Before Your Next Doctrine 2015 Briefing ...

10-page ADPs, 100-page ADRPs,
200-page FMs, ATPs with no size
limits, and Apps and Wikis.

                                     


          Imagine trying to explain this  >>>  

From left, Generals Bradley,
Eisenhower, and Patton

<<<  to these guys.

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. 

________________________

[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.

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. 

Imagine John Kerry as SECDEF

From those who served with Kerry in Vietnam ...

Kerry as SECDEF?

There is talk that Massachusetts Democrat Senator John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, may be nominated to succeed fellow liberal Leon Panetta as the next Secretary of Defense.  What kind of defense secretary would John Kerry be?  Democrat Senator Zell Miller (D-Georgia) clued us in on that eight years ago in a stem-winder of a speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention. The "armed with spitballs" line is in the early part of Part II.

Part I Part II

On the Petraeus Thing

Not in any particular order, here are few accounts an opinions about what happened ...

A Fox News account by Jennifer Griffin and Adam Housely.

Jed Babbin's point of view.

Not a particularly bright piece by Tom Ricks.

The kind of article Ricks should have written, authored by Spencer Ackerman.

Amity Schlaes writes a great analysis of Petraeus, the man.  (Pity no one ever bothers to analyze the woman in cases like this).

Here's Don Imus' interview of author Vince Flynn, during which the whole Petraeus matter was discussed.



Since it came up in his interview of Vince Flynn, here is an Imus segment at which his reviews the Paula Broadwell interview.



And the latest from Fox News, via Bret Baier's Facebook page.

Petraeus taking the oath of office as the new
Director of Central Intelligence

Election 2012: Analyzing the Outcome

Andrew C. McCarthy

" ... The story is not about who voted; it is about who didn’t vote. In truth, millions of Americans have decided that Republicans are not a viable alternative because they are already too much like Democrats. They are Washington. With no hope that a Romney administration or more Republicans in Congress would change this sad state of affairs, these voters shrugged their shoulders and became non-voters."

Read more.