This paper discusses and reviews some previous research concerning what we denote as ‘goal-management’, in other words how to set, apply and evaluate goals when conducting military operations planning. We aim to explain and answer the following question:
We suggest a guideline (a planning tool) for how to conduct goal-management when planning military operations and exemplify our guideline with two fictive examples concerning the development of an Operational advice and Appreciation of Rules of Engagement. The paper concludes that the application of decision theory and ethics, i.e. important parts of philosophy, can contribute to military operations planning by focusing on three perspectives: an axiomatic, an ethical and a deliberative perspective.