Dempsey vs. DePuy: The Impact of Two Generals on Army Doctrine

General DePuy

In the late 1970s, General William DePuy, as TRADOC commander (the first, incidentally), considered how he could improve Army doctrine. The Vietnam War had been recently concluded and the Army was wrestling with its lessons. From 1977 to 1981 there was "vigorous debate and rethinking of fundamental Army doctrine."[1] The outcome of all that thinking and debate—under General DePuy’s leadership—was the AirLand Battle Doctrine. 

In 2010, the TRADOC commander at the time, General Martin Dempsey (now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), considered how he might improve Army doctrine. Wars of long duration in Afghanistan and Iraq were drawing to a close and the Army was wrestling with more lessons learned. Similar to that earlier era, the closing years of this century’s first decade and the opening couple years of the next one have witnessed a vigorous debate and continuous rethinking of fundamental Army doctrine. The outcome of all that thinking—with General Dempsey’s guidance—is “Doctrine 2015.” 

General DePuy’s contribution was a fundamental shift in the Army’s blueprint for war fighting. In his day, the Army’s capstone war fighting doctrine was FM 11-5 Operations. That field manual no longer exists. 

General Dempsey

General Dempsey’s contribution to doctrine, so far, has been nearly half a decade of striving about words to no profit—full spectrum operations—combined arms maneuver and wide area security—co-creation of context—unified land operations—and a cosmetic reorganization of TRADOC’s doctrine library. Today, the Army’s capstone war fighting manual is Army Doctrine Publication 3-0 Unified Land Operations. The basic difference between what is essentially Dempsey’s FM 110-5 and DePuy’s version is that in today’s Army a capstone really isn’t a capstone. For ADP 3-0 cannot stand on its own; it requires the support of another document, Army Doctrine Reference Publication 3-0 Unified Land Operations. 

There are other differences. FM 100-5 was developed with a definite potential enemy and probable area of operations in mind. ADP 3-0 (and its sister, ADRP 3-0) envisions a “complex operational environment.” AirLand Battle was about fighting. Unified Land Operations is about relationships. The former contained real doctrine, fundamental principles meant to guide Army forces or elements thereof in pursuit of the nation’s warfighting objectives. The latter is an annotated dictionary of operational terms and definitions with a fancy digital photo on its cover. 

From Washington to Grant to Pershing to DePuy to Dempsey, everyone in the Army has always understood what a field manual was. Today, despite two years of aggressive selling, it’s hard to find a Soldier who has a handle on what Doctrine 2015 is all about. 

On the subject of Army doctrine, the comparison between Generals DePuy and Dempsey boils down to this.  One general's overriding  concern was about what the manuals said. The other's is essentially about what they look like. 

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[1] John J. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War (Fort Monroe, Virginia: United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Military History Office, 1996), 16.