Issues in Joint Planning

Question

Please provide a 200 word response to each of the following two

posts attached. The post is a response to the prompt listed above it.

Please utilize at least one reference in each of the two responses.

Please cite Author Year, page number. Example: Smith 2021, 3.

Prompt 1:

Strategic guidance is crucial to guide planning. Many observers have noted military planners’

frequent dissatisfaction with some forms of strategic guidance, such as Presidential directives or

commander’s intent.

 QUESTION:  Describe in your own words the tension between planners’ need

for clear guidance and national leaders’ need to maintain flexibility in a contingency.

In your view, which is more important, and why? Support and defend your response

using materials from the self-paced courses.

Post 1:

Clear guidance is the most vital part of the planning process simply because it is the starting

point for planners. Doctrinally this is foundational to the ways, ends and means paradigm that

pervades all levels of joint planning. JP 5-0, Joint Planning (2017, I-2) states, “Joint planning is

end state oriented…” continuing that “…planning begins by identifying the desired national and

military end states.” Focused on the end state, clear strategic guidance articulates the desired

objective. From here planners develop appropriate force structures, tasks, and resource allocation

efforts. When clear guidance exists, the ways and means become relatively easy to plan through

resource appropriation to achieve the effects necessary to bring about the desired result.

However, the global environment is dynamic; national objectives are constantly changing.

Creating broad objectives allows senior leaders to adjust goals relative to developing threats.

However in this “hierarchal” planning process those planners at lower levels of planning can

often become frustrated with ever changing objectives. This is in large part because at the lower

levels of planning, planning is more specific to the operational environment as well as being

resource dependent. Thaler (2003, 5) articulated this stating “…objectives cascade; what is

strategy at one level becomes objectives at the next-lower level.” Without proper and clear

strategic guidance at the level above, the level below is unable to plan appropriate lines of effort

or tasks necessary to achieve the objective, let alone provide guidance to those planners at

echelons below them.

              This concept can readily be tied back to a doctrinal foundation when discussing how

resource availability can impact the planning process; “when translating strategic and CCDR

guidance into joint operation plans (OPLANs) and operation orders (OPORDs), planning must

begin with those resources that are likely to be available at execution” (JP-5, 2017, I-3). This

also jives with Thaler’s discussion about levels of strategy and how they intertwine with

objectives. Because of the hierarchal nature of the planning process, the JP 5-0 (2017, I-4 )

further states that, “Early planning guidance and frequent interaction between senior leaders and

planners promotes a shared understanding of the complex operational problem, strategic and

military objectives, mission, planning assumptions, considerations, risks, and other key planning

factors.”

This statement becomes enlightening when we consider planners frustration with a lack of clear

guidance and the necessary balance that senior leaders must take in order to meet the dynamic

and ever changing global environment. However, frequent dialogue both up and down the chain

from the NSS to the NDS all the way down to the OPLANS and their subsequent parts becomes

vital to help mitigate frustration but also aid higher echelon leaders in maintaining strategic

agility.  To conclude and make one more doctrinal connection, Volume 1 of the Air Force’s

Basic doctrine (2015, Policy, Strategy and Doctrine) reiterates this fundamental point that,

“Strategy defines how operations should be conducted to accomplish national policy objectives.

Strategy is the continuous process of matching ends, ways, and means to accomplish desired

goals.”

Prompt 2

Military forces may be called upon to carry out a wide range of efforts and activities, collectively

described in joint doctrine as the range of military operations (ROMO) or the spectrum of

conflict.

 QUESTION:  Identify a type of contingency in the ROMO for which you believe

US military planners are least prepared. Why is this so? Support and defend your

response using materials from the self-paced courses.

Post 2

As so internationally displayed in the last few weeks, the United States planners are least

prepared at the Range of Military Operations of building partner capacity (BPC).  The crumbling

of the Afghanistan military and government proves how poor and unsuccessful planners are at

building partnerships in weak, unstable, and culturally different countries.  Planners have been

unsuccessful in developing tools to turn Afghanistan into a willing ally and partner.  The

approach planners use seems to be the real issue.  Implementation of these plans in Iraq,

Afghanistan, and even Syria have proved to be utter failures.  There has been no significant pro-

western, anti-Islamic fundamentalism of any real degree amongst all of these endeavors. 

In McInnis and Lucas’ What is “Building Partner Capacity?” Issues for Congress they point out

“While a variety of studies explore programmatic effectiveness, very few explore what the

United States sought to achieve when engaging in a BPC effort, and whether or not doing so led

to desirable outcomes” (McInnis and Lucas 2015).  The failure, they establish, lies within the

initial planning process.  They wrote this more than 5 years ago, almost predicting what would

happen in the summer of 2021.  Planners are failing to establish a realistic and achievable

outcome when the United States decides to engage in BPC.  Having 20 years almost to the day in

Afghanistan, and having it fail so quickly after the slightest shrug of US support, shows how

weak the foundations of the efforts really were.

Iraq suffered a similar lack of planning and the US is still there trying to build that nations

partnership.  Iraq’s fate seems pretty similar to Afghanistan’s, it is only a matter of time.  An

entity inside of the DoD, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s slogan is “Security through

Global Partnerships”.  They basically plan and execute training services and equipment to

foreign nations to further bolster BPC.  Their primary focus is on developing partner nation

force.  You can’t use force to change people’s attitudes only behavior.  People of the nation have

to fundamentally change for peaceful and friendly relationships to develop.  If there is a failure

to develop and focus on that aspect, then it is probably doomed to fail when the forces are gone

and the nation is left on its own. 

When planners are strategizing on how to change a nation to become future partners, they spend

too much time and resources on security.  That is a real issue because they aren’t spending any

energy on changing the culture and attitudes of that nation.  Security is important, but not as

important as developing trust and relationships in the minds of the people.  These recent failures

highlight how tenuous putting all our efforts in security forces are.  It also runs the risk that the

security forces turn power hungry and corrupt or inept.  Planners need to start to change the way

America establishes these partnerships in countries that have little to no cultural similarities to

have any real chance at lasting friendship.

Global Train and Equip. (2021, Sep 8). Retrieved from Defense Security Cooperation Agency:

https://www.dsca.mil/global-train-and-equip

McInnis, K., & Lucas, N. (2015). What Is “Building Partner Capacity?” Issues for

Congress.District of Columbia. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R44313.pdf