Counterinsurgency Campaign Design Tool (COIN-CDT)

To plan and conduct an effective counterinsurgency campaign, commanders first need to understand what they are facing. Because insurgencies vary widely, change rapidly, do not conform to existing doctrine, and are highly complex, figuring out the situation can be the most difficult part of planning and executing an effective campaign. To address this difficulty, doctrine prescribes a process known as “campaign design” that begins prior to campaign planning. Campaign design in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, however, presents challenges that have kept it from being actively practiced in the field. Specifically, it requires information largely gained through experience, it requires complex arrangement of military and non-military factors, and the product of design must be sharable to serve as a framework for planning and assessment. All of these challenges indicate a need for a tool to support campaign design in COIN operations. To address these challenges, we propose to design and demonstrate the Counterinsurgency Campaign Design Tool (COIN-CDT). The COIN-CDT will allow commanders to effectively design counterinsurgency campaigns by capturing their own reasoning augmented with lessons learned by other commanders in similar situations.