FOUNDATIONS: The Role Of Doctrine

Yesterday we discussed the difference between “a way” (descriptive) doctrine and “the way” (prescriptive) doctrine. But why have doctrine if it’s not going to tell you the exact right answer every time? One answer, obviously, is the inherently changing and conflicting nature of military operations. Soldiers of every rank are required to think creatively and find solutions that apply doctrinal principals in new ways to overcome conflict and challenge, be it from enemy force or nature.

So, let’s take a look at the role of doctrine, per ADP 1-01, Army Doctrine Primer.

As always, italics added for our emphasis, and […] indicates we cut out stuff we thought was fluff. And, as always: you’re smarter reading the pubs yourself to be exactly sure.

The major takeaways:

THE ROLE OF DOCTRINE

• Doctrine serves as a starting point for thinking about and conducting operations.

• Doctrine makes six basic contributions to the conduct of operations and the development of military professionals:

  • Provide a coherent vision of warfare.

  • Enhance operational effectiveness.

  • Provide a common frame of reference and cultural perspective.

  • Provide a common professional language.

  • Discuss Army contributions to unified action.

  • State and foster desirable traits in leaders and Soldiers.

Diving deep in the doctrinal details:

Here is what the Army Doctrine primer says in depth:

THE ROLE OF DOCTRINE

1-9. Doctrine serves as a starting point for thinking about and conducting operations. When leaders and Soldiers allow it to fulfill this role, doctrine makes six basic contributions to the conduct of operations and the development of military professionals. Each is vitally and equally important. Each contributes directly to the conduct of operations and mission effectiveness. Doctrine’s contributions—

• Provide a coherent vision of warfare.

• Enhance operational effectiveness.

• Provide a common frame of reference and cultural perspective.

• Provide a common professional language.

• Discuss Army contributions to unified action.

• State and foster desirable traits in leaders and Soldiers.

1-10. First, doctrine provides a coherent vision of warfare (see chapter 3). It accounts for an army’s understanding of war and reflects its vision of warfare. War is socially sanctioned violence to achieve a political purpose. Warfare is the mechanism, method, or modality of armed conflict against an enemy Warfare is how combatants wage war. All armies have an understanding of war that underlies their visions of warfare. (See JP 1 for a discussion on war and warfare.) These visions directly impact the doctrine these armies develop to conduct operations. Armies that understand war as mechanistic and predictable tend to develop doctrine that attempts to control events to a much greater degree than armies that understand war as a chaotic event beyond precise control. If an army’s vision of warfare includes responsibilities to a civilian population in the area of operations, then those responsibilities affect its conduct of operations. The vision of warfare that underlies an army’s doctrine profoundly impacts almost all facets of how that army conducts operations. Strong and effective leaders must understand that vision to make sense of the rest of doctrine.

1-11. Doctrine is based on an accurate understanding of the nature of war. This vision and understanding enables leaders to cope with the stress and uncertainty brought about by the fog and friction of operations. Doctrine provides leaders and Soldiers with sound practices to account for that friction and assists them in making decisions. By providing time-tested approaches to the conduct of operations, doctrine expands commander’s and staff’s experiences beyond what they have personally experienced to what professional commanders and staffs have encountered and found to be useful for coping with complexity. Sound doctrine helps them sort the important from the inconsequential and the routine from the exceptional.

1-12. The second contribution, doctrine enhances the operational effectiveness, recognizes that Army forces capture best practices and lessons learned validated from past operations, current operations, and training. Doctrine incorporates or adds best practices and validated lessons learned to doctrinal TTP. Best practices and lessons learned are disseminated along with enduring principles and TTP identified from historical analysis. (See the Center for Army Lessons Learned website for details.) The resulting doctrine captures what has proven useful in the past and provides a set of tools that leaders think will still be valid during current and near future projected operations. Much of doctrine has stood the test of time and results from extensive operational experience by not only Army forces, but also other Services and multinational partners. While doctrine must be applied with judgment, and doctrine cannot account for every circumstance, it is always a good place to start. Creatively applying different combinations of these doctrinal tools—adapted to the specific circumstances—is the true art of tactics and foundation of operational success. For leaders and Soldiers unfamiliar with doctrine, every operation is experiential learning at the basic level. With a vast array of experiences available through studying doctrine, leaders and Soldiers make every operation more than basic learning.

1-13. Third, doctrine provides the force with a common frame of reference and a common cultural perspective for solving military problems. By providing a common and standardized set of principles, tactics, techniques, procedures, and terms and symbols for the Army, doctrine enables flexibility, supports rapid action and reaction to emerging opportunities and threats, and facilitates swift adaptation during changing circumstances. Commanders and staffs focus their creative efforts on solving the unique problems of assigned missions without having to publish detailed procedures for completing common tasks for every mission. For example, if Soldiers understand that a change in the main effort means that all or most priorities—such as fire support, sustainment support, and so on—also change, then a commander does not have to specify every detail. The commander can assume that subordinate staffs and commanders will act based on a common approach to operations. A common approach enables units to self-synchronize both within the unit and between units. Perhaps the most important example of this common cultural perspective is the mission command approach. If leaders and Soldiers understand and exercise mission command to conduct operations, then commanders can expect subordinates to exercise initiative, and subordinates can expect mission orders, not detailed instructions. As a result, commanders count on more rapid decision making and more flexible adaptation to circumstances than if doctrine requires approval for every change in orders.

1-14. Doctrine’s fourth contribution provides a common language that allows units to pass a great deal of information quickly and succinctly. If each Soldier understands the specified tasks associated with a zone reconnaissance, then a commander can assign this as a task and not have to specify everything that it entails. If each Soldier knows what to coordinate at a passage of lines, then the order does not have to specify every detail when sending an officer or noncommissioned officer out to coordinate a passage. If every Soldier understands that assignment of an area of operations grants certain flexibility within that area of operations to a command and assigns certain responsibilities to the commander for actions in that area of operations, then assigning boundaries does not require details of what can or cannot be done within the area of operations. This common language should result in clearer, shorter orders, much greater precision in operations, and greater flexibility and speed of operations.

1-15. Fifth, doctrine discusses Army contributions to unified action. Doctrine provides a systematic body of thought describing how Army forces intend to operate as a member of the joint, multinational, or interagency force. This in turn provides a common body of knowledge for education, training, and coordination with unified action partners.

1-16. The last doctrine contribution is doctrine states and fosters desirable character traits in leaders and Soldiers. Effective doctrine demands initiative, creativity, adaptability, and ethical action. While doctrine should be broad enough and in enough depth to cover various situations, it should also provide the flexibility to deal with unforeseen and evolving situations.

1-17. While doctrine does not address the workings of the institutional force (which Army regulations and other policy govern) except for those organizations directly supporting the conduct of operations, doctrine does play a role in several Army institutional activities. For example, doctrine provides much of the foundation for professional military education, a tool for assessing organizational designs and a benchmark against which to evaluate concepts. The desirable traits that doctrine fosters (see paragraph 1-16) also apply to the institutional force (both Soldiers and civilians), as does the Army Ethic, as laid out in doctrine.

Learning doctrinal doctrine isn’t just a way – it’s theee way! Take A Doctrine Deep Dive on doctrine selements at in ADP 1-01.1 “Army Doctrine Primer.”