Course of Action Development In Support of Campaign Planning

This monograph highlights the lack of a doctrinal course of action development process for creating campaign plans. Such a process is needed due to the inexperience of both senior leaders and middle-grade staff officers with the operational level of war. The difficulty with developing an operational level course of action development process to use in support of campaign planning lies in the nature of operational art itself and its fitting more in the domain of art than that of science. This monograph accepts the challenge and uses both theory and existing doctrine to develop an operational level process similar to the familiar tactical level course of action development process. The research presents the basic foundation of terms, definitions, and relationships associated with campaign planning. The current lack of an operational level decision-making process is examined and a process resulting from previous research is offered to fill the void. The first step of this process, mission analysis, generates the products necessary to initiate course of action development. These are surveyed and the sometimes misunderstood relationship between mission analysis and estimates discussed. A new way to view the estimate process is proposed to clarify this relationship. Course of action development, Campaign Planning, JOPES, Operational art, Campaign plans, Operational decision making.