This paper analyzes Effects-Based Operations as the most effective way to frame future joint operations in a complex, uncertain environment. This new complex and uncertain environment is characterized by adversaries who have increasingly more access to weapons of Mass Destruction/Effects and whose actions will likely be very unpredictable, and could directly threaten the American homeland. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld stated that, "such new, unexpected and dangerous adversaries must be dissuaded, deterred, and defeated without undue cost to American interests abroad or attacks on the U.S. homeland." In a speech presented March 2002, on transformation he stated that what is needed now at the threshold of the 21st Century is a "new way of thinking and a new way of fighting." The Joint Forces Command has adopted and continues to evolve the concept of EBO within a Joint warfighting construct to answer in part to both challenges. This paper determined that EBO shows great promise as a broad organizing approach to future warfare but has significant obstacles to overcome to be successfully integrated into a new Joint warfighting construct. EBO has been unfairly scrutinized due service centric views and rivalries. These service centric views must be overcome to ensure joint procurement of compatible C4ISR systems, the development of effective war gaming or modeling tools, and the requirement for the integration of joint, hard realistic training. EBO should provide the framework for service doctrine to expand ensuring a synergy between elements of national power, capabilities of each service, domains in which each service operates and the process of thinking and conducting future warfare.

Since the Gulf War, there has been a technology-driven rapid enhancement of military capabilities across a spectrum of disciplines. At the same time, the concept of Effects-Based Operations (EBO) has been evolving and gaining acceptance as a better way of thinking about military planning, execution, and assessment. In this paper, the authors review what the research and development community has done to support this change. They investigate methods, tools, and techniques that have been developed to enable the warfighters in the theater and civilian and military leadership to analyze complex situations, determine desired effects, and develop alternative courses of action that can be compared and evaluated. Their purpose is to focus on the directions that the R & D community should take to provide this needed capability to the operator. This is, unfortunately, a case of the R & D community not leading, but trying to catch up to the operator's needs.

Antulio J. Echevarria II reveals how successive generations of American strategic theorists have thought about war. Analyzing the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Billy Mitchell, Bernard Brodie, Robert Osgood, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, Henry Eccles, Joseph Wiley, Harry Summers, John Boyd, William Lind, and John Warden, he uncovers the logic that underpinned each theorist's critical concepts, core principles, and basic assumptions about the nature and character of war. In so doing, he identifies four paradigms of war's nature - traditional, modern, political, and materialist - that have shaped American strategic thought. If war's logic is political, as Carl von Clausewitz said, then so too is thinking about war.

The manual describes the general strategy for the U.S. Marines but it is beneficial for not only every Marine to read but concepts on leadership can be gathered to lead a business to a family. If you want to see what make Marines so effective this book is a good place to start.