Compass Points - Thinkers & Doers
Beyond 'Muli-domain' operations
Compass Points - Thinkers & Doers
Beyond 'Muli-domain' operations
January 22, 2024
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Over the last few months, US military personnel in the Middle East have been attacked over 100 times. In the aftermath of the most recent attacks, US personnel are being evaluated for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
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The US spends enormous amounts of time and money developing new theories of warfighting, but none of the theories apparently can protect US personnel under fire in Syria and Iraq.
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In their recent article, authors Davis Ellison and Tim Sweijs, warn the,
". . . armed services should be prepared to pivot their efforts from the 'thinkers' to the 'doers.'"
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Authors Davis Ellison and Tim Sweijs spent a year with military planners around the world investigating multi-domain operations. They found the value of the new "multi-domain" approach to war is decidedly mixed at best.
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. . . For nearly a year, we visited some of the main centers for thinking on multi-domain operations. We sat with planners in the Pentagon, officers in the German and Dutch army headquarters, strategists from the Israel Defense Forces, and experts and operators from France, Denmark, and NATO. One of us even worked on the NATO concept once upon a time. We appraised the state of multi-domain operations development with a primary question in mind: Will it actually help to win wars? If so, how?
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What we found is that there are few clear answers to these questions. New concepts are often highly optimistic, uncoordinated with other services and allies, and lack any clear theory of success. A warfighting concept is a description in general terms of the application of military art and science within a defined set of parameters. For many contemporary concepts, what has stood out is a mish-mash of ideas, visions, and terms that often have little to do with one another. For some, multi-domain operations is just another step in another revolution in military affairs, with images of missiles and satellites and networks all linked up to destroy an enemy. For others, it is a call for new energy to be put into whole-of-government style integration that can deter everything, everywhere, all of the time.
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. . . All this means that armed services should be prepared to pivot their efforts from the “thinkers” to the “doers” at training centers and better refine the actual feedback mechanisms between new ideas and the needs and realities of battlefield experience. Concept development should be informed by insights distilled from ongoing wars, as well as from exercises and experimentation within joint forces. It should also seek to articulate theories of success against specific adversaries. Finally, the effective implementation of multi-domain operations depends on the availability of mature technologies, in sufficient numbers, deployed by trained and ready forces.
-- Davis Ellison and Tim Sweijs, War on the Rocks
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Military theories of war are not just for planners or academics. To be ready for the next battle, military forces need funding. Funding is not always directed to proven capabilities. Just the opposite. Military appropriations too often are allocated toward popular jargon, new approaches, and clever technology. None of the jargon, approaches, or technology can ever deliver what they promise: to take the fog, friction, and desperate bloody fighting out of warfare.
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To fight and win in combat a fighting force needs both thinkers and doers, The Marine Corps is a rare fighting force where its thinkers are also doers, and its doers are also thinkers.
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Compass Points is blessed with readers who have spent decades as both thinkers and doers. Among the many outstanding recent comments from many readers, Randy Shetter did not need a year with military planners to understand some important truths about where the Marine Corps is today.
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War in a sense is like a "come as you are party". You don't know when or where the next conflict will be. So, you need all the tools you can get. The Marines training for jungle warfare in Okinawa ended up in the desert. At least they had the tools they needed. Today, our Marines do not have the infantry, armor, artillery, or air assets they may need for the next conflict.
-- Randy Shetter
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Compass Points salutes Randy Shetter for his concise insights and salutes authors Davis Ellison and Tim Sweijs for their fine article and for their warning that ". . . armed services should be prepared to pivot their efforts from the 'thinkers' to the 'doers'" No matter what theories are trending in military headquarters, new battles are coming and to be ready, the Marine Corps will need its full combined arms capabilities.
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War on the Rocks (warontherocks.com) 01/22/2024
Empty Promises? A Year Inside the World of Multi-Domain Operations
By Davis Ellison and Tim Sweijs
https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/empty-promises-a-year-inside-the-world-of-multi-domain-operations/
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Military Times (militarytimes.com) 12/21/2023
US troops in Iraq and Syria have faced over 100 attacks since October
By Meghann Myers
As a Commander I was always considered my alternatives for when systems failed by focus on those with a high likelihood of failure. A compass will freeze.
When the brilliant ones design the endlessly complex schemes to win wars on the cheap with mind bending communications and intricate coordination to unleash precision weaponry they go blind to the obvious:
1. They ignore the principle of mass
2. They ignore the friction of war
3. Logistics is an after thought
4. They believe communications will not fail
The Keep it Simple Stupid admonition goes out the window. They are not in the units that must execute. “ You mean we actually have to do it?”