Memorandum p.1-2 In the Joint Concept Development Vision, I wrote
that focused and clearly stated ideas about the challenges we face and potential ways for dealing with those challenges
are at the heart of future force and capability development. Ongoing design-related initiatives by the Army and Marine
Corps are investigating methods of dealing with future challenges through critical and creative thinking directed
at understanding, visualizing, and describing complex problems and devising approaches to resolve them.
Attachment p.1 First, in designing joint operations, the joint force commander must come to
grips with each operational situation on its own terms, accepting that this understanding rarely will be complete or entirely
correct, but at best will approximate reality... In this environment, the joint force cannot afford
to apply preconceived methods reflexively, but instead must conform its methods to the specific conditions of each
situation.
Capstone Concept for Joint Operations
15 January 2009
p.1 today's operational environment challenges us even more with... our inability to accurately
forecast how threats will emerge and in what form they will take. Adaptive adversaries who possess
a broad range of asymmetric capabilities... will also confront us... The complex nature of current and projected
challenges requires that commanders routinely integrate careful thinking, creativity, and foresight... and become routine.
p.2 Planning is a problem-solving process, no matter the mission... But the focus on procedural steps and
details has tended to obscure the importance of the underlying creative process... Planning without thorough and careful
thinking is incomplete, is destined to yield sub-optimal results, and could focus the joint force on solving the wrong problem.
p.3 The [investigated] ideas fall into four general areas, which I believe show promise for joint operations:
understanding the problem; understanding the operational environment; designing an approach
to solve the problem; and reframing the problem when circumstances change.
p.3 Understanding the problem is essential to solving the problem.
p.4 Understanding the problem is only one step toward the solution. The commander must be able to
describe both the state of the operational environment when operations begin and how the environment should look when operations
conclude in order to visualize an approach to solving the problem. This can seem to be an overwhelming challenge
early in the design process, because the operational environment will change significantly during the course of the operations
due to the actions of the joint force and to other influences beyond the commander's control. Most systems in this
environment are complex, adaptive, and in flux. They will change beyond what we can easily observe.
p.7-8 Conclusion
Design does not replace planning, but planning is incomplete without design. The balance
between the two varies from operation to operation as well as within each operation. Operational design must help
the commander provide enough structure to an ill-structured problem so that planning can lead to effective action toward strategic
objectives. Executed correctly, the two processes always are complementary, overlapping, synergistic, and continuous.
