The Soviet and Russian armed forces classify a large geographical division – such as continental geographical areas with their adjacent maritime areas, islands, adjacent coasts[5] and airspace – as a theatre. The Russian term for a military „theater“ is театр военных действий, teatr voennykh deistvii (literally: „theater of military operations“), abbreviated ТВД, TVD. Lt. Col. Joseph John Shimerdla of the U.S. Army is an Operations Research and Systems Analyst (Functional Area 49). He is the G5 ORSA Division Chief at the U.S. Army Africa/Southern European Task Force in Vicenza, Italy. The creation of theatre is a common and critical military requirement. However, the current doctrinal gap could have a negative impact on the ability of our military to conduct operations in support of strategic objectives around the world.

We need a doctrinal framework that includes both a conceptual definition and a planning concept that allows planners to continually evaluate tasks and set the conditions for success. The proper configuration of the theater requires great attention in planning and managing the disposal of huge amounts of materiel, including tens of thousands of containers and shipping vehicles, as well as millions of army equipment. Therefore, successful logistics planning requires synchronizing the efforts of a variety of actors that include all military services, other U.S. government agencies, foreign governments and militaries, contractors, and non-governmental agencies. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army) The framework developed by USARAF provides a systematic and analytical approach that identifies the requirements and conditions required to set up theatre. Working with joint, interagency and multinational partners, USARAF can identify information and capability gaps, and then use military commitments, security cooperation events, and other activities to fill those gaps. Perhaps most importantly, this approach allows USARAF to identify, plan and request the forces and resources needed to ensure it is ready to conduct emergency operations in Africa. Two vignettes highlight the need to fill this gap in education. The first occurred after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. In the first weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom, U.S. Central Command and U.S.

Army Central Command had only four weeks to prepare for the airstrikes that took place on September 7. October 2001, followed by the deployment of special forces to northern Afghanistan. In this short period of time, planners had not recognized the capabilities of the supporting infrastructure needed to support operations, nor had they fully recognized how difficult it was to launch operations from rigorous regional bases.13 Fortunately, the commandos were able to use a planned exercise, Operation Bright Star, as an intermediate base to deploy and maintain forces in theatre. While these operations were ultimately successful, they called into question the U.S. military`s ability to respond to crises, but it was an unnecessary challenge. Planners can create understanding and shape conditions long before a crisis occurs by prioritizing theatre as an ongoing and ongoing task. This allows U.S. forces to respond more quickly and effectively.

It also eases the avoidable burden of trying quickly and simultaneously to understand, shape and open theatre after a crisis that has already occurred. Without a common definition or conceptual framework for assessing and prioritizing tasks, each theater army and CCG developed its own approach to determining its respective theater based on its definition, including potential locations, available forces, and the relative importance of U.S. interests at stake. This makes it difficult to reach a consensus on what it means to set up theatre and share lessons learned between orders. While this ambiguity may not significantly affect theatrical armies with sufficient resources – since they have assigned and assigned forces and have a sufficient footprint to conduct theatrical operations – those with limited resources have much more difficulty.