As a doctrine author I often see misconceptions of doctrine and concepts, especially the purpose of each. The distinction between the two, however, is far from a trivial one. For members of the profession of arms, understanding how they differ is important. But for military institutions and those of us responsible for crafting concepts and writing doctrine, it is imperative. Failing to properly distinguish between them has real-world implications, leading to situations like unvalidated concepts entering doctrine, which causes confusion and renders doctrine unhelpful to the military professionals who need it the most. This misapplication of purpose happens, and it spans from service doctrine through US joint and multinational doctrine. It is a problem that must be addressed, and that begins with clarifying the differences between doctrine and concepts.
What is Doctrine?
US Army doctrine is defined as “fundamental principles, with supporting tactics, techniques, procedures, and terms and symbols, used for the conduct of operations and as a guide for actions of operating forces, and elements of the institutional force that directly support operations in support of national objectives.” US joint and NATO doctrine have similar definitions.
Doctrine has a hierarchy of ideas that help shape how a commander can think about the planning and conduct of operations. These ideas reflect how the force can currently operate. In other words, doctrine must reflect existing capabilities, force structure, and operational approaches. Doctrine constantly evolves as various operational conditions change over time.
Doctrine, for the most part, is not the way, but rather a way. As the Army definition states, it can serve as a guide. It is an authoritative product, but commanders have the discretion to use their judgment in its application. The only doctrine that is prescriptive are procedures. There are some things commanders and soldiers should not exercise their own judgment on, like how to call in a medevac or the steps to employ a weapon system.
Doctrine embodies the professional language of the military. Terms and symbols are also doctrine and another aspect of our professional language. Doctrine needs to be clear and easily understood. Buzzwords, jargon, colloquialisms, and slang are not doctrine and should be avoided when discussing the planning and conduct of operations. When buzzwords or slang terms are used in lieu of approved doctrinal terms, it causes confusion about what, exactly, is being discussed. In this regard, doctrinal terminology provides the language baseline to increase shared understanding and interoperability, something especially important for multinational operations.
Doctrine takes time to write if it is going to be useful. For doctrine writing there is a clear tradeoff between speed, quality, and quantity. You can usually have two of those elements, but never all three. Quality is arguably the most important. Doctrine is usually at its best when it is the product of many minds and pens. In the US Army we have doctrine authors who do the bulk of the work, but we also send drafts out to various experts throughout the Army for their insights. It takes time to staff a publication across the Army so that the best minds and most experienced leaders have time to read it, reflect on it, and provide feedback on how to improve it. US joint and NATO doctrine both follow a similar process.
Doctrine drives changes to training and to the planning and conduct of operations, but it is not the medium to provide solutions to enterprise-wide problems for the military. In the Army, we often see a desire from leaders pushing modernization efforts to want to change doctrine first, when in reality we may need to enact changes to other parts of the Army before we change the doctrine. The concept-to-doctrine pipeline helps illustrate this further.
What are Concepts?
Concepts are the intellectual starting point for solving an operational problem and they help drive modernization. They are a vision of a future state for military forces and should provide a clear difference from current doctrine. They can outline needed changes to the composition and disposition of forces, new operational approaches (sometimes referred to as operational concepts), and necessary capabilities to combat threats and adapt to changes in the operational environment. Since concepts are unconstrained by current technical or operational limitations, they should never be rushed into doctrine; they need to be validated first.
Validation is a process that takes time and often involves various forms of experimentation, simulations, wargames, and exercises to assess a concept’s efficacy. Once a concept is validated and the necessary capabilities and force structure are fielded to support it, it is no longer conceptual, but rather it is reality and should be reflected in doctrine. However, what we put in doctrine often evolves from how it was originally conceptualized. That is because we learn things through the validation process about what is or is not viable or useful in a concept. Parts of a concept may be valid, others may not. Funding constraints may prevent some capabilities, for example, from being produced. Because of this, doctrine will likely never perfectly reflect a concept and this is precisely why we should never rush a concept into doctrine. We must know what is feasible first.
Confusing Doctrine with Concepts
Recent developments in NATO and US joint doctrine help illustrate some of the problems with forgetting the purpose of doctrine.
Starting in 2024, US joint doctrine started including “futures” chapters in doctrinal publications, a curious development since doctrine is supposed to reflect the current operational environment and capabilities of the joint force. The information in these “futures” chapters comes from the Joint Warfighting Concept—no doubt interesting information but not appropriate for a doctrinal publication. If commanders are interested in predictions on the future of joint warfare, all they need to do is read the concept. It’s why it exists. By putting it in doctrine we are implying that these future possibilities are currently relevant to operations, something that simply is not true. When the conditions are in place for the concept to become reality, then joint force doctrine writers can and should incorporate the validated components of the concept into doctrine.
Something similar occurred in NATO with the alliance’s version of the multidomain operations concept. NATO’s new concept did not undergo any validation activities before it was rushed into doctrine at the direction of senior leaders in NATO, ostensibly to promote or advertise the concept. As a result, dutiful NATO doctrine authors were copying, in many cases word for word, from the concept paper because they had no idea how to incorporate the conceptual ideas as operationally relevant doctrine. It resulted in significant confusion about what multidomain operations were and how NATO was going to approach operations in the future.
For some context, when published in 2023, the NATO concept was a highly aspirational blueprint for modernizing the alliance that had little utility for the conduct of current operations by NATO forces. The NATO concept embodied a whole-of-government(s) approach that sought to have, among other things, NATO military commanders influencing private sector entities to aid in operations. The concept did not grapple with the wisdom or feasibility of such activities, nor did it explain how NATO intends to influence the sovereign member nations of NATO to change their national policies or legal restrictions in this regard. NATO multidomain operations represented a fundamental paradigm shift in how an alliance of nations conducts operations.
To further add to the confusion, NATO envisioned that its new concept would eventually replace joint operations with no clear explanation of what that meant or how it would be achieved. In fact, the full realization of the NATO concept required conditions and capabilities that did not exist when published, do not exist now, and may never exist. It had, therefore, no doctrinal utility to the militaries of the alliance in its published form. A rigorous validation process would have identified these problems, and appropriate adjustments could have been made before trying to incorporate the concept, wholesale, into doctrine. That said, the US Army offered to help describe elements of the concept in doctrine in a way that was relevant for current operations. That process is currently ongoing, and it has, so far, yielded a much clearer picture of what parts of the NATO concept are doctrinally valid for the militaries in NATO. It is an attempt to validate after the fact, which is a suboptimal solution but better than letting the confusion continue.
Doctrine and concepts serve different purposes. Doctrine serves as a guide to inform commanders and their staff of ways to plan and conduct current operations; it is not an advertising tool for other things, such as concepts. Concepts are a vision for the future and reflect needed modernization efforts. Including conceptual ideas in doctrine about nonextant capabilities or force structure, or possible future operating environments, is not useful for military commanders and their staffs. Despite this being common knowledge among doctrine writers and concept developers, we routinely see efforts to incorporate unvalidated conceptual ideas into service, joint, and multinational doctrine. Therefore, when promoting new ideas about how to solve an operational problem we see in the future, the military forces of the United States and NATO need to clearly delineate concepts and doctrine and enforce a rigorous validation process to examine concept ideas and ensure they are currently viable before incorporating them into doctrine.
Kaine Meshkin is a retired US Army officer and a former assistant professor at the United States Military Academy. He is a doctrine developer at the US Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.