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100 Essential Military Buzzwords for 2022
Doctrines, concepts, code names and acronyms...(Oh my)
BY WILLIAM ARKIN and MARC AMBINDER
This post is not for the faint of heart. The national security community produces an avalanche of buzzwords, code names, jargon, and acronyms that explains increasingly fine-grained explanations of basic concepts, policy, and doctrine. It is a constantly changing and evolving terminology, most of it introduced in documents that are a formal part of the overall military planning process.
Some of this terminology fades away or is further refined to go deeper into “operationalizing” broad concepts, some softened or homogenized to find common mmm ground amongst disparate and competing organizations.
Other terms and concepts stick and become the bread and butter of an articulated present and future, that is, until the entire military has at least a cursory understanding of concepts. When that happens, terminology finds its way into common usage. That would apply, for instance, to such terms like “information warfare” or “effects based operations” or “homeland security”. Once brand new concepts, today they are common usage. Other such as “cyber” become so broadly applied that they live precariously, begging for more precise clarification.
The military is on the cusp of a transformation from the global war on terror (GWOT) – a concept itself invented in 2001 – to a return to a second Cold War. “Great power competition” is what this is called, a concept codified in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.
Coincident with the focus is a shift in terms: away from counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, irregular warfare, counter-insurgency warfare, special operations – all terminology with specific meaning – back to conventional warfare, peer and near-peer “competition,” and large scale combat operations. You can’t even talk about this shift without resorting to the specialized terminology.
With the shift then comes a new terminology, some of it brand new, some of it jargon that is itself ready to enter the invisible Webster’s. The terminology applies to all aspects of the “thinking” and working of the military, intelligence community, and domestic national security scene. The 100 terms and phrases collected here are more centrally describing or driving what exists today and aspirations for what will come in the future. The terms describe broad concepts of warfighting (“anti-access/area denial” or “multi-domain operations”) that bring the military into the present and the future. There is a elaboration literature behind every one of these terms and concepts.
The very definition of buzzword – “a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context” – applies here as well, and many of these terms are destined for obscurity. What is hot today often is hot because some Secretary or some chief (e.g., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or a Chief of one of the services) endeavors to put their stamp on direction or doctrine. Until the next person comes along.
Though the 2018 National Defense Strategy – the highest level current articulation of the state of the military – springs from the mind of former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and nominally follows some Trump administration thrust, there is already formal change afoot. The Biden administration has already produced an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, which is influencing the writing of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, now in preparation.
And on and on ... In the meantime, here are 100 new and not-so-new terms that describe much of what the military is doing and aspiring to master or transition to.
Without further ado….
1. “2+3”
2. 2030 Space Vision
3. Activity Based Intelligence (ABI)/Structured Observation Management (SOM)
4. Agile Combat Employment (ACE)
5. All-domain/Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO)/Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2)
6. Analytical Modernization (AMOD)
7. Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD)
8. Anticipatory intelligence
9. Army Aimpoint for 2035/Force Design 2030
10. Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
11. augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR)
12. Autonomy/autonomous systems
13. “big data” analytics
14. C2IE (Command and Control in the Information Environment)
15. Cloud/ICITE Cloud
16. CNO’s Navigation Plan
17. Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC)
18. Competition continuum
19. Continuous evaluation/User Activity Monitoring (UAM)/Continuous Monitoring (CONMON)
20. Counter Transnational Organized Crime (CTOC)
21. Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS)/Counter-small Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-sUAV)
22. Cross Domain Solutions
23. cross-functional
24. Cyber Resiliency of Weapons Systems (CROWS)
25. Cyber Tasking Orders (CTOs)
26. DCO-IDM missions (defensive cyber operations-internal defensive measures)
27. Defense Intelligence Strategy (DIS)
28. Directed energy weapons
29. Disruptive energetics
30. Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO)
31. Dynamic force employment
32. Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO)
33. extremism
34. FADE/MIST
35. FIVE-O (facility, individual, virtual, equipment, or organization)
36. Full Spectrum GEOINT (FSG)
37. Ghost Orders
38. Global Campaign Plan
39. Global military integration
40. gray zone operations and activities
41. Great Power Competition (GPC)/Strategic Competition
42. Guidance for the Development of Alliances and Partnerships (GDAP)
43. High Altitude ISR (HAISR) beyond line-of-sight
44. heuristic techniques
45. Human machine teaming (HMT)
46. hybrid warfare
47. hypersonics
48. Identity management (IdM)/signature reduction
49. INDUSEC (Industrial Security)
50. Insider threat
51. Integrated deterrence
52. Intelligence preparation of the Battlefield/Battlespace/Environment (IPB)
53. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, 2021
54. JIIM (Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational)
55. Joint all domain command and control (JADC2)
56. Joint Force 2030
57. Joint Operating Environment 2040
58. large-scale combat operations (LSCO)/large force employment (LFE)
59. Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE)
60. long-range fires
61. machine learning techniques (clustering, decision tree learning, artificial neural networks)
62. Missile Defense Review
63. Mobilization Operations Planning and Execution System (MOPES)
64. Multi-Domain Operations (MDO)
65. multi-INT
66. multi-mode operations
67. National Defense Strategy 2022 (NDS)
68. National Intelligence Strategy (NIS)
69. Navigation warfare (NAVWAR)
70. Near Peer Competitor
71. Nuclear Posture Review
72. ODTAAC (Outside Declared Theater of Active Armed Conflict)
73. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
74. Operations in the Information Environment (OIE)/Joint Concept for Information Advantage
75. OPIR (Overhead Persistent Infrared)
76. Overmatch/Project Overmatch
77. Pacing challenge
78. Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT)
79. predictive analytics
80. Project Convergence
81. Protect and Defend (P&D) mission
82. publicly available information (PAI)
83. Purpose-Built Task Forces (PBTFs)
84. Quantum research/information sciences
85. random forests
86. resilience
87. “Road-to War”
88. Senior Leader Command, Control, and Communications Services (SLC3S)
89. Set the Globe
90. Social media exploitation (SOCEX)
91. Space Control/Offensive Space Control/Defensive Space Control
92. Space Domain Awareness (SDA)/Space Situational Awareness (SSA)
93. Space superiority/Space supremacy
94. Spectrum warfare
95. Supply chain protection
96. Synthetic biology/biotechnology
97. threat-based strategy
98. Tri-Service Maritime Strategy
99. unmanned systems
100. “Whole of” everything