PLANNING FOR AND APPLYING MILITARY FORCE:

AN EXAMINATION OF TERMS

Paul K. Van Riper

March 2006

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An earlier version of this paper was prepared for a Hicks & Associates, Inc. 

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innovation and strengthen operational concepts through rigorous assessment.

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FOREWORD

Despite common opinion, doctrine never stands still. Concepts 

are redefined, added to, and subtracted from, over time. Often 

the changes result in improvements, but occasionally they do not. 

As Joint doctrine is currently undergoing some potentially major 

revisions, Lieutenant General (USMC, Ret.) Paul Van Riper, an 

experienced warfighter and accomplished forward-thinker, asks 

the doctrine community to take a step back from the process of 

change and take a hard look at the differences between the original 

concepts and the proposed revisions. If, after doing so, the proposed 

revisions clearly amount to a step forward, then we should proceed. 

Otherwise, we might question the value of implementing the 

proposed changes. In any case, pausing for sober reflection even in 

periods of comprehensive change is a healthy habit.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

PAUL K. VAN RIPER retired from the United States Marine Corps 

in October 1997 at the rank of Lieutenant General after more than 

41 years of commissioned and enlisted service. During those years, 

he served in a variety of command and staff billets at posts and 

stations around the world, including seven tours in the Fleet Marine 

Force where he commanded at every level from infantry platoon to 

division. He participated in or observed combat operations during 

five tours. As a second lieutenant, he commanded a platoon in Santo 

Domingo in the Dominican Republic crisis. As a first lieutenant, he 

was an advisor to the Republic of Vietnam’s Marine Corps. As a 

captain, he led a rifle company in Vietnam. As a major, he was a 

United Nations Observer in the Sinai Desert and southern Lebanon. 

As a brigadier general, he served with I Marine Expeditionary Force 

in Operation DESERT STORM. In retirement, Lieutenant General 

Van Riper continues to participate in an array of defense and 

security related war games, seminars and conferences, and lectures 

frequently at professional military schools. He also consults part 

time for a number of government agencies and commercial firms 

on defense and operational matters. Lieutenant General Van Riper 

held the Marine Corps University’s Donald Bren Chair of Innovation 

and Transformation during Academic Year 2005-06. He is a graduate 

of the Army’s Airborne and Ranger Schools, the Marine Corps 

Amphibious Warfare School, the Navy’s College of Command and 

Staff, and the Army War College. 
v

SUMMARY

This Letort Paper briefly examines current and, in some cases, 

still evolving definitions in joint doctrine—especially with regard to 

strategy, center of gravity, decisive point, and commander’s intent. 

It discusses the heritage of those concepts and terms, most of which 

derived from the writings of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. In so doing, 

the author finds that current joint planning definitions and concepts 

tend to confuse more than they inform. In short, they are not ready 

to be incorporated into formal doctrine, and certainly not into the 

actual planning process. Hence, concept developers need to go back 

to the drawing table, and make a concerted effort to separate the 

proverbial wheat from the chaff. Change is good, but so is tradition. 

The definitions advanced by Sun Tzu and Clausewitz have stood the 

test of time for good reasons. If we decide to change them, we should 

have equally good reasons for doing so.

PLANNING FOR AND APPLYING MILITARY FORCE:

AN EXAMINATION OF TERMS

Background.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff produced a complete body of joint 

doctrine for the first time in 1995. This joint doctrine drew heavily 

from service doctrines, especially materials published by the Army 

and Marine Corps after 1982. In turn, the service doctrines of 

this period incorporated many of the ideas developed during the 

American military renaissance of the late 1970s and early 1980s, 

ideas based largely upon the theories of Prussian General Carl von 

Clausewitz, Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, and other more recent 

military scholars.

Unfortunately, the bureaucratic procedures the military employed to develop and publish new service and joint doctrines diminished 

the classical theorists’ and contemporary scholars’ eloquent 

definitions. At the same time, these procedures added unnecessary 

terms. Nonetheless, joint and service doctrines, built for the most 

part upon established theory, provide a rich store of knowledge for 

the practitioner of operational art. As a rule, officers regularly have 

turned to this body of knowledge to plan and conduct operations 

over the past 15 years. The success of Operations DESERT STORM, 

ENDURING FREEDOM, and the initial attack of Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM demonstrates the strength and utility of existing 

doctrines.

This Letort Paper briefly examines current joint doctrine to 

identify the concepts and associated terms that are to guide the 

planning of joint operations. The paper also discusses the heritage of 

these concepts and terms, mainly those gleaned from the writings of 

Clausewitz and Sun Tzu and their later disciples.

In short, this paper describes the essence of current joint planning 

concepts and links key terms to their intellectual antecedents. 

The purpose is to provide a framework against which to compare 

suggested new planning models. If advocates of novel planning 

concepts are able to show how such concepts can improve upon the 

ones described in this paper and, in turn, enhance military planning, 

they will have gone a long way towards proving the merits of their 
innovations. Contrarily, if they are unable to demonstrate a modicum 

of improvement, they must necessarily revisit their ideas or abandon 

them.

Military Planning.

Military leaders routinely face situations or problems where they 

have to decide what actions to take. In addition, military leaders 

must supervise execution of their decisions. When such leaders make 

decisions in anticipation of future action, they are in effect planning. 

One manual states that, “Planning involves projecting our thoughts 

forward in time and space to influence events before they occur rather 

than merely responding to events as they occur.”1 In a literal sense, 

leaders inescapably make all decisions in advance of taking action. 

Therefore, planning as discussed here refers to situations where 

there is sufficient time to employ a decisionmaking process.

At its most basic level, planning requires that a leader have an idea 

of the outcome or results desired from a plan. In addition, execution 

of a plan requires resources. Said differently, planning consists of 

determining and then balancing ends and means. Not surprisingly, 

classical theorists acknowledged the importance of first identifying 

ends and then matching the means needed to achieve those ends.

Over time theorists, scholars, and practitioners enlarged upon 

the simple ends, means model, and selected terms to support more 

detailed and explicit planning. They recognized that how, that is, the 

methods or ways, means are employed is important, thus, the current 

ends, ways, and means paradigm. In trying to understand where to 

focus the available means, theoreticians created concepts such as 

center of gravity and decisive points. Likewise, knowing why a military 

expected to use force led to notions of intent or commander’s intent, 

terms used to identify the purpose of an action. The desire for tools to 

permit assigning certain responsibilities to specific units saw creation 

of terms like mission and objectives. Finally came a term to describe 

the desired post-conflict or after-battle situation, or end-state.

The following paragraphs discuss the origins and meanings of 

this current doctrinal vocabulary. 
Ends, Ways, and Means.

Clausewitz recognized the importance of clearly establishing the 

reason for going to war when he wrote, “No one starts a war—or 

rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear 

in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he 

intends to conduct it.”2 He wrote extensively about the need to relate 

ends and means in his classic, On War. One authority on Clausewitz’s 

work notes that appreciation of ends and means “is, essentially, what 

the whole book is about. . . .”3 At the highest levels of government, 

Clausewitz argued, the ends of war are always for a political purpose. 

He acknowledged, however, that that there will be a series of lesser 

aims that leaders attempt to achieve in order to reach the ultimate 

end. He listed the first of these as the need “to compel our enemy 

to do our will.”4 He further observed that, “To secure that object, 

we must render the enemy powerless; and that in theory, is the true 

aim of warfare.”5 Thus, at the campaign level, the object (or end) is 

to “overcome the enemy and disarm him.”6 At the tactical level, 

disarming the enemy requires destruction of his fighting forces (the 

ends).

Clausewitz created a similar hierarchical structure for means, the 

highest being combat. He acknowledged that combat could take a 

number of forms, not all of which require physical destruction of the 

enemy, an instance being actions that cause an enemy to abandon a 

position without fighting. Although, as he noted, “the gradation of 

objects at the various levels of command will further separate the 

first means from the ultimate purpose,” connoting there must be a 

correlation of ends and means at each level if there is to be a realistic 

weighing of the costs and benefits of any war.7

The other great classical theorist, Sun Tzu, was not as clear as 

Clausewitz was in his writing about ends and means. A review of 

various translations of his work does not reveal these words used in 

the same unambiguous manner as Clausewitz. Nonetheless, a noted 

scholar, Michael Handel, argues that Sun Tzu employed what today 

we know as the rational decisionmaking model to calculate ends and 

means.

8

 He quotes two paragraphs from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to 

support his case:
Weigh the situation, then move. 

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p. 106

Now the elements of the art of war are first, measurement of space; 

second, estimation of quantities; third, calculations; fourth, comparisons; 

and fifth, chances of victory.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p. 88

Quantities derive from measurement, figures from quantities, comparisons from figures, and victory from comparisons.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p. 88

Handel claims that these statements reflect a process where “such 

factors as objectives, considerations of relative strength, and the 

comparison of opponents lead to the weighing of different courses 

of action and to estimating the probability of victory.”9

The ends-means paradigm of the classical theorists appears in the 

writings of numerous modern military scholars. For example, Liddell 

Hart, despite his disdain for many of Clausewitz’s ideas, defined 

strategy as, “the art of distributing and applying military means to 

fulfill the ends of policy.”10 J. C. Wylie, proposed that strategy was 

a “plan of action designed in order to achieve some end; a purpose 

together with a system of measure for its accomplishment.”11 Colin 

Gray characterized strategy as “the use that is made of force and the 

threat of force for the ends of policy.”12

Several contemporary scholars of strategy broadened the basic 

Clausewitzian ends-means concept, specifically by adding ways to 

the equation. As a case in point, Army Colonel Arthur F. Lykke, Jr. 

credited General Maxwell D. Taylor with introducing the idea of 

“ways” in a visit to the U.S. Army War College in 1981 and then 

expanded on the thought in his own writing.13 In another example, 

Air Force Colonel Dennis Drew and Dr. Donald Snow state that, “In 

the modern era, it is much more accurate and descriptive to consider 

strategy as a complex decisionmaking process that connects the ends 

sought (objectives) with the ways and means of achieving those 

ends.”14 Military writers such as Lykke, Drew, and Snow frequently 

identified ways as operational concepts, courses of action, or methods 

used to attain the desired ends. Another current military writer, 
John Collins, described ends, ways, and means based on the names 

Rudyard Kipling provided his “six honest serving men.” Collins set 

them forth this way:

• “What” and “Why” correspond to perceived requirements 

(ends),

• “How, When and Where” indicate optional courses of action 

(ways),

• “Who” concerns available forces and resources (means).15

Of the keystone joint publications, Joint Publication 3-0, Doctrine 

for Joint Operations, discusses the ends-ways-means construct most 

explicitly. In describing the requirement imposed on combatant 

commanders to develop plans for military operations, Joint 

Publication 3-0 notes that, “The result, expressed in terms of military 

objectives, military concepts, and resources (ends, ways, and 

means), provides guidance for a broad range of activities.”16 [Bold 

type contained in the original.] On the other hand, this publication 

does not provide clear and specific definitions for each these three 

separate terms. As an illustration, Joint Publication 3-0 identifies 

ends variously as strategic and operational objectives, goals, and 

effects. Though the manual appears to use objectives and goals as 

synonyms, the use of effects is not always clear. For instance, chapter 

III, paragraph 5.j. contains the statement, “The essence of operational 

art lies in being able to mass effects against the adversary’s sources of 

power in order to destroy or neutralize them.” [Italics added.] The 

phrase “mass effects” in this context suggests means, that is, forces 

or weapons, not ends. Otherwise, if we employee synonyms and 

assume mass is used as a verb, we are saying collect results or assemble 

consequences, outcomes difficult to imagine. Paragraph 6.d. of the 

same chapter makes the following statements: “While some fires will 

support operational and tactical movement and maneuver . . ., other 

fires are independent of maneuver and orient on achieving specific 

operational and strategic effects that support the JFC’s objectives. 

Fires are the effects of lethal or nonlethal weapons.” [Bold type 

contained in the original.] In the first of these sentences, “effects” 

seems to be synonymous with results or outcomes and represents 

ends. The second sentence is difficult to interpret. If fires and effects 
are synonymous (which seems to be the case since “are” is the present 

plural of “be”) the sentence is nonsensical. The sentence could just as 

easily read, “Results are the results of weapons.”

Despite the apparent inconsistencies in each term’s definitions, 

all U.S. professional military schools teach the ends, ways, means

paradigm and the joint planning community uses it commonly, 

seemingly having no difficulty understanding its basic connotation. 

Center of Gravity.

Clausewitz maintained that to achieve a war’s ultimate end, that 

is, breaking the enemy’s will, a nation must direct all of its efforts at 

a center of gravity or schwerpunkt.

17 Although he borrowed the term 

from physics—defined as the focal point where the mass of a body 

is concentrated and the forces of gravity can be said to converge—

he used it in a more abstract manner, noting that it is, “the hub of 

all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is 

the point against which all our energies should be directed.”18 He 

conceded that in nearly all circumstances, unlike in a physical body, 

there would be more than a single center of gravity. Nonetheless, 

he cautioned, “The first principle is that the ultimate substance of 

enemy strength must be traced back to the fewest possible sources, 

and ideally to one alone.”19 Clausewitz provided several examples of 

centers of gravity—an enemy’s army, its capital, or a primary ally. 

Sun Tzu’s thoughts on the object of war are less clear than 

Clausewitz’s, though he also presents a hierarchy of things to 

attack. At the top of his list is the “enemy’s strategy,” followed by 

“his alliances,” then “his army,” and, finally, “cities—only when 

there is no alternative.”20 Michael Handel suggests that Sun Tzu’s 

implied concept of a “center of gravity is . . . on a different, much 

higher plane.”21 Clausewitz provides “concrete guidance for action,” 

while Sun Tzu offers “a metaphor” and “[g]uidance for action in 

general.”22

During World War I, the German Army expanded on Clausewitz’s 

notion of a schwerpunkt and applied the concept extensively at the 

operational and tactical levels of war. A current student of German 

military thought observed “in early 1915, the Austro-Hungarian 

chief of staff, Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf . . . saw the enemy army 
as a system that could be disintegrated by force concentrated at a 

similarly critical factor.”23 Whereas Clausewitz focused on one center 

of gravity or a few that led back to the one, von Hotzendorf was 

interested in a larger number within just a portion of the enemy’s 

force.24 In the latter half of 1915, Captain Willy Rohr enlarged on 

the concept further when he identified machinegun positions as the 

tactical center of gravity and developed new techniques for taskorganized squads that became the foundation for the German storm 

battalions.25 These techniques provided the foundation for the more 

expansive German tactic of infiltration used later in the war.

German combined arms doctrine—derived from earlier infiltration tactics—employed in World War II emphasized the rapid 

concentration of armored units on operational centers of gravity. 

People studying this doctrine “began to confuse schwerpunkt with 

another key element of operational design—the decisive point.”26

Swiss born French General Antoine Henri Jomini originated this 

latter term, stating that, of strategic points, those “whose importance 

is constant and immense . . . are called DECISIVE strategic points.”27

[Capital letters contained in original.] Jomini drops the word strategic

from the term less than a page after introducing it, leaving the now 

familiar decisive point. 

Though Clausewitz used the term—“The best strategy is always 

to be very strong: first in general, and then at the decisive point”—it 

is Jomini’s use of the phrase that is more accurate when applied to 

blitzkrieg.28 Clausewitz’ decisive point referred to a mass against 

which to concentrate force; Jomini’s represented “a portion of the 

enemy, such as a flank, or it may be a piece of terrain, the destruction 

of which will lead to a decision in the operation.”29 In a sense, 

Clausewitz looked at a decisive point as something to demolish; 

Jomini saw it as something to leverage. Those possessed with a 

Clausewitzian orientation usually talk of destroying decisive points, 

while those with a Jominian persuasion most often describe decisive 

points as places to dislocate or “unhinge” an enemy. 

To confuse matters further, a mistranslation in a 1942 book on 

blitzkrieg, Attacks by F. O. Miksche, rendered schwerpunkt as “thrustpoint.”30 This error prompted many later manuals to refer to the 

center of gravity as the “point of main effort.” Adding even more 
to the misunderstanding, a British writer suggested that a better 

term might be “focus of energy.”31 Finally, a member of the “military 

reform movement” of the 1980s put another twist on the expression 

when he presented the thought that the schwerpunkt described, “the 

object of focus for the efforts of all subordinate and supporting units, 

generally expressed in terms of a particular friendly unit.”32 These 

interpretations can lead the casual student to conclude that anything 

subject to attack is potentially a center of gravity, very different from 

the original meaning of Clausewitz.

Because of the confusion noted above, center of gravity is a 

frequent topic in the works of many present-day military writers. 

Numerous small books, pamphlets, and articles published over 

the last 15 years attest to the considerable interest in the subject. In 

a guide that resulted from a 2-year study, two U.S. Army officers 

offer “a method for determining the center of gravity of any entity 

or actor, friendly or enemy; for analyzing campaign options; and 

for applying center of gravity determinations to the planning and 

execution of campaigns.”33 A Marine Corps University professor, 

concerned about confusion on the concept, made an impassioned 

plea in a paper to, “as a minimum return to the Clausewitzian 

meaning of centers of gravity as moral and physical strengths, while 

simultaneously retaining the concept of ‘critical vulnerabilities’ as 

critical weaknesses. . . .”34

Center of gravity entered the joint vocabulary during the military 

reform movement of the 1980s. Though military officers applied the 

term loosely at first, they now evidence a good understanding of the 

term and generally use it consistent with the official joint definition, 

which reads, “Those characteristics, capabilities, or sources of power 

from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical 

strength, or will to fight.”35 Several keystone Joint Publications—1, 

3-0, and 5-0—note the importance of centers of gravity, commending 

commanders to focus on the enemy’s strategic and operational 

centers of gravity when drawing up plans. Though Joint Publication 

3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, recognizes that the term applies 

at the strategic level, the manual focuses on its employment at 

the operational level as an analytical tool useful when designing 

campaigns. The manual also observes that when an enemy protects 

its center of gravity well from direct attack, commanders need to 
“seek an indirect approach.”36 Often the object of such an indirect 

attack will be a decisive point.

Decisive Point.

As noted in the previous section, Jomini’s idea of strategic points

loosely mirrors Clausewitz’s center of gravity. However, Jomini 

posits two kinds of such points, those with permanence because of 

their geographical location and those associated with “the masses 

of the hostile troops and the enterprises likely to be directed against 

them. . . .”37 He further defines these points as decisive—“those which 

are capable of exercising a marked influence either upon the result 

of the campaign or upon a single enterprise”—and a smaller subset 

called objective points—that delineate the object of the campaign or 

operation.38 Both, however, relate to the maneuver of friendly forces. 

Jomini, reflecting on his study of Napoleon’s operations, emphasizes 

maneuvering against an enemy’s flank to separate operating forces 

from their base of support. One authority writes, “The great merit 

of Napoleon as a strategist lay not in simply maneuvering for some 

limited advantage, but in identifying those points that, if lost, would 

‘dislocate and ruin’ the enemy.”39

The philosophical style of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War makes it difficult 

to identify specific references to a concept similar to decisive point. 

Yet, one can argue that the idea is contained in statements from his 

discussion of weaknesses and strengths. For example, “Then, if I am 

able to use many to strike few at the selected point, those I deal with 

will be in dire straits.”40 One also can make a comparable case for the 

sense Sun Tzu conveys when discussing the rapid movement of light 

troops: “In contending for advantage, it must be for a strategically 

critical point.”41

Decisive point came into usage throughout the U.S. military in the 

1980s. Despite the fact that its Jominian origins made the term suspect 

with Clausewitzian disciples, it soon proved useful in planning 

discussions. The official joint definition states, “A geographic 

place, specific key event, critical system, or function that allows 

commanders to gain a marked advantage over an enemy and greatly 

influence the outcome of an attack.”42 (Readers should not confuse 
10

decisive points with decision points, which are events in time when a 

commander must make a decision or act at a geographical location 

that requires a commander’s decision.) The terms vulnerability and 

later critical vulnerability entered the military vocabulary in the late 

1980s as sort of a synonym for decisive point. The official definitions 

for vulnerability read: 

1. The susceptibility of a nation or military force to any action by any 

means through which its war potential or combat effectiveness may be 

reduced or its will to fight diminished. 

2. The characteristics of a system that cause it to suffer a definite 

degradation (incapability to perform the designated mission) as a result 

of having been subjected to a certain level of effects in an unnatural 

(manmade) hostile environment.43

The term vulnerability refers to some aspect of a center of gravity or 

decisive point that is susceptible to attack. When a writer adds the 

qualifier critical, he or she means that not only is the object vulnerable, 

but that it is important to the enemy or the enemy’s defense.

As generally understood in current joint doctrine, especially Joint 

Publication 3-0, center of gravity is of a higher order than a decisive 

point. In fact, this manual makes the case that decisive points are 

“the keys to attacking protected [centers of gravity].”44 In this sense, 

decisive points enable an indirect attack on a center of gravity. 

Intent.

Although there is no clear linkage to the writings of either 

Clausewitz or Sun Tzu with the concept of “intent” or “commander’s 

intent,” scholars often infer the connection. For example, Martin 

Samuels, after tracing the concept of center of gravity from Clausewitz 

to the German Army of World War II states, “A central feature of 

the Schwerpunkt was the Absicht (higher intent).”45 This meant that 

commanders first provided the intent and then assigned tasks to 

subordinate unit commanders. If the situation remained unchanged, 

senior commanders expected their subordinate commanders to focus 

on accomplishing the task. However, when the situation changed, as 

it often did, the subordinate commanders were to take the initiative 
11

in order to achieve the intent, either modifying or abandoning the 

task. Samuels maintains that this system of “[d]irective command 

first entered official German usage in the Prussian Exerier-Reglement

of 1806 . . . was extended in 1813 . . . [and] had become firmly rooted 

by the mid-19th century.”46 He also contends that it “was established 

as a coherent theory” and “enforced as official doctrine” under 

Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) during his 30 years as Chief of the 

General Staff.47

Many students of military operations attribute the operational 

and tactical successes of the German Army in World War II to its use 

of Auftragstaktik, or mission-type orders. Trevor Dupuy, for example, 

writes that Germans believe this “concept pioneered by Scharnhorst, 

fostered by his successors, and brought to perfection by Moltke” was 

the major factor in their exceptional combat performance over the 

years.48

 Fundamentally, the concept of intent rests on the notion that 

the reason a commander assigns a task, that is, its purpose, is more 

important than the task. The idea is to provide the why of a mission. 

If circumstances dictate, subordinate commanders may disregard the 

assigned task so long as they focus on accomplishing the purpose. 

Many scholars and theorists urged the American military to adopt 

mission-type orders during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Service 

leaders heeded this appeal and directed incorporation of the concept 

into doctrinal manuals as well as the curricula of professional military 

schools, but with some confusion.

Doctrine writers questioned where in an operations plan or order 

to place the reference to intent. For reasons unknown, writers at the 

time apparently failed to recognize that existing formats for orders 

and plans placed intent as the second of two parts of the mission 

statement. Since mission statements as early as 1940 contained a 

task with an associated purpose or intent, we can easily make the 

argument that the U.S. military in the 1970s simply rediscovered 

the term and its great utility. Current joint doctrine confirms this 

definition of a mission, “The task, together with the purpose, that 

clearly indicates the action to be taken and the reason therefore.”49

Nevertheless, proponents advertised intent—in the sense of purpose 

or reason—as a central part of the new thoughts introduced into 

operational doctrine in the 1980s and 1990s.
12

In practice, users often displace the correct meaning of intent 

with “intention,” that is, a design or determination to act in a certain 

way. Consequently, users regularly express intent as something 

a commander plans to do to an enemy rather than why he or she 

intends to take an action. For example, “Commander’s intent is the 

commander’s personnel verbal and graphic summary of the unit 

mission and concept of operation that establishes a description of 

the mission objective and method . . . .”50 Less frequently, but no 

less erroneously, users describe intent as the result desired. This is 

illustrated in the words of an advocate of the concept who wrote 

that a mission-type order “involves telling a subordinate what result 

he is to obtain, usually defined in terms of effect on enemy, then 

leaving him to determine how best to get it.”51 Interestingly, intent is 

not defined in joint doctrine, but intention is—“An aim or design (as 

distinct from capability) to execute a specified course of action”—

confirming the explanation above.52

Commander’s Intent.

At about the same time as the U.S. military began reintroducing 

the term intent into its lexicon, the U.S. Army revised the format of its 

operations plans and orders adding a paragraph titled commander’s 

intent. This paragraph was to capture the commander’s thinking 

behind the concept of operations. Doctrine developers at the time 

believed that too often a commander’s reasoning, assessments, and 

guidance were lost when reduced to a few sentences in the “concept 

of operations” paragraph.53 In addition, they felt that subordinate 

commanders should not have to divine their senior’s intentions. 

Doctrine writers eventually added the paragraph to the formats 

of joint orders and plans as subparagraph (1) under paragraph “3. 

Execution, a. Concept of Operations.”54 The official definition for the 

term states:

A concise expression of the purpose of the operation and the desired end 

state that serves as the initial impetus for the planning process. It may 

also include the commander’s assessment of the adversary commander’s 

intent and an assessment of where and how much risk is acceptable 

during the operation.55
13

The purpose or intent in the commander’s intent paragraph obviously 

should mirror the intent contained in the mission statement.

Today, in some plans and orders, the paragraph often becomes an 

unfocused discussion of many unrelated items and can run to many 

pages. Moreover, some commanders and staff erroneously assume 

this paragraph is the heart of a mission-type order, which, of course, 

it is not. That distinction rests with the intent or purpose declared in 

the mission statement in a plan or order’s paragraph 2.

Mission.

Although military staffs have existed in some form since the 17th 

century, it was not until the post-Jena Prussian reforms that staffs 

consisted of well-schooled officers. Only after the reforms inspired by 

Elihu Root and the mandates of the Congressional General Staff Act 

of 1903 began to take effect did the U.S. military create professional 

staffs. The bureaucracies surrounding these staffs soon produced 

standard and approved methods for accomplishing planning, many 

of them borrowed from European nations. Mission statements were 

often at the center of these methods. 

A mission statement tells subordinate commanders what the 

higher commander wants them to do, the task, and why they are to 

do it, the purpose or intent. Though there are several definitions in 

joint doctrine, it is the first one that interests us: 

1. The task, together with the purpose, that clearly indicates the action to 

be taken and the reason therefore. 

2. In common usage, especially when applied to lower military units, a 

duty assigned to an individual or unit; a task. 

3. The dispatching of one or more aircraft to accomplish one particular 

task.56

End-State.

During the intellectual renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s, officers 

became interested in defining how things would look after military 
14

forces secured an objective or accomplished a mission. The term 

decided upon was end-state. It does not refer to the actual securing of 

an objective or to the accomplishment of a mission, but to the general 

conditions desired to be in place when these events happen. The joint 

definition for the term is, “The set of required conditions that defines 

achievement of the commander’s objectives.”57

Objective.

Another term that came into usage early among staffs was objective, 

most often referring to a specific geographic location. Tactical and 

operational level staffs use the term most frequently. At the strategic 

level, it is more often a goal relating to a changed condition. The 

official joint definitions are: 

1. The clearly defined, decisive, and attainable goals towards which every 

military operation should be directed. 

2. The specific target of the action taken (for example, a definite terrain 

feature, the seizure or holding of which is essential to the commander’s 

plan, or, an enemy force or capability without regard to terrain features). 

See also target.58

Users sometimes employ target in place of objective. The joint 

definition that applies to this use is, “An area, complex, installation, 

force, equipment, capability, function, or behavior identified for 

possible action to support the commander’s objectives, guidance, 

and intent.”59

An Example.

The following example at the operational level illustrates 

potential uses of the various terms described above. Theorists 

admonish commanders to focus on the enemy, not on terrain and 

certainly not on process. An analysis by the commander in this case 

determines that the center of gravity for the enemy he faces is a corps 

size organization. The unit, however, has excellent defenses, and the 

commander decides that a direct attack on it would be very costly. 

The enemy, though, would be vulnerable if attacked while moving, 
15

which it is likely to do if it sees friendly forces withdrawing. The 

commander decides to feint a withdrawal. He also decides that the 

enemy would offer a critical vulnerability if attacked as it tried to cross 

the White River, so he designates the three bridges over that river 

in his area as decisive points. He then makes these bridges objectives

and assigns the mission of seizing them to one of his own divisions. 

The unit’s missions read, “Seize bridges (task) over White River in 

your zone of action in order to prevent the enemy from continuing 

to move south (intent).” Finally, he defines the end-state he desires: 

The enemy corps halted north of the White River and damaged to 

such an extent it will be unable to conduct offensive operations for 

at least 96 hours, and friendly units in defensible positions south of 

the river, re-supplied, and prepared to exploit the situation within 6 

hours. The end is a specified level of damage to the enemy corps. The 

means to accomplish this end are the divisions of the friendly corps. 

The ways are the seizure of the three bridges to halt the enemy’s 

movement.

ENDNOTES

1. Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 5, Planning, Washington, DC: 

Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, July 21, 1997, p. 4.

2. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and 

trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 579. 

3. Christopher Bassford, Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in 

Britain and America 1815-1945, in an e-mail note to Paul K. Van Riper, October 8, 

2002.

4. On War, Book One, Chapter One, p. 75.

5. Ibid., p. 75.

6. Ibid., p. 90.

7. Ibid., p. 95.

8. Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, 3rd edition, 

London: Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 77-78.

9. Ibid., p. 18.

10. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd edition, New York: Praeger, 1967, p. 335.

11. J. C Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, John B. 

Hattendorf, ed., reproduction of 1967 edition, Annapolis, MD, 1989, p. 14; cited in 

Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 18.
16

12. Colin Gray, p. 17.

13. See, in particular, Colonel Arthur F. Lykke, Jr., “Towards an Understanding 

of Military Strategy” Military Strategy: Theory and Application—A Reference Text 

for the Department of Military Strategy, Planning and Operations 1983-1984, Carlisle 

Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, pp. 1-2 to 1-6.

14. Dennis M. Drew and Donald M. Snow, Making Strategy: An Introduction to 

National Security Processes and Problems, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University 

Press, August 1988, p. 13. 

15. John M. Collins, Military Strategy: Principles, Practices, and Historical 

Perspectives, Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002, p. 3.

16. Joint Publications 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, Washington, DC, 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 10, 2001, p. III-2.

17. Ibid., pp. 595-596.

18. Ibid. See also Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: It’s 

Not What We Thought,” Naval War College Review, Vol. LVI, No. 1, Winter 2003, 

pp. 71-78.

19. Ibid., p. 617.

20. Samuel B. Griffith, trans., Sun Tzu: The Art of War, London: Oxford 

University Press, 1963, pp. 77-78. 

21. Handel, p. 57.

22. Ibid., p. 61.

23. Bruce Gudmundsson, “Field Stripping the Schwerpunkt,” Marine Corps 

Gazette, December 1989, p. 30. 

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., pp. 30-31. See also Timothy T. Luper, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The 

Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War, Fort Leavenworth, 

KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 

July 1981; and Bruce Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German 

Army, 1914-1918, New York: Praeger, 1989.

26. James J. Schneider and Lawrence L. Izzo, “Clausewitz’s Elusive Center of 

Gravity,” Parameters, September 1987, p. 50.

27. Baron de Jomini, The Art of War, trans. from French by G. H. Mendell and 

W. P. Craighill, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1863, p. 77.

28. Ibid., pp. 50-51.

29. Ibid., p. 51.

30. Ibid., p. 52.

31. Martin Samuels, Command or Control? Command, Training and Tactics in the 

British and German Armies, 1888-1918, London: Frank Cass, 1995, p. 8.
17

32. Attributed to William S. Lind in Robert R. Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver: 

Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand Battle, Novato, CA: Presidio, 1991, p. 51.

33. Phillip K. Giles and Thomas P. Galvin, Center of Gravity: Determination, 

Analysis, and Application, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College Center for 

Strategic Leadership, January 31, 1996, p. iii.

34. Joe Strange, Centers of Gravity & Critical Vulnerabilities: Building on the 

Clausewitzian Foundation So That We Can All Speak the Same Language, Quantico, 

VA: Command and Staff College Foundation, 1996, p. 2.

35. On line version of Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary 

of Military and Associated Terms, available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/index.

html.

36. Joint Publication 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations., pp. III-22-III-23.

37. Jomini, The Art of War, p. 77.

38. Ibid., p. 78.

39. John Shy, “Jomini,” Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear 

Age, Peter Paret, ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 154.

40. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samuel B. Griffith, trans., London: Oxford 

University Press, 1963, p. 98.

41. Ibid., p. 104.

42. On line version of Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary 

of Military and Associated Terms, available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/

d/01520.html.

43. Ibid.

44. Joint Publication 3-0, pp. III-22 and III-23.

45. Samuels, p. 10.

46. Ibid., p. 11.

47. Ibid.

48. Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius for War: The German Army and the General Staff, 

1807-1945, London: MacDonald and Janes, 1977, p. 307.

49. On line version of Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary 

of Military and Associated Terms, available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/

m/03426.html.

50. David A. Fastabend, “The Application of the Commander’s Intent,” Military 

Review, August 1987, p. 62.

51. William S. Lind, “The Theory and Practice of Maneuver Warfare,” Richard 

D. Hooker, Jr., ed., Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology, Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 

1993.
18

52. On line version of Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary 

of Military and Associated Terms, available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/

i/02699.html.

53. Conversation between Paul K. Van Riper and Richard Sinnreich, February 

4-5, 2003. 

54. Joint Publication 5-00.1, Joint Doctrine for Campaign Planning, Washington, 

DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, January 25, 2002, p. C-5.

55. On line version of Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary 

of Military and Associated Terms., available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/

c/01102.html.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.