Whoever wishes to master the art of war must study it continuously.
– Frederick the Great[1]

The purpose of this article is to articulate five planning ideas collected from the Land Warfare Intermediate Course (LWIC): technology and war; planning is entropic; commander’s intent; relationships, commanders, and staff; and confirmation/back briefs. These ideas are designed to support future students preparing for LWIC and share planning ideas with the wider Australian Defence Force (ADF). The core elements of each planning idea are summarised as follows:

• Technology may support well executed planning, but it cannot yet provide an adaptive, persistent, and intuitive human advantage over competitors and adversaries.
• Entropy in planning mandates continuously adjusted planning parameters and replanning to maintain order and a predictability, or shared understanding, of commander’s intent against which subordinate leaders and teams can plan and adapt their own actions.
• Commander’s intent employing five command skills to: (1) gain direction; (2) identify decision points; (3) define what is the problem to solve; (4) action further coordination; and (5) plan decisions.
• Trusted relationships enable commanders to command and staff to control. Mutual trust, shared understanding, and respectful relationships continue, evolve, engage, and enable the successful orchestration of operations.
• Confirmation Briefs are provided by subordinate leaders to their higher commander, immediately after receiving an operations order.
• Back Briefs follow a subordinate leader’s formal analysis of their assigned task to assure their commander that the mission is, or is not, achievable. Importantly, an environment enabling creative back briefs encourages leaders to consider, explore, and challenge ideas, which in turn, biases leaders to innovate and thrive when combating a learning and adaptive adversary.

At LWIC, planning is a human endeavour. Led by the Combat Command Wing, Combined Arms Training Centre, Puckapunyal, Victoria, LWIC focuses on building planning competence for people across all Corps in the Australian Army as well as regional partner military forces. LWIC incorporates coaching and mentoring through the participation of in-role unit Commanding Officers combined with experienced senior officers and subject matter experts.

Conducted over 14 days, LWIC prepares Army Captains, cooperating with their peers, for Brigade staff appointments. In addition, LWIC qualified officers are widely employable as planners in joint, coalition, and multinational headquarters.

In largescale, time-pressured combat scenarios LWIC applies the Military Appreciation Process in multi-disciplinary staff teams to solve three interdependent Brigade deliberate planning and execution problems. LWIC students plan against contemporary threat systems from a position of friendly force tactical disadvantage – particularly in mobility, firepower, and logistics.[2]

Next, this article articulates five planning ideas collected from LWIC.

Idea 1: Technology and war

Technology is present at LWIC. However, LWIC creates professional mastery in our people through enabling planning environments that coach, unify, and test future commanders, leaders, and teams. At LWIC, people seek mastery through building, unlocking, maximising, and applying planning competence, self-awareness, situational flexibility, and a bias to learn.[3] Importantly, LWIC fuses participant cooperation and collaboration through combined arms and multi-domain training, culture, education, and partnerships.

In contrast to the LWIC approach to education, technology rapidly proliferates, replicates, and dominates. This includes artificial intelligence, large language models, machine learning, robotic process automation, edge computing, quantum computing, virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, blockchain, internet of things, and fifth generation wireless technology.[4]

Technology is sometimes hailed as a transformational remedy for seemingly insurmountable military problems (i.e., bombers, submarines, machine guns, roadside bombs, uncrewed air systems). However, as Colin S. Gray noted, ‘the challenge in peacetime is to guess just how well or poorly novel ideas on tactics and new equipment, and their meaning for operations, will perform in the only test that counts – on the battlefield’.[5]

This means, and as LWIC demonstrates, technology may support well executed planning, but it cannot yet provide an adaptive, persistent, and intuitive human advantage over competitors and adversaries.

Even with the support of technology, human planning expertise is perishable and entropic, especially when our intentions – including missions, purpose, tasks, and lines of effort – interact violently with our enemies.[6] In such environments, complete planning skills, competence and execution are never achieved. Even as we train, practice, rehearse, deliver, and execute plans, our planning aptitudes and competencies are always in development.

Idea 2: Planning is entropic

Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no person can imagine exactly who has not seen war.[7]

War’s nature is ‘violent, interactive, and fundamentally political,’ defined as ‘a struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other.’[8] The violent and interactive nature of war ensures that the reason governments embark in war, to achieve certain political objectives, will entropically change with time.

Entropy, defined in the second law of thermodynamics, is a ‘quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system’.[9]

More simply, entropy results in a ‘lack of order or predictability, [and a] gradual decline into disorder’.[10] This means, entropy in planning mandates continuous adjustments in planning parameters and replanning to maintain order and a predictability, or shared understanding, of commander’s intent against which subordinate leaders and their teams can action.

Gradually, however, despite the best efforts of planners to support, modify and maintain original plans, entropy causes plans to decline into disorder and, potentially, chaos and failure. This decline is accelerated through variability, friction, chance, uncertainty, and biased human judgement. Entropy also explains US President Eisenhower’s dictum that:

…plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning…you must start with this one thing: the very definition of [military planning] is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning’.[11]

This author constantly resists planning skill entropy. Without continuous critical thinking demands to frame problems, solve dilemmas, and overcome obstacles; this author feels the fading of their planning competence. Therefore, to build personal planning resilience, this author formally records planning ideas.

Since, 2003 this author has written 16 articles and frameworks-for-action on planning.[12] Subjects of those articles and frameworks include: leadership, relationships, command and control, training, operations, campaigning, operational art, disaster relief, recovery, and reconstruction; pandemic response & recovery, and non-combatant evacuation operations.

From LWIC in late 2022 – despite two decades resisting planning atrophy – on planning, this author re-learned old ideas and learned new ideas.

Idea 3: Commander’s intent

LWIC emphasises the centrality of commander’s intent to warfighting success. At LWIC, commander’s intent is amplified through coaching, training, and educating planners to seek, recognise and employ five command skills to: (1) gain direction; (2) identify decision points; (3) define what is the problem to solve; (4) action further coordination; and (5) plan decisions.

1. Gain commander’s direction (or intent) and/or guidance. Notably, there is a difference between direction, or intent, from a commander and guidance from a commander:
   
   1. Direction, or intent, means a commander is reasonably sure of their planned course of action.
   2. Guidance means a commander is less sure of their course of action and they seek planners to assist them to frame, calculate and solve the designated problem.
2. Identify decision points and related commander’s critical information requirements (CCIR). Importantly, CCIR:
   
   1. Include friendly forces information requirements (FFIR) and priority intelligence requirements (PIR).
   2. Enable staff and commanders to collaborate, creating opportunities and decision space for their organisations to exploit capabilities, capacity, and vulnerabilities.
   3. Provide non-exhaustive reporting and assessment criteria. If in any doubt; report information.
   4. Require a staff bias for inquisitiveness and initiative where staff connect-the-dots and ask the ‘so what? This inquisitiveness includes staff coordination of organisational:
      
      1. Sequencing,
      2. Interdependence,
      3. Interconnection,
      4. Integration,
      5. Interoperability, and
      6. Interchangeability.
   5. Require staff to report accurately and promptly, share information and discuss ideas with colleagues – What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?
   6. Support information requirements for joint, whole-of-government, coalition, and partner decision-making. These requirements require building relationships and situational awareness, enabled by designated and delegated authorities, before a crisis to enable rapid responsiveness during a crisis.
3. Define what is the problem to solve? Scope and scale the problem through mission analysis. Identify gaps in information, plans, personnel, and resources. Produce early course of action sketches during mission analysis to enable a shared understanding of the problem to solve and to accelerate staff efforts in developing courses of action.
4. Action further coordination and necessarily concurrent cooperation with external partners. This coordination evolves multi-jurisdictional planning, including agreeing boundaries, while arranging dynamic and often unpredictable access, basing, and overflight.
5. Plan decisions, including courses of action, lines of operations, branches, and sequels. Courses of action require:
   
   1. Intimate and continual involvement of commanders, their subordinate leaders, and teams to frame, design, and accelerate course of action development.
   2. Commanders to design, develop, and lead course of action wargames.
   3. Rehearsals to test courses of action assumptions, options and thinking. Commanders rehearse both a concept (or ROC drill) and, once the concept is agreed, rehearse the synchronisation of the plan. Following both rehearsals, orders are usually ready for delivery. Rehearsals seek to understand:
      
      1. Adversary decision-making, according to your scale, your tempo, and your plan.
      2. Decision points.
      3. Where people meet in the battlespace, including building the theatre framework.[13]
      4. Control measures.
      5. Branches and sequels, with fragmentary orders written, to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-last the adversary.
   4. Multi-domain (maritime, land, air, space and cyber), whole-of-government, coalition, intelligence, communications, logistics, engineering, medical and partner contributions.
   5. Designating and designing a reserve that has received orders, reorganised, rehearsed, and – if possible – rested.

Complementing the establishment, definition, and application of commander’s intent, LWIC explains the cruciality of relationships for all people at all levels of and across organisations.

Idea 4: Relationships, commanders, and staff

LWIC emphasises, based on relationship building, that commanders command and staff control. Mutual trust, shared understanding and respectful relationships continue, evolve, engage, and enable the successful orchestration of operations, as follows:

1. Relationships:
   
   1. Enable transition between standard pre-crisis procedures to crisis action at the 'speed of events'.
   2. Matter more than it does to define which person has authority over another person.
   3. Are always building. There is no issue worth destroying a relationship; we will always need something from that relationship tomorrow.
   4. Require the design, delegation, and rehearsal of authorities, including rules of engagement, to gain access and apply force.
2. Commanders:
   
   1. Command – through their relationships and ripples of influence – working with others to achieve more.
   2. Establish priorities for planning, key decisions, rehearsals, updates, and mission execution.
   3. Plan and think two levels down, especially when planning to re-allocate or re-group forces. Once the impact of a planned re-allocation or re-grouping is known, task one level down.
   4. Bias trust in people. On occasion your trust will be misplaced… but mostly trust works well for relationships.
   5. May say “no” to subordinate commanders. Staff serve to “get to yes” to enable subordinate commanders to innovate, seize opportunities and defeat the adversary. Staff capacity is exponentially enhanced when afforded clear commander’s intent combined with teamwork, resources, and time.
   6. Speak directly to staff who are subject matter experts. Among their skills, these staff provide quantitative data enabling command decision making.
   7. Build supporting and supported relationships.[14]
      
      1. Supported commander: in the context of a support command relationship, the commander who receives assistance from another commander's force or capabilities, and who is responsible for ensuring that the supporting commander understands the assistance required.
      2. Supporting commander: in the context of a support command relationship, the commander who aids, protects, complements, or sustains another commander's force, and who is responsible for providing the assistance required by the supported commander.
3. Staff:
   
   1. Control, through creating, defining, and ensuring shared understanding of coordination measures, where people meet. Importantly, coordination is less about ownership and more about a sharing mindset. This mindset includes coordination measures such as:
      
      1. key timings (including not before and not later than requirements),
      2. exchange of liaison personnel,
      3. rendezvous points,
      4. relief in place,
      5. passage of lines,
      6. boundaries (including deconfliction, overlap, criteria for crossing, transition, and options to adjust),
      7. coordination points,
      8. fire support coordination arrangements,
      9. deliberate and dynamic targeting priorities, methodology, authorities, systems, and effects,
      10. no fire and restricted fire areas,
      11. dispersal, distribution, and deception, often with limited means requiring economy of force actions, and
      12. control measures such as assembly areas, axis of advance, centre line, report lines, and phase lines.
   2. Orchestrate mission timelines, especially for enabling support. Staff allocate responsibilities for the coordination of effects including multi-domain, whole-of-government, coalition, intelligence, communications, logistics, engineering, medical and partner contributions.
   3. Convey orders and execution check lists through formal message traffic, unless given verbally in time of crisis. In which case, orders are subsequently recorded in formal message traffic.
   4. Monitor, plan, design, assess, and recommend feasible, acceptable, sustainable, distinguishable, and complete courses of action and decisions to commanders.
   5. Lead assessment including understanding risk to force, risk to mission and risk to relationships as well as who owns the risk and for how long is risk held. Based on their risk assessment, staff provide advice to commanders on whether to tolerate, treat or transfer risk. In some cases, based on risk of culmination to mission and/or force and/or relationships, staff may recommend terminating a task.

Finally, once LWIC consolidates knowledge on technology and war, planning is entropic, commander’s intent and relationships, LWIC students are trained and educated in the employment of confirmation and back briefs.

Idea 5: Confirmation briefs and back briefs

During LWIC, when briefing their commanders, participants are training and educated that:

1. Confirmation Briefs are given by subordinate leaders to the higher commander immediately after receiving the operations order. Subordinate leaders dialogue with their commander on their understanding of the:
   1. Commander's intent.
   2. Unit's task and purpose in the mission.
   3. Relationships between their unit's missions and the other unit missions in the operation.
2. Back Briefs follow a subordinate leader’s formal analysis of their assigned task to assure their commander that the mission is achievable. A back brief is given by subordinate leaders to the commander explaining, without repeating the original orders, how the subordinate leader intends to accomplish their mission. This communication helps the commander clarify their intent early in the subordinate leader’s tactical estimate process. A back brief also allows the higher commander to:
   
   1. Understand how subordinate leaders intend to accomplish their mission.
   2. Agree a shared understanding of implied tasks assigned to subordinate leaders. Implied tasks represent an opportunity for creative team thinking, where subordinate leaders suggest innovative ideas to their commanders. Commanders can practice their comfort with this iterative process by respecting the opportunity for their subordinate leaders to challenge a commander’s ideas. A leader who considers, explores, and challenges ideas and then acts, can feel empowered and biased to thrive when combating a learning and adaptive adversary.
   3. Agree on how subordinate, flanking, partner and/or coalition organisations will work with the lead organisation to achieve unified outcomes.
   4. Identify problems in the commander's own concept of the operation.
   5. Identify problems in a subordinate leader’s understanding of the concept.
   6. Identify where key enablers, such as communications, logistics, medical, search & rescue, and commander’s reserve, are prepared and located.
   7. Identify additional coordination measure requirements, especially in areas where people and organisations meet on the battlefield.
   8. Identify additional resources required and/or resources not required.

Conclusion

This article emphasises the importance of LWIC to the Australian Army, regional military forces and the ADF. LWIC provides clarity to leaders in the relationship between the five planning ideas: technology and war; planning is entropic; commander’s intent; relationships, commanders, and staff; and confirmation/back briefs.

Importantly, the purpose of this articulation of ideas is to support future students preparing for LWIC and to share planning ideas with the wider-ADF.

Entropy means that our ADF skills are degrading daily. This article aims to remind readers that planning, as a human endeavour, employs the limitations of human heuristics, biases, imperfections, and errors. Overcoming our human imperfections, as military professionals, requires continuous critical thinking demands to frame problems, solve dilemmas, and overcome planning obstacles.