Interview with Brigadier General Drews, Commander of the Centre for Transformation, Strausberg, Germany.
Anna Gałyga: Sir, what is the reason of your visit to our Headquarters?
BrigGen Drews: One reason is that BrigGen Heinrichs, the Chief of Staff HQ MNC NE, is a good friend of mine, a classmate from the General Staff Course in Germany, and he asked me to visit Szczecin to give a lecture on Effects Based Approach to Operations. The second reason is that the Headquarters Multinational Corps Northeast may actually become a customer of what we are producing, I mean the new ways of military planning, command and control that may be implemented in NATO and also in multinational headquarters. My aim is to present in advance some information about these new processes.
What is this Effects Based Approach? What does it refer to?
Effects Based Approach to Operations is a concept, which describes a new process of planning, command and control of military operations. It reflects the fact that today’s and probable future operations are no longer pure military operations. With regard to Afghanistan, Kosovo or wherever – these new types of conflicts are not conventional or classical any more but they are military operations with a very complex scenario. You cannot solve any problem in the conflict area by using military means only. You can only be successful if you closely plan and cooperate with the civilian partners. Sometimes the military are not even the driving force of the whole process; sometimes the military only make the contribution to the big goal supporting civilian activities. As a result, you receive a totally different approach towards planning, command and control. That also means you need holistic planning and execution of operations.
Can you give me an example?
For example Kosovo. The task of the military from the beginning was to provide security to give all the other civilian organisations possibility to establish stable society. After having done that job within four weeks in 1999, the military was only in a support role in the reconstruction and stabilization processes, which had to be done by other means of influence. From that moment on, the military did not plan or act on themselves but only in close cooperation with the civilian agencies. That is the ideal, but within the last 7 or 8 years that was not always the fact.
So what are the possible problems concerning such cooperation?
The problems lie in comprehensive, coherent civil-military planning. That is very problematic because the military already have established processes of planning, execution and assessment. The civilian agencies have not. So if you really want to have a close cooperation, you have to establish a common process of planning, execution and assessment together with the civilian partners. And there are dozens of civilian partners you have to cooperate with.
Are not the civilian organisations united in a way?
They are not. All civilian organisations – governmental, non-governmental or any other organisations – do not want to be coordinated by the military. And that is true, they should not be coordinated this way. But the military are the only ones who have established planning, execution and assessment process that works. The real problem we are working on is to come together and agree on a common planning and execution process as an umbrella that is a foundation and a prerequisite for the real coherent approach. The military contribution to this coherent civil-military approach is effects based approach to operations.
You are Commander of the Centre for Transformation; can you tell me more about the Centre?
The Centre was founded in 2004 after the decision made by our Ministry of Defence. We got rid of all conventional reforms of the Armed Forces in order to start with the continuous process of transformation and constant adaptation of the Armed Forces and the whole Bundeswehr to the ever-changing environment with regard to missions abroad, development of technology and development of our society. These changes have been accelerated to that degree that we decided on continuous process of adapting our Forces to them, it is a never-ending process. And in order to facilitate this adaptation process, the Centre for Transformation was founded.
The Centre for Transformation consists of several elements, which try to take a scientific look into the future making a kind of “a trend analysis” – how will the environment for the German Armed Forces look within the next twenty years and what will be the consequences for the adaptation of these forces. And we are those who have to invent a new planning process for the whole Bundeswehr, for the Armed Forces.
The second main task is the concept development and experimentation adopted from the American Armed Forces. We experiment ideas that may improve the performance of the Armed Forces. That means accelerating the process of adapting new technologies and adapting changes in the operational environment of missions abroad. We try to experiment them as soon as possible to find out whether a given idea is good and can be implemented. As a matter of fact we are also experimenting with the Effects Based Approach to Operations on multinational level to evaluate it to such extend that in can be implemented in NATO.
The third task is related to the fact that we have the capacity for modeling and simulation as well as operations research. Our task with this regard is to apply them to our present missions supporting German and multinational headquarters in their job in missions abroad.
All those tasks seem to be very scientific…
Yes, it is scientific, you may measure that by figures. The total personnel strength of my Command is about 250, 170 of whom are officers with academic background. Additionally, there are 20 civilian scientists – it is a little bit scientific, going further into the future to have the chance to adapt the Armed Forces timely. We want to be in advance of the development and not run behind it.
How do you actually experiment with concepts like Effects Based Approach to Operations?
With regard to Effects Based Approach to Operations and the bigger umbrella that is the comprehensive approach, we usually experiment by creating experimental headquarters. Every time we have a sponsor headquarters – a real headquarters that forms an experimental headquarters and then works with the new processes. So we do not do it theoretically but in a real practical environment in order to have hard experience, to be able to make amendments to the process, and to make it better and better. The next experiment with the effects based approach to operations and the comprehensive approach will be conducted in April in Enköping, Sweden, where we have both a military and a civilian experimental headquarters. That is an invention; there has never been a civilian comprehensive headquarters. But we formed a civilian headquarters that could be a good model for future operations if we really want to execute the comprehensive approach and the effects based approach to operations. Several civilian partners jointed in this experiment. In fact, it is not the military that will experiment with this civilian headquarters but the civilian partners will do it for themselves. It is also a multinational challenge, but if it is ever implemented it will be within the multinational environment of NATO.
Is there a link between the Centre for Transformation and the Headquarters Multinational Corps Northeast?
Indirectly. The link is that if the effects based approach to operations or comprehensive approach is implemented into NATO, then the headquarters like the HQ MNC NE will work with this process. So I am very pleased to have been invited here. I can tell you in advance what the new process may be, what the prerequisites are, to give information on something that may become reality in the next two or three years.
