text: Comprehensive Tactical Planning in Counterinsurgency
  (cid:131) MOPs.
  (cid:131) Supporting objectives.
  (cid:131) Targets.
  • Frame the time and resources for near-term planning—
  (cid:131) Events
  (cid:131) Ability to predict or analyze
  (cid:131) Combat power
  (cid:131) Operating tempo
  (cid:131) Phasing or timing.
  • Pay attention to balanced development across all lines of effort.
  • Prioritize supporting objectives and targets to resources.
  • Develop order with tasks and ISR plan.
  • Make current operations plans.
  • Execute near-term missions.
  • Assess current operations, new intelligence or new missions.
  • Use this assessment to drive the process through another cycle.
  4-59. Commanders modify the process as needed to fit the situation. While typical modification of the
  MDMP is driven by the need to save time, the counterinsurgent unit has two key reasons to modify
  the process:
  • The end product of long-range planning is not an operations order that is prepared
  for execution in the traditional sense. The long-range plan provides a focus for short-range
  planning and ensures that the operations currently being conducted are having the desired effect
  on the end state.
  • Each planning session within a counterinsurgency is interrelated to the planning that preceded
  it. Units will conduct a thorough MDMP initially and then build continuously on those products
  and their situational understanding as they progress through successive planning cycles. Units
  throughout their rotation continue to “learn and adapt." Through assessment, the commander
  will focus his staff on areas that require further detailed analysis and limit effort on areas where
  sufficient analysis has already been conducted.
  4-60. This analysis is captured in the staff’s running estimate. A running estimate is a staff section’s
  continuous assessment of current and future operations to determine if the current operation is proceeding
  according to the commander’s intent and if future operations are supportable. This, along with the
  commander’s assessment and those of subordinate commanders, build a growing understanding of the
  unit’s operations area and allows the unit to modify the MDMP, not out of necessity of time but through
  the ability to rapidly and accurately define problems and solutions.
  4-61. Insurgencies are inherently complex and dynamic; they cannot be fully understood through a
  single cycle of the MDMP. It is the cumulative effect of analysis and planning that builds and refines
  knowledge of a unit’s area of operations, captured in the running estimate over the course of many
  successive planning cycles that allows the successful defeat of the insurgency.
  4-62. By developing a comprehensive and iterative plan the counterinsurgent force follows the
  conventional MDMP steps. However, fighting an insurgency, or more precisely conducting
  counterinsurgency operations, is not a conventional military operation. As such, the operational
  environment of counterinsurgency dictates some unique considerations to the conventional MDMP steps.
  These considerations apply primarily to four MDMP steps—receive the mission, mission analysis, COA
  development and COA analysis. Figure 4-2 highlights considerations in a COIN MDMP.