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 49