Explaining the Organizational Structures used in Operations and Exercises

Initial Planning for Operations and Exercises includes Organization, People, Material, and Costs.

This figure about the relocation process explains its main steps.

The relocation process is aimed to bring units, along with their equipment and personnel, to the Area of Operation.

This includes the following:

• Planning the operational organizational structure, equipment, provisions and personnel requirements
• Identifying and earmarking sources for equipment and personnel
• Prepare equipment for deployment
• Collective training (and sometime individual training as well)
• Defining transportation re-equipments
• Actual relocation and monitoring

In this unit, we will focus on the first two phases of the relocation scenario:

• Structure Planning
• Dispatch Planning

A plan may be initiated by a higher headquarters directive in response to a political request (for example, in response to a humanitarian disaster), or contingency planning.

When it is initiated, the commander will likely form a Joint Planning Group (or Operational Planning Team) to focus on mission analysis. If the commander has anticipated the mission, they can already have developed an understanding of the environment and problem and formulated an operational approach that they will provide to their team as initial planning guidance. If the commander has not anticipated the mission, they will quickly develop the initial planning guidance in order to provide initial direction to the team, then continue their own operational design to provide more detailed guidance as they better understand the mission.

As part of the planning process, the Joint Planning Group will accomplish the following:

• Assess what organizational capabilities are needed based on the mission essential tasks (METS) across the operation's lifecycle
• Develop the operation's organizational structure across the operation's phases
• Define rotations of forces into and out of the operation
• Specify personnel requirements (staffing estimates, training requirements) based on the mission specifics
• Specify equipment and material requirements based on mission specifics

An operational table of establishment (TOE) is created in D&S that contains the phases, rotations equipment, and material assignments. It can also identify force provider and earmark units to be assigned to the operational roles.

The Defense and Security structure provides the framework to breakdown and estimate the costs over the life of the operation.

Completion of the assessment enables the costing of the proposed options and a budget to be developed based on the preferred option.

Following the higher level planning process and budgetary approval, the operational plan is assigned to Service planners to operationalize the plans. The Service arms assign specific units, personnel and equipment to the operation TOE, using Defense and Security to assess capability and readiness.

When the plan is complete, it is available for review/approval. When it is approved, it can be activated.

The operations plan may be on unit type and positions level, or go down to the level of unit dispatch to operational roles and personnel staffing proposal.

An operation / exercise is built by creating a new force element. Technically, it is the same "O" object but it is two unique infotypes, and a special link IT 1956 - Operations Information::

• Category and Sub-category (configurable list)
• Intensity (configurable list)
• Operations Start and End Date - this could be left blank during the initial plan, if the information is not yet known, for example in a contingency plan
• Object's Start and End Date: best practice is to keep the end date 31/12/9999, so that the operations start and end date can be updated as required
• Country
• Climate, Terrain, and Weather (configurable drop-down lists): key attributes that may impact the equipment requirements, consumption rate, and so on

• Rotations describe the cycles framework for units coming into and out of the theater
• Rotations cannot overlap; however, actual units that are assigned to an operation can overlap to allow proper handover
• A unit may be assigned to the operation across multiple rotations
• Each rotation has multiple attributes: phase and activity (configurable list of values), upper limit of personnel, and start and end dates These parameters can be used for provisions and spare parts consumption estimates
• Rotations can be split and their start and end date may be updated, to reflect the ever changing operational environment

This link describes the relationship between the operation and the real unit that is in charge of it:

A 822 O - O Is Commanded by (Operation/Exercise)

B 822 O - O Commands (Operation/Exercise)

Operation's Org Structure describes the type and quantities of Force Elements, personnel, and equipment that are required to perform the mission, and their hierarchical command and control relationships. The Ops Org Structure may change over time, following the mission plan. This can be aligned with the rotation dates (and their attributes of Phase and Activity), but there is not a hard link between them, to allow for complete flexibility during the planning process.

Additional (new) Force Elements are created under the Operations force element. These new, or existing Force Elements (such as frigates), are created one level below the other using relationship A/B823.

All of them are assigned with the external link A/B823 in case of an operation and in case of an exercise with the link A/B826.

In the case of an operation, we will use the link A/B822 to assign a force element of the operation to a force provider in the standard structure.

Positions will be attached with the link A/B824 and persons to those positions are attached with the relationship A/B805.

The organizational structure of the operation can be in different levels of detail, depending on the type of units and the resource dispatch concept. The level of details is not required to be the same across the operation's structure. It can vary within one operation, subject to the planner's decision, and he can use any mixture between the two approaches:

Create an operation's organizational structure that consists of high-level Force Elements. This can be done in cases where the following is the case:

• The intent is to assign a complete organic entity that is assigned as a whole (for example a ship), or nearly so.
• There is a need for a standard type of unit (that can be defined by a Capability Code, such as Light Infantry BN).

Create a detailed operation's organizational structure, down to the level of positions. This can be done in cases where the following is the case:

• There is need to set up a specific and unique team for a mission.
• There is a need to augment a standard unit with a specific function (for example, translator).
• People (and equipment) are selectively chosen from organic units and are assigned to the mission.

Each operational force element or structure can be created manually by the planner, copied from an existing FE or from a Reference FE, or a combination of coping and manual adjustments.

Rotations are defined on the level of the Operation and reflect the following:

• Planned employment cycles of unit coming into and out of the theater
• Different phases, types of activity and upper levels of personnel in the operation’s lifecycle
• Changes in the organizational structure of the operation

Although rotations cannot overlap, the rotating unit may have to overlap to allow proper transition. Therefore, a real force element can do the following:

• Can arrive to the theater and be assigned to the operational FE before the rotation starts
• Can leave the theater after the rotation ends

While Copying Force Elements and their substructures, the basic structure can be copied into the Operational structure. Therefore, you must use an operation root as new super ordinate object. Alternatively, you can also create new Force Elements in the operation structure itself.

An operational FE has most of the attributes and links of a regular FE, but also has IT1957 with specific details:

1. Operation Rotation Assignments
   • Each Operational FE may by assigned to one or more rotations that are defined for that operation. That means that the operation's organizational structure may change over time to support the different and developing needs of the mission.
   • This assignment can be transferred automatically by the system to the subordinate FEs in the Operational Structure.
   • An Operational FE cannot be part of a rotation if its parent is not also assigned to that rotation.
2. Operational Provider

   Here, the planner can specify the (real) units from which personnel and equipment will be assigned to fulfill the operational role.

3. Operational Positions
   • Specific positions that are required for this operation.
   • These can only be the extra positions that should come on top of the standard unit structure, or a detailed list of all positions (in case, we plan to use individuals assignments to the operation and not complete organic entities).

Armed forces, police, and aid organizations have a permanent domestic base for achieving and maintaining the ability to carry out operations and exercises.

In addition, they must be able to provide personnel and material resources at short notice for a specific operation or exercise. This involves accessing resources in the domestic base and setting up an organizational structure specific to the operation/exercise on the basis of existing organizational elements, contingency plans, and/or new organizational elements.

The Defense and Security solution supports logistics and administrative processes for both the domestic base and for carrying out operations and exercises.

Since the functions and processes in the system for operations and exercises are usually analogous, the term operation is often used in this documentation to refer to both operations and exercises.

You can use the standard SAP system authorization concepts to define the users that are allowed to display and change the system data for individual operations and/or exercises.

Most of the functions that are required for the domestic base are needed as well in operations and exercises.

In operations and exercises, Force Elements are supplied with non-consumable goods and individual/bulk consumable goods on the basis of supply relationships, as is the case with the domestic base.

The force provider that is defined for each rotation assignment is responsible for this initial supply. In the case of individual/bulk consumable goods, this force provider also overrides any initial suppliers of materials defined for these goods.

Readiness level is defined in percentages, describing the actual situation of a force element in three major criteria - material, personnel, and training, compared with the authorized equipment, provisions inventory, personnel vacancies, and collective training curriculum performance.

This can be calculated based on system's reports and analytics, combined with commander's assessment.

Capability Codes and METLs are assigned to the Operational FE. Using the METL app and Capability Code app, we can search for FEs that have these attributes.

You can now look into their level of readiness (for example, within 30 days) and readiness data for material, personnel, and training, and select the best candidate unit for this operational role.

Assigning a parent force element to the operation automatically means assigning all the 002 subordinate FE. The evaluation path is 823 + 002.

The assignment of a person to an operation does not have to be specified explicitly, where that person is fulfilling a position that is part of a "real" force element fulfilling an operational role.

In other cases, a special operational assignment relationship has to be specified explicitly. In this case, as shown in the screenshot from the figure, Assigning Personnel to an Operation, the assignment was performed by editing PA infotype 0748 in transaction code PA30 in the back end system.

Operational Structure/Exercise Target Relationships Relationship Description. This figure contains:

A 822 O - O Is Commanded by (Operation/Exercise)

B 822 O - O Commands (Operation/Exercise)

A 823 O - O Reports to (Operation)

B 823 O - O Is Line Manager of (Operation)

B 824 O - S Includes (Operational Position)

A 805 O/S - P Includes (Person in Operation)

A 826 O - O Reports to (Exercise)

B 826 O - O Is Line Manager of (Exercise)

B 827 O - S Includes (Exercise Position)

A 825 O - P Includes (Person in Exercise)