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The 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (3rd IBCT), 10th Mountain Division, was activated on 16 September 2004 at Fort Drum, New York. The brigade's 4th Battalion. 25th Field Artillery Regiment (4-25 FAR), organized along modular lines, is its organic fires battalion.
Soon after activating with the brigade, the fires battalion leaders realized they needed a planning process that could leverage the battalion's modular capabilities and enable them to develop plans and orders rapidly in the current operating environment: the Global War On Terrorism (GWOT). The battalion commander agreed to an experi ment wi th a new planning model, the recognitionprimed decision model, to determine if it could provide the fires battalion enough agility to be effective in GWOT.
Since 4-25 FAR stood up more than a year ago, we have used this model very successfully to prepare for a future deployment to Afghanistan-including during a rotation to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. We recommend the model as an alternative to the traditional military decision-making process (MDMP) for GWOT.
The Army's needs in GWOT require rapid planning to produce agility and flexibility. The MDMPdoes not produce plans and orders quickly enough for the GWOT environment.
This article describes the recognitionprimed decision model and how other battalions can use this model.
Recognition-Primed Model and MDMP Research. The recognition-primed decision model is a new planning methodology for standard orders development that is gaining a foothold in the Army. This model allows units to develop feasible plans and orders in time-constrained environments and enables friendly forces to act faster than the enemy.
As described in FM 5-0A nny Planning (nul Orders Production, the MDMP has been the Army's decision-making model for more than two decades. With seven steps and 117 sub-steps, it is an analytical process designed to generate the best solution from a series of options. Theoretically, the MDMP enables a commander to employ tactically sound plans that result in success on the battlefield.'
However, recent research reveals that the MDMP actually has the opposite outcome in many cases. The MDMP is a staff-driven regimen that inadvertently isolates the commander from developing the plan.
A group of research scientists from Klein Associates in Fairborn, Ohio, conducted studies of military organizations and planning....