The new Capstone Concept, McMaster said, examines how the Army operates under conditions of complexity and uncertainty in an era of persistent conflict. The concept's purpose is to put into operational terms Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey's vision of balancing the Army to win today's wars while describing how the future Army will fight the wars of tomorrow.[...]
The primary purpose of the capstone concept is to lead force development and employment by establishing a common framework to think about future Army operations; place modernization decisions in a broader context of future armed conflict; establish a conceptual foundation for subordinate concepts; guide experimentation in Army operations and capabilities; and guide capability development.
"We looked at how the Army intends to operate and face the challenges in the future operating environment against what we're calling hybrid threats," said McMaster. "By looking at the current operating environment and the hybrid threats we face and could face in the future, this helps the Army make a grounded projection into the near future and understand what challenges our Army will face as part of a Joint, interdepartmental and multinational force, and then develop the capability our Army will need to fight the future battle."
BG McMaster is leading a team that will complete work on the Capstone Concept by the end of this year. The new Capstone Concept is then supposed to guide the development of subordinate Army doctrine. The Capstone Concept effort thus represents important guidance for Army training, leader development, and combat unit organization.
During his presentation last week, BG McMaster emphasized the differences between the doctrine his team is completing and the doctrine the Army operated under a decade ago. Small Wars Journal hopes to provide further discussion of the Army Capstone Concept as it nears completion. For now, I recommend reading the article linked to above.
Comments
Bill Keller:
To expand on what Ken White said just look at the Marine Corps. Due to their frugalness, expeditionary nature, or any list of factors that is exactly what they are and is exactly how they operate.
The Marine Corps manages chaos, whether on the battlefield or concept development, through decentralized overall guidance and authority and disciplined actors. And it sounds to me that is exactly what McMaster is suggesting.
It also sounds like he is repeating (from an Army centric perspective) almost word for word Marine CMC Gen Conway's Two-Fisted Fighter approach that he's been building the Corps on for the last 2+ yrs.
Bill Keller:
Simple. By having enough people within the organization that are more focused, dispersed, versatile, adaptive, intelligent and forward looking assume control of the level of violence in the environment in which the well organized rigid external is dwelling thus transcending the overly organized tier oriented and disciplined organizational strictures.
Having read this and its supporting article, I remain concerned with this question:
How does a well organized, tier oriented, well disciplined organization, that accepts its guidance mostly from an isolated top tier doctrine expect to react appropriately to an exterior, focused, concentrated, versatile, adaptive, intelligent and outward looking antibody that controls the level of chaos in the environment in which the well organized rigid external must dwell?
Industry equal - Ma Bell versus CATV.