Leap into the Dark: Crisis Action Planning for Operation Restore Hope

摘要

This monograph is designed to demonstrate the complexity of developing,coordinating and executing a time sensitive, crisis situation campaign under Military Operations Other Than War conditions. Campaign plans are developed to provide a sequential linkage and logical evolution of an operation through from the point of crisis initiation through crisis resolution. However, when available planning time is limited and the operational planner does not have the benefit of a preexisting regional plan either to implement or modify to address the existing situation, the potential that either vital national interests or key factors necessary to achieve the desired regional or strategic end states may be overlooked is significantly increased. Operation RESTORE HOPE provides a recent example of a time sensitive, contingency joint and combined operation. More importantly, the campaign is illustrative of potential future MOOTW conflicts that this nation may be committed to. In little more than two weeks, operational planners developed and implemented a complex regional campaign plan that included all deployment, force employment and crisis termination requirements for the area of operations (AOR). To further complicate the planning effort of Joint Task Force (JTF) Somalia, little was known regarding the AOR and the composition of participating joint forces and coalition nations repeatedly changed over time. A detailed examination of the planning environment at the early stage of the crisis will characterize the difficulty in collecting requisite information and consolidating planning resources to complete the operational planning task. In the initial and potentially most crucial phase in the campaign formulation for Somalia, operational planners believed that their was neither theoretical or doctrinal mechanisms to assist them. What resulted was a dynamic, inconsistent, conce.