Making Combat More Simple – Why A Heuristic Works

“Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.”

-   Carl von Clausewitz

Even though Carl von Clausewitz became one of the most influential military strategists in history with his work, On War, even he probably couldn’t have comprehended the complexities of the urban insurgency that our military battles today.  His famous quote about the friction of war is a concept that every warrior experiences time and again, and we have found that even the best technological advancements in the world can’t completely lift the fog.  As insurgents continue to operate as low-tech as they can, the challenge that Marines or soldiers face only compounds as we need to find more effective ways to find them.

We tell you that the concepts that we teach work, and for those of you who take us at face value, we appreciate that, but let me explain why it works.

Heuristics make Tactical Analysis work and the concept is pretty simple and straightforward.  Heuristics are just strategies that let us make decisions more quickly and accurately in situations where there is limited time and limited information.  Limited time and limited information, sound a little bit like combat?  Sound even more like fighting an insurgency?

A good heuristic has a few elements that make this an effective approach.  The first is a search principle.  A search principle means that you don’t have to look at everything present around you, only those things that truly provide the information needed to make good decisions.  For us, the four pillars serve as our search principle. They will give us the insight we need into understanding human behavior, from individuals, to group dynamics, to the environment, and the collective of everyone present.

A good heuristic has a stop principle; this is so you know when to stop searching.  If the elements of your search principle are thought out thoroughly and validated as legitimate indicators, then you don’t need to see the complete picture unfold before you know that your decision is going to be accurate.  For behavioral analysis, we have the Rule of Threes.  Once you hit a maximum of three indicators leading you to the same conclusion, you can stop searching because you have enough information to make a confident decision.

A good heuristic has a decision principle that limits the possible options you have at your disposal once you have reached your stop principle.  If you have too many decisions at your disposal, you waste time trying to figure out which decision to make.  That’s counter-productive to making decisions more intelligently and more quickly.  For Tactical Analysis we keep it simple. You only have three choices to make: kill the anomaly, capture the anomaly, or contact the anomaly.  This covers the range of lethality in the options while ensuring a decision is made on every anomaly.

The heuristic that we use to integrate these elements and principles is:

Baseline + Anomaly = Decision.

The search principle is what you use to establish your baseline and find the anomalies.  Once you identify three cues on the person you are observing that make them stand out from the baseline (above or below), you can stop searching and make your decision on how you plan to deal with it.

Another factor that can complicate war is when there are an unlimited number of ways to classify an observation, to find the terminology that can most effectively communicate what you are observing.  The domains handle that as well, as there are only six options in our Heuristic strategy that you search for, which puts everyone on the same page.  While it simplifies observations at the broad domain level, it also works internally to the domains as well.  In Kinesics we could look at a person making themselves appear to be larger than they really are and some will say that he appears to be posturing, others will say he is acting dominantly, and others will say he is being aggressive or trying to intimidate someone.  All of these could describe the same person and you could find yourselves searching for the best way to describe it.  We only provide three clusters of categories to classify what you are observing on a person using their body language.  Is the person comfortable or uncomfortable, is the person acting dominant or submissive, is the person interested or uninterested in what they are interacting with.  Rapid classification allows you to quickly move on to the next step where you assess whether that is significant or not.

We don’t want to make war or an insurgency any more complicated than necessary, and there are some people that think these domain names do indeed make it complicated because it is new terminology to learn.  But without having a common language, effective communication doesn’t occur and the friction of war just becomes worse.

Heuristics can help us see just a little further into that fog by limiting the amount a Marine on patrol has to look for, making sure they know when to stop looking and limiting the decisions.  It doesn’t solve every problem we face, but it at least limits the number of things we need to consider while overseas.