[Editor’s note: Here’s what passed for an ICYMI during the Great Depression.]

Did You Read…

…the following important stories last week?

Army: Representative Henry E. Barbour Comments on the Tank Situation; Roster of Officers of the 1930-31 Classes at the Cavalry School; Editorial Affiliation of Branch Journals Urged; U.S. Military Academy Cadetships Open; 35th Infantry Celebrates Its 14th Anniversary; Ammunition Production Increases; A Military Road Over Kole Kole Pass Opened?

Navy-Marine Corps: Many Problems Face Navy General Board in Study of Construction Program; Joint Ceremony at Puget Sound Navy Yard on Labor Day; Germany’s New Cruisers Expected to Make Her a Sea Power Again; Bureau of Aeronautics Will Experiment With Use of Seaplanes on Submarines; Work of Marine Corps in Nicaragua Praised by Collector General of That Country; Navy Expects to Meet Naval Aviator Shortage by 1931?

General: Pay-Promotion Board Will Not Attempt to Devise One Promotion System?

If not, you did not read the Army and Navy Journal. You can not get this vital information from any other source.

F.I.R.E. by Lt. Col. Dan Ward, USAF

‘F.I.R.E: How Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant Methods Ignite Innovation’

By DAN WARD

Editor’s note: Lt. Col. Dan Ward is well known to AFJ readers for his clear-eyed pieces on military acquisition (“Acquisition reform … for real; What the Pentagon can learn from NASA’s ‘faster, better, cheaper’ approach” and “How to build good stuff: Five rules for a sensible approach to acquisition“). Here is an excerpt from the introduction to his new book, which comes out today.

F Is for Fast

The F in FIRE stands for fast, which says it’s important and good to have a short schedule. It’s about defining a project objective that can be satisfied on a short timeline, not one we know full well will require twenty years to accomplish.

Now, the precise definition of “short timeline” will naturally vary from context to context. Some applications might deliver new capabilities every day and be considered hopelessly slow if they clock in on a monthly schedule, while for others, delivering in a year would represent a world-class commitment to speed. For military technology, a 2008 report from the Government Accountability Office says “system development should be limited to about five years,” and anything longer than that probably counts as “slow.” The point is, there is some amount of time that represents rapid delivery, so aim for that.

Being fast means we don’t try to solve problems by adding days to the schedule. As the book progresses, we’ll look at some strategies for speed to help us accelerate our development timelines and to solve problems using more thoughtful techniques than simply asking for more time. The key is to treat the schedule as a constraint to be lived with, not as a starting point to be extended later.

Although process improvement is not a central aspect of FIRE, it does have something to say about process. Specifically, FIRE proposes designing our organizations and processes with speed in mind and remaining on the lookout for opportunities to remove speed bumps from the process. This is where process improvement techniques can come in handy. The difference is that FIRE treats these techniques as tools rather than goals, as mechanisms to help achieve a larger objective rather than an objective to be pursued for its own sake—as so often happens in process-centric approaches.

As a general rule, speed is good. Slow kills. Speed fosters stability within a program and reduces our exposure to the forces of change. Speed enhances accountability and learning for the team members. Speed increases the likelihood that the product will be well aligned with both the market’s interest and the available technologies.

But here is the twist: we must not be content with the superficial appearance of speed, where we appear to be moving quickly but are in fact spinning our wheels or running in the wrong direction. Nor should we pursue speed at the expense of doing good work. This means no cutting corners, no skipping essential steps in the development process. The project is only fast if we do quality work on a short timeline.

For example, most of the time we still need to design, document, and test the thing we are building. Rather than skipping those activities entirely or accomplishing them halfheartedly, FIRE offers ways to perform each essential step with speed in mind. So a performance test may only take a minute instead of a year, and it may be performed simultaneously with other activities, but failing to do any tests at all is not what we have in mind when we talk about being fast.

Remember the lesson from the famous race in Aesop’s fable: the tortoise was faster than the hare because he got to the finish line first. So by all means, be fast. But don’t be hasty.

There is also a big difference between being fast and being frantic. Fast is about speed with discipline, focused speed that efficiently moves us from where we are toward where we need to go. Frantic activity, in contrast, spins in circles and creates the appearance of rapidity without actually producing much in the way of forward momentum. Running around like a chicken with its hair on fire is the antithesis of productive action, no matter how exciting it might feel.

I Is for Inexpensive

The I in FIRE—for inexpensive—says it’s important to have a small budget. That may be an unpopular position in an environment in which budgets equal prestige, but in my experience I’ve found that the ability to deliver meaningful capabilities on a shoestring is actually a widely respected skill, even in the cash-rich defense business. Ask yourself: Would you rather be known as the person who manages a $50 billion project that is late or over budget, or the guy who makes great things happen without busting the bank? Which one do you think makes a better impact? Who sleeps better at night—the guy in charge of building the second Death Star, which is so far behind schedule it requires a Sith Lord to straighten things out, or Q, the head of James Bond’s quartermaster division, who always has a freshly tweaked vehicle ready for Her Majesty’s secret agent to take on his next mission?

Being inexpensive is about designing our organizations and processes with thrift in mind and solving problems with intellectual capital instead of financial capital. It’s about setting program goals that can be satisfied on lean budgets and finding thrifty ways to perform even the expensive-sounding functions. The key is to treat the budget as a constraint, not a starting point to be expanded later. It’s a ceiling, not a floor.

But just as fast does not mean hasty, inexpensive is not the same as cheap. You see, a low-cost solution that doesn’t work is actually a pretty expensive solution. Inexpensive does not mean simply picking the low bidder or settling for an inadequate component. What we’re trying to do is maximize bang for the buck, get the most rumble for our rubles, the most sound for our pound.

R Is for Restrained

The third piece of FIRE stands for restrained. This is the common thread that runs through the whole FIRE concept. It is a preference for self-control, for tight budgets and small teams, for short schedules, short meetings, and short documents.

Yes, there’s a point at which an organization isn’t large enough to do the work, and a point at which a document or briefing doesn’t convey all the necessary information. As a general rule, we could get a lot closer to that boundary than we typically do. To demonstrate this, that’s all I’m going to say about restraint.

E Is for Elegant

The E in FIRE stands for elegant, in the sense of “pleasingly ingenious and simple.” Simplicity is an ironically complex topic and will be covered in future chapters, so for now let’s start by pointing out that it is important and good to have a low level of complexity. This sentiment may seem obvious, but given so many people’s love affair with complexity, I think it is worth saying out loud.

Embracing elegant simplicity means designing our organizations and processes with simplicity in mind. It’s about stating our goals clearly and incorporating mature, proven technologies into our designs. True sophistication, true design maturity, and true process maturity are shown through deep simplicity, not through brain-meltingly complex diagrams and structures. In other words, complexity is nothing to brag about.

A certain degree of complexity is inevitable in any situation. While we may not be able to avoid complexity entirely, we can certainly take steps to minimize it. But merely simplifying our design without making it better is a superficial application of simplicity. For simplicity to be elegant and virtuous, it needs to improve the project’s quality, performance, or usability. We’ll look at several strategies for doing exactly that.

Copyright © 2014 by Dan Ward. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Every four years, the defense community waits on pins and needles for the Quadrennial Defense Review. Some succumb to quadrennial defense delusion, the hope that the new QDR can do it all: rationalize strategy, program, and budget; unveil creative solutions to age-old defense problems; and drain uncertainty from the security environment. Of course, no document awash in inter-branch politics and tied to budget cycles can work such miracles, yet a clear-eyed look at this year’s QDR suggests there is much to applaud — if also room for criticism.

QDR 2014 contains a decent estimate of the volatile security environment. It follows the Defense Strategic Guidance and last summer’s Strategic Choices and Management Review. Produced with the threat of sequestration temporarily lifted by the Ryan-Murray budget deal, it matches available resources with the extant strategy and program, knowing well that the United States has more defense aspirations than resources. It makes prudent cuts and protects those aspects of the program previously staked out by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel: cyber; space; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs; and special operations forces. In all, QDR 2014 will help to rebalance the force for a broad spectrum of conflict.

In short, the Pentagon essentially got it right, and deserves two cheers for what it did, and a parting kvetch for what it was not able to do.

Huzzah

The first cheer is for matching the threat, the force, and the strategy. None of the services walked away unscathed, but all survived in good order. As expected, the big loser was the active duty Army, cut back from a high of 570,000 to 440,000 or 450,000, about where it was before the attacks of September 2001. (Some strategic analysts had recommended that it fall to 290,000. A few knowledgeable Army generals — just weeks before publication — firmly believed that the Army total would be 420,000 or less.) The Army’s reserve components took a smaller cut, as did the active Marine Corps, a force with a well-deserved reputation for organizational agility. Special Operations Forces will actually grow a few thousand spaces and focus more on train and assist missions, as opposed to kinetic, direct action operations.

The Navy kept its 11th aircraft carrier and its two versions of the F-35, but capped the number of its unpopular littoral combat ships. The Navy earned an option to come up with better, more lethal ship designs. The Air Force did the best of all the services: it kept its new fighter, the F-35A, and new programs for a bomber and a refueling tanker. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the Air Force plans to cut the entire aging A-10 fleet to afford these new modernization efforts.

Across the services, DoD leaders made modest cuts in pay and housing allowances, and proposed Tricare changes. They began, again, to reduce the civilian workforce and overall headquarters strength. While fixing the retirement issue was beyond the scope of this QDR, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, scheduled to report out in February 2015, may well develop a comprehensive solution. It will, however, be controversial; pay, benefits, health care, and retirement issues have become highly and loudly politicized. Lobbies for the service, retirees, and veterans have created another political third rail for legislators. For example, in the past few months, a COLA cap for younger retirees — an idea popular among legislators and analysts — was passed but almost as quickly repealed after loud complaints of unfairness from retiree and veterans’ organizations. For compensation issues, even a good, comprehensive solution will have a long and difficult march to reach effective legislation.

In all, the QDR did as well as possible in crafting and maintaining a force that can address complex contingencies, while rebalancing to meet the needs of the future. The force presented in the QDR should be capable of homeland defense, defeating a regional aggressor, and holding another at bay.

Another huzzah

The second cheer for the QDR is in how it dealt with risk. Time after time, the review reminded the reader (and the Congress) what would happen to our force if sequestration again comes into play. Land forces will lose another 37,000 soldiers and Marines, the Navy will lose an aircraft carrier, and the Air Force will have to retire another 80 aircraft. On the most basic level, sequestration would shrink our forces and, worse, cut deeply into readiness for all of the Services.

In his own assessment of the QDR, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dempsey emphasized the risks: “…in the next 10 years, I expect the risk of interstate conflict in East Asia to rise, the vulnerability of our platforms and basing to increase, our technological edge to erode, instability to persist in the Middle East, and threats posed by violent extremist organizations to endure. Nearly any future conflict will occur on a much faster pace and on a more technically challenging battlefield. And, in the case of US involvement in conflicts overseas, the homeland will no longer be a sanctuary either for our forces or for our citizens.”

While the chairman was concerned about the overall size of the joint force, he was particularly concerned with the capacity of the nation’s land forces. He recommended a ready, joint, full-spectrum force and a comprehensive review of our mobilization capabilities. He cited three areas of higher risk: “more difficult conventional fights,” more reliance on increasingly less-capable allies, and the sheer difficulties associated with more capable regional competitors. He concluded with this historically accurate judgment: “estimations of how and where we would fight a war or militarily intervene will also probably be largely wrong.” Developments in the Ukraine remind us of the prevalence of surprise and uncertainty in today’s security environment. The only solution to this continuing uncertainty is a balanced, agile force, ready for action across the spectrum of conflict.

Critics of the QDR

The QDR has its fair share of important critics. HASC Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon — a retiring lame duck — demanded a re-write. In a committee press release, he faulted the QDR for not producing a moderate- to low-risk strategy, and claimed that it was a budget-driven review, that “only looks out 5 years, instead of the 20 years required by law.”

There is much to be said in defense of the Pentagon here. For one, the QDR and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs addressed risk in detail. Gen. Dempsey concluded that if we avoid sequestration caps that the strategy presented was one of moderate risk. In Defense News, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development David Ochmanek, an architect of the QDR, said the review was resource-informed, but strategy, not budget-driven. He noted that the environmental studies looked out to 2030, but the Pentagon only built the force out to the end of the defense program. In this budget climate, programming even five years out may be a fool’s errand.

Common sense and common practice support the Pentagon here. Developing a force 20 years out is impossible, and other QDRs have not tried. Our vision is just not that good. I participated in 1996 in a more modest, long-term exercise, led by the Joint Chiefs, and entitled Joint Vision 2010. While the paper aimed far short of a comprehensive strategy and was accurate on some of the technology-related issues, it missed the changing threat and said almost nothing about the advent of the al Qaeda-style terrorism. Interestingly, as the only long-range document on the shelf, it was adopted in 1997 by Secretary Cohen and became a part of the first Quadrennial Defense Review.

Even worse, the successor document, Joint Vision 2020, published within a year of 9/11, continued the focus on high-technology conventional operations focus, despite al Qaeda’s growing prominence. Both documents were focused on dominant maneuver, precision engagement, focused logistics, full-dimensional protection, and information superiority. They both pointed toward “full spectrum dominance” as the goal, but neither document really considered the low end of the conflict spectrum. They did not have a substantive view about the war on terrorism or al Qaeda, by then the wolf closest to the national sled. On 9/11, despite these long-range, visionary studies, we were caught looking the other way, prisoners of service war-fighting concepts and our shared passion for high-technology solutions.

There was one exception to this four-star groupthink. Gen. Chuck Krulak, the commandant of the Marine Corps at the same time developed the concept of the three-block war — a prediction of an operational environment characterized by nearly simultaneous combat, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance. In December 1997, he told the National Press Club that “our enemies will not allow us to fight the Son of Desert Storm, but will try to draw us into the stepchild of Chechnya.” Four years later, it was Krulak’s vision, not that of the other Chiefs, that was closer to reality. His concept better captured the role played by our forces in the war on terrorism that would follow.

In short, looking out 20 years is fine, but Gen. Dempsey was right: our record of prediction is generally dismal and shows no signs of improving. Perhaps what Eisenhower said about planning is also true about assessments and strategies: “plans are nothing, but planning is everything.”

Filling the strategic void

While the QDR has done what it could, how can we get at the concerns expressed by HASC Chairman McKeon? For a better and more thoughtful product, we need a less politicized version of strategic studies to light the path to the future and spur intra- and inter-branch dialog about strategic issues.

The QDR’s limitations have been discussed, above. In conjunction with the QDR, at Congress’s insistence, in various laws, we are required to have a National Security Strategy, signed by the President; a Defense Strategy, signed by the Secretary of Defense and included with the QDR; and a National Military Strategy (NMS), signed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The latter is generally the least interesting of the three because the Chairman commands no formations and directly controls very few defense resources. All three of these documents are routinely ridiculed for pulling punches, ambiguity, and pablum-like pronouncements. We can do better strategic analysis, but not as long as all of our strategic studies are tied to bureaucracies with an eye on independence, programs, and budgets.

We need a standing commission, something to serve the field of thoughtful strategy in the same way that the Government Accountability Office does the field of audit and accounting. The National Strategy Commission can be both a creature of the Executive and Legislative branches, with senior executives appointed by each. Its mission would be the conduct of strategic studies, classified or unclassified, on an agreed-on agenda, by individual tasking, or at the initiative of the commissioners themselves. The Commission can also serve as a standing red team for other strategic studies. Its work would range from the practical to the highly theoretical. It would be free to speculate about futures and to work on real cases or hypotheticals. Any public Commission product would be available to both the Executive and Legislative branches, but either branch could also request an eyes only study. The National Strategy Commission would not be a public think-tank, but it would be a consumer of think-tank products. Indeed, it should help in-box strategists by vacuuming up and assessing think-tank products.

The Commission could study the issue of how small the US Armed Forces could become before it was necessary to change the strategy. Risk assessments could become its specialty. It could also do alternative strategies, comparing, for example, today’s strategy of forward presence and engagement with an over the horizon, off-shore balancing strategy, favored by John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and Christopher Layne.

We will never have neutral vessels of knowledge working for the government. Policy, strategy, program, and budget are branches of the same tree, and we will need senior leaders who can bring them into harmony. We can also benefit by having strategists who are more like the mythical rational actor, and who can do studies with greater bureaucratic objectivity. In the process, they may be able to inoculate us against the quadrennial defense delusion.

Joseph J. Collins teaches strategy at the National War College. A retired Army colonel, he served for nearly 12 years in the Pentagon. From 2001 to 2004, he was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. This article is his alone and does not represent the policy or the opinion of any U.S. government agency.

Col. Robert M. Cassidy

This year will see a set of key events in Afghanistan: variables of pivotal magnitude that may well determine whether it succeeds as a state or succumbs to another Taliban takeover.

If Afghanistan succeeds and endures, the struggle will have ultimately been the good war of the last 12-plus years: in terms of the justification for going to war, in the way the coalition ultimately prosecuted it, and in the context that the international community will have fulfilled a post-war moral commitment to the Afghan allies we supported and fought alongside.

The value of the political object, the morality of the war, and the perception of victory or defeat comprise the most compelling logic of the contest of wills there. There are impediments that increase the risk of failure, yet also momentum that favors success. And there is history, and the history of wars in Afghanistan does not suggest that catastrophic failure is inevitable – if the coalition continues to support Afghanistan after 2014.

The political object, and its perceived value, guide war. The value of the political object of the Afghan War – dismantling, defeating, and denying al-Qaeda sanctuary – derives from the horrific consequences of the 9/11 raids. The political object, when achieved and sustained, will prevent this from happening again. However, the perceived value of the object has diminished in the eyes of the supporting polities because of the costs and duration of this war. In other words, the political and domestic will to persevere have waned.

The Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Islamist zealots of similar cloth have endured significant disruption, displacement and dismantling of their capacity to carry on, yet their will to continue has not relented. This is because of the fanatical religious creed that animates these enemies, and because of the physical and materiel sanctuary and support they benefit from in Pakistan’s border areas. Generous funding from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states also helps. For the likes of the Quetta Shura and the Haqqanis, their mantra is ‘Islam or death.’ For Western polities, it is, ‘bring the troops home.’

Pakistani security elites believe they can counter their existential nemesis, India, by supporting the Taliban and using the Haqqanis to foment insurgency in Afghanistan. Although this notion of strategic depth is a figment of these elites’ febrile and fertile imaginations, their cost-benefit strategic calculus is not likely to change unless there is a huge shift in how the U.S. and the West confront Pakistani duplicity. In other words, in the minds of the Pakistani security leadership that decides strategy, the benefits of supporting and protracting the insurgency in Afghanistan outweigh the costs.

Starkly, there are still two potential, but not inevitable, outcomes: a revived Talibanistan or a strengthened Afghanistan. Giving up potential victory by quitting the field precipitously might see the Taliban eventually overwhelm and undermine the Afghan government and its security forces. And, if the Taliban were to revive an Islamist emirate in Afghanistan, there is every reason to forecast a future with more attacks against the West, planned and prepared, with increasing scope and intensity, from Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s tribal areas.

A better outcome, turning the stalemate of the previous decade into a semblance of victory, would see a resilient and durable Afghan state, with the government, the security forces and the population aligned against a marginalized Taliban. Success would see an Afghanistan that does not fragment and endures as a state inhospitable to al-Qaeda, the Quetta Shura Taliban and other extremists. The bar is not high and the international community does not aim to make Afghanistan into Austria. There will still be violence, poverty and underdevelopment, but an Afghanistan with its people, security forces and government cooperating in modest harmony equates to victory in this context.

There are also moral imperatives for a war to be a “good” one. Despite the missteps that characterized the early years of the Afghan war, this war is ostensibly the good war of the last 12 years. The proximate cause for going to war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban was justified in terms of self-defense. The methods of fighting the war saw the U.S. and the coalition killing enemy combatants and generally trying to avoid killing civilian non-combatants, however imperfectly carried out.

The coalition has intended to do the right things, to help Afghanistan and not to harm Afghanistan. Now, the question remains, will the international community do the right thing in terms of jus post bellum. The requirements for this would be to continue to help the Afghans who allied with us to protect the state and preserve the societal developments in the face of the insurgency and external threats.

Moreover, in a contest of ideas that juxtaposes two diametrical world views of reason versus extreme religiosity, of freedom to choose versus a tyranny of dogma and fear, victory or defeat are of huge importance to our cause and to the cause of our enemies. If the West quits the fight, or stops supporting the Afghans’ cause prematurely, this would likely vivify and embolden al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other militants who espouse a distorted Salafist-takfiri creed of sectarian violence.

In spite of the ambiguity that inheres in the present and future of Afghanistan, the last 12-and-a-half years have witnessed discernible momentum in important areas. Both the quality and the quantity of the Afghan security forces have certainly improved and increased, with the most notable changes occurring since the surge in 2010. What’s more, during the 2013 fighting season, the Afghan security forces were genuinely in the lead, bearing the brunt of the fighting and outmatching the enemy during most combat engagements. Also of importance: During the last decade in Afghanistan, most measures of human development and progress have improved and continue to improve in geometric terms.

The biggest impediment to enduring stability in Afghanistan is the Taliban’s sanctuaries in Pakistan. These give the Taliban a place to regenerate; they allow resupply of lethal aid and recruits. They allow the Taliban to protect its will – the senior leadership and the insurgency’s regenerative potential – thus protracting the war to exhaust the political will of the coalition, with the ultimate aim of making the tremendous capacity of the coalition irrelevant if it leaves the field before achieving its aims. As a consequence of the strategic paradox that Pakistani policy imposes on the coalition’s efforts in Afghanistan with its proxies, though the coalition has made significant gains at the operational level, those gains could very well end up being ephemeral and irrelevant. The crux is that the Afghans, with coalition support, cannot utterly defeat the Taliban by taking away both capacity and will because the insurgency’s political will remains protected in Pakistan’s sanctuaries.

The Afghanistan scholar Thomas Barfield has written that foreign invasions of Afghanistan have manifested a pattern in that, “former insurgent leaders found that success on the battlefield or rallying opposition against foreigners could not be transmuted into political authority once those forces departed.”

After more than 12 years of this war in Afghanistan, it is not likely that Pakistan will turn off its support and sanctuary to the Taliban in the next couple of years. Payments, persuasion, diplomacy and policy have all failed to compel Pakistan to modify the warped calculus that underpins its support to proxy insurgents in Afghanistan. However, it is also unlikely that the Taliban will threaten or seize Kabul outright, or other key population centers, when the coalition forces shrink to whatever post-2014 strength their political leaders decide upon. Whether the international effort devolves to a residual presence of 12,000, or even to a lesser number of forces for assistance, advice and counterterrorism support, historical precedent augurs a difficult future for the insurgents, even with Pakistani support. The one requisite is that the coalition continues to provide a degree of financial aid and assistance.

When the Soviets departed Afghanistan in February 1989, even though the mujahideen, its Pakistani backers, and many others had forecast a quick insurgent victory and an imminent collapse of the Najibullah regime, this did not happen. The regime endured for another three years and two months, with continued Soviet financial, materiel and food support. Only when the Soviets stopped supporting the Afghan regime at the end of 1991 did the Afghan state begin to unravel. Without Soviet support, it ultimately fractured and yielded to the then-inexorable arrival of the various mujahideen factions in April of 1992.

Afghan scholar Joseph Collins has testified to the following reasons for the endurance of the Najibullah government: a disunited enemy; a transition plan that harmonized aid, military assistance and diplomacy; strong and effective leadership; modest reconciliation between the central government and the peripheral tribal militias; stronger Afghan security forces; and a steady flow of foreign aid. In Barfield’s own scholarly work, moreover, he observed several corollaries that accounted for the incapacity of the insurgents to defeat the Soviet-supported government: They were unable to modify their insurgent methods into an effective conventional approach; they lost their cohesion after their foreign foes left the field; and they were incapable of making the transition from factional insurgent leadership to effective national leadership.

What does this mean for Afghanistan after 2014? Commentary from the Middle East Policy Council posits several forecasts for the current war. First, after the withdrawal of ISAF forces at the end of 2014, continued international military and economic assistance to the Afghan government may in fact help it retain power in the key population centers. Second, it is not at all inevitable that the Taliban will regain power, even though they will continue to receive Pakistani assistance and sanctuary. Third, opposition to the Afghan government will actually decline after the American and coalition presence diminishes. And, fourth, once the Afghans are responsible for their own survival, the effectiveness of Afghan government forces may increase discernibly. That is the good news.

The bad news is that if American and allied support for the Afghan state ends abruptly, it is probable that the Kabul government’s strength will decline precipitously. If this occurs, ethnic divisions within the Afghan government leadership are likely to worsen. There will then emerge a possibility, though not an inevitability, that the non-Pashtun officer corps might seek to usurp the power of the sitting Afghan government. In an extremely worst case scenario ¬-¬- a descent into chaos — the most critical fractures within Afghanistan are likely to be those between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns.

The protracted war in Afghanistan has not yielded smooth and unambiguous results for long-term stability in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the region writ large. Neither victory nor defeat are yet certain or inevitable. Indeed, success will not resemble those cherished victories over Germany and Japan during World War II. However, since 2010, the combined Afghan and coalition campaign, forces, resources and leadership have fought the Taliban inside Afghanistan with effect. What is even more compelling is that since the 2013 fighting season, the Afghan security forces were in the lead, have borne the brunt of the fighting, and indeed overmatched the insurgents in most of their battles and engagements.

It cannot be overstated that the biggest strategic risk to the stability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan lies in the fact that the Pakistani Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, under the delusional and spurious notion of creating “strategic depth” on their western flank, continue to support proxy insurgents, just as they have over the last four decades. Al-Qaeda and like-minded militant groups that collude with al-Qaeda in the tribal areas on Pakistan’s western frontier are disrupted and diminished, but they are not fully dismantled and defeated.

In the end, any successes will be ephemeral unless there is continued international support to the Afghan state and its security forces. And violence will not ultimately abate until there is a strategic change inside Pakistan to turn off the sources of support to the insurgents. Without sanctuaries, indeed, the Taliban would wilt into insignificance. The somber reality is that the international community and the U.S. have not reimagined the means and ways to force Pakistan to alter its harmful strategic calculations.

Both the continuation of external support to Afghanistan and the reduction of the pernicious effects from the sanctuary in Afghanistan are a strategic necessity.

Col. Robert Cassidy, U.S. Army, is a professor of Joint Military Operations at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. These views are his and not those of the U.S. government or the Naval War College.

Over the past few years, concerns about an ice-free Arctic have drawn statements from U.S. national, Coast Guard and Defense Department policymakers that make it sound as if the region had only recently broken above the horizon. (A good example is a February 2012 article in which Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr. noted, “The Arctic region—the Barents, Beaufort, and Chukchi seas and the Arctic Ocean—is the emerging maritime frontier, vital to our national interests, economy and security.”

Of course, the Arctic emerged long ago as a federal policy driver. Two years before Secretary of State William H. Seward acquired what would become the Alaskan Territory in 1867, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service dispatched the lighthouse tender Shubrick to become the first U.S.-flag ship to reach that far northern coast. “From this modest beginning, cutters would eventually sail into the Bering Sea and the Arctic,” wrote historian Dennis Noble. The work in Alaska’s western and northern waters would become known as the Bering Sea Patrol…. Eventually, other duties devolved upon the cutters until they became, in effect, the only government known to those who resided in the isolated Bering Sea and coastal Arctic regions. As a part of this government service, cutters provided badly needed rescue units.”

And, as Adm. Papp noted in 2012, “Then, as now, our mission [was] to assist scientific exploration, chart the waters, provide humanitarian assistance to native tribes, conduct search and rescue, and enforce U.S. laws and regulations.”

The Coast Guard’s high-endurance cutters (WHECs) have been essential to Alaska/Arctic missions. The service’s 2013 white paper on resourcing the U.S. Coast Guard said, “Complemented by long-range aircraft, Coast Guard surface assets conduct long-duration patrols from the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska along the maritime boundary line between Russia and the United States, to Hawaii and Guam — distances that cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of barren ocean space. Operating year-round in severe, highly demanding, distant environments calls for specialized training, equipment, and assets.”

The Tyranny of Distance

Distances from USCG cutter homeports to Kodiak, Alaska. (Source: U.S. Coast Pilot 8, Appendix II)

For this reason, the Coast Guard has for more than 40 years operated Hamilton (WHEC 378)-class cutters in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. Alaskan Patrols (ALPATs) typically begin with a cutter transiting north from its homeport — Seattle, Wash.; Alameda or San Diego, Calif.; or Honolulu, Hawaii — stopping in Kodiak, Alaska, for fuel, to top-off stores, and embark an aviation detachment and helicopter, followed by an in-transit patrol to a designated area for focused patrol duty. The overall length of each patrol averages 90 days away from the cutter’s homeport. Thus, reducing in-transit “dead-time” can be a vital factor in carrying out the ship’s numerous missions. (Normally, ALPATs do not include operations above the Arctic Circle, even in summer months.)

In the worst case, patrols originating in Honolulu have up to an eight-day transit to Kodiak followed by:

* A two-day stop in Kodiak on the way in
* A three- to four-day mid-patrol break
* A one- or two-day stop on the way out
* Another eight days’ transit back to homeport

This reality leaves only about 67 days (74% on-scene presence) for actual patrols in Alaskan waters.

ALPATs originating from Seattle fared better, with about 85% of their days away from homeport spent on actual patrol and protecting America’s interests. Alameda is the next most-efficient transit case, but San Diego is virtually identical to Honolulu. Hawaii-based high-endurance cutters steaming at best economical speed (12.5 knots) will burn some 78,500 gallons of fuel costing about $392,500 (at $5.00/gallon), on just the transits to and from Kodiak, before the real jobs could begin.

This worked for a while, but soon the challenges — cost of fuel, increased wear and tear on aging cutters, reduced on-scene presence — of some 16 days’ transit from homeport to Kodiak and back home forced a new course. After years of internal service debate about supportability and infrastructure requirements, the Coast Guard decided in 2007 to permanently move an Alameda-based Hamilton-class cutter to Kodiak. With the USCGC Munro (WHEC 724) homeported in Alaska, ALPATS originating there routinely apply virtually all of their days away from homeport to actual patrol duties, beginning almost immediately as the cutter pulls away from the pier, with no fuel burned on “dead-time” transits.

And the Future?

The 12 obsolescent Hamilton-class cutters, which were commissioned between 1967 and 1971, are being replaced by eight multimission Legend (WMSL 418)-class National Security Cutters (NSCs). As of early 2014, the Coast Guard had decommissioned four Hamiltons and will continue to take them out of service as the NSCs are delivered. The Munro will soon be gone and with it the high-endurance cutter presence in Kodiak. If all goes as planned, there will be a concomitant reduction in U.S. homeport high-endurance cutter “presence”:

This might be problematic. “There are a lot of academic discussions around the Arctic these days, but for us, this is not an abstract academic discussion,”  Coast Guard Deputy Commandant for Operations Vice Adm. Peter V. Neffenger, remarked in July 2013. “As people move into a region where there are challenging operating conditions, difficult lines of supply, lack of shore infrastructure, lack of logistics…it demands a presence of those agencies like the Coast Guard that are required to govern those areas. So, all of the Coast Guard’s authorities and responsibilities in the rest of the country around the coast apply in this new ocean that is opening up.”

The NSCs will perform all of the missions conducted by the WHECs, which in addition to ALPATs include counter-drug patrols in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, High Seas Drift Net patrols in the central Pacific, and joint military exercises and deployments worldwide. They are highly capable ships, equipped with advanced command-and-control systems, onboard sensors, information exchange, onboard and off-board surface and air assets, and weapons systems to meet a broad spectrum of multimission needs. They are able to get on scene quickly, maintain persistent presence for extended periods, monitor the areas with organic and off-board sensors, and carry out missions using small boats, helicopters and unmanned airborne systems––in fair and foul weather, 24/7.

Arctic Shield 2013 provided a glimpse of the value that the NSC brings to the Arctic region. The operation, which focused on western Alaska and the Bering Strait, included outreach and an assessment of the Coast Guard’s capabilities in the Arctic. In addition to other cutters and boats, the USCGC Waesche (WMSL 751) deployed as a command-and-control platform and conducted various missions, including maritime domain awareness, search and rescue, and law enforcement. In many regards, Waesche had more C4ISR—command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—capabilities than all the other USCG Arctic Shield 2013 assets combined. And, as Adm. Papp noted in a 2013 interview, “Using the cutter fleet instead of establishing bases over the next 10 years will save money and allow for greater flexibility.”

The NSC fleet thus will provide a mix of capabilities required in high-stress operational areas that include the North Slope of Alaska, Bering Sea/Gulf of Alaska, eastern Pacific, Caribbean, West Coast, and East Coast/North Atlantic. But there are concerns that eight might not be enough, and early studies in the late 1990s indicated that as many as 16 NSCs would be needed. However, numerous assessments since then concluded that the cost-constrained Coast Guard force structure would comprise eight NSCs, 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters, and 58 Fast Response Cutters. Affordability is king!

There are no plans to replace the Hamilton-class high-endurance cutter in Kodiak with an NSC. As the WHECs are being decommissioned and not being replaced on a one-for-one basis with NSCs, operational coverage in critical areas will begin to lessen; actual patrol time on station will decrease and cost per patrol for fuel will increase. Although the NSC concept of operations calls for 230 days away from homeport each year (compared to about 185 days/year for the Munro), that depends on the service implementing a yet-to-be-developed crew-rotation policy. Failing that, the Coast Guard could administratively change the required operational tempo from 185 to 230 days per year, increasing the burdens on single crews. Thus, the loss of a major, high-endurance cutter based in Kodiak could introduce operational inefficiencies in a key asset and a critical operational area.

Although something of an apples-to-oranges comparison, the U.S. Navy “rule of thumb” is that it takes about three warships to sustain one in forward-deployment areas away from U.S. homeports. This reality has contributed to the Navy’s decision to increase forward basing in Rota, Singapore, Guam and Bahrain.

In addition to loss of operational capability, shoreside support billets for that cutter along with the associated material supply businesses that a cutter of that size demands will likely atrophy, perhaps meaning a loss of civilian jobs in the area and other economic impacts. For example, the cutter itself will require shoreside maintenance beyond the organization level accomplished by the crew and will purchase local consumables for maintenance, repair and subsistence. In addition, a WHEC crew numbers about 170 sailors, perhaps a third of whom are married, many with families that accompany them to Kodiak. All contribute to the economic base of the region.

Because of the variety of the missions and tasks the NSCs will be performing, there is solid merit in the Coast Guard’s homeporting scheme with NSCs in Charleston, Alameda and Honolulu. There will however, be a measurable loss in Alaskan patrol time and cost of fuel associated with the absence of major cutters in Kodiak. For every Kodiak-based NSC, the United States will get 21 days’ additional on-scene presence in an increasingly critical world region — a total of 370 additional days away from homeport each year from two NSCs and at an annual fuel savings of $1.6 million.

The Coast Guard’s 2011 High Latitude Study assessed the requirements for polar operations and capability gaps, concluding that there was a need for at least one additional high-endurance cutter (not an icebreaker) deployed in the Bering Sea carrying a short-range helicopter. “The analysis shows that the current Coast Guard deployment posture is not capable of effective response in northern Alaska and that response may be improved through a mix of deployed cutters, aircraft, and supporting infrastructure including forward operating locations and communications/navigation systems.”

This was echoed by maritime consultant Dennis Bryant, who noted, “The most important of the USCG taskings, and a force-multiplier for all other taskings, is the requirement to sustain the federal capability to conduct maritime operations in ice-impacted waters of the Arctic.” He continued, “The other taskings for which the Coast Guard is designated the lead agency also reflect traditional Coast Guard missions. These consist of enhancing Arctic domain awareness; improving hazardous material spill prevention, containment and response; promoting Arctic oil pollution preparedness, prevention and response internationally; increasing Arctic search-and-rescue capability; expediting development and adoption of the IMO Polar Code, and promoting Arctic waterways management.”

But “robbing Peter to pay Paul”—reassigning one of the Honolulu- or Alameda-based NSCs to Kodiak—creates challenges in meeting other USCG Pacific demands. Instead, should the resources become available, the service could assess the benefits from building additional NSCs for Alaska/Arctic operations––perhaps including an ice-capable (not ice-breaking) strengthened hull design. And, while a single NSC in Kodiak looks to provide a significant increase in patrol/response capabilities, the assessment should address two NSCs for the Alaska/Arctic region. This looks to increase operational capabilities and maintenance, support, logistics, training and personnel quality of life—all factors that contributed to the Coast Guard’s current posture of multiple NSCs in three homeports.

And there is Coast Guard precedent for permanent basing of a major cutter in Kodiak. Commissioned in 1942 as a light icebreaker, after the war the USCGC Storis (WAGL/WMEC 38) was transferred to Juneau in 1948 to support Bering Sea patrols and from 1957 until decommissioning in 2007 operated out of Kodiak. As soon as the Storis was taken out of service, the Coast Guard dedicated the Munro to Kodiak, clear testimony of the need for a permanent presence there.

Audacious Good Fortune

There is an old adage, “Good fortune smiles on the audacious.” Certainly, Secretary of State Seward was audacious when he negotiated the agreement to transfer Russian America to the United States. Nearly 150 years on, “Seward’s Folly” looks to have been one of the best decisions in U.S. history—a bargain at twice the price!

So it could be for the U.S. Coast Guard to re-look its program, policy and posture and build two more NSCs for Kodiak, dedicating them to the nation’s still-emerging maritime frontier.

Scott Truver is a Washington, D.C.-based naval analyst who has conducted studies for the U.S. Coast Guard since 1979.

By Maj. Rob Taylor

Much of the media coverage suggests that the conflict in Syria is a civil war, in which the Alawite (Shia) Bashar al Assad regime is defending itself (and committing atrocities) against Sunni rebel factions (who are also committing atrocities). The real explanation is simpler: it is about money.

In 2009, Qatar proposed to run a natural gas pipeline through Syria and Turkey to Europe. Instead, Assad forged a pact with Iraq and Iran to run a pipeline eastward, allowing those Shia-dominated countries access to the European natural gas market while denying access to Sunni Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The latter states, it appears, are now attempting to remove Assad so they can control Syria and run their own pipeline through Turkey.

The standard Shia-Sunni conflict is little different from many other socio-ethnic-economic-political-religious (SEEPR) conflicts that originate in competition for resources, but in Syria it has a lucrative twist. The pattern of SEEPR control in Syria is similar to that in many other Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan Africa countries (and is arguably common in every country, but more so in traditional societies): Who controls the government controls the state’s resources, and by extension, the wealth derived from them. In Syria, the Sunnis have tried to unseat the Alawites ever since France installed them during the French mandate that ended in 1943. But now the stakes are higher, thanks to natural gas.

Any review of the current conflict in Syria that neglects the geopolitical economics of the region is incomplete. (Nearly all media reports fit this description.) Take “The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War,” published in January by STRATFOR’s Reva Bhalla, which provides an effective Syria-specific revision of Robert Kaplan’s “Geography Strikes Back,” complete with historical acuity, but without mentioning the pipeline. Reports such as these shed little light on current geopolitical economic developments that are at the heart of the issue. Oil and natural gas pipelines bring large amounts of wealth to states which control them, thus attracting international attention, intrigue, and in many instances, terrorist activity.

It is helpful to look at a similar situation: the GAAT region (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey), also known as the Caucasus. As proposals for an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Europe took form, every power broker in the region struggled to influence the route, seeking the wealth that would flow to any country involved in the deal.

Conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, a key Russian ally in the region, prevented the shortest pipeline route, through Armenia. The pipeline ultimately went west through Tbilisi and Ceyhan, but only after Moscow demanded and received a partial diversion pipeline that transports Azerbaijani oil north into Russia. In 2005, oil first flowed through the BTC Pipeline, so named because of its route from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, through Tbilisi, Georgia, and on to Ceyhan, Turkey.

But the pipeline’s completion hardly settled questions in the conflict-ridden Caucasus. Potential malcontents include factions from Armenia’s Nagorno-Karabakh region (backed by Armenia’s sponsors Russia and China), separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Turkey. In October 2012, an explosion damaged the pipeline in Turkey; although it remains unclear whether the blast was an accident, the PKK separatist group was quick to claim responsibility.

The potential for conflict in the Caucasus is so great that the U.S. Army uses it as the setting for capstone exercises at several of its service schools. Conducting several iterations each year at various locations, officers from all branches of the U.S. military, interagency community, and several international partners study coalition warfare using the Caucasus and its pipeline as a theater of operations. These field-grade officers study the general regional strategic implications of the pipeline’s development, including the controversy involved in its formation.

If the BTC pipeline is destabilizing enough to convince the world’s superpower military to plan key developmental exercises around it, the planned pipeline in Syria must have similar implications.

Viewed through a geopolitical and economic lens, the conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but the result of larger international players positioning themselves on the geopolitical chessboard in preparation for the opening of the pipeline in 2016. Assad’s pipeline decision, which could seal the natural gas advantage for the three Shia states, also demonstrates Russia’s links to Syrian petroleum and the region through Assad. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as al Qaeda and other groups, are maneuvering to depose Assad and capitalize on their hoped-for Sunni conquest in Damascus. By doing this, they hope to gain a share of control over the “new” Syrian government, and a share in the pipeline wealth.

The main point for decisionmakers is that the upcoming pipeline increases the geopolitical stakes surrounding the Syrian conflict. The tremendous wealth from the natural gas flow, enough to transform regional economies, has drawn in competing regional players from both ideologies. Analyses that include the pipeline make Syria look a lot like the Caucasus scenario playing out in real time, and they provide reliable information on which to base international decisions. Reports that disregard the pipeline and its geopolitical implications ignore the elephant in the room.

Army Maj. Rob Taylor is an instructor at the Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth. The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

How to reduce the effects of emotion on decisionmaking

By Cmdr. Tony Schwarz

As military planners formulate recommendations for their commanders, they draw upon many kinds of data: joint and service doctrine, friendly and enemy capabilities, personal and shared experience. But one category is often missing from their calculations: emotion.

All humans experience emotion (broadly defined as “feelings”), which means that no one is capable of absolutely rational behavior. Not convinced? You’re not alone. In the study of economics, for example, it has long been generally assumed that human decision making is purely rational — that with few exceptions, humans can be expected to act in their own best interests. This assumption, already under assault by behavioral economists, was swept away by the economic crash of 2008, which obliterated $14 trillion of American wealth and proved just how irrational decision makers can be. (Even Alan Greenspan, one of the staunchest believers in rational economic theory, admitted that his ideology had pushed him to make regrettable decisions.)

Today, the work of the behavioralists is being embraced throughout academia, and it is quickly becoming generally accepted that while humans usually try to make rational decisions, our conscious, rational discernment processes are limited by emotions (or put another way, irrational wants and tendencies in our subconscious).

It is not possible, or even wholly desirable, to eliminate emotion when making decisions. But planners can — and indeed, should — work to manage its effects.

Emotions and controls

Our efforts to reduce the negative effects of emotions should not be confused with an attempt to eliminate emotion itself. In the first place, that’s impossible; in the second, some emotions may actually improve one’s ability to solve problems. For example, research by Jennifer Lerner, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, shows that anger can increase decisiveness. (As British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery reminds us, “When all said and done, the greatest quality required in commanders is ‘decision.’”)

So how do we constructively think about emotion in decisions? The theory of Bounded Rationality, first published by Herbert Simon in the 1980s, offers a useful description. Simon’s theory says that the rationality by which we process information and make decisions is limited in several ways: by the amount and type of information we possess, the cognitive limits on our minds, and the finite amount of time we have to make a decision.

By this definition, the rational abilities of planners are extremely limited. Intelligence is never complete, planners (that is, humans) possess internal biases and tendencies, and, of course, there is never enough time to plan. But this construct also allows us to contemplate ways to reduce the negative effects of emotions on decision making. By implementing various controls, planners can exceed default limitations.

Such controls can take many forms. A simple one: the OPT Lead can acknowledge, early and frequently, the existence of relevant emotions. She might say something like “We all know our commander’s tendency to prefer COAs with minimal risk to forces, but our guidance is to focus on a swift and decisive military victory. Let’s avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy by preventing our concern for risk from limiting our COAs in terms of initiative, dominance, and rapid phase transition.” A control might also be more subtle, like designating a team member to be a devil’s advocate and requiring that he critique each aspect of planning through an independent and reason-based lens.

Another way to limit the ill effects of emotion on decision making is to ensure the staff is given clear and detailed guidance. For example, a transition point must be universally understood: “X, Y, and Z must be achieved before the next operational phase can begin.” Formulating such guidance, of course, requires knowing exactly what the commander wants.

Here are more examples, drawn specifically from military planning processes, of the ways subjectivity impinges on planning:

• Determining the validity of courses of action: Joint planning doctrine states that COAs must be suitable, feasible, acceptable, distinguishable, and complete. All these measures are biased to some degree, but determining acceptability is most subjective. There is a relevant definition in the U.S. Navy Planning Process: in order for a COA to be deemed acceptable, the operational advantage gained by executing the COA must justify the cost in resources, friendly losses, time, position, and opportunity. Still, what is acceptable for some won’t be for others. To reduce subjectivity, flesh out this aspect of validation in the most objective way possible.

• Comparing COAs: After validating a set of COAs, the team must compare their relative advantages and disadvantages. Under joint planning doctrine, the OPT designs a decision matrix: a table with subjectively chosen and subjectively weighted governing factors. To reduce subjectivity, the team should repeatedly consider and refine their perceived governing factors through constant communication with the command element. If those factors are important to the commander, they must be fascinating for the staff, and therefore weighted heavier than other factors. The commander has the right to be subjective; the staff does not.

• Assigning measures of effectiveness for tasks. If there is any doubt as to how to define progress toward task achievement, rather than debate metrics, planners should consult the 1,100-page Universal Joint Task List Database.

Finally, the commander’s orders — the OPT’s final deliverable — must wrestle with the dichotomy of telling subordinate units what to do and not how to do it. Joint Pub 5-0 codifies what good leaders have long known: that the best plans allow subordinates the freedom to create their own means of achieving the commander’s end state. In effect, planners must leave enough room for subjectivity, but not too much.

Plan ahead for planning

Better than countering the negative effects of irrational planning as they arise is ensuring they don’t arise. Most senior military leaders have learned to avoid common mistakes on planning teams: don’t pull rank, don’t marginalize or alienate teammates, etc. But a comprehensive defense against irrationality requires a commander to put proper avoidance controls in place before planning starts.

Here are some common problems, with examples and possible solutions:

• The framing effect. Decision makers can be sensitive to irrelevant differences in how information is presented. During COA Comparison, for example, a briefer who casts a certain COA in terms of gains and a competing COA in terms of loss will often lead the former to be selected, even when the latter is objectively superior. To avoid this, a commander should remind the OPT to view all facets (especially risk assessments) of COA formation through the same lens, to brief all COAs consistently and describe their gains and losses in the same way, and to ensure that governing factors are the same for each COA assessment. Lean on doctrine and follow the proven processes; research shows that more analytical or systemic thinkers make fewer framing errors.

• Sunk-cost bias. The world of Pentagon acquisition is notorious for its the inability to ignore past investments when making a decision, but other kinds of planning are just as susceptible. For example, planners might reaffirm an initial Center of Gravity determination despite contrary indicators, thus creating an improper context for evaluations of critical capabilities and weaknesses. One antidote is to prearrange to have an outsider observe the OPT at intervals to ensure that planning is focused on future cost and benefit only. If evidence of sunk cost bias arises, the OPT should accept responsibility for planning mistakes and not allow pride to prevent changing course.

• Availability heuristic. This means assessing the probability of an event by the ease with which instances and occurrences can be brought to mind. For example, planners might come to believe that that a certain enemy COA is more likely solely because it can be most easily imagined. Or they might base their notion of an enemy’s strategy on recent precedent or personal experience in the face of facts and valid planning assumptions that indicate otherwise. Certainly, history can provide context when assessing potential enemy COAs, but before wargaming, the OPT should caution the team to focus on current data specific to the current situation, particularly empirical evidence such as corroborated intelligence reporting and relative combat power analyses.

• Anchoring bias. This inability to adjust is what happens when planners, say, base their efforts on a standing OPLAN or some other directive even after the commander modifies his or her intent. To avoid this, don’t plan to an old plan. Keep operational plans on the shelf, but consider them notional; they cannot possibly be the perfect fit (or necessarily even a good fit) for specific situations without serious modifications. (This is why Eisenhower said that plans are worthless, but planning is indispensible.) Instead, start planning with higher headquarters’ intent and commander’s guidance, as received at the Mission Analysis Brief, the COA Decision Brief, and wherever else possible.

• Confirmation bias. Related to sunk-cost bias, this is the predisposition to a certain outcome because it is believed to be the eventual outcome. In economic theory, estimates focused on a single possibility are called “single-outcome forecasting.” In military planning, one might, for example, identify the discovery and securing of WMD as a strategic end-state, refuse to consider possible alternatives, and thus drive the purpose and method for all supporting operational planning in counter-productive directions. To counter this, the OPT must plan in a flexible way such that branch plans (with divergent end-states) can be easily activated.

• Finally, there is status quo bias, the tendency for people to resist change, and at times in spite of a very apparent need for change. One reason for this is a reluctance to rock the boat. Most humans weight errors of commission far more heavily than errors of omission — that is, a flawed action is perceived as being far more damaging than the omission of a corrective action. Harvard economist Richard Zeckhauser says this can lead to “herding,” in which team members keep quiet and play wait-and-see rather than voice an objection about a merely potential disaster. Heidi Gardner, another Harvard professor, recalls that when she was at McKinsey & Co., the consulting firm’s standing rule was that anytime an employee did not agree with an assessment or remedy, he or she had “an obligation to dissent.”

• That’s usually not easy to do, and is even more difficult if one is relatively junior on the planning team. But an OPT lead cannot tolerate herding. He or she must create a dissent-friendly planning environment. Members should challenge norms, assumptions, and the appearance of groupthink mentality. They must keep open minds and search for outside-the-box alternatives. The extended discussions spawned by these challenges and searches will either prevent the team from continuing down an ineffective path or they will validate previous planning efforts; in either case they are helpful.

Conclusion

Operational planners are given a desired end state and work backward in a rational manner by using doctrine, precedent, situational data, and more. We owe it to our commanders to inject some level of emotional intelligence into planning the critical courses of action they will direct. This requires a deep understanding of attitudes, opinions, norms and social tendencies that quietly nudge us all into making certain decisions in certain situations. As trusted planners, we must see those factors in advance and acknowledge their power as we plan. We must be aware of our personal predispositions, biases and tendencies and we must not allow them to shape our planning efforts.

If we implement the proper controls before and during planning, the commander can be assured of the most rational planning possible. Moreover, some of us will one day receive recommendations from our own planning staffs. Understanding the effects of emotion as a staff officer will improve our own judgment in the face of great peril and great opportunity.

Since 2009, Cmdr. Tony Schwarz, USN, has been a Navy Reserve Operational Planner with the Maritime Planning Group on staff at U.S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters. A Naval Academy undergraduate and helicopter pilot, Schwarz has over 50 war-time flight hours and has served tours at the White House, State Dept and Pentagon. 

Assured access to cyberspace is a key enabler of national security, so the answer to the question in the title is: we should all care. Two of the defining characteristics of a strong, modern, industrial nation are economic prosperity and a credible defense. The ability to use cyberspace has become indispensable to achieving both of these objectives.

Business and finance executives, as well as senior defense leaders, rely on cyberspace for exactly the same thing—to get information, move information and use information to make better decisions faster than the competition. Despite the importance of cyberspace, there continue to be senior leaders in both the private and public sectors who find themselves ill-equipped to deal with critical cyberspace issues. It is not uncommon to find that these leaders are comfortable providing strategic guidance regarding operations, resource allocation and personnel management across all of their areas of responsibility with the exception of cyberspace. There tends to be a lack of shared understanding between senior personnel who know they need cyberspace to be successful and the technical staffs charged with securing the networks, services and applications that make the organization run. The danger with this dynamic is the potential for de facto delegation of critical decisions to technical experts who do not have the education, training or experience to serve as senior leaders.

Cyberspace is complex, hard to visualize and — to many people — an esoteric concept that they do not need to comprehend. The best way to approach cyberspace at the executive level is to understand that cyberspace adds a new dimension to both economic competition and politically driven conflict, but the existence of cyberspace does not require a fundamental change in our strategic approach to either. This is a difficult premise to accept because “experts” have done a great job of advocating that cyberspace can only be understood by the most technically advanced among us. Becoming overly focused on the technical dimension, however, creates strategic inversion where the most senior leaders become inappropriately engaged with the tactical and technical details to the detriment of effective decision-making. Our senior executives and leaders do need to get a lot smarter about cyberspace, but they do not personally need the skills to configure a router or break an encrypted password. This article provides an executive overview of five cyberspace topics that may be useful to stimulate further exploration by those charged with providing and sustaining economic prosperity and national defense.

What is it?

Words matter. Routine misuse of the word “cyber” is one reason we do not have a common framework for discussing cyberspace. Cyber should not be used as a verb nor should it be used as a noun that can stand on its own. Saying “cyber” should not automatically connote a cyberspace attack nor should it drive one immediately to assume that cyberspace activity is all about spying, espionage, crime or challenging our right to privacy. The term cyber is most useful as part of the compound word cyberspace and cyberspace is simply the man-made domain created when we connect all of the computers, switches, routers, fiber optic cables, wireless devices, satellites and other components that allow us to move large amounts of data at very fast speeds. As with the physical domains—land, maritime, air, space—we conduct a variety of activities in cyberspace to benefit individuals, commercial entities and governments. The key difference between cyberspace and the physical domains is that cyberspace is man-made and constantly changing. That characteristic offers both opportunities and risk.

Part of the global commons

Cyberspace should be classified as a dimension of the global commons. Viewing cyberspace as part of the global commons sets the stage for a number of useful analogies that facilitate the development of policy, domestic and international law, safe operating procedures, individual rights, commercial use, national interests and myriad other issues that we have worked through for the maritime and air domains. Establishing and enforcing accepted norms for operating on the high seas and in domestic and international airspace is a process that never ends. Technology changes, political interests evolve and competition for resources is continuous. Territorial rights in the South China Sea and debate on the use of remotely piloted aircraft for personal, commercial and government use are examples of how governance of the “legacy” global commons requires constant attention. Cyberspace requires an analogous governance mechanism to define and protect individual, business and nation-state’s rights. Some of the challenges to creating an accepted governance structure are the ubiquitous nature of cyberspace, the fact that access to cyberspace for good or evil can be cheap and non-attributable and, as opposed to the static nature of water and air, the cyberspace domain itself is in a perpetual state of change. We do not need to start from scratch with this work. In the maritime and air domains we have defined roles and responsibilities for all of the users and at times they intersect. Countering piracy is a good example. Individual boat owners and commercial shipping companies require the freedom to operate on the high seas. They are expected to take prudent measures to protect themselves, but at some point the threat exceeded the capability of the private sector and national naval forces stepped in to curb piracy off the African coast. There are clear analogies to the piracy problem when we define roles and responsibilities in cyberspace for individuals, private entities and states. Arguably, current concerns over government dominance of cyberspace are overblown. The fact is no single entity can control what goes on in cyberspace and we need both law enforcement agencies and military organizations to have access to cyberspace in order to protect and enable the free, legitimate use of the domain.

The threat

The opportunity for cheap, anonymous access to cyberspace creates an inviting environment for a broad spectrum of malicious activity. The threat commonly manifests itself in the form of cybercrime where individuals or specific companies suffer financial loss. More concerning is the opportunity to create a widespread effect that undermines faith and confidence across financial markets. An example of this occurred in April 2013 when a hacked Twitter newsfeed propagated a false report of an explosion at the White House. Within minutes, the U.S. stock market plunged, reflecting a “loss” of over $130 billion. While the index recovered rapidly, this incident provided a clear warning of our vulnerability to malicious cyberspace activity given the hyper-connected, information-driven nature of the business environment. What would happen if instead of a hacked Twitter account, a major business or financial firm found themselves the object of a destructive cyberspace attack that rendered thousands of computers inoperative?

There is a tendency to look at networks, systems, data and operators simply as revenue generators or costs that must be controlled. It is important to understand that there are actors who instead see all of these components as targets. First are the cyber criminals who are just after the money. Second are competitors who seek critical information or intellectual property that may give them an advantage. This threat is equally concerning to both the defense and non-defense sectors. Third is the insider threat; no matter how well you think you know your team, you must be vigilant. The fourth adversary is the one with the greatest potential to affect national security. This is the state-sponsored adversary who seeks to weaken a government strategically by attacking critical infrastructure or essential components of the national economic system. The state-sponsored attacker may have access to resources that can overwhelm almost any private or government sponsored defense capability. Cyberspace attack is appealing to this fourth class of adversary because it provides an asymmetric, low-visibility avenue of approach and many of the targets are likely unprepared since they do not even consider themselves targets. The threat is real, growing and in many cases underestimated or not even observed. Raising the level of threat awareness without succumbing to the hype of a “cyber holocaust” is a balance that senior leaders must strike.

Ensuring freedom of access for legitimate use

Effective cybersecurity is hard, expensive and we don’t do it very well. Our approach to cybersecurity should start with the assumption that legitimate use of the domain will always be challenged and there are defined responsibilities for individuals, corporations and the state. In the physical world we expect people to lock their doors at night, be wary of their surroundings and know who it is they are trusting to safeguard things that are important to them. Businesses are expected to expend resources to protect things like your money or your personal records. And the state is expected to direct law enforcement and defense activities to ensure the health and safety of its citizens. All of these concepts apply to cyberspace. We are currently challenged to execute this interdependent defense concept in cyberspace due to a variety of technical, policy and privacy issues all of which we will eventually resolve. Something we can and should do now is establish is a three-component security approach.

The first component consists of the usual safeguards like anti-virus, firewalls, data encryption and user training and compliance. We  put a lot of effort into these programs and yet we are still attacked. The reason is there will always be breakdowns in network security implementation, users who click on malicious links, insider threats and determined high-end adversaries who can overcome the best defenses. The fact is the attacker has the advantage in cyberspace. The second component can be referred to as active defense. Active defense consists of “hunting” in your networks for threats that have gotten past the baseline security measures. Active defense is used solely on essential networks, data and systems and only works if cued by intelligence information that allows the hunt teams to focus on specific adversaries that have the capability and intent go after the vulnerabilities most important to you. Hunting uses heuristics and big data analytics to identify anomalous behavior that may indicate an adversary is in the network. The third component of cybersecurity is closely controlled and authorized, at least in the U.S. It consists of operations throughout cyberspace using either law enforcement or military authorities to seek out malicious actors, warn the potential victims and provide the option to take proactive actions to stop the attack. It is important to note that neutralizing an attack does not and should not be limited to cyberspace alone. The government has a wide variety of diplomatic, information, military, economic and legal tools to coerce the attacker and it needs to use all of them. Additionally, there are commercial and private sector entities that have used a variety of legal mechanisms to deter or stop attacks before they affect critical systems.

This third component of cybersecurity raises a number of challenging policy issues both domestically and internationally, but if one considers the advantage the attacker has over the defender in cyberspace it becomes quickly apparent that building higher castle walls is not going to stop all the arrows. We have to be willing to go after the archers. Doing so sets the stage for deterrence. The principles of deterrence for cyberspace are no different than those outlined by Brodie, Schelling and others 50 years ago. We have to define red lines and be willing to enforce them. We must be resilient enough to survive the first salvo. Most importantly, our adversaries must know that we can impose unacceptable costs in a variety of ways and that, if our core interests are threatened, we are willing to do so.

Senior leadership for cyberspace

Expanding the portfolio of our senior leaders so they can provide effective strategic direction regarding cyberspace operations is an immediate imperative. The most successful senior leaders have the ability to deal with complex problems that have no single, simple solution. These leaders are successful not because they know how to do everyone’s job. They are successful because they know their people, they understand what each part of the organization does to generate success and they have sufficient understanding of all component functions to know when something needs their detailed attention. When it is necessary to “deep dive” on a problem, good leaders have the ability to interact with the experts and make a decision. These tenets of successful executive leadership apply to cyberspace as well. One of the goals of this essay was to generate interest in developing appropriate executive-level cyberspace expertise.

Cyberspace is everywhere and even though we cannot see it or touch it, it is fundamentally important to all of us. No matter what your role in society, the ability to use cyberspace provides incredible opportunities along with risks. Hopefully, this article has provided some additional perspective and offered encouragement for informed debate and dialogue on an increasingly important aspect of national security.

Maj. Gen. Brett Williams is the Director of Operations, J3, U.S. Cyber Command. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the position or opinions of the Department of Defense.

By Douglas Macgregor

President Obama warns that if Russia intervenes with military power to crush the new Ukrainian government in Kiev there will be a cost. Yet it’s hard to know what the U.S. president can actually do that would impress Russian President Vladimir Putin.

America’s post-Cold War surplus of military power is gone. It was squandered on occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The preoccupation with “irregular warfare,” the self-defeating interventions, and conflicts with insurgents that have no armies, no air forces, no air defenses and no naval strength — these have left the U.S. unprepared for current and future crises.

Shrinking the Army in favor of light infantry-centric, counterinsurgency-focused units has turned what’s left of the Regular Army into a large constabulary force. The failure to consolidate Army combat power through reorganization, to extract more fighting power from its remaining numbers has destroyed support for new, survivable combat platforms the Army needs. Capability depends on organization, technology and leadership, not just numbers.

In the Navy, shrinking defense dollars are diverted into amphibious carriers and service-unique jet aircraft for the Marine Corps at a point in time when slow, diesel-powered mini-aircraft carriers with minimal self-protection cannot operate in anything other than an extremely permissive environment. The Department of the Navy cannot afford two independent air forces that operate variants of the same aircraft or that field different aircraft for overlapping missions.

The Air Force and Navy need strike weapons that are larger, faster, and have more penetrating power and lethality. Continental opponents like China or Russia would absorb the precision-guided missile strikes envisioned in Air-Sea Battle the way a sponge absorbs water.

And broadly, the way American military power is organized and commanded obstructs unity of effort and supports wasteful spending. The President and the Defense Secretary do not actually command the U.S. Armed Forces, they referee them. Because there is no national defense staff designed to assist the nation’s civilian leaders with the command and development of the armed forces, the American people depend on an ad hoc committee of service chiefs, combatant commanders, the Defense Secretary and the President for collective military leadership.

Putin understands unity of command. He has a national general staff and he commands the armed forces. He also knows that only ready, trained Army forces equipped with mobile armored firepower integrated with powerful air forces can initiate decisive offensive operations, punch through enemy resistance, encircle and destroy enemy forces. Secretary Hagel should know too, but he has deferred to the Army four-stars, men who treat the U.S. Army and its soldiers like an old tire, letting air out until money and people are provided to re-inflate it.

But there comes a time when you cannot re-inflate the old tire, when the old tire must be replaced with something new and better. It’s why Putin has subjected the Russian Army to sweeping reform and reorganization, eliminating its divisions and replacing them with large, mobile brigade groups commanded by generals — mobile armored formations designed for decisive operations in concert with Russian airpower.

Russia is not as strong as it once was. Russia’s armed forces number less than a million, down from 14 million in the 1980s, but like China, Russia is still a great continental power with massive air defenses and a powerful army.

Fortunately, unlike Stalin between 1929 and 1932, Putin cannot murder millions of Ukrainians with impunity. Public displays of Russian brutality might alert the American people to Russia’s true nature. Worse, it might wake up Germany and the rest of the Europeans from their long, comfortable sleep. These are the reasons why Putin is moving cautiously to secure control of Ukraine’s “Russified” East and Crimea,” before gradually pushing Russian military power West to Poland’s and NATO’s eastern border.

But it would help enormously if the U.S. Army could provide the United States and NATO with the capabilities they need, if there was an option to rapidly deploy integrated joint U.S. Army and aerospace forces to Central and Eastern Europe. It would be a game-changer if the American people had an army capable of providing the core of an allied force around which the armies of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Germany could assemble. Then the President could hold Moscow’s aims in Ukraine hostage to Western political demands.

Sadly, the option does not exist. Putin knows it.

Col. (ret) Doug Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, a Ph.D and the author of five books on military strategy and reform.