On Military Force Planning

Document created: 25 August 04
Air University Review, July-August 1970

On Military Force Planning

For the past five years a diverse team of research and development engineers, economists, and ex-military war/force planners in industry has been examining some of the factors which seem to interfere most with obtaining maximum effectiveness in the process of military force planning. This article will present some of their findings, in the form of considered observations based on individual experience. Since we feel that each of the different portions of the planning community has its own specialized ways of looking at the various aspects of this subject, we will divide the article into three parts. The first will be an approach to force planning as seen by research and development. The second part will reflect the viewpoint of the economist and operations researcher. The third will point out some war-planner thoughts and present a set of key caveats that may be helpful to those involved with force planning.

the R&D look

The objective of research and development in military force planning is threefold:

(1) Identify the technologies that could contribute the most to overall effectiveness of the future military force structure.

(2) Allocate the resources required to achieve the desired level of knowledge prior to the start of engineering development on new programs.

(3) Provide a balanced effort with sufficient alternate courses of action to achieve an acceptable level of risk.

Effective R&D planning requires several key elements: timing, technology forecasts, estimated measure of resources required, assessment of risk that level of knowledge will not be achieved, and measures of effectiveness.

Many books, articles, and technical papers are available on these five key elements. Nevertheless, we still do not have a generally accepted method of allocating resources to the advancement of the relevant technologies. The Air Force is developing a method called Torque, which has been tested on advanced development phase tasks and shows great promise, but the advancements of basic technologies that occur more in preceding exploratory development and basic research phases will require a more sophisticated analysis. The problem is this: One of the six basic requirements for starting contract definition is that the technology be essentially in hand. We have too many sad examples of programs that started into development when the technology was not in hand. Too often we find that the level of technology we need to do a really effective job of performing a mission has not been achieved because the need was not recognized and the resources were not allocated early enough to permit the exploratory development which had to precede the required in-hand advanced development technology. At this point, the tendency might be to stretch the meaning of “essentially in hand,” with all the sad consequences.

The important principle here is that the level of technology could have been achieved if the need and the priority had been recognized early enough. A method of doing this is being explored which evaluates the sensitivity of mission and cost effectiveness to the level of specific technologies. Technology forecasts give an indication of whether such levels are possible in the desired time frame of a particular future program. The technologist, with the need defined, can say how the level of knowledge can be achieved and what resources are required and can estimate the risks involved. Allocation of R&D resources can then be made on the basis of resources invested and risk versus the payoff in mission and cost effectiveness.

Allocation of R&D resources by technology tradeoffs requires that certain relationships and definitions be established with the real world uppermost in mind. The timing of a future program must take into account the priority of the mission, the operational deficiency, and the limited Department of Defense (DOD) budget that will be available at that future time. Measures of effectiveness must be defined in a manner that permits the true worth of a technology level to be assessed. For example, the average number of bridge-busting sorties flown per day per aircraft is a meaningless measure if no bridges were actually busted. Clearly, the successful accomplishment of a mission must be one of the measures of effectiveness of the weapon system that performs that mission. In addition, the calculation must show what level of this kind of effectiveness can be realized if the technology is not developed to the desired level.

Assessing the measures of effectiveness is further complicated by the fact that the Air Force must maximize the capability of its total force mix for a given budget. This raises the critical question of just how the force mix will perform the missions.

Operational people tend to push for a single-purpose aircraft which performs its basic mission in the most effective manner that technology will allow. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the belief that the multipurpose aircraft is the only way to fly. These opposing views will not be reconciled until it is recognized that the answer lies somewhere between the two. The search for the optimum point is being pressed today, using the following methodology.

The objective is to determine the optimum force mix of fighter and attack aircraft to perform the tactical air missions. Although there are over 25 tactical missions identified with fighter and attack aircraft, the three which govern the size and mix almost exclusively are counterair, interdiction, and close air support.

Figure 1 shows that the three basic tactical air missions divide into ten sub-missions. The approach is to start with a base design aircraft which performs one sub-mission as effectively as the technology of the time period will allow. This, in effect, is starting with ten single-purpose aircraft in the force mix. A representative scenario can give the target types, quantities, and rates which determine the size of the mix. This first step forms the base from which effectiveness can be measured on the basis of the total force mix life-cycle costs. The next step is to add an increment of multimission capability to some of the base designs that had some degree of multimission capability inherent in their design to start with.

Figure 1. Tactical air missions

Two ground rules govern the adding of these increments of multimission capability:

(1) The mission effectiveness of the original base design cannot be reduced, perhaps meaning that the cost of the new design will be increased.

(2) The capacity of the force mix as established by the scenario cannot be reduced. Each time an increment of multimission capability is added, new force levels and mixes are determined on the basis of constant capability and the total costs calculated. Iterations of this process should converge to a force mix which has a minimum cost but still has the mission effectiveness desired by operational people.

the economists’ view

Money rules! The textbooks do not teach planning in such terms. Secretary McNamara tried vigorously to measure the cost of military effectiveness, but the triumph of the dollar is inevitable.

Why inevitable? Because effectiveness is calculated by military planners, but dollars are allocated by the Congress. Congressmen understand dollars, but they must take the military planners’ word for environments, threats, and measures of effectiveness. When they have done so—as they generally have in the past—they have put their money where their faith was; when they do not—and a great number of them clearly are of a mind not to now—they trust the dollars they understand, and effectiveness becomes an interesting derived quantity for the DOD to evaluate.

What this means to the force planner is that he may start his analysis with long-range strategic objectives and with technological and system requirements, but he must soon recognize that he is suboptimizing. He is working with an inner loop of the planning servo; “requirements” are only a wish list. The size of the dollar sign is the driving input to his outer loop and thus to his entire system. Whatever his opinions may be of this process, his time will be spent most efficiently if he comes up with the optimum solutions within the dollar constraints imposed.

An understanding of the real world is essential for any planner. The real world is peopled by human beings, and thus it is a world of emotion as well as reason. In the past, the citizens and their representatives in Congress took a realistic view of military threats and treated their social problems with wishful thinking. If they have now reversed themselves on both counts, then a condition of wishful thinking regarding military threats and realistic treatment of social problems becomes the present planning environment.

What, then, should the planner do in such an environment? He still has a rational task to perform, even within emotional constraints. He simply appends the words “under the circumstances” to his deliberations. He will find, however, that these circumstances will impose some rather severe restrictions on the new systems he can include in his forces. Fewer systems with more derivatives and with longer life required for each “tail number” will, in all likelihood, reduce overall effectiveness. The more severe question may come not in the reduced effectiveness of the next system but in the compounding effect on the generation beyond that one. That is, the fact that we have not funded an advanced system may have its most damaging effect in our having a lower level of technology available on which to base succeeding systems. Thus past projections of the growth of effectiveness may need to be scrutinized carefully. A trend is generally valid only when one can make the “all other things being equal” assumption. More stringent economic constraints on R&D are the kind of other-things-not-equal condition which can invalidate extrapolations from past growth experience.

the military force planner’s view

For a third viewpoint, we turn to some of the interactions found in the overall planning community and a number of resulting caveats which we believe should be carefully considered, especially by those specializing in anyone segment of the three-part planning community: R&D planning, economics/resource planning, and war/force planning.

The highly specialized areas of finance and R&D since World War II have, in general, forced an officer and civilian manning situation that tends to create specialized communities in the Air Force military force planning structure. While war plans, force structuring, and operations staff activities can be manned with generalists who have a broad background tied to forces in the field, the same cannot be said of R&D and finance. In many cases (excluding some assignments in Vietnam) these two career areas have become so individually complex that officers and civilians have had consecutive assignments for a great number of years in a single community, even though they may have been working at different-level assignments in different headquarters—AFSC, ASD, Flight Dynamics Laboratory. It is not uncommon for an R&D plans officer to go long periods before being assigned to the field forces, if ever.

Financially oriented staff officers often rotate between budget, cost, accounting/finance, programs, management analysis, data automation, and comptroller functions. Relatively short interruptions to attend Air University or other military schools do not seem to shake this identification with the specialty. Concurrently each community, including the generalist war and force plans category, has developed a specialized language not easily understood by other communities. Thus the operationally oriented group works with unit equipment (UE) numbers of aircraft while the group oriented to “P” series resource programs tends to think of authorized active inventory (AAI)—two different ways of keeping books on aircraft numbers. The economics /cost/budgetary group deals in such specialized terms as cost estimating relationships, intricate learning curves, above the line, below the line, flyaway, gross program costs, total costs of forces. Recent cross-training assignments should be helpful; for example, an essentially R&D planner has been given a major supervisory position in the budgetary cost division, including force costing responsibility. When the three-part community has been completely coordinated in a timely way and communications have been smooth, some very interesting patterns have developed, reflecting the integrated thinking of the R&D, cost, and operational groups which is possible in force planning. Such developments seem most effective when generated and implemented by the full three-part planning community. One typical life cycle model is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Typical life cycle model of aircraft program (not on any certain one). New contract definition (CD) and initial operation capability (IOC) dates for replacement systems must be logically phased in, based on operational deficiency, economics, technical feasibility, and age and condition of force being replaced.

basic caveats

The interaction of R&D, economic, and force quantification items can best be shown in a series of “caveats.” Among the caveats that not only reflect mistakes or lessons learned but include potential future danger areas as well, the following are particularly important.

1. Exploit the building blocks of exploratory development/applied research, including mission analysis, technical tradeoffs, and technical intelligence, at a sufficiently early date in R&D to contribute to the direction that future forces take. Do not wait for advanced development to exploit R&D. This is too late.

2. Continuously modify operational doctrine to challenge R&D technology for implementing solutions and vice versa. Stale doctrine does not effectively drive technological innovators; more often than not it tends to push solutions for the last war.

3. Generally, allocate only limited R&D funds to long-term end objectives of mission accomplishment and attainment of operational capability objectives; technology for technology’s sake is valid only for research.

4. Step up frequency and effectivity of communications between R&D and other parts of the planning community.

5. On an overall budget basis, clearly recognize that operational requirements may call for dollars in an amount two or more times that expected in the budget, thus presenting major allocation problems which planners should help to solve.

6. Do not insert new replacement into force too early relative to life cycle of replaced system. Procurement/maintenance objective is at least 11 or 12 years generally for a tail number and up to 20 years for a large bomber or transport if an efficient system was picked to start.

7. Do not insert augmentation system (to supplement a system now existing) without due regard for procurement budget overloading involved for government.

8. Spread knowledge of procurement planning internal practices in government. (This is over and above Armed Services Procurement Regulations.) This applies especially to operations and requirements people, with particular reference to the intricate financing of new systems with government funds on a phased basis.

9. Expand the mere handful who understand force structuring and force costing, including more cross-training assignments between segments of the planning community.

10. Provide sufficient effort to research force planning methodology/techniques, including ways of better integrating the activities of the three-part community.

11. Look beyond production at the life cycle annual operating cost of the force and its parts, especially in the phase-out time period.

12. Establish greater uniformity in interpreting military missions and which systems can specifically perform which missions, and the degree of effectiveness in performance, quantified beyond emotion.

13. Avoid overly frequent assumption that new technology automatically insures new procurement.

14. A key general planning factor is to keep a system in at full force after final production (not including peacetime attrition) for 5 to 7 years before beginning system phase-down. Well-modified systems, such as the rejuvenated B-52, can, of course, extend this 5-7 year period in isolated cases. The point is to objectively review the system being replaced in the force structure. There is no set factor, but the 5-7 year full-force period is suggested as a reference value, which must be modified (less or more) for each new system.

15. Watch for specific characteristics that influence system life. Strong systems, such as the RF-4 for reconnaissance, can defer RFXs at least to the phase-down period. AXs replacing A-7s too early, if at all, must have some special advantage; without this advantage, such a replacement would be tantamount to declaring that the original A-7 purchase was in error. Or, as is the case, A-7s may have doubled in cost and it is possible to put a hold on a portion of production and substitute a quick-fix airplane. This could happen with any aircraft where prices are too high, performance is poor, and there is still time for a hold, prior to delivery of the whole force, for substitution. In every case, the situation should be tested against a pattern like the “5–7-year” full-force schedule and/or new patterns still under study.

for the future

We have discussed several ideas capable of implementation today. Beyond these are other ideas whose need we perceive but whose development requires effort from both sides of the maligned “military-industrial complex.” We suggest these ideas in particular:

1. Encourage a service-industry pooling of data on technological forecasting, which is an important element of R&D planning.

2. Place more effort on tactical doctrine that the services wish to employ in the future. This would tend to create the technology base that will permit employment of the desired doctrine, rather than continue patching the doctrine to fit what existing technology will allow.

3. Develop a new concept to replace “requirements.” The term is meaningless—required in order to do what? Since many so-called requirements are not met, they could not have been required. But the need for replacement is more than one of semantics.

4. Develop a method for assigning a risk index for each force structure in each projected environment. This index would relate the weakness of the nation’s defense posture to the principal threatened hostile action in that environment. Such an index, suitably defined in lay terms, might be a means of communicating with the Congress on the consequences of a proposed cut in forces or budget.

5. Modify the definition of cost effectiveness to include future effects. Project the cost effectiveness of the system beyond the one under consideration, then apply discount factors to account for uncertainties in technologies and environments. But recognize in the calculation that there will be a next system and that it may be significantly affected by a development which is not undertaken today because the cost-effectiveness case cannot be made for it in the immediate program.

6. Increase utilization of the computer for quick response changes in force structure planning patterns and alternative options. With development of more precise and detailed planning factors, this will be possible to a much greater degree than in today’s process.

7. At the middle management level, provide extensive periods of broadening-type training for those over and beyond flag rank. This would even go so far as to give selected fighter staff people, including wing commanders, tours as comptrollers, R&D people tours in procurement production, and vice versa. This will take a determined effort, with top-level backing, to really have a more-than-nominal impact. “Tokenism” here will be insufficient.

Our main purpose in writing this article is a heuristic one rather than the dispensing of any cut-and-dried gospel. We would hope that it generates some thinking in the mind of each reader, whether he is a “force planning” specialist or not. After all, planning is everyone’s business, no matter how small a part he may play in the actual decision process.

Burbank, California

Contributor

U.A. Coty (M.S., University of Michigan), is a Senior Research and Development Engineer, Lockheed-California. He has served as Group Test Pilot and Technical Inspector, USAF, and in various managerial engineering assignment relating to design and production of aerospace systems, e.g., the Polaris missile, and including Senior Research and Development Engineer, Advanced Concepts.

Everett J. Daniels (M.B.A., University of California at Los Angeles) is a long-range planning specialist in the Lockheed-California Company. He was formerly a theoretical aerodynamicist, Navy airborne electronics officer, and electromechanical system engineer. He has published or presented numerous papers on industrial and governmental planning, with emphasis on new product selectivity and the allocation of R&D funds. He is a member of the Institute of Management Sciences and the Operations Research Society of America, a director of the Geodynamics Corporation, and a consultant to the Institute for the Future.

Colonel Robert A. Shane, USAF (Ret), (M.B.A., Hofstra College) is in the Advanced Programs Analysis Office, Science and Engineering, Lockheed-California Company, Burbank. From 1948 to 1954 he was Chief, Economic Evaluation Division, Hq Air Defense Command, in which capacity he developed, with ADC operation an analysis, a war-gaming model defense. Other assignments were as Chief, Material Operations Analysis, Logistics Plans, Hq USAF, and from 1957 to 1960 as Director of Logistics Plans, Fifth Air Force, when he also served on the SEATO Planning Committee. Colonel Shane is an elected member of the Operations Research Society of America and a previous contributor to the Review.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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