© 2011, Small Wars Foundation May 9, 2011
To Design or Not to Design: In Conclusion
by Ben Zweibelson
Editor’s Note: The essay is the final of six in a series on design.
Systems analysis is a new wine in an old bottle.
- Gerald Weinberg, Rethinking Systems Analysis and Design
Any operational system that does not possess an initial textual frame of theory will be incapable
not only of creating knowledge relevant to a concrete circumstantial context, but also of
rationalizing retrospectively its actions in relation to the results it has achieved. This is an exact
reflection of a non-learning organization.
- Shimon Naveh, Asymmetric Conflict
Is Design a necessary methodology for the U.S. Army? By codifying into service
doctrine an entire chapter on design in FM 5-0, the Army appears to acknowledge the need for
ontological approaches to complex systems. FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency also featured a new
Design chapter when updated in 2006. Although the presence of design in doctrinal form
validates a substantial requirement for alternative methodologies to JOPP and MDMP, Army
design in current form suffers from an identity crisis as well as extensive tacticization via
institutional bias. To take higher guidance without critical thinking and launch into MDMP
prioritizes analysis and description over synthesis and explanation. Today‟s increasingly
complex conflict environments cannot function without Design consideration prior to any
detailed planning processes initiating.
Yet Design by its logic is a cumbersome and problematic
methodology when applied to traditional military planning processes.
Design methodology represents a military paradigm for the modern era of increased
globalization, the „cyber-age‟ of society, and the overall trend towards greater complexity.
Scientific endeavors continue to advance technology and human society through a largely
reductionist and descriptive approach to knowledge. “Science and technology have colonized the
planet, and nothing in our lives is untouched. In this changing, they have revealed a complexity
with which they are not prepared to deal.”
Whereas previous eras of human conflict
demonstrated strategic and tactical relationships that afforded localized and teleological
dynamics, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions ushered forward a more complex era where
Gerald M. Weinberg, Rethinking Systems Analysis and Design (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982) 3.
Shimon Naveh, Asymmetric Conflict; An Operational Reflection on Hegemonic Strategies (Tel Aviv: The Eshed Group for
Operational Knowledge, 2005) 14.
Trent Scott, Adapt or Die; Australian Army Journal For the Profession of Arms, Volume VI, Number 3 (Duntroon: Land
Warfare Studies Centre, 2009) 123.
Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975) 3.
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