FORT BENNING, Ga., (Nov.18 2015) -- Army doctrine constantly undergoes analysis and revision to remain relevant.

As the Army continues to adapt, the importance of relevant and current doctrine cannot be understated. Manuals must reflect new concepts and terminology for use across the board by senior leadership and Soldiers alike, said Curtis Archuleta, deputy chief of maneuver doctrine.

In 2011, the Army decided to repackage and simplify its doctrine through the reorganization of the Army's doctrinal library, Archuleta explained. The reorganization required that each of the Army's field manuals be revised and condensed into more inclusive and readable documents with reductions in redundancy. This reorganization initiative is known as Doctrine 2015.

"Before the revisions, very few people were reading through the doctrine because there were literally too many books to keep up with," said Col. Marty Barr, chief of maneuver doctrine. "And no one knew what was important to read since all publications were grouped together as field manuals."

To facilitate this change to the Army's doctrinal lexicon, Doctrine 2015 created several new categories of doctrine; Army Doctrinal Publications and Army Doctrinal Reference Publications reflect fundamental principles, and re-flagged Army Field Manuals to include in-depth discussion and details of tactics and procedures alone, techniques are found in another category of doctrine. This is a wholesale change from how the doctrine library was organized previous to this initiative. Army Techniques Publications contain techniques and are more tailored to formations at echelon, explained Barr.

"One of the revised manuals, FM 3-96, was primarily written and revised here," Barr said. "FM 3-96, whose predecessor was FM 3-90.6, provides doctrine for the brigade combat team, and describes relationships, organizational roles and functions, capabilities and limitations, and responsibilities within the brigade combat team.

This version was updated to stay in line with current doctrine, and the way the Army fights as part of unified land operations, the Army's contribution to unified action," Barr said. The Army demonstrates the Army's core competencies through decisive action - the continuous, simultaneous combinations of offensive, defensive, and stability or defense support of civil authorities tasks.

"Army FM 3-96 was under development for a period of three years," Archuleta said "Over the three years, the MCoE collaborated with government, non-government, joint and multinational partners in order to ensure we captured both strategic and tactical level lessons learned not just from U.S. forces, but from our partners as well.

"It is also the first manual that the MCoE conducted an Operating Force Writing Conference for - in which subject matter experts from the operating force came to Fort Benning and conducted intensive analysis, discussion, and writing in order to put the manual together.

"Some of the new areas that were later expanded into chapters include the nature of the threat, reconnaissance and security operations along with executing in the operational environment in order to understand, shape, influence and consolidate gains," Archuleta continued.

Specific changes to the manual include:

• Army FM 3-96 provides doctrine for the brigade combat team.

• Tactics, the employment and ordered arrangement of forces in relation to each other are discussed in this manual and are intended to be used as a guide. They are descriptive, not prescriptive.

• FM 3-96 applies to the Infantry brigade combat team, Stryker brigade combat team, and Armored brigade combat team.

• The principal audience for FM 3-96 is the commanders, staffs, officers and noncommissioned officers of the brigade, battalions and squadrons within the BCT.

• FM 3-96 applies to the entire Army, both Active and Reserve components.

The brigade combat team FM provides the tactics and procedures to employ the three variants of BCT - Infantry, Armored and Stryker. The MCoE, as the proponent for these three maneuver formations, prepared FM 3-96 for the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Barr said.

Three Fort Benning commanding generals supervised and led the creation of this manual; Maj. Gen. Scott Miller, MCoE commanding general, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, director of Army Capabilities Integration Center and deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and Lt. Gen. Robert Brown, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth commander, deputy commanding general for Combined Arms Training and Doctrine Command.

"At the end of that day, it's a time saver," Barr said. "This manual synthesizes material from several sources to deliver a tailored document for leaders. The table of contents is a great reference piece, and all the warfighting functions are integrated into each chapter of FM 3-96 while with previous versions you would have to check several chapters to find an answer to a single question."