Chasing Emergence: Historical Development of Planning and Intelligence in Great Power Conflict - World War II Case Studies - Loss...
- ISBN-10
- 1701333481
- ISBN-13
- 9781701333482
- Pages
- 72
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-10-20
- Authors
- U. S. Military, Department of Defense, Jared Carter
Description
Modern U.S. Army doctrine requires collaborative planning by all War Fighting Functions. The years between WWI and WWII became the planning forge for the American military. Why did the United States develop integrated planning before WWII and how did it affect Army operations? The integration of intelligence, and other functional specialties, into interwar planning established a new planning paradigm in the U.S. Army. Contributions from non-combat functional areas like intelligence, signals, and logistics became a central theme to interwar planning. The United States' unique geographical location in the world made power projection difficult. Difficulties in mobilization, deployment, and execution of the Spanish American War of 1898 and WWI provided the drive for the Army to improve. For the Army, the Army War College, supplied the War Department General Staff with a large organization capable of planning and conducting war games on an annual basis as part of the curriculum. The interwar planning iterations conducted at the AWC laid the foundation for the importance of intelligence, and other non-combat functions, contributions to Army planning. This continuity continued during WWII and likely forms the historical bedrock of modern Army functional support to planning. WWII cemented the importance of Soldier education, collaboration between staff functions, and the repetition of planning to keep pace with a changing environment into Army culture and doctrine.This compilation also includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.In one of history's great continuities, military leaders have long sought to improve their understanding of their adversaries' capabilities and intentions. While the types of intelligence disciplines rarely change, emerging technologies have enabled new means of collection, analysis, and dissemination of enemy capabilities and intentions through several distinct intelligence domains. Human intelligence (HUMINT) of various forms has been the predominant form of intelligence for much of recorded history. The use of scouts, spies, and cavalry dates back to antiquity. These methods fulfilled most of the intelligence needs of America's antebellum armies. In the decades before the Civil War, a rare, but significant, paradigm shift in the character of war took place. This paradigm shift, sparked by the Industrial Revolution, increased the importance of intelligence. The technological developments that came about during the Industrial Revolution increased the sustainment, communication, lethality, and mobility of large armies. This increase in mobility led to a decrease in warning time at both the strategic and the operational level. State mobilization times and indicators quickly became important to prevent strategic and operational surprise and in deployments over large distances. These historical contingencies increased the speed of the changing strategic context requiring continuous intelligence collection and input.
