Five Elements of Campaigning

Reading Time: 23 minutes

As a nation – and as an important regional leader in the global community – Australia is experiencing significant changes to our strategic environment.^[1]

…defence plans can no longer assume Australia will have time to gradually adjust military capability and preparedness in response to emerging challenges.^[2]

No one starts a war- or rather, no one in their senses ought to do so- without first being clear in their mind what they intend to achieve by that war and how they intend to conduct it.^[3]

Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update places every Australian Defence Force (ADF) campaign planner on notice. No longer can ‘Defence planning assume a ten-year strategic warning time for a major conventional attack against Australia’.^[4] Instead, especially for ADF campaign planners, ‘coercion, competition and grey zone activities directly or indirectly targeting Australian interests are occurring now’.^[5]

A campaign is a ‘set of military operations planned and conducted to achieve a strategic objective within a given time and geographical area’.^[6] Supporting the ADF’s campaign definition, and simplifying campaign planning fundamentals, this paper articulates five elements of campaigning as a guide for ADF planners, summarised as: 

1. Entropic nature of planning
2. Relationships
3. Operating environment: ‘where people meet’
4. Authorities and caveats
5. Setting and maintaining the theatre of operations

This paper complements ADF planning processes, particularly the ADF Joint Military Appreciation Process (JMAP) and the Australian Army Military Appreciation Process (MAP), through describing five elements of campaigning to assist ADF planners in framing problems, thinking and thriving under pressure. 

As noted in Five Ideas: On Planning, Western militaries have developed a plethora of planning processes.^[7] These planning processes are ‘studied, practised, rehearsed and applied in training centres, schools and all command levels’.^[8] Varying slightly, western military planning processes apply reductionism, ‘the practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents’, in six common steps:^[9]

1. What is our environment? 
2. What problem must we solve?
3. How do we solve the problem? 
4. How do our proposed solutions work?
5. Recommend a decision
6. Implement a solution^[10]

Western military planning processes are deliberate, detailed, comprehensive and complete. These processes work well when planners have both a readily defined problem and extended time. When a problem is not readily defined and time is short, a reductionist western military planning process loses viability and efficacy. 

The 2020 Defence Strategic Update requires ADF campaign planners to plan accurately, in competition and before a crisis involves Australia. Competition mandates critically minded ADF planners who are self-disciplined, practiced, rehearsed, collaborative, clear thinking and creative. 

Assisting ADF planners to achieve 2020 Defence Strategic Update requirements, the five elements of campaigning are designed as a planning ‘ready reckoner’. This ready reckoner seeks to support an ADF, and ADF campaign planners, experiencing reduced warning times and changing, complex, unstructured and ill-defined problems. 

Five Elements of Campaigning

1. Entropic nature of planning

Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no person can imagine exactly who has not seen war.^[11]

The violent and interactive nature of war ensures that the reason governments embark in war, to achieve certain political objectives, will entropically change with time. War’s nature is ‘violent, interactive, and fundamentally political,’ defined as ‘a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other.’^[12] There is, therefore, a continuous need to revise policy and campaign planning in dynamic, incremental, and unpredictable strategic circumstances and environments.

Entropy is defined in three categories:^[13]

Campaign planning is entropic, where our intentions, including missions, purpose, tasks and lines of effort, interact violently with our enemies.^[14] Like the second category of entropy, campaigns, without continuously adjusting plans and planning lack order or predictability. Gradually, through variability, friction, chance, uncertainty and biased human judgement, our campaigns decline into disorder and, potentially, chaos and failure. 

Through running estimates measuring campaign plan variance, planners assess a campaign’s entropic conditions, actions, adjustments, threats and opportunities. Measuring campaign plan variance occurs through continuous interactions with our changing environment, combined with assessing changes in policy and processes by strategic, joint, interagency, regional, coalition and multi-sector partners. Our multi-sector partners include organisations demonstrating theatre and campaign enabling capabilities, in communities, technology, commerce, finance, industry, training, education and research.^[15]

Combat is violently entropic. Through armed clashes, combat and plans for combat, relentlessly move toward disorder and chaos. The commander’s intent, unified purpose and shared understanding may initially synchronise action. Supporting command synchronisation, these are the abilities for organisations to ‘communicate…[employ] specialist support (i.e., sustainment, fire support, intelligence, engineering) …and [retain] small group cohesion.’^[16] But as disorder through combat increases, reality diverges from the shared visualisation. 

This means that, without adjustment to our plans, resources, concepts, and missions, our previously synchronised and connected actions gradually erode and eventually cease. There is, therefore, a constant need to revise campaign and combat planning in violent, dynamic, incremental and unpredictable circumstances and environments. For planners, eight tools provide a framework to resist entropy during campaigning and combat, including:

1. Mission orders: emphasise achievable results, not how results are achieved. Orders are neither so detailed that they stifle initiative nor so general that they provide insufficient direction. Mission orders are succinct and unify efforts, enabling our people and teams to plan their operations through understanding the situation, mission, commander’s intent and essential tasks while assessing risk.^[17]
   
   Through commander’s intent, competence, shared understanding, mutual trust, disciplined initiative and risk acceptance, mission orders enable achievement of a campaign end state or ‘accepted enduring conditions’. An end state is a ‘desired future condition, articulated through command designated criteria, for a campaign or operation to conclude’.^[18] In contrast, accepted enduring conditions are ‘acceptable to our collective communities and stakeholders, conducive to our individual, collective and national interests and enable people to reach their potential’.^[19]
   
2. Education: inculcate an organisational culture of life-long education, continuous learning and self-motivated students of the military profession, through readily accessible education programs aligned to how differing generations of people learn.
   
3. Staff rides and tactical exercises without troops: habitually enable professional discourse amongst leaders, outside, on the ground, in weather conditions to challenge our thinking. Make mistakes, learn from each other and clarify our tactical and operational understanding. Study, walk and talk on terrain from ‘blue’ friendly perspectives and ‘red’ enemy perspectives. 
   
4. Doctrine and standard operating procedures: declassify doctrine and standard operating procedures (SOPs). Keep them simple, readable and current. Doctrine complements SOPs. An SOP should, therefore, not need to restate doctrine. 
   
5. Training: conducting routine tasks routinely. Divide days into micro-training opportunities. Training minutes turn into training hours, days, weeks and months. We are always delinquent in some of our training objectives. Know our weaknesses. Discuss our solutions. Train with the violently entropic nature of combat in front of mind. Under pressure, we fall to the level of our training.
   
6. Confirmation Brief versus Back Brief: Confirmation Brief is given by subordinate leaders to the higher commander immediately after receiving the operation order. Subordinate leaders brief the commander on their understanding of the:
   1. Commander’s intent.
   2. Unit task and purpose in the mission.
   3. Relationship between their unit’s missions and the other units in the operation.
7. Back Brief is provided by subordinate leaders to the commander explaining how the leaders intend to accomplish their mission. This helps the commander clarify their intent early in the subordinate leaders’ tactical estimate process. Back briefs allow the higher commander to:
   1. Identify risk, alterations and/or opportunities in the commander’s own concept of operation.
   2. Understand how subordinate leaders intend to accomplish their mission.^[20]
      
8. Rehearsals: begin with trust, which we patiently build; we cannot surge trust. Rehearsals commence with checks, inspections, practice and revision of training. Revision includes drills for equipment and tactics underwritten, from recruitment, in all leaders through their experience in repetitive and disciplined parade ground movement. 
   
   Depending on time constraints, terrain access, participant availability and operational security, rehearsals include and involve: sketch or topographic maps; key leaders; terrain-models; digital terrain-models; combined arms; support capabilities and systems; battle drills or SOPs; digital networks; rehearsals of concept; full mission rehearsals; and mission rehearsal exercises.^[21]
   
   Trust emanates from our initial planning events, enabling us to prepare for challenges ahead. Wargaming, testing and rehearsals help build confidence in our plan as feasible, acceptable, suitable, sustainable, distinguishable, employing deception and complete (FASSDDC). Red-teaming challenges our planning assumptions.
   
9. Plan your 1st 25-plays like Bill Walsh: if you want to sleep the night before a game [or a battle], have your first 25 plays [or opening actions] rehearsed and established in your own mind. Then you can commence a battle without the stress of determining your first moves. You will start the battle and you will remind yourself that you are looking at certain things because a pattern has been set. These include:
   • We have studied our enemy, we have examined intelligence, we have read reports, we know our enemy well.
   • Our ability to think concisely and our ability to make good judgments are much easier in rehearsals than during the heat of the battle.
   • We prefer to make our decisions related to a battle almost clinically before the battle commences. Our decisions made during rehearsals are the ones that make sense.
   • During a battle we are in a state of stress, sometimes we are in a state of desperation, yet we are expected to make calculated decisions.
   • Without question, during rehearsals our decisions are usually objective. In battle, and under pressures, our decisions become spontaneous.
   • In the final analysis, after a lot of time and thought and a lot of planning, and some practice, a commander must isolate themselves prior to battle and put together the battle’s first 25-plays.^[22]

Given that campaigning and combat are inexorably entropic, these eight tools for planners and leaders can only delay, modify or resist entropy in our plans. However, when combined, these eight tools enable our planners to constantly revise campaign planning in violent, dynamic, incremental and unpredictable circumstances and environments.

2. Relationships

Planners constantly foster and maintain relationships as fundamental systems and capabilities.^[23] Relationships are a pacing item. Where pacing items are ‘major systems [and capabilities]…central to an organisation’s ability to perform its designated mission’.^[24] These systems and capabilities are subject to continuous monitoring and management at all levels of command. A pacing item is held at the highest level of readiness.

Trusted relationships are hard to build, and easily broken. Trust in relationships is built over time based on common shared experiences, aligned values and habitual training.^[25] Relationships require mutual trust and shared confidence between leaders, their people, partners and teams. Trusted relationships enhance intra- and inter-organisational communication, save time through robust honest interactions and enable cooperative efforts.^[26]

For campaign success, planners nurture collaborative, courteous and continuous relationships. Planners work to support others. Others may, in turn, work to support planners. A planner may also work to coordinate the actions of others. In all cases, planners remain sensitive to the size, capability and capacity of the ADF. 

Planners carefully cultivate relationships without overwhelming other stakeholders through the ADF’s mass, organisation and presence. This applies especially when executing Australian-led whole-of-government operations domestically or in our immediate region, ‘ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland South-East Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South West Pacific’.^[27]

Further from Australia, the ADF may serve as a component within a larger coalition campaign plan. This was certainly the case for the ADF’s post-World War II campaigns in Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam, Gulf War, Somalia, Afghanistanand Iraq. When serving as a component within a larger coalition, campaign planners build relationships with senior coalition partners through:

• Purposefully joining the senior coalition team.
• Seeing and knowing the environment, threat, ourselves and our partners.
• Learning from our senior coalition colleagues, including adapting to their culture and sharing our culture. Learning never ends.
• Providing our knowledge, experience and perspectives.
• Seeking leadership over tasks, plans and projects.
• Leading through influence… not direction. 
• Maintaining a bias for action, especially following failure.
• Enhancing our professional mastery, which is the performance of our tasks, skills and actions with:^[28]
  • Competence
  • Emotional self-awareness
  • Flexibility in a range of environments and circumstances
  • Self-confidence in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions
  • Returning the investment of our service alongside senior coalition partners back to the ADF
• Maintaining connections with coalition partners. In our interconnected world, we will meet these same coalition colleagues again.

Tactical and operational relationships

When establishing campaign parameters at the tactical and operational levels, planners clarify two forms of relationships. Tactically, command relationships are defined as ‘command responsibility and authority’. Operationally, support relationships are defined as the ‘desired purpose, scope, and effect when one capability supports another’.^[29]

In coalition warfare at the tactical level, especially in warfare partnering the United States (US), there are generally two command relationships for planners to understand and employ:  

• Operational control: the authority to perform those functions of command over subordinate forces involving organising and employing commands and forces, assigning tasks, designating objectives, and giving authoritative direction necessary to accomplish the mission.^[30]
• Tactical control: the authority over forces that is limited to the detailed direction and control of movements or manoeuvres within the operational area necessary to accomplish missions or tasks assigned.^[31]

It is important for planners to note that ADF doctrine does not match US doctrine regarding these command relationships. For example, US operational control is closer in definition to ADF operational command, defined as ‘authority granted to a commander to specify missions or tasks to subordinate commanders, to deploy units, to re-assign forces and to retain or delegate operational control, tactical command and/or tactical control as may be deemed necessary’.^[32]

This difference between US and ADF doctrine applies similarly to US tactical control which is closer in definition to the ADF tactical command defined as ‘authority delegated to a commander to specify missions and tasks to forces under their command for the accomplishment of the mission specified by higher authority’.^[33]

In coalition warfare at the operational level, especially in warfare partnering the United States, there are generally two support relationships for planners to understand and employ:

• Supported commander: in the context of a support command relationship, the commander who receives assistance from another commander’s force or capabilities, and who is responsible for ensuring that the supporting commander understands the assistance required.^[34]
• Supporting commander: in the context of a support command relationship, the commander who aids, protects, complements, or sustains another commander’s force, and who is responsible for providing the assistance required by the supported commander.^[35]

In defining support relationships, US and ADF doctrine are broadly aligned.^[36]

Strategic relationships

At the strategic level an effective approach to coalition relationship building is through establishing a co-ordinating authority. This authority assigns a commander ‘responsibility for coordinating specific functions or activities involving forces of two or more countries or commands, or two or more Services or two or more forces of the same Service’.^[37]When appointed as a coordinating authority, a commander is authorised to:

• Request consultation between the agencies involved, or their representatives, but does not have the authority to compel agreement.
• Attempt, by discussion, to obtain essential agreement between the agencies involved.
• Refer unresolved issues to the appropriate authority.^[38]

Contemporary examples of effective strategic coordinating relationships include the US-led coalitions serving in Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) and Operation Gallant Phoenix,

As campaign planners foster and maintain trusted relationships as fundamental systems and capabilities, they simultaneously consider the operating environment and coordinate ‘where people meet’.

3. Operating Environment: ‘where people meet’

A fundamental task for campaign planners is to coordinate ‘where people meet’, or where two or more organisations interact, in the operating environment. Constant command and staff diligence is required to support organisations in their actions in complex, lethal and often cluttered operating environments. A commander ‘commands where people meet’, through clear and timely guidance articulating fulsome intent for organisational missions, tasks and purpose.^[39]

Complementing a commander, campaign planners ‘control where people meet’ communicating, synchronising and sequencing orders, actions, timings, support and resources to enable the commander’s intent. Operating environment coordination includes defining: 

• Locations of organisations.
• Areas of operation.
• Deception plans.
• Axis of advance.
• Report lines.
• Objectives.
• Coordination points.
• Boundaries (including operations boxes, restricted fire areas and temporary boundary changes).
• Limits of exploitation.
• Routes.
• Communication nodes.^[40]

Campaign planners consider the operating environment via a framework across three dimensions – human, information and physical^[41] – throughout five domains: maritime, land, air, cyber and space.^[42] This tri-dimensional and penta-domain framework stimulates critical and creative thinking, unifies disparate stakeholders while engaging planning partners through the six common planning steps:

1. What is our environment? 
2. What problem must we solve? 
3. How do we solve the problem? 
4. Will our proposed solutions work? 
5. Recommend a decision.
6. Implement a solution.^[43]

The tri-dimensional and penta-domain framework enables campaign planners to wholistically consider their operating environment. The framework, combined with the six common planning steps, iteratively and comprehensively considers all campaign aspects. 

As the campaign commences and the campaign realises its entropic nature, where our intentions, including missions, purpose, tasks and lines of effort, interact violently with our enemies, our planners will revisit the tri-dimensional and penta-domain framework^[44] Disciplined employment of the framework, assessing and measuring campaign plan variance, ensures commanders and planners remain attuned and responsive to changing campaign  requirements. This process continues until the campaign  ends or achieves accepted enduring conditions. 

Boundaries applicable to an operating environment or germane to a mission, task or geographic area, merit particular attention during campaign planning and execution. In considering boundaries, planners should focus on the following:  

• What boundaries exist, including clan, tribal, local government, emergency services, school districts, business, etc.? Are there benefits in aligning our campaign boundaries with existing and established boundaries?
• How may established boundaries offer opportunities to achieve our campaign objectives through collaborating with local communities, host nations, flanking units, formations, coalition partners or neighbouring nations?
• In optimising campaign collaboration, how do we establish intra-boundary and cross-boundary liaison, communications, support, information sharing and learning?
• In non-linear operating environments with global boundaries, such as the information dimension and cyber domain, coordination by planners requires early and continuous analysis, cooperation and support. For these skills, planners collaborate with practitioners from government, diplomatic, civil, maritime, air, land, special operations, transportation, strategic strike, cyber, information and web-based communities.^[45]

While campaign planners consider ‘where people meet’ in the operating environment via a framework across three dimensions – human, information and physical – throughout five domains: maritime, land, air, cyber and space, they must also plan the employment of authorities and caveats for allocated forces.

4. Authorities and caveats

Command includes the ‘authority and responsibility for optimising available resources and for planning employment, organisation, direction, coordination and control of military forces for the accomplishment of assigned missions’.^[46]Control is the ‘authority exercised by a commander over activities of subordinate organisations, or other organisations not normally under their command, which encompasses the responsibility for implementing orders or directives.^[47]Together, command and control define strategic, operational and tactical relationships.

Common to both command and control, authorities encompass policy, strategy, law, ethics, rules of engagement and culture. For campaigns, authorities are considered by planners through the six warfighting functions including: command relationships; intelligence sharing; movement and manoeuvre including access, basing and overflights; lethal and non-lethal targeting permissions; logistics provision and support; and, force protection requirements.^[48]  

Authorities are most effective when accompanied by resources. Authorities, linked to resources,  enable planners to assess campaign variance while measuring operational progress and mission success. In addition, resourced authorities empower planners to define the practicalities of a plan’s feasibility, acceptability, suitability, sustainability, distinguishability, deception and completeness (FASSDDC). 

Related to authorities are caveats. While caveats are deemed pejorative, defining what an organisation cannot do, authorities emphasise the positive – what an organisation is permitted to do. Authorities for all commands are limited in some way through available resources and through the employment, organisation, direction, coordination and control of military forces. Lead-nation campaign planners must resist the temptation to exaggerate coalition and partner ‘caveats’, while promoting their own operating methods as ‘authorities’.^[49]

To stimulate critical and creative thinking, unify stakeholders and engage key partners, planners may audit campaign plans to ensure proposed authorities match capabilities of relevant organisations. One method of auditing authorities for an organisation is through the seven principles of mission command or through the ADF Leadership doctrine’s ‘seven interdependent mission command conditions’.^[50]

Impartially executed, an audit enables an objective analysis of an organisation’s role in campaign plan. Auditing provides planners a new opportunity to understand an organisation’s capacity to employ assigned authorities ethically, safely, effectively and prudently. 

In turn, an audit re-examines a campaign plan based on planning constraints – tasks organisations “must do”, and restraints – tasks organisations “cannot do”.^[51] Following an audit, campaign planners may seek to amend allocated authorities, including applying less or more restrictive constraints or restraints to relevant organisations.

Auditing planned authorities through the seven principles of mission command, includes analysis of organisational:^[52]

(1)     Competence: tactically and technically competent people and teams are the foundation of effective mission command. Competence performing assigned tasks, to an agreed standard, is achieved via repetitive, realistic, and challenging training, combined with life-long learning through employment, education and professional development. Applied competence resists entropy during campaigning and combat. Competence gained through common experiences develops teamwork, trust, and shared understanding that people and teams need to realise mission command and unity of effort.^[53]

(2) Mutual Trust: is the result of shared confidence between our people and our teams based on reliability and competence in performing their assigned tasks. There are no shortcuts to gaining people’s trust. Over time – hours, days, weeks, months and years – trust is built, by all of us, on values, caring for people, consistent leadership, commitment, two-way communication, personal example and common shared experiences. People are more willing to exercise initiative when they believe their commander and team trusts them by accepting and supporting the consequences of their decisions.^[54]Shared Understanding: of an operating environment, task, purpose and approaches to solving problems forms the basis of unity of effort enabling peoples’ disciplined initiative. Effective decentralised task execution is not possible without first achieving a shared understanding.^[55] 

(3) Shared understanding is enabled by two interdependent variables, collective knowledge and connected actions:
– Collective knowledge encompasses common problem perception and common professional language, including doctrine, operating procedures, operating systems, training and education.
– Connected actions include our contest of ideas, diverse opinions, personal example, dialogue, coaching, mentoring and collaboration.^[56]
– Both collective knowledge and connected actions are perishable, especially when people and teams are pressured in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments. Therefore, when not in pressured environments, people and teams must consistently train, learn and educate to test and sustain our skills in sharing and nurturing our application of collective knowledge and connected actions.

(4) Commander’s intent: is a clear and concise expression of the task, purpose, limitations, conditions and end-state, or accepted enduring conditions, of an operation. Commander’s intent, personally prepared and delivered, provides focus to our people and teams for achievement of the commander’s desired results without further orders, even when the operation does not unfold as planned. Commander’s intent, nested and reinforced at each level of command, provides the basis for unified actions throughout the force. A succinct and clear commander’s intent that people and teams can remember and understand, even without an order, is key to maintaining unity of effort.^[57]

(5) Mission Orders: an order is a communication—verbal, written, or signalled—that conveys instructions from commanders to their people and their teams. Orders provide guidance, assign tasks, allocate resources and delegate authority. Most orders contain five elements: situation; mission; execution; administration & logistics; and command and signals.^[58] Employing mission orders, commanders remain solely responsible and accountable for exercising delegated authority through people and teams. In turn, disciplined initiative and coordination allow our people and teams to plan, prepare, and execute their operations to accomplish their own mission.^[59]

(6) Disciplined initiative: is when people and teams work to follow their orders and adhere to the plan until they realise their orders and the plan are no longer suitable for the situation in which they find themselves. The situation may change through: enemy or friendly action; weather; terrain or infrastructure changes; equipment or logistics availability, or seizing, retaining, and exploiting an opportunity offering a greater chance of success than the original plan.^[60] Enabling disciplined initiative requires a command climate of mutual trust, shared understanding and learning. In training – before committing to combat – commanders practice and learn to accept risk and underwrite the good-faith mistakes of their people.

In turn, people practice and rehearse employing commander’s intent to define the limits within which they may exercise initiative. People learn to trust that they have the authority and responsibility to act. Intent provides our people the confidence to apply their judgment in ambiguous situations because they know the mission’s purpose and desired end-state or accepted enduring conditions.^[61]

(7) Risk Acceptance: mission command requires commanders, people and teams to manage accepted risk, exercise initiative and act decisively, even when the outcome is uncertain.^[62] Risk is the exposure of someone, or something valued to danger, harm, or loss. Because risk is part of every operation, it cannot be avoided.^[63]

Commanders analyse risk in collaboration with people and teams to determine what level of risk is acceptable and whether to tolerate, treat or transfer risk, or terminate the mission. In developing courses of action, commanders consider risk to the force and risk to the mission against perceived benefits. They apply judgment regarding the importance of an objective, the time available, and any anticipated costs.^[64] In applying judgement, commanders assess:

• Who holds, or owns, the risk?
• For how long is the risk held?
• Do we treat, transfer or tolerate the risk? Of do we terminate the operation?

Reasonably estimating and intentionally accepting risk is not gambling. Gambling is a commander deciding to risk the force without a reasonable level of information about the outcome. ^[65]

Understanding campaign authorities and caveats, includes auditing an organisation’s capacity to employ assigned authorities safely, effectively and prudently. Command, authorities and caveats encompass all six warfighting functions. Setting and maintaining the theatre for the warfighting functions is the final task for campaign planners. 

5. Setting and Maintaining the Theatre of Operations

A theatre of operations, or simply a theatre, is an area defined for the conduct and support of specific military operations.^[66] Primarily, a theatre is established when the scope of the operation in time, space, purpose, and/or employed forces exceeds the capacity of a Combined Joint Operational Area (CJOA). 

A CJOA is a defined area of sea, land, air and cyberspace in which a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) Commander conducts military operations to accomplish a specific mission.  CJOAs are particularly useful when operations are limited in scope and geographic area or when operations are to be conducted on the boundaries between theatres.^[67]

In a theatre of operations, unlike a CJOA, more than one combined joint force headquarters can operate. One or more theatres may be established. Different theatres will normally be focused on different missions.  A theatre of operations typically is smaller than a theatre of war but is large enough to allow for operations in depth and over extended periods of time. Theatres of operations are normally associated with major operations and campaigns and may cross the boundary of two, or more, CJOAs.^[68]

The purpose of setting and maintaining a theatre, is to ‘create conditions, gain access, support military operations, sustain joint forces, and facilitate the successful execution of a campaign plan and other strategic plans’.^[69] For campaign planners, setting and maintaining the theatre is a continuous activity enabling the ADF to ‘deploy military power to shape[Australia’s] environment, deter actions against [Australia’s] interests and, when required, respond with military force’.^[70] Setting and maintaining the theatre may occur in contact with the enemy.

Setting and maintaining the theatre seizes the initiative, exploits opportunities, retains freedom of action and achieves decision in combat through the synchronisation, coordination and integration of multi-national and joint capabilities. These capabilities include: intelligence; communications; movement; manoeuvre; lethal and non-lethal fires; sustainment; contracting; medical; air and missile defence; engineering; chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear defence; security; and ready response forces. 

Across three dimensions – human, information and physical – and throughout five domains: maritime, land, air, cyber and space of an operating environment, planners set and maintain theatre access. Through planners defining, assessing and coordinating requirements, theatre access is defined for:

• Sea, land and air routes,
• Ports,
• Terminals,
• Airfields,
• Basing, 
• Cyber effects, and the
• Electromagnetic spectrum.

For multi-national joint operations, setting and maintaining a theatre requires campaign planners to assess, coordinate and harmonise diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence and law enforcement elements of national power.^[71] Enabling national power, multi-national joint operations require resources from the entire ADF coordinated with whole-of-government, coalition, host nation support and multi-sector partners. ADF multi-sector partners include organisations demonstrating theatre and campaign enabling capabilities, partnered through leadership, ethics and innovation, in communities, technology, commerce, finance, industry, training, education and research.^[72]

For campaign planners, 2020 Defence Strategic Update provides the ADF guidance for setting and maintaining a theatre of operations, encompassing ‘force structure planning, force generation, international engagement and operations’, based on six priorities:^[73]

1. Prioritising a geographical focus on Australia’s immediate region – ‘ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland South-East Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South West Pacific’.^[74]
2. Growing self-reliance, including theatre opening capabilities for deployed organisations, equipment, and supply:
   • Reception. 
   • Assembly as mission-tailored organisations.
   • Transportation to designated destinations.
   • Distribution networks.
   • Contracting. 
   • Local procurement.
   • Theatre gateways.
   • Personnel accountability.
   • Medical operations.^[75]
3. Working closely with other arms of Government.
4. Enhancing lethality.
5. Maintaining the ability to operate globally, through ‘mobilisation, deployment, employment, and redeployment of forces’.^[76]
6. Enhancing capacity to support civil authorities in response to natural disasters and crises, including continuity of operations for coordination nodes, community capabilities, key infrastructure and strategic systems.^[77]

In setting and maintaining a theatre of operations, the Defence Strategic Update 2020 requires ADF ‘force structure and capability adjustments focussing on responding to grey zone challenges, the possibility of high-intensity conflict and domestic crises’.^[78] Ultimately, if requirements match the ‘capabilities [the ADF] have to offer… and can be applied, then, of course, we show up’.^[79]

In addition, to setting and maintaining a theatre of operations, Defence Strategic Update 2020 requires ADF capacity to ‘conduct cooperative defence activities with countries in the region [as] fundamental to our ability to shape our strategic environment’.^[80] Further, the ADF must ‘be prepared to lead coalition operations where it is in the interests of the region for us to do so, especially in our immediate region.^[81]

Setting and maintaining the theatre for the ADF, is a partnership between Chief of Joint Operations (CJOPS) and a multi-national joint force commander, usually designated a commander Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF). Together, CJOPS and the CJTF Commander coordinate theatre arrangements with whole-of-government, coalition, host nation support and multi-sector partners.

There may be one or more CJTF Commander(s) in a theatre of operations. Together, both CJOPS and the CJTF Commander(s), and their planners, simultaneously set and maintain the theatre for the employment of the multi-national joint force(s). In addition, planners prepare resourcing and enable missions to achieve campaign objectives for the realisation of operational and strategic end states or accepted enduring conditions.

Conclusion

Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update states that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) can no longer ‘assume a ten-year strategic warning time for a major conventional attack against Australia’.^[82] Instead, especially for ADF campaign planners, ‘coercion, competition and grey zone activities directly or indirectly targeting Australian interests are occurring now’.^[83]

This paper supports ADF campaign planners to achieve the objectives of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update. Through five elements of campaigning – entropic nature of planning; relationships; operating environment (where people meet); authorities and caveats; and, setting and maintaining the theatre of operations – this paper is a practical guide for ADF campaign planners. 

This paper complements ADF planning processes, particularly the Australian Defence Force, Joint Military Appreciation Process (JMAP) and the Australian Army, The Military Appreciation Process (MAP), through describing five elements of campaigning to assist ADF planners to frame problems, think and thrive under pressure. 

The five elements of campaigning are designed as a planning ready reckoner. They simplify campaign fundamentals for ADF planners, as we contend with reduced warning times and changing, complex, unstructured and ill-defined problems. 

About the Author: Major General Chris Field, @ChrisFieldAUS, Australian Army, served as Deputy Commanding General, Operations, United States Army Central, 2020-2021, in South Carolina and Kuwait.  

This paper does not represent any official positions of the Australian Army or Australian Department of Defence or the US Army or US Department of Defense.

Cover Image Credit: CAPT Lily Charles, Defence Images

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End Notes:

^[1] Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Defence, 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Canberra, 2020, p. 4

^[2] Ibid, p. 14

^[3] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, Book 8, Chapter 2, p. 579

^[4] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 14

^[5] Ibid, p. 14

^[6] Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Defence Doctrine Publication (ADDP) 3.0—Campaigns and Operations, Department of Defence Canberra ACT 2600, edition 2, amendment list 1, 2014, p. 1-1

^[7] Chris Field, Five Ideas: On Planning, The Cove – the Australian Profession of Arms, Canberra, 21 November 2018 https://cove.army.gov.au/article/five-ideas-planning [accessed 28 October 2020]

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2018, https://www.lexico.com/definition/reductionism [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[10] Field, Five Ideas: On Planning, Op Cit.

^[11] Clausewitz, On War, Op Cit, p. 119

^[12]  Christopher Mewett, Understanding War’s Enduring Nature Alongside its Changing Character, War On The Rocks, Washington, District of Columbia, United States, 21 January 2014   

https://warontherocks.com/2014/01/understanding-wars-enduring-nature-alongside-its-changing-character/  [accessed 28 October 2021] and United States Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting, Op Cit, p. 3 and Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Defence Doctrine Publication – Doctrine, Foundations of Australian Military Doctrine, Capstone Series, Defence Publishing Service, edition 3, Canberra, Australia, 2012, p. 2-1

^[13] Ben Purvis, Yong Mao and Darren Robinson, Entropy and its Application to Urban Systems, Laboratory for Urban Complexity and Sustainability, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK, 12 January 2019, p. 1

^[14] United States, Department of Defense, Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, Washington, D.C, 01 December 2020, p. GL-11

Line of Effort: In the context of planning, using the purpose (cause and effect) to focus efforts toward establishing operational and strategic conditions by linking multiple tasks and missions. 

^[15] Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Army, Forces Command 2020 to 2028: Supporting Army’s Contributions to Defence Strategy, enabling Army in motion, mastering Accelerated Warfare and upholding Good Soldiering, Canberra, 2019, p. 1

^[16] Marinus, On Defeat Mechanism, Maneuverist Paper No. 10, Marine Corps Gazette, Marine Corps Association, Quantico, Virginia, Vol. 105, No. 7, July 2021, p. 103

^[17] Chris Field, Connecting Good Soldiering and Mission Command, The Cove – the Australian Profession of Arms, Canberra, 18 March 2021 https://cove.army.gov.au/article/connecting-good-soldiering-and-mission-command [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[18] Australian Defence Force Procedures, ADFP 5.0.1—Joint Military Appreciation Process, edition 2, Canberra, 15 August 2019, p. 2-25

^[19] Chris Field, Seven Ideas For Leadership Beyond COVID-19, The Cove, Australian Army Profession of Arms, Canberra, 10 June 2020 https://cove.army.gov.au/article/seven-ideas-leadership-beyond-covid-19 [accessed 28 October 2021]

The idea of ‘accepted enduring conditions’ was originally developed in Australian Army Headquarters, Army’s Future Land Operating Concept, Directorate of Army Research and Analysis, Canberra, ACT, September 2009, p viii https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/sites/default/files/acfloc_2012_main.pdf [accessed 28 October 2020]

^[20] Chris Field, On Personal and Professional Potential, The Cove – the Australian Profession of Arms, Canberra, 13 August 2019 https://cove.army.gov.au/article/personal-and-professional-potential [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[21] United States, Headquarters Department of the Army, Field Manual 6-0, Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, Washington, D.C., 05 May 2014, Chapter 12, pp. 12-1 – 12-14

^[22] Chris Field, 52 Weeks of Ideas Part 2: Resilience, War and Strategy, The Cove – the Australian Profession of Arms, Canberra, 07 April 2021 https://cove.army.gov.au/article/52-weeks-ideas-part-2-resilience-war-and-strategy [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[23] Field, Seven Ideas For Leadership Beyond COVID-19, Op Cit.

^[24] United States, Headquarters Department of the Army, Army Regulation 220–1, Field Organizations, Army Unit Status Reporting and Force Registration – Consolidated Policies, Washington, D.C., 15 April 2010, p. 99

^[25] Email from Brigadier Doug Laidlaw, Commander JTF 646, to author, 14 May 2020

^[26] Chris Field, Community recovery – Six ideas to close community ‘intent-to-capability’, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience, Monograph No. 2, February 2018, p. 3

^[27] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 6

^[28] Lieutenant Colonel Greg de Somer and Major David John Schmidtchen, Professional Mastery: The Human Dimension of Warfighting Capability for the Army-After-Next, Land Warfare Studies Centre Working Paper No. 107, Canberra, October 1999, p. 3

^[29] Justin M Redfern and Aaron M Cornett, The challenging world of command and support relationships, United States Army Sustainment Magazine, 5 April 2018. 

https://www.army.mil/article/203331/the_challenging_world_of_command_and_support_relationships

[accessed 28 October 2021]

^[30] United States, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Washington D.C., April 2018. p. 171

^[31] Ibid. p. 224

^[32] Australian Defence Force, Philosophical – 0 Command and Control, Edition 2 AL2, Canberra, 01 July 2021, p. 65

^[33] Ibid, p. 65

^[34] Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Op Cit. p. 220

^[35] Ibid. p. 220

^[36] Philosophical – 0 Command and Control, Op Cit, pp. 92-93 

ADF Doctrine:

• Supported commander. Supported commanders have primary responsibility for all aspects of an assigned task and are allocated resource priority. Supported commanders must indicate to supporting commanders their support missions/requirements and associated coordinating instructions.
• Supporting commander. Supporting commanders provide forces, equipment, logistics or other support to a supported commander as required. They must advise the supported commander on the availability and most appropriate employment of their assets. Supporting commanders under an ‘in direct support’ arrangement are responsible for completing the mission/tasks allocated to them by the supported commander. Supporting commanders under an ‘in support of’ arrangement may prioritise their own missions/tasks; however, they must use any remaining capacity to assist the supported commander’s mission/tasks.

^[37] Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Defence Doctrine Publication (ADDP) 00.1—Command and Control, Department of Defence Canberra ACT 2600, edition 2, amendment list 1, 01 March 2019, p. 5-16

^[38] Ibid, p. 5-16

^[39] Chris Field, Command and Control 3rd Brigade (Reinforced)(ANZUS) and Exercise Talisman Sabre 2017, The Cove – the Australian Profession of Arms, Canberra, 20 May 2019, pp. 1-2

https://cove.army.gov.au/article/command-and-control [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[40] Ibid, p. 8

^[41] United Kingdom, Ministry of Defence, Joint Concept Note 1/20 – Multi-Domain Integration, Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Shrivenham, November 2020, p. 36

^[42] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 35

^[43] Field, Five Ideas: On Planning, Op Cit.

^[44] United States, Department of Defense, Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, Op Cit, p. GL-11

Line of Effort: In the context of planning, using the purpose (cause and effect) to focus efforts toward establishing operational and strategic conditions by linking multiple tasks and missions. 

^[45] Field, Five Ideas: On Planning, Op Cit.

^[46] Australian Defence Doctrine Publication (ADDP) 00.1—Command and Control, Op Cit, p. 1-1

^[47] Ibid, p. 1-1

^[48] Field, Five Ideas: On Planning, Op Cit.

^[49] Ibid.

^[50] Commonwealth of Australia, ADF Leadership, Australian Defence Force, Philosophical Doctrine, 0 Series, Command, Edition 3, Canberra, Australia, 2021, pp. 34-41. 

The Australian Defence Force ADF Leadership 2021, ‘seven interdependent mission command conditions’ are identical the US Army’s seven principles of mission command in  Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces 2019. The important exception is:

• ADF Leadership doctrine emphasises: Checking and verifying people, where responsibility for the outcome of a mission rests with the leader who issues it. This means you need to check and verify your subordinates’ execution of the mission. You as the leader must know, track and understand the situation and context in which your subordinates are operating. Done with forethought and care, this can reinforce trust and avoid ‘micro-management’. The art of mission command requires you to focus your checks at the right time, place, organisation and issue. It is a fundamental error to think of mission command as ‘set and forget’; rather it is ‘set, follow, check, support and adapt’. (Commonwealth of Australia, ADF Leadership, Op Cit, p. 40)
• In contrast, US Army mission command doctrine, emphasises: Competence: performing assigned tasks, to an agreed standard, is achieved via repetitive, realistic, and challenging training, combined with life-long learning through employment, education and professional development. (Headquarters Department of the United States Army, Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces, Army Doctrine Publication, ADP 6-0, Washington, D.C., 31 July 2019, p. 1-7)

^[51] United States, Department of Defense, Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, Op Cit,  Chapter III, p. 18

Constraint: is a requirement placed on the command by a higher command that dictates an action (“must do”), thus restricting freedom of action. For example, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was required to enter the continent of Europe instead of relying upon strategic bombing to defeat Germany. 

Restraint: is a requirement placed on the command by a higher command that prohibits an action (“cannot do”), thus restricting freedom of action. For example, General Douglas MacArthur was prohibited from striking Chinese targets north of the Yalu River during the Korean War.

^[52] Field, Connecting Good Soldiering and Mission Command, Op Cit. 

^[53] Headquarters Department of the United States Army, Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces, Army Doctrine Publication, ADP 6-0, Washington, D.C., 31 July 2019, p. 1-7

^[54] Ibid, pp. 1-7 – 1-8

^[55] Ibid, pp. 1-8 – 1-9

^[56] Ibid, pp. 1-8 – 1-9

^[57] Ibid, pp. 1-9 – 1-10

^[58] Ibid, pp. 1-10 – 1-11

^[59] Ibid, pp. 1-10 – 1-11

^[60] Ibid, pp. 1-11 – 1-12

^[61] Ibid, pp. 1-11 – 1-12

^[62] Ibid, p. 1-14

^[63] Ibid, p. 1-13

^[64] Ibid, p. 1-13

^[65] Ibid, p. 1-14

^[66] United States Department of Defense, Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations, Op Cit, pp. IV-10 – IV-11

^[67] Ibid, p. IV-11 

^[68] Ibid, pp. IV-10 – IV-11

^[69] Headquarters, Department of the United States Army, Army Techniques Publication No. 3-93, Theater Army, Operations, Washington, DC, 27 August 2021, p. 5-1

^[70] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 30

^[71] Cesar Augusto Rodriguez, Timothy Charles Walton, and Hyong Chu,  Putting the “FIL” into “DIME”: Growing Joint Understanding of the Instruments of Power, Joint Force Quarterly 97, 01 April 2020 https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1099537.pdf [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[72] Forces Command 2020 to 2028: Supporting Army’s Contributions to Defence Strategy, enabling Army in motion, mastering Accelerated Warfare and upholding Good Soldiering, Op Cit, p. 1

^[73] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 25

^[74] Ibid, p. 6

^[75] United States Army, Army Techniques Publication No. 3-93, Theater Army, Operations, Op Cit, p. 5-5

^[76] Ibid, p. 5-3

^[77] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 25

^[79] The Hon Scott Morrison, MP, Prime Minister of Australia, Address – Launch of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Canberra, Australia, 01 July 2020 https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-launch-2020-defence-strategic-update [accessed 28 October 2021]

^[78] Ibid, p. 30

^[80] 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Op Cit, p. 26

^[81] Ibid, p. 26

^[82] Ibid, p. 14

^[83] Ibid, p. 14