© 2011, Small Wars Foundation April 5, 2011
To Design or Not to Design (Part Four):
Taking Lines out of Non-Linear; How Design Must Escape
‘Tacticization’ Bias of Military Culture
by Ben Zweibelson
Editor’s Note: This essay is part four of a six part series on design.
Doctrine had to come to terms with the new geometry of the battlefield. Discussion raised many
points [at Fort A.P. Hill TRADOC meeting on revising FM 100-5 in 1992]. Were diagrams
useful in describing an intellectual concept? And should an intellectual concept be doctrine at
all? [General Frederick M. Franks, Jr.] viewed the old standard, and dichotomy, of linear
versus nonlinear warfare as a shibboleth, now without meaning…Franks thought no graphic was
necessary for such a visualization…Doctrine was needed that would jolt the Army out of the old
geometry of the battlefield.
The import of ‘not-locally-made’ theories of operational warfare not only hinted that [Israeli
Defense Force] generals were not performing their duties appropriately, but also sent them back
to school to study their very profession the hard way, by abstract meditation, profound reading,
and reflective learning- activities that the majority of them had managed to avoid for
generations.”
The fifteen pages of design doctrine in FM5-0 Chapter 3 Design introduces non-linear
open system concepts while paradoxically recommending traditional linear methodology for
transforming these dynamic open systems into the desired state. While the first eleven pages on
design discuss open systems and their inherent tendencies to learn, adapt, and resist mechanistic
action, section 3-58, The Operational Approach, resorts back to linear causality by
recommending lines of effort as a method to depict transforming the system.
Once again, Army
design doctrine suffers an identity crisis in which holistic approaches to complex systems
struggles with an institutional preference for tacticizing all levels of war.
John L. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War (Fort Monroe: Military History Office, United States Army
Training and Doctrine Command, 1997) 84. Romjue cites H.O. Malone, Jr. Chief Historian‟s notes on a Fort A.P. Hill meeting
on 16 September, 1992. The subject of the meeting: FM 100-5 Off-Site Conference.
Shimon Naveh, Operational Art and the IDF: A Critical Study of a Command Culture (Center for Strategic & Budgetary
Assessment (CSBA), contract: DASW01-02-D-0014-0084, September 30, 2007) 3. Naveh describes how Systemic Operational
D esign (SOD) was not well received by the Israeli military institution due to similar anti-intellectualism and self-preservation
processes that manifest in the U.S. Army today concerning design doctrine and theory.
United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Field Manual 5-0; The Operations Process. (Headquarters, Department
of the Army, 2010), 3-59; Alex Ryan, The Foundation For An Adaptive Approach; Australian Army Journal For the Profession
of Arms, Volume VI, Number 3 (Duntroon: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2009) 72. Ryan discusses feedback and how scientists
applied linear methods to complex non-linear systems which “only works up to a point.”
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