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Planners today struggle to properly apply operational art in large scale war — and they don’t fully realize why. It takes something like firsthand experience in a strategic level wargame against a human red team to fully realize how much understanding of classical military art has been lost.

The 21st century has witnessed the resurgence of great-power competition, with the Indo-Pacific theater emerging as a focal point for geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. The increasing complexity of warfare, characterized by rapid technological advancements and emerging multi-domain operations, places unprecedented demands on military planners and strategists. Central to meeting these demands is the application of operational art — the vital connective tissue between strategy and tactics. Operational art, as conceptualized in both Western and Soviet traditions, provides the framework for translating strategic objectives into coordinated action across vast operational spaces and timeframes.

Despite its foundational role, recent wargaming — especially in scenarios simulating high-intensity conflict with China — has exposed a troubling decline in the understanding and application of operational art within U.S. and allied militaries. Concepts such as decisive points and centers of gravity, which remain enshrined in joint doctrine, are often misunderstood, misapplied, or neglected altogether in practice. The consequences are not merely theoretical: Failures in operational design can lead to strategic paralysis and defeat, even for the most technologically advanced forces.

Competency in operational art declined with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War as the United States shifted from planning for major war to smaller scale operations, such as counterinsurgency. The decline continues today. This downward trajectory can best be seen through the lens of a confidential, human-adjudicated 2022 Department of Defense wargame simulating a 2034 conflict involving the United States, China, and the Philippines. Drawing on U.S. joint doctrine, historical cases, expert analyses, and firsthand experience in the wargame, I argue that the inability to identify and exploit decisive points in relation to adversary centers of gravity undermines the efficacy of joint force operations. Planners should understand the critical enabling roles of integration, mass, and synchronization, and the cognitive barriers — such as proceduralism and failure of imagination — that impede doctrinal mastery. There are opportunities for revitalizing operational art to meet the challenges of contemporary and future warfare.

Theoretical Foundations: Operational Art, Decisive Points, and Centers of Gravity

Operational art, decisive points, and centers of gravity form the intellectual backbone of modern campaign design and execution. These concepts provide the framework for linking strategic objectives to tactical actions, ensuring coherence across all levels of military operations. By understanding the theoretical underpinnings of operational art, commanders can more effectively synchronize efforts and exploit opportunities on the battlefield.

Operational Art: Bridging Strategy and Tactics

Operational art in U.S. military thinking, or the opératique as conceptualized in French military thought, occupies the vital intermediate level between strategy and tactics. It enables commanders to orchestrate campaigns over vast distances, coordinating diverse forces and actions to achieve strategic objectives. The emergence of the operational level was a response to the limitations of traditional binary distinctions between strategy and tactics, particularly as the scale and lethality of warfare increased in the 20th century.

The operational level provides a distinct perspective, allowing practitioners to identify problems and solutions that are invisible at the tactical or strategic levels. Its successful application requires not only an appropriate organizational structure but also agile systems capable of rapid adaptation and coordination. The operational artist carefully arranges actions in a deliberate sequence, takes advantage of timely opportunities, and sustains a rapid pace of operations. By doing so, they disrupt the enemy’s ability to respond effectively and weaken the adversary as an integrated system.

Decisive Points in Joint Doctrine

Within U.S. joint doctrine, decisive points are central to campaign design and execution. Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning, defines a decisive point as “key terrain, key event, critical factor, or function that, when acted upon, enables commanders to gain a marked advantage over an enemy or contribute materially to achieving success.” These are not arbitrary targets or fleeting opportunities. Rather, they are operationally significant nodes — physical, conceptual, or functional — on which the outcome of a campaign may hinge. There is also the idea of “[action] upon” in the definition. This distinction clarifies that decisive points have significance only when they are acted upon — meaning that their value lies in the potential to change the course of a campaign through purposeful engagement or intervention.

Critically, decisive points are defined in relation to the adversary’s center of gravity. They serve as stepping stones or linkages, the seizure or neutralization of which systematically degrades the enemy’s ability to resist. As Jeffrey A. Springman articulates, decisive points function as intermediate objectives whose proper sequencing enables friendly forces to converge upon and ultimately neutralize the adversary’s center of gravity. This underscores the need for deliberate operational design, where decisive points are purposefully linked to strategic objectives.

Centers of Gravity: Clausewitzian Roots and Operational Application

The center of gravity remains a foundational, if contested, element of joint doctrine. Joint Planning defines the center of gravity as the “source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.” Drawing on Clausewitz, the center of gravity is conceived as the linchpin of an adversary’s ability to resist or project power, whether a fielded force, a critical logistical network, or the political will of a society.

Identifying an adversary’s center of gravity anchors operational design by linking strategic ends to operational ways and tactical means. However, as Springman warns, failure to establish a clear linkage among tasks, decisive points, and the center of gravity results in operational incoherence and dissipated effort. A center of gravity-focused approach demands both doctrinal mastery and the operational imagination to adapt to changing circumstances.

Decline of Operational Art: Insights from the 2034 U.S.-China-Philippines Wargame

The decline of operational art in modern military planning is increasingly evident, particularly when tested against the complexities of strategic level wargames involving peer adversaries like China. As the Indo-Pacific region becomes the epicenter of great power competition, the ability to translate strategy into effective, synchronized operations across multiple domains is more critical — and more challenging — than ever.

Wargame Overview and Outcomes

A recent Department of Defense wargame simulated a hypothetical 2034 conflict scenario involving U.S., Chinese, and Philippine forces. In this scenario, the People’s Liberation Army invaded the Philippines after a hypothetical victory in Taiwan two years earlier, prompting an American-led Blue force response. Despite having significant air and maritime assets, Blue was decisively defeated by the People’s Liberation Army, which rapidly seized and consolidated control over critical terrain in the central Philippines.

Analysis of Failures

Blue’s defeat was not due to technological inferiority or resource constraints. Instead, it stemmed from fundamental conceptual and procedural failures in the application of operational art. Blue planners repeatedly conflated decision points (moments requiring a choice) with decisive points (actions or locations that materially affect campaign success), failed to relate their lines of effort to the adversary’s operational center of gravity, and dispersed their combat power across multiple, poorly integrated lines of operation. The absence of clarity and focus prevented the massing of effects at decisive places and times, ceding the initiative to the People’s Liberation Army.

In contrast, the People’s Liberation Army exploited interior lines, seized key airfields and maritime chokepoints, and rapidly established anti-access/area denial networks, consolidating their operational gains with remarkable speed. This outcome closely parallels findings from historical campaign studies, such as Michael D. Heredia’s 1995 monograph on Operation Desert Storm, where success was enabled by clearly identifying the Iraqi Army as the center of gravity, sequencing actions against decisive points (notably logistics hubs and command nodes), and balancing offensive and defensive operations to prevent premature culmination.

Broader Implications

The failures observed in the wargame were not merely procedural but deeply cognitive. Post-wargame analyses revealed that planners defaulted to paradigms from counter-insurgency and stability operations, emphasizing process, risk aversion, and support buildup over maneuver, initiative, and rapid adaptation. Understandably, the wargame participants defaulted to their earlier professional and deployed experience in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and to their earlier professional military education in low intensity operations. This cognitive inertia was compounded by an inability to distinguish between the requirements of low intensity and large-scale combat operations, leading to disunity of effort and strategic paralysis.

These findings echo James Lacey’s analysis of contemporary wargaming, which highlights persistent difficulties in identifying and exploiting decisive points and centers of gravity in high intensity, peer conflicts. The operational atrophy witnessed in the wargame is symptomatic of broader challenges facing joint force planners and commanders today. I know this because I was one of the Blue planners.

Enabling Decisive Action: Integration, Mass, and Synchronization

Effective operational art hinges on the seamless integration, mass, and synchronization of military forces to generate decisive effects at critical moments. These foundational principles, rooted in joint doctrine, are essential for transforming disparate actions into unified, campaign-level success.

Integration, as defined in Joint Publication 1, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, is the “arrangement of military forces and their actions to create a force that operates by engaging as a whole.” This principle implies the creation of mass and relative superiority at decisive points, enabling forces to act as a single, unified whole rather than as disjointed parts. In the wargame, Blue’s efforts were characterized by sequential, stovepiped operations — air interdiction, then maritime strikes, then submarine operations — each executed in isolation rather than as part of a synchronized effort. This fragmentation prevented operational synergy and allowed the adversary to exploit gaps.

Marc LeGare’s analysis underscores that mass is not merely the accumulation of resources but the focused application of combat power at the decisive point and time, achieved through integration and synchronization. Blue’s failure to mass effects in the wargame was a direct consequence of inadequate integration and the absence of clear operational objectives. Without a coherent understanding of decisive points, efforts were scattered across multiple, uncoordinated lines of operation, rendering them ineffective.

Synchronization is defined as the “arrangement of military actions in time, space, and purpose to produce maximum relative combat power at a decisive place and time.” Clyde L. Long warns that unsynchronized actions — even if individually effective — are likely to be dissipated if not directed toward operational objectives. In the wargame, lack of synchronization allowed the People’s Liberation Army to exploit operational gaps, consolidate territorial gains, and achieve campaign objectives with speed and efficiency.

Properly implemented, integration, mass, and synchronization empower operational artists to create conditions to exploit decisive points and systematically target the enemy’s center of gravity. Their neglect, as seen in the wargame, leads to operational paralysis, loss of combat power, and defeat.

Cognitive Barriers: The Failure of Imagination and Proceduralism

Barriers such as failure of imagination and overreliance on established procedures —two understandable human tendencies — have repeatedly hindered effective operational planning and execution in war. When doctrine becomes stagnant and procedures are followed uncritically, organizations become rigid and leaders lose the creativity needed to adapt to evolving battlefield threats and complex operational environments.

Proceduralism and Doctrinal Stagnation

A deeper failure of operational imagination underlies the doctrinal and procedural deficiencies observed in the wargame. Charles D. Allen argues that robust operational concepts must challenge assumptions, seek out neglected pathways, and adopt holistic perspectives to avoid operational failure. In the wargame, persistent confusion between strategic and operational levels manifested as repeated attempts to redefine the nature of conflict at the operational level, undermining the nesting of plans, delaying decisive action, and resulting in individually rational actions that failed to generate cumulative operational effects.

Historical Parallels and Contemporary Lessons

Historical analysis, such as Heredia’s study Operation Desert Storm and recollections by officers in the years following 1991, reinforces the enduring relevance of operational design elements — center of gravity, decisive points, culmination, linkage, sequencing, and conflict termination — even as they adapt to modern, maritime, and high-intensity conflicts such as a future war over the Philippines. The lessons are not merely procedural but fundamentally cognitive: Effective operational art requires both doctrinal mastery and the willingness to innovate and adapt under pressure.

The Decline of the Operational Perspective

The decline of operational art is not unique to the U.S. military. French military theorists have likewise observed that the agility, tempo, and coordination required for operational success are often undermined by organizational inertia and an overreliance on procedural compliance. Meanwhile, Seth Jones has argued that the opening campaign of the Russo-Ukrainian war is a case study in failed Russian operational art. While the operational level enables identification of otherwise invisible problems and solutions, its successful application depends on the agility and adaptability of the organization and its leaders.

How Technology Can Help 

Technology should not replace the need for human expertise, but its judicious use can enhance it. Advanced technology is here to stay and likely will spread to every corner of human activity, including war, making its integration into operational art essential. Technology provides the necessary edge in future conflict environments constrained by the need to operate in smaller, more survivable nodes. Leveraging technology is a critical step in maintaining and improving military proficiency in operational art for future conflicts.

Technology — especially AI — can significantly improve joint planners’ understanding and application of doctrine and operational art in complex, contested environments. Against peer adversaries like China and Russia, planners will likely operate with smaller, distributed staffs and under degraded network conditions, making traditional planning methods riskier and less effective. AI and advanced digital tools, including a real-time, live data common operational picture, could help planners manage information overload, automate routine tasks, and enhance analysis, allowing them to focus on higher order operational art challenges.

Automated Data Processing and Terrain Analysis

AI rapidly analyzes large geographical areas, identifies key terrain, and synthesizes vast operational data, enabling planners to focus on visualizing the battlespace and understanding multi-domain interdependencies. Predictive algorithms, leveraging historical data and real-time intelligence, can forecast enemy movements and estimate logistical requirements with greater accuracy, allowing for more developed contingency plans. This supports better identification of decisive points and operational risks.

Enhanced Center of Gravity Analysis

AI-powered network analysis and pattern recognition tools map complex relationships between enemy capabilities, requirements, and vulnerabilities. These systems can highlight strategic and operational centers of gravity, simulate multiple courses of action, and predict adversary responses. This enables planners to tie objectives and operations to decisive points and centers of gravity. Properly used, AI tools can reduce cognitive burden on military decision makers and planners.

Decision Support and Visualization

AI-driven decision support tools analyze operational timelines, resource requirements, and spatial relationships — including the physical characteristics of the battlespace — to suggest decisive points and synchronize operations. Advanced visualization platforms help planners understand how objectives, decisive points, and centers of gravity interrelate across time and space. These platforms also provide clear, interactive representations of complex problems.

Information Management

AI filters and prioritizes information, generates concise intelligence summaries, and organizes doctrine and lessons learned, reducing cognitive burden and ensuring planners focus on what matters most for mission success, such as the ability to rapidly identify, prioritize, and act on decisive information and tasks. Additionally, by providing objective, data-driven assessments, AI can help mitigate human cognitive biases that often affect decision-making in high-stress, complex environments.

Distributed Planning and Collaboration

Cloud-based platforms with embedded AI enable geographically dispersed staffs to collaborate, synchronize plans, and maintain consistency even under degraded network conditions. For example, even in peacetime training, limited transmission assets or congestion in communications infrastructure can cause high latency and reduced bandwidth, which slows data transmission and limits real-time collaboration and access to cloud services in tactical environments. Increased network intrusions, spoofing, and cyber attacks can further degrade mission command systems and digital common operational pictures. Nonetheless, with sufficient connectivity, automated plan checking can identify gaps and inconsistencies, supporting more robust operational planning. Cloud-based platforms and AI support distributed planning by providing robust data management, automated analysis, local processing, and resilient collaboration tools — directly mitigating the operational risks posed by degraded network conditions. Cloud-based systems can cache data locally and synchronize updates with intermittent restoration of services and edge computing, allowing AI functions and data processing to occur despite connectivity disruptions.

An Example Scenario, Key Considerations, and a Word of Caution

A tactical example can show how AI-driven decision support tools, AI-driven information management, and AI-enhanced cloud-based platforms can transform the command and control of complex operations.

A corps headquarters is planning a multi-brigade offensive against a peer adversary. The staff employs an AI-driven decision support tool like the U.S. Army’s Maven Smart System that ingests real-time intelligence reports, operational data, aviation, protection, and logistics statuses, and terrain analysis. The tool speeds up the planning and reduces errors made by the human staff by performing the following functions.

First, the AI analyzes the projected movement rates of friendly units, actions by civilians on the battlefield, anticipated enemy reactions, and logistical throughput. It highlights a 12 hour window when fuel and ammunition resupply will be at peak efficiency, and when sensors can be in ideal overwatch positions, aligning with the arrival of a bridging asset at a key river crossing.

Second, the system overlays high-resolution terrain data and enemy disposition maps, identifying a narrow defile as both a potential choke point and a decisive point for the operation. It simulates enemy artillery ranges and suggests optimal routes for maneuver units to avoid detection and maximize cover during the approach to the crossing site.

Third, based on the input of commander’s intent and repeated, fully automated simulations, the AI can analyze for the decisive point and ways to achieve better synchronization. The AI recommends concentrating fires and maneuver at the defile during the identified window, synchronizing electronic warfare, aviation, and ground assaults. It also proposes a deception plan to fix enemy reserves away from the decisive point. Planners interact with a dynamic three-dimensional map that visually links objectives, decisive points, and centers of gravity. The platform allows users to adjust timelines, resource allocations, and see immediate impacts on synchronization and risk. Interactive overlays show how changes in one area (e.g., delayed bridging or low artillery ammunition) cascade across the operation, updating recommendations in real time.

Finally, the commander uses these insights to refine the scheme of maneuver, allocate resources, and issue clear orders. The visualization platform ensures all staff sections share a common operational picture, reducing ambiguity and improving coordination. This approach to AI-enabled battlespace visualization can transform complex, multi-domain problems into actionable, synchronized plans, directly supporting decision dominance and operational effectiveness.

This scenario illustrates the transformative potential of AI-driven platforms in operational planning, but realizing these benefits will not be a simple process. There are several implementation considerations — including an important caution — that joint force leaders should be aware of. First, U.S. military commands should invest in AI tailored for military planning, infrastructure, and staff training, and multinational interoperability. Second, commanders should integrate AI tools in phases: begin with terrain and information management, then progress to center of gravity and decisive point analysis, then course of action development. Third, commanders should pair technology with enhanced education in operational art to ensure planners understand both the capabilities and limitations of AI assistance. Finally, commanders should maintain human judgment and doctrinal alignment in all technology applications.

Revitalizing Operational Art: Recommendations for Doctrine, Education, and Practice

Addressing the challenge requires a comprehensive approach. Moving beyond proceduralism, the Army should educate planners who understand and can flexibly apply the principles of operational art in dynamic, complex environments featuring the thorniest tactical problems. Integrating doctrinal mastery with experiential learning and historical insight will be essential to restore and advance operational proficiency for large-scale combat operations.

Doctrinal Education Beyond Proceduralism

A renewed emphasis on doctrinal education is essential — one that transcends rote memorization and procedural compliance. Planners should internalize the logic of operational art, mastering the dynamic relationships among ends, ways, and means; identifying and exploiting centers of gravity and decisive points; and orchestrating integrated, synchronized joint combat power. This demands not only familiarity with doctrinal definitions but also the ability to apply them flexibly across diverse scenarios.

Experiential Learning and Wargaming

Wargaming and experiential learning should be central to professional military education and training. Free-play, human-adjudicated wargames expose conceptual weaknesses, challenge participants to adapt in real time, and provide adversaries who think, adapt, and exploit operational opportunities. As Lacey and Heredia observe, such experiences are the most effective antidote to intellectual complacency and process-driven inertia.

Balancing Support and Initiative

Operational planners should resist the temptation to over-engineer support and logistics at the expense of tempo and initiative. While sustainment is essential, the pursuit of perfect conditions for action is incompatible with the realities of high intensity peer conflict, where initiative, risk acceptance, and rapid adaptation determine outcomes. Planners should be trained to balance offense and defense, recognize the culminating point, and avoid dissipating effort on non-critical targets.

Integrating Historical Wisdom and Contemporary Innovation

A deliberate effort is required to integrate “old school” operational thinking — rooted in Clausewitzian principles — with the realities of the 21st-century battlespace. Only by synthesizing historical wisdom with contemporary innovation can planners regain the proficiency required for success in large scale combat operations.

Retired Senior Military Leaders’ Role in Reversing the Decline

As highly qualified experts in professional military education, retired senior Army leaders can contribute more to doctrinal instruction and experiential learning. Doctrinal education should move beyond rote memorization. Instead, planners should be taught to internalize and flexibly apply the logic of operational art, understanding how to synthesize ends, ways, and means in complex, fluid environments. Experiential learning — particularly through human-adjudicated, free-play wargames — should become central to the education experience. Such exercises force participants to confront adaptive adversaries and reveal cognitive and conceptual gaps that rote education cannot address.

Conclusion

The continued relevance of decisive points and centers of gravity in joint doctrine is not merely a matter of theoretical debate but a practical imperative for operational success. As demonstrated in both historical campaigns and contemporary wargames, the inability to identify and exploit decisive points — defined in relation to the adversary’s center of gravity — renders even the best-resourced force vulnerable to strategic defeat. This failure is as much intellectual and organizational as it is procedural, rooted in decades of operational drift and cognitive inertia.

The way forward demands a recommitment to doctrinal rigor, critical reflection, and experiential learning. Planners should master both the art and science of operational design, leveraging integration, mass, and synchronization to create and exploit decisive opportunities. Only by doing so can they reclaim the initiative, generate cascading effects on the enemy’s operational system, and maintain a competitive advantage in the face of dynamic and capable adversaries. In the Indo-Pacific and beyond, the stakes are nothing less than the preservation of U.S. influence and the credibility of American military power in the 21st century.

Marco J. Lyons is a U.S. Army officer currently serving as deputy chief of staff, V Corps (forward) in Poland. Between July 2022 and July 2025, he was the assistant chief of staff of plans for U.S. Army Pacific. He was a 2021 Harvard Kennedy School national security fellow and a 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology national security fellow. He served on the 2021 Office of the Secretary of Defense China task force and on the 2016 and 2017 Army Science Board studies of multi-domain operations. He completed Naval Postgraduate School in 2014, where his distinguished thesis examined U.S. nuclear weapons policy, strategy, and force structure.

**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: Damien Thomas via DVIDS