Introducing Joint Operations An exploration and explanation By Prof Jon Czarnecki August, 2009

1. Introducing Joint Operations An exploration and explanation By Prof Jon Czarnecki August, 2009

2. About this presentation… This presentation is about operations. Specifically, it focuses on military and joint operations.

3. What’s an operation?

4. Any operation, including medical operations, is a system of actions, all interdependent and sequenced, to achieve some end, goal, or objective. All operations work in some kind of environment. Typically, operations share environments, and the scarce resources such environments possess. Sharing and scarcity often lead to competition for available resources. For some human groups and organizations, competition sometimes lead to war. Sometimes, however, the sharing and scarcity lead to cooperation – improvement in the quality of all lives concerned.

5. Why should I be concerned about operations of any kind?

6. Two reasons for your interest: • Anything we do as humans, that is as living systems, • is an operation. That includes what we do in groups and • organizations. • We are interested in joint military operations because • we are in the military and operations are what we do. • Equally important, just about everything we • do on a medium to large scale in the • military nowadays is joint.

7. OK, what’s a joint military operation?

8. A joint military operations is like any operation. It is a series of interdependent and sequenced actions to achieve some end, goal or objective. -It is planned actions of that force. -It transforms a specific object of operation into something that is consistent with the purpose and objective. -It is military because it involves the armed forces. -It is joint because it is multi-service and/or interagency.

9. What’s interdependent and sequenced mean?

10. Interdependent and sequenced means: No piece of the operation can work by itself and produce ends. Everything in the operation is linked together. Joint military operations involve a lot of moving pieces. All the pieces cannot move at once. Their actions must be arranged to fit the environment, the ends, and any opponents. Joint military operations are like a wrestling match, as Clausewitz writes. They are like Sumo matches.

11. How is a sumo match like a joint military operation?

12. The sumo match and a joint military operation both have at least two opponents and have a relevant operating environment. Both have rules and techniques (moves.) Both cases require their participants to manipulate/leverage/adapt themselves, opponent, and environment to achieve their goal. But, joint military operations are different in that there are no referees and judges to determine who wins.

13. What is it that operations manipulate or leverage or adapt?

14. Operations manipulate, leverage or adapt that which they perceive to be real.

15. Whaaaat? I mean, what does “perceived to be real” mean?

16. Space Time Energy Mass Information We interact with our world thru perception. We also use the things we Invent, like operations, to perceive and interact with our world. It is the foundation of our existence. Specifically, we perceive our world, using our senses, in five ways or components. They are:

17. Military operations always have • involved these components. • What has changed has been • the available quantities. • Space has increased • Time has increased • Energy has increased • Mass has increased • Information has increased Alexander the Great faced similar problems in his Baluchistan campaign as Stan McChrystal does in Helmand Province today.

18. First, consider Gen. George McClellan at Antietam. He has received intelligence (information) that Lee’s Army is divided, and can be taken in pieces. McClellan uses the information and quickly (energy and time) moves his army (mass) to Sharpsburg on Antietam Creek, a place (space) and time (time) of his choosing. Let me give you a few examples of how military operations manipulate these five components.

19. Now a much more recent example: Operation Iraqi Freedom, the major combat operations phase, typified the conventional form of maneuver warfare that has become doctrine among United States forces. The operation involved the fast (energy, time) movement of two large (mass) corps, covered by complete control of the aerospace dimension (mass, time), to attack to the assessed enemy center of gravity (information), Baghdad, through more than 300 miles of enemy held ground (space.)

20. United States Defense • Doctrine defines four types • of joint military operations: • Major Combat, and • Stability Operations • Strategic Operations • Homeland Defense

21. Each type of joint military operation requires different emphases on manipulating their relevant Realities. For example: • Major combat operations require: • More energy • More information • Less time • Stability operations require: • More mass (labor intensive) • More time • Much more information

22. Operations, being processes, also • are systems in and of themselves. • They have structure • They have purpose • They are organismic (people do them) • They are complex

23. What a minute! What’s a system?

24. We live in a universe of systems, and systems of systems. As living beings, we are systems. Everything we do is a system. Russell Ackoff, one of the great systems thinkers, has put it like this: “A system is a set of two or more elements that satisfies the following three conditions: 1. The behavior of each element has an effect on the behavior of the whole; 2. The behavior of the elements and their effects on the whole are interdependent… the way each element behaves and the way it affects the whole depends on how at least one other element behaves; 3. However subgroups of the elements are formed, each has an effect on the behavior of the whole and none has an independent effect on it.”

25. Here are some examples of systems:

26. Operations demonstrate the traits of a special type of system, • Complex Adaptive Systems: • They are unpredictable as opposed to deterministic; • They produce emergent behavior; • Their behavioral history tends to be irreversible. • They illustrate the old saying: nothing goes according to plan. • They coexist with: • - Their opposition or object; • - Their operating environment. THEREFORE: They never can be optimized

27. Here are some examples of complex adaptive systems:

28. All Operations Have the Following Common Elements: • LEADERSHIP • Command • Staff • Decisions CAPABILITIES -Functions -Organizations -Equipment INFORMATION PROCESSING Communications Data and Meaning Control Coordination

29. All Joint Military Operations have organizations as their critical nodes within the system: Leavitt Systems Diagram of Organization Tasks Structure People Technology

30. Hold on, big guy. I get that organizations are systems, even complex adaptive systems. But where’s this node come from?

31. No problem. Recall that systems have elements. Those elements are connected to each other. In complex systems, some elements are more connected than others. Those are nodes. Critical nodes are connected to many other nodes, let alone elements. Here are a couple of examples of nodes:

32. All Operations and Organizations, as Complex Systems, Have the Following Design Characteristics: • Robustness – Strength, Durability 2. Resilience – Flexibility, Adaptability 3. Redundancy – Backup, Support There is no optimization because the basic situation remains: - That is, uncertainty and unpredictability

33. Which leads us to… Paraphrasing Clausewitz, the primary challenge for those who plan and execute operations is to know what their situation is, and to accept it for what it is, not for what one wants it to be. Or, as Sun Tzu writes, to know oneself and his enemy is to be victorious in a hundred battles.

34. And thus… • Specifically, those who plan and execute joint military operations • must succeed at four basic tasks: • Choosing the right “mix” of reality components for • Themselves, • Their Opponent, and • Their Operating Environment; • Choosing the right “mix” of elements; • Choosing the right “mix” of organizations; • Choosing the right “mix” of design characteristics.

35. With which we conclude… The four tasks of joint military operations go to the heart of Operational Art.

36. BACKUP SLIDES

37. INSIGHT Anything any living system does involves manipulation or leverage or adaptation of reality. Reality includes the participant/observer and at least his/her relevant environment. Organizations also are living systems. Organizations’ processes are operations. Operations manipulate their opponents and environments to achieve organizational goals.

38. Hold on there. What’s this 3-body thing?

39. A 3-body situation or problem refers to physics and astronomy. Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravity work very well when there are only two bodies involved in his equations defining the laws. A relatively unsolvable problem occurs if we add another body or planet to these equations. If motion is involved (as in any operation), adding a third body means there is no way to use Mathematics to optimize or solve the equation. Now, let’s continue.