Doctrine 2015

General officers will descend upon Fort Leavenworth, Kansas next Wednesday to make the next round of decisions on two things.  One of them is the next revision of the Army's capstone doctrinal manual for operations, FM 3-0.  The other is what its doctrinal library will look like by the year 2015.

Let's take the second one first.  Doctrine 2015, designed by some smart people at the Army's School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, is a complete overhaul of Army doctrine.  Up until about a year ago, all Army doctrine existed in field manuals, called FMs.  In 2009, at a Doctrine Re-engineering Conference at Fort Leavenworth, it was decided that there were too many FMs and that something must be done.  What was done was to create a second class of doctrine, less general in applicability, and more oriented to narrower specialties, and call them Army Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, or ATTPs for short.  In Signal doctrine, for example, this change caused FM 6-02.53 Tactical Radio Operations to become ATTP 6-02.53 Tactical Radio Operations.  This kind of change, obviously cosmetic, has been occurring across all Army proponents for about the past year now.  It was the Intellectual Center of Army's first stab at what then-TRADOC Commander, General Martin Dempsey was looking for--fewer and better written manuals that were more relevant and more easily updated to reflect the realities of the modern operational environment.


The Doctrine 2015 concept will create five separate classes of publications (see chart).  First, at the top of the pyramid, so to speak, will be Army Doctrinal Publications.  In Army shorthand, these will be called ADPs.  ADPs are intended to set forth nothing but the absolute fundamentals of given discipline ... in no more than ten pages!  Take FM 3-0 for example (which, under the plan would become ADP 3-0 by 2015).  The 2008 version was 220 pages.  Change One to the 2008 version, published in March of this year, was 175 pages.  A March/April draft of the revision due out this fall was whittled down to just 75 pages.  A second draft, staffed out to Army commands, schools, and centers in May, was designed along the Doctrine 2015 model.  It was only 10 pages long.  One of the big questions that the generals will be answering at next week's FM 3-0 Revision General Officer Review Board, or GORB, is whether that 10-page limit is cutting it too thin.

Of course, the idea is not to simply throw away 210 pages worth of doctrinal content, using the 2008 version as a benchmark, but to use that material to develop the other classes of doctrinal publications.  The second tier of those publications, right after the ADPs, are educational support packages.  It is apparent from the graphic that these will eventually have some range of multi-media features.  For now, however, they don't exist except in conceptual form--though I understand that a draft ESP to complement ADP 3-0 has already been developed.  Who will develop these and what will they contain is still undecided.

Field manuals will comprise the third tier.  But there will be only fifty of them, each limited to 200 pages, for now, but that will probably come down over time.  In terms of Signal doctrine, there will be an FM for Signal Operations.  FM 6-02 Signal Operations, under development now, will probably fit that bill.  Another FM covering cyberspace/electromagnetic activities will be written, but who will write it and what it's actual scope will be has still to be worked out.

Techniques are next.  These will not be considered doctrinal publications.  They will be "wikis," accessed, updated, and maintained on the web.  At present, they only exist in theory.

Finally, a fifth class of publications will be applications.  These, too, have to be developed from scratch.  Interactive media, podcasts, and mobile computing applications are some of the ideas that have been floated for this class.

Look for an update after the 15 June GORB.  Should be interesting.