Certainly, the love for planning slows down most if not all Western formations and creates a misguided self-perception of excellence.
The ability to decide on the spot quickly and to give meaningful orders without some elaborate decision-making process, probably without a staff at all, is what counts very often. Even corps-level veterans of WW2 stressed the importance of quick reactions.
Anglophone military literature almost fell in love with the OODA loop, maybe exactly due to the fact that the planning has become too ponderous. The effect seems to be negligible. In fact, OODA still appears to be too negligent and optimistic; there's rarely time to observe the effect of one's decisions before the next decision. The "observe" thing is riddled by mistakes anyway and the expectation for a commander's "orientation" on the situation should be set rather low due to the fog of war in its widest sense.
The OPFOR at Ft Irwin definitely stands out as an example of this. They are very rigorous in their battle drills - helped by their constant ability to rehearse and employ them in the field - but during their planning, they develop several courses of action and rehearse them all. Where US MDMP doctrine has you make a COA decision before WARNO 3, and then publish in the OPORD, the OPFOR would publish and OPORD with 3 or 4 COAs, and choose which one on first contact. Their excellent battle drills would allow them to quickly transition into the appropriate COA by repositioning on the battlefield to exploit enemy weaknesses, but the core of the decision was made after first contact, when the fog of war would start to dissipate.
By: Brant
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The 11th ACR worked at the NTC in a highly artificial environment where there was an unrealistic amount of time for planning - and they ran quite the same scenarios over and over again.
It's like American Fotball, where there are long breaks after every few steps and the coach has the time to consider and communicate the tactic.
The real world is more like Football, where there's only a single large break in the whole thing, all other breaks being too short to even leave the assigned position.
There's only once or twice much time for extensive planning and rehearsing.
Let's take the 1940 West Campaign as example:
There were months for planning and rehearsing before it began. There were days for planning and other preparations before the second phase began days after the fall of Dunkirk.
During most of the campaign there was no time for anything but decisions on the spot, though. The French attempted to "plan" - and demonstrated its folly.
This lesson is 70 years old and still not widely understood. It's as if it was the Frenchman's bad for being slow, ponderous and insisting on elaborate staff planning - but the very same things are right with "us".
No, multiplying the necessary planning effort as it was possible for OPFOR at the NTC is NOT the way to go!
"and they ran quite the same scenarios over and over again."
and yet when the 101st came to town, with missions that looked nothing like anything the OPFOR would traditionally face, they never altered their planning process and still did fine.
"an unrealistic amount of time for planning"
Not in the OPFOR TOCs I was in... there was some overall discussion of the missions before we headed to the field, and the baseline graphics were created, but the final missions weren't briefed until 36-48 hours before execution (and that was for a defense, when we had to have time to dig in). Most offensive missions were briefed 12-18 hours ahead of time.
Well, that IS unrealistic.
A real, mobile war leaves you in most cases something between 20 minutes and three hours for your reaction to a change of the situation. This includes everything from things changed in the field to blue troops met the challenge; communication, identification, staff work, decision-making, issuing orders, distributing orders and readying the troops.
It has long since been acknowledged that the cycle wasn't anywhere near 12-48 hrs in OIF, but rather close to a new challenge and mission every 6-8 hours. That was against a minimal capability army.
12 hrs equalled some 50+ km advances in 1940.
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