Introduction

Any evaluation of Australian Defence Force (ADF) models for applying military power should begin with doctrine. However, this task becomes problematic when examining concepts of ‘linearity’/ ‘non-linearity’ and ‘complex adaptive systems.’ The inclusion of such terms alludes to methods of applying military violence, yet the definitions of the terms vary across the hierarchy of ADF doctrine.^[1] For example, ADF foundational capstone doctrine uses concepts of ‘linearity’ to describe military engagements and articulates ‘complexity’ in war as the spectrum of competition.^[2] In the next level of philosophical doctrine, the use of terms becomes broader. That is, ‘non-linear’ describes physical geography, non-predictability, time and space, and movement along the spectrum of competition.^[3] On the other hand, the same doctrine uses ‘complexity’ to describe operational situations as ‘systems’ that exhibit ‘structural complexity’ when comprised of many parts or variables, or ‘interactive complexity’ where the situations change or adapt over time, making them ‘complex adaptive systems.’^[4] Despite the ambiguity in terminology, a strength of ADF doctrine is that it provides a clear position on the difficulty of non-linear complex adaptive systems as they relate to military operations. Specifically, military operations deal with complex adaptive systems (situations) that change over time in non-linear ways, meaning it is difficult to predict the consequences of military actions.^[5] The doctrine’s position is that models such as the Military Appreciation Process (MAP) cannot deal well with complex systems, because they use inferior linear causality and reductionist methods.^[6] The weakness of this position is that non-military disciplines, such as systems engineering, have shown that linear methods are still applicable to non-linear complex problems.

Systems engineering developed as a discipline throughout the second half of the twentieth century to specifically address the problem of creating and managing complex systems, by seeking to understand dynamic relationships between system elements and system behaviours.^[7] The ‘NASA Systems Engineering Handbook’ classifies systems engineering as a science and an art, using methods and techniques to characterise interactions in complex systems.^[8] Since its inception, systems engineers have expanded the discipline and developed taxonomies around systems-of-systems to explain complex system interactions between systems that show emergent and adaptive behaviour.^[9] For example, Mark Maier has proposed that systems-of-systems are geographically dispersed and collaboratively evolve.^[10] Such conceptions of complex systems align with ADF’s military doctrine and offer potential application to military planning.^[11] Given this alignment, there is merit in examining the systems engineering body of knowledge for insight into methods of altering complex adaptive systems through the application of violence.^[12]

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of the MAP to argue that existing ADF military planning processes would have better utility by using systems engineering methodologies to conceptualise complex adaptive systems. Firstly, the paper examines the nature and character of war in the context of complex adaptive systems and non-linearity. Next, the paper draws parallels between systems engineering methods and elements of the MAP to show that linear methods such as MAP can still support the understanding of complex adaptive systems. Finally, the paper illustrates how improved systems-thinking methods can evolve current military doctrine to improve planning for the conduct of military action.

Understanding war and complex adaptive systems

Complex adaptive systems are an enduring part of the nature of war, but the understanding of these systems has advanced over time. Reflecting on his experiences of the Napoleonic Wars, Clausewitz wrote of ‘fog and friction,’ where simple things become difficult, and that the ability of individual soldiers to make independent decisions creates part of war’s unpredictability and chance.^[13] Clausewitz was describing elements of a complex system. Brian Cole argues that Clausewitz’s trinity represents a series of complex adaptive systems of social, political and military interactions that adapt to the environment similar to a chameleon.^[14] While Clausewitz is often criticised for being contradictory on the nature of war, modern social science recognises this as the complexity of social systems, of which war is the most violent.^[15] Similarly, Samuel Solvit argues that war needs to be understood as a complex adaptive system because it is a social phenomenon where groups, relationships and environments undergo destruction and construction.^[16] This phenomenon explains why the First and Second World Wars challenged conceptions of war due to the complete involvement of societies and why strategies such as strategic bombing failed to have the predicted impact because of failings to comprehend the entire social system.^[17] A century on from the First World War, today’s social systems exist in the information age, making the world the most connected it has ever been. The nature of war is still a violent social phenomenon, but social systems have become more intricate, changing the character of war.

The internet has connected individuals and made social systems more complex and adaptive, increasing the complexity of modern wars. Not only can individuals communicate and share ideas globally, but technology has removed language and geographical barriers that previously limited connections between individuals in social systems.^[18] Modern counterinsurgency wars have become so complex, given the interactions between issue-motivated groups, religious ideologies and extremist individuals, and the clash of states and non-state actors conducting violent action.^[19] Ironically, the technology that created the complexity also assists in understanding it, with computational methods modelling analyses of complex social networks and simulated realities that can aid military decision-making.^[20] Western militaries such as the ADF try to articulate the complexity of modern war through models such as the spectrum of competition, yet this does not necessarily make applying violence any easier.^[21] While these systems’ complex nature and role in war are more apparent, the ability to predict these systems is not. This problem is due to the emergent and non-linear characteristics of complex adaptive systems.

In military operations, non-linear characteristics of complex adaptive systems make equating reaction to military action difficult, but not impossible. Non-linearity, often correlated with complexity, describes the lack of proportionality between the input to a system and the output of a system, making it challenging to predict system behaviour.^[22] While difficult to predict, non-linear systems are still predictable, provided they exhibit stability over time and can be sufficiently observed or approximated.^[23] The ability to short-term forecast weather is an example of such predictable non-linearity due to long-term observational consistent behaviour and modelling.^[24] However, adaptive systems change with input over time, which has the effect of increasing unpredictability. In non-linear adaptive systems, it is very hard to predict the output. Even observation over a long period may not produce any discernible patterns of behaviour because of system changes over time.^[25] So long as a system is not entirely random in its behaviour, known as chaos, it remains hard to predict but theoretically not unpredictable.^[26] While military operations involve enacting violence against complex adaptive social systems, a level of predictability must exist because otherwise, the entire logic for war becomes nonsensical.^[27] Social science explains that social systems exhibit behavioural consistency and predictability, despite being non-linear, complex and adaptive.^[28] Although challenging, the ADF’s military planning methods seek to predict outcomes of military violence against complex adaptive systems.

The ADF’s operational planning doctrine has acknowledged war’s complex and adaptive nature by incorporating iterative methods but still seeks to demonstrate cause and effect through reductionism.^[29] Ben Zweibelson’s criticism of the United States’ approach to military planning applies equally to Australian doctrine, where he considers that military planners view complexity as something to be solved by reducing problems into smaller parts in a “pathological desire to achieve certainty” in military outcomes.^[30] Furthermore, he argues that trying to identify linear causality between variables such as economic, political, and military factors consistently fails to successfully predict the behaviour of complex adaptive systems in war.^[31] Viewing reductionism as a weakness of current military planning methods can tend to overlook the strength of reductionism as a valid method of analysis. Most modern technology builds upon scientific knowledge from reductionist approaches, despite reductionism’s limitations in dealing with non-linearity and complexity.^[32] The value of linear reductionism is its simplicity and ability to support the understanding of observable phenomena.^[33] The ADF has evolved the MAP to incorporate non-linear iterations and reduce prescriptive linear processes, but this is not the only solution. Rather than focusing on the military planning model as the problem, another approach is to focus on the target complex systems. By exploring alternate methods for conceptualising complex adaptive systems, the ADF can use existing military planning methods to exploit the value they provide. Systems engineering provides the basis of this alternative.

Comparison of methods for dealing with complex systems – Systems engineering and the MAP

Systems engineering is a proven discipline for understanding and characterising complex systems, which are similar goals of military planning.^[34] Systems engineering achieves this through techniques and methodologies that incorporate systems-thinking. When conceptualising a system, systems engineers recognise that systems have structure; exhibit wholeness; exhibit emergence; exist at multiple levels of an organisation; exist within an environment and have a purpose.^[35] As a result, systems engineers seek to understand the system’s environment, constituent parts, system-level properties, functions and behaviours, ways of adapting to the environment, and how it conducts feedback to enable adaption.^[36] The ADF’s military planning doctrine demonstrates that military planners seek similar outcomes as systems engineers. The MAP aims to: assess the situation equivalent to understanding a system’s environment, frame the problem much like identifying the system’s required properties and develop options comparable to developing ways the system may behave, function, and adapt.^[37] Therefore, the outcomes of the MAP are fundamentally aligned with the proven discipline for understanding and characterising complex systems, which can only be considered a strength of the ADF’s model. Given the alignment, the MAP is well-placed to incorporate systems engineering methodologies and processes to enhance the application of military violence against, and as part of, complex adaptive systems.

Despite the similarities, the relationship to complex adaptive systems is somewhat different for systems engineering and the MAP. Systems engineering aims to support the design, development and realisation, management, operation, and retirement of systems.^[38] It involves methodologies and processes to understand systems to ensure they fulfil their purpose across an entire life cycle.^[39] This means that systems engineers characterise systems, often from requirements, and need to understand the interactions between systems, subsystems, and components to design the systems. Importantly, systems engineering recognises that simple methods such as repetitive decomposition do not work for complex adaptive systems with emergent properties which cease to exist when subsystems are isolated from the whole system.^[40] As a result, systems engineering is about balancing linear procedural and non-linear iterative methods to understand complex adaptive systems.^[41] In contrast, the MAP, when used as a planning tool for military operations, supports the design of operations to interact with and apply violence against complex adaptive systems.^[42] This interaction represents a system-of-systems problem. Military planners need to conduct operational design to understand friendly complex adaptive systems, the complex adaptive systems of the adversary, and how they interact along the spectrum of competition.^[43] As Clausewitz recognised, these may be military, economic, social, political, or strategies conceptualised as an aggregation of these systems.^[44] In simple terms, systems engineering is about building systems, and the MAP is about damaging systems. Both require an understanding of complex adaptive systems to be successful, but systems engineering has demonstrated that understanding does not need to be perfectly predictive.

Approximations of complex systems are frequently sufficient for systems engineering applications meaning the same can be true for the ADF’s military planning model. However, this would require the ADF to address two interlinked weaknesses in its existing MAP. The first is, as Zweibelson criticises, for military planners and commanders to overcome their obsession with achieving certainty, and the second is to become comfortable with uncertainty.^[45] This uncertainty does not refer to operational risk management, which the MAP incorporates in detail. Rather, it is uncertainty in the underlying logic and causality within operational plans.^[46] Practically, being comfortable with uncertainty could mean rethinking MAP methods such as Centre of Gravity analysis, opening the possibility of indeterminism or viewing Centres of Gravity as functions of time.^[47] When military planners become comfortable with uncertainty, it allows them to use approximation methods rather than trying to pursue more and more detailed models to understand complex adaptive systems.^[48]

Using approximation modelling of complex adaptive systems provides two major advantages in military planning. The first is that it is faster because there are robust analytical methods to quickly develop models that are ‘good enough’ for approximating system behaviour in the most likely conditions.^[49] Second, simplified linear or lower-order models are often sufficient approximations of complex systems, which means more straightforward incorporation into the MAP’s linear procedural analysis methods.^[50] Scientific and mathematical techniques such as linearisation and equation transformations allow the approximation of complex non-linear relationships in simpler terms by bounding the equation around points of interest.^[51] Disease modelling is an example of how bounding equations and problem space can support understanding a complex problem in simpler terms. Although disease spreading is a complex adaptive problem, because it involves human behaviour, scientists know that humans interact in defined social networks, enabling them to make approximations and simplifications in modelling to get close enough for informed decision-making.^[52] In a way, the MAP methods of identifying Centres of Gravity and breaking the operational environment into discrete ‘deep, close and rear’ zones are forms of approximation.^[53] However, the weakness is the conceptualisation of complex adaptive systems is built upon linear reductionism ‘systematic’ thinking rather than the ‘systemic’ system-thinking.^[54] Enhancing systems-thinking within the MAP will improve the utility of existing ADF models for organising military action against complex adaptive systems. The final part of this paper provides ways to strengthen the MAP by incorporating more systems-thinking.

Applying more systems-thinking to military planning through the MAP

A clearer view of complex adaptive systems and their relationship with the spectrum of competition would improve how the MAP can frame problems and develop military plans. One option is to represent a cascading hierarchy of systems, which at the strategic level could be defined as Clausewitz’s trinity as described by Cole.^[55] Alternatively, each of the elements of national power under the DIME^[56] framework could be considered a system, with military operations seeking to act against or protect actions against these systems, which function together as a system-of-systems.^[57] Systems interpretation also needs to change at each reference level of conflict, meaning that systems at the military-strategic level are likely conceptual systems. In contrast, at the tactical level, they are likely to be physical systems that involve military capabilities.^[58] At the strategic level, the problem frame is a complex adaptive system-of-systems, a series of interacting systems that will change with the input of military action. With a clearer systemic description of the complex adaptive systems involved in conflict, the notion of linearity becomes clearer. Systems can be described as systems engineers describe them: with inputs, outputs, functions, variables, constraints, actors, relationships, feedback, and stability.^[59] With an increased focus on clearly defined systems, the MAP should also evolve its systematic thinking around Centre of Gravity.

Modifying the MAP’s Centre of Gravity analysis with systems engineering definition processes, would remove the linear causality weakness inherent in the Centre of Gravity analysis and more realistically represent the complex adaptive systems in conflict. The systems engineering definition processes described by ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 include mission, requirements, architecture, and design.^[60] As part of defining a system, methods require consideration of interactions within the system, boundaries of the system and related systems, the operating environment, and states and modes of operation.^[61] Systems engineers can still define these critical aspects of the system even for non-linear complex adaptive systems such as networks. In the MAP, Centre of Gravity analysis tends to define a single hierarchical tree relationship to define a ‘system’ and then reverse engineer lines of operation to target vulnerabilities in this single-dimensional hierarchy.^[62] A Centre of Gravity analysis modified with more systems engineering processes can better represent complexity. For example, the Centre of Gravity may change depending on the state of the operating environment or the health of the critical capabilities that comprise it. Additionally, considering the relationship and interactions between lower-level critical capabilities and critical requirements may mean that the interaction between the Centre of Gravity elements, rather than the elements themselves, could represent vulnerabilities in the system. While the MAP suggests planners need to change from “simply focusing on a single point of potential failure (traditional Centre of Gravity) to the means of transforming an interactive and adaptable dynamic system,” incorporating more systems engineering methods into the process would improve the means to achieve it.^[63] With better conceptualisation of complex adaptive systems, MAP's utility increases in developing courses of action to target such systems.

Using systems-thinking to conceptualise system details can improve military planners’ understanding of how to target complex adaptive systems. Both social science and engineering have used network models to focus on the relationships and interactions between entities in systems rather than solely focusing on the entities themselves.^[64] In addition, Norbert Weiner’s Cybernetics work proposed that systems control themselves through a feedback process designed to correct errors and adapt to change.^[65] For militaries, Everett Dolman argues that targeting complex adaptive systems means striking at an opponent’s ability to change.^[66] Systems-thinking using these models provides the perspective to better achieve this using the MAP. Feedback is how systems adapt and is enabled through networks of interactions within systems. While targeting feedback is one way to damage complex adaptive systems, other methods include identifying more vulnerable states and modes, exploiting system boundaries, or altering a system’s operating environment. The key to success is enhancing how complex adaptive systems are understood and using the robust methods within the MAP to organise military violence against them.

Conclusion

The conduct of war has always involved complex adaptive systems, and the non-linear nature of these systems has made organising military violence challenging for military planners. Clausewitz wrote of such aspects of war, illustrating his understanding through concepts and models such as his trinity, fog, and friction. The ADF has also recognised the complexity of war, using models such as the spectrum of competition to describe the complex adaptive nature of warfare. Furthermore, the ADF has acknowledged the weakness that its primary method of planning military operations, the MAP, is built on linear reductionist logic that can be difficult to apply to non-linear problems with adaptive complexity. However, much of modern science builds on reductionist logic, and linear processes are easier to implement, making both features inherent strengths of the MAP. The issue for the ADF is how its method for organising and applying military violence can be successful against the complex adaptive systems in conflict. This paper has shown how the discipline of systems engineering provides the means to overcome this issue.

Systems engineering and its associated systems-thinking provide methods of conceptualisation and understanding of complex adaptive systems. In many ways, the goals of systems engineering and the MAP are similar, as both seek to characterise systems for different purposes. Therefore the MAP can benefit from incorporating systems engineering techniques, provided that the military can overcome an obsession with certainty and embrace approximation. The strength of systems engineering and systems-thinking is the ability to work with uncertainty and approximation, with sufficient accuracy to allow system design. In doing so, systems engineers can understand and develop complex systems. Military planners can use this same knowledge to target systems in war if the MAP was to be improved with better application of systems-thinking within the doctrine. Such improvements include clearly articulating the role of complex adaptive systems in competition and conflict, expanding the Centre of Gravity analysis to accommodate the representation of complexity and non-linearity, and incorporating different systems-thinking when developing courses of action. In this way, improving the conceptualisation of complex adaptive systems, and using systems engineering methodologies to accommodate system complexity, increases the utility of the ADF’s military planning process.