While planning, staff will want to focus their efforts against critical vulnerabilities of the enemy in order to make utmost damage to enemy center of gravity. There are 3 phases of a center of gravity analysis which are identifying critical capabilities, critical requirements and vulnerabilities.Ĭritical capabilities are those that are considered crucial enablers for a COG to function as such, and are essential to the accomplishment of the adversary’s assumed objective(s).Ĭritical requirements are the conditions, resources, and means that enable a critical capability to become fully operational.Ĭritical vulnerabilities are those aspects or components of critical requirements that are deficient or vulnerable to direct or indirect attack in a manner achieving decisive or significant results. Center of gravity analysis is therefore a very important part of the operational design. Hence, identification of centre of gravities is vital to any planning process. A good planning starts with the idea of attacking the enemy centre of gravity while protecting friendly centre of gravity (ies). COG is used not only for the enemy but also for the friend and other important actors in the field of operation. ![]() ![]() Later, it changed its original meaning for, area of operations got widely expanded and joint operations’ nature had a distributed concept. Originally this was used to describe where the enemy army is mostly concentrated (Department of Defense, 2015). Similarly, in Joint Publication, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (JP 1-02) centre of gravity is defined as “The source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act. In his famous book “on war” Clausewitz defined centre of gravity as “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends…the point at which all our energies should be directed (Clausewitz, 1989). In this paper, firstly, elements of war will be explained, then the terms operational art and operational design will be scrutinized to see whether they can be applied to modern cyber operations and how. That’s why it has been said that amateurs do strategy but professionals do logistics (Olsen and Creveld, 2011). Whereas strategy is about thinking and planning, operations are about doing: hence the term operational art. Today, modern theorists underpin those elements and use them in their art of operation and operational design. A number of military theorists in history have tried to understand this problem and they have come up with terms that make it easier to understand. Once you understand the problem the more likely you are to be successful. The better you plan the less complex the problem gets and the more well-structured it becomes. Military peoples’ first mission is always to understand the problem. In other words, war is a problem that should be solved. ![]() This is why the military people exist and are best known for ability to plan. However, every single person in the world would agree that war is a combination of a series of activities that should be planned carefully. Famous theorist Clausewitz defines it as continuation of politics by other means while Chinese general Sun Tzu defines it as “the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction.”. One of the most controversial words in all languages is probably “war”. Can the traditional operational design techniques be applied to this new domain? Are there any examples of such warfare? This paper tries to answer such questions and find out whether there may be an operational design of recent cyber warfare examples, and concludes that operational design can be applied to cyber warfare as well. Yet, today, according to some theorists, in addition to land, sea and air we have a new domain: cyber. Almost in all war plans you may come across to an operational design. ![]() Today, findings of those and military history itself help current commanders and military planners to understand the operational environment, uncover the nature of ill-structured problems and thereby form a scheme of operational approach to solve the problem. Famous military theorists like Liddell Hart, Clausewitz and Jomini tried to understand the war and broke down it into elements like center of gravity, culmination, dialect approach, direct and indirect approach etc. The better you plan, the less complex the problem gets and becomes well structured. Planning is essential in all military activities due to the nature of war. Military experts are best known for their ability to plan.
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