Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 35

DELIBERATE WAR PLANNING

The solution proffered here is a theoretical framework
populated by an objective set of criteria that can be
used to assess the validity of a plan objectively and, in

so doing, shift the focus from institutional and bureaucratic concerns to the strategic merits of war plans and
war planning.

Notes
1. Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian War Planning, 1st ed. (New York: Berg Publishers, 1991); Talbot C. Imlay
and Monica Duffy Toft, eds., The Fog of Peace and War Planning:
Military and Strategic Planning under Uncertainty (London: Routledge, 2007); Steven T. Ross, American War Plans, 1890-1939, 1st
ed. (London: Routledge, 2004); Steven T. Ross, American War
Plans, 1941-1945: The Test of Battle (London: Routledge, 1997);
Steven T. Ross, American War Plans, 1945-1950, 1st ed. (London:
Routledge, 2013).
2. White House, National Security Strategy (Washington, DC:
White House, February 2015), 7, accessed 13 October 2016,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf.
3. Department of Defense Directive 5100.01, Functions of the
Department of Defense and Its Major Components (Washington, DC:
U.S. Government Publishing Office [GPO], 21 December 2010), 1.
4. Joint Publication ( JP) 5-0, Joint Operation Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, 11 August 2011), I-1.
5. Gordon B. Davis Jr., Thomas C. Graves, and Christopher N.
Prigge, “The Strategic Planning ‘Problem,’” Military Review 93, no.
6 (November-December 2013): 10, accessed 13 October 2016,
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/
MilitaryReview_20131231_art005.pdf; Martin E. Dempsey, “A
Campaign Of Learning: Avoiding The Failure Of Imagination,”
The RUSI Journal 155, no. 3 (2010): 6–9; Janine Davidson, “The
Contemporary Presidency: Civil-Military Friction and Presidential
Decision Making: Explaining the Broken Dialogue,” Presidential
Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (March 2013): 130–31.
6. Paul Davis, senior principal researcher at RAND, conversation with author, 7 April 2016.
7. Robert M. Gates, Duty (New York: Knopf, 2014), 118 and 143.
8. JP 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, chap. 1.
9. Ibid.
10. The figures presented here are based on preliminary
analysis: twenty full-time planners in each of the nine combatant
command plans divisions (180); ten full-time planners in each of
the thirty-six service components (360); sixty full-time planners
in the joint staff J5 and Office of the Secretary of Defense, Plans;
and sixty full-time planners serving as doctrine writers, instructors, and information technology specialists.

MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2017

11. For more information on unified command plans, see
Edward J. Drea et al., History of the Unified Command Plan:
1946–2012 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, 2013).
12. Robert A. Gleckler, “Why War Plans, Really?” Joint Force
Quarterly 79 (4th Quarter, October 2015): 71–76, accessed
13 October 2016, http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/
jfq/jfq-79/jfq-79_71-76_Gleckler.pdf.
13. Combined Chiefs of Staff, “Combined Chiefs of Staff Directive for Operation Overlord,” 12 February 1944, ibiblio website,
accessed 13 October 2016, https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/
Overlord/Overlord-CCS-Dir.html.
14. JP 3-0, Joint Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO,
11 August 2011), A4–A5.
15. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Beatrice Heuser (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 105.
16. Robert Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd
ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2002), 3–9. Yin describes exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory research strategies.
17. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks at the National Defense
Executive Reserve Conference,” 14 November 1957, online by
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency
Project website, accessed 13 October 2016, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10951.
18. The U.S. military’s planning doctrine accounts for the value
that prewar planning provides to individual and organizational
learning in “Constant Change, Learning, and Adaptation,” JP 5-0,
Joint