars. Currently, the formal interaction takes place on the softball field (and in the winter on the volleyball court). When I attended as a student, the course had electives that would have students enrolled from various seminars, which offered the opportunity to meet other officers who are serving throughout the joint force. Figuring out a more formal way to interact with other seminars looks to be a project to work on in future courses. Finally, throughout the course, we had to taper off discussions and put the “in the parking lot” as time did not allow for the tangent conversation. But if you are going to put conversations in a parking lot, you need to visit the parking lot sometime in the future. Perhaps at the end of the day, on a Friday, or over lunchtime. If you never visit the parking lot, then in reality the conversation went to the garbage dump.

Following the after action review, the seminar hosted retired Major General Dillon. The discussion went deep into great power competition, specifically how we are preparing leaders in the joint force to think through this lens.

Graduation

22 November: Graduation

The final day of the course is graduation. General Holmes from Air Combat Command was our guest speaker, and he offered a nice anecdote about the events of 9/11, and how they still relate to what we do today. Further, he discussed the dimension of time, and how planners at the operational and strategic level need to take the long view of time in an era of competition.

We conclude by saying goodbye to our students as they head to the parking lot to drive to the airport, or back to their home. There is a “military friendship” feel as they depart. What I mean by “military friendship” is that throughout anyone’s time in the military, from basic training through the war college, we forge short term friendships with multitudes of people. This happens at schools, assignments, or any other situation where you are put in an environment with strangers who share the same goals. Moreover, military schools often occur away from the family, which has you breaking bread at lunch and dinner with people you barley know. Then at the end of 2 or 10 weeks, you say farewell, never to cross paths with them again.

28 October - 1 November History and COA Development

Monday, 28 October: Virginia War Museum and Military History

To begin the week, our seminar met up in the morning at the Virginia War Museum. It is a hidden Gem adjacent to the James River, and served as a terrific forum to bring in some history into our planning. We used the museum classroom to have discussion on some previous battles and campaigns that might have some historical relevance to the problem they are planning.

JCWS uses a fictional scenario in North Africa to drive students though operational design and the joint planning process. Indeed, each seminar acts as a fictional USAFRICOM staff to build a Combatant Command Campaign Plan (CCMD), followed by the construction of a contingency plan based on tensions between fictional nations in northern Africa. As students build their fictional contingency plan, the use of history though the red team technique of analogy suitability analysis serves to expand their thinking on the problem set.  

Helmet worn by then Captain Harry S. Truman in WWI

Using the Red Team technique of “Analogy Suitability Analysis,” the students examined a variety of past conflicts ranging from pre-conflict actions such as the construction of the Maginot Line, the building of China’s Belt Road, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Each student discussed what parts of past conflicts could be applied to the current planning problem they face.

As an aside, one of the best books on decision making at the strategic level is Thinking In Time, the Uses of History for Decision Makers by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May advocates for this exact technique. It prevents lazy thinking by officers, who more often than not consider themselves historians.

The nice part about holding class at an offsite is the more relaxed atmosphere of the class, and the opportunity to break bread as a group. The museum is within walking distance to The Crab Shack on the James. A TTP when taking a group of 20 to lunch, is to deliver the orders ahead of time, which avoids waiting 45 minutes for the meal to arrive at our table. We walk in, sit, eat, and walk back to the museum for some afternoon discussions and time to walk around an look at the exhibits in more detail.

Tuesday, 29 October: Command and Control, More History and the CCJO

I began the day with a two hour discussion and practical exercise focused on command and control. I presented my theory that any brief to a senior leader can encompass four topics. 1) Decisions 2) Risk 3) Authorities, and 4) Command and Control. The latter involves the first three, as the design of a C2 chart is all about decision making, risk (understanding advantages and disadvantages), and authorities, which include national caveats. All must be part of the input into the chart.

To add on to the complexities of command and control at the operational level of war, I stress the importance of coordination mechanisms. One can quickly get lost in thee acronyms, but understanding what a JACCE, SOLE, HACC, CMOC, and CCC are and provide for the commander are paramount in the construction of a C2 diagram.

What always comes up as a discussion point is how to display C2 for Marines in a JOA. First and formost, the USMC fights as its own internal combined arms team, which includes its own internal air support. It is a deadly sin to suggest a MAGTF or MEB be under operational control (OPCON) to a JTF or JFLCC commander, as OPCON allows for a commander to break up and reassign tasks to a subordinate unit. Rather, USMC units are under tactical control (TACON) to the joint force commander. Anyone looking for a fight to change this paradigm is setting themselves up for a disappointing Tank session.

Finally, I implore to the seminar to never create a C2 diagram in a vacuum. Indeed, sending off a couple planners to develop C2 in a corner, divorced from the rest of the COA development team is a recipe for disaster. Just as the concept of sustainment should be linked to the COA, so should C2. Further, differences between various C2 options could be what makes multiple courses of action distinguishable from one another.

Today, various seminar students looked at the conflict portions of past wars to include the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 2006 Lebanon War, and the Russian-German conflict, with a focus on the Russian Defense in the opening phase of Operation Barbarossa. We use the Red Team technique of Analogy Suitability Analysis to flush out how these conflicts could relate to the fictional scenario the seminar is planning against.

Lunchtime today included a guest speaker form the Joint Staff J7, who conducted an LPD (Leader Professional Development), on the design and contents of the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO). It was the first of what the faculty expects to be a series of brown-bag lunch professional development opportunities. More than an overview of the CCJO, the session provided a perspective on the overall family of joint concepts, and the Chairman’s vision of future force design and development.

There are a slew of concepts out in both the joint staff and in each of the services. When teaching people the contents of a concept it is critical to keep in mind that a concept is not authoritative, and neither doctrine nor policy. Rather, it lays out ideas on how the force could operate in the future. Concepts must be tested to ensure they work, and well thought out DOTMLPF-P solutions flow from there. Anyone who remembers the absolute disaster of Effects Based Operations (EBO) understands the danger of using a concept before it is tested.

Wednesday 30 October: COA Development

The bulk of the day the seminar took time to develop their courses of action. The students divided into three OPTs, each of whom developed their own course of action. Each COA comprised of an operational sketch, a C2 chart, and a concept of sustainment. The OPTs did this for each phase of their operation. Each COA had a different focus (terrain, enemy, friendly protection), and it was neat to see the creativity each OPT used to develop their COA.

Thursday 31 October: Wargaming

The seminar chose one of their three courses of action to wargame. Their is a balance between conducting a full up wargame of every phase with every actor on the battlefield represented versus available time. Ultimately we conduct the wargame with a focus on teaching the students how to wargame, with an emphasis on the inputs and outputs of the wargame. Surprisingly, a good portion of the seminar had previous experience in this planning step, an understood the flow of events.

When we have students who are inexperienced in the wargame process, it can be a challenge to keep discussion to a minimum. A quality wargame has controlled discussions, and avoids random people offering their philosophy on how an engagement would play out.

The outputs of wargaming are critical to refining the plan. These outputs include refined CCIR, new decision points, new branch plans, and new squeals to the operation. For our seminar, this aspect opened their eyes to how skipping the wargame step can be fateful to a contingency plan.

Friday 1 November

Took a day off today to take care of family. Looking forward to writing more next week.

7-11 October: Deep into Planning

Current and Desired Conditions

Monday 7 October

After an exciting weekend in D.C. with my son, who attended his first professional football game, we returned to academics. As we finished up the “Who am I?” las t week, the seminar began a series of briefs from the students on their respective units. We are calling this “Unit 101.” This is an opportunity to inform other students on the joint commands each person is going to or coming from (depending on when their respective service decided to send them to JCWS). We began Unit 101 with an overview of the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command or JECC, which happens to be my previous assignment.

Tuesday 8 October: The Strategic Estimate

Appendix B of Joint Publication 5-0 lays out the format for a strategic estimate. Class today was a discussion of the format followed by group work in flushing out the current and desired conditions of their planning set. Critical to the strategic estimate is understanding the current conditions and the desired conditions. As we are developing a Combatant Command Campaign Plan (CCP), we look out five years in the future for the desired conditions. We avoid “End State” as day-to-day campaigning never ends. End State is appropriate for contingency plans that deviate off of the CCP.

Wednesday 9 October: Defining the Problem

Morning was dedicated to finishing the strategic estimate, and formulating concise descriptions of the operational environment. A large portion of the estimate centers on the Operational Environment or OE. The OE portion consists of five elements, 1) a description of the CCMD Area of Responsibility (AOR) 2) A description of the Area of Interest (AI) 3) Friendly actors 4) Adversary actors and 5) Neutral actors. To help the students prepare, we assigned everyone in the class 2-3 nations in the USAFRICOM AOR to study through the PMESSI lens. We then consolidated the students into regions, then consolidated back as a seminar to present a complete picture of the AOR.

As we continue planning in this phase of the course, 2 students from each of the three regions are now assigned to one of three concurrent OPTs. I find that having the students in smaller working groups to develop products works better than the development one one product by the entire seminar. I

In the afternoon, I introduced the class to the problem statement. any planning effort begins and ends with the problem. As an opening video, I used this clip from Moneyball. It’s a useful clip that distills two facets of a problem, the proximate cause and the root cause. The proximate cause being the loss of Jason Giambi, the root cause being the lack of money and spending by ownership. Understanding the root cause leads to the creative solutions Billy Bean had to employ. If you get the problem wrong at the onset of planning, the entire plan can quickly come off the rail just as it’s leaving the station.

I presented a method of crafting the statement by filtering in 3 parts or components to the problem. 1) the reality 2) the idea and 3) the consequences. In other words, current conditions, desired conditions, and risk. Further, I detail that the problem statement is distilled as what is preventing an organization from getting from the current conditions of the operational environment to the desired conditions.

Although the seminar already had their class on risk, I offer my perspective in articulating risk to senior leaders. First and foremost, senior leaders do not want a chart with different colors listing the risk/mitigation/residual risk, etc… A risk matrix is completely appropriate for a junior officer running an M4 range. It’s not appropriate at the Combatant Command, Joint Staff, and Department level. Further, I offer that labeling risk with a specific work such as “significant” or "high” impedes the risk discussion. When you label risk with a single word, the discussion turns into an argument on which word to choose. Staffs must articulate risk with statements, actual sentences that talk about the consequences of action or inaction. If anyone is dead set on creating a matrix, it’s all good to have in back-up to show the work. But leave the matrix in back-up.

Understanding the current environment, the desired conditions of the environment, and the problem statement lead to the skeleton of the Operational Approach. Which is where I will take the class tomorrow.

Thursday 10 October

We began class with our second “Unit 101.” One member of the class is assigned to JTF-North, and gave a nice overview of the organization and it’s mission. The “Unit 101” seems to be a nice way to begin the first 15-20 minutes of class before diving into the mental exercises of planning. The student briefing JTF-N informs us of counter narcotics mission and recommends the book Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel. Having read the book I concur and second his opinion.

We continued with the development of the Problem Statement in the morning. Each student printed out their ~300 word problem framing and statement. Each of the 6-person groups then used the 5 Will Get you 25” Red Team method to determine the best of their respective problem statements. With that, the students scoped down the 300 words to a a problem statement of 3-4 sentences that a staff would display to a commander.

I have previously written on the importance of getting the problem statement right. The benefit of going through the exercise of problem framing, is having the staff fully understand the problem before they begin writing them. In the same way some staffs skip mission analysis and go strait to COA development, some OPTs immediately go into writing the problem statement at the outset. OPTs and staffs must take the time to truly understand the problem before they try to articulate it. At the end of the day, a short and concise problem statement is what planners brief to commanders, narrowing the background data and information to get there is certainly an art.

The afternoon began with an introduction to the Operational Approach. Up to this point, the seminar created various aspects of an operational approach for a campaign plan. This includes the current conditions, the desired conditions, and the problem statement.

Leaders never make decisions from data, rather leaders make decisions from a story. We write the story from our data, but the ability to display data in a visually appealing manner and craft a story from the visual is a vital aspect to the life of a staff officer. An operational approach done well is the commander’s story of how he or she envisions the operation or sees the battlefield.

I impart on the seminar that operational approaches and campaign plans are not the sole business of joint or combatant command staffs. Rather, they are the language of senior leaders both in joint and service commands. I offer them examples such as the Army’s Human Dimension Strategy, the Navy Strategy for Achieving Information Dominance, the JECC 2020 Campaign Plan, and the Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025. Each document is a little different in presentation, but all describe the current environment, the future environment, problems to overcome. Some have lines of effort, all have objectives in time and space to get them to their desired conditions.

Building a CCP Operational Approach

At the conclusion of academics, the seminar took a van ride over to the Piers on the main portion of Naval Station Norfolk for an hour long tour of an attack submarine. Tours of naval ships is certainly a highlight of the course. Typically students will tour a submarine and an aircraft carrier in port. Personally, the surprising aspect of each ship is the sheer size. For example, up until my first time boarding the U.S.S. Hampton Roads, my mental picture of an attack submarine was something along the lines of Das Boot or U-571. The depth, or number of floors on the submarine surprised me. But make no mistake, Denzel Washington isn’t going to run laps on the inside of a submarine either. On the other hand, it’s still small, and not a place I would want to spend an extended amount of time in. Hats off to Submariners.

Friday 11 October

Always a good day that begins by opening the inbox and seeing a letter of acceptance from a publication you send an essay to. Naturally, I will post it here, and other means of social media when it is published.

We started today with a guest speaker, retired Ambassador Miles. A couple times a year a former Ambassador will address the seminar to provide a perspective from other agencies of the U.S. government. It’s an important piece of the larger planning puzzle. What DoD and the military does around the world may be the biggest elephant in the room, but there are other elephants. A key insight however, was the observation that typically, U.S. Ambassadors do not think nor act regionally. They are responsible for their own country, which is a juxtaposition of our Combatant Commands who look at the world and various problem sets through a regional lens.

We finish the week with some more work on the operational approach, walking each of the three OPTs through intermediate military objectives (IMOs) within their campaign plan. Each OPT briefs them to the rest of the seminar, and by noon everyone is ready for the three-day weekend.

Happy Columbus Day

30 September - 4 October: Yorktown, Interagency, and Theater Strategy

Monday, 30 September: Test review and Introduction to Campaigns

Last Friday marked the culmination of the Joint Force Fundamentals portion of the class. I’m happy to say that all students in the seminar passed the exam. The interesting feedback I received on the exam is that the students desire more short answer and essay questions in lieu of multiple choice and memorization type questions. I think this is the way all PME should go, students should apply critical thinking and analysis to what they learn in the classroom over simply learning definitions of key terms.

Over the weekend, prior to class, I sent the students a link to one of my previous articles on the personalities of an OPT. It serves as a structure to think about how they will work together to solve problems, no matter what personality they fall into.

The week began with a broad overview of theater strategy and campaign design. Over the next three weeks the seminar will work as an OPT to develop the framework of a Combatant Command Campaign Plan.

Tuesday 1 October: Yorktown Staff Ride

Today the seminar conducted the Yorktown Staff Ride. Personally, it’s my favorite part of the course, mostly because as a resident of Williamsburg, my commute to Yorktown is significantly shorter than the days I drive to Norfolk, and traverse the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT). Aside from the shorter drive, using the history of the American Revolution to tie in concepts to contemporary planning is useful. and if Thucydides teaches us anything, it’s that while the character of war may change, the nature of remains constant.

The seminar met at the Victory Monument, overlooking the York River. I arrived early, and was able to watch the sunrise, a peaceful moment to reflect. One of my fellow seminar instructors who leads the staff ride gave an opening lecture, pointing out some neat facts on the monument. For example, the decision to build a monument was made shortly after the revolution, but the funding and building of the monument didn’t happen until nearly 100 years later. Wanting something is one thing, getting Congress to pay for it is another. Some things never change.

One of the key areas of discussion was the alliance between France and the Americans. Coalitions are hard to build, and hard to maintain. This is true at the political or policy level, and also at the operational level of war. The French and the Americans had to make decisions together on the conduct of the battle, the chain of command, sectors, and even the terms of surrender towards the end. How to best fight as a coalition still matters today. We compared the coalition at Yorktown to the coalition in the Gulf War, and even the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

a second aspect we discussed was how Yorktown fit into the larger global campaigns of France and Great Britain. We talk today of Globally Integrated Operations. In some ways, our fight for independence was just another battlefield

As an aside, Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens get most of the tourists in this area. Anyone who visits should make the stop at Yorktown to see exactly where America earned it’s independence. My wife, my kids, and I spend each July 4th watching fireworks over the York River. It’s not quite the Macy’s celebration on the East River, but in my view there is no better place to celebrate than at the birthplace of our nation.

Wednesday 2 October: Global Integration and Campaign Design

We begin the day with a focused after action review of the first two weeks of the course. I lead a discussion, and try to pull out what went well and what didn’t. Naturally, the seminar zeros in on what they want to improve. I lead off the AAR with the overall course objectives (showing the objectives or what we intended to accomplish is something I do at every AAR I lead. For the most part we got there, but getting there had its own obstacles. The main thing the students look for or wish to have is a syllabus. We have an outlook calendar, we have all the course material by lesson on Blackboard, yet no syllabus, which is surprising to say the least. Further, as I speak to other instructors, they let me know that this is a request from nearly every student or seminar that passes through.

It’s not an exciting day, nor is it an exciting topic. As we are in the campaign design portion of the class I lead the seminar through a discussion of the various campaign plans at the CCMD level. We focus on Combatant Command Campaign Plans or CCPs. Further, we discuss the relationship between CCPs and Functional Campign Plans (FCPs), Regional Campaign Plans (RCPs) and the Global Campaign Plans (GCPs).

The current parlance of the joint force is CCPs. The CCP replaced what used to be called the Theater Campaign Plan or TCP. The big difference is that Theater Campaign Plans were focused on the Area of Responsibility (AOR) of the combatant command. TCPs tended to be geographically focused, while CCPs should also have a global perspective, and focus on the 2+3 threats. Moreover, we look to the CCPs as the documents that operationalize the Joint Strategic Campaign Plan (JSCP).

Thursday 3 October: Interagency Discussion

Quote of the Day: Stigma doesn’t always come from winning or losing, stigma can come from not taking risk.”

The highlight of today was a group discussion led by the State Department representative to the Joint Forces Staff College. The Department of State maintains representatives at each our our major Professional Military Education (PME) schools. What our representative discussed was the State Department perspective on U.S. Operations.

The discussion began with a description of the “3 Ds” of U.S. foreign policy; Diplomacy, Development, and Defense. Diplomacy is the State department, Development is USAID, and naturally, Defense is DoD. Further, we discussed the stereotypes of State and Military personnel, much in the same way we did when we discussed the stereotypes of each of the services. One person mentioned the view that diplomats are reluctant to take risk, and always looking to smooth over confrontation. This sparked some good back and forth on why that perception is there, and often the necessity of careful actions and words in diplomacy

A second part of the discussion focused on funding. When it comes to money, the Department of Defense (under the Defense pillar of the 3 Ds) currently runs an annual budget of over $700 Billion. Said $700 billion does not include the funds for the Department of Energy which manages nuclear weapons, nor does it include everything that is rolled up under the Department of Homeland Security. The budget of our diplomatic corps is paltry in comparison. Granted, the Department of State does not employ Carrier Strike Groups, Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs), or other high tech and high dollar items, but still, its quite the comparison.

I think a lot about how each service spends it’s budget which leads into how each service presents it’s force and capabilities. The Air Force tends to speak in Air Wings, or aircraft, the Navy in Ships, but the Army tends to speak of it’s formations in terms of people. Indeed, the Army speaks in terms of Companys, Battalions, and Brigade Combat Teams, all of which are measured by the number of people in them. People are our platforms, and people, when grouped together take the largest portion of our budget.

Friday 4 October: Finishing “Who Am i?”

Our last two Who am I? sessions occurred this morning. Overall feedback on the exercise seems positive. The seminar took the exercise seriously, reflected upon themselves, and used WAI to help build the group dynamics in the seminar. Personally, I see everyone who participated more as a person than just another student. A deeper understanding of how people think, and how people communicate within the seminar should pay dividends as the class continues over the next seven weeks. I understand who the introverts are, and that their reluctance to speak up is not because of a bad attitude, or not understanding the material, it’s just a reflection of their introvertedness. It’s now on me to develo ways to pull out their participation.

23-27 September: Peer Eval, Crusade in Europe, Strategic Guidance, and the First Exam

our seminar took their first exam this week.

Monday, 23 September: Strategic Guidance and AARs

In the first week of class, we introduced the students to the overall structure of our national level strategic guidance. This week we did a deep dive on each of the documents which include, the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, the National Military Strategy, and the Joint Strategic Campaign Plan. This morning, the class did a deep dive into each document, using the actual NSS, the unclassified summary of the NDS, and an instructional NMS developed for the course. The seminar broke into different groups, and provided a summary along the ends/ways/means/ risk construct on the white boards. Further, the discussion delved into the regional and country descriptions found in the NSS and NDS, which provide for the basis of a threat based planning model in lieu of a capabilities based planning model.

Other aspects of importance include the Global Operation Model (GOM), which the NDS lays out the different layers of the force (contact, blunt, surge, and homeland). However,most importantly, we ingrained into the seminar that when they are tasked to lead a planning team to write a theater strategy, a contingency plan, or any other joint planning, these documents often serve as the first source to think about objectives and endstates.

Over the first week, and into the second, at the conclusion of each class, or seminar asks the students to fill out an index card on sustains and improves for the class. It’s rapid feedback, but provides us with good ideas on what we need to improve on as instructors. Often, a student has an new idea on how to present the information. It is a sincere belief of mine that everybody knows something I don’t. Everyone can teach me something new. This could be a commander, a general officer, a new private, or the building janitor. Never limit where you can receive new information from, or who you can learn from.

Tuesday, 24 September: Joint Functions and Multi-National Briefs

We begin the day offsite at a local restaurant in Norfolk. Over breakfast we take two hours to discuss each of the joint functions. To enable the discussion, I had assigned 2-3 students to a chapter in Crusade in Europe. Each team discussed what they observed in the chapter for each of the seven joint functions. Two aspects of this lesson come out, first, students appreciate any time away from the classroom. Sitting behind a desk and reviewing PowerPoint slides, although appropriate for some lessons, is not ideal every day. Second, the use of history as a method to explain and comprehend current doctrine and operations. Although Eisenhower doesn’t frame his writings with the joint functions, or in an operational approach, the elements are certainly there. We can find examples of current doctrine in every past conflict if we look hard enough.

Looking into the future, we may continue to use Crusade in Europe to help instruct the elements of operational design, and as a way to explain the elements of global integration.The decision making at the national level during WWII, included prioritization of Europe over the Pacific. Even at the operational level, decisions on where to focus forces and capabilities was a constant factor in fighting the war. In some respects, WWII may be the best example we have of the concept and ideas behind global integration.

Following our offsite discussion, we moved back to the classroom where our international students presented a brief on their native counties and armed forces, which for our seminar includes Austria and Thailand.

As a backdrop for the presentation, I took the time to read the English versions of their respective national security strategies. Looking at how other nations view the world, and their relationships to other organizations is a way to develop a comprehensive view of the world. Austria’s strategy for example discusses the relationship to NATO and the EU.

Each international student talked for about an hour, which is incredible when you think about it. Their presentations were in English, and to a foreign audience, and understandable to the entire seminar. The ability to hold court in a second language is

Wednesday, 25 September: Global Force Management, JSCP, JCIC, and Exam Review

The morning began with all the students attending a brief from the Joint Staff J35 on the topic of Global Force Management (GFM). We are lucky in the sense that the J35 GFM shop happens to be across the street from the Joint Forces Staff College. This allows us to have the true experts on GFM talk on the subject matter.

What is important to know for a joint planner is that there is only so much “stuff'“ or capabilities for the joint force to distribute to joint force commanders. GFM is about balancing risk, looking at problem sets globally, and ensuring that capabilities allocated or apportioned to joint force commanders meet the Secretary’s intent. The global view at the joint staff level is paramount, as Geographic Combatant Commanders (GCCs) tend to have a parochial view, prioritizing their respective area of responsibility (AOR).

The Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning(JCIC), is now coming into fruition in the form of joint doctrine. We talked about the ideas, the continuum of conflict, and how the JCIC was the first tool to break the mental model of the 6-Phase planning model. I liked the idea of introducing joint concepts to the seminar, but we must keep in mind that concepts (joint, multi-service, or service) are only ideas. They provide a vision of how we will operate in the future, but is not a description of what we do today.

An aspect of the JSCP and JCIC instruction was the attendance of a peer mentor in the back of the classroom. Each new instructor at JCWS is assigned to a senior member of the faculty who acts as a peer mentor. I introduced mine at the start of the class, and received his feedback on Friday, which I detail below.

The problem sets the joint force faces today can no longer have a regional perspective. Enemies and adversaries have global reach. This reach may not be in the form of tanks, airplanes, or aircraft carriers like we have, but through other domains such as cyberspace and space. Moreover, other nations have looked to asymmetric means to attack America globally. Once again, this is not a new construct (organizations such as Red Army Faction targeted U.S. service members in Europe), but one that joint planners and strategists must consider moving forward.

Thursday, 26 September: Reading Strategic Guidance, Exam Review, and lunch with an author.

In the afternoon, I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of the JAWS seminars who invited retired Colonel Frank Sobchek to speak to their class. Frank is the primary author of both volumes of The U.S. Army in the Iraq War. I read both volumes earlier in the year. Every officer should take the time to read them. More than a dry history, the story looks at key decisions, innovation, and a myriad of other aspects of how the U.S. Army fought for eleven years. The book confirmed much of my thinking and perspective from what I saw on the ground as a young captain from 2005-2008. Faulty assessments, asinine decisions and guidance, and moral failings were a staple. The latter, from Abu Ghraib to Mahamidiyah involved war crimes by individual soldiers, but often was set up by failings of the institution. My personal view is that the Army as a service has yet to acknowledge its role in these types of events.

Friday, 27 September: Peer Feedback and the First Test

An uneventful day as students took their first exam, a combination of multiple choice, short answer, and short essays. Students were dismissed from class for the weekend once they completed the exam. I did play for them my all time favorite exam from Spies Like Us.

At the completion of the exam, I sat with my peer mentor to get feedback on how I conducted the class. He offered some great insights to instruction to include:

-The instructor owns everything on the slide he/she presents. Instructors do not develop all the slides, but must be careful to review everything, and not present information they can not discuss to any degree of intelligence. I see this as similar to any other briefing in front of a senior leader. I have been witness to many staff officers get crushed on an obscure bullet point on a slide that they had little to zero knowledge of. The same can happen to an instructor with students. Indeed, credibility is at stake.

-be careful in how I move about in the classroom. Some movement is good, as hiding behind a podium can indicate a lack of confidence in presenting the material. Our classrooms have the students sitting in a U type setting, making the middle of the U a place to walk up and down. I refer tothis as “my cat walk.” I am an ambiturner, although I have never been a male model.

-State up front why the class needs to understand what they are learning. War stories are ok to stress the importance of a subject. This is in accordance with andragogy, the method and practice of teaching adult learners.

-Know the 2 or 3 big ideas within each lecture. State them up front and consistently hammer on them.

16 - 20 September 2019 We begin a New Class

Monday 16 September: Arrival of the New Class

Today marked the beginning of JCWS 19-4. Students from all of the services, and from multiple allied and partner nations walked into the building to begin their JPME II education. We started the day with all students, from all seminars attending an opening ceremony. we followed this with an introduction to our students in our seminar classroom. Our seminar has 18 total students. They represent all services (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines), and also includes a Thai Air Force Officer who happens to also be a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and an Austrian Army officer.

The previous week, as all faculty were preparing for the next course, we had a luncheon with the international students. Here is where I first met the Thai and Austrian officers. My conversation with the Austrian officer centered around who he considered the most famous or prominent Austrian soldier throughout history. He offered General Count Radetzky and Field-Marshal Karl Schwarzenberg. I countered with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served as a tanker in the Austrian Army, where his weightlifting career took off (one of the best 30 for 30 Shorts out there).

When the seminar first sat down in the classroom, we conducted the standard military introduction, of name, hometown, and previous assignments. As the class will be together for 10 weeks, we made and effort to break the ice. We had everyone pair off with one other student, and describe their answers to a series of questions. With each new questions, the students paired off with someone new. The questions we had them answer to each other:

-What do you see as a successful leader? What do you see as a failed leader? Describe one of your mentors? What is your greatest athletic achievement? What was your favorite course in college?

Getting IT and other administrative requirements became the focus of the rest of the day. We went in detail on the readings for the next couple of days, which was a bit of shock to the students.

Some thoughts as we prepped for the new class:

-Our seminar uses Slack as a primary means of communication. It allows for controlled discussions outside of the classroom, and is an excellent way for instructors and students to pass information to each other. Some subjects that we created on our Slack page include “Short Bios” for each of us to get a sense of one another, “Book and Movie Recommendations,” and “Faculty Instructions,” to name a few.

Tuesday 17 September

“People don’t make decisions from data, rather they make decisions through a story.” I agree with this sentiment based on my experiences as a joint planner.

To begin the day, I spent about 10 minutes discussing my background with the “Who Am I” (WAI) construct. This is a technique I learned at the Red Team Course, is described in the Red Team Handbook, and is a fantastic way for students and faculty to get to know each other, and to build a deeper sense of empathy and understanding of our perspectives. Further, the WAI exercise provides an opportunity to reflect on beliefs, and turn the reflection into a story. Over the next two weeks, each member of our seminar faculty and each student will talk their “Who Am I” to the class.

This was our first day teaching the course material. To lead off the instruction, I led a discussion on how we will build and develop knowledge on joint doctrine. Often, learning new doctrine is learning a new vocabulary. Words that services use may not be appropriate, and terms that joint commands use are not in use in Army, Air Force, or other service doctrine. To break the ice, I played this short clip from Renaissance Man. It’s an underrated movie from the mid-1990s, but ranks as one of my favorite.

The formal instruction began with an introduction and overview of the material we will present over the next two weeks. The big focus of my class was to introduce the ideas of Unity of Effort, Unity of Action, Whole of Government, and Global Integration.

Today we also discussed service cultures. It’s a useful exercise in a joint environment, and serves as an unofficial ice breaker. We have a discussion on the views or stereotypes of the various services. This ranges from fitness levels of the Navy, to coloring books and crayons of the Marine Corps. The class discussed the cultures of each of their services, and discussed whether or not there is such a thing as a joint culture. Most agreed there is, but one student pointed out how a joint organization such as a joint task force often takes on the culture of the organization that is the core of the command. This could be a service component command, or an army corps/division headquarters. Valid point indeed.

Other discussion was interesting, even at the field grade level, people form other services still do not understand the badges, tabs, patches and other elements of flair that we put on our uniforms. One officer described the flair as an informal handshake, and a fast way to judge what another soldier or sailor has done throughout their career.

In the afternoon, I gave an an introduction to the Joint Functions. A Bridge Too Far served as the scene setter. There are seven joint functions, which are similar to the Army’s six warfighting functions, but with a different term for one, and the addition of information as a joint function by Secretary Mattis in September of 2015.

The seven joint functions are Movement and Maneuver, Intelligence, Sustainment, Command and Control, Fires, Protections, and Information. The Army substitutes Mission Command for Command and Control. Today was simply an introduction, we will be going into more detail on the joint functions next week. To prepare for that portion of the course, I assigned the students Chapter 1-8 of Crusade in Europe by Dwight Eisenhower. The book is remarkable, and offers the use of history to discuss various ideas in current doctrine.

Wednesday 18 September: DSCA and the Icebreaker

Day two of WAI was conducted by our Seminar Team Lead (STL), the senior instructor of the seminar. Beginning on Thursday, students will begin their WAI presentations.

The course instruction today is on Homeland Defense and Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA). The paramount points in the classroom discussion was the differences between State Active Duty, Title 32, and Title 10. The law is clear, and the policy strict on what service members can do when activated under each authority. For example, Title 10 (active duty) can not conduct law enforcement. Further, the funding and chain of command is different for each authority. State Active Duty and Title 32 answer to their respective governors, although the latter receives funding from the federal government. Title 10 is when forces are on federal active duty and answer to the President.

Following the classroom discussion, all seminars met for a panel of DSCA experts. The panel included a local emergency manager, a representative from FEMA, a retired Coast Guard Vice Admiral, to name a few. Without discussing their exact comments, the themes of their discussion focused on the importance of building relationships between the military and other government organizations such as FEMA, as well as relationships with the private sector (businesses who may contribute to recovery for example). Further, all panel members stressed the importance of understanding authorities in a DSCA mission. Moreover, understanding how military actions can upset the local economy in a recovery is an important aspect (leads to the joint principle of restraint).

In the afternoon, we had an opportunity to attain some class unity. The first week of each course the students participate in a Defense Support to Civil Service exercise. It was an opportunity for students to plan and develop some courses of action within a DSCA environment.

In the evening, our seminar had an informal icebreaker at a local brewhouse/restaurant. We tried to choose a place with an open atmosphere as opposed to everyone sitting down at a restaurant. The ability to walk around and talk to other students was first in considerations on where to hold the icebreaker.

Thursday 19 September: Strategy, the JSPS, and the USTRANSCOm Commander

Following the morning portion of Who Am I?", the seminar was led through a discussion on strategic theory. There are a ton of ways to think about strategy, and no shortage of thinkers and strategists who have developed their own definition. For example, Colin Grey, author of The Strategy Bridge defines strategy as “the direction and use of force for the purposes of policy as decided by politics.” Sir Lawrence Freedman, defined strategy as the “the art of creating power.” Further, Freedman presses the aspect that “Strategy is a noun and not a verb, something one has rather than does.” Further, Freedman is clear that “There is therefore a difference between having a strategy, which suggests a plan, and acting strategically, which suggests flexibility and responding to events.” However, for JCWS, we use the Yargar model of defining strategy as Ends+Ways+Means, balanced over risk. Often, this theory is displayed by a 3-legged stool (the Lykke depiction) , with the imbalance being the strategic risk.

Not everyone is a fan of the Ends/Ways/Means model of strategy, however, nearly every strategy document that the joint force produces falls within this paradigm. The advantage to it is that a planner, or leader can pick up any published strategy and recognize the formula and the language of the product.

Talking through the Joint Strategic Planning System, and all the documents that are a part of it, to include the NSS, NDS< NMS, JSCP, The best way to describe how I approached the introduction was that the JSPS represents a forest, and all the documents within represent trees. The introduction part of the course was flying over the forest and pointing out the trees from a distance. Next week, the plan is to walk up to the trees and examine them (read them) up close.

One of the best aspects of teaching at or attending Professional Military Education, is the opportunity to listen to senior leaders speak at a guest lecture. This afternoon, General Lyons, the Commander of U.S. Transportation Command spoke to all seminars, to include the JAWS (Joint Advanced Warfighting School) class for a little over an hour.

I told the class my theory about guest speakers, and it goes something like this. Anytime a guest speaker comes in, ask a question. Never worry about getting labled as the guy/gal who always asks questions. There is a good chance that you will never have the opportunity to ask or even communicate with the speaker again. I gave them anecdotes about the times I asked Neil DeGrasse Tyson a question at the Pentagon Library while he was promoting his latest book. Further, I have asked questions to retired General Zinni and even Conan O’Brian, the latter while he was on a USO tour. Take advantage of opportunities you know you will never get again.

Friday 20 September: Ethics

I find that Fridays are best spent outside the schoolhouse classroom at an offsite location. This morning, for our discussion of ethics, I held our class at the MacArthur Memorial in downtown Norfolk. It is about a 15-minute drive from the school, and offers classroom facilities for our use. We met up at 0830 to begin our discussion of ethics in the classroom, followed by a guided tour of the memorial at 1030. The tour took about an hour, and we released the students to begin their weekend.

For the ethics discussion I led the discussion with by asking who had the fewest years of service in the class. One person had 11, and the most experienced person, a former enlisted Marine has over 25 years. With this in mind, I asked why we needed to discuss ethics at this point of their careers. We came to somewhat of a consensus after talking about Fat Leonard, and other ethical and moral failings by flag level officers that ethics is something we must continue to think about and discuss. I added that thinking about ethics as a staff officer, and at the operational level of war would take a little brain power.

I had the entire class go strait to joint doctrine (Appendix B of Joint Publication 1) to understand the Joint Values. The joint values of Duty, Honor, Integrity, Courage (physical and moral), Integrity, and Selfless Service, are important in the same sense that each service has their own respective values. The joint values provide for us a common denominator in thinking about ethics.

I had the class divide into four groups, each of whom had an essay to read (the previous night’s homework) and discuss with the larger group. These essays included Dr. Wong and Stephen Gerras’s Lying to Ourselves, Ludwig and Longenecker’s “The Bathsheba Syndrome: The Ethical Failure of Successful Leaders,” and Lay Phonexayphova’s “Lessons from Yusufiyah From Black Hearts to Moral Education.” The latter author was a student in our last course. Further, as a member of the Blackheart Brigade in the 2005-2006 deployment, I have published my own thoughts on all that occurred in South Baghdad over the course of that terrible year (the original was a 5-part series on the Foreign Policy / Best Defense site, the link takes you to the entirety on The Decisive Point)..

The “Lying to Ourselves” monograph introduces the idea of ethical fading, an concept highlighted by a recent article in Proceedings. According to the Wong and Gerras monograph, ethical fading is dishonesty becomes an acceptable practice, creating a culture where decisions that would normally require moral soul searching, or reflection become a decision based on pragmatism or self interest.

The hard part of the discussion was in how we translate joint values and ethics to the role of a planner on a JTF or Combatant Command staff. It’s easy to discuss Mai Lai, or Yusifiya, or other aspects from the tactical side, but values and ethics at the operational level of war get more complicated. The discussion brought to light some ideas:

-Ethics is important in how joint planners develop and recommend courses of action, especially in the manner of collateral damage.

-Assessments, it’s easy to brief a 3 or 4 star what they want to hear, rather then be the messenger with bad news. Effects Based Operations failed, and sooner or later so does Effects Based Briefings. Officers on JTF and CCMD staffs must have the moral courage to speak truth to power.

-Planners at the operational level develop and recommend policies to leaders at strategic levels. The Blackhearts article led into this insight. Indeed, Steven Green should never have been in the army to begin with. The institutional force allowed people with low moral character to serve in the army, and to deploy into combat. The army in the mid-2000’s increased it’s authorized end strength to nearly 570,000 active duty soldiers. This meant that the standards to join went down, and men and women who should have never been in the army were placed in situations where they controlled the lives, and made life or death decisions of other people. We have yet to account for this.

Next Week: In depth strategic guidance, more on joint functions, grading the first exam, and our unique way of conducting After Action Reviews.

Teaching JCWS: Indoctrination (INDOC)

19-23 August: Indoctrination (INDOC)

The focus of the past two weeks has been on learning how to be a faculty member at the Joint Forces Staff College. The first week focused on the fundamentals of teaching. This included an introduction to Bloom’s Taxonomy, a discussion of personality types we might meet in the class room, and a couple blocks of instruction on how to write a lesson plan.

The introduction focused more on the running of a classroom. In a sense, this is where I am beginning to see the similarities between teaching and leadership. The seminars in JFSC typically have 16-18 students and last ten weeks. We discussed how over the course of ten weeks building the seminar into a cohesive team is an expectation. Indeed, the social aspect of the education here among officers from each service is an important part of development.

The seeds of teaching relatively senior officers joint planning and joint operations comes from understanding andragogy, or the adult learning model (opposed to pedagogy). Unlike teaching children in public schools, students at the adult level come to the class voluntarily. Further, each student brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from their previous assignments. Indeed, in an adult classroom the students should be treated as equals who fell unfettered in their contributions to the learning environment. Moreover, each student will need to relate what they are learning to how they will apply it in their future work or future assignments. Not only do we have to teach the material, it is vital to have them gain an appreciation for how they will use it.

Other aspect of teaching introduced this week was the domains of learning, which include the affective, cognitive, and psychomotor domains. The cognitive domain is often referred to as “Bloom’s Taxonomy” which is completely new to me. Each domain has levels, and the cognitive domain moves through six levels starting with Knowledge, moving through Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and ending with Evaluation. Each of these levels has associated terms which lead to the creation of lesson objectives and samples of behavior in the classroom. Or as I frame them in my mind, objectives and endstates.  

With regards to classroom interaction, we discussed how cohesion will create more noise, more disagreement, but lead to more learning. Other aspects of classroom control we discussed was creating a tradition in the classroom. Thinking through what traditions we can develop in a ten week course (a weekly award for most embarrassing incident for example) may be a challenge.

Other aspects of classroom instruction that run parallel to running an OPT is the ability to manage disagreement, and just as important the ability to manage disagreement. In a 10 week course consisting of majors and lieutenant colonels (Navy lieutenant commanders and commanders) discussion in the classroom is what enables learning. It is incumbent on the instructor to enable the discussion, and to ensure each student participates. Just as in OPTs, classrooms will contain A-type extroverted personalities, and B-type introverts. Nobody should have a monopoly on speaking time, just as nobody has a monopoly on knowledge.

The INDOC also featured a fast introduction to learning theory. This featured a review of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Fundamentally our discussion on the three types centered on whether we believe we have the ability to change a student’s behavior, change the way a student thinks, or adjust the reality from which students will approach problems. We came to a consensus that over ten weeks we will probably combine elements of each approach to the seminars.

Finally, the INDOC ended with discussion on what makes for a good lecture. Most of the times we use the lecture model in class it will tend to be informal, with considerable interactions with the students (both questions and discussion). Most of the faculty here tends to avoid PowerPoint lectures, leaving that as a tool to show examples of planning products. The method here most seem to use to teach joint concepts, joint planning, and joint operations, is the lecture - example - practical exercise model.

26 - 30 August: Week 2: Writing and Philosophy

Writing is a skill. Evaluating someone else’s writing is a skill. Both require practice, development. The latter skill is new to me, and I believe will take time to develop and refine. Week two of instructor indoctrination focused on the skill of evaluating and coaching other people’s writing. Here is how it went down.

We began the week with a discussion on the purpose of writing. We concurred that generically, writing can be broken down in to four basic elements 1) writing is a process of communication 2) writing uses a conventional graphic system 3) writing conveys a message 4) the message is conveyed to a reader. What will push military students and writers is that the audience or reader is not necessarily the instructor. As students who attend the course are in relatively senior positions, their writing should have a larger audience.

Concerning writing in the military, the class discussed various forms of writing. These include emails, orders, decision papers, information papers, white papers, and PowerPoint presentations.

Teaching Philosophy: At the conclusion of day 2, we were asked to consider a teaching philosophy. Most of us were familiar with leadership or command philosophies, so this was a new concept to us. I outlined a draft, but will be taking the time to write a complete one over the next few weeks. Twitter was a fantastic resource to gain additional insight on developing one. One professor from the Army War College sent me a couple examples, and others chimed in with their thoughts, to include a former director of SAMS. Twitter can be a hellhole of a site, but it can also serve as a way to connect to other leaders, thinkers, and writers who we normally don’t engage on a day to day basis. It’s all in the way you use it. Going back to the teaching philosophy, I plan to post it on this blog as I complete it, or at least what is appropriate to put out there.

A factor of writing in JCWS is students are expected to write to learn. Writing to learn allows students to practice discovery thinking, and to explain course material to themselves. Further, having students write forces them to make decisions in their thinking. Moreover, writing to learn enables students to understand the course material better. A more comprehensive understanding of the course material transfers to improved communication. That is to say, writing or explaining new material to one’s self is the first step of explaining something to others.

When the course moved into grading papers, I discovered a glaring weakness in my own ability. Let me explain.

Each of the new instructors took a “draft paper” to mark up and make comments on. As I marked up the paper, I focused on grammar, spelling, and other small errors throughout the paper. When each new instructor talked through their markings, others were able to capture bigger ticket items such as logical inconsistencies in the paper’s thesis and argument. I became so distracted in the weeds I failed to see the forest. My corrections would be of little use to a student trying to formulate a thesis with supporting evidence.

This being said, the technique we talked through, as a class was to make small corrections on the first one or two pages, and ask the student to revise the rest of the paper as they work through drafts. The final product should be error free and grammatically correct. It is my belief that senior leaders can become distracted by small errors, and tend to ignore any products that contain them, no matter how important the content may be. Indeed, writers who submit products riddled with small errors tend to be labeled as hasty, careless, or uninformed. Further, senior leaders rarely want someone to represent their organization if they present sloppy, error filled work.   

Balancing the content, the arguments, and the clarity with a tendency to act like a grammar nazi will be a continual challenge I will maintain at the forefront when coaching and advising students on their written work.

Plagiarism, also known as the death sentence of writers was our final topic of the week. This is a paramount topic for writing in the military. Day to day, the military plagiarizes thousands of documents. This may be in how we have generic write ups for awards and evaluations, or in the way that unit SOPs tend to have similar language. These are accepted practices in large organizations. However, officers must leave this practice behind when attending professional military education (PME).

Teaching JCWS 12 - 16 August 2019

Monday, 12 August 2019: Predicting the Future

Quote of the Week: “Physics doesn’t move mountains, Chemistry does.” In relation to how a planning team works.

Over the weekend I spent time preparing for two classes. The first was Joint Futures, which is a discussion on documents such as the Joint Operating Environment (JOE) and the Chairman's Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO). The second class was on step 7 of the Joint Planning Process, plan development. I gave the seminar a choice of which one to begin with. They chose Future Force, as I explained it was more interactive and require some creativity.

Taking a step back, over the weekend I posted two videos on Slack to get the students thinking about the future of war and armed conflict. The first was a clip from a a short film titles “Slaughterbots.” The second was a short summary on what the future operational environment may look like. It seemed a nice setup to spur discussion. finally, I began the class with clip from the 2014 reboot of Robocop. What I enjoyed about the clip from Robocop was the interaction of advanced technologies with the human aspect of war. On a side note, most people tend to stay away from movie reboots, especially classics as Robocop. However, the dialogue on the ethics of AI and autonomous systems throughout the movie is terrific.

The futures class provided an introduction to the Joint Concepts that the Joint Staff J7 and the services produce. My intent was not to make them experts on capabilities development, but rather to show each student where said documents reside. Moreover, introducing them to the 2010 CCJO, whose central idea of Globally Integrated Operations, and how concepts drive what we aim to achieve today. We also discussed how each service produces similar documents, and in their own way support the Chairman’s vision, albeit through a service lens.  

Following the introduction of the concepts I broke the students into three groups, and asked each group to identify major trends stretching out to the year 2039. Then taking all the trends together, I asked for one solution from each of the DOTMLPF-P categories. this was my method of introducing the DOTMLPF-P language to the group.

Tuesday 13 August: Applying Military History to a Fictional Scenario

At the end of Monday, we split the seminar into teams of two. Each team was told to research a previous conflict, how the conflict ended, and to apply the conflict termination lessons learned to the course fictional scenario. With this method, the military history aspect is not only a part of the course, but the students understand a way in which to apply history to current scenarios. Each team presented for approximately 20 minutes. All included a short video found on YouTube with a slide depicting lessons learned, and a slide depicting application to the course scenario. These conflicts included: 1) Kosovo/Serbia 2) U.S. Civil War 3) Japan Post WWII 4) Desert Storm 5) South Africa post Apartheid 6) 2006 Israeli - Lebanon War 7) El Salvador Civil War 8) Tamil Tigers 9) Nicaraguan Revolution.

There are other conflicts that we can add to the list, and my first thought was Columbia and FARC, as well as Britain and Argentina.

What some of these conflict brought to the forefront is that the decisive phase of a military operation can be the post-combat phase. This was true for the 2006 Israeli - Lebanon War, and true for U.S. military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel/Lebanon also flushed out the necessity of information operations post major combat operations, both on the battlefield and to the international community.   

In the afternoon, we had the same teams look at their planning scenario for post conflict or post MCO operations. To develop options on what the battlefield would look like, we used the Red Team method of alternative Future analysis. I walked the seminar through an example, then had teams examine the possible futures through a local, regional, and global actor perspectives.  

The alternative future technique is useful when trying to envision a complex scenario, or to provide a range if visions should the outcome of an operation be uncertain. We used this as a method to determine Most Likely and Most Dangerous scenarios following the major combat operations phase of planning.

Briefing Technique: There was a total of nine quad charts per group, I detailed how I wanted each group to brief the quad, to ensure all followed the same method (start at the top left and go clockwise). It’s useful when briefing similar products or charts to use the same method to avoid confusing senior leaders.

Wednesday 14 August: Post MCO COA Development

The seminar began their planning for post combat operations. We asked them to update their operational approach and to develop a COA sketch. Again, we broke up the seminar into three planning teams, each developing their own COA. Some issues that I observed:

-Post Combat Operations need to have it’s own plan. this means revisiting each step of the Joint Planning Process. The center of gravity can shift, facts and assumptions change, and new lines of effort can appear., and naturally, the command may be solving an entirely new problem. Diving head first into COA development is not the best way to build the post combat train. 

-Planners tend to operate at the level of war where they are comfortable. This translates to a flushed out COA at the lower operational or high tactical level. We consistently have to help students to think at the theater level and focus planning across the entire CCMD Area of Responsibility.  

Thursday 15 August: Post MCO Wargaming

Each of the three OPTs conducted a short wargame (1 turn) for their post combat operations phase. What is clear in the post combat phase is the value of command relationships. Often, the battlefield becomes more congested with an almost infinite amount of actors. This ranges from other government agencies such as USAID/OFDA, to Non-government agencies (NGOs) such as Doctors Without Borders and The International Red Cross. Further, more nations may participate in the rebuilding or reconstruction of a nation. All these actors place an emphasis on formal coordination elements a joint force commander requires. A good command relationship chart in the post combat phase should consider:

-Combined Coordination Center / CCC

-Joint Air component Coordination Element / JACCE/ACCE

-Special Forces Liaison Element / SOLE

-Civil Military Operations Center / CMOC 

-Liaisons at any other organizations as required.

Moreover, transition into the post combat phase of an operation will often require activities in conjunction with a host nation’s security forces. More than the military that resides under a Ministry of Defense, security forces could include the Police and Border Patrol who reside under a Ministry of Interior. There must be a method and capability to coordinate actions with each of these elements.

CONCLUSION

Post combat planning should receive the full attention of planning efforts, on par with or greater than the planning for the combat operations phase. Indeed, the post combat operations phase could be the decisive phase of a military campaign (see Iraq and Afghanistan). This means going through the entire planning process from operational design and mission analysis (the COGs changed, the mission changed) to COA development (the force list will change) to COA analysis (more actors on the battlefield to wargame) to the production fo a new plan and issuance of orders.

NEXT WEEK: the seminar moves into their capstone exercise. During this time, and over the next three weeks I will be in the Faculty Development Course that the school runs in house. This will be an introduction ranging from the course materials, to adult learning models, and various teaching methods.

Teaching JCWS

31 July - 8 August 2019: Operational Design and JPP

I am starting this blog to keep and share lessons learned on operational level planning. Having been assigned to instruct Joint combined Warfighting School students, I want to share what I learn throughout my time here. this will also offer an informal way of sharing my lessons learned over the past decade working at the operational and institutional levels of war. 

Couple ground rules that I will abide by. The school is a non-attribution environment. I will never shout out anyone by name, instructors, students, guest speakers, etc. Second, this is meant to share observations and lessons on instructing and planning. This is not meant to criticize, praise, or judge the school / institution in general. So here we go…

31 July: This initial Friday post covers my first two weeks of integration in the classroom. I am working with seminar 3 for the duration of the current class. Jumping into the curriculum, the students are well on their way in operational design and covering center of gravity (COG) analysis. I was able to lead the class through a discussion of Centers of Gravity. Two articles, Eikmeier and Vego seem to be paramount to understanding this topic.

I used examples of effective centers of gravity (Gulf War, Initial Invasion of Iraq) to feed the discussion and some examples of failure (Occupation of Iraq, Vietnam). One student approached me afterwards to offer that in Vietnam, we did not properly identify the South Vietnamese government as a Critical Vulnerability. I agree with that assessment, and offer that the same can be true for how we looked at certain Iraqi Security Forces. The Iraqi Police were a critical vulnerability that we never solved.

We (the other seminar instructors and I) are using the six steps Eikmeyer developed as a method to identify the COG at the operational and strategic level. Two thoughts on this. The 6 step method is effective, as it provides structure. My experience in COG identification is a group of officers brainstorming what the COG could be. So having a method to the madness is nice. Second, although JP 5-0 discusses a COG at three levels of war (Tactical, Operational, Strategic), I do not believe in nor will I teach the existence of a COG at the tactical level. Tactical COGs exist in the same space as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  

The COG analysis covered the COG at the Operational and Strategic level, their associated Critical Capabilities, Critical Requirements, and Critical Vulnerabilities. The seminar did this for Red (the adversary), Blue (U.S.), and Green (Host Nation).

-The use of post it notes or stickies on the white board during planning gets more of the team involved. During the course of planning, a team member naturally drifts to the computer, and soon you have 8-10 people staring at a screen waiting on one person to move a box on PowerPoint, or to correct a spelling error in Word. Further, the stickie notes can move around to help order decisive points in both space and time, naturally flushing out an operational approach.

1 August: The seminar (I use class and seminar interchangeably) began development of their operational approach. A proper COG analysis strengthens the operational approach. In this aspect, when the planning team develops thoughtful critical vulnerabilities, these vulnerabilities morph into decisive points on the operational approach. Each decisive point was written on a sticky, pasted tot he white board, and grouped in a logical manner. The various groupings then became the Lines of Effort / Operation for the Operational Approach.

Monday 5 August: the seminar moved on from operational design and into mission analysis. In previous assignments the argument over which comes first, design or mission analysis is like arguing for the chicken or the egg. They are separate chapters of JP 5-0. However, in my view design leads the analysis. The seminar was versed in mission analysis, as I assumed they covered it in the Campaign Design section of the course (before I arrived). the seminar broke into three small groups to develop and compare/contrast what they developed, which for the most part was pretty good. I did make the following injects:

     -Rules of Engagement, SROE, and Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) are not limitations. They are things we (the United States) abides by. There can be specific elements of a ROE that constrain or restrain development of courses of action. for example, limited number of boots on the ground, or limiting lethal attacks against an adversary. However, broad statements like ROE and LOAC should not appear on a slide in front of a GOFO.

USING HISTORY

JCWS has a military history portion of the curriculum. The staff has leeway into how to integrate history lessons into the course. We had the seminar break up into three teams, and each team selected a previous conflict to examine. After examining the conflict, the teams were then asked to produce a chart that explained the similarities and differences to the exercise scenario. They were then asked what lessons they can apply from this lens. the three conflicts chosen were the Russia - Georgia War of 2008, the Arab - Israeli War of 1973, and Desert Storm.

This method has the seminar look at the analogy method as described in Thinking in Time by Richard Neustadt. I actually developed a slide while at USEUCOM comparing Georgia, Ukraine, and what could happen in Serbia, as a method to convince people not to throw out analogies.

This last point led to a thought that one of the “OPT Personalities” I missed was the historian. Or the guy in the OPT that loves to make historical analogies despite their degree in Criminal Justice.

Tuesday 6 August

I talked to the seminar about decision points today. I displayed some example Decision Support Matrixes from the ARDENT SENTRY exercise under JTF-X. The seminar appreciated the ability to look at some DSMs and what right looked like. It pulled in how CCIR is tied to decisions. Talking the class through, then showing an example seems to be an effective method. Further, I pulled in some generic decision points that run across every operation and exercise (e.g. Change FP posture, or Stand Up JTF).  

RED TEAM GROUP THINK MITIGATION

Throughout the 10-week course we are introducing Red Team group think mitigation techniques strait from the Red Team handbook. These techniques, such as 5 will get you 25, Dot Voting, and Circle of voices are paramount in getting full class participation. Indeed, the seminar will go through hundreds of 3x5 Index cards writing down their thoughts and ideas before the course is through.

To bolster the Red Team and group think mitigation, I played for the class the Abilene Paradox, a short video that serves as an example of the dangers of group think.

Wednesday 7 August

The class has begun course of Action (COA) development this morning. We broke them up into two OPTs to develop two distinct COAs. One is terrain focused, the other is enemy focused. I spoke a bit about what traps to avoid when designing what types of COAs to develop. 

AVOID: A heavy/medium/light characterization of COAs. Assuming each COA meets the minimum threshold of Adequate, Acceptable, Feasible, Distinguishable, and Complete, then you have made the decision for OSD easy. They will choose the light course of action. In a similar vain do not have Land Centric and Air Centric options, as decision makers will choose the latter. 

They look to develop a scheme of maneuver, identify main and supporting efforts, tasks to each component command, risk, and a C2 construct for each phase.

With regards to C2, I find that the C2 discussion can be the most important. A bad C2 construct can limit the effectiveness of good leadership at each level. There are times when good leadership can overcome a bad C2 design, but planners and joint force commanders shouldn’t count on it. I use Abu Ghraib as an example of bad leadership with a bad C2 where nobody understood who is in charge.

What becomes clear after looking at the COAs, is that each OPT became constrained by the Maps they used. Once the map was put up on the screen, that terrain became the maneuver space. COAs were restricted to their planning maps. It is sometimes necessary to use a broader map to get students to think at the operational level.

On the positive note, each OPT spent most of their time trying to construct the C2, and they did this as a group. Often, an OPT will task one or two planners to go off in a corner and construct the C2 diagram while the rest of the group flushes out the course of action. The result is a C2 chart that is disconnected and not in support of the course of action. the second positive note was the back and forth discussion in the group. Once they realized the complexity of command and control at the operational level of war, the lights came on.

Thursday 8 August

The two OPTs briefed out their respective courses of action. Each team briefed their COA sketch from the Whiteboard (in lieu of forcing them to make the perfect PowerPoint slide). Each COA had Phase II beginning with an enemy invasion. I used this to point out that phase changes should always be the decision of the U.S. commander, and at the time of his/her choosing. An enemy action should inform the decision to change phases, but not be the sole factor.

An interesting side note, as the seminar is filled with students from each service, an Army student used the term SF to indicate Special Forces, until an Air Force student asked for clarification as SF means Security Forces in Air Force parlance.

Finally, with regard to COA development, it is worth stressing the importance of maps. Often, planners become transfixed on the map in front of them. At the CCMD level, using a map that displays the entire CCMD Area of Responsibility (AOR) can help keep a planning team focused on the entire theater, not just the JOA that the Joint Task Force owns.

When the students discussed their C2 diagrams, I continued to press for what unit filled the role and where that unit will go. For example, a JTF or CJTF does not magically appear. Planners must designate a force who will serve as the JTF, and allocate time for said JTF to form. Moreover, when planners brief times when the JTF or any other unit will be IOC or FOC (Initial Operating Capacity / Full Operating Capacity), they must be prepared to discuss the checklist or terms that meet IOC/FOC. It’s always the first question.

Interestingly, IOC and FOC are not joint terms with regard to a HQ readiness. Each is a term that relates to capability development (such as the F-35) milestones. However, IOC and FOC seem to be universally understood with senior military leadership.

Following the COA briefs, we had a short discussion on Course of Action Comparison, more commonly known as Wargaming. This began with a discussion of their evaluation criteria which a small group of students developed. I preach to anyone creating evaluation criteria that a good place to start is with the Principles of War and the Principles of Joint Operations, both of which are found in Joint Publication 3-0 (page I-2). Other common or generic evaluation criteria include alliance/coalition cohesion and risk of expanding or escalating a conflict.

Proper evaluation criteria is key to evaluating and comparing each COA. At the operational level, there is a discussion of advantages and disadvantages of each COA. These must be framed from the chosen evaluation criteria, and not be new characters introduced this late in the planning process.