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Assumptions and group thinking can often pose a risk to the planning process at the division or corps level. Red teaming, a form of analysis used for decades, could counteract such pitfalls.
"Red teamers" serve as trusted sources of input while balancing the fine line between challenging perceptions and maintaining a staff's confidence as independent thinkers. They are empowered to act as divergent thinkers or devil's advocates. Red teaming has been useful after the shared assumptions of a planning staffcaused organizations to be unprepared for emergent threats and enemy actions, such as Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks.
Doctrinally, red teams in the U.S. Army are part of the planning process at the division or corps level. Originally intended to be stand-alone, permanent teams within these larger stafforganizations, several staffofficers currently are authorized to be red teamers in addition to fulfilling other staffroles. The Army, through Training and Doctrine Command's University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., provides courses leading to an additional skill identifier as a red teamer.
Two Sides of Red Teaming
A red team assists the higher commander in two ways. First, it looks behind the assumptions underpinning the work of the planning team. Second, it dives deep into the doctrine, thought processes, tactics, techniques and procedures utilized by the enemy. Both functions involve challenging assumptions but in slightly different ways.
In its first role, the red team is basically a force for counteracting groupthink in the commander's special staff. As those who have served in staffpositions at higher echelons are aware, if stafforganizations are far from the line units, fewer forces can push back against staffassumptions in the planning process. At higher echelons, the planning process can look like an exercise in "giving the old man what he wants."
Doctrinally speaking, the traditional military decisionmaking process can be easily constrained by the assumptions explicitly or implicitly imposed by a commander. Although there can be advantages to a focused and directed planning process, the point of the red team is to provide an independent set of eyes to...