George w. casey jr. - Federation of American Scientists

y Edwin K. Morris
Introduction
The art of warfare is challenging but the role of units
rotating in and out of a war zone can impact effectiveness.
The process of transferring knowledge between
those units is critical to continuing efficiently.
The impact of knowledge management (KM) is very
evident in the U.S. Army’s process of units replacing
other units in a war zone. Commonly referred to as
rotational warfare, Relief in Place (RIP) presents a
battle flow challenge that relies heavily on the time
period both units are concurrently deployed at the
same time. With high risk of life and limb, the task
of knowledge sharing of the current operational picture
(or knowledge base), becomes an insurmountable
responsibility upon which lives and missions
may depend. Soldiers are given a two-week window
in which to exchange knowledge capture and transfer
expertise, which serves to demonstrate all related
activities, and quickly build rapport between
the incoming and outgoing organizations. The Joint
Publication 1-02, DOD Dictionary of Military and
Associated Terms, defines RIP as:
“An operation in which, by direction of higher
authority, all or part of a unit is replaced in an area
by the incoming unit. The responsibilities of the
replaced elements for the mission and the assigned
zone of operations are transferred to the incoming
unit. The incoming unit continues the operation as
ordered.” 1
The purpose of this article is to educate the reader
in the Army RIP process by illustrating from anecdotal
experience and explicit expertise the essence
of KM as a system that is not formally recognized as
KM as such. The RIP process is not architecturally
KM instrumented into the standard RIP. In order to
set the stage within which this combat oriented KM
approach operates, we will consider environmental
and organizational facets of Army operation from a
Military Intelligence (MI) point of view.
A combat unit is assigned to conduct its mission
within the designated boundaries of a specific geographic
location. By conducting operations in that
assigned area over time, the organization produces
a very personal and subjective interpretation of that
period of time and its events, one which makes exchange
or sharing critical knowledge somewhat
difficult. The unit’s experience may also provide volumes
of explicit knowledge which can become difficult
for rapid integration by MI due to the massive
volume of declarative and procedural knowledge
thus represented.
High levels of organizational familiarity achieve a
level of expertise representing the internalization of
experience into a personal knowledge base that is
supported by externalized products. MI operates in
a knowledge set different than the rest of the Army
and through its operations conducts KM in a much
more specific manner that is not a true doctrinally
recognized KM methodology. Knowledge discovery
and combination are key and very intricate parts of
the MI process and the typical mission it performs
when deployed in a war zone.
Specific to the field of MI is the discovering, capturing,
and applying of knowledge in a manner that
is fast paced and hectic. In the operational tempo of
the war zone a concept referred to as overcome by
events (OBE) exists. This concept recognizes that in
warfare the level of explicit knowledge via actions,
reports, and analysis may produce the effect of
OBE, meaning that what is important at this hour
may be OBE by tomorrow. A flurry of information
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