For the first time, an Army Operating Concept (AOC) acknowledges success at the strategic level of war is a required land force capability, connecting a capability to achieve national goals with service success at the tactical and operational levels, a senior officer said.
The AOC, produced by the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), guides future force development by identifying fundamental capabilities the future Army needs to support U.S. policy objectives. The title, Win in a Complex World, emphasizes “the land forces’ importance for protecting our nation and securing our vital interests against determined, elusive, and increasingly capable enemies,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said in the foreword.
Commander Army Training and Doctrine Command
Photo: TRADOC
“The nation pays a lot of money for the Army, we ought to get a strategic capability, and we need to build that, train and educate and buy equipment optimized for that,” said Gen. David Perkins, leader of Training and Doctrine Command, an organization often called the “architect of the Army.”
Previous AOCs emphasized how to fight to win at the tactical and operational level.
There is a gap in the debate on the future of national security strategy and the role of land power, a new Rand report, Improving Strategic Competence, said. “The gap exists because there has been no systematic effort to collect and analyze insights from those who have been actively engaged in making policy and strategy from 2001 to 2014,” writes lead author Linda Robinson, a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corp.
“We’re very, very good at the operational and tactical level and can do it very well,” Perkins told reporters as the AOC was rolled out at the Association of the United States Army Annual Conference last week.
Perkins said, the strategic level is “another level of difficulty,” he said. The strategic context includes national command authority, national strategy and policy, the interaction with the interagency, coalition, non-governmental organizations and others. This is familiar territory for those who have spent significant time in combat and stabilization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over more than a decade.
The AOC also reflects the understanding and lessons learned from 13 years of war.
The Rand report addresses lessons learned, for example, that military operations “take place in the political environment of the state in which the intervention takes place.” Thus military campaigns must be based on “a political strategy where technology cannot substitute for sociocultural, political and historical knowledge and understanding,”
Working with people on all levels is something today’s Army leaders are very familiar with. The service is moving to incorporate this “human dimension” into the training and education to “raise, prepare and employ” the future Army for unified land operations. This is discussed in detail in a related concept.
AOC authors realized that “the operational and tactical level of war is inadequate…to get at what the Army needs to provide our nation,” Perkins said.
The document describes how the future force of 2025 and beyond will prevent conflict, shape security environments and win wars–as part of the joint force, working with partners. It represents something much more than kinetic capability.
As military leadership has stressed time and again, the future is more complex, uncertain and unknown. The AOC provides the basis of how the Army will assess, experiment, evaluate and test proposed capabilities and innovative solutions for the future. Also, it will help senior leaders focus investments and priorities.
This means ihe AOC will guide changes in Army doctrine, organizations, training materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities, which TRADOC oversees.
Flowing from the AOC, the Army Centers of Excellence will revise as needed its six functional concepts–mission command, intelligence, movement and maneuver, fires, sustainment and protection– incorporating lessons learned and potential capabilities. It is all part of of driving adaptability throughout the service.
Odierno wrote the Army must provide the unique capabilities and multiple options to the president, defense secretary and combatant commanders. “Innovation is critical…the AOC is the start of the “innovation we need to ensure that our soldiers, leaders and teams are prepared to win in a complex world.”