Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 66

Campaign Plan Framework: A Road
Map to Achieving Your Intent

In JP 5-0, Joint Operational Planning, a campaign plan
is defined as
a series of related major operations aimed
at accomplishing strategic and operational
objectives within a given time and space.
Planning for a campaign is appropriate when
the contemplated military operations exceed
the scope of a single major operation. Thus,
campaigns are often the most extensive
joint operations in terms of time and other
resources. Campaign planning has its greatest application in the conduct of large-scale
combat operations, but can be used across the
range of military operations.3
Joint and Army doctrine do not formally recognize
a campaign plan (per the doctrinal definition) as a
tool at the tactical level of Army operations. However,
most units since the early days of Operations Enduring
Freedom and Iraqi Freedom have created and nested
their deployment operations across time and space using the campaign model. In fact, given that the missions
and the complexities of operations far exceed established doctrinal planning constructs, I have found the
creation of a campaign framework (both in garrison
and deployed) as a natural and necessary complement
to my commander’s intent. My intent rarely changed;
however, my campaign plan was updated (iteratively
based on our planning cycles, and then only after a
thorough and deliberate planning process recommended such changes) to reflect changes that were less
seismic than those that would have required an update
to my intent.
In garrison, I structured my campaign plan around
three logical lines of effort: leader development, training, and fortifying the team. In combat, my three lines
of effort were Afghan National Security Force development, security operations, and retrograde. In both
cases, the end state to my campaign plans matched my
commander’s intent, but the milestones, objectives,
and subordinate lines of effort changed periodically to
match the realities on the ground.
As the campaign plan and my intent served as the
(largely) unchanging azimuth for our operations, the
cyclic decision-making process allowed the brigade to
make small course corrections along the way.
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Targeting: Timely Cyclic Decision
Making

Targeting is defined in JP 3-0 as “the process of selecting and prioritizing targets and matching the appropriate
response to them, considering operational requirements
and capabilities.”4
Although our brigade used the Army’s doctrinal
MDMP for some of our conventional planning (e.g., initial
campaign plan development and redeployment operation
order), we found that the use of a targeting-style decision-making process was more responsive to the fast pace
of operations, and it directly nested with my campaign
plan. Although there are several approaches to targeting
within our Army, I define targeting simply as a deliberate,
cyclic planning process. My initial targeting cycle was two
weeks, as I found this to be adequate to preempt changing
conditions during our deployment. I later elongated
the process to a four-week cycle after the end of the
fighting season (i.e., the warm-weather months in
Afghanistan). In fact, the length of the process was not
as important as executing the same targeting process
we fine-tuned during our JRTC deployment where it
was a three-day model. The most important input from
using a targeting model (versus the MDMP) is the subordinate commander assessment that starts each cycle.
Immediate orders production allows the battalion an
entire targeting cycle to refine planning before execution at the company level.
Planning six weeks prior to execution allowed me to
shape events at the brigade level in a synchronized, coordinated manner despite being spread across two provinces
and partnering with a multitude of Afghan Security Force
organizations. My targeting ensured that, although tactical operations and unit-level advising occurred daily at the
platoon, company, troop, and security force advisory and
assistance team (SFAAT) level, all activities nested toward
a common brigade end state.
I viewed our battle not as a thousand unrelated
tactical engagements but as a thousand interconnected
tactical engagements united by a common end state
and achieved through common objectives that we
established in our targeting meeting. At the end of
each targeting cycle, we published a targeting fragmentary order that prioritized and synchronized assets
(time, resources, and priorities) over the duration of
the targeting cycle. The targeting cycle allowed me
to prioritize and synchronize the key tasks from my
March-April 2015  MILITARY REVIEW