As anyone who has ever worked in The Building will tell you, the national security bureaucracy has its own special brand of communication. I'm not just talking about the acronyms, mystifying as they can be, or the doctrinal jargon. Trades and professions often have specialized vocabulary; this is especially true of technical fields and complex organizations. What's curious about the Defense Department is the way that language is used, not so much the words themselves: popular idiomatic expressions are chopped and changed liberally, peppered throughout briefings and casual conversations alike as universally-understood signifiers of meaning. This can strike a speaker of standard English as more than a little odd, particularly in a world where concrete explanation of complicated concepts seems – no exaggeration – vital to national security. If you're being uncharitable, you could almost say these low-content, pre-fab clichés are used as a substitute for real thinking.
Now that you understand the disease, let's take a look at a few of the symptoms. Here's a brief list of terms to serve as an illustrative primer on the lexicon of the Pentagon.
Put steel on target* – *To take decisive action on a particular task, to get to work, to show results. Synonymous with "put rounds downrange." More often used in the Building to reference administrative tasks than artillery shells.
Piece* *– Catch-all term used to refer to any grouping of tasks, objects, ideas, or actions that can be coherently described by a single modifier; often a sub-set of a broader grouping, as with a specific working group within an integrated process team. This is a tough one to explain, but you know it when you hear it – and you hear it all the time.
Task/Tasker/Tasking* *– No self-respecting staff officer would confuse his tasks with his taskings, and neither should you. A task, as laid out in Army doctrine, is "a clearly defined and measurable activity accomplished by individuals and organizations." In other words, it's a thing you do. Taskings are a type of order, a direction to perform certain tasks. And taskers? Well, they're the very lifeblood of the DoD action officer! That's the boilerplate document, complete with tracking number and other administrative impedimentia, that serves to formally notify organizations of relevant taskings and monitor their responses. When you show up at your desk, you've got a tasker in the inbox that communicates a tasking, the execution of which involves the accomplishment of tasks. Simple enough, right?
Warfighter* *– The Platonic ideal of Pentagonese: a word with pretensions of normalcy and mainstream communicative value, but which means something very specific (and very specifically different to its apparent meaning) in The Building. As far as the Army's concerned, a *warfighter *is a soldier. Yep, *any *soldier. You may hear the term used to refer specifically to people serving downrange, but it never excludes FOBbits; that is, a *warfighter *doesn't just fight wars anymore. Just ask the combat service support NCO whose 2003 letter from Iraq argued that "each and every one of my Soldiers is more than simply a logistician, a computer systems analyst, or a mechanic. Each one of my Soldiers does more than simply provide support and resources to enable other Warfighters to perform their operational commitments. Each one of my Soldiers is a Warfighter." And why not? It's a godsend for senior leaders and service chiefs, who surely have an easier time working the budget piece on the Hill when every soldier is a warfighter – when everyone contributes to The Fight. (Or The Warfight, if you will. Yes, I have actually heard this one with my own ears.)
De-conflict* *– Just like it sounds: to synthesize and eliminate inconsistencies. Senior leader-appropriate substitute for "un-fuck." Usually employed as part of a pledge to belatedly solve problems that could have been avoided by good staff work.
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Requirement – This is a term with real substance, but abuse has rendered it almost meaningless without adjectival modification. According to doctrine, "an established need justifying the timely allocation of resources to achieve a capability to accomplish approved military objectives, missions, or tasks." More often used as a catch-all buzzword to refer to anything one needs, wants, prefers, or daydreams about. Modify with "validated" when you seek to express your wants more forcefully.
Stoplight charts – Ever-present assessment and evaluation briefing slides which make use of the analytically rigorous, totally objective green/amber/red rating system to indicate whether outcomes are considered acceptable, borderline, or unacceptable. Can be used to rate everything from security in an Afghan district to cost, schedule, and performance milestones for a major acquisition program.
Battle rhythm – Doctrine says it's "a deliberate daily cycle of command, staff, and unit activities intended to synchronize current and future operations," but this is basically just a hooah, "warrior-focused" name for a daily or weekly routine. It's actually a meaningful term in the operating forces, but in the cubicle farm it sounds pretty stupid to talk about the weekly staff meeting, VTC, and report deadlines as part of the organizational battle rhythm.
Put that in your rucksack/Here's one for your toolkit – These two come courtesy of a Marine company-grade officer and bridge the field/building divide: they make reference to the figurative "rucksack" a military officer carries through his career – his "toolkit" of best practices. Young lieutenants ought to perk up when they hear the wizened old Gunny preface one of his lectures with either of these phrases.
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If you can't get enough of this stuff, check out the intermittent series "Learn to Speak Pentagon" at my blog, Ink Spots.
Gulliver is a faceless defense bureaucrat, working taskers every day to support the warfighter. He's also a contributor to Ink Spots, a blog about counterinsurgency, defense politics, and national security.
Photo: DoD
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