Effects-based operations and its enabling capabilities in expeditionary warfare.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of U.S. Joint Forces Command, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Government."Let it be said that combatant commanders ... don't fight with Army systems or Navy systems or Air Force systems; what they want to do is fight with joint systems. They have to take all of the capabilities, not the ones that one Service recommends, but all of them, and make them rational and coherent, and then be capable of putting power on a specific target in a specific way."
--Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 31 January 2002
For more than a decade, a change in the view of operations has been taking shape. Like Joint operations, Effects-Based Operations as an expeditionary warfare concept has also been evolving, and is now making its way into discussion, experimentation, and joint doctrine. Arguably, the first Gulf War was the first use of effects-based operations by an expeditionary force. Two measures of performance for the "air campaign" during Operation DESERT STORM were the attrition of the second echelon forces, mainly the Republican Guard and Iraqi armor and mechanized units, and the isolation of the Kuwaiti theater of operations by destroying the Tigris and Euphrates River bridges. Once the coalition achieved these effects, the ground operation could start. The effectiveness of the air operation on Iraqi forces was measured through the use of battle damage assessment (BDA) with additional strike missions planned based on this feedback. Since then, great improvements in intelligence collection and "systems of systems" analysis has led to an even greater understanding of the use and efficiency of effects-based operations.
The 2002 Toward a Joint Warfighting Doctrine: Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO) concept paper envisioned future operations as effects-based to allow forces to operate across the range (continuum) of military operations. The RDO concept identified four key characteristics for future joint operations (see Figure 1). Further, it described the military element of an effects-based campaign against the backdrop of the application of the national instruments of power. (1) Emerging future concepts use the future joint operations characteristics as a foundation for Effects-Based Operations.
Intelligence support to effects-based operations (EBO) is a critical component of a successful effects-based campaign. Intelligence is not only to determine the centers of gravity (COGs) in the adversary's system of systems, but also to determine how well the effects are disrupting the adversary's systems at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Finding and understanding the causal links in the adversary's systems and measuring the effectiveness of disrupting those systems will be new fields of analysis for intelligence professionals as well as new responsibilities.
Effects-Based Operations (EBOs)
"... the conditions that we want to establish are ... where our joint and combined forces can conduct coherently joint and combined effects-based operations across the full range of military operations, where the scope, speed and richness of operational knowledge can quickly lead to precision decisions."
--Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, U.S. Navy, 5 February 2004 (2)
Currently, the definition of "EBO" focuses on the actions that change the state of a system to achieve directed policy aims using the integrated application of selected instruments of national power--diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME). In other words, we direct our DIME actions against the adversary's' political, military, economic, social, informational, and infrastructure (PMESII) systems to achieve the desired effects, thus obtaining our national goals and objectives through the use of an effects-oriented campaign plan. To accomplish this, the EBO concept has four components:
[] Knowledge superiority.
[] Effects-based planning process.
[] Dynamic and adaptive execution.
[] Accurate, timely effects assessment.
Each of these components has a prototype or process in some stage of development to support the use of EBO at a joint task force-level in a regional combatant command.
Intelligence support to EBO requires our analysts to be more knowledgeable in "system of systems" analysis. Additionally, our analysts must develop "seasoned" expertise, gained through experience over the full spectrum of military operations and the current and future environments. The Joint National Training Capability and its corresponding Joint Intelligence National Training Capability (JINTC), combined with commander emphasis on analyst training, offers us the possibility of increased experience in less time than we currently use (see Figure 2).
The U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) Regional Joint Intelligence Training Facility (RJITF), working in conjunction with the Joint Warfighting Center and the Joint Military Intelligence Training Center, can develop EBO training and courses that support the four EBO components and other future supporting concepts. Recent partnering between JFCOM and the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca resulted in increased joint training at USAIC&FH--the Joint Intelligence Combat Training Center (JI-CTC). The JI-CTC allows the joint Intelligence Community the ability to leverage resources in live, constructive, and virtual environments. It could be a critical piece of the JINTC. (3)
Knowledge Superiority
"Information is the raw material of the intelligence business and we must find ways to extract additional value from what is currently available while at the same time harvesting and exploiting new and nontraditional sources of data."
--Rear Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, U.S. Navy, 17 October 2002 (4)
To support an effects-based approach requires the ability to develop a knowledge advantage sufficient to enable precise and bold action through battlespace understanding and situational awareness. (5) Battlespace understanding means that we must have detailed knowledge of how the enemy operates at all levels. Operational Net Assessment is the product and process used and developed to assist with battlespace understanding. Situational awareness, on the other hand, implies a tailored or relevant snapshot of the battlespace at a specific moment. The relevant common operational picture (COP) and joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (JISR) system support situational awareness.
Operational Net Assessment
Effects-Based Operations and its enabling concepts and technologies all require detailed knowledge of the adversary's political, military, economic, social, informational, and infrastructure (PMESII) systems. Commanders and their staffs need to have as complete an understanding of the adversary as we can possibly collect and process. We form our understanding based on the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) picture our resources can collect. Understanding the adversary leads to identifying COGs that allow us to apply effects to influence the adversary's behavior and/or capabilities, thereby facilitating his culmination. By understanding ourselves, we protect our COGs and prevent disruption of friendly operations.
The Operational Net Assessment (6) is the integration of people, processes, and tools that use multiple information sources and collaborative analysis to build shared knowledge of the adversary, the environment, and ourselves (see Figure 3). (7) While this reads a lot like joint intelligence preparation of the battlespace (JIPB), ONA might be viewed as an expansion of JIPB to include all elements of national power as well as to enable EBO. Additionally, coalition partners must also be involved in ONA to add their elements of national power to the EBO. The all-source intelligence analyst by necessity must become more knowledgeable of more than just military systems and trends. Political, economic, social, and informational trends and analysis will likely become new areas of study for military intelligence analysts.
ONA analysts look at the adversary's systems as a "system of systems." We usually think of these systems as links and nodes. The nodes are usually people, places, or things. The links are most often causal or supporting relationships between the nodes in a system; it maybe best to think of the links as inputs and outputs. Ultimately, the analyst looks closely at the nodes and the links between each node in each of the PMESII systems as well as the nodes and links common to the overarching PMESII system to identify COGs and critical nodes and links. The analyst also looks closely at the friendly environment to identify its COGs and critical nodes and links. Later in the planning process, the commander will use this information to support the decisionmaking process as well as to achieve the objectives of the strategic and operational campaign plans using effects-based planning.
The development and use of the ONA is an area where intelligence officers need to focus their attention. We need to understand how an ONA is developed, potentially assist other nonmilitary agencies in developing databases and analytical methods, as well as identify and understand shortcomings in the process and ONA concept. ONA will most likely not have all the data we need--as if we ever have all the data we think we need--but it is an evolutionary step forward toward a holistic approach to understanding and analyzing the threat.
Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (JISR)
The intent of JISR is to assist intelligence operations by integrating assets, capabilities, and products from all Services into a COP enabling centralized control of collection resources from national and Service systems. Moreover, JISR becomes an interrelated process to battlespace understanding and situational awareness, and ultimately a feedback mechanism for effects-based planning and synchronization. The JISR as a supporting prototype to situational awareness allows commanders and staffs to better understand the ONA at any time during the operation, as well as how the adversary might react to various effects employed by joint forces. By managing real-time ISR collection, JISR helps fill the gaps in ONA, and assists in determining "how well" the EBO is preceding. The commander can then decide if and how the operation needs adjustment to achieve the objectives.
Effects-Planning Process
"We would not apply overwhelming force. Rather, we would apply the overwhelming 'mass of effect' of a smaller force. Speed would represent a mass all its own."
--General Tommy Franks, (U.S. Army, Retired) American Soldier (8)
The goal of the effects-planning process is an effects-based campaign plan that connects strategic goals and tactical actions in a synchronized flow of effects that accomplish the desired end state. It would therefore follow that there are strategic, operational, and tactical effects with a corresponding desired change in the adversary's behavior at each level. We use strategic effects to change the adversary's behavior at the national level, as evidenced by the removal of Slobodan Milosevic as the head of the Serbian Government. The intention of operational effects is to change the adversary's ability to operate in an effective and efficient manner, like using a broad frontage of attack to destroy the Iraqis' ability to establish an effective defense of Baghdad in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). Tactical effects would affect the adversary's employment of key systems, like denying the Iraqis' the use of their integrated air defense system at the start of Operation DESERT STORM.
With our previous operational concepts, we emphasized a physical superiority of at least three-to-one before engaging the adversary. In an EBO, the emphasis will be on understanding how the adversary's systems operate, where his COGs are and what effect we want to achieve. When supported by an accurate understanding of the current situation, we can more precisely apply our capabilities to achieve the greatest possible effect on the adversary's systems. Our focus on precision will reduce but not eliminate the physical force needed to achieve the intended results.
Collaborative Information Environment
In their time, drums, flags, and radios have been evolutionary advances in communication technology. Today, the collaborative information environment (CIE) is an evolution of our communications system. Where use of drums, flags, and radios had been mainly to disseminate orders or report changes in the conduct of the campaign, we use CIE to share information and develop synchronized campaigns or operations plans. In the future, the CIE will become the standard method of communication between commanders and staffs, up, down, and throughout the chain of command and be the lynchpin for developing effects-based campaign plans.
Essentially, the CIE will be an enabling technology for distributed staffs, joint and coalition. The goal of the tools that comprise CIE is the clear communication of ideas, concepts, and orders as concisely and efficiently as possible, as well as the information needed to develop them. The CIE will enable the information paradigm shift away from "need to know" to "need to share" (see Figure 4).
The CIE exists today at JFCOM, and is undergoing installation at other regional combatant commands as well as at least one other government agency. Developed from a combination of video, audio, and whiteboard-like applications available to most users on the Internet, CIE is not perfect but it is useable if not completely scalable. In the future, CIE will be a much more integrated package of tools that can easily scale to a thousand users, and will electronically co-locate staffers spread over the globe and integrate with our coalition partners.
Dynamic and Adaptive in Execution
"Putting together information about where the enemy is and discovering what the really important targets are still represent daunting challenges in a complex, ambiguous environment. Battle damage assessment, even in the case of precision weapons, remains, an intractable problem for both air and ground forces."
--The Iraqi War: A Military History (9)
The components and defense and non-defense agencies support each other and the effects-based campaign plan with the unique capabilities each brings to the operation. Joint forces, including government agencies, which can communicate, quickly assemble, collaborate, and synchronize their actions on objectives, are crucial to effects-based operations.
The JTF staff is critical to dynamic and adaptive execution, and is not limited to military staff members, but also includes other nonmilitary government agencies. As a staff, this team must train and be ready to work together to act and react quickly to a battlespace in flux. At some point during the operation, the joint staff will include coalition members and, in some cases, nongovernmental agencies if it is a military operation other than war (MOOTW).
For intelligence officers and analysts, the JTF staff will develop, update, or refine the ONA, and determine the effectiveness of the effects-based campaign or operations plan. The intelligence staff must be ready to identify changes in the system and quickly reinforce or mitigate effects as needed. Recent operations suggest that the intelligence staff will be human-resource constrained, so all members must be competent at all critical tasks.
Standing Joint Force Headquarters-Core Element (SJFHQ-CE)
Recent military experiments such as Millennium Challenge 2002 and military operations made it apparent that combatant commanders need an organization capable of providing timely pre-crisis information in situation development, mission planning, and course of action development as well as evaluating and preparing host-nation support. With this objective, JFCOM proposed and the Department of Defense (DOD) implemented an SJFHQ-CE (10) initiative that allows combatant commanders the flexibility of having a permanent JTF headquarters to conduct joint operations. Tailored to be immediately responsive by having already established links into the appropriate resources, the SJFHQ-CE will guarantee mission accomplishment. Specifically, the SJFHQ-CE provides each combatant commander with a time advantage by having a dedicated staff using collaborative planning tools designed to develop an extensive knowledge base.
Permanently staffed with joint personnel, the SJFHQ-CE is under the direction of a flag or general officer. The SJFHQ-CE coordinates with other combatant command staff elements, and develops and analyzes potential contingency operations, which leads to the creation of the ONA. This concept enables seamless planning during any pre-crisis situation and improves their understanding of the enemy as well as friendly forces. Additionally, the SJFHQ-CE will standardize all key enabling concepts involved in EBOs and Expeditionary Warfare.
In keeping with its flexible design, the SJFHQ-CE may serve as the core of a JTF headquarters or it may support a component or other headquarters designated as a JTF. Furthermore, it can directly support a combatant command headquarters or serve as its forward element when it functions as the Joint Force Commander. Currently, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is using an SJFHQ-CE and all Combatant Commanders are directed to have an SJFHQ-CE operational by fiscal year 2005.
The design of the SJFHQ-CE offers unique opportunities for the intelligence functional area (see Figure 5). Specifically, like the other parts of the SJFHQ-CE, intelligence is not represented as a staff section (normally referred to as a J-code, i.e., J2 or J2X). There are, however, numerous intelligence professionals spread out in the operations, plans, and information superiority cells. The intelligence supervisor in the information superiority cell can act as the de facto J2 for the SJFHQ-CE. Based on the reach back to the combatant command staff, the command's J2 is a more appropriate manager of the intelligence function. There is a significant requirement for the theater joint intelligence center to provide intelligence products and support to the SJFHQ-CE. Use of a common information environment allows the sharing of data and the ability to leverage national, interagency, academia, and industry expertise. The knowledge management cell within the SJFHQ-CE is critical to this effort.
Joint Interagency Coordination Group (JIACG)
In the past, government agencies have been a part of the war effort, especially after hostilities had started. In EBO, the JIACG representatives will be deeply involved in the development of strategic and effects-based operational planning. These agencies will bring insight into the nonmilitary aspects of the adversary and the ability to synchronize the nonmilitary elements of national power to the planning team. The intent is for civil government agencies to achieve our national goals without resorting to applying the military aspect of national power in full force.
The goal of the JIACG is to understand completely the adversary's systems of systems--PMESII using all the information available to us. The nonmilitary government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury help fill in the gaps in ONA so we can apply our elements of national power (DIME) to affect the PMESII systems in a way to end hostilities or achieve our national goals quickly and decisively. This group and their expertise bring our joint force closer to the coherently joint capabilities-based joint force required by the President, Secretary of Defense, and our nation.
To defeat the adversary quickly and decisively using effects-based planning and operations requires synchronization of all the elements of national power. Three of these elements have nothing to do with the military and more than one agency may actually wield some of them. The military may possibly have to assist the nonmilitary agencies in understanding and developing synchronization methods and coordination processes to aid effects-based planning, operations, and metrics.
Accurate and Timely Assessment
"If it is difficult to calculate one's own strength, then how much more difficult is it to calculate the strengths of others whose culture, language, and nationality are so different?"
--Calculations: Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II (11)
The accurate and timely assessment of effects Accomplishment is an essential element in EBO and Expeditionary Warfare. As the saying goes (with a slight spin), amateurs talk tactics, while professionals talk integration of capabilities e.g., (logistics). Effects-Based Operations and Expeditionary Warfare will most likely be resource-constrained, either by the rules of engagement or especially in the kinetic weapons resources generally used to achieve desired effects. Therefore, commanders will need to use limited resources effectively by not attacking a target more than is necessary to achieve the desired effect or develop, practice, and use nonkinetic weapons in creative ways to achieve the same effect.
Assessment of effects implies effects must be empirically measurable as well as attributable to achieving the desired results (see Figure 6). The intelligence function will be an essential component, if not the collector and evaluator of the success of effects on the adversary's systems of systems. An ONA that is as complete as possible and enabled by a thorough understanding of PMESII and its nodes and links is critical to warfighter success. Our elements of national power will "target" cause and effects aspect of the adversary's systems to affect them in a way that supports our national goals. It will likely take multiple "targeting" of the causal links to achieve our goals, so we must develop a method to report the level of effectiveness reached at any given moment.
Most likely, our actions will have second and third order effects on PMESII systems, some of these effects we will be able to foresee, others will have unintended negative consequences, and still others will have unintended positive consequences. We must learn to predict these second-, third-, and higher-order effects. Further, we must have effective processes and procedures to mitigate unintended negative effects and take advantage of unintended positive effects.
Leveraging unintended advantageous effects may be an area where information operations (IO) can have significant utility as a nonkinetic weapon in effects-based operations. With a sound and synchronized IO plan, we can reinforce and perhaps amplify intended effects with a thorough understanding of the adversary's PMESII systems as well as reduce the undesired effects caused by the inevitable accidents and imprecise application of national power.
Conclusion
Effects-Based Operations is a concept developed from examining a problem, defining a condition, and proposing a solution. For EBO, the problem is the strategic requirement, the condition is the operational environment, and the solution is a vision of future warfare. EBO is new, but rooted in observation and lessons learned from the past twelve years of operations that our forces have deployed to and worked with other government agencies and coalition forces.
What this article has covered is at best a primer to Effects-Based Operations. We hope that this article will stimulate you enough to investigate EBO, and the supporting prototypes and processes. Joint warfare and the Joint Forces Command are the future; as intelligence professionals we should continually monitor what our force is conceiving, testing, and evolving so we can better prepare for the future.
As a part of the joint JFCOM-CENTCOM effort, Admiral (ADM) E.P. Giambastiani (Commander, JFCOM and Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation) noted that intelligence capabilities during OIF needed enhancement. Additionally, ADM Giambastiani provides us a valuable insight from OIF, "Warfighters don't care where capabilities come from--they just care that they are responsive, integrated and effective." (12) The challenge for the joint Intelligence Community, and its national Intelligence Community brethren as well, is to develop the capabilities required of EBO and Expeditionary Warfare. Further, the Iraqi campaign reinforced the lesson that quality trumps quantity on most modern battlefields. (13) Joint Forces Command, the Services, and the Defense agencies must work together to develop that quality in this complex, ambiguous environment. The Joint Forces Command provides an excellent environment for examining future concepts through joint experiments, joint training exercises, and the fielding of lessons learned solutions to participants in the Global War on Terrorism.
Endnotes
(1.) U.S. Joint Forces Command, Toward a Joint Warfighting Doctrine: Rapid Decisive Operations, J9 Joint Futures Lab, 18 July 2002, pages vii-viii.
(2.) Giambastiani, Edmund P., Admiral, U.S. Navy, "Born Joint," CHIPS Magazine, Spring 2004, page 8. Text edited from remarks given at Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) West, 5 February 2004. This document is available at http://www.chips.navy.mil/archives/04 spring/Web_ Pages/Born_Joint.htm
(3.) Cubillo, Frank, Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Deputy Director of Intelligence Operations, JFCOM, interview by COL Perkins, 13 May 2004 in Suffolk, Virginia.
(4.) Jacoby, Lowell E., Rear ADM, U.S. Navy, Statement for the Record to the Senate Armed Services Committee, 17 October 2002, page 1.
(5.) U.S. Joint Forces Command Joint Concept Development and Experimentation's Concept Primer, "Effects-Based Operations (EBO)", U.S. Joint Forces Command Public Affairs Office, November 2003, page 3.
(6.) For more information on ONA, see the U.S. Joint Forces Command Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC) Joint Doctrine Series Pamphlet 4, "Doctrinal Implications of Operational Net Assessment (ONA)," dated 24 February 2004.
(7.) U.S. Joint Forces Command, Toward a Joint Warfighting Doctrine: Rapid Decisive Operations, page x.
(8.) Franks, Tommy, General (GEN), U.S. Army, American Soldier (New York, NY: Regan Books, 2004), page 416.
(9.) Murray, Williamson, and Scales, Robert H. (MG, U.S. Army, Retired), The Iraq War: A Military History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2003), page 243.
(10.) For more information on the SJFHQ, see the JWFC Joint Doctrine Series Pamphlet 3 "Doctrinal Implications of the Standing Joint Force Headquarters (SJFHQ)," dated 16 June 2003 at http:// jwfc.jfcom.mil.
(11.) Murray, Williamson, and Millett, Allan R, Editors, Calculations: Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1992), page 4.
(12.) Giambastiani, page 7.
(13.) Murray and Scales, page 249.
Colonel Stephen Perkins is the Director of Operations (J3) of the Joint Information Operations Center. He was the Deputy Director for Intelligence Operations (J23) and the J2X, U.S. Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, Virginia. COL Perkins received a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree from Cameron University, in Lawton, Oklahoma, and Masters degrees from Auburn University and the Army War College; he is a graduate of the Air Command and Staff College and the Army War College's Advanced Strategic Art Program. He has held command and staff intelligence assignments including Company Commander, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry; S2, 2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); and Commander, 103d MI Battalion. Readers may contact COL Perkins via E-mail at stephen.p.perkins@us.army.mil and by telephone at (210) 977-2911 or DSN 969-2911.
Lieutenant Colonel John Jackson is a U.S. Army Reservist (USAR) assigned to the Army Element of the Joint Reserve Unit at U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). He is currently a staff officer in the Operations Division (J23) of the J2, JFCOM, and a contract employee in Virginia. He received a BS degree from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. LTC Jackson has had assignments with the 319th MI Battalion and 525th MI Brigade, the 204th MI Battalion, U.S. Central Command (Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM), and 32d Separate Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) in the Wisconsin Army National Guard. Readers may contact LTC Jackson via E-mail at john.dale.jackson@us.army.mil and by telephone at (703) 923-2146.
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| Author: | Perkins, Stephen P.; Jackson, II, John D. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Jul 1, 2004 |
| Words: | 4268 |
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