My mission yesterday was to review the US Army Capstone Concept (another ACC) and feed some comment back in through the Small Wars Council. I got to page 38 just before 5pm (mercifully the last dozen or so pages are just summaries and glossaries). The ‘mercifully’ comment is probably a clue that I was less than happy with the result – correct.  There isn’t very much comment on the Small Wars discussion thread for this document – probably because it is a chore to work through and is somewhat of a disappointment:

• It reads as though it has been written by a team of writers who are probably not even in the same part of the country let alone the same building or room. Parts of it are quite disjointed and it does not flow as smoothly as a key capstone publication must – if you actually want anyone to read it. Possibly, hopefully, the publically released draft is an early one and the current draft is more polished and advanced.
• Most of the writing is rather verbose and clumsy with overly complex sentences and long, sometimes almost incoherent, paragraphs.
• At 55 pages including glossaries, indexes etc, it is too long. All the key concepts are in the first 10-20 pages and I believe you could turn out a good product in no more than 30 pages.
• An essential quality for the author of a Future Operating Concept has to be an imagination. After a not too bad start, the draft document reverts to describing current not future scenarios. There is ample open source material available to analysis to get a feel for what a future force for 2016-2028 have to face and then reverse engineer back into the capabilities and qualities that force may need.
• It needs a catchy name like the  Complex Warfighting, and Adaptive Campaigning developed by the Aussies or even our own Precision Manouevre.

What really gets me is that drafting a futures concept isn’t hard…yeah, sure, you have to think and bit and maybe get out of the square…look at the Australians, it wasn’t even two months ago that they had John Birmingham out to Pucka to chat about what 2020 warfare might look like (which reminds me I must chase that up and see if anyone at FDG took any notes from that session)…even TRADOC which owns the COIN Center had Josh Wineera present the Interbella [link goes to the Powerpoint] model, again no more than a couple of months ago…you need a couple of people with a bit of imagination…I just did a bit of a blogjack and suggested on Cheeseburger Gothic that JB and those who contributed to his future war thread might want to contribute to the US Complexity and Uncertainty document…

We were talking about Interbella [link goes to the article in Colloquium] products yesterday,  while Josh chunks away at his broader thesis; specifically a play-book in three parts, targeting strategic, operational and tactical levels, focussed on managing complexity and uncertainty; no more than 25 pages and written in simple practical terms…oh, like a Marine Corps publication, you say? Yep, simple, concise and cuts to the chase…

So on the drive home last night I started to think about what might happen if you applied the Interbella model to the Future Operating Concept that the US Army is developing. Even though, Interbella uses a solar system analogy, it’s not rocket science…it might look like this:

• What is the sun, or may be suns, that everything rotates around?
• What are the things we know, that we’re pretty sure will stay the same…the planets perhaps?
• Toss in some dark matter…things we think are there or that may occur but we just can’t prove it at the moment…
• What happens perhaps when some of these factors, possibly innocuous on their own, align?
• Consider what might be the rogue comets…things perhaps that may be less likely but most dangerous…911, Pearl Harbor, topping ArchDuke Ferdinand, collapse of the Berlin Wall…
• Consider the broad approaches and strategies that might mitigate these factors…

Uh-oh, suddenly, we’re almost there…a fledgling FOC…

The discussion on Jim Gant’s Tribal Engagement Team strategy continues on Steven Pressfield’s blog. I like his comment today regarding the way that Jim Gant has produced this paper…no one asked him or compelled him to write…but by doing so and placing it out there in the webspace, it has attracted a degree and depth of comment and feedback that would be unlikely if it had to worm its way through a formal hierarchical structure…go the Information Militia!! When I think about it, Interbella is another example of the same sort of initiative…someone just got off their bum and did something…

I’m in Waiouru today and it’s snowing quite heavily…if I had remembered the cable for my camera , I would post an image of Waiouru In Springtime!!