Military operation plan
list of actions an armed force intends to carry out to achieve combat goals
A military operation plan (commonly called a war plan before World War II) is a formal plan for military armed forces, their military organizations and units to conduct operations, as drawn up by commanders within the combat operations process in achieving objectives before or during a conflict. Military plans are generally produced in accordance with the military doctrine of the troops involved. Because planning is a valuable exercise for senior military staff, in peacetime nations generally produce plans (of varying detail) even for very unlikely hypothetical scenarios.
Plan XVII and the Schlieffen Plan are examples of World War I military plans. The United States developed a famous color-coded set of war plans in the early 20th century; see United States color-coded war plans.
Military plans often have code names.
United States
A U.S. Department of Defense Operations Plan (OPLAN) is a complete and detailed plan for conducting joint military operations. Such plans are developed by the staff of a unified combatant command in response to actual or potential situations for which military operations may be required. An OPLAN is executed when the commander issues an operations order (OPORD), or when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) issues an execute order (EXORD) at the direction of the United States secretary of defense to implement a decision by the president to initiate military operations. A concept plan (CONPLAN) is an operation plan in concept form, often lacking the level of details normally found in other military plans.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Military operation plan” is list of actions an armed force intends to carry out to achieve combat goals. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Military, operation and plan, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q149377. The Library of Congress control number is sh85085261. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Military operation plan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.