Søren Sjøgren

With the 2022 update to NATO’s AJP-01 Allied Joint Doctrine, mission command was elevated from an important component of a joint command philosophy to the alliance’s overarching command philosophy – a shift in written doctrine raising concerns about its practical application across the multinational force. This study explores the gap between written doctrine and operational practice, highlighting the complexities of implementing mission command within NATO’s diverse military landscape. Through 33 interviews with NATO senior leaders, the analysis highlights challenges in achieving human interoperability in a multinational environment. We show that NATO commanders lack some of the mechanisms held in the literature to be efficient means to ensure its implementation in national settings. Ultimately, while the doctrinal emphasis on mission command is a positive step, its successful implementation requires operational commanders across the NATO command structure ensure that doctrine is read and discussed, and that training activities designed to facilitate prudent risk-taking are arranged. Finally, we call for a focus on the use of simple language to promote mutual understanding. These steps might aid the transition from paper to practice, and enhance human interoperability.

This article concerns organisational decision-making in a multinational military NATO headquarters. Despite widespread criticism of its mechanistic and bureaucratic tendencies, empirical research on the daily practices of military planning remains surprisingly scarce. Drawing on fieldwork in an operational NATO headquarters and interviews with commanders and staff officers, this article utilises an assemblage framework to unravel the construction of order. Within the military headquarters, war is generally imagined as a managerial problem – a rational, procedural endeavour of aligning means and ways to achieve military ends. The article shows how standardisation efforts designed to increase interoperability can paradoxically relegate staff officers to the status of cogs in the war machine focused on processing (“feeding the beast”) rather than inspiring creative or innovative thinking. This approach risks alienating segments of the multinational staff when imposed standards diverge from contemporary NATO doctrine. Since professional military education is the domestic responsibility of member nations, NATO commanders cannot assume a uniform understanding of doctrine and planning; individual headquarters must therefore bridge this gap if staff officers are not to be left with the inescapable obligation to adhere to procedures.

Evnen til at studere militære operationer på en systematisk og kritisk måde er en central kompetence for enhver officer. Alligevel har det på Forsvarsakademiet (FAK) vist sig svært at overbevise vores studerende på både diplom- og masterniveau om at skrive deres afsluttende projekter om netop dette. 

Under overskriften the science of military operations søsatte vi i 2022 et projekt for systematisk at undersøge, hvordan vores studerende på FAK har grebet sådanne analyser an. Vi anmodede officersskolerne og studiekontoret om samtlige projekter og censorrapporter siden akkrediteringen i 2014 for at undersøge de gode eksempler og lære. På baggrund af disse 659 afgangsprojekter spørger vi: Hvad kendetegner en god analyse af militære operationer?

Artiklen ligger åbent her: https://krigsvidenskab.dk/emne/den-nodvendige-taenkning-hvad-kendetegner-en-god-analyse-af-militaere-operationer-i-afgangsprojekter-pa-forsvarsakademiets-uddan

Collecting data and working with classified information in restricted military settings can present significant research challenges. Academic ideals of transparency and openness clash with the military’s need for secrecy and closedness. This article engages with existing literature on security requirements and research ethics in discussing practical challenges researchers face in military research. Even though military security requirements and principles of research ethics are often perceived as opposites, they also share characteristics: both realms are context-driven, nonobjective, and require professional judgment to assess. Through a four-part analysis corresponding to different steps in a research process, the authors develop a practice-oriented guide for researchers accessing and working with classified information in discussing mundane examples of how “insiders” with “privileged access” navigate between ethical research principles and security issues. The article also incites a broader debate on research governance, (self-)imposed restraints and the conditions for critical inquiry in the military domain.

This article discusses concepts to explore decision-making processes in a military headquarters. Military planning is commonly perceived as a systematic and structured approach to organising ways and means to achieve military ends. While standardised procedures and decision-making tools are crucial for large military organisations to function efficiently, these devices are not neutral. Routines within the staff organisation carry implicit beliefs shaping the perception of war as a managerial problem with an optimal solution that can be elicited through a process and presented in a bulleted list. By examining organisational outcomes as socio-material assemblages, this article sheds light on how daily routines influence potential solutions and shape what can and cannot be thought. Conventional approaches in organisational studies have either overlooked the role of organisational tools or studied them as a matter of technology adoption. The entanglement of the social and material in organisational life should be observed and described empirically to understand how order is reconstructed after it has broken down. 

Military doctrine is a form of organisational knowledge. Scholars argue that beneath written doctrine lies a set of deeply held beliefs about war and warfare that do not change even if the written doctrine does. This article explores the relationship between written military doctrine, the underlying beliefs about doctrine that govern its interpretation and application, and ultimately how militaries operate. The analysis is based on fieldwork at a NATO division and 33 interviews with commanders and senior staff officers. It suggests a typology that can be used to understand variances in doctrine and operational differences.

In this article, I explore how contemporary military commanders understand command in the context of standardised planning processes, doctrine, and a supporting staff organiation. The article is based on 30 interviews with former and current NATO commanders and senior staff officers. I describe the interplay between commanders and their staff, including its clear division of labour, authority, and responsibility. I argue that commanders make key decisions in the planning process based on professional judgement. Commanders recognise the usefulness and limits of structured decision-making processes and doctrine while acknowledging also the need for surprise, creativity, and risk-taking. Left unattended, the military staff tends to develop mechanical behaviour by following a bureaucratic logic of rationality, control, and optimisation. In this context, command is a distinct and necessary function for the making of key decisions that allow for creative applications of doctrine, while avoiding any succumbing to predictable textbook solutions. Finally, the article points toward the importance of developing future commanders and their staff officers to understand the limits of doctrine and procedural approaches and develop professional judgement.

Krigsførelsens Kredsløb er en struktur eller en enkel model til strukturere tænkning om militære kapabiliteter. Men modellen skal suppleres med teori, hvis den skal bruges til at forklare eller analysere konkrete problemer. Valg af teori afhænger af de grundantagelser, man gør sig om det sagsforhold, man forsøger at forstå. Det skal bestemmes fra gang til gang og i relation til den konkrete problemstilling. Formålet med denne artikel er at øge bevidstheden om, hvad Krigsførelsens Kredsløb kan og ikke kan.Krigsførelsens Kredsløb er gennem tiden blevet brugt og operationaliseret med ganske forskellige syn på virkelighed og viden, uden at kredsløbets forfatterne har været eksplicitte herom. Den videnskabelige diskussion har i hovedtræk bestået af idéhistoriske forsøg på at opspore, hvad kredsløbets forfattere mente, og hvem der var ophavsmand til hvad. For den, der ønsker at arbejde videnskabeligt, er det nødvendigt, men ikke tilstrækkeligt at kortlægge, hvad andre har ment. Man må selvstændigt, kritisk udlægge sine grundantagelser om den sag, man vil undersøge. Man må selv svare på, hvad det er, man undersøger, og hvordan man mener at kunne vide noget om det.Denne artikel vil gøre brugere af Krigsførelsens Kredsløb i stand til enten at koble modellen med en teori og et videnssyn, der er passende til at lave en videnskabelig analyse af en konkret problemstilling, eller til at forkaste den som uanvendelig til det konkrete formål.

Krigsførelsens Kredsløb er en model, der peger på en sammenhæng mellem den militære organisation, dens teknologi og de doktriner (metoder), som den anvender. Modellen har været anvendt på Forsvarets uddannelser siden midten af 1960’erne og ligger som en latent selvforståelse i officerskorpset af sammenhænge og grænsedragninger i den militære praksis.Modellen findes i tre varianter, der hver afspejler den sikkerhedspolitiske situation, de er skrevet ind i. Fælles for de tre udlægninger er en manglende diskussion af deres påståede årsagssammenhænge. Det skaber især problemer, når studerende forstår kredsløbet som en teori, der kan forklare årsagssammenhænge. Modellens popularitet i Forsvaret står i kontrast til dens status uden for hegnet, hvor den er blevet fuldstændig ignoreret i den akademiske litteratur. Der er behov for et 50-års eftersyn: Hvad kan Krigsførelsens Kredsløb anno 2020?Den gode nyhed er, at Krigsførelsens Kredsløb udgør et nyttigt instrument i både undervisnings-, forsknings- og policyanalysesammenhæng. Den mindre gode er, at dens anvendelse til dato har været præget af to svagheder: (1) at finde den rette balance mellem enkelthed og kompleksitet, og (2) en manglende forståelse for, at modellen ikke forklarer noget i sig selv, men skal suppleres med teori.Formålet med dette temanummer er at give bud på, hvordan disse udfordringer kan løses. Det vil demonstrere, hvordan modellen kan suppleres med teori, og hvordan den kan tilpasses for at kunne løse forskellige problemer. Det er vores håb, at disse artikler vil bidrage til at øge kvaliteten af de analyser, som modellen vil blive brugt til fremover.

Denne artikel udpeger, hvordan man kan stille sig i det videnskabsteoretiske terræn, når man forsøger at forstå doktrin. Det er et litteraturstudie af ståsteder eller grundantagelser om, hvad doktrin er og om hvordan man kan opnå viden om doktrin. Artiklens formål er at skabe interesse for en refleksiv tilgang til spørgsmål om doktrin. Det skal ske ved, at læseren bliver bedre til at stille spørgsmål til, hvorvidt den valgte tilgang til at forstå doktrin eller den valgte definition af doktrin er passende i forhold til netop den virkelighed, som undersøges. Det kræver en diskussion af bud på hvad doktrin er, hvad doktrinens funktion er, om værdien af praktisk erfaring, samt om grænser for hvad der er muligt at erkende teoretisk i det fagmilitære felt; om videnskab og ikke-videnskab.