Some Thoughts on Doctrine 2015

Doctrine 2015 is about reorganizing the doctrinal publications process. It is not about producing better doctrine. 

During his tenure as the TRADOC commander, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey had the Army’s School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas study what could be done to improve Army doctrine. There was indeed considerable room for improvement. As the commander of TRADOC, the Army’s architect of the ‘Army of the future,’ General Dempsey served as the lead doctrine developer for the Army. He asked the smart folks at SAMS to come up with some recommendations on basically how to do two things—

• Make doctrine more accessible to Soldiers. 

• Get products to the field faster. 

The ultimate decision was a framework that took the name of Doctrine 2015. Some, not familiar with the specifics of the change, have thought that Doctrine 2015 is about writing doctrine for the year 2015. The significance of the year, however, is that that is the date by which the last vestiges of the legacy doctrine development paradigm will have been superseded by the new paradigm represented by the nearby chart. 

As of October 2011, Army doctrine existed in 383 field manuals, some of mammoth proportions, and an assortment of some forty-four publications known as Army Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures which had come about as a result of a previous effort to “fix” doctrine. The Doctrine 2015 framework not only drastically reduces the number of FMs down to a much more manageable ’50,’ it imposes a hierarchical order on the Army’s doctrine library and prioritizes the levels of effort required to develop and maintain that library. As the graphic shows, there are now five levels of doctrine. 

The top level consists of Army Doctrine Publications, the second of Army Doctrine Reference Publications. ADPs contain the core, basic, fundamental doctrinal precepts upon which all other doctrine is to be based upon. ADPs are short. Each one is limited to ten or eleven pages. ADP 3-0, for example, provides a sort of “executive summary” of the Army’s basic operational mindset, Unified Land Operations. Each ADP is paired up with a reference publication, an ADRP. Thus, ADRP 3-0 supports ADP 3-0. Reference publications provides more detail. The idea is that, for a given subject on warfighting—intelligence; sustainment; Fires; etc.—the Soldier can download a brief synopsis—the respective, ten-page ADP. He won’t have to wade through two or three hundred page document and try to figure out its essentials. Nor will he have to tie up large amounts of bandwidth downloading a gigantic manual, complete with graphics. At the same time, if he requires more detail than the ADP provides, he can download its companion reference publication. 

The thirty ADPs and ADRPs shown in the graphic were developed out of legacy field manuals. What they are supposed to be is capstone doctrine, the primary link between Army and joint doctrine (ADP 1 and ADP 3-0), and base doctrine for the warfighting functions and fundamental Army tasks. The Army’s dictionary of terms and graphics is also in this group, sort of. ADP 1-02, isn’t the dictionary—you have to go to ADRP 1-02 for that. The ADP is sort of a guide to the ADRP. 

You might also look at like this, that an ADP is the Readers’ Digest version of a core subject and an ADRP is the Cliff Notes. 

Almost all of the ADPs and associated ADRPs have been published. ADRP 1 is still under development. ADRP 3-28 is out for staffing. But now that most of these publications are out on the street, it is becoming clear that Doctrine 2015 in practice is not as clean and precise as is Doctrine 2015 in theory. In theory, the ADPs were supposed to be ten-pagers. During initial briefings, before anything was written, this was modified to “ten or eleven pages.” The regulation [TRADOC Reg. 25-36] says “generally limited to ten pages.” That seems, however, to have been too ambitious a goal. ADP 2-0, for example, is 28 pages. The downloadable .PDF file if 7.29 megabytes. Same for ADP 3-0. ADP 4-0 is 30 pages. So is ADP 5-0. ADP 3-05 is 34 pages. ADP 3-07 is 32. The rest range from 24 to 28 pages. 

The reference publications, ADRPs, are supposed to provide a more detailed explanation of the principles contained in the related Army doctrine publication. Essentially, however, they are nothing much more than compendiums of terms and definitions and sets of lists. Very little “explanation of principles” indeed. Field manuals, the next layer down in the Doctrine 2015 hierarchy, are “Department of the Army publications that contain principles, tactics, procedures, and other doctrinal information. [They] describe how the Army and its organizations conduct operations and train for those operations. Field manuals are supposed to “describe how the Army executes operations described in the ADPs.” That will be interesting, for the ADPs don’t describe any operations. Further, field manuals are supposed to “fully integrate and comply with the fundamental principles in the ADPs and the tactics and principles discussed in the ADRPs.” 

The Doctrine 2015 framework limits the Army to a total of 50 field manuals and it sets December 2013 as the date for having all 50 field manuals published. Four have been published so far. An initial draft of FM 6-02 Signal Operations was recently staffed and it is one of only two field manuals constructed based on Doctrine 2015 precepts that I have reviewed—the other being FM 6-0. 

So far, I’m not seeing a lot of doctrine in these “doctrine publications.”