As military professionals at the tactical level of war, we often find ourselves standing at the sharp edge between chaos and logic. The only thing keeping us from falling into disorder is our ability to understand our chaotic environment, if only for a short while. Running estimates are a big part of how we make sense of our bewlidering surroundings. They distill information into a meaningful logic that allows us to act.
Learning to write an estimate can be daunting when you’re first given a blank quad chart. It can also be difficult to see how an estimate relates to the rest of the operations process. While doctrine provides some great tools, it’s easy to get lost in the details and forget why we’re writing a running estimate to begin with. After years of struggling with running estimates, I’ve found that I gain the most insight when I draw them out. Below I’ve outlined a framework to understand, visualize, and describe running estimates graphically.
The Staff and the Running Estimate
Armies developed staffs to help them understand the vast scope and scale of modern war. At the end of the 19th century battles grew beyond the confines of a single battlefield. As a result, armies struggled to manage the new scale and speed of war. It began with logistics. In fact, the modern staff sytem has its roots in the quartermaster corps. The logistics of modern war confounded military leaders trying to maneuver huge armies across continents for extended durations. Similarly, engineering and artillery also became more complicated, requiring expert advisors. In response, a new class of military professional developed. They eventually became advisors that helped commanders understand and manage war. Modern staffs descend from those experts.
To this day, staffs help commanders understand, visualize, describe, direct, lead, and assess operations. Staffs do this using running estimates. The running estimate is the sum of a staff’s analysis as it bears on mission success. It’s the key to effective planning.
Structuring and Writing a Running Estimate
Running estimates are organized by either war fighting functions or staff sections. They are used across coordinating cells (plans, future operations, current operations) to plan, prepare, execute, and assess operations. Unfortunately, many tuck away running estimates after mission analysis. They’re called running estimates for a reason. They should be updated throughout the operations process.
Doctrinally, running estimates include facts, assumptions, friendly and enemy status, civil considerations, conclusions, recommendations, and risk. In addition, many staffs often include forces available, tasks, and shortfalls. They also come in several formats to include a five-paragraph template and the much dreaded quad chart. Regardless of inputs or format, the running estimate is designed to prompt the staff to generate inputs that answer one question: do friendly forces have sufficient combat power to accomplish their mission? In other words, staffs are trying to balance two sides of a simple math problem.
Friendly capability +/- environmental effects – Enemy capability ≥ Mission Requirements
The goal is to make sure that friendly force capability is at least equal to a mission’s requirements. To figure this out, staffs need to understand the effects of the operational environment and the enemy. Finding the gap between friendly force capability and mission requirements and then finding solutions to fix them are a major purpose behind a running estimate.
Generally, a staff defines the terms of this math problem during the second step of the military decision-making process, mission analysis. Mission analysis uses the tactical variables, to evaluate friendly forces, the operational environment, the enemy, and mission requirements. Mission analysis uses the running estimate as one of its primary analytical tools.
When you first find yourself looking at a blank running estimate, it’s best to start with the things you think you know. This includes friendly force status, forces available, tasks, and facts. We’ll start there. While you’ll gather most of this information during planning, the following outlines how to integrate that information into your running estimate.
Forces Available and Force Status
You can visualize forces available using line-wire diagrams. The diagrams should show units one level up and two levels down. You’ll find this information in your higher headquarter’s orders and in your current operations cell’s common operating picture. It’s important that you account for all forces, including those under tactical, operational, and administrative control. Don’t forget to include supporting units as well. Do this for friendly forces, partners/allies, the enemy, and civilian entities.
Once you’re confident you have a handle on your forces available, place them on a map. Getting forces in the right location will require inputs from the current operations cell and liaison officers. If you’re receiving forces in the future, place the dates and times of their arrival on your timeline. Figure 1 provides an example of a sketch of available forces. At this point, you’ll naturally begin to gain insights about operational reach, basing, and risk as you place everything on a map.
Figure 1. A sketch that outlines how to visualize available friendly and enemy forces.
Tasks
The next step focuses on the tasks you’ve been given by your higher headquarters. Tasks can be divided into three groups: specified, implied, and essential. A specified task directs action through an overtly written or verbal order. Implied tasks have not been overtly stated but are required to accomplish specified tasks. Essential tasks are either specified or implied tasks that must be accomplished to achieve your mission’s purpose.
You should start by writing down all your specified tasks, big and small. Specified tasks can be found in the mission, commander’s intent, concept of operation, tasks to subordinate units, and coordinating instructions. In addition, your higher headquarter’s staff have likely included additional coordinating tasks in their annexes.
Next, you derive implied tasks from your list of specified tasks. You’ll find your essential tasks in your higher headquarter’s mission, intent, and concept statement. The great thing about tasks is that you can visualize them on map and a timeline. You can place them on a map using intent graphics or graphic control measures. You show them on a timeline by highlighting the projected start and completion time of tasks on a synchronization matrix.
Visualizing tasks on a map and timeline will help you understand requirements in the context of time and space. For example, in Figure 2 the task to destroy an enemy force on OBJECTIVE VIKINGS requires enough combat power to get to OBJECTIVE VIKINGS, disrupt enemy artillery, and sustain forces from the tactical assembly area. A task’s requirements represent the right side of the math problem you’re trying to figure out. Again, you’ll start to see connections between tasks and the available forces. Make sure to write them down as these will eventually become your conclusions.
Figure 2. A sketch that outlines how to visualize specified, implied, and essential tasks.
Facts
Your insights will allow you to begin deriving facts. Facts are any piece of verified information that are required to continue planning. Examples of facts include the disposition, and strength of friendly and enemy forces. Other facts might include distances between units, ranges of critical weapons systems, and rates of consumption. Facts will also become apparent in your timeline.
Unfortunately, not all facts are relevant to the mission. Some of the hardest work we do is sifting the irrelevant from the relevant. The trouble is, how do you know what’s important? Let’s go back to our math problem. A fact is relevant if it uncovers a gap between your task’s requirements and your available forces. Figure 3 provides an example of how this would look visually. In this case, the unit will culminate prior to task accomplishment at the limit of its operational reach. The sketch makes the fact evident that without further support, there’s a shortfall between task requirements and available forces. It’s critical to use doctrinal terms when you’re describing your facts to others. Using commonly understood doctrinal language will help others quickly focus on you main point and avoid distraction.
Figure 3. A sketch that outlines how to visualize relevant facts based on available forces and force requirements.
Assumptions
Generally, you’ll begin to identify pieces of information that you can’t yet confirm but are necessary to continue planning. These pieces of information are known as assumptions. By definition, assumptions tend to be relevant to the mission. Having an assumption means that you have to either get the information yourself through information collection or submit a request for information. Your goal with any assumption is to get the required information to turn it into a fact.
Just like facts, assumptions should be communicated to senior leaders using doctrinal language. Figure 4 visualizes an assumption graphically using doctrinal terms. In this case, you assume some form of external support that will extend your operational reach. Unfortunately, there’s still a gap between your available forces and your task requirements.
Figure 4. A sketch that outlines how to visualize an assumption of external support.
Risk and Uncertainty
At this point we’ve begun to tackle uncertainty head-on. Uncertainty is an inevitable component of risk, the next major part of a running estimate.
Uncertainty is a measure of confidence in our information. It’s also a measure of a commander’s trust and confidence in a staff’s analysis. It’s often confused with probability, the likelihood of an event occurring. Interestingly, it’s far easier to reduce uncertainty than it is to change the probability of a given event. We reduce uncertainty by gathering information. In fact, we use information as a weapon to combat uncertainty and define risk.
Risk articulates the cost or benefit of a decision to act. One way of defining risk comes from the world of statistics and is called expected value. Doctrine has modified the expected value formula to be more intuitive. It tells us to evaluate risk by assessing an event’s likelihood against its severity in terms of mission accomplishment. While not in doctrine, many leaders also like to think in terms of risk to mission and risk to force.
That said, even doctrine’s definition can be difficult to understand. Luckily, we can visualize risk graphically. Figure 5 shows how we can visualize a risk to mission. In this case, available forces are insufficient to achieve task requirements, resulting in a high risk of failure beyond culmination point two.
You could also think about risk in terms war-fighting functions. For instance, in the case below, limits on available movement and maneuver generate a risk. Interestingly, thinking in terms of war-fighting functions may highlight opportunities to manage risk. You could use intelligence assets to collect information to reduce uncertainty and fires to advantageously shape enemy forces.
Figure 5. A sketch that outlines the risk to mission success as the gap between a point of culmination and an objective.
Analysis, Synthesis, and Conclusions
Your conclusions are the most important part of your running estimate. To understand conclusions, let’s think about thinking. Up to this point, we’ve been breaking information up into pieces. We’ve been doing this to define the terms of our math problem. This “breaking apart” of things is known as analysis. When we get to our conclusions, we’ve defined the terms of our math problem and we are asking, “does everything add up to success?” In other words, we are bringing things back together. The word for this is synthesis. Our conclusions are the sum total of our analysis.
Through our conclusions we’re telling others how we see mission success or failure. Additionally, we’re recommending actions that close the gaps between failure and success. They might include a requisition for forces or request to adjust task requirements. In addition, your conclusions inform course of action development.
As mentioned earlier, your environment never stops changing. You have to constantly go back to the information you’ve gathered to make sure your facts are still facts, your forces are still available, and your tasks are still relevant. That’s why we call them running estimates. You have to keep it updated based on changes in the operational environment.
How to Brief the Running Estimate
Unfrotunately, briefing a running estimate can be precarious. Many fall into the trap of briefing their analysis which, as mentioned earlier, is disaggregated. If you’re briefing analysis, you’ll quickly realize how short people’s attention spans can be. On the other hand, if you only brief your conclusion, you’re not going to build confidence that your insights are based on good staff work. The truth is, it can feel like a lose-lose situation.
While it can be demoralizing to fall into that mental trap, there’s a way out. The important thing to remember is that you’re not trying to transmit your understanding to somebody else; that’s nearly impossible. What you’re actually trying to do is help others gain insights for themselves. To do this you’re going to have to use shared conceptual frameworks.
In other words, if you put a map, a timeline, and a line-wire diagram in front of most military leaders, you’re on the right track. You might still have a quad chart or a five-paragraph document for reference, but when you’re communicating your insights, do it while pointing at terrain, a synch matrix, or an organizational chart. Lastly, translate every visual insight you have into doctrinal terms. Doctrine is a shared language we all understand because of our training and education. It’s a shortcut to convey understand and spark insights.
Conclusion
We often view chaos and logic as opposites, but what if chaos has a logic? What if instead of combating the chaos of the operational environment, we tried to understand it? Running estimates are a vehicle to gain and communicate insights about the chaotic world we operate in. Unfortunately, they can seem like more of a hassle than they’re worth. Yet, in the hands of a professional, they can be a work of art. Leo Tolstoy once defined art as the ability “to evoke in oneself a feeling one has experienced, and . . . then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, to transmit that feeling—this is the activity of art.” Oddly enough, that’s what we are trying to do. We are trying to convey meaning to others. If a running estimate conveys true meaning, I can think of no greater achievement as a military professional.
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