The Essence of Doctrine 2015

The five layers of Doctrine 2015

Doctrine 2015, not in its concept but in its execution, is not much more than a huge cut and paste drill.  The concept behind Doctrine 2015 is to make doctrine more accessible and to cut down the size and number of doctrine publications.  A great idea.

In execution, however, the concept breaks down a bit

Think about it.  The Army Doctrine Publications are new, but the material in them is not--(new material on unified operations excepted).  The guts of ADP 3-0 were pasted over from the last FM 3-0.  Ditto for Army Doctrine Reference Publication 3-0 ... and for all the other ADPs and ADRPs.  There is some new material in the emerging ADP/ADRP 5-0 and 6-0 pertaining to mission command.  But this material doesn't represent the bulk of any of these pubs.  The bulk is the information that is already contained in the old FMs 5-0 and 6-0.  Hence, ADP/ADRP 5-0 and 6-0 will be, essentially, the old FMs, respectively.  It's 90% cut and paste.

Same for the field manuals.  Under Doctrine 2015 it was decided that there will be fifty FMs.  Of those fifty, for the ones that are already published as FMs, nothing changes, except maybe some of them are a little smaller now because some of their contents were cut out and pasted into some ADP or ADRP.  A lot of the old FMs, under Doctrine 2015, will become Army Techniques Publications.  Essentially, these ATPs will be cut and paste version of old FMs.

The proponents and preparing activities are cranking out a lot of work to meet Doctrine 2015 deadlines, but very little of this work is original.


twh



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