This monograph addresses how humans think and make sense of the world, and whether the current logic used by the U.S. military is still useful for understanding and influencing a world where complexity continues to increase. Drawing from elements...
This monograph addresses the fact that most writing on strategy is descriptive rather than explanatory. Describing strategy in terms of categories such as "grand strategy," or "theater strategy," or by various analogies, does not illuminate what...
Operational design is an intellectual exercise that draws on the creative vision, experience, intuition, and judgment of commanders to provide a framework for development of detailed operation plans. Recently, a number of authors have questioned...
This monograph posits that military practitioners have a theoretical and doctrinal gap in understanding operational art. This threatens to separate tactical action from strategic purpose resulting in battlefield success that is orphaned by...
Since the events of September 11, 2001 the United States military counternetwork operations, theory, and doctrine have failed to account for the form, function, and logic of clandestine cellular networks used by both interstate insurgencies, such...
This monograph attempts to define the underlying cause of today’s tension between the Western and Arab-Islamic worlds, along with identification of existing similarities which can be utilized and exploited to bring about common understanding and...
Sorrells, William T., Downing, Glen R., Blakesley, Paul J., Pendall, David W., Walk, Jason K., Wallwork, Richard D.
Systemic Operational Design (SOD) is an application of systems theory to operational art. It is an attempt to rationalize complexity through systemic logic employing a holistic approach that translates strategic direction and policy into...
The recognition of the failure at the strategic and operational levels of war during the Global War on Terror, specifically in Iraq, has resulted in a quest for intellectual solutions to complex operational and strategic problems. To date this has...
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the grip of
superpower strictures loosened resulting in an increase in complexity and dynamism that marks today's security environment. The rapidly changing and uncertain...
Eight years of persistent conflict and increasing engagement requirements across the globe have followed the end of the Cold War. Appropriately, leaders and theorists recognize the professional military obligation and importance of adapting...
Bias caused by organizational culture is a constant companion of military planning. Cognitive models dominated by Newtonian, mechanistic, and reductionist thinking, have all but entrenched bias at the operational level of war where contextual, or...
What kind of policy can the United States and the international community pursue that increases the likelihood that stability emerges in failed and failing states? I develop a theory of state-building to guide decision makers. The theory states...
This monograph began as an investigation to determine if either Effects-Based Operations (EBO) or Systemic Operational Design (SOD) should replace the traditional Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP). It soon became clear that the approaches do...
What caused the agricultural manpower shortage in World War II? Historians have proffered a variety of explanations that attribute linear causality to a handful of independent variables. No scholar, however, has attempted to study the manpower...
Operational level commanders and their staffs require relevant and current joint doctrine that articulates the critical function of operational design and its role in the Joint Operation Planning Process (JOPP). Since operational design is the...
The monograph analyses the origins of the use of violence in the name of religion by the Salafist movement in Europe in order to enable identification of key characteristics to shape national strategies of prevention that are appropriate for...
The United States Marine Corps developed Operational Maneuver from the Sea in the 1980s and codified it as a Marine Corps concept in 1996. In brief, Operational Maneuver from the Sea seeks to exploit the sea as maneuver space to defeat access...
This monograph examines the current force structure of the Bottom-Up Review and its ability to meet the requirements as outlined in the National Military Strategy. The goals and objectives of the national U.S. strategy are examined in the context...
This monograph sets forth a theoretical model for strategic analysis. The purpose of the paper is to determine how the components of a strategic plan relate to each other. It examines and critiques contemporary and classical definitions of strategy...
The current inter-agency doctrinal tools to integrate the decision-sharing elements of battle command at the operational level for defense support to civil authority operations are inadequate under conditions of extremely degraded communications....