Defense planning when major changes are needed

ABSTRACT

The principles and formalities of modern U.S. Defence planning stem from the 1960s and have largely served well. This paper, however, is about the special challenges that arise when major changes have been needed, some even transformational in character. It discusses how changing realities, independent studies and analysis, events, leaders, and political processes have led to changes not easily instigated within normal processes. Several examples are discussed for the period 1976–2016. Today, the United States and allies again face major challenges that require major military changes. Those have not yet been decided, much less accomplished. The paper draws on lessons from earlier periods to identify obstacles to and mechanisms for change. The last section focuses on defence analysis, which has sometimes been an obstacle but can be part of the solution. The paper urges a new ethic for analysis and the analysts who perform it.

KEYWORDS:

• Defence planning
• planning under uncertainty
• transformation
• adaptiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. (See Grimes 2008, 8). Other agencies have sought to emulate DoD’s PPBE. For related discussion (see Tama 2018a, 2018b) and the larger special issue in which the paper appears. Official description of the PPBE can be found on the website of the Defense Acquisition University, http://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/ppbe-overview.

2. A recent official history (Keefer 2017, 323–349) provides support for much of this case.

3. The “Wolfowitz report,” Capabilities for Limited Contingencies in the Persian Gulf, was a study by the DoD’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation. Reportedly declassified in 2013 (Gunzinger 2011), it does not seem to be publicly available on the Internet.

4. Major players included Robert Komer, the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy; Russell Murray, the Assistant Secretary for Program Analysis and Evaluation; and David Jones, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David Jones. The NSC Staff was also much involved.

5. The recapitalization focus is evident in U.S. General Accounting Office (1995). The preference for continuity (but with adequate funding) was evident in reactions of most senior DoD leaders who were briefed in a 1996 meeting on strategic options (Davis et al. 1997). A few of the leaders, however, exhibited much more interest in change.

6. Proponents for change included Andrew Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment (Krepinevich 2002), the Defense Science Board (Defense Science Board 1998, Defense Science, 1996), the National Research Council (National Research Council 2000, National Research Council 1997), and such leaders in the Joint Staff as Admiral William Owens (Vice Chairman) (Owens and Offley 2000) and Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski (Cebrowski and Garstka 1998). Non-government studies also contributed (Frostic et al. 1993, Davis 1994, Davis et al., 1998, Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1996, Davis et al. 1996, Ochmanek et al., 1998, Hundley 1999).

7. Private communications with Under Secretaries of Defense and other officials in the mid-to-late 1990s. It seemed to them that everything worthwhile was being accomplished outside the mainstream processes (the PPBE, acquisition process, and that of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council).

8. This included large studies reviewing implications of the social-science literature for thinking about counterterrorism (Davis and Cragin 2009) and intervention operations (Davis 2011, Wong et al., 2017).

9. A more formal definition is that deep uncertainty is “the condition in which analysts do not know or the parties to a decision cannot agree upon (1) the appropriate models to describe interactions among a system’s variables, (2) the probability distributions to represent uncertainty about key parameters in the models, and/or how to value the desirability of alternative outcomes” (Lempert et al. 2003). The ideas have been developed for more than two decades at this point (Davis 1994, Lempert et al. 2003, Walker et al., 2013, Haasnoot et al., 2013). For links to many publications, see the website on robust decisionmaking http://www.rand.org/topics/robust-decision-making.html.

10. A history of capabilities-based planning, including criticisms and counters, appears in an appendix of a larger report (Davis 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul K. Davis

Paul K. Davis is a senior principal researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis in the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research has emphasized strategic planning (particularly for defence), decisionmaking theory, deterrence theory, modelling and analysis under uncertainty, and social-behavioural modelling of complex systems. Dr. Davis was a senior executive in the U.S. Department of Defence before joining RAND in 1981. He received a BS from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in theoretical chemical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Davis has served on numerous panels of the National Research Council and Defence Science Board. He is an associate editor and reviewer for a number of professional journals.