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MISSION
The Naval Operational Planner Course (NOPC) educates selected Navy and other-Service
officers in the skills required for the planning, execution, and assessment of joint
and naval operations. The purpose of this effort is to provide operational commanders
with these specially educated officers. In a 21st century of complicated threat
and opportunity, Joint, Navy component, and numbered fleet commanders increasingly
require officers who are both platform-expert and skilled in the planning, execution,
and assessment of campaigns and major operations. Such skills are essential in an
environment of exceptional speed and complexity; officers must develop them through
practical experience built upon a solid educational foundation. The NOPC provides
this educational foundation.
BACKGROUND
The Naval Operational Planner Course (NOPC) is a Chief of Naval Operations – directed,
13-month curriculum that began in1999. The NOPC imparts significant maritime and
joint planning knowledge and skills to select all-Service officers for subsequent
assignment to the numbered fleets, Navy components, U.S. combatant commands, and
analogous operational war fighting staffs. NOPC graduates are peers to the graduates
of the other U.S. advanced war fighting schools: Army's School of Advanced Military
Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth; the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting
(SAW) at Quantico; the Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS)
at Maxwell AFB; and the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) at the Joint Forces
Staff College, Norfolk, VA.
CONCEPT
The NOPC integrates the Naval War College resident intermediate-level core curricula
(National Security Decision Making, Strategy & War, and Joint Maritime Operations),
three electives comprising the Joint Planner area of study, and real-world planning
missions assigned by Joint and Navy operational commanders. This educational process
yields skilled practitioners of the operational art and operational planning in
the joint and maritime domains. Graduates can plan, execute, and assess outcomes
via the Navy and Joint Planning Processes. They understand how to integrate campaigns
and plans, theater strategies, national military strategy, and national security
policy and strategy with operational planning, execution, and assessment. NOPC graduates
are well-qualified to make judgments based on internal evidence or external criteria
with respect to the multi-faceted aspects of maritime force employment. They can
apply organizing principles to exercise command and control of joint forces and
embedded maritime components. Graduates are creative, innovative, and capable of
developing new operational concepts.
OBJECTIVES
The NOPC curriculum educates officers who can:
- Conduct sophisticated multinational, interagency, joint, and component planning,
execution, and assessment at the operational level of war. Capability includes estimate
process, plan development, force organization, order writing, execution, and running
estimates in the crisis action, adaptive, and contingency environments.
- Organize and lead an operational planning team (OPT). Serve effectively as principal
element leader in a joint planning group (JPG).
- Understand and speak all operational planner language -- multinational, interagency,
joint, component, and Service.
- Comprehensively understand and apply national security policy and strategy, national
military strategy, national maritime strategy and power, theater strategy / campaigns
/ plans, and relevant multinational concerns to operational planning, execution,
and assessment.
- Think critically and apply results effectively. Graduates are skilled at evaluating
a complex, chaotic security problem, identifying key causes and effects, developing
an exhaustive set of alternatives to solve the problem, and implementing effectively
the chosen alternative.
- Competently represent and communicate maritime capabilities, limitations, doctrine,
and requirements. Make well-qualified judgments concerning all aspects of maritime
force employment. Develop new maritime operational concepts.
- Plan effectively with graduates of the other advanced war fighting schools.
METHODOLOGY
The NOPC curriculum has three main components. First, students participate in the
Naval War College resident intermediate core courses: National Security Decision
Making, Strategy and War, and Joint Maritime Operations. Second, all resident intermediate
students must take elective clusters associated with various areas of study; accordingly,
the NOPC students take three tailored electives that collectively constitute Area
of Study “Joint Operational Planning.” Third, the course concludes with three-month,
real world, practical planning missions assigned by Joint or Navy operational-level
commanders, including U.S. Combatant Commanders, Joint Task Force commanders, and
numbered fleet commanders.
NOPC students are selected from the U.S. active duty officers slated to attend the
Naval War College resident intermediate program each August. The selectees are organized
into seminars comprising Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Air Force officers.
The students receive presentations from subject matter experts of many national
security venues, but the majority of NOPC learning takes place in the team-centric
seminar environment where students learn planning processes and then face increasingly
sophisticated operational planning challenges. In addition to the requirements of
the three core courses, the NOPC electives require graded oral and written assignments,
and formal presentations to senior U.S. military and civilian officials in person
and via video teleconference. The NOPC curriculum concludes with the students presenting
for approval their recommended plans to the operational commanders who assigned
the planning missions.
NOPC CURRICULUM DESCRIPTION
- Please visit the Naval War College Web pages for the National Security Decision
Making, Strategy and Policy, and Joint Military Operations departments to access
the curricula of their respective intermediate core courses.
- The NOPC electives complement the Naval War College intermediate core courses,
maintain consistency with related material covered in the Navy’s education and training
continuum, and provide students with the skills necessary to meet the NOPC learning
objectives. Given the Naval War College core curriculum focus on the strategic and
operational levels of decision making across the range of military operations, the
NOPC electives concentrate on operational art and operational-level planning fundamentals,
to include focused study of planning considerations at the maritime functional component
level and the joint task force level.
- Elective #597A, Fundamentals: Operational
Art and Doctrine: introduction to NOPC and the Navy planning process; classical
thinkers; naval tactics; naval operations; design of major naval operations; operational
factors; operational functions; elements of operational warfare; center of gravity
development and deconstruction; operational art exam; review of Joint Operation
Planning & Execution System (JOPES), Consolidated Planning Guidance (CPG), and Joint
Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP); review of Joint Publications 1, 3-0, and 5-0;
review of Navy Doctrine Publications 1 and 5, and Navy Warfare Publication (NWP)
5-01 (Navy Planning Process); Adaptive Planning, and Combatant Command Planner Perspective.
-- Fall trimester: 15 sessions over ten weeks.
- Elective #597B, The Navy Planning Process
and the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander (JFMCC) Environment: brief
introduction to JFMCC concept, command and control, and force employment considerations
for planners; addresses the Navy Planning Process with practical exercise (Joint
Intelligence Preparation of the Environment [JIPOE] through course of action [COA]
decision).
-- Winter trimester: 15 sessions over ten weeks.
- Elective #597C, Operational Planning
Considerations for the Joint Force Commander: introduction to the Joint Task
Force construct and JFC planning processes and organization; JFLCC, JFACC, JFSOCC,
and JFMCC employment considerations; JTF boards, centers and cells; joint deployment
process and exposure to the Collaborative Force Analysis, Sustainment, and Transportation
(CFAST) tool; introduction and practical application of the Standing Joint Force
Headquarter (SJFHQ) concept. Mini-courses by guest experts on information operations
(IO) and effects-based approach to operations (EBaO) are conducted concurrently
with this elective. The students also participate in a one-week theater contingency
war game (TCWG) with the other advanced war fighting schools at Maxwell AFB, Alabama.
-- Spring trimester: 15 sessions over ten weeks, not including mini-courses and
TCWG.
- Capstone Planning Project – 12 weeks.
NOPC students are assigned as adjunct planning teams to a numbered fleet N5 (plans)
or a standing Joint Force J5 planning staff, to develop JSCP and Combatant Commander-directed
plans. These plans are typically (although not necessarily) maritime-focused, and
each NOPC team conducts the appropriate planning process to meet the Commander’s
Guidance in development of the specific plan.
GRADUATE CREDENTIALS AND ASSIGNMENTS
NOPC graduates receive the Naval War College diploma, Master of Arts degree in National
Security and Strategic Studies, and certification of Joint Professional Military
Education (JPME) Phase I Intermediate Level completion. The Naval War College awards
joint operational planner designation to NOPC non-Navy graduates for translation
into the appropriate Service-specific codes. NOPC Navy graduates receive Additional
Qualification Designation (AQD) “JP-1.” This AQD is also awarded to Navy graduates
of the other advanced warfighting schools (SAMS, SAW, SAASS, and JAWS).
NOPC non-Navy graduates receive post-NOPC assignments as directed by their respective
Services. In accordance with specific Chief of Naval Personnel rules, NOPC Navy
graduates are assigned to either warfare community tours or operational planner
billets on Joint, Navy component, and numbered fleet staffs. Those who first go
to warfare community tours are assigned thereafter to operational planner billets.
Navy officers who attend the NOPC or another advanced warfighting school, and then
complete operational planner assignments receive AQD upgrade from “JP-1” to “JP-3.”
CONTACT
The NOPC Academic Coordinator may be contacted at 401-841-2519 or 2534 (DSN 948).
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