On Relationships between Key Concepts of Operational Level Planning

The Australian operational level planning doctrine, Joint Military Appreciation Process (JMAP), comprises four consecutive and iterative steps, namely: Mission Analysis (MA), Course of Action (COA) Development, COA Analysis, and Decision & Execution. All four steps are supported by an integral operational level intelligence function called Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace (JIPB). During each step of the JMAP, a number of planning objects are produced, leading to the development of an operational plan in its most abstract form: a variety of courses of actions with branches and sequels. The planning objects include a military end-state, centres of gravity (COG) for both the threat and the friendly forces, critical vulnerabilities (CV) and decisive points (DP), properly defined in Operational Art. A course of action is a line of operations that consists of sequenced and coordinated military actions that traverse decisive points, leading to the achievement of the identified military end-state. The desired military actions exploit the threat critical vulnerabilities, while protecting own critical vulnerabilities. The effectiveness of the individual military actions is assessed through their impact on the centres of gravity of both the threat and friendly forces. This paper develops a modelling framework to elaborate the relationships between key concepts of operational level planning with a focus on deliberate planning. A qualitative analytical model of the concepts is presented to illustrate these relationships. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate course of action development in a systematic manner such that the intermediate and final planning products are amenable to analysis, comparison and reuse. Our goal is to complement Operational Art with a qualitative analytical framework for planning.