Center of Gravity: Determination, Analysis, and Application

Giles, Phillip K; Galvin, Thomas P.

doi:10.21236/ada593948

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…70 While we see what takes place and what each node contributes, we do not know who or what makes it act. 71 It also fails to describe which entities are passive players. For example, the authors likely wanted the reader to assume the central bank was neither involved nor even cognizant of the relationship between one of its employees and the terrorist cell.…”

Section: Assessing the Inputs: Operational Net Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the New Joint Pub 5-0 Interpretation of Center of Gravity": Will It Help or Confuse Joint Planning?"

Galvin¹

2006

Self Cite

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Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. Clausewitzian notion that the key to strategic success depends on applying effects to influence the adversary's greatest source of power, its "center of gravity," in order to achieve our mission and prevent the enemy from achieving his. Not only does the draft JP 5-0 assert that CoG is relevant to all operational environments including the WOT, it treats it as a critical step in the campaign planning process. Planners take as input a detailed system-of-systems analysis of the enemy, determine its center of gravity, then systematically analyze it in order to "produce the right combination of effects in time, space, and purpose … to neutralize, weaken, or destroy it" without wasting precious resources. Theoretically, doing so "is the most direct path to mission process? Are we comfortable that the result will be a CoG that when weakened, destroyed, or neutralized, will directly achieve mission accomplishment? Or, are there seams within this process that could instead introduce confusion or lead to the wrong result? If so, can we mitigate them? If not, does this mean JP 5-0's construct is fundamentally flawed?This paper begins with Clausewitz's original idea and some key points of contention predating the draft JP 5-0. It will then present JP 5-0's CoG definition to show how it addresses these issues. Next, it will evaluate JP 5-0's use of CoG in the planning process to identify pitfalls. Finally, it will offer recommendations to mitigate those pitfalls and suggest areas for further research.

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Section: Assessing the Inputs: Operational Net Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the New Joint Pub 5-0 Interpretation of Center of Gravity": Will It Help or Confuse Joint Planning?"

Galvin¹

2006

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“…Therefore, in the education of strategic leaders at all the U.S. senior military service colleges, there is great emphasis on the center of gravity analysis. This analysis requires a wide range of background knowledge not only from the military domain, but also from the political, psychosocial, economic, geographic, demographic, historic, international, and other domains (Giles and Galvin 1996). In addition, the situation, the adversaries involved, their goals, and their capabilities can vary in important ways from one scenario to another.…”

Section: Sample Application Domain: Military Center Of Gravity Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our approach to center of gravity analysis, based on the work of Strange (1996) and Giles and Galvin (1996), and developed with experts from the US Army War College, consists of two main phases: identification and testing. During the identification phase, center of gravity candidates from different elements of power of a force (such as government, military, people, economy) are identified.…”

Section: Sample Application Domain: Military Center Of Gravity Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Disciple-RKF Learning and Reasoning Agent

Tecuci¹,

Boicu²,

Boicu³

et al. 2005

Computational Intell

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Over the years we have developed the Disciple theory, methodology, and family of tools for building knowledge-based agents. This approach consists in developing an agent shell that can be taught directly by a subject matter expert, in a way that resembles how the expert would teach a human apprentice when solving problems in cooperation. This paper presents the most recent version of the Disciple approach and its implementation in the Disciple-RKF system. Disciple-RKF is based on methods for mixed-initiative problem solving, where the expert solves the more creative problems and the agent solves the more routine ones, integrated teaching and learning, where the agent helps the expert to teach it, by asking relevant questions, and the expert helps the agent to learn, by providing examples, hints and explanations, and multistrategy learning, where the agent integrates multiple learning strategies, such as learning from examples, learning from explanations, and learning by analogy, to learn from the expert how to solves problems.Disciple-RKF has been successfully applied to build learning and reasoning agents for military center of gravity analysis, which are used in several courses at the US Army War College.

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“…If a combatant eliminates or influences the enemy's strategic center of gravity, then the enemy will lose control of its power and resources and will eventually fall to defeat. Similarly, if the combatant fails to adequately protect his own strategic center of gravity, he invites disaster [7]. There is a lot of emphasis on the determination and analysis of CoG in practice and in the education of strategic leaders at all the senior military service colleges.…”

Section: The Center Of Gravity Challenge Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%