Photo By Nora Amrane | Col Keith Rudderham, the Caribbean Task Force’s mentors team lead, is giving a...... read more read more
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Military organizations around the world have formal planning procedures to achieve mission objectives. The method used by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is called the Operational Planning Process (OPP). The OPP is used to develop and analyze possible ways to achieve a mission and then produce actionable orders for subordinate units to efficiently conduct operations. It is a demanding but necessary activity for any exercise or operation to enhance command and control over distributed forces for the accomplishment of the mission.
As part of Exercise (Ex) TRADEWINDS 2021 taking place in Guyana, CAF mentors are teaching OPP to assist the Caribbean Task Force (CTF) headquarters (HQ).
In the CTF, participating military members assume various roles within the HQ. Apart from the host country, military members from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda and Belize attended Ex TRADEWINDS 2021 to learn as much as possible about OPP.
The CTF HQ is separated into sub-sections; each with a specific role in the process. These include plans, intelligence, military and civilian cooperation, communications and information technology, logistics, maintenance, medical, and human resources.
When asked why CAF mentors are teaching the OPP to partner nations in Guyana, Colonel (Col) Keith Rudderham, the CTF’s mentors team lead explains, "OPP is a required skill when the Caribbean countries are deployed as the Caribbean Task Force and come together to form a force that could help one of their neighbor partner nations in need."
In this training, a key objective is to develop the ability of participants to analyze and understand the terrain and security situation of the host country so they can enable their commander to make informed decisions. This analytical process helps planners create a list of possible options, or courses of action (COAs), that the commander can choose from. This list is reduced further to a workable number of preferred COAs that are war-gamed by the command team, and the best solution is then presented to the commander. The sub-sections then further refine the chosen plan and identify how best to implement it in order to have the desired effect on the ground.
The OPP training is a step-by-step practice in which participants learn how to simplify complex problems, recommend agile solutions that can be coordinated across different functional areas and environments, and adapt the plan as circumstances change.
"OPP training in the context of Ex TRADEWINDS 2021 is a fun and rewarding experience. It’s great to see the progress from the very first cycle, which is a bit of a struggle for some, until the end of the training. It’s the practicing, the doing, that helps the transfer of the skills. Getting feedback and exchanging knowledge with other Caribbean nations at all levels throughout the exercise is the best way to learn about OPP,” said Colonel Rudderham.
| Date Taken: | 06.21.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 06.23.2021 11:49 |
| Story ID: | 399512 |
| Location: | GEORGETOWN, GY |
| Web Views: | 342 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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