You Don't Think There's a Plan? Really?
...I've about had enough of you people...
As a guy who used to give two-week operational planning seminars at war colleges around Europe, I can literally talk for two weeks about how you take an idea from a POLMIL Good Idea Fairy and turn it into a 143-slide PPT-deck and about an inch-thick decision brief printed on A4, with a few handy charts on A3. If you’re nice, I’ll put the cool chart on A2.
Over the last couple of weeks, the memo went out, apparently, that “there is no plan!”
Sure, some of the people saying that are just ignorant and over-caffeinated. Some well-meaning, some raging with Orange Man Bad. Those people deserve something between a polite sigh and eye-roll. Little more.
Others saying such things who know better? They are the ones that I’ve about had enough of. Right out of the Harry Reid, “It is an election year. Nothing is more important…” playbook.
We all see you—not just the ones you are signaling to.
Well meaning people can argue if what they see looks like a good plan or not, but “no plan?”
Anyway, it is all rather silly. Three generations of U.S. military officers have built and revised various OPLANs against Iran. We, if anything, have over-planned. Reagan, Bush41, Clinton, Bush43, Obama, Trump45, Biden, Trump47…everyone and their Pentagon has built off each other’s plans.
We’ve got this. We’re executing decades of hard work. That is why it is going so well…from a military point of view.
No, we don’t know all the details of the plans; the decision points, measures of effectiveness, critical capabilities/vulnerabilities, etc. Heck, when my shop at CENTCOM was across the hall from the Iran shop in 2007, they wouldn’t let me see them. Do you really think we’re going to just post the whole thing up on 4chan or something?
Planning, we have done. What we have not done, rightfully, is put our OPLAN out there for everyone to look at in an unclassified environment.
Would Alabama publish their playbook on the web while the game against Auburn was going on?
No.
What we have seen are selective mentions of part of the critical aspects of the plan.
As reported by Lucas Tomlinson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine, USAF, made it quite clear on March 10 what the goals of the operation were.
1. Destroy missiles/drones
2. Destroy navy
3. Destroy military and industrial base
This weekend with the eternally ridiculous George Stephanopoulos, the Secretary of State leaned in with that bad-faith actor to remind everyone of the basics.
The full video is below, but here’s the meaty part from the end.
… this operation (is) about very specific objectives. The president laid them out on the first night of the operation. I’ll repeat them to you now because I hear a lot of talk about we don’t know what the clear objectives are. Here they are. You should write them down.
Number one, the destruction of their air force.
Number two, the destruction of their navy.
Number three, the the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability.
And number four, the destruction of their factory so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future. all of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon.
That was our objective from the beginning. That remains our objective now. We are on pace and in fact ahead of schedule on some of those things and we are going to achieve those things in a number of weeks, not in a number of months.
Consistent. Defined. Accountable. Roughly what we knew at the start of the operation.
There is comfort in that, however;
Final note, as I have mentioned on recent episodes of the Midrats Podcast and elsewhere, I am standing by the marker I put down on March 2,
If this degenerates into another long, drawn-out conflict where we put boots on the ground, my opinion will change. If it drags on for weeks of diminishing returns, my opinion will change.
The sooner we state, “We’ve made our point. Don’t make us come back.” the better.
If the Iranian people want to take this opportunity to change their government, then fine. That’s for them to make their move. We opened the door, but they have to walk through it.
We need to be steadfast on this one point: we won’t wait for them.
We are still, just barely—in the first month—about to go into the second. Let’s pull back in the last part of Secretary Rubio’s statement above.
We are on pace and in fact ahead of schedule on some of those things and we are going to achieve those things in a number of weeks, not in a number of months.
OK. That is the word from March 29 from my fellow Floridian and the man fourth in line to be President.
I take him at his word…but I also know that each day this goes on, the more people will ask for one more month, six more weeks, until Christmas, etc.
I hope wise counsel is keeping us out of the trap that is so clearly in front of us.
The Iranian government, however decimated its leadership may be, has more than demonstrated the ability to kill the Iranian people on an industrial scale.
In a nation of 90 million people led by religious zealots who have all the guns, there will always be new people who are more than willing to step up to take the levers of power—secure in the first point above.
Most of the people who have the personality, resources, and network to lead a rebellion have immigrated. Like Cuba, the Iranians have used emigration as a safety valve. Of those remaining who were willing to rise up, they were murdered in the tens of thousands as per the first point above. There likely is not a critical mass.
I hope planning assumption #1 was that the Iranian government would not fall. Unless we have wonderful luck, the Islamic Republic of Iran will probably endure in the short to medium term.
As I was doing my final edits this AM, I noticed the “If you want it open, open it yourself.” note from the President.
The off ramp is right there should we desire to take it.
As outlined by General Caine at the start and Secretary Rubio over the weekend, we have achieved our goals for this punitive expedition.
Though nice to have, but regime change was never a goal.
Though nice to have, but an open Strait of Hormuz was never a goal.
Don’t make us come back. Again.
Put the blinker on and get in the right lane. Let’s exit.
CDR SALAMANDER thank you for the great post. Boy, as a military professional and military historian, I am absolutely seething with rage at these clueless keyboard warriors and armchair generals who have the gall to smugly declare “there is no plan!”
From Day 1, Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine have laid out the mission objectives with crystal-clear precision: destroy Iran’s missile and drone arsenal, crush their navy and air force, and dismantle their military-industrial base so they can never threaten us again. They have been brutally honest that this is a focused punitive expedition that will take 4-6 weeks if the outcomes are met—and they have been unequivocal from the start: no boots on the ground, no nation-building, no endless occupation. Period.
Yet these defeatist critics deliberately ignore every single word that has been said, twisting the facts and spreading their pathetic loser agenda of political sabotage and national self-doubt. It’s not ignorance—it’s willful dishonor, a direct slap in the face to every warfighter executing the mission and to the generations of professionals who built and refined these OPLANs across multiple administrations.
You nailed it, CDR SALAMANDER: the plan exists, it is sound, it is being executed on schedule, and it is delivering results. Enough with the noise from the peanut gallery. Support the mission, back our warriors, and let the professionals finish the job. We’ve made our point—now let’s drive it home and come home.
There is a military plan, sure. That’s a straw man. War is politics by other means and Iran is eating Trump’s lunch because there is no political plan other than wishcasting regime change.
Iran can keep the Strait closed as long as they want and just extort tolls to fund their nuke program. Who is the winner in that scenario? What will we have accomplished - politically?