Since we had no clear idea of what the enemy was doing, we had to guess. We’d take those guesses—officially called intelligence estimates or analysis—and try to deliver violence in such a way that the enemy could not do what we thought he was trying to do. That was working far better than we had dreamed.

Meanwhile—as in every war I’d seen—the Air Tasking Order was getting out late. Some problems are inevitable. Bad weather over targets required changes in the target lists, and there’d always be computer hiccups. Other problems were less forgivable: planners lust after the perfect plan, and generals like to general; both often pay more attention to doing their own thing than to taking care of the needs of the troops who are getting shot at.

There will never be a perfect plan until the intelligence that drives planning touches perfection. Don’t hold your breath. Yet planners obsessively fiddled and tinkered with the daily plan, trying to squeeze every drop of efficiency out of it . . . as though it were a work of art and not a rough script. When we stopped the presses to make small changes affecting only a few units, we risked delaying the ATO for everyone. And that risked increasing confusion or, worse, chaos.

Generals don’t feel like generals unless they make their presence felt. Fair enough, when they know where they are going and keep a light hand on the reins. That’s leadership. Too often, though, they don’t know where they are going, yet pretend they do (in the absence of virtue, the appearance of virtue is better than nothing); and then get the staff to plan the trip. Once the staff plan is prepared, the general will inevitably make lots of changes. General-induced changes make big ripples in the planning cycle. In our ATO planning process, we had lots of general-created tidal waves, including too many from me.

Despite the screwups, we gradually brought order to this confusion and speeded up the planning process in an orderly way that allowed humans to accommodate to them. Very early in the war, we learned to make changes early in the ATO, not by stopping the presses, but by sending change sheets directly to the units involved. We’d tell them something like: “When you get the ATO tonight, your F-16s are targeted against Target X. Disregard that and go to Target Y.” At first the new systems confused the wings, but they caught on rapidly.