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February 15, 2007

On Assumptions

The blogosphere is abuzz today with the exciting news of slides from the Iraq planning. As it appears the people chatting about the subject are unfamiliar with the inner workings of the military, it's important to explain just what these documents do and do not say.

At issue is this slide:

In the military, the word 'assumption,' like many terms, has a very specific meaning. When planning, we rarely have all facts available to us. Developing a detailed plan often requires us to make assumptions. For example, if we are developing a plan to invade Canada, we may not know how the local population will react to our presence. Our plan needs to take that issue into account, so we make an assumption, say that the locals will attempt to disrupt our invasion force through insurgent tactics. When we make an assumption, it needs to pass two tests: it must be necessary and valid. Necessary refers to the plan. If we don't need to make the assumption, we shouldn't make it; we make assumptions only when planning cannot continue without more data. Valid refers to the realism of the assumption. We cannot assume that the Canadians will greet our invasion with open arms simply because that would make things easier. To use an historical example, when the Allies planned Operation Market Garden, they assumed that XXX Corps could reach Arnhem in four days. That assumption was necessary: without it, the Allies would never have dropped the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. But it was not valid: it took XXX Corps seven days to reach the south bank of the Rhine, by which time 1 Para was combat ineffective. MG Urquhart took 10,600 men into Arnhem; less than 2,300 made it out and 1 Para was never reconstituted; bad assumptions lead to disaster.

A good staff will examine each assumption carefully against these criteria. A good plan makes only those assumptions that are absolutely necessary, and takes pains to validate assumptions as soon as possible. I am not in a position to criticize the staff that built the plan for Iraq, as I don't know what they did in developing these assumptions. But certainly in hindsight many of them look pretty bad. Let's review each of them.

"This operation will be the national main effort." Meets both criteria easily. The amount of personnel and supplies meant OIF needed to be the main effort so the assumption was necessary, and clearly Iraq has been our main effort for the last four years, so it was also valid.

"Opposition groups will work with us." I'm not certain this meets either criteria. The war plan itself was clearly successful without help from opposition groups, and I'm not convinced the occupation failed for a lack of assistance from opposition groups either, so I don't think this was necessary. It was not valid, either, although I recall reading in Cobra II that this was the CIA position at the time, so it may have seemed a valid assumption at the time.

"Co-opted Iraqi units will occupy garrisons and not fight either US forces or other Iraqi units." This one has confused a lot of people. This is not saying that the Iraqi Army will hide in its barracks. It is referring to the belief that some Iraqi units could be convinced to simply stay out of the fight. Again, however, this assumption was not necessary to the plan, as the Coalition was able to take Baghdad despite few, if any, Iraqi units choosing to go to ground rather than fight. Nor did it appear to be valid, although this was another area where the CIA claimed they had more success than they had.

"Regional states will not challenge US military operations with conventional forces." Both valid and necessary.

"DoS will promote creation of a broad-based, credible provisional government prior to D-Day." The crux of the problem. It's questionable whether or not the State Department could have accomplished this, but it is certain they didn't even put any particular effort into doing so. Since leaders are supposed to develop their plan in such a way as to validate their assumptions, the failure of CENTCOM to even point out that this was not occurring in the runup to war is particularly damning.

"Continued freedom of navigation for shipping and naval forces through the Suez Canal / Straits of Hormuz / Northern Arabia Gulf." Valid and necessary.

"Operations in Afghanistan transition to phase III (minimal air support over Afghanistan)." Valid and necessary, albeit a factor in why Afghanistan remains a problem.

"BCT in Kuwait replaced by full-up brigade." Valid and necessary.

"US forces in Turkey (ONW and all other units) TACON at N-Day; SOF in Turkey OPCON to CINCCENT at N-day." The SOF part is valid and necessary. The other turned out to be neither, as Turkey did not grant permission for 4ID to attack from the north, but the operation still succeeded.

"Iraqi regime has WMD capability." Arguably neither valid nor necessary, but a wise precaution to take.

All in all, the list appears to have required a bit more work. The big failure, as I noted, was that the State Department did not do what was asked of them and nobody at CENTCOM raised that as an issue that I am aware of. If that was a necessary assumption for the success of the plan (and it certainly would not have hurt), CENTCOM should have screamed bloody murder when it became apparent it was not going to happen. Their failure to do so, while hardly the sole point of failure in the Iraq war, was a critical breakdown.