Fredericksburg
Introduction
A military plan is a means to achieve a specific end. Sometimes a military plan becomes an end, in and of itself, or it becomes a means to achieve an end other than its originally intended end. This is the essence, though not the totality, of something I call “The Objective Fredericksburg Problem.”1
When a battalion is given the mission to “attack to seize Objective Fredericksburg no later than [Date, HH: MM],” they are being given a very specific task. Whatever happens, Objective Fredericksburg must be seized by the given time. Seize is “A tactical mission task that involves taking possession of a designated area using overwhelming force.”2
Seizing that objective will require the use of overwhelming force from a variety of sources. Pilots will launch rockets, missiles, and bombs; artillerymen will fire artillery rounds onto and around the objective, and infantrymen will use machine guns and bayonets to kill any remaining enemy on the objective. Seizing the objective is an activity that will occur in time and space, and it will be done by a large group of people all playing their part.
Seizing Objective Fredericksburg and The Plan to seize Objective Fredericksburg are not the same things. The Map is not the territory.
The Plan is only useful insofar as it enables or assists the unit in seizing OBJ Fredericksburg. If a plan is not useful it is usually very harmful, it is rarely ever neutral. Making a plan, then, is usually a high-stakes activity—it is either really helpful or really harmful. It is typically either an essential element of success or the main reason for failure, there is little room for middle-ground.
This all seems perfectly obvious, so what’s the big deal?
“The Enemy Won’t Do That”
One of the main processes the Army uses for planning is called the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). This process has a number of steps:
Receipt of Mission
Mission Analysis
Course of Action (COA) Development
COA Analysis (Wargame)
COA Comparison
COA Approval
Produce the Operations Order
This process can and should be adjusted to fit the situation. Sometimes, for example, the commander will know exactly what she wants to do and will skip developing alternative COAs, which means the staff can also skip COA comparison. Other times, the staff will go through this entire process very slowly and deliberately, eventually producing a plan with a lot of details.
Several months ago I was talking with my friend Mo about some of the ideas in this essay. Through our conversation, we discovered that we had observed many of the same things in several different units throughout the Army. One of those things was the tendency of battalion operations officers to defend a plan that was clearly very flawed. For example, Mo recounted a story about a training exercise he had conducted as a part of a battalion staff. During the wargame (where the plan was played out on a map with a fictional enemy played by the intelligence officer) the intelligence officer pointed out that the enemy could easily defeat the plan if they simply moved a small unit onto a certain piece of terrain, which they were very likely to do. And the way the plan was designed it couldn’t be easily adjusted. It was immediately obvious to everyone that the plan needed to be scrapped and started from scratch.
But the operations officer and the rest of the staff had spent the last several days coming up with this plan, and the mission was happening the next day. There simply wasn’t time to start from square one. The requested resources had already been allocated to the battalion. Units had already been emplaced based on this plan. Company commanders had already been told the general areas that they would be attacking. The staff would be crushed if they had to throw out all of the work they had done over the last several days. There was too much momentum on this plan to stop it now. Moreover, if the S3 admitted that he overlooked such an obvious flaw in the plan, he would look and feel very silly. But he was a well-trained officer and he knew what he had to do.
The operations officer took a deep breath, looked at the intelligence officer and said, “the enemy won’t do that.” He then went on to explain the many reasons why he came to that conclusion. Even though these reasons ranged from far-fetched the colossally absurd, the staff all felt…relieved. They wouldn’t have to go through the painful and arduous MDMP again. Most were happy to simply roll with the plan they had and hope for the best.
Of course, when the mission began, things quickly went downhill. The enemy did indeed put a unit exactly where the intelligence officer said they would. But the intelligence officer was wrong. It wasn’t a small unit, it was a big unit. And the plan didn’t fail in a small way, it failed in a very, very big way—the entire battalion was wiped out.
This is an example of the Objective Fredericksburg Problem. The Operations officer didn’t treat the plan as a means to accomplishing an end. The plan was something that had to get done in a certain amount of time. What happened as a result of that plan was, to him, of little concern.
“Probably Not Serviceable”
Mo’s story about his experience with the OBJ Fredericksburg Problem may seem like a one-off. You might say, “sure, a battalion operations officer might make that mistake during a training mission, but no serious commander would make this same mistake in combat.” If you said that, you’d be wrong. Like, really wrong.
During the planning for Operation Market Garden, a British Army intelligence officer named Major Brian Urquhart discovered that the entire operation was facing a huge problem. The allies were planning to land three airborne divisions in the Netherlands to seize a series of bridges that would allow a large armored force to cross the Rhine River and enter Germany. But MAJ Urquhart received intelligence that the Germans had two panzer divisions very near where the airborne troops were templated to land. He knew that putting lightly armed paratroopers up against German tanks was suicide.
MAJ Urquhart was desperate to confirm or deny his suspicions. He was able to get a special air squadron to take very low-level reconnaissance photographs around the areas where the airborne troops would be landing. When the photographs came back he was stunned. He found five photos that clearly showed German tanks sitting near the planned drop zones. He rushed them to his headquarters to alert his boss, General Browning.3 From Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far:
The General studied them one by one. Although Urquhart no longer remembers the exact wording, to the best of his recollection, Browning said, “I wouldn’t trouble myself about these if I were you.” Then, referring to the tanks in the photos, he continued, “They’re probably not serviceable at any rate.”
Not only did no one take Urquhart seriously, they got rid of him because he was a nuisance.
From Urquhart’s book A Life in Peace and War:
Later in the day Colonel Eggar, our chief doctor, came to visit me. He informed me that I was suffering from acute nervous strain and exhaustion and ordered me to go on sick leave. When I asked him what would happen if I refused, he said, in his kindly way, that I would be arrested and court-martialed for disobeying orders. I begged him to let me go on the operation in any capacity. He refused. I tried to explain the cause of my anxiety and asked if there was no way of stopping, or at the least reshaping the operation. He again said no, but I had the feeling that he understood me better than discipline allowed him to say.
And what happened? The operation was a failure. I was an absolute disaster.
From a A Bridge Too Far:
Allied forces suffered more casualties in Market-Garden than in the mammoth invasion of Normandy.
The worst-hit unit was the British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Airborne Brigade that had jumped in to seize the bridge at Arnhem, which was the area where Urquhart had seen the pictures of the “unserviceable” tanks. It turned out that those tanks were serviced just fine, and they did a number on the Brits and Poles who fought valiantly to hold the bridge at Arnhem. Out of 10,005 soldiers who jumped into the Arnhem area, 7,578 were killed, wounded, or missing. Total casualties for the operation across all the units were about 17,000.
At least the casualties suffered at Normandy ultimately led to success. Not only was Market-Garden a failed operation it sucked needed resources away from Patton’s 3rd Army which had been making excellent progress.
Many books have been dedicated to what went wrong at Market-Garden, so we won’t go over everything here. My aim here is only to show that plans take on a life of their own. The bigger the plan, the harder it becomes to stop, no matter how fool-hardy the plan is.
Urquhart again:
It was of course inconceivable that the opinion of one person, a young and inexperienced officer at that, could change a vast military plan approved by the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Britain, and all the top military brass, but it seemed to me that I could have gone about it more effectively. I believed then, as most conceited young people do, that a strong rational argument will carry the day if sufficiently supported by substantied facts. This, of course, is non-sense. Once a group of people have made up their minds on something, it develops a life and momentum of its own which is almost impervious to reason or argument. This is particularly true when personal ambition and bravado are involved.
Urquhart is right, there is nothing he could have done to stop it. But he was not the only person with the intelligence that showed the two panzer divisions around Arnhem. Although I cannot find whether the photographs he had of the tanks near the drop zones ever made it above General Browning’s desk, Eisenhower knew of the intelligence about the Panzer divisions near Arnhem, and he had enough military judgment to know that the operation was extremely risky. He sent his Chief of Staff, Bedell Smith, to try to convince Montgomery to alter or cancel the operation based on the intelligence. Monty refused.
Urquhart could not have stopped the operation. Maybe Eisenhower could have. Maybe Montgomery could have. What about Urquhart’s boss, General Browning? It is an open question whether or not he could have convinced Monty to change the operation. Maybe the operation could have been changed or called off, but it wasn’t. Too much had been invested. Eisenhower felt that he couldn’t cancel the plan because he had already approved it. Monty saw no need to cancel the plan because he was deluded into thinking that it would work.
Again, the point here is that plans tend to take on a life of their own. The longer it takes to make the plan, the stronger it becomes. The more people that work on the plan the stronger it becomes. The more resources that are shifted in anticipation of the plan, the stronger it becomes. The more that future operations are based on the success of the plan, the stronger it becomes. The Plan becomes the thing that must be protected and not disturbed. One must not speak ill of The Plan lest one’s career be adversely affected.
Even though the intelligence about the Panzer Divisions around Arnhem didn’t stop the operation, at least the ground commanders were told that they should expect to encounter armored forces. Because the ground commanders were given the intelligence about the Panzers, they loaded extra anti-tank weapons and brought many extra anti-tank mines, and planned to set up anti-armor ambushes so that they could deal with…[checks notes]…oh wait…wait…that can’t be right…WHAT!?
THEY DIDN’T EVEN TELL THE GROUND COMMANDERS THAT THERE *MIGHT* BE TANKS SITTING ON THE DROP ZONE!? IN FACT, THEY DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED THAT TINY DETAIL FROM ALL THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS!?
It’s not just that the plan had taken on a life of its own, it’s that its life was dear and precious and had to be protected from reality and criticism at all costs. The Generals were so intent on keeping the plan safe and undisturbed that they willfully distorted reality and kept the truth from the people who needed it most.
The plan became something other than a means to achieving its desired end. It became a thing unto itself that served its own ends. This is one kind of formulation of the Objective Fredericksburg Problem—the tendency of a plan to take on a life of its own.
Add it to the Doctrine
The title of Chapter 2 of Army Doctrine Publication 5-0 “The Operations Process” is “Planning.” It is a very good chapter about planning. I highly recommend it. The chapter has 25 pages. Less than one page is dedicated to “Planning Pitfalls.” According to the manual, there are four planning pitfalls:
Attempting to forecast and dictate events too far into the future.
Trying to plan in too much detail.
Using the plan as a script for execution.
Institutionalizing rigid planning methods
In a later newsletter, I hope to go through each of these “pitfalls” and explain my thoughts about them in greater detail, but for now, I will simply argue that the most pernicious pitfall, the OBJ Fredericksburg Problem, needs to be added to the list.
Since each pitfall is only given one paragraph (even though each pitfall should probably be given its own chapter), I will provide a paragraph for any aspiring doctrine writers out there.
Allowing a plan to become something other than a means to achieve the desired end.
“The fifth pitfall is allowing a plan to gain a life of its own such that it cannot be criticized, changed, or discarded when the situation changes or new information becomes available. This pitfall can occur when a commander or a staff have invested considerable time, energy, and personal capital into the creation of the plan, and may have scaffolded the plan with assurances to their higher headquarters about its necessity and probability for success. Commanders and their staffs avoid this problem by always keeping the end in mind and involving their subordinate elements in the planning process.”
Criticism
“You are just describing cognitive biases like group-think, overconfidence bias, and sunk-cost bias. We know all about cognitive biases and they are in the doctrine and we teach them during Professional Military Education.”
Teaching people about cognitive biases is not sufficient to stop plans from assuming a life of their own. Moreover, it doesn’t matter if all of the individuals on a staff are aware of group-think and overconfidence bias, they won’t be able to stop a plan from gaining so much traction that it cannot be stopped. Overcoming the OBJ Fredericksburg Problem is not about teaching people to spot and “overcome” bias, as if such a thing were even possible. Overcoming the OBJ Fredericksburg Problem is about designing your planning structures in such a way that plans can’t outgrow their own original purpose. This will (probably) be the topic of the next essay.
We need to take seriously the idea that the plan is alive, like a person, and we need to treat it that way. It can be a meek little nerd that we keep in the corner and make fun of, or can be a vicious and blood-thirsty tyrant, that demands a blood sacrifice, or it can be a really helpful person who is dedicated to achieving the goals of the organization and is always there when you need them and has the most important answers at the right time. What type of a person it becomes is up to the people who build it.
Next Newsletter
We’ll expand on the OBJ Fredericksburg Problem and talk about how to avoid it.
The name has nothing to do with the Civil War Battle. In the Army, objectives are often given names according to the unit’s naming convention. Some units use civil war battles, others use the names of presidents, and some others use the names of American states, brands of beer, football teams, etc. The choice of “Fredericksburg” is coincident with the fact that I was helping to plan a training mission that used OBJ Fredericksburg when I formed this idea.
Army Field Manual 1-02.1 “Operational Terms.” March 2021.
A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan. Page 159.
I am reminded of a news report filed by Boston Journal Army Correspondent Charles Carleton Coffin on December 9, days before the Union attack at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in which Coffin noted that from his position near Chatham in which General Sumner had his headquarters, Coffin could hear the Confederates working hard on the defensive positions and he could see the locomotives delivering reinforcements. He concluded that an attack directly across the Rappahannock River at the town of Fredericksburg would be a folly of immense proportions and the Union Army would have to find another plan. Of course, they didn't.
When the staff is too wedded to their plan they surrender the initiative, even if they are on the offense, because they do otherwise than what they have planned.
I'd argue there is a connection to the Civil War battle. Lincoln was pushing Burnside to attack no matter what. Burnside was totally committed to attacking at Fredericksburg. This surrendered the initiative because Lee, knowing Burnside had to attack in one of a limited number of places, could choose where to defend.