By Colonel (Ret.) Eric Jorgensen

In the business world, project managers think of project “scope” as the sum of the products, services, and results to be provided by a project. Managing scope is about ensuring projects include all the work required and only the work required. When that work expands without adjustments to objectives, this will impact the schedule, costs, and resources. This is “scope creep.”

When a military operation expands, observers often refer to that as “mission creep.” But it is lack of oversight and intentionality that qualifies mission changes as mission creep, not the mere existence of changes themselves. Military commitments involving increasing numbers of military forces does not necessarily mean mission creep. Most would agree that growing U.S. military commitments during World War II did not involve mission creep. What about America’s war against ISIS?

Change Control

“Change control” means identifying, documenting, and approving or rejecting changes to work and deliverables associated with a project. A systematic approach should be taken to clearly dealing with change. What it should not come with is changes to objectives, because a project with different objectives is a different project.

One of the primary goals of change control is to prevent unnecessary changes. Reasonable project objectives and planning should be established from inception, not made up as you go along. On the other hand, it is equally important to identify and institute any changes necessary to accomplish those original objectives. Change control may even involve deciding a project should be cancelled and perhaps recommending a different one in its place, if and when it becomes clear that the success of the first project is impossible to achieve.

We resisted mission changes in the Middle East for fear of mission creep and we forfeited an old battlefield to an old enemy in a new uniform.

When discussing the war with ISIS and what it can teach us about strategy, Air Force Colonel Clint Hinote made the point several months ago that U.S. strategy against ISIS would no doubt eventually have to change, but that this would not qualify as mission creep: “…iterative strategy is both normal and desirable,” he said, “so long as the adjustments [or mission changes] lead to a continuing advantage. When they do not, it’s not mission creep – it’s just bad strategy.”

I would add that the true discriminator between strategy adjustments that are simply either “good” or “bad” and strategy adjustments that represent mission creep is whether or not the adjustments align with the mission’s original objectives. Even adjustments that lead to advantages could be mission creep if those advantages come at the expense of time, funds, or resources not originally allocated to the advantages the mission was supposed to produce. In project management, we call this “gold-plating.” As above, project managers are supposed to deliver the work required, and only the work required. Delivering a better product than required is not necessarily a success, especially if it takes more time, funds, or resources to produce than planned. Then again, delivering the exact product required may also represent a failure for the same reasons. Whether a project or a war is a success or failure must be determined by considering the original objectives, or ends, and the ways and means intended to be applied in pursuit of those objectives or ends.

Project: Degrade and Destroy

At the time of Hinote’s article last September, President Obama had just declared that the U.S. and partner nations intended to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. These were the ultimate, strategic objectives of operations against ISIS, and it would be difficult to gold-plate such extensive ends (a topic for another day). The real question in this case is whether or not the means assigned to achieving those objectives will be able to accomplish that end in and with the anticipated ways.

In military terms, the President’s pursuit of his stated objectives was supposed to include only widespread and sustained airstrikes by the U.S. and others, along with U.S. and partner non-combat ground support to indigenous ground combat forces, including the Iraqi Security Forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga, Syrian opposition groups, and Iraqi militias. Today’s operations continue seven months of U.S. and coalition airstrikes, with U.S. boots on the ground deployed in advise-and-assist support of indigenous ground forces, but limited to no more than 3,000 in number.

Advisers are still restricted from conducting direct combat operations of their own. As recently as a week ago, General Lloyd Austin, commander of Central Command (CENTCOM), endorsed that strategy, when he insisted that ISIS will be defeated without ground U.S. combat troops. Ashton Carter, the brand new Secretary of Defense has nevertheless candidly acknowledged to Congress that he dislikes the three-year sunset President Obama included in his new draft Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS; and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has testified on Capitol Hill that he would welcome requests by his commander on the ground for the introduction of special operations forces and others to accompany Iraqis and even Syrian partner forces engaged in combat with ISIS.

The mission has not changed thus far – there is in fact no mission creep – but our military’s senior leaders are prepared to adjust fires if and when necessary. It is exactly the kind of Defense Department leadership we should all want. Carter and Dempsey have said nothing that contradicts the President’s own strategic objectives. They are merely acknowledging that “degrading and destroying” ISIS will require iterative strategy prepared to adjust the ways and means employed to accomplish that end, within the necessary confines of very carefully orchestrated change control, to include the approval of the President.

Strategic Patience

Some will argue that we are not adjusting our strategy quickly enough. Benjamin Lambeth, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, recently argued that the U.S. has not explored in earnest the appropriate mix of air and land involvement to leverage our strongest comparative advantages from the air without risking a return of our troops to high-intensity close combat on the ground. In Lambeth’s mind, the only creeping comes with too much reluctance to execute adjustments, rather than merely to acknowledge that they might some day be necessary.

Carpet bombing will likely never again be the answer anywhere. But that in no way simplifies the challenge to maintain a strategic perspective connected to the facts on the ground and to the risks to U.S. national security that come with those facts, regardless of how high or low those risks rank in the polls.

The U.S. is fighting ISIS as intensely as we are now because U.S. strategic patience gave ISIS and its destabilizing effects in the Middle East time to metastasize into direct threats to U.S. national interests, abroad and even here at home. We resisted mission changes in the Middle East for fear of mission creep, and we forfeited an old battlefield to an old enemy in a new uniform, albeit with considerable help from the Iraqi government itself. Dempsey has it right about the need for patience and about carpet bombing. But we must be careful never to allow our patience to be imbued with wishful thinking that surrenders the advantages that come with thoughtfully scripted, systematic, and timely mission changes — even if that means scrubbing one mission and starting another.

Is ISIS beginning to fray? Perhaps. But even that comes with the confounding fact that Iranian forces are playing a large role in providing training, weapons, and leadership for resurgent Iraqi Shiite militias. Let’s not allow our resistance to mission creep and our penchant for change control to conspire to unnecessarily delay or squander a victory over ISIS, or to surprise us again with the same kind of complex and dangerous situation elsewhere in the world. Change control is important, but it should never be a goal in and of itself. It is merely one means to an end. In war that end must be winning, preferably sooner, rather than later.

[Photo: Flickr CC: U.S. Army]