Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 51
DENIERS OF “THE TRUTH”
Behavior
MDMP
ADM
Unstructured
Time spent thinking (vice building
Powerpoint briefings)
Less
Slightly Less
More
Officers and NCOs together during
planning
Less
Slightly Less
More
Rehearsals
Less
Slightly Less
More
Critically reviewing higher’s implicit
assumptions
Less
Slightly Less
More
Focus on area-specific analyses
Less
Slightly Less
More
Logically connecting objectives with their
plan
Less
Slightly Less
More
COA focus on their infiltration (vice
number of guerilla bases or the like)
Less
Slightly Less
Slightly More
Adapting once on the ground
Less
Slightly Less
Slightly More
Slightly More
Slightly Less
Less
Achieving complex training objectives
Less
Slightly Less
Slightly More
Perception of the value of planning
Less
Slightly Less
More
Planning was for everyone (vice only
officers)
Less
Slightly Less
More
Recycle/ Relief of officers
Table 2. Comparison of Observations
to learn and regurgitate throughout the Special Forces
Qualification Course, but the majority did appreciate the
chance to think instead of simply regurgitate prior-templated solutions. That all the officers were potentially
months away from deploying as commanders of operational Special Forces teams made that point all the more
important to me personally.
Table 2 provides a comparison of all three groups.
Conclusion: The Divinity of Doubt
What makes officers in the U.S. Army blindly learn a
concept, regurgitate it faithfully, and become complacent
about questioning it? I rarely see Special Forces teams outside of the schoolhouse who follow a standard approach
MILITARY REVIEW January-February 2015
to all missions. Mostly what I have seen are teams who
naturally fight attempts to tell them how to think about
or approach situations. Instead, they look suspiciously
at doctrinal templates and higher headquarters’ implied
assertions.
These informal observations reinforced my own experience: we need to have an agnostic approach to warfare
and not be caught up in any one paradigm. The ADP,
like MDMP, is just one way of approaching things. Both
are largely products of just one paradigm, the technically
rational one. This paradigm assumes that the world is
like a clock and can be understood by measurement and
reductionist methods. Complexity theory, another paradigm, asserts that the world is non-linear and therefore
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