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Strategic Plans, Joint Doctrine and Antipodean Insights

Authored by Professor Douglas C. Lovelace Jr., Dr. Thomas-Durell Young.

October 20, 1995

34 Pages

Brief Synopsis

This is the second in an analytical series on joint issues. It follows the authors' U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Planning: The Missing Nexus, in which they articulated the need for more formal joint strategic plans. This essay examines the effect such plans would have on joint doctrine development and illustrates the potential benefits evident in Australian defense planning.

Doctrine and planning share an iterative development process. The common view is that doctrine persists over a broader time frame than planning and that the latter draws on the former for context, syntax, even format. In truth the very process of planning shapes new ways of military action. As the environment for that action changes, planners address new challenges, and create the demand for better methods of organizing, employing and supporting forces. Evolutionary, occasionally revolutionary, doctrinal changes result.

The authors explore the relationship between strategic planning and doctrine at the joint level. They enter the current debate over the scope and authority of joint doctrine from a joint strategic planning perspective. In their view, joint doctrine must have roots, and those roots have to be planted firmly in the strategic concepts and plans developed to carry out the National Military Strategy. Without the fertile groundwork of strategic plans, the body of joint doctrine will struggle for viability.

PRECIS

The relationship of strategic planning for the U.S. armed forces to the development and implementation of joint doctrine is opaque, but important. Strategic plans, by translating the National Military Strategy into strategic concepts, could guide the development and implementation of joint doctrine. This essay identifies the many improvements that would accrue to the joint doctrine development process, as well as to the implementation of joint doctrine, if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to develop strategic plans, as defined herein. Strategic concepts, derived from strategic plans, would provide a basis for the development of joint doctrine, thus ensuring joint doctrine is more responsive to the National Military Strategy (NMS). These strategic concepts, in contrast to those broad concepts found in the NMS and other strategic planning documents, would be specific and focused. The linkage of strategic planning and joint doctrine development is not without precedence: the Australian defense planning system has evolved in recent years with the objective, inter alia, of producing a useful body of joint doctrine. The Australian Defence Force has been using a planning process by which strategic direction is converted into Strategic Concepts, which form the basis for Australian joint doctrine.

KEY FINDINGS

• Strategic plans should be developed that further define the National Military Strategy and provide supporting strategic concepts. These concepts could provide the basis for the development of joint doctrine.

• The practice of Lead Agent in the development of joint doctrine should be modified and the Joint Warfighting Center should be given responsibility and authority for managing the development of joint doctrine.

• Joint doctrine, in accordance with the Chairman’s policy, should be universally accepted as authoritative.

• The development of strategic plans can improve adherence to, and implementation of, joint doctrine.

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