Mission Report: FORT FUBAR
Imagine your Nick Saban (famous coach for the University of Alabama football team, “Roll Tide”) and you’re trying to create a sweet new offensive play. So, you tell your assistant coaches to come up with a few ideas for a new play that involves a run fake, with play action, where the quarterback has the option to run or throw the ball. You then tell them you want to see one version where the offensive line is balanced and another version of the same play where the line is unbalanced with more linemen to either the left or right side of the ball (COA DEV, Hooah). And boy does your staff deliver! They draw up a great play, show you exactly where everyone is supposed to block and what routes the receivers will run. You then have them “war game” out which of the two offensive line formations will work better and based on the criteria you selected, they decided to go with the unbalanced line to provide an extra blocker. You then brief this new play to your team, and everyone loves it.
During the next game you call the play, and it goes terribly. Turns out, with an unbalanced line, the back side defensive end was able to run free and make the tackle before the play could develop. But how can this be? You followed all of the steps (Football MDMP). You did the war game and conducted the brief. The answer is that you never actually battle tested the play! You never did it live. Even during your rehearsals, it still wasn’t the same. The defense was not going full speed.
This is the same way we do MDMP in the Army during training. We receive an order from higher, follow all of the steps in the process, maybe even conduct rehearsals, but in the end, we don’t execute the play! We don’t see if the course of action we chose will actually work.
So here is my solution. Have your subordinate Battalion’s, Companies, etc. actually run the mission! Your staff did all that hard work developing the COA, now let’s see how good they are at planning by running the mission. The measure of a successful COA is not “did you follow the steps.” The measure of a successful COA is “did it work.”
Far too often I see staffs plan and plan and plan, but they never get to see their plans in action. They don’t know if they are actually good at making plans or if they are just producing the product the Army wants to see. However, to pull this off, it will require effort on your part. You have to assign missions to your subordinate companies and battalions that your staff has planned. How often does a Battalion Commander get to maneuver his troops? Better yet, what about a Brigade Commander? I can tell you, in the National Guard it’s almost never. We send one IBCT through JRTC a year. Maybe they will do an NTC rotation, XCTC, or even a JMRC rotation prior to a deployment.
The point is, unless we are intentional about it (planning to execute an MDMP developed COA during Annual Training or drill), staffs will never get to see if they are good at developing COAs until it’s too late (the too late scenario is doing it live in combat). So to answer the article title “Why a fifth grader playing “Call of Duty” could out plan your staff,” the answer is that the fifth grader has multiple reps implementing his COA plan and your staff does not.
Love this article? Great! Let me know and I’ll produce more. Hate this article? Well, it’s probably ‘cause you’re a grass fairy who hates football. Why don’t you go ahead, respond, and let me know why I am wrong.
*This article was written by FUBAR 6. All opinions expressed in this article are that of the author. This article is not endorsed by the Department of Defense, the United States Army, or any other state or government agency. Comments to the author can be submitted below.