Sketching for Military Courses of Action Diagrams Kenneth D. Forbus Jeffrey Usher Vernell Chapman Qualitative Reasoning Group Northwestern University 1890 Maple Avenue, Evanston, IL, 60201 USA 847-491-7699 [email protected] ABSTRACT A serious barrier to the digitalization of the US military is that
You should refer to FM 6-0, ADRP 1-02, and the online instruction on MDMP, especially the supplemental lesson called Course of Action Statement and Sketch; you will find the supplemental lesson in the C633 lesson folder in Blackboard. You should also refer to Leavenworth Paper #11 upon which the C634 MDMP Exam and this assignment are based.
course of action becomes infeasible, wargamers must stop, reject it, and begin the next course of action. * avoid drawing premature conclusions and gathering facts to support such conclusions. * avoid comparing one course of action with another during the wargame. wait until the comparison phase.
This thesis describes a software program that recognizes hand-drawn Course of Ac- tion diagrams. User input is through sketching, or a combination of sketching and speech. Course of Action symbols are recognized incrementally, and the informal sketching input is replaced with formal images of the symbols.
In incident-level decision making, a Course of Action (COA) is an overall plan that describes the selected strategies and management actions intended to achieve Incident Objectives, comply with Incident Requirements, and are based on current and expected conditions.
Courses of action address the what, who, when, where, why, how for each threat, hazard, and function....Identify Courses of ActionDepict the scenario. ... Determine the amount of time available to respond. ... Identify decision points. ... Develop courses of action.
A COA consists of a sketch and a textual statement. The sketch conveys a number of crucial properties of the situation and the plan. First, it includes a depiction of what terrain features are considered important.
A valid COA should be suitable, feasible, acceptable, distinguishable and complete [1]. A COA is suitable if it is in alignment with commander's intent and will accomplish the mission when carried out successfully.
1. Any sequence of activities that an individual or unit may follow. 2. A possible plan open to an individual or commander that would accomplish, or is related to the accomplishment of the mission.
The first three courses of action are defensive, where the primary objective of the organization is to survive:Focus on cost reduction. ... Focus on core operations. ... Downsize.
COURSE-OF-ACTION DEVELOPMENT STEPS: ARRAY INITIAL FORCES. DEVELOP THE SCHEME OF MANEUVER. DETERMINE C2 MEANS AND MANEUVER CONTROL MEASURES. PREPARE COURSE-OF-ACTION STATEMENT AND SKETCH.
(b) A COA statement should contain the following: A statement by the commander expanding on his purpose in a way that ties it to the higher commander's purpose. A statement of the array of forces.
I used the AGADAP steps (analyze relative combat power, generate options, array initial forces, develop schemes of maneuver, assign HQs, prepare COAs) as a framework for this meeting, and we collectively walked away with clear requirements to refine manifests and equipment distribution to complete the mission.Jul 1, 2017
What is the seven step process in military problem solving? Identify the problem, Gather information and knowledge, Develop criteria, Generate possible solutions, analyze possible solution, Compare possible solution, Make and implement the decision.
The MDMP consists of seven steps: receipt of mission, mission analysis, course of action (CO A) development, COA analysis, COA comparison, COA approval, and orders production. The MDMP offers a proven analytical process that assists the commander and staff in developing, integrating, and synchronizing their plan.
An acceptable COA must have the right balance among cost, risk, and the potential advantaged gained.Aug 6, 2018
COURSE-OF-ACTION DEVELOPMENT STEPS:ANALYZE RELATIVE COMBAT POWER.ARRAY INITIAL FORCES.DEVELOP THE SCHEME OF MANEUVER.DETERMINE C2 MEANS AND MANEUVER CONTROL MEASURES.PREPARE COURSE-OF-ACTION STATEMENT AND SKETCH.
(b) A COA statement should contain the following: A statement by the commander expanding on his purpose in a way that ties it to the higher commander's purpose. A statement of the array of forces.
A COA is a plan describing the selected strategies and operational actions designed to accomplish the mission according to the commander's intent (NATO 2013: 4–66). Each COA that is developed must be significantly different from any other.Oct 11, 2019
course of action. 1. Any sequence of activities that an individual or unit may follow. 2. A possible plan open to an individual or commander that would accomplish, or is related to the accomplishment of the mission.
There are five fundamental issues that must be considered when developing COAs. A valid COA should be suitable, feasible, acceptable, distinguishable and complete [1]. A COA is suitable if it is in alignment with commander's intent and will accomplish the mission when carried out successfully.
Course of Action analysis gives you, the battle staff planner, the opportunity to determine whether or not the operation will succeed before the lives of your soldiers are placed in the fray of battle. Your soldiers don't understand (PB, Force Ratios, Mission Analysis, or Course of Action Development.
Use to send timely changes of existing orders to subordinate and supporting commanders while providing notification to higher and adjacent commands.
Possible courses of action are typically developed using the following steps:Depict the scenario. Create a potential scenario based on the threats and hazards identified and prioritized in Step 2.Determine the amount of time available to respond. ... Identify decision points. ... Develop courses of action.
COA analysis (wargaming) is the fourth step in the MDMP and is arguably one of the most critical because it takes the commander's plan from concept to detail and synchronizes the unit's combat power for an operation.
Someone's course of action is what that person is going to do. For example, say you're listening to your friend's vacation plans....Your friend's course of action might be:Take a flight to Paris.Visit the Louvre.Visit the Eiffel Tower.Take another flight to London.Visit Big Ben.Jan 12, 2022
A COA consists of a sketch and a textual statement. The sketch conveys a number of crucial properties of the situation and the plan. First, it includes a depiction of what terrain features are considered important. ... The COA sketch indicates a commander's plan in terms of the tasks that their units are assigned to do.
Training Briefing. Commanders brief the unit training plan to the next higher commander. This briefing formalizes the plan and the resources required to support it.
1. Any sequence of activities that an individual or unit may follow. 2. A possible plan open to an individual or commander that would accomplish, or is related to the accomplishment of the mission.
In the U.S. military, an Operation Plan (OPLAN) is a complete and detailed plan for conducting joint military operations.
In the best-case scenario, sustainment planners would have ample time and develop two or more COAs that are feasible, acceptable, suitable, distinguishable, and complete.Aug 6, 2018
Some actions consist of an aggressor and a defender, examples of which are the “Pen-etrate” and “Fix” actions. For these actions, the sketched shape often consists of anarrow-like shape. The shape of the arrow shaft may differ (to differentiate betweenactions), but the common properties are that the aggressor and defender can be de-termined based on the position of the tail of the shaft, the position of the head of theshaft, and the direction the arrow is pointing. A common LADDER shape definitionof “tail” and “head” are used in all shape descriptions for actions of the type aggres-sor/defender. This allows the COA Domain Handler to locate the endpoints of thearrow and determine the direction the arrow is pointing. The COA Domain Handlerhas access to all recognized units and their location in the frame. Using the locationof the referenced points for “head” and “tail” in the sketched shape, the COA DomainHandler determines the likely aggressor and defender based on the angle of the arrowshaft, the location of these points, and the location of all sketched units.
Sketching is the primary method of input to the COA design interface. Sketch inputcan be divided into two types of pen strokes - those used to create shapes and thoseused to edit shapes.
Course of Action diagrams are commonly accompanied by a written textual descrip-tion. While the diagram indicates which units are present and which actions theyare to perform, the additional written description is used to explain the order ofevents and reasons why an action is to be performed. These components indicate thecommander’s intent for a possible battle, and for this reason the text is an integralcomponent of the operational picture that can’t be represented by graphical symbols.Although commander’s intent can’t be represented by symbols, it is still an essentialcomponent of the operational picture.
Computerized COA systems have typically been rejected primarily because the inter-face seemed unnatural to users. Some systems relied on a complicated user interface,which added complexity to creating COA diagrams. For example, nuSketch Bat-tlespace (nSB) [5] relies on a glyph bar to create units and drop-down menus for unitproperties and actions. While this avoids the problem of recognition, it also createsa complex and inefficient interface. The glyph bar is shown in Figure 2-1. Insteadof sketching, users create symbols by clicking on the appropriate icon on the glyphbar and adding details about the icon through the appropriate drop-down menu. InnSB, 294 distinct friendly unit symbols and 273 distinct enemy unit symbols are rep-resented in the glyph bar. While trying to speed up the creation of COA diagrams,the user interface of nSB adds complexity and complicates the sketching task, makingit difficult to interact with the program.
There are three main components of the COA interface: the sketch recognizer, theCOA Domain Handler, and the COA Multimodal Recognizer. The sketch recognizeris capable of recognizing sketched shapes in the COA domain. The COA symboldomain is compositional - multiple modifiers can be added to symbols. The COADomain Handler ensures that only valid combinations of modifiers are recognized bythe sketch recognizer. The COA Domain Handler also provides an interface to othersystems. The COA Multimodal Recognizer combines pen and speech input, allowingthe system to receive details through voice input that might not be easily sketched.
The sketch recognizer consists of three components, the Primitive Recognizer, theIntermediate Feature Recognizer, and the Domain (LADDER) Recognizer. As pen-input data is captured by the computer, it is passed to the primitive recognizer, whichanalyzes and classifies individual pen-strokes as lines, ellipses, points, polylines, andscribbles. Once an initial classification of these strokes has been completed, primi-tive objects representing lines, ellipses, etc. are passed to the Intermediate FeatureRecognizer and Domain Recognizer. The Intermediate Feature Recognizer is used torecognize shapes of intermediate complexity that are drawn with one or more strokes.Recognized shapes from both the Primitive Recognizer and the Intermediate Feature
The intermediate feature recognizer analyzes the primitive objects created by thePrimitive Recognizer. If there is a collection of these primitive objects that form ashape of intermediate complexity, this information is passed to the domain shape rec-ognizer. Therefore, there can be multiple interpretations of a single pen-stroke: (1)the low-level classification provided by the primitive recognizers, and (2) the interme-diate complexity feature(s) the stroke is part of. While the primitive shape recognizerrecognizes primitive objects with a single stroke (low-complexity objects), the inter-mediate feature recognizer can detect shapes of intermediate complexity based ontheir geometric properties. The result of the intermediate feature recognizer is an al-ternate interpretation of a collection of single-stroke primitive objects. This collectionis input to the domain shape recognizer.
DISCUSSION: Wargaming is the most valuable step within the course-of-action analysis. Observations from the CTCs indicate that few staffs understand how to war-game effectively, and that many staff officers are not involved in the procedure. By wargaming , the staff takes a course of action and begins to develop a detailed plan. Additionally, it can better synchronize the course of action when the entire staff is involved in wargaming . Information recorded during the warga me provides the information for the development of paragraph three (execution) of the operations order, the execution or synchronization matrices, and the decision support template. Because of the importance of its results, and the time it requires, more time is allocated than for any other step. Wargaming results in the identification of tasks, combat power requirements, critical events and priority efforts, task organization and command and support relationships, decision points and possible fratricide locations.
The scheme of maneuver is a narrative description of how the forces arrayed will accomplish the commander's intent. Ensure the scheme of maneuver addresses the elements of the battlefield framework (deep operations, covering force/security force, close operations, rear operations, and reserve).
THE DECISION MATRIX WILL HELP THE STAFF RECOMMEND .
Military Decision making Process. military decision making process is an iterative planning methodology to. understand the situation and mission, develop a course of action, and produce an. operation plan or order. Steps of the Decision Making Process. are—.
The Army design methodology involves deliberately framing an operational environment and problem through dialogue and critical and creative thinking by a group. Narrative Construction. a story constructed to give meaning to things and events. Individuals, groups, organizations, and countries all have narratives ...
a story constructed to give meaning to things and events. Individuals, groups, organizations, and countries all have narratives with many components that reflect and reveal how they define themselves.
"Under drawings" like these can become the basis on which you draw longer, finished artworks, giving you clues about the whole figure even as you start to focus in on details. Or, they can remain stand-alone exercises.
Give yourself no more than two minutes to capture the line of action, the three movable masses, the limbs and the joint locations.
Gesture drawing is a commonly used exercise to prepare your brain to see the "important" parts of a pose, and prevent you from getting bogged down in the details. Thus, it's a very popular warm up before a drawing practice, and commonly used in university drawing courses to teach students good practice habits. We'll start there too.
Take special note of the major joints in the body like the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip socket, knees and ankles -- you may wish to add a dot or a bubble to indicate where these joints are. These are the attachment and pivot points for your limbs.
Gesture drawing is a great foundation skill, but of course there is so much more to becoming a capable artist. That’s why we have an ever-growing wealth of practice suggestions in the Lessons & Tips session. You can also visit the forums to see what other self-taught artists are doing to hone their craft.
EFSTs are those FS tasks essential to the success of the maneuver operation. (e.g, Phase II fires disrupt and delay enemy second echelon maneuver brigades from H+1 to H+3 in order to deny access to our AO, vicinity Smithsville, until the brigade completes defensive preparations.) EFSTs are primarily applicable to DS units and are normally developed by the FSEs as part of the maneuver MDMP.
A DS FA battalion prepares a comprehensive FASP that covers the employment of all FA assets in support of a maneuver operation, to include reinforcing units, attached radars, or other FA assets. The battalion develops the FASP as part of the larger combined arms MDMP process. The FASP is based primarily on the supported maneuver and FA battalion commanders' guidance and intent for fires, the scheme of maneuver, the concept for fires, and higher HQ OPORDs, FSPs, FASPs, and guidance. The DS battalion FASP usually becomes an appendix to the FS annex in the maneuver OPLAN/OPORD. Thus the DS battalion is integrally involved in development of both EFSTs and EFATs.
This applies particularly to FA operations where reaction times are brief and crucial to overall mission success. FA battalion planning involves both the MDMP, which includes IPB, and the products of the planning process. These products include the FSP, the FASP, and the various orders used to disseminate instructions and information. This chapter is organized into three major sections: Section I covers the MDMP; Section II is an overview of FA IPB; and Section III addresses FA battalion rehearsals.
4-03. R, GSR, or GS FA battalions must also integrate and synchronize their planning processes with higher and/or supported maneuver and FA HQ planning. The extent of this integration varies with the situation. But often their MDMP may focus more on their battalion's execution of assigned tasks, and they usually do not prepare their FASP as an integral document to a maneuver OPORD/FSP.
The battalion S3 can maximize available planning time for the batteries and supporting units by sending additional WARNOs as planning develops to allow parallel planning, nested rehearsals and training, and completion of precombat checks (PCCs).
4-11. The FA battalion staff must identify all tasks the unit must accomplish to support the supported unit's mission . The staff extracts from all applicable orders and plans those tasks clearly identified (specified) as battalion responsibilities. The staff also reviews all orders and plans to identify those tasks that are not specified but are important to mission accomplishment (implied tasks). The staff then reviews SOPs and other applicable documents, and conducts a macro analysis of the battalion's role in the operation to identify any implied tasks that may be required. See FM 101-5 for additional information on tasks.
The battalion S2 can provide input on enemy artillery vulnerabilities to optimize desired effects on the enemy, which could reduce friendly risk if engaged . The commander, with staff input, determines whether or not the level of risk is acceptable and provides guidance as necessary on actions to reduce the level of risk or advising higher HQ of the situation. Higher HQ may dictate degree of risk. (See FM 101-5 for additional guidance).