Jfacc as Architect

Warfare in the Information Age presents a growing number of challenges to military planners. A convergence of factors is redefining the nature of the problems strategists must solve. Strategists will increasingly face a special class of problems known as "wicked problems" or "messes." Growing anecdotal evidence suggests current campaign planning processes, exemplified by the Military Decision Making Model, and even the paradigm-shifting "Effects Based" approaches, though addressing non-linear, multi-variate thinking, still appear to be inadequate for solving this class of problems. Designing campaigns to solve wicked problems and messes generates new demands, none more important than skillful problem structuring. This emphasis on framing problems differently affects both campaign design and detailed campaign planning. The U.S. Army and U.S. Joint Forces Command are both investigating Systemic Operational Design (SOD) as a possible alternative to resolve these suggested shortcomings. SOD is an epistemological approach to campaign design rooted in General Systems Theory. It emphasizes commander-centered learning and understanding based on a give-and-take engagement with the problematic environment rather than prediction. The results of the Army's Unified Quest (UQ) '05 and '06 experiments suggest SOD's potential promise. The Air Force's EBO and Strategy-to-Task methodologies are useful for detailed planning, but lack a robust design component. This thesis examine SOD's utility as a problem-structuring methodology to assist Airmen in designing campaigns that have a better chance of solving Information Age messes and wicked problems.