This Machine Makes Predictions: QMN022
Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Thursday, 23 May
(Today’s report is a 5 minute read)
BLUF: Good plans start with good information and a careful examination of the nature of problem. Green Berets have a process for this that examines the environment first, and then the adversary, and then both together. It predicts what the adversary’s going to do so that the team can visualize the future.
Brady here. DDED. An acronym that’s burned into my mind.
Define the Battlefield Environment
Describe Battlefield Effects
Evaluate the Threat
Determine Threat Courses of Action
These steps explain the knowledge that every Green Beret goes into planning with. And they're also the steps we teach indigenous army staffs. They lead to effective plans and fruitful operations.
I remember these steps so well because it’s what I taught to foreign staffs in South Asia so that they could better provide valuable, coherent and actionable information to their commanders prior to and during combat. For months leading into a hot dry summer, I and a Special Forces intelligence sergeant drilled analysts and their managers - working at a corps headquarters in a volatile regional capital - in delineating operating areas, characterizing terrain and conditions, and explaining people, their motivations, and their capabilities. We examined the adversary we had in common and built models of how we thought he was organized, what he was after, and what he’d been known to do. And then we combined it all and made predictions about what he'd do next - describing both the most likely scenario as well as what the worst possible might be. It was a long, detailed process but led to effective and timely planning - which was the value we impressed upon our regional allies.
When Green Berets plan, they go through seven long, involved steps that can take days or weeks in order to determine what their detachment will do. But they can’t do this properly without knowing where they’ll be working, what the environment’s like and who they'll be fighting. The four steps listed above, led by a detachment’s intelligence sergeant, help generate the necessary information. It’s very important to mention that this deliberate analysis not only assembles enemy and environmental facts, but it helps get team members mindsets in the right place as planning goes forward. This process characterizes the problem they’re about to solve.
Taking care to define the area you're analyzing can seem like a low-value activity - like an administrative shuffle of boundaries - but it's very important to do up-front. It determines where your team will not only be working, but also what areas you won't be working but that significantly impact your area. For instance, Taliban opium production may happen outside your area of operations, but in your area of interest. It would mean that traffickers will be traveling through your area at given times, so knowing more about outside opium production will improve the accuracy of your estimates.
Describing the battlefield’s effects - or what the land, weather and people are like - can often be done well in advance. It can even be done by an outside organization that’s worked there before. That analysis of course should be reviewed in detail, but many Green Berets will tell you that it’s not uncommon to reuse past terrain analyses because in nearly all cases the terrain doesn't change. Some areas see rapid human development meaning new roads and structures, or when combined with weather the environment can change drastically by season depending where you are - so such things bear serious scrutiny. It’s been more than once that flash floods have caught guys by surprise because they hadn’t happened in a few years and escaped notice until too late.
Evaluating the Threat looks at the composition, disposition and strength of enemy forces but goes much deeper. Pattern analysis of recent activity begins to bring more about the enemy to the surface that can be exploited as well. One of the best ways to describe an enemy is to give what’s called a “day in the life” - a description of what the average enemy soldier is doing across an entire day. It looks of course at activities but also the patterns they set in across time and motivations for those actions, more vividly displaying who you're up against.
Threat Courses of Action line up that information about the environment with what we know about the enemy - essentially “Here’s what he’ll do given what he has, what he wants, and considering the limitations of terrain and weather”. As mentioned above, we list what what the enemy’s most likely to do and also what the worst possible scenario is - also known as the Most Dangerous Course of Action. This allows the team to plan for what’s expected and also to understand how bad things could get. It’ll also impress upon the team some indicators about which course of action the enemy appears to be taking at any given time - which can be very important on the ground. This final step produces the end result of the process: predictions about what the enemy’s going to do and when.
As Green Berets like to say, this process is continuous. The more we learn about the enemy and the terrain, the more we update this information. So this picture about the battlefield continually becomes more accurate over the course of planning and even during the actual execution of the mission. The intelligence sergeant identifies where gaps in information exist and asks both higher command and for the team itself to fill those gaps as they carry out their missions.
If you start this process in pre-mission planning and continue to update and refine it during execution, you'll find your operations are more successful because you're focusing your effort in the right places at the right times on the ground.
YOU CAN THROW OUT NATURE WITH A PITCHFORK...: Recent Studies Reveal Neanderthal DNA at Work in Modern Humans (2 min) "...we could actually look and say: 'We see a Neanderthal version of the gene and we can measure its effect on phenotype in many people-how often they get sunburned, what color their hair is, and what color their eyes are." In addition, they found correlations between Neanderthal DNA and the likelihood that a person is a smoker, an evening or morning person, as well as increased risks for sunburn and depression.” (KSA)
THE HELL YOU SAY: Scientists Show Lasting Benefits of Growing Up Outside the City (4 min) Another addition to CPP’s ‘Veterans’ No-Shit List.’ “Using data from 3,585 people collected across four cities in Europe, scientists from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (also called IS Global) report a strong relationship between growing up away from the natural world and mental health in adulthood. Overall, they found a strong correlation between low exposure to nature during childhood and higher levels of of nervousness and feelings of depression in adulthood. Co-author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Ph.D., director of IS Global’s urban planning, environment and health initiative, tells Inverse that the relationship between nature and mental health remained strong, even when he adjusted for confounding factors.” (BJM)
THE JUNIOR EXEC WITH CPP: Sales cures all.
Not everyone can do it, but everyone is in the business of it, or should be. Without it, you have nothing. Granted, healthy growth is important and having a ‘variety of nutrients in the bloodstream’ makes for a healthier business… but don’t spend more time thinking about growth than you do achieving growth. You need sowers, reapers, and hunters to achieve growth; people who can plant seeds with marketing messages, who can harvest new and perennial crops on an ongoing basis, and hunters who can find that perfect lead and convert it. These are specialized jobs and should be working in concert to spread the right message, learn about what works and doesn’t work, and insure marketing, sales, and delivery are all doing their part to support the growth mission.
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA), Chris Papasadero (CPP) & Brady Moore (BJM)