The Interim Strike Force Headquarters organizational concept has emerged as the experimental platform upon which the U.S. Army will examine how to reorganize the Army in the near term to meet the conflicting demands of National Security Strategy, force projection and resource constraints. This new design seeks to create a force which is more rapidly deployable, more lethal, modular, more mobile, more sustainable, and more survivable. By enabling the Strike Force Headquarters to operate in a decentralized manner and avoid the pitfalls of information pathology the Digital LNO Nodes provide the organizational adaptability required to enable Strike Force organizational tailoring. Force tailoring offers a powerful solution to alleviate this tension between requirements and constraints. Force tailoring is defined as the capability to determine the right mix and sequencing of units with sufficient combat power to accomplish the mission and sustain the force, based on METT-T, analysis, and other criteria such as available lift, pre-positioned assets and host nation support. This monograph addresses the challenges posed by force tailoring. In particular, this monograph seeks a remedy to the challenges posed by an increased span of control, operating in a more complex environment, the loss of organizational cohesion posed by task organizing on short notice, command and control issues associated with decentralized execution and the threat of information pathology. A review of the theory of complex systems indicates that all complex adaptive systems require control mechanisms to ensure that the self regulating and adaptive qualities of the system survive in a turbulent environment. This suggests that the Interim Strike Force requires integrative control mechanisms in order to remain adaptive and self organizing. The Digital LNO nodes, serving as directed telescopes, serve this vital function. The German General Staff model of using directed telescopes to enable decentralized execution is presented as empirical evidence of the efficacy of integrative control mechanisms to ensure system adaptiveness. This monograph suggests that the selection and training of directed telescopes for the German General Staff is an effective template for Interim Strike Force LNO Node development. Finally, the monograph analyzes the ability of Digital LNO's to provide the system adaptiveness required to enable force tailoring as measured against Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch's criteria for adaptive organizations in their book Military Misfortunes. The monograph concludes by recommending attributes of an LNO that are required for them to serve as successful directed telescopes for the Interim Strike Force Headquarters.

ADA 370328 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)