Imagine how difficult it is to apply the five phases of operational planning to the complexities of a “three-block war”. Now make it infinitely more complex by multiplying it by at least six domains. From Chinese expansion in the South China Sea to Russian aggression in Ukraine and Iranian activities across the Middle East, many of the U.S. military's most difficult challenges today are not “war” as we traditionally define it.
They are in a “gray zone”, as many have called these situations, somewhere in between. Operational planning refers to creating an outline of the activities that a department or organization will focus on in the coming months. The Marshall Plan was, in current terms, an economic component of post-World War II stability operations to prevent Europe from falling under the control of radical communist extremists. This evaluation is directly based on the work breakdown structure you used during the planning phase, in which you developed your best estimate of the tasks and activities needed.
An operational plan also focuses more on the department than the strategic plan, which focuses on the objectives of the entire organization. An operational plan differs from a strategic plan in that the latter has more to do with the vision of the organization, while operational planning focuses on the basic aspects of how it will be developed on a daily basis. An operational plan consists of understanding your vision, creating objectives and setting concrete steps to achieve them. This implies a linear progression of the conflict through a culminating phase (phase III) of major combat operations and, then, a “post-conflict period” of stabilization and transition.
Iterative cycles should work at the operational level of the war and constantly change the understanding of the nature of a conflict and of the operational objectives when necessary. The time required may vary; annual operational planning is common, but an organization can simply draw up a plan for the next three or six months. Organizations that don't spend time on operational and project planning often overdo it, meaning they run into obstacles along the way and fail to achieve overall objectives. Fundamentally, an exploratory problem-solving technique expects them to change both the reality of the operating environment and the planners' understanding of it.
Future operational planning should include exploratory problem-solving techniques instead of a conflict model, use an iterative rather than sequential approach, adapt to an era of persistent participation, and adopt an inter-agency process. Once you're in the creation and implementation phases, you'll define and begin to execute the details of the project plan. When people think about planning a project, they tend to immediately think about scheduling, but you don't get to that part until the preparation phase. The dominant military paradigm for operations is a six-phase planning structure, consisting of phase 0 (form), phase I (deter), phase II (taking the initiative), phase III (dominating), phase IV (stabilizing) and, finally, phase V (empowering civil authority).
As a result, the United States has participated in numerous operations that were below the threshold of an existential threat in order to maintain that status quo.
