Naval postgraduate school monterey, california thesis

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Figure 3.
Author’s Representation of the Effects of Time on Principles 
The uniqueness of a hostage siege can be summarized via these four principles 
from operational warfare that transform throughout the life of the hostage ordeal. The 
principles of 
surprise, intelligence
, 
operator’s skill
, and 
deception,
when represented on a 
simple graphical diagram, will follow a specific pattern in the shape of a human 
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Strategic Level of war as defined by Joint Pub 3-0, is that level of war at which a nation, often as a 
member of a group of nations, determines national or multinational (alliance or coalition) strategic security 
objectives and guidance and develops and uses national resources to accomplish these objectives. The 
Operational Level of war links the tactical employment of forces to strategic objectives. The focus at this 
level is on operational art—the use of military forces to achieve strategic goals through the design, 
organization, integration, and conduct of strategies, campaigns, major operations, and battles. The Tactical 
Level of war is the employment of units in combat. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of 
units in relation to each other and /or to the adversary in order to use their full potential (Joint Pub 3-0, 
2001, pp. II-2, II-3).

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biorhythm. A close look at this graphical representation of the hostage crisis biorhythm
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will define the critical factors for a successful rescue attempt. These factors show that, 
throughout the course of the hostage crisis biorhythm, they will benefit the rescue force 
or the hostage takers differently, depending on the specific moment in time. A thorough 
understanding of this biorhythm will provide planning guidelines to assess the best 
windows of opportunity for a proposed rescue attempt.
On page #22, Figure 5 shows an example of the hostage crisis biorhythm model, 
demonstrating how the principles change as a function of time and depicting the best 
execution point for a rescue attempt. The graph is not an exact analytical tool that can 
predict precisely a moment in time; it is only an estimate to aid in the decision process.
A more analytical approach later on in this thesis assigns values to different factors for all 
parties involved and plotting instances throughout a specified time line. This is done by 
applying utilities from decision-making models and principles of Game Theory
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, but it is 
only a subjective estimate based on the planner’s assigned utilities.