What is Secretary of Defense James Mattis' current position on effects and effects based approaches to operations?
Effects Based Operations was a methodology for planning military operations that had flowed out of a number of previous methodologies, including the concepts of John Warden implemented by the US led coalition in Operation Desert Storm, System of Systems Analysis (SOSA), and Israeli Systemic Operational Design (SOD).
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jfq/jfq-35.pdf (See "The Origins of Effects Based Operations" by Philip Meilinger
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2006/MR1477.pdf
Many remember the "Effects Based Operations cease and desist" memo then General (now Secretary of Defense) Mattis issued during his tenure as the commanding general of Joint Forces Command in 2008:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjcsIbiyeHVAhVFKCYKHUBnBGgQFgg1MAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dtic.mil%2Fget-tr-doc%2Fpdf%3FAD%3DADA490619&usg=AFQjCNGlwbbr1bgpGYoGO1cQi4IJ3h45jg
Since then, it has been debated whether he had gotten the call wrong while trying to defend traditional concepts of warfare...
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjcsIbiyeHVAhVFKCYKHUBnBGgQFgg6MAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.airforcemag.com%2Fmagazinearchive%2Fdocuments%2F2013%2Fjanuary%25202013%2F0113ebo.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEnQIf3c2kWtUPVhTwlQhsGBtZnFg
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjNz4nxzuHVAhUBeSYKHRd_A9IQFggrMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fndupress.ndu.edu%2Fportals%2F68%2FDocuments%2Fjfq%2Fjfq-52.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGQiWA3T44tvNShMQz4rmhI0axn_w (See "Effects Based Operations: Combat Proven by Paul M. Carpenter and William E. Andrews)
...if there was sufficient evidence to support his conclusion...
http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-26_Issue-5/V-Henriksen.pdf
...if the nature of war means that Mattis was mostly right...
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jfq/jfq-46.pdf (see "Effects-based Operations and the Problem of Causality" by Zoltan Jobaggy)
...that Gen Mattis hadn't been critical enough of EBO in the memo...
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjNz4nxzuHVAhUBeSYKHRd_A9IQFggrMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fndupress.ndu.edu%2Fportals%2F68%2FDocuments%2Fjfq%2Fjfq-52.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGQiWA3T44tvNShMQz4rmhI0axn_w (See "EBO: There Was No Baby in the Bathwater" by Lt Gen Paul K. Van Riper)
...and that EBO was a mixed bag with both elements to throw out, with others to retain.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj_op2H1eHVAhUFQiYKHS1jCSoQFggmMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fndupress.ndu.edu%2Fportals%2F68%2FDocuments%2Fjfq%2Fjfq-52.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGQiWA3T44tvNShMQz4rmhI0axn_w (see "Letter to the Editor" by Steven Chiabotti)
This may lead many to wonder what SECDEF's current position on EBO is, or more specifically, the Effects Based Approach to Operations (EBAO) currently in Air Force doctrine. As it happens, he was asked that very question in 2016, which can be accessed at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk7GkKmXOGg
See from minute 21:30 to 25:15 when they ask Gen Mattis LTG Traynor's question about EBO. Gen Mattis validates and affirms USAF EBO (now EBAO) for "closed complex systems" [complicated, which are mostly linear], and then talks about how that approach is fundamentally unsound for "open complex systems" [complex or "wicked problems", which are mostly nonlinear]. The latter was the mistake in the way that JFCOM tried to apply EBO in one specific instance during an exercise, hence his decision to kill that specific EBO methodology when he was the JFCOM commander.
The takeaway - The nonlinear aspects of human social and political interaction described as being fundamental to the "nature of war" in the cognitive and moral domains can't ever be captured in a static ruleset and addressed with mechanistic, checklist-type approaches, even if some parts of the military problem in the physical domain do lend themselves to the application of a rigorous scientific process. This is captured by Mattis' closer to the question: "I still salute the Air Force's rigorous way of approaching closed complex targeting, but war is not a matter of servicing targets."
- Lt Col Dave "Sugar" Lyle, LeMay Center Strategy & Concepts